For Her Love (18 page)

One reward almost made it all worthwhile. When he gingerly snuggled up to Grace, she sighed in her sleep and melted against him. It was a start.

The next morning, Giles concentrated on the bacon and eggs on his plate, keeping his eyes glued to the food rather than the ruins of his once pristine quarters. Behind him, he was painfully aware that broken eggshells, a dirty bowl, the paper wrapping from the bacon, and an open crock of butter cluttered the top of his small sideboard.

“Breakfast is delicious,” he said. It seemed judicious to compliment her first, then broach the subject of order and organization, and the food really was very good.

“I spent a good bit of time in the kitchen with Matu and Keyah, our cook,” Grace explained. “Once we have a bigger kitchen, I’ll be able to do more.”

“I’m looking forward to that. I must admit the food at Welbourne was outstanding.”

“Keyah’s predecessor was a cook sent by Iolanthe’s father, and she trained Keyah. With the Renaults being French, a skilled cook was a priority. I’m sure that, even with your little hearth, I can make you very happy to have married me.”

He smiled at her. “I’d have been happy even if you didn’t know how to boil water.”

Grace looked away uncertainly.

“We’ll leave for Geoff and Faith’s in the early afternoon,” Giles continued. “Mayhap you could use the time before that to,” he cleared his throat, “finish what you’ve started in here.”

Grace shrugged. “There’s not much left to do. Might I help you in the office? My father taught me to keep accounts. I could help with that.”

Giles choked on a bit of bacon. “Are you quite certain you wouldn’t like to spend a bit more time getting organized up here? How will you find anything?”

“Oh, I’ve a fair idea where everything is. What I cannot find, I’ll simply root through my trunks for.” Not for the first time, she thought of Matu. If only she were here. She could help Grace with cooking and organizing. ‘Twas embarrassing to realize just how much of a nursemaid Matu had remained to her all these years.

“Grace, I’m afraid it will be weeks ere we’ll have a proper house.”

“Aye, but we’ll manage until then. I promise, the moment I have a room of my own, you’ll never again be troubled with all my trappings.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll keep all my disarray in there.” She shrugged lightly. “I know I’ve made a bit of a mess.”

A
bit
of a mess? Aye, and she was a
bit
skittish about sex, too. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. “Do you mean a sewing room or some such thing?”

“Nay. A bedchamber.”

“You will not have a bedchamber of your own. A wardrobe of your own, aye, a chest of drawers, a vanity, but no chamber.” He stabbed at his eggs.

“But…”

“I’m patient, darling, but I am no monk.”

She blushed deeply. “I was not suggesting that you’d not be welcome there. Of course, you would be free to visit.”

“I am not going to visit my wife.”

“But, my parents…”

“Have one of the most unnatural marriages that ever I have seen.”

“‘Tis a common practice!”

“Not in our home.”

“I’m not a tidy person, Giles.”

“You’ll learn to be.”

She stared at him for a moment. His face was mild, his voice calm, but there was no mistake that on these points he was unprepared to budge. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you never thought that this need you have for perfect order borders upon an obsession?”

“Aye.”

“Aye? And that worries you not?”

“Nay. It serves me.”

Did the man always have to be so damned unflappable? She leaned back in her chair. “Well, it doesn’t serve me!”

“I cannot live like this.” He finally let his gaze scan the room.

“I have proposed a solution.”

“As have I. I’ll see to it that you have a place for everything.”

“You cannot simply order me about, Giles. I’m not a member of your crew.”

“As evidenced by the fact that we have conversed on this topic easily twice as long as ever I would converse with a crew member on it. I told you before that I’ve no wish for a servant, but neither can I abide this!” He gestured broadly.

“There has to be some compromise. I cannot live like you, either. There is not a personal touch anywhere that you occupy. A body might walk into your cabin or your apartment and wonder whether anyone lived there at all.”

“Unwashed dishes are a personal touch?”

“A cup,” she replied tartly. “God forbid.”

“I have nowhere to put my clothes.”

“I’ll take a few things out of the wardrobe.”

“And put them where?”

“A trunk. There’s room.”

“And how is it that everything fit into your trunks yesterday, but now that they are half empty, they no longer shut?”

“My gowns. They’ll be utterly ruined if they stay crushed like that. I needed to hang out the wrinkles, or at least spread the skirts out, and they don’t all fit in the wardrobe.”

Giles heaved a sigh. He hadn’t thought about the sheer volume of women’s skirts. And he had to admit that she did look awfully fetching in the pale green dress she had put on while he had been out purchasing the ingredients for their breakfast. “Green suits you,” he said at last, taking another bite of food.

Had she won? She felt a little twinge of guilt. Mayhap he was compulsive, but she was, after all, the one invading his home.

Then the corners of her lips twitched. He liked her gown. “Iolanthe always said that I wore too much green.”

“Iolanthe?”

Grace winced. He had caught her off guard.

“Do you never call her Mother? And did the woman ever open her mouth to you without insulting you?”

“No, on both accounts,” she admitted. “I called her Mother when I was a child, but after a while, well...” What could she say?

It nagged at him, the coldness between Grace and her mother. “Was that when Matu came between you? She thought it was your maid’s fault that you were so distant?”

She nodded but refused to look at him. All she could think of was the lifetime of lying ahead of her. “I suppose she was right that Matu spoiled me. I’ll see what I can do about straightening the mess.”

“You had a point. I may be overly concerned with order. Do what you can. We’ll muddle through until we can get a larger room and more furniture.”

No bedchamber.

“I’ll give it my best effort,” she promised.

“I should like to have you look at the accounts later. I’m accurate, but too slow.”

“Just imagine.”

“What?” Giles asked.

She leaned toward him and grinned, resting one hand lightly on his arm. “Fathom that, my Giles being so methodical that his ciphering takes him hours.”

The phrase caught his attention.
Her
Giles?

*

Giles washed dishes while Grace made another attempt to get her things to fit neatly into the drawers and wardrobe. To her husband’s credit, he didn’t own an excessive amount of clothing, and some of it was permanently stored on board
Reliance
, but that didn’t mean that he had enough room to store both their belongings.

Finally, he came over to her and said, “I think this will be easier if we just sort out what you have in groups. Then we’ll know how much room each kind of clothing requires and we can decide the best place to put them.”

Grace’s smile was deceptively sweet. Excessively organized Giles. How very certain he was that everything could be made to work if it was just approached methodically enough. He seemed to think that of every aspect of life. She knew better. “Let’s begin with my gowns, shall we?” she asked.

He smiled back, aglow with the confidence of a captain in charge of his crew on a glass-smooth sea. “Perfect.”

She pulled several from the wardrobe, then more from one trunk and even more from the other, laying them out on the bed and fluffing them. “Wrinkles,” she reminded him, then smothered another grin at the daunted look in his eyes.

The skirts created a pile of silk, damask, linen and cotton nearly yard high, in rich shades of yellow, green, orange, blue and many others. He looked from the bed to the relatively small wardrobe and conceded, “So be it. They’ll not all fit in there. Surely these two trunks will hold them. If we divide them between the two, they shouldn’t wrinkle too badly, and I’m sure we can still shut the lids.”

Grace shook her head. “Why didn’t I think of that? But there are a few things still in each of the trunks. I’ll just take those out, too, so that we can decide where they’ll best fit and be neatly tucked away.”

Out from the bottoms of the trunks came layers of petticoats, all edged in flounces of lace, all in colors complementing the skirts piled high on the bed.

“Of course, we want to be organized,” Grace continued. “Underthings should all be stored together, do you not think?” From wardrobe drawers that wouldn’t close completely, she pulled cotton, linen, and silk shifts and a goodly mound of stockings, again in a wealth of colors. “And what about shoes?” she asked, pulling a half dozen pairs from the wardrobe cupboard. “And, of course, there are nightdresses in the chest of drawers.” She opened a drawer to reveal a frothy mass of still more lace and fine, white silk and linen.

Giles stared at it all. Spread out as it was now, it consumed the entire sleeping and dressing portion of the room. “It cannot be,” he muttered.

“What cannot be?” Grace asked, eyes wide, lashes fluttering.

“That a man who has bested some of Spain’s finest sailors is about to be defeated by a fortress of frills!”

Grace pursed her lips, and looked simultaneously thoughtful and mischievous. “It certainly doesn’t speak well for Spain!”

He walked over to the chest of drawers and delicately lifted out a nightdress. It was sleeveless and made of sheer lawn, trimmed in pink ribbons and lace. “I like this.”

Grace blushed. Last night she had slept in her rather substantial linen shift.

He continued to eye the garment then said, “‘Tis badly wrinkled though.” He dug through the drawer. “They all are. Don’t tell me. Matu always folded your clothes.”

Grace marched over and snatched the nightdress from him. “Matu could defeat the whole Spanish navy,” she quipped.

“I don’t doubt it,” Giles replied.

He carefully folded the garments that remained in the drawer, and when Grace finished folding hers and added it to the pile, she discovered that they took up only half as much space. She looked at it in surprise. “I always thought that ‘twas a waste of time to fold these, because they always wrinkled so anyway when I slept in them.”

“If we fold the stockings,” Giles remarked, “they could probably fit in here, too.”

“Fold stockings?” she said. She gazed at him from under raised eyebrows with a look that clearly said she thought he was being methodical in the extreme.

But her skepticism had no effect, and soon her stockings were neatly matched and folded next to her nightdresses.

Without another word, she went to the bed and began to fold her shifts. They were bulkier than the nightclothes and still required two drawers, but when she was finished, both drawers closed all of the way. Knowing that they both needed room in the wardrobe, she lined her shoes up neatly underneath it. Giles frowned at them, but seemed willing to leave them there.

Together they surveyed the intimidating mound of dresses remaining. “They’ll have to go in my trunks,” Grace said. “And you’ll never get them to close.”

But he had an answer for that, as well. The silks were hung, for they would wrinkle the worst if they weren’t. Then, with Grace’s help, he inserted each petticoat into its coordinating gown to keep the skirt from being completely crushed. Then he lay the gowns carefully in the trunks, alternating the placement of gathered waists so the skirts would lie relatively flat. True, neither trunk would close, but skirts no longer spilled haphazardly over the sides.

“Have you always been like this?” Grace asked.

“I’ve lived in ships’ cabins since I was nine. You learn to use space wisely there.”

“I suppose you would,” Grace agreed. “Since you were nine?”

“That’s when my father died. My mother had four children to feed, and though my father had saved money, ‘twas not enough. He was a shipbuilder, and I signed on with one of his friends as a cabin boy.”

While Grace did her best to tidy the top of the chest of drawers, organizing hair ribbons, tying them together in a big bow, and neatly arranging bottles and jars, Giles told her about his childhood and his three sisters.

“Even when I was very young, I was very protective of them,” he said. “And they knew that I could not abide a girl’s tears. Whatever was wrong, I would fall all over myself to fix it if they cried. They even picked fights with other children, for I was sure to intervene ere they reaped the just results of their mischief. I haven’t seen them much since I left home, for I’m seldom in London, but they’re all married now and have children.”

“But,” Grace said, “you lived with them long enough to become a rescuer of unhappy women.”

“I? I’ve certainly never thought myself such. After all, ‘twas Geoff who ultimately rescued Faith.”

She urged him to tell the story, and he did. Grace commented that, indeed, it was Giles who had rescued Faith, for he’d tempered his friend during their courtship. Then she coaxed more tales from him, stories about life at sea, descriptions of faraway ports, running narratives of battles with the Spanish.

When all was said and done, they were nearly late to dinner.

*

Compared to Welbourne, the Hampton residence was quite modest. It was a small cottage with a cozy keeping room, a bedchamber, and a nursery. Behind it was a small kitchen surrounded by a neat herb garden. All of the furnishings were very plain, yet wrought with exceptional care.

“My father,” Faith explained, caressing a polished trestle table. “He made all of little Jonathan’s furniture, as well.”

At the sound of his name, the little boy tossed aside the wooden toy he’d been chewing on as he sat on the floor. He grinned with his few teeth and toddled to his mama, tugging on her skirts when he reached her. Faith picked him up. “Would you like to hold him?”