Chapter Sixteen
The word “shite” hovered over Delilah like a guillotine with a fraying rope.
She sat now at her dressing table, plaiting her hair, relieved to have gotten through another evening without hearing it echoing
throughout the sitting room in Daniel’s voice. She knew it was only a matter of time, however. Her pride balked at telling
his mother about their little encounter on the stairs. So far, she’d told only her husband, very briefly, shortly after she’d
forced him to say “blancmange” aloud. Even making that confession had felt torturous. She didn’t know why. Tristan had been a sailor, after all.
Still, she had inwardly writhed in embarrassment when his eyes had widened in amazement.
She whirled when she sensed said beloved husband standing in the open doorway of their room. Staring at her.
He entered, and quietly closed the door.
“Tristan . . . why are you looking at me like you’ve never seen me before in your life?”
“Because I don’t know who you are anymore,” he said gravely.
Alarm surged through her. “W-what do you mean?”
“I thought I’d married a refined lady. Somehow well above my station. Instead, tonight I find myself going to bed with a salty-mouthed
sailor. I don’t know, Delilah. I might need a little time to adjust.”
She snatched a glove off her dressing table and threw it at her laughing husband, who caught it adroitly.
Truthfully, she loved it when he teased her. It was a side of him that he shared almost exclusively with her.
“I’m glad you find it funny, Tristan.”
“And I’m sorry to tease you if you’re embarrassed about it.” He deposited a kiss on top of her head as he deposited her glove
back on her dressing table. Military habits died hard. He never flung his clothes about, even if he was able to get out of
them with breathtaking speed.
He did that now and got into his nightshirt and she tried not to stare, but that nightly revelation of her husband’s magnificent
body was like getting a birthday present every evening, and it remained one of the best things about being married to him.
He slid into bed and sighed happily.
“No, I don’t mind. It is funny, I suppose.” She climbed into bed next to him, pulling their blankets and quilts up over both of them. “It’s just—Tristan,
have I changed since you’ve known me? Because I think that’s exactly what’s bothering me. It never would have occurred to me to shout that word in any context before. Not even accidentally. I was raised to be a lady, with all that implies.
I’m horrified that it just came out of me like that. Mr. Delacorte thinks we’re influencing him, but what if it’s the other way around?
What if I’m transforming like the cheese Delacorte found under his bed?”
She burrowed into his arms and they both sighed contentedly.
“Sweetheart, why, exactly, are you horrified? I’m a little aroused.”
She laughed, then stopped. “Wait—are you?”
“Well, I generally am a little when I hold you like this . . .” He pulled her gently closer. “But no, just hearing you bellow
‘shite’ doesn’t instantly inspire an erection. But I’ll tell you why it makes me happy. Do you think it’s possible you’ve
never before felt safe enough to shout that word?”
“Safe? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You’ve told me before how you were raised to please, and how you’ve always been aware of the need to be proper, to conform
to everyone else’s needs and expectations. But here? You’re safe here to be wholly yourself. And nothing is more beautiful
to me than that, because all I want from life is for you to feel safe to be exactly who you are. So in light of all that,
your ‘shite’ is music to my ears. It makes me feel like I’ve done my job in making you feel secure.”
“Oh, Tristan.” She was moved; she shifted to kiss his shoulder. “Do you know, I think you might be right.”
“Delilah, I know you hold yourself to an exacting standard, but I promise you do not have to be flawless. I do, but you don’t.”
She snorted softly and gave his ankle a little nudge with her toes. “Silly. You are perfect, however.”
It was his turn to snort. “I would love you even if you were Delacortian in nearly every way.”
The “nearly” amused her. “You’re legally required to. For better or for worse are right there in the vows.”
He laughed shortly. “If Daniel had pinched me, I’m afraid I might have punted him over the banister out of pure reflex. You were well within your rights to add to his
vocabulary in such a colorful way. And while I can’t call out a four-year-old for pinching my wife’s arse, he needs to know
in no uncertain terms that such behavior is neither appropriate nor allowed. He needs to understand that it’s disrespectful.”
“What if his father does it, and that’s where he learned it?” she whispered. “Pinches women. Or at least pinches his mother.”
Tristan went still a moment. He sighed heavily and laid an arm across his forehead. “Regardless, we have to say it to him
and hope the lesson sticks before his father gets here. I think we have a responsibility to the world at large to curtail
a bottom pincher if we can.”
They silently reflected on this.
“I could do it. I could tell him,” Tristan said. “I want to. But do you know, briefly, I almost wanted to die, when he burst
into tears when I spoke to him that first time. The mortification, Delilah. And trust me, more than once I’ve made a grown man cry as blockade captain. That was part of my job. It’s child’s
play for me. I’m hard as bloody nails. Or I can be. So . . . why did it destroy me?”
“My poor dear.” Her husband was not hard as nails, not all the time, but that was their secret and she cherished it.
“He looks like a damned puppy. Christ, his eyes filling with tears. The lower lip quivering. The horror.”
Delilah was trying not to laugh. “I’m so sorry.”
“Delacorte and Bolt say I have a look.”
“The stern one?”
“You know it, too?”
She merely squeezed his hand.
“I was raised by the military, as you know. Giving and taking orders was about the extent of the affection exchanged.”
“If we are so blessed, you will treat any child of ours the way you treat anything else you love. Like me. You don’t order
me about, do you?”
“That’s because I want to live to see another day. Also, I want to die when you cry, too.”
She laughed softly. “You’re going to have to be stern now and again, and that’s how he or she will feel safe and know how
much you care. And I will be so grateful, because you know I struggle with being stern.” It was true; Angelique, a former
governess, was considerably better at it, in an amusing way, and all of their servants knew it. “Any child we might have will
have the perfect balance of parents.”
“Marchand says that between me, Bolt, and Delacorte a child raised here would get everything he needs from a father.”
She laughed. “Mr. Marchand seems unusually wise with regard to children. I wonder what his story is?”
“It’s actually a little like mine. St. Giles included, according to Bolt. And I expect a man like him won’t ever feel safe
sharing all of his secrets until the right woman comes along.”
She knew this was true of her beloved husband.
“Why do I have the feeling that being a father will be a thousand times harder than being a blockade captain?” he murmured.
“One is about war, the other is about love?” she guessed. “And as Eros demonstrated when he shot Apollo, love is even more challenging.”
“It almost seems greedy to want more out of life than we already have. I feel lucky every single day,” he told her. “And yet . . .
a little Delilah . . . a little Tristan . . .”
Her heart felt swollen as she imagined a little boy that looked just like him. “We’ll make it work the way we’ve made everything
work so far. And if for some reason it doesn’t happen for us . . .” Her voice had gone a little thick. “We’ll make that work,
too.”
They fell quiet.
“By the way, Tristan?”
“Yes, love?”
“My favorite look of yours is the one that comes over your face . . . when we’ve just, ah, joined . . . and I’m under you . . .
and I’ve just wrapped my legs around your back . . .”
“Oh, I think I can oblige you with that look, milady,” he murmured.
It had felt almost sacrilegious to do something so mundane as play spillikins with Mrs. Pariseau in the sitting room a mere
few hours after she’d been kissed into weak-kneed oblivion. It was Ginny’s valiant attempt to prove to herself that nothing
had really changed. But she’d played badly. Her blood had been heated to lava temperatures a few hours earlier and had only
just now ebbed to a distracting, low simmer. She blamed that for her unsteady hands.
Well, that, and a lingering, wild, piercing exultation that made every breath feel like the first she’d ever taken.
This exultation would not and could not and should not last.
But she decided she wanted to be alone with it as long as it did, to savor the feeling.
So finally she excused herself so she could pace in her own little room.
She walked from door to window over and over. Giddy. Enervated and frightened.
She’d been raised within the confines of a set of beliefs about class and aristocracy. She was a lady and proud of it. She’d
grown up thinking she knew precisely how gentlemen and ladies should behave, what kinds of friends she ought to cultivate,
what constituted goodness and morality. There was a right kind of man and a wrong kind and a right kind of woman and a wrong
kind. At no point had she thought to question any of the things her parents had taught her. Why would she? Everyone she knew
felt the same way.
But now it was as though the kaleidoscope of her life had been given a twist. All the pieces were the same, but everything
looked different.
She understood now that Lucifer’s Fall, that alleged palace of sin, was after a fashion Marchand’s monument to love and his
fortress against loss. He had been born into chaos and survived the unthinkable and had still managed to embrace life with