Chapter 9 #2
Sarah came into the room and rested one hand upon the locked deed chest. “The papers are safe as papers can be. The House is fed. The roof did not leak this afternoon despite the rain. Nothing requires you for the next eight hours unless the bell rings.”
Margaret understood the gift because Sarah did not call it one.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Do not thank me by asking for the subscription list.”
“I had not intended to.”
Sarah’s brows rose.
“I had intended to ask whether tomorrow’s coal delivery had been confirmed.”
“It has. At eight, not before.” Sarah moved toward the door. “Dinner is laid in the small parlor. His Grace is there, and he has asked no one to fetch you.”
Margaret looked once more at the office register.
The evidence was copied, sealed, divided, and entered. No further act of vigilance could improve it tonight. She turned down the lamp, took her keys, and followed Sarah into the corridor.
Henry was standing before the small parlor fire when she entered, though a chair had been placed close enough to receive him without ceremony.
His coat was dark blue and newly altered at the right shoulder.
The damaged coat from the assembly had not returned from the tailor, and this one did not disguise the slight drop of the joint as successfully.
Margaret preferred it.
He appeared recovered from the acute spasm, but not restored to a body he had possessed before Waterloo. The stiffness in his left knee remained when he turned. His right arm moved within a careful range. Recovery had returned choice, not erased consequence.
Dinner waited beneath silver covers on the sideboard. Two places had been set at a small round table. No servant remained in the room.
Henry looked at the keys in her hand. “Locked?”
“Locked, witnessed, divided, and dispatched.”
“Dyer retains one set?”
“Yes. Independent counsel will hold another before midnight.”
“And the House set requires two keys.”
Margaret placed her own upon the table. “The evidence is as secure as we can make it.”
Henry nodded. He did not celebrate as though paper had restored his name. “Then I have three questions.”
“The bank produced seventeen pages, two memoranda, and an elderly gentleman who objected to our carriage springs. I may have exhausted my tolerance for questions.”
“I shall make them brief.” He indicated the table, then the door beyond it. “Do you want dinner, solitude, or me?”
Margaret looked at the three choices he had made distinct.
He had not offered dinner with himself as an inseparable term. He had not described solitude as fatigue or himself as comfort she ought to accept. The bank’s evidence lay secured because both of them had worked for it, and he had not mistaken that small victory for a fee paid toward her body.
“Those are not mutually exclusive over the course of an evening,” she said.
“No. But I will not choose their order.”
Margaret removed her gloves one finger at a time. Henry waited without moving closer.
“I want dinner,” she said. “I have eaten only half a roll since noon.”
He lifted the nearest cover. “Cold beef, bread, cheese, and a soup Sarah threatened me against allowing to cool.”
“She considers cooled soup a personal betrayal.”
“I have been told the kitchen would hear of it.”
Margaret sat. Henry served her without turning the act into gallantry and took less for himself. They ate while rain traced the windows and the House settled around them.
He asked no question about the evidence that had not already been answered. She did not mention the bedroom prepared above them. The omission did not make desire less present. It prevented desire becoming another task completed while food went cold.
When Margaret had finished the soup, she set down her spoon.
“I want you,” she said.
Henry’s hand remained upon his water glass. “Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Because of what happened at the bank?”
“No.”
“Because I stopped the other night?”
“No.”
He waited for the answer she had not yet given.
Margaret folded her napkin once. “I want you because I have spent two days wanting the next time, and because tonight nothing immediate requires either of us to be less honest than that.”
His eyes stayed upon her face. “Do you want me in your room?”
“Yes. I have arranged privacy.”
“With Sarah?”
“She has moved two linen baskets and invented repairs.”
“That sounds more formidable than a lock.”
“It will be.”
Henry set down the glass. “You may change your mind upon the stairs, at the door, after I enter, or after anything begins.”
“I know.”
“I am saying it because the room is yours.”
Margaret rose. “Then come to it because I have asked.”
The west stair held only one shaded lamp.
Sarah’s repair notice had already appeared on the corridor stand in firm black letters. It did not identify the nature of the supposed defect, perhaps because Sarah expected curiosity to be more dangerous when supplied with detail.
Henry climbed beside Margaret rather than behind her. His left knee required the rail during the final steps. She did not offer assistance he had not requested, and he did not hide the pause before they reached the landing.
At her bedchamber door, Margaret took out her key.
Henry stopped before the threshold. The corridor lamp showed the pale line along his cheek and the silver beginning at his temples. He had entered drawing rooms, battle lines, and hostile legal conferences with less visible caution.
Margaret unlocked the door. “Come in.”
He followed her.
The room smelled of clean linen and the lavender Sarah tucked between stored sheets. A low fire warmed the grate. The curtains had been drawn across the rain-black windows, and two candles burned upon the dressing table beside the covered ewer.
Margaret shut the door and turned the key.
Henry heard it. He made no move until she faced him.
“This is the first time you have been in this room,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You may look at it without submitting an inspection report.”
“I have already observed that the chair beside the fire is too small for me.”
“It was not purchased in expectation of a duke.”
“Most useful furniture is not.”
The humor settled rather than deflected. Margaret crossed the room and removed the pins from her hair.
She had imagined doing it before him. In imagination, the act had possessed grace. In practice, the third pin caught in a coil and required both hands to free. Dark-auburn hair loosened over her shoulders in a heavy, untidy fall.
Henry watched without rescuing the pin.
Margaret placed it beside the others. “You may kiss me now.”
He crossed to her, but stopped within reach. “May I touch your hair?”
“Yes.”
His left hand entered the loosened mass at the back of her head. The gesture altered his face before it altered hers. Command left his mouth. Wonder would have been too grand a word for the quiet attention with which he learned the weight and texture of what she usually bound out of everyone’s way.
Margaret put both hands upon his coat and kissed him.
She set the pace because she wanted to know she could.
Henry followed the first pressure, the first change of angle, and the first step backward toward the bed.
When his left hand settled at her waist, she drew nearer.
When his right hand rose more slowly, she caught it and placed it against her hip where the shoulder need not strain.
The kiss deepened without urgency.
He tasted of wine taken sparingly with dinner. His coat was cool from the corridor, his body warm beneath it. Margaret opened the front buttons and pushed the cloth from his left shoulder, then stopped at the right.
“How shall we manage this one?” she asked.
“I can remove it if I turn.”
“Show me.”
Henry angled his body and eased the right sleeve down without lifting the arm. Margaret held the weight of the coat so the cloth did not drag across the scar. The garment came free without scissors, pain, or an audience.
She laid it over the chair.
“Waistcoat?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Margaret unfastened it. Henry remained still while her fingers worked downward, though his gaze moved over her face with each button. She opened his cravat, drew it loose, and placed it with the coat.
When she reached the shirt, she looked at him.
“Yes,” he said.
“That was not a question.”
“No. It was the answer I wished ready when you asked.”
Margaret opened the first buttons and spread the linen enough to see the strong plane of his chest and the scar passing toward the right shoulder.
Two nights earlier, the skin around it had been rigid with spasm and sharp beneath camphor.
Tonight it remained altered, bound in places where the muscle had healed unevenly, but calm.
She touched below the worst edge, where he had guided her hand before.
Henry covered her fingers briefly. “There is safe.”
“I remember.”
“I know.”
She felt the weight of that trust more distinctly than she had felt the bank seals beneath her hand.
Henry bent to kiss her. Margaret answered, then stepped away before he could decide the next movement for her.
She turned her back and lifted her hair clear of her gown. “The hooks.”
His fingers found them.
He worked slowly, not because the fastening was difficult, but because each released hook exposed another narrow line of shift beneath the moss-green wool.
Margaret stood without helping. Asking him to undress her felt more revealing than standing naked would, because she had spent years completing every task before another person could make it into a favor.
The gown loosened.
Henry drew it down her arms, careful of the right shoulder only because it was his own and not because she had become fragile by association. The wool fell to the carpet. Margaret stepped free and laid it across the dressing-table stool.
Her stays followed under her direction. She loosened the front, then allowed Henry to manage the remaining ties. His knuckles brushed the strong muscles beside her spine. He kissed the nape of her neck once and waited.
Margaret removed the stays and set them aside.