Richard gave her a long look. “I can’t accept this. Your husband was a hero of Waterloo, and a marquess. I don’t deserve this. You should save it for Nicholas.”
Harriet shook her head. “You can give his father’s kit to Nicholas when you return to us, when Nicholas is ready to shave.”
“But, Lord Blandford…”
She cut short whatever he was going to say next. “Charles, his name was Charles. I loved him with everything I had, but he’s gone. He’s been gone for five years now. It’s time to stop grieving and go on with my life. It’s time for Nicholas to move into his new life as well. We’re sending him next year to Charles and Sidmouth’s old school, Eton. Thanks to your prompting, his speech and confidence are improving. Sidmouth thinks he’ll be ready.
“When I told Nicholas what I wanted to do, he was so excited for you to have his father’s shaving things. He agreed you should have them until he is ready to shave, which, by the by, he assumes will be very soon. He’s so sure you’ll come back to us, he made me want to cry.” And then she did. She hated turning into a watering pot in front of this man.
Richard put the shaving kit on the table and gathered her in his arms. “Thank you both. I will accept the great honor of the loan from Nicholas. And you, Milady Blandford, had better be here, waiting for me when I return.”
Richard soughtout Captain Thorne and Nicholas at Bert’s stall in the small stable. “Are you spoiling that beast again, Lord Nicholas?”
“He knows me now, Lieutenant Bourne.” The boy was fairly vibrating with excitement. Bert had lowered his fuzzy head and was nuzzling at the child’s neck. Thorne hovered nearby just in case the donkey bared his teeth. The beast had an unfortunate habit of nipping at his favorite people.
Thomas footman held Max and Fleur in a tight grip while the donkey sent menacing glares their way. Max kept up an intermittent low growl.
“Where’s M-Mama?” At the slight stutter, he gave Richard a stricken look, but relaxed when Richard gave him a broad smile and hoisted him up to sit on a bale of hay. “Where’s my Mama?” the boy repeated and improved the phrase the way Richard and Captain Thorne had taught him.
“She’s in the kitchen making some of those ginger biscuits we all love.” Richard couldn’t resist ruffling the boy’s thick, sandy hair. From his impressive height already at the age of six, Richard was sure he would turn into a tall marquess one day, similar to his Uncle Sidmouth, the duke. With a twinge of guilt, he realized he had no idea how tall, or handsome, the late Marquess of Blandford had been. Perhaps Nicholas resembled his father.
“I came out here to thank you for the fine loan of your father’s shaving kit. I will treasure it and make sure it’s returned to you in plenty of time for your first shave.”
At that the boy jumped down from the bale and danced around a beam of sun in the center of the barn. “I told Mama you could use Papa’s things. I had to talk a long time to convince her.” He raced back to Bert for a few more scratches behind the beast’s great floppy ears and then turned once again to Richard.
“I promised her you’d be back in plenty of time for when I’ll need to s-shave in a couple of years.” The boy paused a moment in his non-stop chatter, and the look in his bright hazel eyes was so pleading, he nearly broke Richard’s heart. “You will, won’t you? Promise me you will. She’ll be sad if you don’t.”
Richard could find no words and so merely hugged the boy tightly and stared at the low stable ceiling as if seeking inspiration. This fathering sort of thing was too new. Saints preserve Ireland, he was never so thankful for the years he’d spent helping raise his younger brothers.
The irony hit him like a fist to the stomach. Of all the times he’d taken care to avoid matrimony and fatherhood like the plague, now here he was desperately trying to catch up.
Richard crept quietly upto Lady Blandford who had her back to him, sprinkling sugar over the tops of the freshly formed ginger biscuits on the cottage’s heavy, well-used oven tray. When she’d safely deposited them in the heavy cast-iron oven and stood, hands on hips, eyeing the fire, he put his arms around her from behind. When she whirled and slapped at his hands, he breathed a soft kiss onto her ear.
“What did you two have to say that took so long?”
“I thanked him for the loan of his father’s shaving kit, and we made plans to make sure I return it promptly in time for the beginnings of his own beard.”
“You encouraged him in his deluded dreams of an early manhood?”
“Of course.” When she slapped him again, he added, “For all we know the Marquess of Blandford may well acquire adult attributes over the next year or two.”
“Ah, but you forget. I spent my childhood tolerating my blundering cousin as well as Charles whose family owned the neighboring estate. I know exactly how long it took those two to mature. I think my son will fall somewhere between them.”
She slanted her head at the intensity of the wood stove’s fire and gave him a meaningful look. He gave her an abbreviated salute and went outside to retrieve an armload of fresh firewood.
After he’d re-stoked the fire to her satisfaction, he pointed to the mixing bowl and all the ingredients she’d brought to the cottage. “This is none of my business, because I can eat as many of these biscuits as you’d care to produce, but why not let the lodge cook bake them down there?”
“Because the three of you like your cookies warm, and after that long trek from the lodge up to the bluff and then up here, they’re always stone cold.” When he gave her a teasing, skeptical look, she added, “They get as hard as quarry rocks that way, too.”
She went to the cottage doorway and checked the path to the stable.
He assumed she was worried at what was taking her son and Thorne so long. “Nicholas is still trying to convince Bert to tolerate Max and Fleur.”
Instead, she returned to his side, put her arms around him and buried her head against his chest. “You don’t have to worry about having the banns read.” For the first time in Richard’s long experience with women, that specific bit of news didn’t fill him with relief and elation.
She pointed to the cookies baking in the oven. “When the sand falls through the timer, take them out to cool.” And then she pulled her cloak off one of Richard’s wooden hooks and walked out the cottage door toward the stable.
Harriet hadn’t beenthis content in a long time. And for the first time in many years, she hadn’t worried about Nicholas’s safety in days. She forced herself to enjoy the moment and not look too far down the road, the road that led to the bluff where she’d have to watch Richard’s ship sail out of Falmouth Harbor for the fever-ridden coast of Africa.
