He set his teeth.
The objective was an heir. It had been an heir from the day they signed the agreement.
He worked the oil longer than he had the other two times. He did not have to examine why.
She let out a breath after a while. It was not a sound of pleasure, but something held. He felt her body relax, the tense thigh muscle beneath his palm loosening slightly.
He moved over her in the dark. He braced one hand on the mattress beside her head. The other hand guided him into her by careful degrees. When she released a small gasp, he stopped. She breathed normally again so he pushed further, the heat and tightness of her closing around him.
A surge of possessiveness came up in him that had no place in his mind. He saw again the picture of her smiling warmly at another man and heard again the laugh she offered so freely before she ever said his name.
He shut his eyes and pushed down the word pulsing in his head now.Mine.
The marriage bed was not a place for boys, and jealousy was not a sentiment for a duke who’d already claimed her.
He did not look at her face. This was an obligation, nothing more. He kept his eyes on his own hand braced beside her head.
He began to move, the pleasure building until it could not be contained. When he came, he gasped against his own teeth while her scent rose around him.
Henry held himself still until the breath came back to him. The gentle touch of her exhale tickled his arm. He eased away and sat back on his heels in the dimness.
He stole a glance.
Her face was turned toward the fireplace. Her eyes were closed. There might have been moisture on her left cheek, or it could have been the illusion of the flickering light.
Henry drew the hem of her nightgown down to her ankles and sat on the edge of the bed. He took up his dressing gown from the chair and left the room without looking back at the bed.
Chapter nine
The Ledgers
Violet
Mrs Greer brought the ledgers to the morning room at ten, three of them in burgundy cloth, and laid them on the small writing table by the window.
“The household book, Your Grace. The accounts for the past quarter. And the standing orders with the tradesmen.”
“Thank you.”
Violet drew up a chair on her side of the table. The fire had been built up against the cold of the morning. She set her hands flat on the burgundy cloth of the topmost book and waited a moment before she opened it.
The first page was a summary of the previous quarter. She ran her finger down the columns and stopped halfway.
“Mrs Greer.”
“Your Grace.”
“Is this figure for the candles alone?”
“It is, Your Grace. Wax candles for the public rooms and the family rooms. Tallow for the offices below stairs.”
Violet did some quick arithmetic in her head. The wax candles for a single quarter at Iredell House came to nearly twice the entire household budget at Thornwick for a year. She kept her finger on the line until she was certain her face had settled.
“I wonder if we ought to reduce the use of wax candles and place tallow for the family rooms only, Mrs Greer. It should yield significant savings for the household.”
Mrs Greer pressed a hand flat against her hair at the temple where there was nothing to smooth. “I should not advise it, Your Grace. The late duke’s father tried it in the family rooms, in the year of the wheat failure. He reversed the decision before the month was out. Tallow burns dirty and blackens the cornices. It is noticed.”
“I have lived with tallow all my life, Mrs Greer. I do not find the smell particularly disagreeable. I should not have noticed it at Thornwick, and I do not expect to notice it here.”
