Joseph forced himself to wait a full day before initiating some future contact with his wife.
Not only was he uncertain that Tessa wanted to see him (and if so, in what vein), he needed a full day to recover from Vauxhall Gardens.
The twenty minutes that she was lost had taken years off his life. Icy fear thudded through his veins long after he’d followed her carriage home that night. For decades, Vauxhall Gardens had played dark, shadowy host to every manner of shady assignation. The moment he’d rushed into the pergola to find her ringed by a half circle of drunken louts made him want to rip the vine from the canopy and strangle each man. He thrummed with violence, but the situation wanted control and stealth, and every fight he’d ever fought had been brought to bear in those moments. He’d been outnumbered four to one and his first priority had been Tessa.
Looking back, he marveled that he’d allowed the men to go, to simply fade into the darkness unaccounted for, but Tessa had required him more.
In that moment, he met yet another side of Tessa he’d not known. Terrified, guilt-ridden, nearly inconsolable. He couldn’t stop thinking about her response. There was no question she’d been frightened, and this alone was enough to trouble him, but what bothered him more were her tearful ramblings. She seemed to believe that she’d somehowinvitedtheir attention, that vanity was to blame.
It made no sense. She’d looked beautiful that night, colorful and happy andherself—or at least more like the self she’d presented in Berymede. She’d seemed not just pretty butcomfortable, he’d thought.Natural.
She’d eventually found some calm, but still she had clung to him, keeping close to his side far more than she had during the spirited, early hours that she’d enjoyed in the park.
Despite her distress, it was impossible to deny that he savored the feel of her in his arms. Like the selfish blackguard he was, he’d tried to memorize the fierce strength in her small hands, the softness of her head beneath his chin, the outline of her perfect ear pressed against his chest. He’d waited so many days to touch her. He’d worried for months that he would never touch her again. But that night, she’d clawed to get closer. His heart had been perforated with piercings, prick after prick after prick.
After the requisite day and night, Joseph had settled on a generic request: that he might spend some time in Belgravia with her and the baby and then, if possible, he might squire her around town in his phaeton.
As added incentive, he mentioned a potential stop in the offices of the buyer for the guano haul. Tessa had seen the cargo brought to port, but he wasn’t sure if she learned how the fertilizer reached the buyers.
The invitation he sent her was brief and general, and he was careful to make no mention of what he really intended, which was to show her his house.
Six months before the guano scheme had been launched, Joseph had purchased a five-story, Georgian-style house in Blackheath, a borough of southeast London. He’d grown weary of his leased suite of rooms and Blackheath was not only respectable, it was convenient to the London docks and home to a growing number of shipping merchants and importers.
The house had figured centrally in Joseph’s Plan for the Future. He would furnish it finely, staff it professionally, and live there when he was in town. A fine house was important, he knew, for entertaining political connections.
After Tessa’s confession, Joseph assumed he would eventually give over the fourth floor to her and the baby. He’d not thought about whether she would like it, only that it would solve the question of his estranged wife and her baby.
Now, he was consumed with what she might think. He paced the empty house, glowering at how unfit it seemed. Large and cold and mostly empty, it held only a stray collection of mismatched pieces that had caught his eye around the world. Was it fit for a gentleman’s daughter? Hardly. Would it be comfortable for a baby? Not at all. Was it too far from central London? Too cold and cavernous? Yes and yes.
And the illustrious fourth floor, which he had assumed she would quietly and gratefully inhabit? It now seemed like a banishment reserved for a mad relative or a pet that could not be trusted.
The whole notion of the house seemed awkward and impractical at best. At worst, gaudy, presumptive, and unfit.
But Joseph tried very hard not to get ahead of himself. First, he would take some measure of her plans for the future. If she seemed amenable, he would casually suggest she consider the house. Make no assumptions. Let her lead the way. He could sell the house and everything in it.
Or, he thought as he stood on her doorstep in Belgravia, he could live in it alone while she moved on, quietly go mad and lock himself on the fourth floor.
But first, he would see her again.
“We couldn’t be sure how much time you meant to spend with the baby,” Tessa told him as she led Joseph into the parlor.
The brown dress, he noted, had made a reappearance. Joseph could not care less what colors she wore, but he could not help but be troubled by thewayin which she wore them. She trudged along in the brown wool as if the fabric weighed a stone. The bun at the back of her head looked like a painful knot.
“I shouldn’t like to disrupt the baby’s schedule,” he said.
“He should go down for a nap in a half hour,” she said. “If your day permits, perhaps we can sit with him until then.”
“I’m at your disposal,” he heard himself say. The nursemaid Perry, holding the child, leapt up from the sofa when they entered the parlor.
“Welcome home, Mr. Chance,” the maid said brightly. “We have been waiting for you ever so long.”
This sounded like a planned recitation, but Joseph smiled. If memory served, one tended to part company with Perry with a touch of stunned deafness. The less said to encourage the girl, the better.
Perry went on, “Your son, especially, has waited so long to make your acquaintance.” She presented Christian to him like a platter of biscuits.
“Thank you, Perry,” Tessa sang, sweeping past the maid to scoop up the baby. “Remember what we discussed? Mr. Chance has limited experience with infants. He may wish to learn how to comfortably hold a baby before we pitch Christian in his path.”
“Oh, holding babies is as easy as holding a sack of potatoes,” the maid lectured sagely. “The trick is never todropthem. Babies do not take kindly to being dropped.”
