Chapter Twelve
T he folly was a little oven in the mornings. Caroline would know, having spent the last week waking up there. She’d moved her clothes to the folly, and it had become a fully outfitted bedchamber. Minus the bed frame. Still only a mattress tick, but that lent the space a certain charm.
As did the entirely nude length of her husband stretched out on it, one arm bent behind his head, the other splayed across his taut torso.
Difficult to dress when he was looking at her as if her skin alone might break his fast. No toast necessary.
“Come back, Caro,” he said.
“We’ve much to do today.” She clumsily tightened her stays and stepped into her stockings, tied one with a pink ribbon. Felix liked pink.
The sight of it roused him from the bed, brought him prowling toward her. “Let me.” He knelt at the chair she sat in, his stronger fingers deftly maneuvering the second ribbon. When he was done, he kissed the top of her knee, squeezed her calf. “Shall we return to bed?”
She tapped his cheek. “No. I am writing to a midwife I know in Manchester today. Hawthorne’s future guests may find themselves in a variety of precarious positions, and it’s best to be ready for them all.”
“Naturally.”
“And then I must help the maids clean out the conservatory. You are going into Dorking, are you not?”
“I had planned on it,” he said with a sigh, “but plans are made to shattered into tiny little unreadable pieces, Caro-mine.”
She gasped. “Blasphemy. Clothes now, husband.”
He groaned, claiming a long, sultry kiss before doing as she’d commanded.
Something of a shame. The clothes, not the kiss.
If anyone should go around undressed, it should be Felix.
He left off his jacket, though. The heat had already pierced their little heaven, and she liked him in shirtsleeves, liked to see him rumpled, those sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
She rolled them up for him as they made their way through the garden, and oh, the smile that dragged from him. She’d no idea happiness felt this way, like wicked grins and low chuckles, like secret touches under a shady tree.
Which, somehow, she dragged him away from. But not without grumbling.
She set him at a small stone patio outside of a drawing room the maids were cleaning.
The door was thrown open to let in the sun and the breeze, and one of the footmen, Freddy, hovered in the doorway.
He seemed to be trying to keep one eye on Caroline and the other on the women working inside. A predatory eye?
Freddy jumped forward, arms outstretched. “Don’t fall, Miss Farmer!”
No, a protective eye. The footmen were proving quite valuable. Sympathetic and sweet despite their hulking figures.
“Sit, Caro.” Felix urged Caroline into a small wicker seat beside a matching table laden with tea then sat himself.
She folded her hands in her lap. Felix liked to pour her tea.
Unusual, but he said she’d get it too hot for herself, and he could not have her perfect tongue burnt when he had other plans for it. Difficult to argue with that.
Everything was perfect. The days, the nights, her plans, even the unexpected addition of a husband to her household.
Perfect.
Felix had not had a nightmare since she’d shared his bed. And that reminded her of a plan she’d been developing.
Felix sipped from her tea, testing the temperature, then finding it satisfactory, handed it to her with the rim where his lips had settled facing her.
Small detail. Purposefully meant. Her entire body flushed.
The more of herself she shared with this man, the more his tiny gestures felt entirely provocative.
The kissed rim of a teacup more salacious than her body fully revealed before him.
Perfection. Which was why…
“Felix,” she said, attempting to hide her hesitance, “I have a new plan I would like your opinion on.”
He chuckled. “Smash it. That is my opinion.”
“You like my plans.”
“Some of them.”
Her chair lurched toward him, and she looked down with a yelp to find his foot hooked around one leg, dragging her sideways.
“Felix!” she cried when her chair butted against his and she toppled into his lap.
“Yes?”
“The others are watching.”
“And?”
“And… and…” Could not make up a single reason for him not to behave badly. She enjoyed it so much. “Oh, very well.”
He kissed her as the morning birds sang and the sun warmed the blooming flower petals. He thrummed his fingers through her hair as the maids and footmen paused their chores to sigh and watch or shuffle away with embarrassment in their cheeks.
“Now,” Felix said, setting her back onto her chair, “what is your plan?”
“My what?”
“Good to know that works that way.”
Caroline blinked, shook her head, found her focus. “Oh yes!” That kiss proof things were progressing in the right direction for what she was about to suggest. “I think we should move out of the folly, and I have a three-step plan to enable that goal.”
His smile became brittle and broke off like an iced twig in winter. His gaze flicked toward the house before he engrossed himself in pouring his own tea, in buttering some bread. “We’re moving back to London, then?”
“London? No, of course not. You said you’d stay.
We are moving into my bed chamber. Inside Hawthorne.
” She enumerated her points on her fingers.
“You are no longer having nightmares. Righting the house is moving more quickly with help. The gardens need attention next, and the folly, situated so close to the gardens, is a perfect place to store whatever is needed for that project until it is done.”
His jaw twitched. “Why? Why must you control everything, everyone? It’s an impossible task.”
Frustration rose in her so suddenly, flushing into every inch of her like a crashing wave.
“Because otherwise no one regards me with one ounce of seriousness!” She stood with a jerk, the lovely, rosy happiness from before smashed like glass beneath her feet.
“I must prove myself with every breath. Prove I am not silly, prove I am not scatterbrained or childish. The glaziers will not speak with me; they ignore me and look for my husband. My father’s philosopher friends laugh at me.
His political acquaintances have patted me on the head.
Like I am a girl of five when I am a woman of eight and twenty!
I plan because I know I am good enough. But the world does not.
And I must arm myself in every way I can to prove it. ”
She blinked, her skin hot, her hands fisted so hard her nails cut into her palms.
Slowly, Felix stood. He clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head.
“I apologize. I do not mean to question you. If I have one certainty in life, Caro… it is that you are the most impressive woman I’ve ever met.
You dream it, and you do it. If I have insulted your plans, I have not meant to insult you.
I can be a brute.” He peeked at her from the corner of one eye. “What are your three steps?”
Her legs simply… quit working as all the frustration that had entered her so quickly simply drained away and she sunk back into her chair. “Oh.”
He knelt in front of her, resting his hands atop her in her lap. “Well?”
“Are you sure you want to hear?”
He nodded, moving back to his chair and settling one ankle atop the other knee as he sat. He laced his fingers together atop his abdomen.
She beamed. “F-first, we try one night. Just one. In my bed chamber. We do not even have to sleep. We will keep each other up all night in order to acclimate you. Second, we invite Chloe and Garrett and your grandfather to stay with us and we fill the house with company and laughter. That way you do not see ghosts here, but very live people who love you. Finally, we try another night. Then another. And we keep trying until you are happy sleeping inside. I will not begin work on the gardens until then. See, I have modified my original plan to take account of your situation. Aren’t you proud of me? I’m learning.”
A smile twitched in the corner of his lips. Encouraged, she moved back into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I know you were happy here with your family at some point, and it is the lack of those people who made you happy that fuels your discontent.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then tell me?”
He shook his head, kissed her knuckles. “No. The past does not matter. It does not hurt me.”
But something in his eyes revealed his words as lies. “We do not have to. I merely thought, since you are staying now, we might try something that feels more permanent.”
He looked at the house once more, his lips thin.
“You’re right.” He kissed her temple then stood, resting her gently where he’d been sitting.
“We’ll follow your plan. Now I”—he scratched the back of his neck, wouldn’t look at her—“must be off to Dorking. I need to check with the constable about Mr. Smith. He’s said to have left the village, but a man can always come back.
” He mumbled the last part, already walking toward the stables.
She ran after him, caught his arm. “I’ve upset you.”
His eyes were so stormy.
And then they weren’t. Then he was pulling her into his arms and kissing her again, then he was saying silly things in her ear. “Time for a riddle, Caro. I am soft and hard and always needy. What am I?”
She’d not heard this one. And with his warm lips skimming so close to her skin, she could not think to solve it. “I-I’m sure I do not know.”
“Felix Canterbury, Viscount Foxton. Soft for his wife’s every desire, hard for her body every hour of the day. And needy for her smiles.” He nipped her earlobe.