Voluptuous, page 7
“Yes.” Henrietta sounded relieved. “Nathaniel, please do shake hands with your father.”
The boy looked first at Henrietta and then tilted his head to look at Oliver out of the corner of his eye. After several seconds consideration, he thrust out his hand. Oliver took it and gravely shook it.
“Nicely done, darling,” Henrietta breathed.
Oliver let himself, for a moment, imagine the darling was for him.
He got into the carriage and when it turned at the end of the drive and he dared look back, he saw Henrietta still standing out in the cold, Nathaniel held on her hip, her other arm above her head, sweeping back and forth in large arcs like she was a castaway hailing a passing ship.
Over the next three weeks, a waking hour did not go by in which he didn’t conjure the feel of her body against his, the sound of his name on her lips, the sight of her holding his son and waving farewell to him.
These reveries made him hurry through his meetings surrounding the shipping interests and the brewery left to him by his deceased father. The unexpected expiry of Mr. Oliver Hartwell’s ataraxy likely provoked some head-scratching among his solicitors and men of business. He was impatient, short-tempered, demanding. Issues must be resolved immediately, and the new contracts written out and signed without delay. He could not linger. The new year was much too distant. He must be back at Crossthwaite by Christmas Day.
On the morning of his last day in London, he finally took out Henrietta’s list. He had held the shopping back as a treat for himself, looking forward to spending uninterrupted hours thinking of her, searching out and procuring things she wanted for herself. He expected the list to include some bolts of cloth to be made into dresses at a future time. Would she describe exactly what she wanted, or would she leave the color and pattern of the fabric to his taste? Would she want some luxurious, scented soap or expensive perfume? Ribbons or threads for her embroidery? Would she allow him the latitude to select a bonnet for her? Might a husband be allowed to purchase stockings for his wife?
But when he unfolded the list, he found:
Top, brightly colored. Red or yellow?
Ball, a good sized one, for you and N. to throw about and kick.
Bilbocatch.
Hobbyhorse, if not too dear.
Shuttlecock/Battledores.
Books (simple) about insects, butterflies, spiders, worms, &c (with illustrated plates, please) for you to read to N. (again, if not too dear).
His hand swept over the foolscap, smoothing it, over and over. For an hour, he sat and smoothed the piece of paper. He considered the list. He considered his son. He considered his own miserable and half-hearted efforts at paternity. And, most of all, he considered Henrietta, his polestar, and how she was showing him the path forward in the kindest way possible.
The path of play.
Finally, he folded the page, tucked it into the tailcoat pocket closest to his heart, and set out, determined to get everything on the list and a few more things, besides.
When he disembarked in front of Crossthwaite on Christmas Eve, his legs stiff and creaking from too many days in his carriage without respite, the front door banged open and Henrietta ran out.
He was ready for her. He held his arms open and she ran into them.
“You’re home! Welcome home, Oliver,” she said into his chest.
He bent his head down and smelled her hair. Juniper and burnt sugar.
“Happy Christmas, Henrietta,” he said, his voice choking only a little on her name. In that moment, he decided he would sell the London businesses. He didn’t want them. He didn’t need them. And he never wanted to travel away from here again.
Far too soon, she was releasing him, turning towards the house and crouching down.
“Come down, too,” she whispered, tugging on his hand. Mystified, he crouched with her, not wanting to release her hand.
Nathaniel, looking impossibly well and surely half a stone heavier in weight and an inch taller in height, came out the front door now, almost as fast as Henrietta had, bolting right towards his father.
Then and there, Oliver received his very first hug, ever, from his son. It lasted only a second, if that—Nathaniel’s slender arms around Oliver’s neck, warm cheek against his cold one, his own hand coming up to touch his son’s narrow back, so like his own—before Nathaniel squirmed away.
Thank God, the embrace had been short and Oliver could stand and busy himself with removing parcels from the carriage. He was almost completely recovered when he turned back to Henrietta who took his arm, hugging it against herself and her breasts as she led him into the house, burbling about Christmas and the greenery she and Nathaniel had collected and Mrs. Nixon’s ginger cake in the oven and could he smell it?
It was the finest homecoming a man could ask for and a far better one than he deserved.
Eleven
April. 1818.
Henrietta had been married for almost eight months now. Two-thirds of a year.
She had learned many things about her husband in that time. He was widely considered to be a diligent and fair man, kind to his workers and helpful to his tenants. He read a newspaper in the evening after dinner. He still liked Mrs. Blaire’s custard, even though Henrietta was the one cooking it now. He was making a map of the Lake District, and not a dull, dry one, but a charming one, full of all kinds of cunning little drawings.
He always smelled good to her, even when his work had involved some hard labor that day and he had just come into the house, greeting her on the stairs, brushing by her on his way to his wash. He might have had to deal with some farming unpleasantness, but there was some essential rightness to his own smell that overcame any stench.
Oh, and he had beautiful hands and wrists and arms. She had spent many hours observing his hands—his long palms topped by his strong yet elegant fingers, holding his newspaper, wielding his knife and fork—but only last month, she had gotten her first look at his forearms.
She had decided to take Nathaniel out in the dog cart to observe the sheep shearing. All the men had taken off their coats and rolled up their sleeves, but it was Oliver’s forearms that had heated her body and made a trickle of sweat course between her breasts on the cold March morning.
That span from Oliver’s elbow to his hand was long, of course, like all the rest of him, but also ropy with muscle and sinew and branching veins when he lifted a ewe. A sparse mat of dark hair on the outside and golden skin on the inside.
Henrietta didn’t think it was wifely to pine, but she let herself shed a few tears of longing for those forearms when she was alone in her bed that night.
But the most important thing she had learned about her husband was that he loved his son. He did. Somehow, sometime in the past, Oliver had let himself get all foolishly twisted up in his thoughts and actions and emotions. In the midst of pushing away those big feelings he thought he could not tolerate, he’d also pushed away his son. Henrietta didn’t know why Oliver had believed he wasn’t strong enough before, but now he had found the belief or the strength from somewhere.
Because much of what had been wrong between father and son had come right in the last several months.
This winter, Oliver had devoted time and care and attention to Nathaniel. The two had played together and read together and even occasionally napped together on a sofa in the drawing room, Nathaniel’s dark head tucked into his father’s chest as Oliver’s arm curled around his son protectively.
There was nothing that made her happier than witnessing that growing closeness.
Except, perhaps, if something similar might happen between herself and Oliver?
He was unfailingly kind to her. He trusted her with everything in the house, despite her youth and inexperience. He had allowed her to take charge of Nathaniel’s food, his sleep, his simple lessons.
And he had, unexpectedly, given her the most marvelous, romantic Christmas gifts, ones that hinted at an intimacy between them that did not exist.
Rose-scented perfume. A reference to where they had become betrothed?
Yards of blue muslin in the exact shade of her eyes.
A bolt of pink taffeta. The month before Christmas, she had mentioned she loved pink, but never wore the color because a London modiste had told her she couldn’t. The redness of her hair was to blame. And when she had torn the wrappings from the bolt on Christmas morning, Oliver had said stiffly, “You should wear what pleases you. And I think you would look very well in any color.”
And silk stockings. Silk stockings! From a man who had never seen her legs, let alone touched them.
He tolerated her affection—her hand grabbing his, her hugs, her kisses atop his head when he was seated or on his cheek when he was standing and she went up on her toes. She bestowed all the same caresses on him that she gave to Nathaniel or she would give to members of her family.
But he never reached for her.
Never.
She had never spoken to anyone, not even her mother, about her secret shame. Her husband did not want her in his bed, and he did not want to come into her bed.
He never spoke of his previous wives, so she knew almost nothing about them beyond the painting of the beautiful, fragile Emily. Henrietta never allowed gossip to be repeated in front of her. Her lady’s maid had tried to tell her some of the below-stairs talk, but Henrietta had hushed her immediately, saying, “If my husband wants me to know something, he’ll tell me himself, Lucy.”
She had dared to ask Oliver one or two questions about her predecessors, but she could see with her own eyes he didn’t like to talk of the past and his losses, so she stopped asking. After all, she was trying to make him happy, not sad. Much better to tell him how Nathaniel had learned his numbers up to one hundred because he wanted to draw a centipede or to laugh over Oliver’s stories about the one wily ram who always left his fellow rams to invade the ewes’ pasture or to repeat the family news contained in her most recent letter from Bexton Manor.
She also stopped asking questions about the previous Mrs. Hartwells because, as the months went by, she discovered certain things about herself.
First, she was a coward and didn’t want to hear about the women Oliver had chosen. Women he had married of his own volition and lain with.
Second, she was a horribly jealous, petty thing.
Third, she was in love with her husband and she wished desperately, more than anything, that he would be in love with her, too.
Twelve
August. 1818.
“You needn’t, you know,” he said on the eve of her twentieth birthday and Nathaniel’s fourth birthday. There had been a silence between them for a good half an hour, during which he had been hiding behind his newspaper and steeling himself to say this to her.
“Needn’t what?” She looked up from her embroidery.
“Stay here.”
He had seen no evidence she wanted to leave. She had said nothing, done nothing to suggest that. On the contrary, she had woven herself into the fabric of Crossthwaite and the village beyond in a way he himself hadn’t in his over twenty years of owning the property. She had met every occupant of Woldenmere and knew every granny, every child, every dog, probably every chicken and cow.
But he would not make the same mistake he had made with Violet. Henrietta needed to know she was not bound to him and she could have another life, one of her own choosing. Hadn’t he vowed to put her needs always above his own? He must keep that vow. No matter the pain it would cause him. No matter he no longer could fathom a life without her.
No matter that both his and Nathaniel’s hearts would break should she leave.
“I’ll buy or rent a house for you, anywhere you like, give you ample money for a household. Nothing as grand as Bexton Manor, of course, but something suitable.”
She blinked and her head bent again to her stitchery and all he could see were her sunset curls, her nimble fingers poking the needle in and out.
When she spoke, her voice was low. “Do you want me to go?”
“No!” The word burst from him with a greater force than he intended. “No, but I want you to be happy.”
She continued to keep her eyes down, to stitch. “I’m happy. Are you happy?”
What was his answer to be? As long as she didn’t leave, it was a resounding, heartfelt yes. But he didn’t know how to be heartfelt, so he merely uttered the word.
“Yes.”
She finally lifted her head. Were those tears in her eyes?
“Oh, I’m so relieved and glad, Oliver. I don’t want to leave. I love,” she almost choked, “Crossthwaite.”
He wanted to be sure, and he wanted to know how to keep her happy in his home. “You’re not bored? Lonely?”
“How could I be bored or lonely? There’s so much to keep me occupied. The house, the village, the countryside, Nathaniel, Zephyr. I’m busy as a bee.”
He felt a small pang that he was not on the list of things that kept her from being lonely at Crossthwaite.
“You needn’t bother yourself about the house. Mrs. Liddell did an adequate job on her own before you came. ”
“I like being mistress of the house.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A duke’s daughter shouldn’t be doing laundry.”
She laughed. “I don’t do laundry. Not really. Not the hard parts, the soaking and the scrubbing and the wringing. I just do the hanging up and taking down. And folding it and putting it away. I like that.”
“As long as you like it.”
“I do.”
“And,” he said carefully, “you needn’t make custard. You could tell Mrs. Nixon how to make it.”
Her face colored and she dropped her embroidery hoop into her lap and twisted her hands together. “You know?”
“Word got back to me.”
“But I like making custard, too.”
“Good. Because I like eating your custard.”
He couldn’t help but lay a subtle emphasis on your. Since he had found out she was the one who made the custard, he thought it even more delicious. When he ate it, he felt he was filling himself up with her. Her care. Her sweetness.
“Good.” She smiled. “I’m glad you know my secret.” She picked up her embroidery hoop and her smile turned a bit mischievous. “And I’ll tell you another one. Because I wasn’t perfectly truthful with you, just now.”
Apprehension threw tight, iron bands around his chest and compressed the air out of his lungs. He had been so sure the custard-making was her only secret. And it was such a silly, harmless one. What painful truth was she about to reveal?
“I do have a little bit of time on my hands occasionally, and there’s something I’d like to do with it.”
Go to Paris? Take up with a lover?
“I’d like to learn saddlery.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“I want to learn how to make a saddle.”
He was still bewildered. “You want to learn a trade?”
“No. I just . . . I’ve had an idea for a while. For a special saddle for myself and Zephyr. And I’d like to be the one to make it. If you would take me to Lancaster, I can have a tree made there for my saddle and I could buy the tools and leather I need. I was thinking Mr. Spedding might be willing to give me some lessons in how to cut and stitch the leather? And I could use the extra harness room in our stables to do my work.”
Our stables. She had said our. She wasn’t going anywhere. The strain and weight of the invisible iron bands dropped away, and he felt like a boy.
All things were possible once again.
He took up his newspaper, hoping to give an appearance of nonchalance rather than ecstasy. “I’m going into the village tomorrow. Shall I have a word with Mr. Spedding about the lessons?”
She beamed. “Oh, yes, would you? If you ask, he’ll be sure to say yes.”
Oliver was fairly certain Spedding would be far more likely to say yes if the pretty, young Mrs. Hartwell asked him herself, but Oliver would hammer out a fee for the lessons, make certain there was nothing dangerous for Henrietta in the undertaking. No chance of lopped-off fingers, for example.
And he’d make sure Spedding didn’t have any strapping, young apprentices about. Ones with flirtatious ways and wandering, greedy hands. Henrietta had no idea of her effect on men. And still no idea some men were depraved animals.
Like you.
He straightened a page of the newspaper. “Would next week suit for going to Lancaster?”
“Oh, Oliver!”
A flurry of skirts as Henrietta jumped up and suddenly she was in front of him, almost in his lap, leaning over, pressing into him, hugging him from a standing position as he sat, her breasts nudging under his chin.
Time had not made her touch any less arousing for him. He didn’t know how it was possible, but each time she came near him, his physical desire for her grew incrementally. At this point, a quick kiss on his cheek accompanied by an unintentional graze of her bosom against his arm could keep him awake all night, painfully hard until he capitulated and used his hand while thinking of the softness of her lips and breasts.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oliver!”
He allowed himself to take one hand off the crumpled newspaper in his lap and pat her back lightly, tentatively.
“You’re welcome.” He swallowed, committing this embrace to his memory, adding it to his catalogue of her caresses. “Henrietta.”
She pulled back slightly, her eyes enormous with delight, her arms still resting on his shoulders. “You’re the dearest husband in the whole world.”
“At Crossthwaite, certainly,” he said and raised his eyebrows. Her puffery embarrassed him, especially when he knew he wasn’t anything like a real husband to her.
But she didn’t smile or laugh at his deflection. She just shook her head.
“Oliver Hartwell, when are you going to realize Crossthwaite is the whole world to me?”
