It had been the first time in her life that any gentleman besides her father had encouraged her to speak of her interests. As they moved into the sun of the front lawn her eyes grew wet and hazy from the glare. “I liked that painting in the ballroom very much. I think I will always remember it.”
He gave her a long and enigmatic look. “You enjoy history,” he said. “Let us talk of history. Courtland Manor’s and my own.”
He took her first to the gardens and surrounding woods. Court seemed in his element here, seeking out long-unused paths and stomping about in his dust-covered boots. He showed her where he played as a boy with his beloved dog Mercury. He described everything about his childhood pet, from his glossy amber eyes to his coarse red fur. His tales were so vivid she almost expected old Mercury to come bounding from the surrounding trees. He showed her where he hid as a child and played forest games with one of the servants’ boys, at least until they were found out and forbidden to speak to one another again.
From there they went to the stables where she learned of his boyhood mounts and extensive riding instruction. He’d only been allowed the gentlest sort of horses as a child, lest he meet with disaster. One old nag was still there, cosseted and sheltered in her old age. His miniature-sized tack was there, his initials engraved on the fine leather. They went into the house then, shed hats and cloaks and ventured into musty, dark rooms where he told more tales of his childhood. So many of them were sad. Stark lessons learned, harsh discipline meted out for one thing or another. She’d understood he had an unusually rigorous childhood. It was something else altogether to hear about his everyday experiences within these walls.
He told her of servants dismissed for being too kind to him, relating the exact places where they were sacked as he looked on in horror. He showed her the places he’d hidden when his parents fought, great screaming fights that terrified him, fights about his father’s extramarital affairs and many, many fights about him, Courtland’s sole heir. “And here,” he said, leading her to the middle of the great room just inside the door, “here is the first and last place I ever cried in public. I was six years old. My dog died…Mercury, you remember.”
Harmony nodded with a hot, tight feeling in her throat.
He stared at the parquet floor as if he could see his own self in the gleaming tiles. “I was looking for my mother, to tell her, and my father found me crying and knocked me to the ground. ‘A gentleman never cries in public. Especially a future duke.’ And so it was.” He looked up at her and touched her cheek. “And I have never cried since, not like you, who cries so gustily and sweetly whenever it moves you to do so.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I shall cry now, unless this tour is at an end. I can’t bear much more of this.”
He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. “I love that you cry. I pray you will never stop.” He made a face, rocking back on his heels as she dabbed at her tears. “Well, I don’t mean that in a literal sense, of course.”
She giggled through sobs. “I didn’t think you did.” She fluttered his wet hanky in frustration. “There has got to be some middle ground, hasn’t there? Something between never crying at all and always making a scene. And you, and this childhood… There has to be some center ground where one can be disciplined and mannerly, and yet enjoy the fullness of life’s pleasures. There must be a balance between joy and duty. There must be.”
Her husband brushed away her tears and looked intently into her eyes. “When we return to town we shall dismiss your tutors and instructors and find this middle ground so we can both be at peace. We shall endeavor to make our marriage as harmonious as your name.”
“Do you believe that’s possible?”
“We’ll find a way.” He sobered, stroking a ringlet of her hair drawn askew by her bonnet. “For one thing,” he said, lowering his voice, “I don’t intend to spank you anymore.”
Harmony couldn’t say why, but the idea troubled her. “Why have you decided that?”
“I don’t want you to get the idea that you are not good enough as you are. That you need improving. Because you don’t.”
She made a face. “Sometimes I do.”
“You don’t.”
“What if I am terribly stubborn and start calling you Benedict even though you hate it? Or Benny?” she persisted. “What if I started calling you Benny from this moment forward?”
His lips twitched in a shadow of a smile. “It is not worth a spanking.”
“What if I put pepper in the dowager’s unmentionables? That is surely worth a spanking.”
“You would not.”
“I might, to get what I wanted. I am terribly headstrong and reckless when it suits my needs.”
“Harmony.”
“What if I stuff bits of odiferous leaves and grass into Mrs. Lyndon’s hats where she cannot see them? She’ll be sniffing about everywhere, trying to discover who smells so bad, and the whole time, it shall be her. What if I publish my own book about Mongol hordes and pass it about at the Courtland ball with my name emblazoned on the cover?”
Court cupped her chin, stifling laughter at her wild examples. “Why must you plague me? You have, you know, from the very first. I am not a man who can be comfortable with women hiding under desks, or conversing of hordes, or sponsoring historical expeditions. How on earth have you ended up in my life?”
“Fate.”
“Chance,” he countered.
“Magic,” they both laughed at once. She threw her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest and breathing in his reassuring, familiar scent. “But if I am good enough as I am, so are you. I don’t want you to change to suit me. If I earn a spanking I wish you would give it to me. Otherwise I shouldn’t know what to do with myself. I’ll be an utter mess.”
“And what of the sulking afterward?” he asked, leaning in so she was on level with his raised eyebrows and teasing gaze. “How shall I deal with that? And your petulant moods?”
She melted against him, feeling the evidence of his burgeoning desire thick and hard against her middle. “I think you will find a way to bring me out of them.”
He held her tightly, brushing his lips across hers. The kiss deepened, a celebration of closeness and acceptance, of divisive problems solved, at least for the moment. She sighed against his mouth as he embraced her without the least of gentlemanly manners. “Oh, Court,” she whispered.
“Courtland!” Her father’s loud voice carried across the soa
ring room.
Court released her with a jolt, and Harmony turned to find her papa stalking toward them, the tutting dowager at his heels.
“They are perfectly fine, Harry, you see?” said the dowager. “I told you they only needed a little time away.”
Harmony’s eyes went wide. “Did your mother just call my father ‘Harry?’” she whispered to her husband.
“I believe so,” he muttered back. “What the devil’s going on?” He addressed her father, holding out a hand to greet him. “Welcome to Courtland Manor, Lord Morrow.”
“I’ll speak to my daughter before I accept your ‘welcome,’” her father snapped.
“Papa!” Harmony shot Court an apologetic look.
“Come with me, dear,” the old man said. “We’ll have some words in private. I got a letter yesterday eve that deeply unsettled me.”
“It was not from me,” the dowager protested to her scowling son as Harmony’s father pulled her from the room into a smaller, adjoining parlor.
“Well, you have made an entrance,” Harmony said to him once the door closed. “But I am happy to see you anyway.” Was it only yesterday she’d so desperately wanted to seek shelter in his arms? She hugged him, thinking how much everything had changed in the meantime. Then she drew away and frowned. “Now, tell me. What on earth has got you in such a temper?”
“What has he done to you, poppet? I got this letter yesterday at the house. No signature or direction, but I’m sure it came from St. James Square. Here.”
He held out the note. Harmony recognized Mrs. Redcliff’s hand in the hastily scrawled missive. She hadn’t the heart to read it, thinking of what her protective lady’s maid might write to her father after the uproar of the past couple days. “Papa,” she began. “Well, we have had some recent difficulties…but…”
Her father threw himself down on a yellow chintz sofa, beckoning Harmony to sit at his side. “I tell you true, I figured the duke for a fine man. I trusted he’d make you happy, but even before you married I’d heard things about him that didn’t sit well with me.”