The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

Mrs. Catsdoor was waiting for him in the corridor. “How is she, Master James?”

“She wanted to die alone.”

“Aye, it’s like the darkness before the dawn. That was my granny’s special brew. She always said that my grandda was a man who couldn’t hold more than a small dram of demon rum but that she knew he couldn’t help himself and thus if she wanted to have a husband for longer than a year, she had to invent something to ease him.”

“Did your grandda last longer than a year?”

Mrs. Catsdoor looked philosophical. “Yes, indeed, Master James. He’s all of seventy-two now, no teeth at all in his head, and drinks like a thirsty goat. We buried my granny twenty years ago. We found gallons of her brew in the cellar. He finished the final one some five years ago.”

“There’s something passing strange if that’s the moral to that tale, Mrs. Catsdoor.”

She sighed. “I’ve always thought so, Master James. Your new bride isn’t used to spirits, is she?”

“No, I believe, though, that the bottle and a half of champagne she consumed today will keep her free of intoxication for a good ten years.”

“That’s what my grandda used to chant like a monk when he felt particularly revolting. His vow never lasted out the day.”

James decided he wanted to meet grandda. “We’ll let her sleep through the night, Mrs. Catsdoor. If she does wake up, though, could you make something she could eat and keep in her belly if she’s hungry?”

James didn’t particularly want to eat either, but he liked Mrs. Catsdoor’s porridge with the honey she mixed in it. He finished the bowl just before he took off his clothes and climbed into bed next to his sodden wife.

He leaned over her for a moment, lowering his ear to her chest. Her heart was slow and steady. “You’re not dead yet, Jessie.”

19

I’M ALIVE, JESSIE thought, reasonably pleased, and then unutterably relieved once she realized she wasn’t still so vilely ill that she wanted to die. She raised a tentative finger, then her whole arm. She was wearing her own nightgown, one James had put on her the day before.

Was it still the day before? Bright sunlight shimmered through the light muslin draperies. She remembered Mrs. Catsdoor’s brew and how she’d believed it unjust to die with that vile taste in her mouth. But she didn’t die, and James had known she wouldn’t die. She’d made an ass of herself and he’d let her do it. It was morning. She realized that now.

And James had done everything a husband was supposed to do, and she had no memory of it, so that was all right as well. She heard a snort, jumped, then turned to see her groom lying on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other hand on his belly, which was barely covered with a sheet. He gave two more short snorts then fell silent.

Everything that was deep within her responded to the sight of him lying there beside her. He was her husband. He had thick gold hair on his chest, all crispy-looking and a tuft of soft gold hair beneath his upflung arm. He was hard and lean, lightly tanned from working in the sun without his shirt, and she wanted more than anything to shove that sheet down just a little bit more. She wanted to see just how much like a stallion he really was so she could try to remember what he’d done to her.

She moved her legs. Nothing hurt. Recalling how she’d seen mares teetering around after mating, she began to wonder. She didn’t think she was going to teeter at all. James must have been very careful with her. She eased out of bed before she could resist the temptation to pull that sheet down no longer and walked across the bedchamber. When she did, she didn’t teeter at all.

She whistled to herself as she stripped off her nightgown, then bathed in the basin of cool water on the dressing table. Every few minutes, she looked back at the bed. James hadn’t moved a bit. Well, perhaps that sheet was just a bit lower. She took a step toward the bed, then stopped, and settled for craning her neck a bit. The sheet was lower. She saw the narrow line of golden hair that disappeared too soon for her taste beneath that dratted sheet. He had a flat belly, but she’d already known that, still seeing it in the flesh pleased her. His flesh was whiter here, and she found that fascinating though she couldn’t begin to explain why.

She dressed quickly, still whistling, took one last look at James, and regretfully left the bedchamber.

“Mrs. Catsdoor?”

“Good heavens! Mrs. James. Now, don’t you look like a lovely little summer posy, all bright and eager and ready to blossom for the sun.”

Jessie thought of those foxgloves and smiled. “Your brew was excellent. Thank you very much. I thought I loved champagne, and I surely did, but it did me in. I’m sorry I wasn’t quite attentive enough when I arrived here yesterday. Goodness, I’m starved.”

“Of course you are,” Mrs. Catsdoor said, grinning as she remembered Master James carrying in his bride in his arms, and she looked dead. Dead drunk was more like it. “Come eat some porridge. Master James tells me it’s the best porridge in all of England and the Colonies. It’s my honey, you know. I have a special breed of bees, and no one else knows of their hives. Just three of them and all the honey’s for me. Just sit down here, Mrs. James, and I’ll fix you up right and tight.”

James awoke with a start. He’d dreamed he was kissing a woman who was moaning into his mouth, whispering how magnificent he was, how much he pleased her, how she enjoyed him touching her and coming inside her and he was so big and so—James shook his head. A typical man’s dream. Nothing but a damned dream.

Something wasn’t quite right. He was in his bed, but he wasn’t sleeping on the left side. He was on the right side. He never slept on the right side; it made him have strange dreams, although this most recent one wasn’t bad at all. Then he remembered he’d placed Jessie there sleeping like a drunken stoat, convinced she was going to die, and he’d slept beside her. The pillow was still pressed down, the sheets rumpled.

She was gone.

“At least she didn’t die,” he said to the empty bedchamber, climbed out of bed, and shrugged into his dressing gown. An hour later, he found her grooming Esmerelda, chatting to Sigmund as if she’d known him all her life. She wasn’t wearing breeches as the old Jessie would have, but the pale blue gown was of sturdy cotton, plain and functional. So this was the new Jessie in her working mode.

She’d braided her hair atop her head with those streamers curling lazily down over her ears. He wondered if she’d brought her old leather hat to England.

“Good morning,” he said.