Chapter 53
The bedchamber was bathed in late-afternoon shadows when Graham, heart still pounding, managed to come up on his elbow and look down at Cam’s beloved face.
She was still breathing hard enough to please him greatly.
Jayne would have approved. He wasn’t a clod.
He marveled that this lovely creature with her shining hair tousled across the white pillowcase was his.
His wife. It was amazing. He found himself wondering if he hadn’t been the long-lost heir to Earl St. Lucy, if he’d merely been a business partner of sorts, would her father have considered him a fortune hunter, certainly not worthy of her, and kicked him to the curb? Very probably so.
From one day to the next, he, Alex Ivanov, with a blank brain, had become Viscount Whitestone, his earl father’s only heir.
And someone wanted to kill him because of it.
Graham sighed, banished the ever-present fear, and lightly smoothed a fingertip over her eyebrows.
Cam opened her eyes, dreamy, still glowing with pleasure, her cheeks still a bit flushed.
He kissed her, felt the tip of her tongue glide over his mouth, and of course he stirred.
He said nearly touching her mouth, “No matter our wondrous subtlety in excusing ourselves, you know as well as I do every single staff member knows exactly what we’re doing and that is why we haven’t been disturbed.
I doubt if we didn’t emerge from this bedchamber for two days, trays would be left outside with only a discreet knock on the door.
“However, my father is a different matter. He could well be pacing outside the door right now, so alas, dear one, we cannot remain in bed for much longer.” And he grinned, kissed her eyebrows, the tip of her nose.
Cam sifted her fingers through his hair. “Silk, your hair, glorious silk.”
He picked up a thick, heavy tress currently fallen over her forehead. He brought it to his cheek. “I’d like to wrap myself in your hair.”
Cam blinked up at him, grinned like a bandit. “I shall have to grow it for ten more years because my hair could be a blanket. Then perhaps to earn an extra groat or two, you could let me play Lady Godiva.”
“The thought of you wearing only your hair atop a horse with dozens of men staring at you makes my blood clot in my veins. So I’ll be content to rub your hair on my face. Now, about my father just outside, possibly listening for snores or conversation, I think it best we rouse ourselves.”
“It’s marvelous—your father is so happy to see you, so happy to have you home, at last. And now that you are here to live, under his roof, he just might come to approve of my snagging you so quickly after he’d finally gotten you back.
Wait. Graham, maybe I do hear someone just outside, maybe walking up and down in the corridor, maybe muttering. ”
He laughed and kissed her, oh how he loved her mouth, and laughed some more.
“Maybe both my father and Nutworthy are pacing together.” He forced himself to pull away from her and sit up.
He said nothing for several moments, looked thoughtful.
“Wife, do you think perhaps now we have conducted sufficient observations to draw conclusions and posit a marital theorem?”
Cam said, “An excellent question. I read one cannot conduct too many experiments, consider too many results before forming a theorem. One must be committed, regardless of the hour. But I suppose I am nearing starvation, so our next experiment will have to wait. Well, for a little while. Maybe three hours. Do you agree, my lord?”
He didn’t agree, not at all, but there was duty and expectation and his father, an excellent man he prayed he’d soon remember. The love Graham felt from him, the absolute joy, it moved him unutterably. He wanted his father again, wanted him in his heart, where he belonged.
It turned out only Nutworthy was walking up and down the hallway. Graham’s father was pacing in his own study, looking at the very old ormolu clock on the mantel every other minute, waiting, waiting, close to wearing holes in the Aubusson carpet, Blakeney observed later to Mrs. Mince.
Nutworthy said while assisting his lordship, “When Mr. Blakeney asked me about your absence, my lord, I replied in very proper English obfuscation. I told him since you and Lady Camilla were newly wedded, your union sanctioned by God and the English government, it was to be expected there would be the very frequent exercise of vigorous young blood. Ah, did you notice my wit, my lord?”
Graham grinned at Nutworthy’s face in his mirror. “Yes, your wit is noted, Nutworthy. I could not have explained in a more proper manner or disagreed with anything you said.”
Cam’s first evening at King’s Head was a rich tapestry of faces, of voices slowly becoming familiar to her and delicious boiled capon and oysters. She was happy and content and eager, all at once.
If dinner was at first somewhat stilted, her father-in-law so pleased he couldn’t stop smiling at Graham and talking of what they would do, she soon relaxed, answered his questions, trying for humor, not difficult when she told him a story of her aunt Deveraux and the Duke of Wellington, both dancing far into the night at a ball in Brussels three days before Waterloo.
Cam wondered aloud if the duke, near her aunt’s age, remembered that special night drawn from her aunt’s prodigious memory.
Even Eugenie smiled and Donner guffawed.
But always, always, Vereker turned to his son, asked him endless questions, hanging on to every word out of Graham’s mouth.
And he told his son how together they would visit the farms, not quick visits like his first time at King’s Head, but lovely long visits, and they would speak of needed new farming equipment, and he and Graham would design them and oversee their being made.
What did Graham think of a new water wheel set above the flowing Green Stream, and on and on it went.
Graham, she saw, was nearly as excited as his father.
Eugenie managed to ask them questions about the Isle of Wight and Ventnor, a place she wanted to visit. Both she and Donner were astute enough not to mar the joy of the evening by mentioning the statue toppling off the hotel roof.
Cam was near to falling asleep when Cilly finally left her to retire to her own bedroom down the hall, selected for her by Cam.
But because she hadn’t felt she had any firm footing yet at King’s Head, she’d asked Graham to inform Mrs. Mince of her selection, but he’d shaken his head, tweaked her nose.
“No, you are the mistress, you have the reins. Ride, Cam, ride.”
If Mrs. Mince was surprised at the bedchamber Cam had assigned to Cilly, she’d merely nodded, said it would be done. As Cam was walking away, she heard Mrs. Mince mutter, “Lon don ways, such strangeness, but if her new ladyship even wanted her maid in her bed with his lordship, who am I to say?”
Graham had laughed when she’d told him, and lightly buffeted her shoulder. “Apparently you ride very well right out of the gate.”