‘There’s no need for a maid, Mama. If Adam returns for luncheon he can walk me back or, if not, I am sure Mrs Moss will lend me her servant for half an hour.’ Lovely as it was to be on such good terms with her mother again, the phrase comfortable coze conjured up thoughts of letting her hair down with Maggie about things she could never discuss with Mama.
*
The clocks were striking ten when Maggie opened the door. Pierre, the coachman, carried the basket of clothes through to the kitchen then went whistling on his way to return the coach to Lady Thetford.
‘You look so fine, lovie!’ Maggie enveloped her in a hug, then stepped back to admire her. ‘Miss Tatton, I should say.’
‘Rose, please, Maggie. I’m still not answering to anything else without having to think about it. How are you? And Moss and Lucille? And all the men?’
‘Everyone’s fine, Rose.’ The older woman cast a glance upwards at the ceiling. ‘Excepting for the major.’
‘What’s wrong with Adam?’ Had she depressed him so much last night with her talk of love and trust that he was cast into gloom? ‘It isn’t that wound in his side, is it? It isn’t festering?’
‘No, nothing like that. He had to hold a court martial yesterday and the man was executed afterwards. Raped a nun in the hospital where he had been nursed, can you imagine? Anyway, the major’s fierce on that, especially since Badajoz, but he’s not the sort to go hanging and flogging with a light heart either. And then he sat up half the night drafting new guard rosters for the nunneries. None of that makes a man light-hearted, not when he’d rather be chasing the Frenchies back to Paris along with the Rogues.’
‘And he had to spend yesterday evening attending a vapid soirée with me and then listening to me agonising on the subject of marriage.’ And making love to me. ‘Why didn’t he say?’ Maggie opened her mouth, but Rose swept on. ‘Because he was doing his duty to me as well as obeying orders, I know. And now I’ve promised him for a dinner party this evening. Could you give him a message, Maggie? Say I will make his excuses.’
‘Tell him yourself,’ Maggie said as she reached for her bonnet. ‘I’m off to give Mrs Herring a hand with her new baby. It isn’t sleeping so the poor soul isn’t either, as you might imagine. You take the major a nice cup of tea and stay as long as you like. It’s Lucille’s day off,’ she added as she scooped up a basket and made for the door. ‘Kettle’s just off the boil.’
‘Maggie—’ But the other woman was gone. Rose took off her bonnet and spencer and began the familiar ritual of making tea in the homely kitchen. Adam liked his strong, black and sweet. She poured hers first and waited while the brew darkened. She was in no hurry now, content to know he was upstairs and they had the house to themselves.
When she climbed the stairs the door stood ajar so she pushed it open without knocking and looked in. Adam was bent over the desk with his back to her. His boots were set neatly to one side and he had hooked his bare feet around the legs of the chair like a schoolboy, she thought with a pang of tender amusement. Dog lay beside him and as she entered he wagged his tail, two heavy thumps on the floorboards.
‘Quiet, Dog. Thanks, Maggie, can you just put it down here?’ He didn’t look up from the page he was covering in writing that looked as though he was constraining a naturally bold hand to fit the page.
Rose put the mug on the table and rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘I could have been a French agent armed with a knife.’ It was a measure of his control that the quill did not blot. She laid her cheek against the crown of his head. ‘Have you got a headache?’
Adam laid the quill across the standish and lifted his hands to cover hers. ‘Just the usual report-writing headache. What are you doing here, Rose?’ His big hands enveloped hers, his thumbs closed over the pulse points in her wrists and began to stroke gently back and forth.
‘I came to bring the borrowed clothes back to Maggie, but she’s gone out to help a neighbour so she left me to make your tea. I’ll go away again now, Maggie said you’d been up all hours working. I wish I had known last night.’ She slid her cheek lower so she could kiss the upper rim of his right ear. It was not a body part she had ever imagined might be arousing, but the strong curve and the intricate whorls were sculptural and sensual. What would he do if she fo
llowed them with the tip of her tongue? ‘There’s no need to come to the dinner party tonight, I can give your apologies, say you are on duty.’
‘But I won’t be. And this is finished.’ He released her hands, picked up the quill to scrawl his initials at the foot of the page and added it to the stack.
‘Are all your nuns safe now?’
‘They had better be.’ He swivelled round in the chair and pulled her down on to his lap. ‘They are doing impressive work. Very valuable work. Our medical facilities in England could learn a lot from them. Men will be walking out of their wards who would otherwise have left as cripples or in a coffin.’
He broke off to remove Dog’s head from his knee where the hound had thrust it, slobbering gently, in an attempt to lick their linked hands. ‘Bed!’
Dog slunk off to the door looking beaten.
‘Bed sounds a good idea,’ Rose said. ‘Come and lie down and rest, you’ve a ferocious dinner party to fight tonight.’
‘Bed, you and rest in one sentence?’ Adam’s gaze seemed to smoulder when it rested on her.
‘Rest to start with. Mama knows I have come to see Maggie and expects either you or Lucille to walk me home after luncheon. Maggie is working her magic on a fractious baby and its exhausted mother. We have the whole morning.’
Adam stood up with her in his arms, which made her gasp. He set her on the bed, closed the door, turned the key in the lock and studied her as she began to unlace her half-boots and roll down her stockings. ‘Your mother knows you are here?’
‘Not in your bedroom. But she had her coachman drop me off just now. She thinks I am visiting with Maggie. You have quite seduced her, you know.’ She reached up her hands to unpin her hair.
‘Leave it.’ Adam’s voice had thickened. ‘Seduced her?’
‘I believe the sight of a big fierce warrior sitting in a dainty teashop wrestling with tiny sweetmeats quite won her heart.’ Her gown joined her stockings on the chair.
‘It seemed only courteous.’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You are teasing me.’