Page 44 of His Illegitimate Duchess

A s Stevenson shaved his face in practised and deft strokes, Talbot let his mind wander and, as it usually did, it settled on his wife. We’ve been married almost a month now, he realised. Sometimes, he felt like she had always lived here with him.

After his bath, as Stevenson handed him his body linen, then his necktie, waistcoat, coat, and finally, his boots, all of those items carefully brushed and polished, he took a good look at his faithful companion, the man who was among the rare few who knew him the longest, and, not for the first time, wished he could cross the barrier between them and just be open with him.

He ached to talk about his wife, to sort through the confusing feelings and thoughts he was grappling with.

Instead, like an animal that had been mercilessly taught not to approach a fence and was thus adept at avoiding it, he only said, “For tomorrow, have my fishing boots and two angling rods ready. I shall teach my wife to fish.”

Stevenson nodded dutifully, but it seemed to Talbot that he was fighting a smile. What was the man who, for years, had suffered under the task of selecting and purchasing jewellery for his master’s paramours thinking now?

While Stevenson knew of and had seen multiple of his women coming and going from his London home (Colin had always known only his duchess would be allowed to enter Norwich), Talbot had no idea about his valet’s private life.

Did Stevenson have a steady woman, or did he simply visit courtesans on his days off like most men in service did? Did he desire to be wed? Did he believe in love?

As Talbot made his way to his study, his thoughts turned to his own woman.

Their shared passion seemed to only become more pronounced as the weeks went by, and the last time Talbot found his mind drifting to carnal relations this often was when one of the boys at Eton had somehow managed to obtain a copy of Fanny Hill.

But Elizabeth wasn’t a piece of fiction – she was a real, hot-blooded woman with a snug, hot centre that he entered and found release in every chance he got. Being inside her felt like a revelation, especially since Talbot had never enjoyed a woman without using cundums before his marriage.

Ever since an older student took him, Hawkins, Pratt, Brandon, and Stone to an establishment in what would end up being his last year at Eton and warned them never to let themselves enjoy a courtesan without one of Mrs Phillips’s implements of safety if they wanted to avoid by-blows and the French disease, Talbot had religiously followed his schoolmate’s advice about cundums .

His thoughts wandered to the made-up, unenthusiastic face of the young woman he’d almost bedded that day; he could still clearly picture her thinness, her stained teeth, and recall the stale, slightly animalistic smell of the room she lived and did her business in.

He reviewed the memory with faint distaste but profound gratitude because, although he was unable to follow through with his brothel conquest (the girl was, of course, handsomely paid to say otherwise), thanks to his friend's advice, Talbot was more than prepared for intimacy when his mother’s widowed friend helped him briefly forget his grief the following summer.

Colin chuckled at the idea that he believed himself in love back then, now that… Never mind that, he thought.

In his rare moments of clarity, he worried he would lose his mind and all his faculties if he continued obsessing over relations with his wife in this manner.

He’d never been with anyone so eager, so passionate.

He sometimes wondered whether her passion was roused by him or if it was something that she’d always had in her, something innate, inherited even.

Was that how her mother ended up ruined, by the same natural passion her daughter had? Talbot remembered seeing her mother on their wedding day. She didn’t seem that kind of woman , he mused.

Perhaps it had been Elizabeth’s father’s trait. Talbot remembered how devastated Nicholas had been after the duke’s death by the discovery of the exorbitant sums spent on the multiple women who’d accepted the late duke’s carte blanche .

Whose father was worse? Talbot wondered. His own sire’s fatal flaw hadn’t been carnal passion or adultery, but rather his romantic obsession with one woman. It was too frightening for Colin to even begin to consider the traits he might have inherited from his own father.

Mercifully, a knock on the door interrupted that thought.

“I apologise for the intrusion, Your Grace, but the parcel you have been waiting for has arrived,” the butler informed him.

“Thank you, Baker, you may leave it in the library.”

He desperately wanted to immediately go open the parcel and gift its contents to their intended recipient, but his mornings had become an exercise in restraint – they were spent testing how long he would be able to remain inside his study, pretending to deal with matters of the estate, before he managed to find some ridiculously weak excuse to set off in search of his wife?

Yesterday, he claimed he couldn’t wait for his meeting with Edward and needed someone trustworthy to immediately go over some calculations in the grains ledger.

Thanks to that excuse, he was able to have her with him for the next two hours and could freely enjoy glancing at her as she intently worked on the calculations.

She was awfully clever, his wife. And witty. And interesting. Whenever he found her in Lady Burnham’s company, the older woman smiled knowingly at what she most likely considered calf love and for some inexplicable reason, he wasn’t vexed by it.

He genuinely liked Lady Burnham, and not only because of her sincere affection for his wife.

They had dinner with her every night, with Edward and his wife joining them twice a week, and by now, they had spoken about many different topics and issues as they dined, and Talbot found himself not only respecting the older woman’s opinions but also caring about what she had to say.

He half-heartedly returned his gaze to Pratt’s letter, which detailed the latest news from their London circles – who lost big at White’s, who made an enviable purchase at Tattersall’s, who made a clever or unlikely match.

News like this would have, at one time, been the highlight of Talbot’s day, and he’d eagerly await a letter from the city whenever he’d stayed at Norwich in the past. He was surprised to realise that he hardly gave any thought to his usual circles and pastimes these days.

I am still the same man, he told himself, I am simply occupied by different matters at present.

He remembered the bitter resentment and sense of abandonment he’d felt when his former friend Nicholas had “turned his back” on all of them after his marriage, and he begrudgingly admitted to himself that he might have misinterpreted his friend’s behaviour as an insult to himself when it had been anything but.

He had been unable to see it then, but he knew now – sometimes, things happened, things so grand and large and consuming and overwhelming that they commandeered all of one’s attention.

Hopefully, that feeling would burn itself out at some point.

Like getting over a bout of influenza, he mused, before getting up to go inform his wife of the contents of Pratt’s letter.

*

By now, retiring to the library after dinner had become part of the couple’s routine, and it was something Colin found himself looking forward to. It felt like unbuttoning one’s waistcoat after a long and tedious day. How had I ever enjoyed solitude? he wondered.

“Shall we continue reading The Antiquary tonight?” she asked him, affecting a casual air, when he knew very well she was absolutely taken with the love story between the side characters.

“As my wife wishes,” he bowed dramatically, and she laughed merrily.

Colin felt like the most accomplished man in the entire world whenever he elicited such reactions from Lizzie.

“Before we start, however, I have something to give you,” he said as he unwrapped the parcel Baker had left in the library earlier.

“What is it?” She asked warily.

“Hold out your left hand.”

When she did, he slid the signet ring on her smallest finger. Elizabeth held her hand up to peer at it.

“It is lovely! Is this a crest?” She squinted at the ring as if to make out the details.

“Yes, it is the Talbot family coat of arms. Do you see the two lions holding the shield below the ducal crest?” Elizabeth nodded. “It is a signet ring, you can use it to seal the wax on official correspondence,” he explained.

His wife stared at him wordlessly at first. She then looked back at the ring.

“This is very thoughtful of you. Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice.

Talbot took both of her hands and kissed both her wedding ring and her signet ring. She looked at him with (he felt) warmth and affection in her eyes.

“You are very welcome. Now, there is another item here for you.”

“Another gift?” Lizzie asked, incredulous.

“More of a… replacement item,” Talbot said with a flair of his hand as he handed her the second gift.

The pouch had the words Rundell & Bridge embroidered on it.

“Is this a… thimble?” Elizabeth asked tentatively as she felt the object inside the drawstring pouch.

“Yes,” Talbot raised his chin. “It is most inappropriate for a married woman, a duchess at that, to be using a former suitor’s gift for her needlework. I would appreciate it if you disposed of the offending item posthaste.”

“The offending item,” Elizabeth echoed, her features betraying the laughter that wanted out.

“Yes,” Talbot said in a tone he hoped conveyed that he wasn’t jesting.

“What do you propose I do with it?” His wife asked as she opened the pouch.

“Throwing it in the fire would be most expedient.”

“It is very intricate,” Elizabeth murmured as she observed her new thimble by candlelight. Embossed in the gold were two letters, E and C . “Are these our initials?” she asked, astonished.