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“Your wife is frightfully simple. I like to read and draw and paint. I even enjoy needlework. I have always wanted to learn to swim,” she said unexpectedly.
“I will teach you.”
He felt her smile, and he said, “My wife also has a courage like none I have ever seen before. You are an extraordinary woman.”
Her gasp was soft and shocked. “Is that how you see me, Ethan?”
Something unexpectedly tender clutched at his heart. “Yes. You married me, a stranger with a dastardly reputation, for the sake of being there for a babe that is not your own. That is a risk many would not take.”
“Rubbish,” she said, “You are a duke. Many would marry you if you drooled while you spoke.”
Ethan laughed, bemused by her sense of humor. He tightened his arms around her. “You willingly gave up your reputation and any chance of a future of your own, to accompany your sister through her disgrace. You lost your family…your friends…your hopes, and I suspect that even knowing the hardship that you endured, if given the chance, you would make the same choice. You are kind and loving, with a strength I admire,” he said gruffly.
A nervous laugh rose in her throat. “I always thought I was selfish for allowing my parents to lose both their daughters to scandal. I know I did not deserve my father’s ire; I just could not desert Catherine in her time of need.”
“Wrong,” he grounded out. “No father should ever abandon their child. Ever. He should have used his power and influence and closed ranks around Lady Catherine. She is hardly the first lady to have a child out of wedlock.”
His wife sighed, took his hand, and kissed his knuckles. “You are kind and sweet, thank you.”
Ethan dared not laugh. Only his duchess would call him kind and sweet.
“I was very anxious before, afraid that we might not have a good marriage because in truth, we are strangers still. But it is astonishing how…wonderful it feels being with you.” She perked up as if struck by an incredible notion. “Perhaps we knew each other in a former life.”
“You believe humans to have several lifetimes?”
“I own to it being a possibility. Don’t you?”
“I am not so whimsical.”
“I forgot you value logic and pragmatism,” she said with a sniff.
“I find it wonderful being with you too, Verity,” he said.
From his assessment of most ton marriages, they were cold and impersonal, with many gentleman having mistresses, and then ladies seeking other lovers to soothe the heartache of loneliness. Ethan had never thought much about marriage before little Thomas and Verity came into his life. He had known he would eventually get married, for he would fulfill his duties and responsibilities to the dukedom. But he had never once imagined what his duchess might be like, for the idea of marriage had not felt important, something to be cherished. It had simply been a duty.
Now he felt different, and it was because of the woman in his arms. He did not want to disappoint her. Ever. Ethan wondered how his little duchess would react should she know of the knowledge he held in his heart. Something ugly and dark crawled through his heart, and with a sense of shock he realized it to be discomfort that he might lose her regard, and the softness in her gaze whenever she looked upon him.
Rubbish, he silently snapped. There was no damn need to be discomfited. They spoke no more, and he stayed like that, with his duchess wrapped into his arms, and fell into slumber.
* * *
A few hours later,Verity stirred sleepily as Ethan slid from her restraining languorous limbs. He leaned over her, magnificent in his nakedness. She burrowed into the coverlet, intending to sleep, and smiled when he kissed her forehead and the lids of her closed eyes, and then more passionately her mouth, swollen from their night’s adventures in marital bliss.
“Uh, what time is it, Ethan,” Verity murmured, her eyes flickering open to a dark chamber.
“Nearly dawn, I’m going riding, are you getting up, or shall I leave you to slumber on?”
Verity propped herself up on her elbows and squinted in the dark at her husband as he lit a lamp. As the light glowed out, she enjoyed a long look of his naked back, buttocks, and thighs. It was a view she found classically splendid, and she frowned, slowly going through what her husband had told her.
Oh, he’s going riding. He’s had another nightmare. She sat up in the center of the bed. “I’m getting up, but I need some help with my new riding habit, the buttons are at the back. I don’t want to wake Matilda so early…”
“I can act as your dresser,” he said, leering at her, and she giggled as she slid out of bed and into her duke’s arms.
“I’ll go and dress and then come and help you, can you find everything you need?”
“Yes, Matilda is very tidy, and we put everything away together.” Verity felt stiff and sore, but she would keep him company. She washed her face and hands and brushed her hair into a queue. Then she donned her undergarments and got out her riding habit. It had been made a little loose for more ease of movement, so Verity did not think she needed to wear her stays underneath. She slipped into her new bright-blue riding habit and fastened the buttons at her cuffs. Verity felt rather than saw Ethan come up behind her and his hands reaching inside the habit to cup her breasts, as his thumbs stroked her nipples into peaks.
Oh God. The pleasure was searing. “Um, that’s nice, but if you continue, I’ll have you back in that bed. Perhaps I might even ride you instead of my mare,” she teased, not even certain if such a thing was possible.
