Chapter Eight #2
Reluctantly, she placed her palm into his and he circled his fingers around her wrist, pressing the pads of his fingers into her glove as if he were seeking signs of life.
Fleetingly, he wished neither of them were wearing gloves.
Because if they weren’t wearing gloves, he could trace the vein up her arm and—
“Yes?”
Her prompt intruded on his thoughts. Pity. “Keep your wrist flexible. See?” He wiggled her wrist. “This is loosely.”
Finally, she gave up resisting and relaxed her hand.
“Very good.”
Her mouth twisted. “You just want me to be compliant.”
He snorted. “Occasional compliance would be nice.”
“May I have my hand back please?”
“Not yet.” He ran his thumb over her fingers. “I’ve always liked your hands.”
“You have?” She gazed at him, her expression part apprehensive, part intrigued.
“When we first met, you were always so still, so controlled, except for your hands. Your hands were nearly always in motion. Occasionally, I’d fancy that if I watched your hands enough, their movements would reveal all of your secrets.”
“You want to know my secrets?”
He did.
He wanted to know her secrets. But he couldn’t demand them until he was willing to reveal his own.
“Are you keeping secrets from me?” he countered.
She dropped her gaze. “Why would you ask?”
“Just a sense.” Actually, he’d been speaking metaphorically, but she didn’t seem as forthcoming as usual, did she? “You were fluttering your hands during tea. And you balled up your fingers just now.”
“I was anxious about making a good impression at the Townsends.”
A perfectly valid explanation. “And I suspect, equally anxious about making a good impression on your irresistibly handsome instructor?”
“Ah!” She groaned. “The insufferable duke returns.”
“Insufferable? Me?” He touched his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You’re not,” she accused.
But his ruse had worked to dissipate the tension. She grinned as she took back the reins.
“Trusty,” she commanded, “walk on.”
The cart bounced along in relatively comfortable silence, except for the seat’s repeated smacks to his bum. He’d have to plan a future lesson on how to avoid the worst of the ruts. Right now, she simply needed to build confidence.
“I’ll tell you one secret,” he whispered confidentially, “if you promise not to let anyone know.”
“Yes?”
“The first time I attempted to drive, I held myself too rigidly, too.”
She smiled. “Was your teacher equally as patient?”
“The coachman helped me develop my skills.”
But the first time he’d driven someone else had been Viv.
After he’d stolen the cart, he’d accidentally driven into a ditch.
She’d overtaken him just as he’d been peeling away his coat to work the wheel from the rut.
Her scolds had quickly quieted. And, when he’d turned around, she’d shocked him by backing him up against a tree and then kissing him senseless.
The memory flitted through his mind, leaving only a twinge of embarrassment over the stupidity of his prank.
He hadn’t felt even a hint of nostalgia!
Perhaps that was because there wasn’t anywhere he’d rather be—in the present or in the past—than right here, teaching his wife to drive.
“My ambition was to become skilled in as short of time as possible,” he went on. “A gentleman should understand the expertise of those he employs, else he might be fleeced, you know.”
“Your father’s maxim?” Cassandra queried.
“No.” He shook his head. “My father couldn’t be bothered with the concerns of his underlings. The maxim came from our old coachman.”
“Were you close to him?”
“I was,” he replied thoughtfully.
He conjured the old coachman in his mind’s eye, heard the old man’s brogue, his booming laugh. Unlike his fleeting memory of Viv, this recollection left a strange, achy feeling in his chest.
My God.
Could he possibly be missing the coachman?
Coachman—that’s what they’d always called him, John Coachman…heaven only knew if he ever had another surname—had been gone for…
Well, since long before his father had passed.
He compared the sting he’d just felt with the heavy feeling he got whenever he summoned a specific memory of his father. He decided the heaviness he felt on those occasions was less grief than guilt for having fallen short of being the perfect son.
Which meant he missed John Coachman, and he missed him more than he missed his father.
Understandable, perhaps. While his father had been a model aristocrat, his skills in other areas had not been nearly as well developed.
Patience with wayward children, for instance.
Before Harbury had gone away to school, he’d been close to some of the staff. All of them—including Anderson—retainers left over from his grandfather’s time. Seemed like every holiday, he’d come back to the hall only to be told another one of them had either been pensioned off or had passed on.
His father had found his interest in their welfare unseemly.
Was his father’s insistence that he keep his distance from the staff then why he’d held himself so aloof from everything now? Moreover, had he held onto his single-minded attachment to Viv because indulging memories of her kept him from feeling the depth of his frustration with his father?
“Earlier—”
His wife startled him out of his reverie.
“—I called you insufferable.”
“I took your insult in jest,” he replied.
“I meant it in jest…” She hesitated. “This time. But Eliza and I used to call you insufferable. The Insufferable Duke. Unfair, I know. But there was the Almack’s incident.” She smiled apologetically. “I just want you to know I don’t think of you as insufferable anymore.”
“I’m glad I’ve improved in your estimation,” he commented dryly.
“You have. And in my defense, you had nearly ruined me. If I had nearly ruined you, what would you have called me?”
Unfortunately, when he’d first told Adrian about her, he’d called her the silly chit.
Unfairly, too. They hadn’t even been properly introduced. He’d just been piqued because he’d been drunk and angry with himself.
But what would he call her, now?
He tilted his head. “Now, I’d call you the best choice I ever made.”
She blushed and looked away.
“You’re catching on,” he said.
Her glance was furtive.
“Driving, I mean,” he clarified.
“Thank you.”
Suddenly, she yanked up on the right rein and the cart jerked to one side.
“Trusty. Stop! Now.” The horse came to an abrupt stop, but the cart did not, a violent see-saw of wheels nearly toppling them.
“What the—” but before he could finish his exclamation, she had jumped to the ground. She was already heading for the brush. “Cassandra!”
“I’ll be back,” she called over her shoulder.
Trusty made a noise melding both annoyance and protest. Harbury glanced between Cassandra and the horse before climbing down from the box and trudging over to soothe the animal.
“Sorry boy,” he crooned. “I’ve absolutely no explanation.”
Noise in the shrubbery alerted him his wife hadn’t gone far. Still, he breathed a jagged sigh when she reappeared, leaves sticking willy-nilly from her hair. In her arms she held a squirming ball of mud and fur.
“Mercy,” he breathed.
“How clever and excellent a name,” she said beaming. “What do you think?” She spoke to the ball of filth. “Shall we call you Mercy?”
“What,” he asked with some aspersion, “are you holding?”
She lifted a puppy. A disgusting, dirt-splattered puppy who couldn’t have weighed more than a clove.
“I’d like to keep him.”
He scowled and drew back. Absolutely not.
But she was flushed with happiness and crooning as if the abomination were something precious.
“Of course,” he found himself saying aloud.
“Oh, thank you!” She twinkled up at him. “Would you drive the rest of the way? He’s shaking, he’s so afraid. I want to hold him close.” She demonstrated her intention whispering. “We’ll get you home and then you will be washed and fed.”
His heart shifted in his chest.
She’d always be gentle with something in her care, wouldn’t she?
Even when angered, she did not act in haste or, like many men he knew, out of a need to assert their authority. She’d been furious with him and the worst he’d gotten was a leveled, annoyed glance.
He was lucky, very lucky indeed he’d chosen Cassandra for that fateful waltz. And very lucky she’d proposed. Marrying her had been his best decision.
He glanced warily at the dog.
He only hoped the pup would not prove one of his worst.
*
Cassie pretended she did not notice Harbury’s distaste for Mercy.
Not everyone, she knew, had a partiality for animals.
Her father, for instance, had been renowned for the quality of dogs he raised for the hunt, but had never liked to handle them.
Like everything else, the dogs had only been means to advance his ambition.
Had he known his daughters played with those dogs when he was not in residence, he would have been mortified.
And objectively, in Mercy’s case, disgust was a natural reaction.
Mercy’s long hair was stringy in some places and completely matted in others. His floppy ears were dotted with things she suspected were pests. When she’d first spotted him by the roadside, she’d thought he was a dead rodent.
Then, rather heroically, he’d lifted himself and scrambled down the ditch.
How had he come to be there?
Had he been hit by a passing cart? Thrown from a carriage?
She smoothed the fur on either side of his face and looked down into his eyes. Apparently, she had a partiality for big brown eyes because she was instantly smitten.
The feeling did not appear to be mutual.
He turned his face toward Harbury and squirmed. She had to grip even tighter to keep the dog from scrambling into her husband’s lap.
She understood the draw. She sighed. Who wouldn’t want a man like Harbury?
“Settle,” she crooned, running her hand from the pup’s head to his tail. “Shhh.”
The little thing’s heart was beating rapidly, his eyes were anxious. A well of anger bubbled up. What kind of monster had left something this precious by the side of the road?
She couldn’t yet tell the breed, if indeed Mercy had one, but he didn’t look like a mongrel. And he didn’t look like a hunter or sheep dog, either. He was the kind of dog preferred by London ladies. A lap dog, she was almost sure.
Another Harbury Hall mystery to solve.
The abandoned puppy’s origin. The unhappiness of supposedly well-managed tenants. The library’s disorganization at only one end. Most disconcerting of all, the unclear desires of a reluctant husband who sometimes appeared no longer reluctant at all.
She stole a glance in Harbury’s direction.
But she couldn’t fault him for sometimes being guarded and careful.
She was, too. After all, she hadn’t told him about her plan to rally the wives. And she’d also withheld the truth of her growing attachment.
He wanted her, that much was clear. She believed he liked her, too. Clearly, he had good intentions. So why were they both holding back?
She held the puppy close to her heart and, heedless of filth, pressed her lips lightly against the top of his head.
If only showing her affection to her spouse came as easily.