“—and I don’t see why I shouldn’t have them, they will make riding so much nicer, and it’s not as if anyone will see — oh, good, Harry’s here. Can we eat now? I’m practically faint with hunger.”
Plum, Thom, and Temple were all sitting on the verandah, enjoying the cool evening air. Raised voices, shrieks of laughter, and loud accusations of cheating hinted that the children were engaged in a game in the overgrown garden.
“Yes, of course we can eat now.” Plum’s voice was cool and impersonal as she rose and prepared to follow Thom into the house.
Harry, who had much experience being a husband, knew better than to let another moment pass without correcting the slight he had inadvertently made against his wife. He put a restraining hand on her arm and gestured Temple on. “We’ll be along in a moment.”
Plum kept her gaze on the wall beyond Harry’s shoulder, her face expressionless. He tried to form the words of an apology, but everything sounded too stilted and insincere. In the end, he did the only thing he could do. He pulled her into his arms and kissed the breath from her lungs.
“You’ve married an idiot, Plum,” he murmured against her lips when his mouth finally parted from hers. “A fool, a simpleton, a bona fide half-wit.”
Plum, who had been stiff as a board through the entire kiss, relaxed against him, her lips curving under his. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say you were a half-wit, but a fool…well, we all have our foolish moments.”
“Some of us more than others,” he agreed, and pressed kisses along her jaw to her hair. “I’m very sorry for what I said earlier. I realize how insulting that must have sounded, and I can assure you that was the last thing I meant. It’s been a while since I had a wife, so you’ll have to forgive me if I forget to go down on my knees every morning and bless you for taking us all in hand.”
Plum giggled and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You’ve never once gone down on your knees to me.”
He smiled into her hair, pressed a last kiss to her temple, and with a sigh of regret, released her, grinning at her disgruntled look. “It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you, wife, but once I start, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
Plum’s eyes went all liquid at him. He sucked in his breath and thought for a moment about just taking her right there, and damning everyone else, but his body — willing as it was to fulfill that plan — was at war with itself over what it needed most.
His stomach won out. It growled in a most vociferous manner.
Plum laughed, and pushed him into the house. “I’d better feed you if I want you to make good on that promise in your eyes.”
“I hunger for many things,” he teased as he held the door to the dining room open.
“So do I,” she said with a provocative glance that went straight to his groin.
Dinner was a trial. Oh, the food was good, and the company — just him, Plum, Thom, and Temple — was convivial enough, but his eyes kept returning to the woman seated down the length of the table. Every time he looked at her, erotic, sensual images arose in his mind.
With the soup, he thought about how smooth her flesh was against his mouth. With the game course, he mused over the flowing silk of her hair. With the fish, his nostrils were filled with the remembered scent of her skin, a scent that was faintly jasmine with overtones of warm, arousing woman. He ate whatever was set before him, his eyes on Plum as she chatted with both Thom and Temple, his mind filled with all the things he wanted to do to her, and quite a few he wanted her to do to him. This evening the house could come down around their ears for all he cared — he was going to consummate his marriage, or die trying.
“What do you say, Harry?”
He blinked away the mental image of Plum writhing with pleasure and looked at Thom. “What?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Thom’s gray eyes laughed at him.
“Leave him be, Thom, he’s hungry,” Plum said, her little pink tongue flicking out to lick her lips. The very sight of it had him hard and aching with desire.
“Hungry. Yes, hungry,” he said, his gaze never leaving her mouth.
Plum’s eyes lit with sudden recognition, a slow, knowing smile curved her lips in answer to the plea he knew to be in his eyes.
He almost swallowed his tongue.
“You’ve eaten enough that you can converse civilly. This is important, Harry. Plum is being too old-fashioned for words.”
It was an effort, but he dragged his mind away from his wife and tried his best to pay attention to what Thom was saying. “What is?”
She gave a martyred sigh and said, “My breeches.”
“Your what?”
“Breeches! I want breeches to ride in, and Plum says it would shock anyone who saw me and ruin all my chances of making a good marriage, but as I’ve told her time and time again, I don’t want to be married. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a pair of breeches to ride when we’re in the country. It’s not as if we know anyone here. You wouldn’t mind if I were to ride in breeches, would you?”
Harry, no fool he, slid a glance toward Plum before deciding how to answer his niece-by-marriage’s plea. Plum’s straight brows told him nothing, but the thin line of her lips spoke volumes. “I’m sure that Plum knows what’s best for you, Thom.”
She made an annoyed sound and glared at Plum. “It’s all your fault, he’s besotted with you and wouldn’t dare do anything against your wishes. Now I’ll never get a pair of breeches.”
He grinned at Plum. “I’m a bridegroom, I’m supposed to be besotted with my bride.”
Plum grinned back at him as Temple made a witticism about husbands being led by the nose. He relaxed, warmed by both the avid look in his wife’s eye, and the knowledge that all in his world was well. McTavish was on the road to recovery, he had corrected his first misstep with Plum without too much difficulty, and she was evidently looking forward to the evening’s activities as much as he was. If there was one complaint he had to make against his late wife, it was that she seldom enjoyed their bed sport. She tolerated his advances, but no matter how much he tried to bring her pleasure, it was only rarely that he was left with the impression that she enjoyed herself. Plum was different. Harry was conscious of a pleasant tension that filled the air between Plum and him, a slight feel of static electricity in the air, as if a storm was approaching.
Temple turned to him near the end of the meal. “While you were sleeping, I had the footmen scour the estate for poisonous berries. They found several, but none in the area Digger said the children were playing before McTavish became so ill.”
Harry nodded, selecting a ripe peach from the bowl before him, his mind automatically traveling the paths of soft, ripe fruit to softer, riper woman. “Send what you found to Doctor Trewitt. He might be able to tell us if that’s what the boy ate.”
“I wonder if he could have eaten a leaf,” Thom asked, slicing a bit of cheese from a large hunk of white cheddar. “My uncle used to tell me he thought I was part goat because I was forever eating leaves. You must be used to this sort of thing, Harry.”
He stopped stroking the peach’s round, full softness and looked a question at Thom.
“Your other children — you must be used to them having stomach upsets and such.”
“Oh, yes. Somewhat used to it, none of them have ever been as ill as McTavish. Thankfully, Plum was here to take care of him.”
Plum beamed at him.
“She’s very good at that sort of thing,” Thom agreed. “She’s especially good with babies. They all seem to love her.”