Chapter 10
Ten
Arabella’s wedding gift to Harry was several pieces of embroidered linen—tablecloths, pillow slips, handkerchiefs.
“My trousseau chest is overflowing,” Arabella explained. “And yours is a trifle bare.”
Harry tried very hard to be gracious, but when would she ever have much use for linen? She had been planning on using the trousseau chest for books.
Harry did manage to smile during the wedding, but it was unfortunately when the bishop said, “nor taken in hand to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites” and then she snorted when he said marriage was “to avoid fornication.” Harry listened quite carefully to Thomas’ vows and noted Thomas had vowed to forsake all others.
Forsake is a very vague word. Convenient.
Harry was still thinking about that when it came to her vows and didn’t pay attention to the obey and serve part.
“I will,” she said in much too loud a voice.
It was a relief when it was over, and they had all signed the register.
Arabella said it was a lovely wedding and wasn’t Harry lucky to have such a handsome husband.
Harry chuckled to herself. It had nothing to do with luck.
Hadn’t she arranged it in just this way, to her own satisfaction?
However, why she wanted a handsome husband as opposed to an ordinary one didn’t bear thinking about.
The wedding breakfast long over, the nuptial couple were late leaving London because Harry said she had to pack her books herself.
She explained to Thomas she couldn’t have packed them earlier because she might have needed one this morning.
So, only after much delay, did Thomas and Harry finally head by carriage to Sommerleigh.
Smythe and Jackson had gone ahead with Harry’s clothing that morning, but Harry had a small bag. And three trunks of books.
The late start meant they would have to break their journey at a coaching inn.
Thomas had not anticipated this, and when they stopped at the only decent inn within five miles, there was a servants’ bunkroom available for the coachmen and the footmen but only one private bedchamber for the wedding couple.
Thomas came back to the stable yard to tell Harry, who was directing the ostlers on the careful unloading of her trunks.
“These will have to be stowed in the room,” she said.
“I’ll bunk with the coachmen tonight,” Thomas said, slinging his leather bag over his shoulder.
“Why?”
“I assumed—"
“We’ve slept together before. A bunkroom doesn’t sound very comfortable. Not up to an earl’s standards, I should think. But there will be enough space in the bedchamber for both of us, and the books, too.” Harry strode into the inn.
They ate in the room. Well, Thomas ate, and Harry had one bite of her meat and pushed it away.
Thomas then ate her portion as well. It was unseasonably cold, and there was a fire, but it burned weakly and did not warm the chamber.
Harry dug a book from the bottom of one of the trunks and sat near the hearth, trying to use the firelight and a candle to read.
Thomas was tempted to go down to the innkeeper and buy a bottle of wine but then thought better of it.
Circumstances were such that he had better keep his wits about him.
“What are you reading?” Thomas asked after he had flung his tailcoat on the back of a chair, looked out the window, and paced the small room, crowded with the piles of books Harry had pulled out of the trunks to find the one she wanted.
Harry did not answer. Thomas studied her.
Her hair was the nondescript brown of a field mouse.
It had been in an elaborate coiffure for the wedding with flowers woven into it, but Harry had taken it down in the coach, and Thomas had been surprised by the abundance of her hair.
So many curling tendrils flying everywhere.
Such a contrast to the spareness of the body.
As her eyes were. And her mouth.
In the swaying coach, Harry had then smoothed and fastened her hair back into a plain arrangement.
As she had raised her arms to pin the last curl in place, Thomas had experienced a sickening lurch in his chest. He had seen many women in his lifetime perform just this gesture—strumpets sitting at dressing tables, applying rouge and then putting their hair in order.
But a vision of his sister suddenly came to him—Jane brushing her hair and pinning it as he watched, fascinated, a boy of six or seven.
Nonsense, Thomas told himself. Look at this girl.
His Jane had been a beauty. Her hair as dark as his.
Her eyes blue. Her skin fair and rosy. This girl was a peculiar bluestocking with grandiose delusions.
She thought she was going to solve some perplexing riddle that the finest minds of Europe could not penetrate. Bah. Perhaps she was mad.
No, Tommy. Be fair.
His wife was odd but not mad. And she had saved Sommerleigh. And so she had saved Thomas. And Phillip. And even Octavius.
Harry placed a finger on a line and looked up.
“Limits.”
“Pardon me?”
“You asked. I’m reading about limits. And before you ask, limits are something mathematical you will have absolutely no interest in or need to know.”
She went back to reading.
“Well,” said Thomas. He left and went to the privy.
When he returned, he carried a bottle of wine and four more candles he had purchased from the innkeeper. He put the candles down next to Harry.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll be able to read longer. I don’t sleep much.”
“I don’t sleep at all, a few hours a night at most,” Thomas said, pouring himself a glass of wine.
“I sleep far less than you,” Harry said.
“I seem to remember I woke up before you in Lady Huxley’s fourth-best drawing room.”
“Ah, but you must have fallen asleep before me!” Harry was triumphant.
Thomas swigged his wine. “Well, you should sleep. And you should eat more.”
Harry looked towards him.
“I did not spend one hundred and forty-five thousand pounds on a husband just to exchange one stepmother for another. That was not the bargain.”
Thomas subsided into silence. He drank the bottle of wine.
It had been inexpensive, but it was not rough on his tongue.
It was probably watered. He felt barely tipsy, and he was long accustomed to spending his nights with female company or, when at home at Sommerleigh, with an excess of drink or abusing himself into exhaustion.
None of these options would be possible tonight. How would he pass the hours until dawn?
He decided to put on his nightshirt. He thought of warning Harry, but the devil take her, she was the one who had insisted on sharing the bedchamber. He stripped down and put on the nightshirt.
Harry did not even look up from her book.
Thomas reminded himself of the women who looked at him and openly admired the muscles in his arms and legs, the size of his shoulders and chest. He was not mistaken. Many women—of all stripes—looked at him with lust. This girl had not even cast him a glance.
He threw himself into the bed and covered himself with the counterpane.
Why should he care she had not looked at him nor even uttered a maidenly protest and turned away?
He thought briefly of using his own hand so he might sleep.
The girl was an innocent; she would never know what he was doing under the covers.
No. He felt the deepest kind of disgust. He was well and truly a degenerate.
He gritted his teeth. He would keep his word and more, he swore to himself.
He would keep his end of the bargain with this girl as she had kept hers.
He would give her time and peace, and he would not expose her to sin.
She would have her mathematics, as much as she wanted, until she died.
Which she seemed very determined to do, given how little she cared for her body.
Thomas tossed and turned in the bed for hours. He occupied himself with thinking of the improvements he might bring to Sommerleigh now that he had funds. He might even buy a new thoroughbred colt. Octavius would always be his favorite steed, but, although still vigorous, he was getting older.
The bed moved ever so slightly. A body next to him. A fragile thing. He turned to look and saw a mass of curly hair and a ruff of lace. And nothing else. Harry was buried under the counterpane and appeared to be trying to burrow into the feather tick. She let out a low groan.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She peered up at him. “Oh, I should have come to bed a long time ago, Lord Drake. This is bliss. You are better than any bedwarmer I have ever used. You might hire yourself out as such.”
He had forgotten how husky her voice could be.
“But then I might not have needed to marry for money,” he joked.
“I don’t think the potential remuneration would be adequate.” Then, “Oh, I see, that’s a joke.”
“Yes.”
He lay still so as not to touch her, even accidentally. Although she had drawn quite close to him, she also did not touch him.
“Lord Drake,” she began.
“Yes,” he said, and his mind raced. What should he call her? She was no longer Miss Lovelock. Harriet? Harry? “My lady,” he finally said.
“You are an earl,” she said. “What does that make me?”
“A countess.”
“I thought so. How apt.”
He got a sudden, sharp elbow in his ribs. “Ow!”
Harry sat up and then quickly lay back down again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. Am I crowding you?” Thomas said, confused about what had just happened.
“I should know better,” Harry said, her voice muffled into the feather bed. “I can’t make jokes.”
“Your assault on my rib cage was a joke?”
“No.” She stuck her face out. “But I elbowed you to show you I had made a joke. That’s what my sister Arabella does to me when someone makes a joke. And that is a signal for me to laugh. You didn’t laugh, so I elbowed you.”
“But . . . but what was humorous?”
“Me, a countess.”
He still did not understand and did not laugh. “Please don’t elbow me again!” he said, half in fear, half in jest.
“Count-ess,” she repeated slowly, emphasizing the first syllable. “Me. See? Because of counting and numbers and me?”
“One might think you had planned to marry an earl just to get the title.”
“Oh, really, anyone with some sense about him and a big house in the country would have done.”
Thomas first felt unaccountably wounded that anyone might have done and then unaccountably pleased she thought he had some sense.
A silence descended on the bed.
“What time do you think it is?” Harry asked.
“It can’t be three yet,” Thomas replied. He turned over several times, almost violently. Would this night never end?
After Thomas’ thrashing in the bed, she definitely sensed some chill now that had not been present before.
“I feel a draft,” Harry said.
“You do?”
“There is some cold air leaking in under the counterpane from somewhere.”
Thomas swung his legs out of bed and stood. He walked around the bed, tucking the counterpane in tightly on all sides.
The dim light of the fire allowed Harry to observe something was tenting Thomas’ nightshirt.
When he got back into bed, Harry said, “You are having a reaction.”
Thomas said brusquely, “Yes,” and promptly turned over so he was facing away from her.
Harry considered the situation. It had been so thoughtful of him to get her the candles.
And to turn the bed into this heavenly, snug nest. Next to her, the Earl Drake radiated heat like a bonfire.
And there was that lovely warm smell of him.
That spiced smell that was like pepper but was too sweet to be pepper.
Yes, being married might agree with her. Certainly, the first night of sharing a bed was revelatory and cozy. And if he would just stop tossing and turning, she might be able to sleep a bit.
Besides, she was curious.
“Should I relieve you, my lord? Manually? I don’t know how, but you can tell me. I know it will not lead to children. Then you might be able to sleep. And stop moving around so much.”
“No.”
Harry wondered why his voice sounded so strained.
Thomas went on, “No, my lady, I want you to put your mind to rest on the matter. I promise you I will never call on you to perform that function.”
How curious he should use that word.
“Do you know we use the word function in the calculus? Of course, it was Herr Leibniz and not Newton who first used the term. And Euler coined the current system of notation. It is a most useful concept.”
Silence from Thomas but she could tell he was listening.
“It is the word used to talk about a process whereupon a group of numbers is transformed into another group of numbers. It is like a machine where you feed threads in and get a length of cloth out. I’ll give you an example. Say you bred rabbits on your estate—”
“Rabbits?”
“Yes, and you noticed your number of rabbits was doubling every day—”
“I don’t think it happens that quickly—"
“Hush, Thomas, that is irrelevant.”
Thomas hushed.
“And let’s say you wanted to be able to anticipate how many rabbits you might have on succeeding days.
You would define the function f of x equals n times two to the xth power with n being the number of rabbits you started with and x being the number of days that have passed.
You see? And, of course, you are going to eat some of the rabbits and sell some of the rabbits, so you could introduce some additional terms to the function, but, at least in this elementary example, it would be best if those numbers were either zero or some other constant or some fraction of x.
I think it is far too early to start talking about introducing other variables.
We can depict this function using Descartes’ system.
Now, of course, with rabbits, it is really a discontinuous function because you can’t have a fraction of a rabbit, can you?
Except when you’re eating one, I suppose, as a whole rabbit is a quite large amount of food.
“Let’s just put rabbits aside so our function is not just restricted to non-negative integers.
That will then let me explain limits to you because the limit of f of x will approach zero as x goes to negative infinity.
I do wish I could draw it, but you’ll just have to imagine a horizontal line with hatch marks on it labeled with numbers starting at zero and then one, et cetera.
The negatives will be on the other side of the zero.
And then a vertical line intersecting the horizontal line at zero and having its own set of hatch marks going up, sharing the same zero as the horizontal line—we call that the origin—and then one, two, three, you see? ”
But Thomas was silent, having fallen asleep long ago.
Harry crept slightly closer to his heat, and in time, she, too, slept.