Peter left his mother’s room once he ensured that she had taken the tonic prescribed for her heart and settled in for the night.
He’d been terrified of what the shock of his engagement, hasty marriage, and new money bride might do to his mother’s health, but she’d been surprisingly sturdy despite the unexpected news. In fact, her cheeks had taken on a rosy hue when Peter shared that he was to be married.
“A gel? You’ve got a bride, do you, Peter?”she’d asked.“I’d almost given up hope. Just as I had when you arrived, my precious gift. May you not need to wait as long as I did for that happiest day. A baby!”
Peter had been surrounded with stories of his mother’s longing for a baby; everyone in the Sidwin household knew that she’d prayed for a child for decades, and finally fell pregnant — when she was nearly fifty years of age.
As such, she’d doted on her miraculous baby boy, and he could feel nothing but tenderness for the mama who had wanted him so badly. She was well into old age now, and Peter was relieved to see that the — admittedly edited — circumstances of his engagement and hasty nuptials didn’t worsen her health.
“You wouldn’t be expecting an increase already?”she’d asked hopefully when he checked that the warming pan at her feet was secure. “I have some thread from myparfilagethat I’d like to have made into a rattle for the little dear.”
Peter had nearly choked. He’d always known his mother to be a perfect lady; who was this woman who delighted in the idea of him having impregnated a debutante before marriage!
“I promise, when the time is right, Her Grace and I will find ourselves with joyful news,”he’d said, nodding to the night nurse who attended mama.“You think only of your health. All in good time.”
What Peter couldn’t say to his mother was that, since their wedding at Grosvenor Chapel, he’d been too shy to do more than nod at his wife.
Their interlude in the sitting room on Curzon Street had been mortifying in the extreme (though Peter experienced a certainheaviness in his manly territory when recalling how the new Duchess of Cockesbrayne’s mouth had looked and felt on his cock).
The problem was that the whole encounter had been something of a farce. A most pleasurable farce, but resembling a pantomime at a house party rather than a genuine tryst between lovers.
Thus, three days after his marriage, Peter still had not visited his bride’s rooms.
He trudged up the stairs to the ducal apartments, noting once again the places where the paint had chipped and the carpets were threadbare. Really, it was a miracle that — of all the chits who could have ended up tangled in his falls — he’d landed Miss Ninepence, whose dowry was many magnitudes larger than nine pence.
At the recollection of their interlude in the sitting room, Peter’s cock twitched in his smalls.Humiliating little thing, he thought with a downward glance, not even directing his eyes at the duchess’s chambers next to his own.
Peter’s body seemed to know that she was near, but he couldn’t imagine that a woman who had made a deal with him toavoidtheir engagement and marriage would be eager to consummate the union. It was too bad that the celebrated stud Dick Stone had ended his career; just a few years ago, producing an heir would have been so much easier.
After washing and changing into his nightclothes, Peter settled into his bed and blew out the candle. He’d need to address the problem of his marriage, but it would wait until tomorrow; he was uncomfortably aroused, and any solutions he came up with tonight would likely range from lewd to potentially criminal.
It was as he pulled the blankets higher and tried to quiet his mind and cock that Peter noticed something strange. The bed felt warm, as if there had been a warming pan placed between the sheets. But he’d asked for no such service, preferring that his staff focused entirely on the comfort of his mama.
And then the bedclothes in the middle of the big four-poster moved slightly.
Peter whipped the blanket back, hoping to discover that his fears of a wild animal were wrong.
“Oh!” said a voice from under the bulk before he dropped it again in shock.
That didn’t sound like a very eccentric aristocrat’s escaped pet raccoon.
The tangle of blankets erupted more decidedly, and Lucy Ninepence stuck her head out.
Well, not Lucy Ninepence any longer. Now she was Lucy Sidwin, Duchess of Cockesbrayne.
He was staring at her in the dark when he realized she was speaking.
“…I had hoped to be awake when you came up, but your bed looked so soft and warm that I thought I’d lie down for just a moment,” she said. Somehow, her head had found its way onto Peter’s pillow, and she looked entirely at home. That was something of a surprise.
“I’ve always felt this room is rather drafty,” he said.
“Oh, there’s an easy way to fix that,” said Lucy, pulling the bedclothes over their heads. “See, this way all the heat stays inside the blankets. And I can share my extra heat. I was born in the summer, after all.”
She chattered as if all of this was very regular. As if it were only a matter of course for a bride to launch herself into her husband’s bed.
To be fair, Peter hadn’t exactly kept up the groom’s end of the bargain. He hadn’t evenattemptedto consummate the marriage, even after feeling his heart flutter at how beautiful Lucy looked on their wedding day. Society made much of a husband’s rights, but Peter knew well that a wife had rights, too — and he wasn’t fulfilling them.
Even in the dark of their cozy nest, he could see that she was pretty. Her nightgown appeared to be white, and he suddenly regretted blowing out the light because he wished to see her in whatever lovely creation had been packed in her trousseau.
