But those were all the words she uttered, her tongue otherwise engaged as Wells lay back in rapturous delight. He’d snared his Fox at last.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The journey back to Cumberland took a full week now that Lord Wells and his lady wife did little to rush their return. The pair spent lazy nights in inns along the way and stopped frequently to stretch their legs or picnic during the day.
Wandering into woods for clandestine tête-à-têtes also slowed their travel, though there was one flight from carriage that Wells would gladly have avoided: The day he’d confessed to reading Charles’s correspondence with her sister.
She’d stopped the driver in a rage, then taken off into the forest.
He’d known he must come clean, though it had taken him a good hour to convince his wife to return back to Cumberland with him rather than run straight back to London. He should have told her before they’d married and yet . . . It no longer mattered why he hadn’t. What mattered was that she forgave him—with the promise she’d bludgeon him in his sleep should he ever knowingly deceive her again.
In truth, Wells had no desire to keep more secrets from Charles. The entire trip back he found himself revealing more to her than she likely wished to know about her husband. A dam had broken inside him, allowing feelings to tumble outalongside the telling of all his stories. Somehow, after confessing to reading her letters, it felt safe to tell her everything.
Liberating.
Cuthbert they’d left behind in London to await Eleanor’s trousseau, for the Enrights had agreed to outfit their other granddaughter for her wedding after no small degree of arm-twisting from Wells’s mother. He had also tasked his steward with stealing a certain lady’s maid from Charles’s grandparents. Given his father’s health, Wells knew Charles would be Duchess sooner than later and the attendant duties—not to mention requisite apparel—would be more than a maid like Ruby was equipped to handle.
When the happy couple did, at last, arrive at Almsdale Abbey, Wells carried Charles over yet another threshold before demanding his staff gather in celebration. Only his wife hushed him imperiously, saying said celebration could wait until the morrow. She would not taxherstaff so unexpectedly and would need first assess how everything had gone in their absence. Ought her new husband not do the same?
Fergus laughed outright to hear their exchange, and Jenkins merely nodded her approval, leaving Wells to ponder whom his servants would now obey: their future Duke, or the future Duchess of Allendale?
He’d worry about that another day.
“Oh milady, I beg youpleasetell us every bit of how it were his lordship found you in London! And what kind of weddin’ you had, and what you wore and . . .”
Ruby was positively breathless with excitement, talking nonstop at Charles while the other girls and Jenkins all sat aboutthe large kitchen table, staring at the new Lady Wellesley in rapt attention.
Charles couldn’t help but grin back. “Why, I wouldn’t know where to start, Ruby. Only I must insist you call me Charles and not milady when it’s just us maids, chatting over a cup of scordy.”
But Jenkins wouldn’t have it. “Lady Wellesley,” she chided, “I’ll tolerate no sech familiarity inmykitchen, ma’am. This may not be London, but we’ve class enough in Cumberland t’ know when t’—”
“Mrs. Jenkins, please.” Charles met her gaze. “We’ll put on a good show when visitors come, of course, but when we are alone here I . . .” She took a breath. “If Lord Wellesley is allowed to roll up his shirtsleeves and work alongside Mr. Adams’s men, then I can help the household, working alongside my marras.”
A roomful of eyes peered at her in surprise.
“I beg you.” She grew desperate. “I never, ever expected to marry his lordship, so to imagine I must now become some wholly different person, why I?—”
“Well now, I s’pose we might, initially at least, grant yousomeleeway, milady.” Jenkins finally relented, pursing her lips. “Least until you hire more housemaids. ’Cause t’ be frank, Lady Wellesley, without yourladyshipt’ scrub and polish alongside t’ rest of us, I don’t know how we’ll be ready for another visit from t’ Duchess. The moment her grace’s first grandbabby’s born, she’ll show up demandin’ another audience, eh?” She gave Charles a saucy wink.
Charles blushed as Ruby squeezed her hand. “See now, milady, we’ll not lob you out just yet, only now tell us,please, of oa’ your grand adventures with his lordship.”
Charles related her story in full, leaving certain details out, of course, but entertaining them as best she could. Surrounded by these warm Cumberland women, sipping scordy while regalingthem with her London stories, she felt at last like she’d come home.Gang yam.
Wellesley’s welcome was of a very different nature.
“Found ’er where, Capt’n? At Li’s?”
“Which one o’ madam’s houses?” piped another.
“Finally wooed ’er, didya?”
“’Tisn’t in the man t’ woo a woman proper,” elbowed in the fellow beside him.
“Still feisty on ’er weddin’ night, was she?” came another’s sly retort. “’Bout time y’ made an honest woman o’ that lass!”
Wells scowled at the unruly lot, shaking his head at their lurid chaff and refusing to divulge the particulars of anything.
“Listen, louts,” he ordered. “A man does not discuss a wife the way he might discuss a mistress, so you can all sod off.” He grumbled to himself, “Asking questions to which I’ll give no goddamn answers.”
