Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Andrew could not have been the duke for very long, but he evidently had a firm way of running things—she might even say strict—because for the first week, Jessamine felt as though she were a spare cog in a very well-oiled machine.
The servants moved about her with precision; breakfast was served at nine precisely, and if she arrived late, she often found them packing her a tray.
If she came early, there was no breakfast to be found, and the footmen sheepishly informed her that the duke had instructed them to provide breakfast precisely when he required it.
The same happened at dinner. For lunch, he often ate out at one of his clubs, and Jessamine was more easily able to request some bread and cakes be sent to her in the middle of the afternoon without fearing she was disturbing the duke’s routine.
Because, it seemed, he did not differ from that routine.
After breakfast until perhaps one, he worked in his study.
At one, he left the house, presumably to visit one of his gentlemen’s clubs for lunch, or perhaps for something else—Jessamine did not ask, and she did not particularly care.
When he returned, at five or six, he would change, and dinner would be served at eight on the dot.
If Jessamine was late, he would not scold her, but treat her to a glare.
Breakfast and dinner were the two meals they were expected to share together. Except, of course, as she had predicted, William did not adhere to a schedule. In fact, his needs often overlapped with Andrew’s rigid mealtimes.
The first time she was more than a few minutes late to dinner, he came up to find her in the nursery, cradling a screaming infant against her shoulder and singing a lullaby under her breath. He froze in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“He won’t sleep.” Jessamine huffed hair out of her eyes as she walked back and forth, feeling as though she was wearing a hole through the carpet. Her arms and legs felt like lead, and her eyes were gritty. “I’ll come down as soon as he goes to sleep.”
Andrew surveyed her with an irritated expression. “He ought to get accustomed to sleeping by himself. Put him down and come to dinner.”
“If I put him down now, he will not settle, and I can’t eat while he’s up here screaming.”
“Does he need feeding?”
“No.”
“Can the nursemaid not do it?”
“She has been with him half the day,” Jessamine snapped. “And she has her own children too, you know. Not to nurse, but to care for. How do you think she still has milk? She has been caring for William excellently, but she must also think of her own children.”
Andrew’s expression set, and Jessamine wondered if he had considered this. That nursemaids did not merely exist outside of any other consideration.
No doubt he had not.
His gaze fell on the pots of herbs Jessamine had placed beside William’s crib. Their fragrance filled the room. “What are these?” he demanded.
“They are merely there to help him sleep and reduce his chances of nightmares.” Jessamine jutted her jaw.
She’d had lavender beside her bed ever since she had moved to Scotland, and its soft perfume had lulled her to sleep when she had thought she would never rest again.
Even now, the scent sent a wave of peace through her tense body. “It should help him rest.”
“Nonsense.” Andrew picked up the small pots and tossed their contents into the fire. “Do not make the mistake of listening to nursery tales and mistaking it for medical certainty, Jessamine.”
“I am doing no such thing,” she fired back. “These are all used in Scotland.”
“And does Scotland know better than the best medical professionals in the land?”
“There is something to be said for old medicinal cures.” If she were not holding William, she would have put her hands on her hips.
Already, her fury at his having disposed of her herbs—her lavender and sage and valerian root—made her want to hurl something at his smug face.
“Imagine presuming you know best when you do so little of the work, Your Grace.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then pass the child to me.”
“As though I should! You would merely dispose of him in his crib and inform me that we are going downstairs now, because his crying interferes with your schedule. When I’m sorry that this infant has not yet developed a sense of your precious discipline, but I will not punish him for it.”
Andrew sighed in impatience. “Then what do you intend, Jessamine?”
“To sing to him,” she said simply. “As I was doing before you ever arrived.”
His jaw set, but she turned her back on him, swaying gently as she crooned one of the old lullabies she’d heard countless times in Braemar from nursemaids and mothers and old scullery maids with gnarled fingers.
They all sang to the babes, to quieten them and settle them and to protect them from evil spirits.
Jessamine did not believe in spirits, but she did believe in the power of song to soothe.
William blinked his large blue eyes up at her as he listened, and eventually they closed slowly, lulled into slumber.
Jessamine grinned in triumph and placed the sleeping infant down in his crib.
Andrew still stood in the doorway, listening to her with an odd expression on his face. She swept past him, tugging him out of the room and shutting the door behind him.
“Come, Your Grace,” she said, grinning to herself. “If you’re not careful, we shall be late to dinner.”
The next time Andrew ventured into William’s room, he found the boy sleeping in his crib.
Jessamine must have immediately gone into her bedchamber, and so Andrew stood alone in the middle of the room. He’d heard the strains of her singing from below, and had thought to come and listen, but he’d just missed it.
At first, he hadn’t thought the singing would do much, especially in what sounded like a foreign tongue, but there could be no doubt the boy responded to it.
The herbs were back, too. Bunches of lavender and sage tied together, and something brown and almost bark-like in quality in a small pot.
He’d tossed them away, and she had returned them to their place without consulting him, going so far as to tie the bunches of lavender and sage to the bars of the crib.
Andrew raised a brow, but rather than throw them away, he leaned in to examine them a little more closely.
William slept soundly, and the soft fragrance of lavender surrounded him.
For a moment, he was reminded of his mother.
She had kept dried lavender in a pouch on her person, and whenever she had embraced him, he had smelled it.
A strange longing overcame him, and he moved away, banishing the feeling. This was not about his mother. But Jessamine clearly had a reason for putting the herbs there, and he could not believe it nefarious.
He slipped quietly from the room and went downstairs to the library, scouring the shelves until he finally found what he was looking for: a comprehensive collection of the natural herbal remedies of England. A book he suspected his mother had left there.
Sitting before the empty fireplace, ignoring his otherwise strict routine, he began to read.
Jessamine arched her back, exhausted, as she made her way through the house to the library.
This was the one time of day, in late afternoon, when her time was wholly hers.
Every day for the past three days, she came to the library—safe in the knowledge that Andrew did not spend these hours at home—and read a novel.
Not for long, of course. William required a great deal of care and intervention, and she refused to let others take over the role that ought to be hers. But just for a little while.
When she entered the library, however, she came up short. Andrew had not left the house, after all. No, he was sitting in an armchair, one ankle hooked over his knee, reading a book in his lap.
She hovered in the doorway, suddenly reluctant to relinquish her own routine. If she left now, what was she do to?
As though hearing the force of her thoughts, he glanced up and met her gaze.
Her stomach immediately squirmed. There was something about the sternness of his face when he looked at her that made her instincts kick in. Fight or flight.
When it came to Andrew, she so often chose fight. But there was something else under her skin, something even more terrifying than the anger and resentment.
When he looked at her in that way he had, it made her think of terrible things she ought never to. What it might feel like to have that strong, big body pressed against hers, his big hands on her face, her waist, his mouth on hers.
In her daydreams, though she resented herself for it, she found herself enjoying those moments.
“Jessamine,” he said. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”
He half rose, closing the book he was reading. She caught a glimpse of a green illustration on the front, and her irritation dissolved into curiosity.
“What are you reading?”
“Oh, this?” He tucked the book out of sight. “Nothing in particular. Just whiling away time.”
“You usually go out during the afternoon.”
“I do,” he said, replacing the book carefully on the shelf. She made a careful note of where it was so she could find it later. “Today, I changed my mind.”
“Altering your routine?” She raised a brow at him. “How odd.”
“Yes, I realize it must be strange for you. But please, don’t let me get in the way of whatever you had intended to do. I would hate to intrude on your time.” He bowed slightly and moved as though he was about to leave.
For a reason she could not fathom, Jessamine placed a hand on his arm. “Shall we declare a truce?”
“A truce?” His brows came together as he looked down into her face.
There was something so forbidding about the severity of his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. He was a man carved as though from ice, with no softness to be seen, save for the occasional softness around his mouth and eyes when he looked at William.
That very softness was now why she offered this truce.
“I know you disagree with the way I choose to raise William,” she said, “but he is none the worse for it, and I think he would if I went about things differently. Even if you disagree, surely you can accept things the way they are?”
“I do accept them,” he said unexpectedly. “I will not fight you on this, so long as I perceive no harm coming to him.”
“I would do nothing to harm him. And,” she added, “neither would you. After I informed you that our nursemaid has her own children and family, you gave her an extra half day off a week. I know it, and you know it, though that means you have had to hire another nursemaid for that single day, so William may still be fed.”
She had overheard the interview, where Andrew had calmly informed the nursemaid of William’s current feeding and napping schedule, and what her duties would be.
Jessamine hadn’t known he had paid so much attention, but evidently he had.
Mealtimes, too, were different. While the food was still prepared for the same times, he would come up to check with her to see if William was likely to settle in time, and if not, he prepared a tray for her and had someone bring it.
Those small gestures, along with the way he sometimes tiptoed into William’s room just to, one would presume, look at the baby, suggested Andrew was not as cold-hearted as Jessamine had first suspected.
A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Believe it or not, I am not regularly cruel to my servants, and I do what I can to support them. I am not my f—” He cut himself off. “I am not a tyrant.”
“So will you enter a truce with me?” She stuck out her hand.
After a long moment, he took it, his fingers engulfing hers. “I was not aware we were at war.”
“Were you not? Is that not what marriage is?” She smiled at him, and for the first time, she thought she saw the tiniest hint of a smile in return. “Marriage is a never-ending battle.”
“How long will this truce last, then?”
“Until we next find something to disagree over, which is to say, not very long at all. But for now, we should take advantage of it.” She nodded to his armchair. “Read. I will read as well, and then we may get on with our day in our respective ways.”
For a moment, his fingers tightened on hers, and she wondered if he would reject her offer. Arguing was certainly a state they were more familiar with, and she rather suspected part of him enjoyed the arguments. Having her present peace as an option was perhaps unsettling.
But then his mouth twitched again, and he dropped her hand. “I fear remaining in the same room as you for too long would disrupt our truce sooner than necessary. Enjoy your break, Jessamine. It’s well-deserved.”
He bowed and left the room.
Jessamine stared after him. Would this fragile truce hold, or would it break at the first possible moment?