For a moment, brief but sharp, Bea believed he was teasing her. The words he said so closely resembled the words she longed for him to say she thought he was uttering them out loud so she could hear the absurdity for herself.
Now she was supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of her pretentions.
Oh, but he was sincere.
Blue eyes steady, he regarded her thoughtfully, no scorn or amusement on his face, only concern.
Her heart suddenly racing, she found it desperately difficult to take her next breath. He could not know what it meant, the simple statement, the acceptance it represented, for if asking her to stop was some sort of rejection of who she was, then the inverse must be true as well.
On a shallow breath, she said, “We had an agreement, your grace. You promised to stop making me love you more, for it is really quite excruciatingly uncomfortable to have a heart this full.”
“I clearly recall refusing to make any such promise,” he said firmly, “and if you had wanted me to vow to treat you with a little less respect, then you should have taken the time to interview clergymen until you found one who was receptive to the amendment.”
Delighted to have her own words repeated back to her, Bea asked what had prompted the reassessment. “You were vehemently opposed yesterday.”
“I want you to be happy and for that—” he began.
“Joyful.”
“Yes, joyful,” he said. “You are a duchess now, and I know that is not something you desired. I know you would prefer that I were someone of minor importance, a baronet or a second son with a very good book collection.”
“Actually, I was holding out for a third son with a majestic library when I deigned to consider your suit,” she explained with an impertinent grin. “That is why I was still unmarried at the ripe old age of six and twenty.”
“A very rare creature indeed,” he replied, returning her smile. “I heard they only go abroad on a full moon, like vampires.”
“You mean werewolves,” she said.
He acknowledged the correction and apologized for confusing his mythical creatures.
She shook her head and made a tsk-tsking sound of hearty disapproval. “And yet you can list all twenty-one ships that engaged in the Battle of the Nile. I fear your education was sadly lacking in practicality.”
“There were fifteen ships, and if you persist in mocking my education, I shall list all of them for you in the order in which they appeared in battle,” he threatened.
Alas, Bea was far too besotted with his pedantry to find this anything but an inducement, and noting the lascivious glint that entered her eyes, he said, “I know you dread the grandeur of my life—the servants, the houses, the social obligations.”
“The pineries,” she inserted.
Although this particular anxiety was news to him, he duly added it to the catalogue. “The pineries. Watching you interrogate various suspects today, I realized that investigating murders makes you feel confident. It makes you feel strong. When you thanked Mayhew to allow you the courtesy of determining who was beneath your notice, you seemed impervious, invulnerable. I don’t want to take that away from you. Moreover, I cannot. Because I need you to feel strong and confident as the Duchess of Kesgrave or you won’t be happy.”
She had been teasing before, about the pain of a full heart, but it was in fact quite unbearable and she felt something inside her straining to burst.
Tears, she thought contemptuously.
No, no, she would not mar the perfection of the moment with a maudlin display. She would be irreverent. Yes, irreverent, for that was how she had wooed him. All she had to do was say something clever.
Wit and flippancy, unfortunately, were beyond her meager capabilities, for the emotion that swirled inside her was far too turbulent for the simplicity of words. It raged fiercely, demanding action, and reveling in the strange magic of its power, she pressed herself gently against her husband and spoke softly in his ear.
“Joyful,” she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper as she repeated it along the line of his jaw, then on the side of his neck and at the top of his spine—joyful, joyful, joyful, she intoned, seemingly incapable of stopping herself, for it was indeed utter joy that she felt.
Chapter Fourteen
As her purpose in raising the issue of Mr. Réjane’s severed head had been to induce Kesgrave to intercede with the constable on her behalf so that she may examine the body without bestirring the gossips, Bea did not consider the conversation to have been an unqualified success. It had resulted in several other wonderful outcomes, including a satisfying resolution to the thorny issue of her troubling fondness for detection, but as far as furthering her inquiry went, it had been a failure.
Nevertheless, marital accord and the freedom to realize one’s full potential added a sort of giddy sprightliness to one’s thoughts, and having effectively staved off a bout of weeping in a marvelously gratifying fashion, she was eager to return to the matter at hand.
Slipping back into her night rail, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers to look for a sheet of paper and a quill.
“There is an escritoire in my dressing room,” Kesgrave said, observing her movements from the bed with a delighted expression.
She darted quickly into the adjacent room, which was larger than her and Flora’s bedchambers in Portman Square combined, and located the writing desk along the far wall under an imposing painting of a turban-topped gentleman sporting a sword and standing on the crest of a hill. She selected a fine sheet of cream-colored paper, a ledger to write against and a pencil.
As she returned to the bedchamber, her stomach rumbled.
“I wonder, your grace, if it’s possible
