Joseph shot Tessa a look.It’s up to you.
Tessa beamed at the couple. “We would be delighted,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
After much deliberation, Tessa consented to leave the baby with Perry at the inn for their night at Abbotsford Cottage. It would be her first night spent away from the baby since his birth. Perry had insisted that she and Christian were more comfortable at the inn. Certainly, there was far more room than the cellar in Belgravia. And Christian was deliriously in love with the innkeeper’s cat.
“We must get a cat for Dollop when we settle down, wherever it may be.”
“A cat and a goat,” said Joseph. “And a horse. As soon as he is able to ride. I want all our children to ride.”
Tessa loved hearing him talk about Christian as if he was his own son, but the mention of other children caused her to turn away. Even after a week alone together in an inn bedroom, after hours of intimate moments steeped in sensuality, her marriage to Joseph had still not been consummated.
The night before, she’d lain very still and quiet while he’d casually wrapped his large hand around her ankle. She had not cried out. She had not leapt from the bed. But, unlike all the other parts of her body, his touch on her ankle had been met with silence and stillness. She had been... stoic. It had taken all available strength not to cry out.
She had not been able to kiss him, she hadn’t laughed, she hadn’t explored his body. She hadn’t burned with need for him and begged him todo more—do anything more!
She’d simply lain there, her heart pounding, her mind spinning, willing herself to carry on with four anxiety-ridden minutes of his warm, casual hand wrapped around her left ankle.
When Joseph saw her reaction, he had endeavored to withdraw. He’d never meant to experiment if she appeared unhappy or, God forbid, in distress.
But Tessa had felt the value of each of the other times he had touched her, and she saw the value especially his hand on her ankle. Joseph was slowly replacing the small ownership taken by Captain Marking and giving it back—first to her. Second, if she allowed it, she would share possession with Joseph, who, after he moved his hand, would return with tickles and tweaks and massages that drove her mad with desire.
All the while, she had been distracted by the joy of exploring his body, marking it and possessing the beautiful expanse of his muscle and heat, to call it her own.
“I believe my ankle is a problem,” she’d told him, “because the moment the captain touched my ankle, I knew what was to come.” She said the words into the darkness.
“I was finished,” she went on. “Ruined. A rough kiss or even a tussle in the woods would have been unpleasant, but I could have recovered. When my ankle was under his control, when he bent my leg, I was powerless. It was the beginning of the end.”
“We will get past it,” Joseph had said against her hair.
But Tessa struggled to see how. The obstacle of the ankle was that it was the first thing Marking’s hand found when he’d delved beneath her skirts. How could she ever forget the cold, terrifying realization that a man—this formerly dashing man—was clawing his way up her body from below?
“The beginning of the end,” she had repeated and fallen asleep.
She’d awakened to Joseph whistling, fresh and hopeful; eager to see Abbotsford Cottage again. She could not remain downtrodden when he, denied so long, was cheerful and eager to spend a night in the beautiful home he wished to buy for her.
They arrived to Abbotsford Cottage in time to take another tour of the house and change for dinner before the other guests arrived. The house was as Tessa remembered it, grand but not opulent; a piece of history but also a home.
Ever aware that the sellers were auditioning them in the same way they considered the house, Tessa was generous with praise and open about the ways she might style the house if it became hers.
It was easy to be enthusiastic about the property—she had loved it at first sight—but even so, she struggled to focus. Her lack of attention felt like a betrayal of Joseph, who all but rubbed his hands together in anticipation over the library, the ballroom, the solarium. She wanted to enjoy it with him, but honestly, Joseph was the source of her distraction.
The longer the day wore on, the more determined she became that tonight their lovemakingwouldhappen. Enough had been... well,enough. Her demons, surely, had been exorcized. She’d carried on, wounded and nervous, until she’d grown weary, even of herself.
It was fun (and useful) to enjoy Joseph claiming one part of her body at the time, but then they’d hit the barricade of her stupid ankle and Tessa wanted to rail at the sky. An ankle wasn’t even one of her naughty bits. She refused to allow her anxiety to stand in their way another night.
She, Tessa St. Croix-Chance, once formerly the most notorious flirt in Surrey,wouldbe bedded by her own husband. Tonight. In this beautiful home. With no baby in the next room. And no Perry to face in the morning. She would put the past to rest, satisfy Joseph (who had been so very patient), and satisfy herself.
The first step, she thought, was to look her very best. After the tour, Tessa reminded Lady Winnifred that she’d traveled to the house without a maid. The lady kindly provided a woman from her own staff and sent her up to assist.
The middle-aged maid arrived promptly and said almost nothing compared to Perry’s constant chatter. She styled Tessa’s hair simply, in a high, loose bun at the back of her head, with wisps of blonde dropping around her face. She was fastening Tessa into a cherry-red evening gown glittering with tiny iridescent crystal beads when Joseph let himself into the room.
“I’ll finish,” Joseph said to the maid. “Thank you, that will be all.” The woman bobbed a curtsy and disappeared from the room.
“You look too good to leave this room,” Joseph said, coming up behind Tessa. He dropped a kiss on her neck and she shivered.
“My mother adored this dress. It was never my favorite, it’s stiff and uncomfortable, but it makes a statement.” Tessa fidgeted, trying to find the most comfortable way to tolerate the sharp beads. She gave a kick of one leg, then the other, jostling the layers of petticoat that tangled around her legs. She caught sight of a red slipper beneath the hem, and she had the thought. An idea.
