Truly a Wife (Free Fellows League 4)

Ned glanced at the bed, realized his mistress was right, and gave her a deferential nod. “Very good, milady.”

“When my mother inquires about my absence at breakfast tomorrow, tell her that I decided, on the spur of the moment, to spend time with an old friend.” She thought for a moment. “Tell her I rode with my friend and that I sent you and Rupert home to collect enough clothes for a week’s stay. It’s not uncommon. I’ve done it before.”

Miranda had done it lots of times. She’d spend almost the entire season at Abernathy Manor when Alyssa Carrollton married Griffin Abernathy shortly before he left for the Peninsula three years before. And she’d continued to make frequent visits to Abernathy Manor even after Griffin returned from war a hero and had been elevated to the title of Duke of Avon. She traveled so often that her mother complained that Miranda made a habit of running away from home. “My mother will understand. Have my lady’s maid pack the necessary clothing and return here as soon after breakfast as you can. And bring food. His Grace will be hungry when he wakes up. And I’m starving.”

“Yes, milady.”

“And Ned,” Miranda cautioned, “I want you and Rupert to come in a plain coach, without livery and without the grays.” The St. Germaine stable was known for its matched gray carriage horses.

“I’ll send Rupert back tonight.” Her footman lifted his hand to forestall Miranda’s protests to the contrary. “His Grace is ill. You may have need of a carriage to send for a physician.”

“You heard His Grace,” Miranda reminded him. “No physicians.”

“But you may need to send Rupert for help,” Ned replied. “And he’ll need a vehicle.”

“Agreed.” Miranda gave in. “You may send Rupert back, but remember that no one must know what happened tonight. No one must know that His Grace and I are here. Absolutely no one.”

“You can rely on it, milady.”

“Thank you, Ned.” She looked him in the eye. “I am relying on it. My good name and the duke’s depend upon it.”

* * *

Miranda waited until Ned left the room before she resumed the task of undressing the Duke of Sussex. Miranda smiled at the thought. She had wanted to undress Daniel for years. Now he was her wedded husband, but undressing him this way wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. There was nothing romantic about tugging and pulling and lifting an unconscious man in order to remove his clothing. It was hard, heavy work, and as she tugged his superfine jacket off his shoulders and down his arms, Miranda called herself ten kinds of a fool for dismissing Ned.

Until she’d relieved Daniel of his jacket, untied his elegantly fashioned cravat, removed his black brocade waistcoat, and unfastened the black onyx studs from the front of his shirt, then, pulling his shirt from the waistband of his trousers and peeling it away from his torso and over his head …

She stared transfixed by the sight of his naked chest. Ned was right. There was absolutely no comparison between a man of three score and five years and one of a score and eight.

Miranda had only seen her father’s naked torso once, but she remembered it well. Growing up, Miranda had always imagined that her father’s shoulders were broad and strong, but she realized that the marquess had benefited greatly from the skills of his tailor. Her father’s shoulders were wide, but the muscles were long and weak. His chest was sunken and pale, and his skin felt clammy to the touch. There had been a sprinkling of gray hairs scattered across her father’s chest and a ring of them around the flat, pink disks surrounding his nipples. The flesh covering his ribs and abdomen had been soft and doughy, his navel large and deep.

Daniel’s naked torso was as different from her father’s as night from day. His shoulders were broad and so well-muscled there was no need for padding in the seams of his jacket. His skin was a dark, golden color and appeared to be tanned by the sun, like the flesh of seamen who spent long, hot days amid the ship’s rigging, or the flesh of the gypsy men who wore short vests without shirts and who sought permission to camp with their families upon her estates during their journeys across England.

Daniel’s muscles rippled and bunched with his every movement, and the hair on his chest was golden bro

wn and formed a neat, compact wedge that spanned the width of his chest and covered his dark, flat nipples. The color contrasted sharply with the strips of snow-white linen encircling his ribs and the square of linen that had been stained red by his blood.

Miranda bit her bottom lip to keep from gasping at her first glimpse of the muscle and flesh covering his ribs and his abdomen. There was nothing soft and doughy about this flesh. Daniel’s abdomen was rippled with twin rows of taut muscles, his navel a mere indention bisected by the waistband of his trousers.

His was the body the Greeks and Romans had sculpted, the body of David that Michelangelo had so lovingly freed from the marble encasing it, and Miranda’s heart beat a rapid staccato at the sight of it. Except for the bloodied bandage on his side and the strips of linen wrapped tightly about his ribs, Daniel’s body was sheer perfection.

She had never seen anything quite as wonderful, had never dreamed that his elegantly tailored clothing had hidden such strength and beauty.

And she had never dreamed that Daniel, bleeding so profusely from a wound in his side, could still find the strength to waltz her out of a ballroom, cross a huge expanse of lawn, stop long enough to carry on a civil conversation with a fellow gentleman, then climb aboard a coach and suffer the jolting ride over the cobblestones to St. Michael’s Square and get married before passing out.

Glancing at the shirt she still held gripped in her fist, Miranda saw that the tails of it were stained with his blood in front and on back. She looked at the square of linen covering the wound in his side, then at the buttons at the waistband of his trousers. The buttons beckoned to her like siren songs luring sailors onto treacherous rocks, urging her to slip them from their buttonholes in order that she might satisfy her burning curiosity and explore the flesh hidden beneath the black superfine. But Miranda chose the truest course.

Taking a deep steadying breath, she left the tight binding around his ribs intact, but quickly untied the knots in the bloody bandage and carefully peeled it off the wound.

She couldn’t bite back the gasp as she stared at the tear in Daniel’s side. Miranda was no expert, but even she could see that Mistress Beekins had done an excellent job of stitching his flesh together. The ball had ripped a jagged gash through the flesh of his side and along his rib cage. Miranda marveled at the other woman’s skill, for there was no excess of flesh with which to work, and Mistress Beekins’s stitches were uniformly neat and small. Unfortunately, lifting his arm to signal the waltz had spoiled the needlework by pulling a half dozen or so of the long line of stitches out.

A steady trickle of blood oozed through the gap in the pulled stitches, but Miranda was relieved to see that the blood flow had slowed considerably now that Daniel was no longer moving about and exerting himself. He would carry a scar once the wound healed, a scar that would forever mar the perfect display of sinew and flesh covering his torso. But the wound would heal once it was restitched. Unfortunately for Daniel, she would have to do the restitching herself, and Miranda had never exhibited a great talent for needlework.

Gritting her teeth at the thought, she replaced Daniel’s bloodied bandage, then lifted the lamp from the table beside the bed and went in search of supplies. Leaving the door to the bedchamber open so she could hear if he cried out for her, Miranda hurried downstairs, retracing her steps, relieved to find that Ned had lit the lamps along the way from the upstairs bedchamber to the passageway that led to the kitchen.

The house was completely furnished and equipped with most of the personal items and amenities one would expect to find in a fashionable household. And since most fashionable households would at one time or another have need of a sickroom, Miranda prayed this one contained the items she needed in order to do the job that must be done.

Her prayers were answered when she located a tapestry sewing basket and a store of linen, including several oilcloth sheets, and, on a shelf in the housekeeper’s pantry, a bar of French-milled soap. The linen smelled slightly musty from having been stored, but it was clean and serviceable, and Miranda was profoundly thankful that she wouldn’t be reduced to cutting up her silk ball gown or sacrificing her silk undergarments in order to bandage Daniel’s wound. Her dress was bloodstained and might be beyond salvaging, but until Ned returned, it was all she had to wear.