22. Chapter 22
twenty-two
D avid only moved because his stomach had become a nuisance with its growling.
He would have happily stayed as they were all night, even with his arm asleep where she rested her head, if it meant he got to hold her.
His hunger had other plans, however, so he slipped from beneath her and waited until she curled into the bed and continued snoring softly before he took up his robe and quietly left the room.
He crossed the corridor to her room, where he pulled the bell cord to summon the housekeeper.
In under a quarter hour, the woman along with the hastily hired kitchen maid and the footman, brought all the food upstairs and loaded it onto a wheeled cart covered with a tablecloth.
David thanked them profusely and pushed the entire conveyance into his room without their help.
He assumed their presence might embarrass Jenny.
He also assumed she must be hungry after rehearsing the entire day.
Closing the door behind him, he winced when one of the wheels squeaked. It wasn’t terribly loud but in the quiet room, it might as well have been a gong sounding the meal was ready. She stirred and he rolled the cart to the bedside.
“What’s happening?” she muttered without opening her eyes.
“Dinner,” he replied, sitting on the bed to look her over .
She was still breathtaking. Her skin had a glow from their lovemaking that he couldn’t help but feel a bit pompous about. One hand curled around the blanket covering her, but the other lay on her stomach. He picked it up and kissed her fingers. Her lips twitched with a smile.
“It smells delicious.” She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
Not as delicious as you. He didn’t dare say that, she was already wary when it came to them.
But in his position leaning over her, he could smell the delicate fragrance of her perfume mingled with their sex and even his own cologne clinging to her curves.
He’d never realized how alluring his own scent on a woman was.
“Mme Tremblay, the housekeeper, ordered from a very nice restaurant nearby. We dine there almost every night when in residence,” he explained.
Without rising from the bed, he sat up and took the lids off the dishes.
“We have onion soup, chicken quenelles in a cream sauce with peas, and a lovely bread.”
He tore off a hunk and devoured it before he poured them each a glass of red wine that had been left to breathe in a decanter. She sat up as he did this and gratefully accepted the wine when he handed it over.
“It’s very good.” She smiled at him over the rim of the glass and held the blanket to her chest, shielding her breasts as if he might try to pull it away at any time.
“Alfred only buys the best.” He set his glass down and placed a napkin over her lap. “Would you like the soup or chicken first?”
“Are we eating in bed?” she asked, amused.
“Why not?”
“The chicken, please.”
She held out her glass so he could take it, apparently expecting that he would then hand over her bowl. He ignored her, picking up her bowl and dipping the spoon inside. Then he made certain the dumpling wasn’t too hot before he offered her one on the spoon.
She laughed. “You’re going to feed me?”
“As your husband, it is my sworn duty to make sure you are provided for and I’m almost certain that means food.”
“But not by your own hand, surely.” She continued to giggle.
The sound of her mirth made him feel weightless. He raised an eyebrow and nudged the spoon closer to her. “Let no one say I don’t take my duty seriously.”
She relented and parted her lips, taking the dumpling. “Mmm.”
He tore his eyes away from the tempting sight and took a bite, his bloody stomach reminding him that if he hoped for more of his wife tonight, then he’d need to eat for strength. “Delicious.” It had been months since he’d last had these and they were every bit as good as he remembered.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said around another bite of dumpling.
“I didn’t mind,” he said, staring at a green pea floating in the cream sauce instead of her face. He should have been disturbed by how much he’d enjoyed holding her while she slept, but he was curiously relaxed about it.
Jenny looked at him from under her lashes. “I think spending the spring and summer in London made me lazy. I’m not accustomed to the long rehearsal days.”
“You rehearsed in London.” He only knew this because after she had moved in with Dev and Cora, he’d met with Dev in his study and heard her once or twice.
Her voice had been coming from somewhere deep in the house but he’d never seen her or heard her clearly, not like he had at their engagement party .
“Yes, well, a couple hours a day is no match for the hours spent at the theater every day. Not to mention the boarding house…Oh no! What time is it?” She sat up straighter and looked around wildly for a clock.
“After ten,” he said easily, dipping the spoon in for another bite.
“No,” she groaned and sank back against the pillows. “Mme Lamaire won’t be happy with me.”
“Your landlady?” he asked.
She nodded and he grinned, resolving to wait until her bad humor had passed to mention she could stay here. “Can’t you tell her you were with your husband?”
She huffed. “That woman is not understanding.”
He bit the inside of his lip to keep his grin from widening and fed another bite to her. The benefits of her staying here were outweighing any arguments she might have.
“Is the boarding house restful?” He made his voice as casual as possible. Tearing off a piece of the fluffy bread, he dipped it into the cream sauce and offered it to her.
She chewed thoughtfully and then took a sip of wine. “I room with Luci and she’s very nice, but it’s a boarding house. The bed is small and it’s noisy.”
And he imagined she was accustomed to more freedom than it seemed Mme Lamaire allowed her. He waited for her to say more and when she didn’t, he offered her another bite. Wanting to keep the conversation going, he asked, “Have you stayed in a boarding house before?”
“Not really. Not for long anyway,” she said around the bite of food.
He kept his eyes on the ragout and made himself not ask the questions that burned in his mind.
What was it like for her in New York? Why was she so wary around him?
What did he have to do to make her stay with him?
He wanted to eat up every bit of information about her he could gather even more than he wanted the food.
Forcing himself to go slowly, he took a bite and scraped up the last of the peas in the bottom of the bowl to feed to her.
“I thought you lived with Mrs. Wilson when you moved here.”
“I did.” She accepted the peas. When she was finished chewing, she added, “Once, when we were much younger and my mother still believed that Mr. Hathaway might love her…she took us to the Adirondacks in upstate New York, where he has a hunting lodge.”
Everything stilled inside him. His hunch about Mr. Hathaway had been right. “What do you mean? She fell in love with your godfather?”
Jenny stared at him as she realized she’d said too much. Then she stared into her wine and he could see the wheels of her mind churning to figure a way out of this. Returning the empty bowl to the cart, he placed a hand on her thigh. “It’s all right, Jenny. Your past doesn’t concern me.”
Her eyes flicked to him, untrusting.
“It’s true.” He made his voice neutral. “Would I have married you otherwise?”
She gave him a half smile. “I still can’t believe you did.”
“They call me eccentric and a fool, but at least I can go to social gatherings and not worry about mothers and their unmarried daughters hunting me.”
“You’re very welcome for that.”
He laughed at her benevolent tone. Then, more seriously, he said, “You can trust me, Jenny.” Maybe for the first time in his life, he meant it. He’d take her secrets to his grave if it meant she’d spill them to him.
Twirling her glass between her hands, she said, “I suppose there’s no need to hide the truth.
We’re married now.” She sighed. “Mama fell in love with him after…” But her voice trailed off and he knew it was be cause sometimes the truth was difficult to say after lying had become the default.
Trust was difficult after distrust had been the norm for her.
He decided to overcome the first hurdle for her. “Hathaway is your father.”
The story had always been that Charles Hathaway was their godfather and a good friend of their father, Jeremiah Dove.
When Dove had passed, Hathaway had administered his estate and looked after the family of women.
Rumors indicated that Fanny had been Hathaway’s mistress before ever marrying Dove, but nothing had been proven.
A painful expression crossed her face.
“I don’t care, Jenny. I…” How to make her understand how he felt? He didn’t even know how to explain it. “I only care about you, not your past or your parents or anything that happened before we met.”
Her lips parted and he could tell she didn’t quite believe him, not because she didn’t want to but because he’d never given her any indication that he might like her in any way that wasn’t superficial. That thought brought a lump to his throat and he had to look away from her to deal with it.
“But it means I’m a…I’m illegitimate.”
“And you think that’s the one thing Society might object to?” he tried to tease her.
It worked. She grinned and brought her wine glass to her lips to hide it. “I suppose they have many reasons for that already,” she said and took a sip. More seriously, she added, “Please don’t hold it against my mother. She truly believed he wanted to marry her. She loved him.”
“I won’t.” He could not deny her anything when she looked at him with those liquid, pleading eyes.
Had Hathaway ever loved Fanny? David had never understood the inclination of some of his peers to amuse themselves with the emotions of those they considered beneath them .
“Hathaway never acknowledged you?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. He wondered how any man could be so stupid as to not want this wonderful woman in his life.
She shrugged. “Not publicly, not really. People knew, I think. When we were little, he’d come by to visit us on Sunday afternoons.
I always imagined him going to church with his new family and then leaving them after their luncheon to come and see us.
” She sighed again, a wealth of feeling in that one breath.
“But then the visits stopped and the allowance he gave us shrank. Mama took us to Newport to see him in person one summer and it did not go well. His brother found us in a shop and berated her. We left, but later we took the trip to the Adirondacks. Mama forbade us from mentioning the second trip to Cora, who was off at school then. We stayed in a boarding house for several days and it was horrible. The owner must have known who my mother was because she was not kind to us. I never saw Mr. Hathaway that time, either, because Mama left Eliza and I behind when she went to see him. She came back in tears and we left the next morning.”
“I can’t imagine having children and abandoning them.”
She stared at him impassively. “But…” She bit the inside of her lip, hesitating, and then charged ahead. “But you must have one or two.”
“God, no.” The thought horrified him. “Why do you say that?”
She blushed. “You’ve been known to bed many women. Surely one of them…”
He shook his head. “No, not any of them. I’ve been very careful.” He indicated the tin on the bedside table.
“You said that you…that you employed the use of a prophylactic every time, but I…” She hadn’t completely believed him.
“I meant it, Jenny. Every time. I never wanted children outside of marriage. I know how it feels to be abandoned.”