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“So that was Adelaide’s idea,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he confirmed, and carried on with the story. “Amused at her cleverness, Augustus turned his attention to the family’s quarters. The southeast wing, ground and first floor. Trees and spirits. While Augustus created his legacy, Adelaide turned to the rest of the house. Flowers and birds.”
I sipped.
Ian continued narrating another tale of his home.
“They had one ongoing argument. You see, she loved being in this house, Augustus loved being in his wife.”
I grinned.
“As such, she gave him eight children. They both doted on their brood, but Augustus thought Adelaide doted on them too much. She put them among the trees, and at the barest whimper, would leave their bed to see to her babies. He preferred her in his bed, so he moved the children’s rooms to the northwest wing. This didn’t make her happy and they fought, but she could no longer hear her children in distress, so her attention was no longer divided. As Augustus and all highborn people knew was the right way of things, their nannies took care of them when it was needed, not their mother. And Augustus again had her undivided attention in order to go about the business of giving her more.”
“Please tell me this story doesn’t have an ugly ending,” I begged.
“No, darling. They wrote love letters to each other until Adelaide died at sixty-seven. And when I say that, I mean Augustus wrote her his last letter on the day she died. They’ve been kept. They’re under lock and key, partially because they’re fragile, mostly because they’re raunchy as fuck.”
My mouth dropped open.
I snapped it shut to ask on an actual giggle, “Really?”
Ian sipped whisky then shared, “He was partial to going down on her. He called her ‘nectar’ his ‘life force.’ My favorite quote, ‘I sit here, my darling, my bride, my wife, with the taste of you still on my tongue, your song of pleasure in my ears, and I want nothing more than to bury my flesh in yours, and I was in that heaven but ten minutes ago.’”
“That’s both sweet and hot,” I stated the gods’ honest truth.
“Mm,” he hummed his agreement.
“They loved each other?” I asked, the wealth of hope in those words surprising even me.
“The good kind of besotted, darling,” he answered. “Augustus may have moved the children, but Aunt Louisa found other letters. Letters from Adelaide’s mother, her mother’s friends, all of them admonishing her, and urging her to press Augustus to stop being so ‘unseemly’ in their open devotion to their family. They picnicked in the parkland and took holidays together. Augustus taught his own children to ride, his sons to hunt. They had many friends. They had a great many parties. They filled this house with love and happiness.”
“So it isn’t all dead women and grossness.”
He smiled. “No, not all dead women and grossness.”
I went cautious when I asked, “Did you have love and happiness here?”
His long legs still angled my way, he twisted so his back was to the couch, resting his head there, and he took another drag off his cigarette.
Blowing smoke straight into the air, he kept his eyes aimed to the hanging plants and glass ceiling when he said, “Danny and I were close. Inseparable before we went to school. Once at school, we were still tight, even if we made a lot of friends. We’d play rugby on the front lawn and track mud in because we both liked to ride in the rain. Mum’s old-school British. Reserved, keep calm and carry on and don’t touch the queen’s person. But she threw extravagant birthday parties for us every year, always has a huge Christmas bash and gave us a ridiculous amount of presents. And she helped us with our homework personally. She was interested. I felt loved. I knew my place in her heart.”
“Your dad?” I asked quietly.
He turned only his head on the couch to face me. “Earliest memories, idyllic. He doted on her. Like he didn’t believe she was real. As if she might vanish in an instant, like a dream. Same with us. We were happy. Then, and I can’t know if it was the first she knew of or the first he had, but it was the one she couldn’t abide, she learned he was stepping out on her, and she called him on it. He was outraged. I remember that argument and I remember he said more than once it was not her place to question him.”
He took another drag, blew out the smoke, then looked back to me.
“It turned to shit after that. She withdrew, even from us in some ways. And he seemed to make it his mission to show us what a ‘real man’ was and drilled that into us both.”
“And what’s his version of a real man?”
“One who does what the fuck he wants, when he wants to do it, and no one has the right to tell him any different.”
“Are you going to kick them out of the house?”
His brows shot up. “Hell no. It’s their home.”
“Does your dad think you will?”
