Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (8 page)

“Thank you,” he said, releasing his breath, several steps later.

“‘Tis the least I can do.”

He raised a speaking brow. “The very least.”

Amid a musty disharmony of discarded furniture, beside grime-glazed windows, spider-webbed corners, with the faded scent of lavender about them, Ash absorbed Larkin’s delight as she rummaged through a score of life-scarred old trunks.

To her, every unearthed buckle and feather appeared new and unequaled. Seeing the world through her guileless eyes gave Ash a glimpse into her true nature—not a dyed-in-the-wool gutter rat so much as a stalwart mouse, raised in the gutter, open to better … desperate for better.

Nothing jaded about his bride, not when it came to female fripperies. Every striped ribbon and scrap of lace a treat, her face alight, she stepped audaciously away from real life for a time as if to play at dress up.

She found two cambric night-shifts with sleep-jackets and night-caps from the last century and fell in love with them. He thought they must be his great-grandmother’s, but little did Larkin Rose care. She adored them. She found a threadbare chemise next and claimed that too.

The corset she wrapped about herself over her clothes made her groan as if in pain and roll her eyes, so she tossed that back like an undersized fish into a lake.

Ash sighed for losing the corset, as he tossed the night-caps after it. “I prefer your hair unadorned,” said he, certain that his appreciation of her tresses would not be welcome at this early stage.

When he found a cream high-waisted afternoon dress with burgundy overskirt, that he liked, she sighed as if to humor him and stepped behind an old Chinese screen to try it on.

“Must be one of my mother’s more recent purchases,” he said as she emerged wearing it. “It fits you well.”

Lark shrugged, returned behind the screen and came back folding it. Though damned near fashionable compared to the rest, the dress got placed in the trunk, rather than with the treasures she wished to keep. “I am not ready to meet your mother,” she said, her gaze trained guardedly upon it.

“You will tell me when you are?”

She sighed with relief, until Ash claimed the dress and slipped it beneath his arm. “I like it on you,” he said.

“I like these better.” She indicated her choices and turned away, as if dismissing the subject, or him, or both, only to unearth a trunk filled with nothing but slippers. Dozens of matched pairs in every hue and fabric. With a squeal, she knelt like a child over a new box of toys.

Ash sat careful and off-side on a previously plundered trunk, so as to observe her, a new and simple pleasure.

“I am in heaven,” said she as she placed her two shod feet before him, to show off a pair of blue-satin heeled slippers with silver buckles. “I have seen none so fine.”

Oddly pleased to be included in her enjoyment, Ash rifled through the trunk as well, found an embroidered pair in jonquil to match the dress she wore most often, and she let him slip them on her. A minute later, they each held one of the same pair, which amused her no end. Ash realized then that he had never really “seen” his unlikely bride. With the least attention and happiness, she, like a butterfly, emerged, a specimen of rare beauty.

She found five pairs of matching slippers that fit, no less in her glory at finding them than at the notion of wearing them.

Ash added his mother’s dress to her hoard. “We will send a maid for these later, for you will need both arms to help me down the stairs.” He thought she might remove the dress he liked from her stack, but when she saw that he watched, she shrugged and made to precede him out the door.

A papered polygon hatbox tied with tasseled red ribbon stopped her. She pointed it out. “What is that?” she asked with the excited curiosity of a child, so much so, that Ash was pleased to take it down.

“Untie it and look inside,” he said.

Larkin’s anticipation told him he’d made the right decision. She removed the lid, sounding as though she savored a sweetmeat deep in her throat and tore through the treasure. “Look, brocade bells, ribbons, silver stars, bows and rosettes.” Her face softened. “Fine-cut snowflakes made of parchment, almost as perfect as the real thing.” She regarded him as she stroked the snowflake in her palm. “Did you ever look at a real one? It’s a work of art.” She regarded him quizzically. “What do rich people do with such beautiful things?”

“They’re Christmas decorations. We place them about the house for the holiday,” he said, “at least we used to when my mother was—”

“I never saw Christmas.”

“What, never?”

She shook her head. “Same day as any other at the pub. I would not have known it was Christmas but for the rogues who stopped for a pint with holly in their buttonholes. That’s how I first knew
you
were a rogue.”

“So you knew, did you?”

“How does holly make a man a rogue, Ash?”

“‘Tis not the wearing of the holly makes him one,” Ash said with a wink. “‘Tis what he does with the sprig later that counts.”

CHAPTER SIX

“What
does
a rogue do with the holly in his buttonhole?”

Ash dropped a handful of parchment snowflakes over his naïve bride’s head, which made her lips twitch and her eyes twinkle. If he didn’t know better he’d think that Larkin Rose sometimes hid a giggle beneath the surface. “At Christmas, I will be pleased to show you,” he said. “If you will allow me.”

“Promise?”

“I certainly do.”

Lark collected the scattered snowflakes, from her hair, her shoulders, and even the floor, nowhere near as interested in his roguish nature as Ash would wish. “We can make more snowflakes,” he said. “They’re only paper.”

“I do want to learn how to make them,” she said, “and I will have you show me, but I’d like to keep these as well.”

“We will have to give you a rousing good Christmas this year to make up for the ones you’ve missed. I shall roll out all the old traditions.”

Her eyes widened. “What kinds of traditions?”

Ash told her about evergreens and kissing boughs with bells and ribbons in them, and the big cedar their old German estate manager, Stan Redman, who still lived in the dower house, had brought right into the picture gallery the year before he went to fight Boney. They had decorated the tree with nuts and pinecones, and ribbon rosettes that Stan’s wife Olive had made.

That had turned out to be his mother’s last real Christmas.

“I want a tree too,” Lark said, “a big one, and a Yule log, but may I take some of these decorations downstairs now, just to look at?”

“You may take anything you want. This is
your
home now, too,” he said, catching the glimpse of wonder his statement brought to her expression.

Ash spent the rest of the day in his office going over estate issues, problems, and expenses. He found so much work, after his weeks of recovery, that he failed to see his bride for the next two days as well, though he looked in on her every night as she slept.

He watched her throughout dinner at the end of that week, thinking he might have missed her, and saw that she took in everything he did, from the way he used his fork, as if she’d rarely seen one before, to the way he spooned his soup. He almost wished they weren’t economizing so that she could entertain him with her self-effacing eagerness to learn through several more dinner courses.

She’d changed into a simple green satin evening dress, not quite as new, or well-fitting, as the cream and burgundy afternoon dress he preferred, but not bad all the same, though it did already have a new tear at the shoulder, and it matched a pair of the slippers they’d found. Ash caught her every so often—whether in the dining room, the drawing room, or even walking outside—raising a foot and pointing her toes, so as to admire her slippers.

For a consolation prize of a bride, she had potential did this new wife of his. Ash cut a piece of beef and wondered how she’d react when he climbed into her bed later that night.

He toyed with the notion of preparing her for his nuptial invasion, by warning her in advance, but he feared she’d simply bolt if he did, so he kept his own counsel. “You might have noticed,” he said, “that we are running the house with a quarter the normal staff.”

Lark shrugged. “You might have noticed,” she returned, “that where I come from nobody runs the house but me, so I wouldn’t know a normal staff to save me life.”

Ash nodded, stifling his grin, and giving her half an apology for his careless statement. “Likely then you will not fall into a fit of the vapors at my news, but I find myself very nearly without funds.”

“Your pawned paintings tell that tale,” she said with a dollop of sarcasm. “You gamble too much.”

“That too.” He sighed. “As my new wife, you should keep me otherwise occupied,” he teased, “and I’ll never have the desire to venture forth and gamble again.” But Ash could see from her blank expression that Larkin did not understand the nature of his insinuation.

“At any rate,” he added. “Cook is also the housekeeper of sorts. There are two maids, Mim and Nan, and Grimsley is my valet who also acts as butler. Brinks is not only the coachman but the stable-hand. I am not only the master but my own man of affairs and estate manager.”

“Everyone works very hard,” Lark said. “Especially you. I had noticed that.”

“My father kept the outside of the house in good repair—I must give him that much credit—but as for the inside, I hate these telltale signs of a depleted fortune, up to and including a short staff, but I will do what I must to keep the Chase. As for running it, old Stan still lives in the dower house with his wife, Olive, and acts as my advisor. They are a hard-working lot, my staff. I’m glad you’ve noticed. I want them to know and respect you as well. I’ll present you formally tomorrow.”

“Good, because I can help.”

“You know how to run a staff, then?”

“I know how to scrub a floor and change a bed and I could dig a ditch too, come to that.”

Ash winced. “Which my bride will most assuredly not do.”

Lark rose at his tone. “Then what the bloody blazes
will
your bride do?”

Ash rose to meet her ire. “She will keep her husband happy in the bedroom,” he ordered, throwing down his napkin, “beginning tonight.”

“Hah! She bloody well will not!” Lark left the dining room and ran up the stairs to her bedchamber. There, she tried to lock her door against him, but the lock had gone missing. Then she went for her pistol, but the dresser drawer where she had left it came up empty.

She stood on a chair, feeling along the high shelf in the wardrobe, thinking the maid must have moved it to a safer spot, when her bedroom door opened and Ash came in, closing it firmly behind him. He threw his dressing gown on the bed like a gauntlet, his lips firm. “You won’t find it,” he said.

“Find what?”

“The pistol. No, nor anything sharp or capable of drawing blood, for you do mean to beat me off, again, do you not?”

Lark watched alarmed, as her husband began to unbutton his frockcoat, with more determination than she liked. “What are you doing?” she asked, afraid the weapon in his trousers might be deadlier than her missing pistol.

Ash removed his coat with a look that said it should be obvious, appearing, for all the world, as if he were baiting her, she thought.

“I am undressing as you can plainly see. We are, after all, husband and wife.” His eyes held a spark of wicked intent, a roguish look that Lark had liked a great deal too much in her growing up years.