Chapter Nine Morning
CHAPTER NINE
Morning
Mary Beth woke because someone was knocking.
For one disoriented second she lay still, warm beneath the covers, aware only of pale morning pressing around the curtains and the unfamiliar weight of an arm across her waist.
Then the knock came again.
“Ma’am?”
Mary Beth’s eyes opened completely.
Ambrose was awake beside her.
He did not move. Neither did she.
The maid outside tried the sitting-room door.
The key held.
Mary Beth had turned it herself near midnight. At the time, the act had felt deliciously sensible. In daylight, with a servant three yards away and Ambrose Tavener naked in her bed, it seemed less like prudence and more like evidence.
“Ma’am? It is half past seven. Shall I bring the tray?”
Ambrose’s mouth moved near Mary Beth’s ear.
“I begin to dislike tomorrow.”
She almost laughed, which would have ruined everything.
Instead she caught his wrist and whispered, “Do not breathe so loudly.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I shall try to survive quietly.”
Mary Beth pinched him hard enough to make his expression change.
Outside, the maid knocked once more.
“Leave it in the morning room,” Mary Beth called.
There was a pause.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Footsteps retreated along the corridor.
Neither of them spoke until the sound vanished down the main stair.
Then Ambrose rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
“I have inspected bridges under flood, quarry faces after frost, and railway cuttings after a landslip,” he said. “That may have been the most dangerous thirty seconds of my professional life.”
Mary Beth pulled the sheet higher over herself.
“You are very brave when the threat has left.”
“I was brave while she was here. I remained perfectly still.”
“You were terrified.”
“Naturally. I have no experience escaping from the bedrooms of notorious widows before breakfast.”
She turned toward him.
“No experience?”
Ambrose gave her a slow, warning glance.
“Careful. You asked about wives and attachments. You did not conduct an audit of my entire adult life.”
“I may begin one.”
“You may find it less interesting than you hope.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
“It is an attempt to get dressed before your household arrests me.”
He sat up.
Morning was unfair to him.
Mary Beth had expected daylight to reduce some of what the previous night had done to her judgment.
Instead it revealed the firm line of his shoulders, the old pale scar near one collarbone, and the roughened hands that had spent the night touching her with more care than many gentlemen devoted to prayer.
He reached for his trousers.
Mary Beth caught the back of his hand.
Ambrose stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have never once in the time I have known you stopped a man for nothing.”
She considered denying it, then abandoned the effort.
“Stay another minute.”
The humor left his face.
That was the difficulty with him. He understood when a sentence cost her something.
Ambrose sat back on the edge of the bed.
Mary Beth moved closer and rested her head briefly against his shoulder.
There was no seduction in it, no challenge or game. She simply wanted one more minute with him in daylight.
His hand settled over hers.
“This,” he said quietly, “is what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Which part?”
“Any of it.”
Mary Beth thought of the Sablehurst drawing room, of doors opening because Benedict wished them open. She thought of Ambrose in the carriage room asking for an answer about tomorrow, and of his hand finding hers in the dark after she had already given him everything easier to give.
“No.”
The answer surprised her by requiring no courage.
Ambrose kissed her temple.
“Good.”
“Do you?”
“I regret that your maid has excellent work habits.”
Mary Beth laughed against his shoulder.
“You are impossible.”
“I am also late.”
“For whom? You work for me.”
“That argument becomes increasingly suspicious when made from your bed.”
He dressed quickly, though not quickly enough to prevent Mary Beth from enjoying the process.
His shirt was still slightly damp at one cuff from the previous day’s work.
His waistcoat had fallen beneath the chair.
One stocking was nowhere to be found until Mary Beth discovered she was sitting on it.
Ambrose accepted it from her with grave dignity.
“A household of thieves.”
“You should report us.”
“To whom?”
“Lord Sablehurst might know a magistrate.”
The line was meant lightly, but something shifted in Ambrose’s face.
Mary Beth noticed.
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Turn him into a wall between us before he has earned the labor.”
Ambrose tied his cravat without a mirror.
“I am not.”
“You were about to.”
He exhaled.
“Perhaps.”
“Then stop.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I dislike you when you call me that.”
“You dislike me very selectively.”
He bent and kissed her once, fast enough to be almost respectable.
Almost.
Then he crossed into the sitting room.
Mary Beth followed in her robe.
The corridor beyond the outer door was empty.
Ambrose opened it only a few inches and listened.
“Your blue room is twenty yards away,” she whispered. “If anyone sees you, you were discussing the drainage reports early.”
“Without a coat?”
“You are an engineer. Perhaps you are eccentric.”
“That is an architect.”
She pushed him lightly between the shoulders.
“Go.”
He slipped into the corridor and reached the blue room without discovery.
Mary Beth closed her door, leaned against it, and smiled like a fool.
That was more alarming than the maid.
* * *
At breakfast, Ambrose arrived twelve minutes after Mary Beth.
His hair was damp, his coat properly brushed, and his expression gave no indication that he had left her bedroom less than an hour earlier carrying one boot in his hand.
Mary Beth hated him for this composure immediately.
She sat at the far end of the table with correspondence open beside her plate.
“Mr. Tavener.”
“Mrs. Blackthorn.”
He took the chair opposite.
The servant pouring coffee showed no interest in either of them.
Mary Beth considered that suspicious.
Ambrose unfolded his napkin.
“The north team will begin removing the failed facing today. We found another section yesterday where the backing stone is sound enough to retain. If that continues, we may save ten days.”
“Good.”
“The temporary pasture fence in the west field should be finished before noon.”
“Good.”
“You are staring at me.”
Mary Beth lowered her coffee cup.
The servant was still in the room.
“I am listening.”
“Very intently.”
“You are discussing my wall.”
“I am.”
“It is an interesting wall.”
Ambrose bit the inside of his cheek.
The servant departed with the coffee pot.
Mary Beth waited until the door closed.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
“I nearly died when she knocked.”
“You told me not to breathe. I was the one in danger.”
“You breathed anyway.”
“Recklessly.”
She kicked him beneath the table.
Ambrose caught her ankle between his boots.
Mary Beth froze.
He continued buttering toast.
“The quarry carts will need another route if the lower track remains soft,” he said conversationally.
His boot still held hers.
“I can send them by the west lane.”
“Too narrow at the second gate.”
“Then widen it.”
“That requires moving a gatepost.”
“Move the gatepost.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
His foot released hers.
Mary Beth decided that breakfast had become intolerable.
It also became her favorite meal.
* * *
The secret did not become easier over the following week.
It became practiced.
That was different.
Ambrose returned to the blue room every morning before the household stirred.
Some nights he never entered Mary Beth’s rooms at all.
On those evenings they worked late in the estate office or sat in the small library with maps spread across the table, and he kissed her only once before leaving because once was all the corridor allowed.
Other nights he came after the last downstairs door had closed.
Mary Beth learned the sounds of Blackthorn after midnight: the settling of old timber, the distant clock in the west hall, the kitchen door being bolted, the faint tread of a servant carrying the final coal scuttle upstairs.
She had lived in the house for years and never known how many noises belonged to it.
Ambrose learned them too.
They developed an absurd system without discussing it.
If the small lamp remained lit in Mary Beth’s sitting-room window, he came.
If it was dark, he stayed away. If rain made the terrace path too muddy, he used the servants’ stair at the north end.
Mary Beth objected to this as undignified until she remembered that dignity was the least interesting thing he did after reaching her room.
The arrangement should have felt familiar.
She had had secrets before.
This one refused to behave like the others.
The gamekeeper had belonged to evenings separated cleanly from the rest of her life. They had desired one another, been kind to one another, and never pretended the affair required a future. Mary Beth remembered him without shame and without ache.
Ambrose was everywhere.
He was in her breakfast room arguing over culvert dimensions.
He was on the north slope with mud to his knees.
He was in the estate office correcting a contractor’s arithmetic.
He was beside her at luncheon because rain had trapped the crew indoors.
He was under her hand at midnight, half asleep and warm.
There was no clean border around him.
Mary Beth had asked him to stay after the wall was finished.
Each day made that request more dangerous.
Each day also made her more certain she had meant it.
* * *
By the following Tuesday, the north wall had ceased to resemble a disaster and begun to resemble work.
The failed facing was gone from the worst section. Timber shoring held the cut behind it. A new drainage trench ran clear toward the western outlet, carrying water away from the cottages instead of allowing it to collect beneath the slope.
Mary Beth stood beside Ambrose above the works while carts from the lower quarry moved slowly along the widened lane.