Page 110

“Did they all fit in the dining room?” Stella asked. “Did the hog fit on a platter?”

“Most of them didn’t come because they disapproved of my parents,” Silvester said, taking up her hand again. “As for the platter, it arrived in the dining room on a door, held high by four footmen. With a starched ruff around the hog’s neck and a Juliet cap on its head.”

“A Juliet cap?”

“Velvet ornamented with pearls and silver beads, with a tiara perched on top. My mother thought it was frightfully funny.”

“A tiara?”

“The vicar took offense, thinking that my mother was mocking the queen. Which, to do her credit, she wasn’t: my mother just thought the velvet cap and tiara were amusing on a hog’s head. The vicar never deigned to dine with us again. But the leftover hog made enough pork sausages to get the entire village through the winter.”

Stella nodded. She was starting to get a clear idea why Silvester had decided young to become so polished and urbane. “Did your parents mind the vicar’s disapproval?”

“Not at all. They were not particularly devout, and felt his indignity allowed them to stop attending church on Sundays. One of my sisters became convinced that the devil would attend our deathbeds, but luckily her certainty had waned before my father passed away. May I show you a few more rooms?”

Silvester shoved open doors here and there while barking labels. “Map room, Guardroom, Chapel, Garderobe, Solar.”

“Why is there so little furniture?” Stella asked. She was feeling slightly dizzy.

“Most of it was sold in lean times,” Silvester said. “The hog’s tiara is no longer ours, for example. My father’s passion for steam engines was a constant drain on the estate. My mother’s chimney design actually made money, but even so, she has shown little interest in replacing the furniture.”

He pushed open the door to a room that contained nothing more than a sofa minus a leg. The windows were stone-mullioned with pretty lacework, but the glass was covered by ivy, so it was gloomy as well as empty. “The yellow drawing room,” Silvester said.

Stella squinted, trying to see if the walls had once been yellow. They seemed a dingy brown.

“Named after the settee and chairs that used to be here,” he clarified.

He didn’t say anything more, and neither did she. He led her into a newer—but by no means new—area, the North wing, and started opening doors. “Breakfast room, library, my mother’s study, another drawing room, a sewing room. Shall we rest before visiting the other wing, let alone the kitchens? I should warn you that they are best described as medieval.”

“Perhaps we could see the South wing tomorrow,” Stella said, feeling overwhelmed by the pure size of the Grange along with its dirt and shabbiness.

Not to mention the way Silvester’s hand kept slipping down to her rear and squeezing. She could whip around and frown at his impertinence, but every time their eyes met, she was seized by an all-consuming lust for her husband.

That was the only word for it.

“Ungodly,” Mrs. Thyme would call it. “Depraved.” That was before her aunt even heard about the coroneted hog.

And yet Stella couldn’t suppress the pulse of desire that kept going through her. The comforting thing was that Silvester’s eyes were hard and hot. She wasn’t in the grip of this cyclone alone. The two of them were both there, whirled by desire.

Returning to the castle at the heart of the Grange, he drew her up the sweeping stone stairs leading from the entry. “There are two bedchambers on this floor, and then the nurseries above. Of course, there are a great many bedchambers in the South and North wings. Servants used to live above the nursery, but they rebelled long ago and now they are housed in the South wing.”

“I would like to see the nursery,” Stella said. It was absolutely clear to her that Silvester’s goal was not the bedchamber, but the bed. Not that she didn’t share the idea, but they would likely be there for hours.

Her husband nodded and drew her up another flight of stone steps. “This floor was designed as a set of interconnecting rooms, all reached through the nursery.” He pulled open double doors. The enormous room held an empty bookcase and a rusty trunk along a stone wall. “We spent most of our time out-of-doors, but we used to have a rocking horse,” Silvester said, as if he wasn’t describing the most dismal childhood imaginable. “And a few books, of course.”

“I gather they were sold?” Stella asked faintly.

He shrugged, and led her back to the steps. “I suppose so. Beyond that room is the nanny’s chamber and a night nursery.”

Stella couldn’t even imagine the work that would have to happen before the castle was habitable.

Back down a flight, he pushed open another set of double doors. “Our bedchamber.”

“Our bedchamber?” she echoed, blinking at him as he drew her inside.

Silvester closed the door and backed against it, as if she might try to escape. “My parents always slept together.”

Stella’s eyes rounded as she looked about. Unlike the other chambers, this room was charmingly decorated and smelled of lemon polish rather than dust. The walls were papered, and the windows cleared of ivy.