25
“She is fine,” Thornston said a bit impatiently when Robert put his fob watch back in the pocket of his waistcoat.
He had been checking it regularly, thinking for at least the past few hours that something might have happened to Jo but not daring to voice the thought.
When he had woken up and the servants had told him that Jo was gone, he had sent a note to Thornston’s lodgings to ask him to come by for luncheon.
They were sitting at the table in the shadow of a white Greek-styled wooden pavilion in the garden.
Around them were neatly trimmed shrubbery with pink flowers giving an extra sense of privacy.
The pavilion and the shrubbery both opened up toward the sea.
It was the perfect spot for a private meal – one he should have shared with Jo, Robert thought glumly.
He could not deny now that something had to be amiss with her, since she had taken off without a word to him early in the morning. It was not the behavior of someone looking to become better acquainted with her husband on her honeymoon.
The house itself was rather ideal for a honeymoon though, Robert had to admit. It was large, yet still intimate and not as close to the city as he had feared. If he and Jo did not want company, it would be easy to avoid it.
“You don’t know that,” Robert snapped.
“She is walking along the beach in sunlight and has brought food, water and…”
“She has been gone for at least three hours,” Robert interrupted.
“You told me she likes going for long walks on the beach.”
Robert nodded, even though he did not feel reassured by this.
“Has something happened between the two of you?”
“No, what would have happened?” Robert sneered.
He did not want to tell Thornston about their night together. He did not want his friend to scoff at the fact that he had yet to sleep with his wife and that they had ‘only’ used their fingers to pleasure each other. It had been some of the best sexual experiences of his life. If not the best.
“You seemed… strained around each other yesterday when I met you. I thought you might have been arguing again,” Thornton teased him lightly, which made Robert grit his teeth. “What did you do? Try to pay for her jewelry this time?”
“No,” Robert sighed and raked a hand through his hair.
“Oh, so there is something,” Thornston said gleefully. “Let me guess, you slept together, but now she is withdrawing from you.”
It was too close to the truth for Robert to hide his surprised expression fast enough.
“How did you…?” he began then clamped his lips shut to not spill any more of their secrets.
“Ah, so I was right,” Thornston asked and smiled triumphantly. “Josephine did strike me as the type.”
“The type to what?” Robert asked angrily, both at Thornston’s ability to analyze the situation and for using his wife’s given name.
“Some women,” Thornston began and leaned forward in his seat as if he was a teacher telling a student about a scientific revelation, “will feel slightly embarrassed by the fact that they let themselves be carried away by the act. Even though they enjoyed participating in the moment.”
“Why would you think this applies to Jo?” Robert said defensively and crossed his arms over his chest, even though he was secretly wondering whether Thornston was right.
“I have found this to happen with women who are either very used to being in control or not very experienced in matters in the bedroom. Both apply to your wife as far as I know.” Thornston leaned back with a slight smirk, clearly finished with his lecture.
Robert scowled at him while he mulled the matter over.
He had never thought he lacked experience in the bedroom.
Lucretia had never complained; she had in fact praised him more than once, but he supposed it was true that only sleeping with her, an experienced, very willing woman, had given him a couple of blind spots in that area.
With Thornston’s constant change of partners, Robert allowed that he might have more experience in this particular area.
“And hypothetically if that was the case what should I do?”
“Reassure her. Take matters at her pace. Allow her to withdraw afterwards and then find her way back to you, since it is what you both want.”
Robert nodded along as Thornston spoke.
“I’ll leave when she returns,” his friend assured him with a wink, his light brown curls bobbing over his forehead.
Robert rolled his eyes at him and smiled, nevertheless. He could be patient. He thought he had been, but he needed to be even more so, it seemed.
“Now that I have solved your problems, I need your help with my own,” Thornston said, putting on more air than he normally did, meaning that whatever he said next was important to him.
He pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket in his light blue jacket and started unfolding it.
“Remember how I have been looking for my aunt since I came into my majority?” he asked.
Robert nodded. Thornston’s aunt had eloped with a stableboy when she was only seventeen and Thornston’s grandfather and parents had never spoken to her again.
Thornston had put it into his head that he wanted to be reunited with her.
He said he wanted to help her financially, but Robert suspected that it was also due to the fact that she was his only living relative.
“But I thought the investigator you had hired had learned she was dead?” Robert asked as Thornston smoothed the letter against the wooden table. The paper rustled slightly in the light breeze.
“I did,” Thornston said flippantly without meeting his eyes. “But the investigator was able to have a look at the church registers in the parish she lived in…”
“I do not even want to know how he did that,” Robert interrupted.
“And he found that my aunt and the stable hand had three daughters.” If Robert did not know Thornston so well, he would never have picked up on how significant this was for him.
But the way his friend’s voice became almost devoid of emotion while being even more flippant than before signaled it to him.
And it was massive, Robert recognized. Thornston had believed himself to be without family and now he had found three cousins.
“That is incredible,” Robert therefore told him.
Thornston only acknowledged this with a quick dip of his head while looking at his hand that continued to smooth the paper on the table.
“I intend to marry one of them.”
Robert froze as if someone had pointed a gun at him. He had frankly never expected to hear his friend say those words, at least not in the next decade. He slowly eased into what he hoped was a more casual position as he tried to find the right words.
“Are they… how old are they?” he asked as he cleared his throat.
It seemed a neutral question to ask.
“It says that the eldest is three and twenty.” Thornston looked at the letter again, even though the front with his name and address on it was still facing up. “The second eldest, one and twenty, and the youngest eighteen.”
“Oh,” was all Robert could say. Then he remembered what Thornston had said about needing his help. “And how do I fit into this? You seem to already be doing all you can to find them.”
“I am,” Thornston mumbled, his dark brown eyes briefly met Robert’s. “Do I have your blessing in such a match?”
“Of course,” Robert told him without hesitation, and he could see his friend’s shoulders slump just the tiniest bit. Robert had not been aware of the tension in Thornston’s body. “You will always be welcome in our house. In Xavier’s as well,” he added because he knew it to be true.
“Many people will probably… frown upon it, but… it feels like the honorable thing to do. For them. It would elevate them to the position they would have had, had my aunt not eloped.”
Robert nodded along as Thornston explained. It was a much more thorough plan than he had realized. It must be something that his friend had contemplated for some time.
“And I need to marry at some point,” Thornston continued without looking at him. “I do want an heir of my own. It just has not… taken precedence before. But this would be… killing two birds with one stone.”
He winced at the euphemism.
“Or something less violent for something that might prove to be quite pleasant.” He said the last part with a slight grin and a sideways glance in Robert’s direction and Robert knew they were venturing away from the serious moment.
“So, when will you marry?” Robert asked.
“As soon as the detective is able to locate my cousins,” Thornston said with a shrug and placed the letter back in his pocket. “He believes them to be living in Kent.”
“That is not far away,” Robert began, but was interrupted by a distant rumbling. “Thunder?” he asked as he looked at the sky.
“The cliff,” Thornston said in a decisive voice.
They both sprang to their feet.