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“Indeed. Let’s go back to your new home and visit together and have some tea and biscuits. I’ve never been beyond the parlor in Marlow’s town house. It looks grand from the outside; I’d love to see the rest of it.”
“Yes, that sounds fun. I shall give you a tour since I’ve barely explored the house myself. Did you know we’re going to have a house party at Maitland Glen this fall? I’m sure you and your parents must come, and Wescott and Ophelia and the baby. Perhaps Ophelia will sing for us with her angelic voice.”
“Oh, that would be grand. Yes, I’m sure we’ll all be desperate to come. Maitland Glen is so charming.”
They returned to her husband’s town house, deciding on the way that it needed its own name, as some of the grandest homes in town had names like Sundridge Crescent, Ellington Gardens, or Arlington House, her friend’s home in Berkeley Street.
“You ought to call it the Tiger’s Den,” Elizabeth suggested. “Now you’ve tamed the tiger who lives inside it.”
Rosalind laughed. “It’s not a very wild house, like a tiger’s den. It’s stately inside.”
“The Tiger’s Stately Showplace?”
“Too much of a mouthful,” Rosalind protested. “And we both agree we’re done with being wild. It needs a sedate name. Marlow Meadows.”
“Marlow Meadows?” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “Are there meadows?”
“There is a pretty garden out back.”
“Marlow Gardens. No, that sounds like a pensioner’s hotel in Bath. I still prefer the Tiger’s Den. Oh, there is your tiger now.”
As they rode into the stable yard, Marlow greeted them and came to lift them from their horses. He set Elizabeth down first with exquisite gentility, then lifted Rosalind and set her down with a close embrace and stolen kiss. Rosalind blushed as Elizabeth grinned at them.
“Welcome to our home,” said Marlow to Elizabeth.
“It’s been christened the Tiger’s Den,” she informed him.
“If you say so,” he answered, barely raising a brow. “Have you ladies been out riding already?”
“We went to Hyde Park,” Rosalind said.
Marlow searched her face as if to gauge the reactions she’d received there.
“No one was outwardly rude,” she assured him, “though I noticed a few curious glances. The only one who scowled, really, was Lord Brittingham.”
“Lord Brittingham had no claim to you prior to our engagement, so he can scowl all he likes. Though I can’t blame him,” he said, leading them across the side courtyard into the house. “I’d have scowled if you went to him. Will you stay for luncheon?” he asked Elizabeth. “We’d love if you would.”
“Mama says I must not be a nuisance to you, since you’re newlyweds.”
“You could never be a nuisance. Of course you shall stay.”
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “And I probably wasn’t supposed to repeat what Mama said. She whispered it a bit, like it was a secret.”
Marlow chuckled and went ahead of them while Rosalind walked arm in arm with her friend.
“Goodness,” Elizabeth said softly. “He’s so much like a husband now, isn’t he? So handsome as well. He always was, I just never thought of him in that manner. I can’t believe he sold his hair for you.” She sighed. “Now that is the stuff of love poems.”
“He is the very stuff of love poems,” she agreed, staring ahead at him. She had doubted it once, a short while in the beginning, but she wouldn’t tell Elizabeth that part of the story either. There were some things, some delicious, secret things, between her and Marlow that no one else should probably ever know.
