Chapter Twenty-Four #2
She swallowed and lowered her gaze. “Miss Anning said she walks the beach after each tide, rather than digging. I thought I might go to Lyme Regis one morning when the tide is not terribly early.”
“There are safe places here you can dig.”
Katie’s head whipped up and she tried not to grin like an idiot at his offer. “Er, safe?”
“Often the best fossils are exposed by slides like that one.” He gestured to the hillside. “To a fossil hunter the temptation to dig in a freshly uncovered area is difficult to resist. But it’s dangerous and people are frequently hurt or even killed.”
“Oh, I see.”
“You will not need to worry about that here,” he assured her. “There are plenty of safe places to dig where you can still find something interesting.”
“Miss Anning said your dig was far better than the shoreline for fossil hunting.”
“Correct.” He glanced at her emerald-green habit, with its sweeping train, and a notch formed between his stunning eyes. “Do you have something—”
“I have a more practical habit.”
He nodded.
She gestured to the large fossil. “If you don’t mind, could you tell me more about this—what was it called again?”
“It is a belemnite.” His eyes met hers, and the expression in them was one she had never seen before. It was far too slight to be called a smile, but the harsh lines of his face seemed to relax. “I do not mind. In fact, it would be my pleasure to tell you about them, Kathryn.”
***
By the time Gerrit finished showing his wife around the dig and introduced her to his other workers it was past noon and Jeremy arrived with two large hampers of food.
“Would you care to join me for my midday meal?” Gerrit asked, wishing he didn’t sound so bloody stiff.
“Will there be enough?” Kathryn asked.
“Yes. Cook always packs plenty,” he assured her.
“Then I would like to join you.” She followed him into the work tent. “This is nice,” she said, glancing around.
“It is functional and convenient,” he said, pouring some water into the basin for her.
While they washed their hands, Jeremy set out their meal of roasted fowl and crusty bread, both still warm.
“I think I will bring my sketchbook when I come back tomorrow,” Kathryn said.
Gerrit finished chewing his mouthful of food and washed it down with some ale before saying, “Are you any good?”
She blinked, and her mouth pulled down at the corners.
Damnation! “I did not mean that to sound rude,” Gerrit admitted. “I was just curious.”
It must have been the correct thing to say because her lips relaxed.
“I am not bad at sketching, but my watercolors are barely adequate. Of course I am not nearly as good as my sister Aurelia, who was a professional illustrator before she married the Earl of Crewe.
Gerrit was momentarily speechless; her sister had worked. “Indeed? A female illustrator?”
Kathryn’s forehead furrowed and her eyes narrowed.
He identified her sudden change in mood with an ease that startled him. Why was it so difficult to converse with her? Why did he keep saying the wrong things? “I am not being critical,” he assured. “I only meant that I have never met a woman who does such work. Especially not a peer’s daughter.”
After a moment, her face relaxed and she nodded. “Before my sister Phoebe married Viscount Needham, our family was in danger of losing our home, so Aurelia decided it would be prudent to learn how to support herself.”
“I knew of Addiscombe’s, er, fascination with cards,” Dulverton admitted.
Kathryn snorted, her expression bitter. “There are very few among the ton who don’t know about my father’s gambling.”
“I had no idea matters were so dire,” he added.
“They were,” she said grimly, her gaze distant. “But thanks to the generosity of my brothers-in-law—especially Needham—our family estate is no longer in danger.”
Gerrit could only nod. What could a person say about such a thing? Addiscombe’s behavior was criminal, in Gerrit’s opinion. But Kathryn hardly needed to hear that.
Thankfully, she changed the subject. “Do you hire people to sketch your specimens?” she asked, taking a piece of bread he had sliced and slathering it with butter.
“I make drawings for myself, but for anything I want to use in a presentation or article I employ a professional.”
She gestured to Gerrit’s specimen journal, which sat on the other side of the table. “Are those your sketches?”
“It is a newer book and contains only the most recent ones.
“May I see?”
He slid the book toward her and ate while she untied the leather thong that bound it and flipped through the pages. Once she’d finished, she looked up. “You are very good.”
“Merely adequate,” he demurred, quartering a pear and handing her a section.
“Thank you. Do you paint your drawings?”
“I have not done so in the past.”
She bit into the pear and a drop of juice escaped and clung to her full lower lip.
Gerrit stared, transfixed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There is a bit of juice.”
“Where?”
He wordlessly pointed to a place on his own lip that mirrored the spot.
She hastily dabbed at it with her napkin. “Did I get it?”
He grunted, wrenched his gaze from her mouth, and adjusted himself beneath the table.
“Thank you for showing me around today.”
“You are welcome.”
“I—are you sure you don’t mind if I come to the dig?”
“I am sure,” he said, perplexed by just how much he liked the thought of her joining him.
Kathryn opened her mouth, hesitated, and then smiled and stood. “Well, I should go so you can return to your work.”
Gerrit tossed down his napkin. “I will ride back with you.”
“You do not need to do that. You said I was safe as long as I stayed on the estate.”
“You are safe, but I want to ride back with you,” he said, realizing as he said it that it was true. For some reason, he was not yet ready to end this pleasurable interlude.
Gerrit felt a pang at the way her face lit up; it took such a small thing—his company—to make her happy and yet he had brought her so little joy during their brief marriage.
He lifted her onto her mount, and they rode toward Briarly, Kathryn chattering about the dig, her excitement about tomorrow—her first day—causing a cascade of emotions that left Gerrit both terrified and hopeful.
Terrified because he could not recall ever wanting to please a person this much, and he had very little idea how to do that.
And hopeful at the thought of a future that did not contain a bloodless marriage of convenience, but something fulfilling and meaningful.
The words she’d murmured two nights before in the library—I’m happy now—had come back to him several times over the intervening hours.
If Gerrit had made her happy once, surely he could do so again?
***
Gerrit stared at the blank wall opposite his bed, his thoughts in an unaccustomed jumble. Actually, the jumbled feeling was not so unaccustomed since his marriage.
Half his mind was on the delightful afternoon he had spent with Kathryn at the dig and the other half was still back in his wife’s bedchamber half an hour ago where he had, in a perfunctory fashion, carried out his nightly duty.
After their enjoyable day Gerrit had been tempted to disregard her demand for workmanlike coupling, but there had been nothing in her demeanor to suggest that she had changed her mind about his visits to her bed. She was an intelligent woman; if she had changed her mind, she would tell him.
He told himself that just because she had visited the dig today did not mean she wanted more from him.
Fossils were fascinating; he could understand why she was interested in them.
Gerrit, however, was the Duke of Dullness.
He had never denied the validity of that nickname as little as he had liked it.
She might have evinced an interest in fossils, but that did not mean she wanted more of him.
After Christina, there was nothing more repulsive to him than the thought of foisting his company on another person.
Kathryn had asked for so little in their marriage that Gerrit could not bring himself to ignore her one request, no matter how much he yearned to return to the way things had been at the beginning of their marriage.
When he’d gone to her tonight, she had not said a word to him. Not when he’d been in her bed or when he’d slipped on his robe, thanked her, and left.
Opening the connecting door and leaving her room had been almost painful, which was odd because he had always left afterward, even when their couplings had been passionate and enjoyable.
The urge to share her bed grew stronger every night he went to her, regardless of how little pleasure their intercourse now brought him.
For a moment earlier tonight Gerrit had wondered what Kathryn would do if he simply crawled back under the covers beside her and went to sleep.
The yearning had been so powerful that it had actually frightened him.
Thankfully, he’d gained control of himself and suppressed the impulse, which would have been a horrific invasion of her privacy.
Gerrit had accidentally fallen asleep in her bed one night early in their marriage and had been ashamed by his lapse afterward, vowing to never to encroach on her in such a way again.
It bothered him that he would even want to sleep with her. He’d never wanted such a thing before. What was happening to—
“Gerrit?”
He jolted and turned to find his wife lurking in the shadows near the connecting door. “Is something amiss, Kathryn?” He began to push back the blankets.
“No, nothing is wrong.” She hurried toward him, her green silk dressing gown fluttering around her. “Please, do not get up.” She swallowed, fidgeted, and then said, “May I get in with you?”
“In?” he repeated stupidly.
“In your bed.” Uncertainty began to rearrange her features.
Gerrit shifted over and wordlessly pulled back the bedding, his heart squeezing in his chest when a smile banished her uncertainty and she hurriedly mounted the steps and crawled in beside him.
“Mmm, nice and warm.” She scooted so close their hips and shoulders touched.