“That means waiting longer.” Langley did not look pleased, but when Margot cocked an eyebrow at him, he merely shrugged as if he was completely at ease with the proposal.
“I hope that is acceptable to Your Grace.” Margot looked at Kit. They might be cousins and soon to be in-laws, but she was still a little reserved around him, tentative as if Kit would refuse Elsie’s sister a request.
Determined not to be of a similarly disinclined disposition, Kit smiled at the group. “If that is what you would both like, I am most agreeable.” Despite the idea that standing up with Langley was far from his idea.
“I also had a request from one of your servants,” Margot said,looking at Elsie. “Elinor Samson. It seems there was an understanding…”
“Between her and my driver?” Kit asked. Clary had already requested to court the maid, and after what the two of them had done for Elsie, Flora, and himself, Kit had even offered to pay for their honeymoon.
“They are to be married?” Elsie asked. “How lovely.”
“Excellent,” Langley said with the sort of tone that both showed he approved but did not wish to linger. “Shall we go and partake of dinner?” The earl slipped his arm around Margot’s waist, then gallantly offered Flora his arm, which made the younger girl laugh.
Elsie got to her feet, ready to take Kit’s arm.
“When do you think your sister will warm to me?” Kit teased.
“Perhaps at the same time as you take to Langley?” Elsie asked in amusement. Then in an undertone, she added warmly, “You should not have been so brutally honest about the events down in Tintagel or the possibility I could be with child.”
“I certainly received the distinct impression that Langley and your sister might have the same concerns,” Kit replied sardonically, which made Elsie giggle as she pressed closer to his side.
“There is no need to sound quite prudish,” Elsie said, and Kit wondered if he might be becoming a hypocrite. It just seemed to him that the tragedy of his uncle’s murder, the diamond conspiracy too, might all have been avoided if his various uncles’ lusts had been properly controlled. Still, at least he would ensure that error was not repeated in the next generation.
Turning as they reached the end of the corridor, he looked down at Elsie, waited until the three ahead of them were out of earshot, and then asked, “Is there any chance you might be increasing?” He had no objection to the idea of children, as many as she might care or be able to give him. In fact, he was warming to the concept—especially a dimple-faced little girl with equally becoming dark curls as her mother. But if she was, then theirmarriage ceremony would need to be brought forward post-haste. So, he reasoned it would not be a bad thing for all concerned if there was a dignified wait as they made their way towards the altar. That was what logic told him, although Kit was quite prepared to tell logic to go hang.
“I do not believe so,” Elsie murmured.
Leaning down Kit took her free hand and lifted her fingers up his mouth. “Plenty of time for all that.”
The followingevening as Kit lay secluded in his new bedroom, the lull of nighttime darkness should have pulled him quickly into slumber. After all, the bed was as plush, grand, and wide as anything Kit had ever slept in.
The luxury of the dukedom was fully his now, the title and the nobility he had inherited still not entirely resting easily on his shoulders. It was an adjustment, one he thought he should have been prepared for, and yet he found himself desperately yearning for the reassurance of Elsie. Were she lying next to him… Kit smiled at himself in the darkness at his own amorous ideas. So, he could not fall asleep—his mind was abuzz with all those thoughts of what he might do to her, with her, on her…
The door of his chamber slid open, and Kit sat bolt upright in his bed, reaching instinctively for the candle which still burned beside him.
“I thought”—her voice low, Elsie moved through the dark room getting closer to the bed— “after what occurred at dinner…”
Kit remembered the touch of their fingers through the silk of their gloves as he escorted her to the chair next to him. She must have felt the rush of heat through the contact, the need that had burnt through him, hours later.
“I caught you watching me during the meal,” Elsie said, a note of seduction in her voice.
“I was busy contemplating where we will reside after the wedding.”
“I thought you liked the idea of residing in the Gables Park that Langley spoke of. He said it was available to let, could we afford it?”
The idea of living just thirty miles from Langley, in Hampshire, was not an entirely welcome one. Yet it was better than returning to his family home in Cornwall. Anything was better than there.
“If you wish to let Gables, I am sure we will have more luck than anyone else in my family.”
On reaching the bed, Elsie looked down at him with such a sweet smile his chest felt tight. She nibbled her lower lip, before she changed the subject. “You have fretted that the sins of your family must play out and affect you. I have feared the same because of my mother’s mistake. With my own prior lapses too.”
Kit moved closer, unable to deny drawing nearer to her, telling himself as long as he resisted the urge to pull her down onto the coverlet, then all would be well. He could ignore the temptation of Elsie until they were wed, ignoring his growing erection. But Elsie had other ideas. She sank down onto the bedspread, her fingers reaching out and touching his bare chest, coming to rest over his heart.
“Yet without those errors, mistakes, whatever they might be, whatever you wish to call them, we would not have found our way to each other. We might not have fallen in love. I am therefore grateful for at least my part of these transgressions. Certainly, the ones that we committed together I will never regret.”
“That is different.” Kit could feel his emotions at war within his chest. “You and I are in love.”
“That’s right.” Elsie edged closer, and Kit could tell she mightkiss him. Again, his mind screamed that he should refuse her, but everything else told him he was being a fool.
