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“You would no longer be committing adultery, my beauty, so don't give me that excuse.”
“But you would!” she cried.
He laughed. “Let me worry about my own sins, Bess.” He dismounted and held up his arms to her. “Come, walk with me by the river. I want us to talk.”
More than anything in the world she wanted to walk with him, talk with him, but she knew that if he put his arms about her and kissed her, passion would overwhelm them. “I will walk with you if you promise not to touch me and if you give me your word we will have a normal conversation that isn't unseemly.”
His piercing blue eyes searched her face intently for a full minute to see if she was serious. Then he dropped his arms, allowing her to dismount on her own, and began a normal conversation. “I bought a piece of land in Lincolnshire—thought I might try my hand at building a house like Chatsworth.”
“Abbot Stoke! Sir John Thynne told me in his letter you outbid him. He's interested in buying property in these parts.”
“God damn Thynne, the only thing he's interested in is you!” His hands closed over her shoulders and he shook her. “Promise me you won't marry again! Christ, they'll all be sniffing about you like dogs after a bitch in heat.”
Bess clenched her teeth. “This is unseemly!”
“Fuck unseemly! You'll have so many proposals, you'll be married again before the year's out!”
“Shrew, don't insult my intelligence. I shall never leg-shackle myself again! The moment I marry, all my wealth and lands become the property of my husband in the eyes of the law, and I know the law very well. What is mine I intend to keep for my lifetime, then it passes to my children. Every manor, every acre, every penny!”
“Thank God you have decided to use your brains. Marriage is like prison, a life sentence. It eats your soul; it's hell on earth.”
“I'm sorry yours has been like that, Shrew. It can be hell, or it can be heaven.”
His hand cupped her cheek. “Bess, I want my piece of heaven—I know I'll have it only with you.”
She covered his hand with hers and held it while she touched her lips to his palm in an intimate gesture. How stubbornly blind she had been. As surely as she was his weakness, he was hers. Yet he was her strength too. He was everything she needed, everything she wanted. She could no longer go on denying it to herself. He had known for years it was inevitable; what had taken her so long?
Bess suddenly realized with clarity that after Cavendish she had been afraid to love again, for when love was taken away, it was too painful to bear. That's why she had married Syntlo, to keep her heart from being torn asunder again.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
His arm slipped about her and drew her close to his side possessively. “We are going to make plans to be together, of course. Whenever we can, wherever we can. I'm going to Court tomorrow. I'll take care of all the exchequer business and council business in short order, then we'll have the whole summer before us. I'll take you to Wingfield Manor, Rufford Abbey, Buxton Hall, Worksop, Welbeck … all of them. You have a passion for houses, Bess—I want you to get to know mine. Some you'll love, some you'll loathe, like Tutbury Castle. It's so damp, moss grows on the walls.”
“Shrew, you go too fast.”
“You will come?” he demanded intensely.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I'll come, but aren't these places crawling with servants?”
“Each has a staff of caretakers, but nothing like the horde at Sheffield Castle. I'll make sure the servants are discreet. Neither of us wants a scandal that will reach the ears of our children.”
“Nor our queen,” Bess cautioned.
“Spend the afternoon with me. We'll ride up into the Peaks, away from civilization. We won't encounter a soul.” He made the pledge to her as though he could control the universe, and in that moment they both believed he could.
As they galloped together, they laughed as if they were children without a care in the world. Then they climbed their mounts for almost two hours, going ever higher, until they crested the tallest peak. They reined in and sat in their saddles, holding hands, looking down at the rivers and valleys far below.
“Do you realize, my beauty, that between the two of us, we own as far as the eye can see?”
He sounded like a god standing on Olympus. The corners of her mouth lifted with the wonder of it all. “Does it intoxicate you?”
“Not nearly as much as you do, Vixen.”
Two weeks later Bess received another letter from Sir John Thynne in the morning post. He told her he had heard a rumor that her old home, Hardwick Manor, was for sale, and if it were true he was most interested in the property.
Bess flung down the letter and summoned Robert Bestnay. “Find James. I need him immediately.”
James Cromp was not only Chatsworth's steward, he had been a friend to Bess for more than sixteen years, because they kept no secrets from each other. When her secretary returned with Cromp, she questioned them both. “Has either of you heard a rumor about Hardwick being on the market?”
