“I love you,” Esther Windham whispered to the fellow in her arms. “I will always love you, and love you better than any other lady loves you. I love my husband too.” Also better than any other lady loved him, though lately, that love had taken on a heaviness.
Esther’s regard for Percival had acquired an element of forbearance that troubled her, because it went beyond the patience any couple married five years endured with each other from time to time. Percival was a doting father, a dutiful son, a loving husband, and yet…
“Is he asleep?” Little Bart had crept to his mother’s side on silent feet—a surprising accomplishment for a lad who could shriek down the rafters with his glee and his ire. “Can we go yet?”
“Hush.” Esther leaned over and kissed the top of Bart’s head. He already hated when she did that. “You’ll wake the baby.”
Impatience crossed Bart’s cherubic features but he knew better than to commit the nursery equivalent of high treason. He was solid, stubborn, charming, and in line to become the Duke of Moreland. The charm and stubbornness would serve him well, though Esther had learned to steel herself against both. She rose with the baby and put wee Valentine in his crib, gave the nursemaid a smile—for the next hour at least, there would be peace in the nursery, provided neither the baby nor two-year-old Victor woke up—and extended her other hand to Gayle.
Gayle was not charming in the same way his brother was. He was serious, curious, and sweet natured. He and Bart got on famously, thank a merciful God.
“Will we sail boats?” Bart asked, yanking on Esther’s hand as they headed for the stairs. “We can do Viking burials again, can’t we? Will Papa come, too?”
“Papa is busy today, but yes, we can do Viking burials. Gayle, what would you like to do?”
This was her one afternoon a week to spend with the children, the one she and Percival had vowed and declared would be inviolate. The one the children looked forward to.
The one she used to look forward to, too.
“Pet the kitties.”
“A lovely notion.” Though Bart would scare most of the kitties away, all except the shameless old mamas who seemed to know a kitten favored by a child might find an easy life as a pantry mouser rather than the rigorous existence awaiting the barn cats.
When they reached the ground floor, Bart pelted off in the direction of the library, there to collect paper from the duke’s desk. Esther paused long enough to tell a footman—old Thomas—to have a brazier and some spills prepared for the services to be held at the stream.
Outside the library door, Gayle dropped her hand and peered up at her. He had beautiful green eyes, the same as Bart. Victor’s eyes were a slightly darker hue, and baby Valentine’s eyes had lost nearly all traces of their newborn blue.
“Mama?”
Esther dropped to her knees. Gayle did not shout his sentiments, even in his most sanguine moods. “My dear?”
She pushed soft auburn curls away from his face. He’d been born blond, but his hair was darkening as he matured. He tolerated her affection silently, a little man more preoccupied with his inner world than most his age.
“If you could do anything you wanted to do this afternoon,” Gayle asked, “what would you do?”
Esther turned, braced her back against the wall, and slid to a sitting position. “I’m not sure.” This question, and her reply to it, caused a lump in her throat. Many things brought a lump to her throat. “I might take a nice long nap.”
She was treated to a frown that put her much in mind of her husband. “A nap isn’t fun. We’re supposed to have fun for our outings. Petting the kitties is fun.”
“You don’t like the Viking burials, do you?”
The frown did not dissipate. “Was Grandmama a Viking?”
In the way of little minds, he’d skipped across several ideas to connect two disparate concepts. He did this a lot, which fascinated Esther as much as it worried her.
“Gayle, we did not put your grandmother’s body on a ship, light the ship on fire, and send the ship out to sea. That was for great Viking warriors, for kings long ago and far away. Nobody does that anymore.”
“Grandpapa won’t go away on a ship?”
Ah.
Esther pulled him into her lap, a warm, sturdy bundle of little boy full of questions and fears a mother could only guess at. He bore the scent of hay, suggesting some obliging footman had already stood guard over a sortie to the haymow, where the boys play Highwaymen and Pirates and Damned Upstart Colonials.
Why did little boys never play Dukes and Earls?
“His Grace will go to heaven when God sees fit to call him home. Grandpapa has lived a long, honorable life, and St. Peter will throw a great fete when His Grace strolls through the pearly gates.”
“Will Grandpapa need a footman to help him?”
Such worry in such a small body. “He will not. He will strut.”
This caused a smile. “Like Papa?”
“Like all of my menfolk.” Esther blew on the back of Gayle’s neck, making the sort of rude sound boys delighted in.
She thought he’d squirm away then, but he sighed, little shoulders heaving up with momentous thoughts, then down. “Will Uncle Peter strut when he goes to heaven?”
Gracious God.
“He will strut, and he will shout to everybody that he has come home.” Dear Peter probably hadn’t shouted or strutted since Esther had met him five years ago.
Now Gayle did scramble to his feet. “Will I shout and strut when I go to heaven? Will I be as big as Bart?”
Esther rose, though it was an effort that left her a trifle light-headed. “You will carry on as loudly as anybody, and my guess is you will become very proficient at strutting. You are a Windham, after all. As for being as big as Bart, you are as big now as Bart was when he was your age.”
This concept, that Bart was merely half a lap ahead in the race to adult height, always pleased Gayle. “I want to make birds with my paper, not ships that burn.”
“We can do both.” Though Bart would want to throw rocks at the birds when they became airborne, and Gayle—in a perfect imitation of His Grace—would point out that burning ships was a waste of paper.
Esther followed her son into the library, where Bart—appropriately enough—was already seated at the desk, sturdy legs kicking the air as he folded paper into some semblance of ships.
While the boys argued halfheartedly about which was more fun—birds or ships—Esther sank into a chair and tried not to think about whether she’d be capable of strutting into heaven when her turn came.
No, she would not, though in heaven, she would get a decent nap. She would get as long a nap as ever she wished for.
“Madam, you have a leaf in your hair.”
Esther glanced over at Percival, her expression confirming that she’d misinterpreted her husband’s attempt at friendly repartee as censorship. Percival reached forward to tease the little bit of brown from the curls at Esther’s nape. That she had time to picnic and lounge about should please him, but had she really sat through dinner with a leaf in her hair?
The instant Percival’s fingers were free of her hair, she moved away. “How was Squire Arbuthnot?”
A year ago, heavy with child, she would have moved into her husband’s touch.
“Rather the worse for drink, as usual, but the man can ride better drunk than I can sober. And he understands drainage, whether we’re talking about the contents of the wine cellar or boggy terrain.” Boggy, stinky, insect-laden, unplowable, useless land, such as graced too many acres of Moreland property. “I was damned lucky Comet didn’t come a cropper.”
His lady wife was already in a nightgown and robe, depriving him of the pleasure of undressing her. Something about her posture suggested that Percival—a man with five years of marital reconnaissance under his
