The real punishment might not be the spanking, but the wait for satisfaction.
“Reedy!”Matthew called out to his valet with anticipation and relief threaded through his voice.The man was standing at the top of the stairs, speaking with Nettie, and they both turned to look down at Matthew and Johanna.
From the expressions on their faces, Johanna feared they did not have good news.Reedy was stoic, but Nettie looked sympathetic and a touch worried.
“Your Grace.”Reedy hurried down the stairs, leaving Nettie hovering at the top of them, and quickly bowed.“I ah… unfortunately do not have the news you might wish.”
Johanna could practically feel her husband’s energy fall, from excitement to pure disappointment.
“What?Could the armoire not be moved?”His arm flexed beneath Johanna’s hand, and she put her other hand atop his, hoping to assuage some of the emotions she could sense roiling through him.
“No, Your Grace, I mean yes, the armoire could be moved, but…” Reedy lost some of his blankness as he wrung his hands in front of him.“Your coin was not beneath it.”
“Not… beneath…” Matthew sucked in a large breath, and Johanna felt him list toward her, so he was now almost leaning against her.Bracing herself against him to help hold him up, she looked up at him, concern threading through her when she saw how very pale his face had gone.“But then, where is it?”
“We do not know, Your Grace.I looked everywhere in your room that I could think of, I swear to you?—”
“I need to see for myself.”Matthew began to move, and for a moment Johanna was worried that he would tear himself away from her.He came to a halt as her hand tugged on his arm, though, rather than continuing onward, and looked at her with an expression she’d never seen before.A little lost.A little fearful.“Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
How could she not?
Although he’d seemed to be doing well enough without his coin this evening, clearly, he was not ready to be without it at all.She wondered if the expectation of having it again once he returned home had been part of what had helped him so much with its absence.Arm looped through his, she kept up with his rapid pace as he led them to his bedroom, Reedy and Nettie trailing behind them.
The door was open, and there was a small army of footmen inside when they entered.Some of them were crawling along the floor and checking every inch of the rug that covered the room, one with his head in the armoire—the contents of which had been emptied onto the bed—several searching along the baseboards, and one underneath Matthew’s bed.
It was clear that they were being excessively thorough.Johanna let out a long, slow breath.Surely, so many of them could not have missed a shiny coin on the floor.It appeared as though they were checking every square inch of it.Her heart sank on her husband’s behalf.
To her surprise, he did not seem to sink, though he did put his hand over hers on his arm and press very tightly on it.
Reedy cleared his throat, and everyone in the room looked up, then jumped to their feet, bowing, as they realized the duke and duchess had arrived.
“Any luck?”Reedy asked, sounding as nervous as Matthew was anxious.
All the footmen shook their heads.
“I think it could have fallen through this knothole in the floor, Your Grace,” one of the footmen said, gesturing at the section of the floor that the armoire used to cover.It had been moved several feet to the side of that spot.“But we ran downstairs to check and could not find anything, so we came back up to look through the room again.”
“Thank you for your diligence.”Matthew’s voice sounded hollow.He looked at Reedy.“I’ll spend the evening in my wife’s chambers to give them time to set the room back aright.You may stop looking.”
Oh, her poor Matthew.
He sounded so incredibly sad.Resigned.It was like the spark of life had been sucked right out of him, and all Johanna wanted to do was see it returned.This was such a small thing, compared to the burdens she had been through with her family, yet she could see how deeply it affected him.He had not had an easy childhood, despite his wealth and status, and that coin had meant something to him during that time.
If she’d had a talisman she could use to help her make decisions, that led her family out of the dire straits they’d been in, she would have been devastated at its loss as well.Even now, she knew she owed her own current good fortune to that coin.Without it, would Matthew have married her?
She did not know.
But she hurt when he hurt.
She loved being married to him.Seeing his smile.Learning from his passion.The way he interacted with her siblings.His protectiveness.His humor.The way he made her feel.
She…
She could not finish that thought right now.
“Come,” she murmured, closing the door to her room behind them and shutting out the noise of the footmen in his.They could still hear bits and pieces as the armoire was being moved back into place.Her room was not as small and cozy as the carriage, but at least it gave them a modicum of privacy.A sense of shutting out the rest of the world, with its weight of decisions, choices, and other people.
