“Now?”
“No, not in the bath. I wouldn’t be able to see, would I? But how about I kiss you the way you like?”
“Yeth. Pleathe.”
So he lay in the bath with his wife in his arms and kissed her until she began to shiver. He washed her hair for her and then his own and used the buckets of formerly-hot, now-tepid water to rinse their heads. Then he took great delight in toweling off his wife. However, once they adjourned to her bedchamber, he did not repeat his request that she touch herself for him. He wanted to be the one touching her, washing away any bruises his former mistress might have left, just as he had washed Caro’s mud and anger away.
Thirty
In the morning, she steeled herself.
“I’ll go with you today,” she said at breakfast. “To meet the tenants.”
“You will?”
“Yes.”
After all, she had made a good start on the house, just as she had in London with the money. Now she needed to spare at least a few hours to do what her husband wanted. He had given her such care yesterday after their bath. It was almost as if he had known, without her telling him, how much she needed cosseting after Lady Starling’s words.
But I do hope you’ll be understanding when he wanders, because of course he will, eventually.
She must delay that inevitable wandering as long as possible. She must show him consideration while things were still new and good between them, and he wasn’t yet bored by her. Or frustrated with her. Or ashamed of her.
But she couldn’t help thinking he would be ashamed of her this morning, despite his words as he helped her into the carriage: “Everyone is going to love you, Caro, darling.”
What she witnessed on her tour of the Burchester farms was that everyone loved her husband. Every time she got out of the carriage with him to meet a farmer and his wife and their children, everyone smiled. Everyone laughed. Phineas held babies while he stood in the sunshine, looking up at roofs, discussing the expense of new thatching. He squatted down to talk to the little ones and despite the fact he had not brought any sweets with him—“I forgot today because I brought my sweet wife instead,” he said, tweaking noses and tickling ribs with the bold ones, waving to the shy ones—the children still wanted to be near him as he talked to their mothers and fathers.
And the golden nimbus of adoration she observed around her husband expanded to include her, too. True, the children did not flock to her, but the young ones petted Lavinia, perhaps remembering the dog from yesterday. Older girls asked Caroline about her dress. The farmwives offered her tea and smiled as they answered her questions about physicians and chickens and firewood and church services. No one pretended they couldn’t understand her. No one laughedather.
Phineas knew everyone’s names, everyone’s ages, that last year’s potatoes had done well but the turnips hadn’t, that a granny was lame and couldn’t come out to meet the new countess but maybe Caro could duck into the cottage to greet her?
And everyone looked well. Even the lame granny was plump and smiling with her gouty toe propped up on a pillow. Clothes might have been patched but no one was in rags. Everyone had shoes or other coverings for their feet. No gauntness. A surprisingly large number of teeth.
“I told you.” Her husband grinned in the carriage at her on the way home. “I told you they would love you.”
No, they loveyou.
“Phineas.”
“Yes?”
“You are a lord.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“You are more a lord than my father ever was.”
His face was blank as if he couldn’t absorb what she had said. He didn’t say anything for a long time.
“But the money, Caro—”
“You are a lord. A good one. The money is nothing. I’ll find money for you.”
“For us.”
“Yes. For us.”
“It means . . . it matters a great deal to me that you think I’m good at something.” He raised his eyebrows. “Besides the obvious.”
