Page 45 of His Illegitimate Duchess

“I felt it was wise to mark this gift with a reminder of our covenant.”

“I am aware of our covenant, even without the reminder,” Lizzie smiled, “but I will not be throwing my old thimble in the fire. I shall give it to Mary instead.”

“I have never been wasteful nor will I ever be,” she added sternly when she saw Talbot was about to object.

“Very well, we shall call her in here right now,” he approached the bell ropes and rang for her maid.

Elizabeth shook her head at her husband, affectionately , he imagined.

“Are you jealous, husband?”

“Never. It is simply improper to carry on like this.”

“Colin,” she said gently, and the use of his given name outside of their lovemaking shook him to his core.

He walked to where she was sitting on the sofa and sat down next to her.

“I hope you believe me when I tell you this is a matter of not wanting to be wasteful, and nothing else,” she said.

Colin nodded, incapable of speech.

“Do you -,” he started, but then cleared his throat, “did you love him?”

“The Corporal? No!” Lizzie looked aghast at the idea. “I simply considered him a good match and thought that we would be well-suited in temperament. That was all.”

He nodded and looked away. There was a knock on the door.

“You called for me, Your Grace,” Mary curtsied to Lizzie in what was obviously exaggerated and insincere subservience that was being performed for his benefit alone.

He saw his wife pressing her lips together, like she was trying not to laugh at the play she was putting on with her friend in order to appease her husband. Colin was suddenly tempted to join them in the game, to trick them somehow, to be like all the other children, but alas, he was a duke.

“Mary, Her Grace has expressed a desire to bestow her old thimble on you, now that she has been gifted a new one. I would like to instruct you not to use that thimble in my wife’s presence or when altering her clothes and other items belonging to her.”

Mary’s confusion was clear on her face, but she nodded.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Very well. Thank you, Mary, you may leave now.”

“I’ll go up with you so you can help me get ready for bed,” his wife said, no doubt eager to discuss her husband’s irrational demands with her friend.

You just earned yourself some revenge for that attitude later, wife, he thought smugly as he watched her retreating back.

*

When Talbot entered the morning room the next day, his wife quickly set down the newspaper she’d been reading. He noted how strained and pale her face was.

“What is it?” he asked, worried.

She swallowed and then took a deep breath.

“A Mr Thorpe has written an article about our marriage, using very thinly veiled mocking language about me as your bride. If The Times contains reports like this one, I cannot imagine what the scandal sheets are saying,” she shook her head before putting her face in her hands.

After several deep breaths, she regained her composure and sat up. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He asked, frowning.

“I don’t know.”

“You have nothing to feel sorry about. I am the one who performed the actions that led to our hasty marriage, and I should be the one to apologise to you. I won’t, however, since I rather enjoy being married to you,” he smiled at her and sat down at the head of the table.

Elizabeth smiled back weakly but sincerely.

“And Mister Thorpe shall regret the day he picked up a pen, mark my words,” he added darkly.

Talbot watched his wife carefully for the rest of their meal.

“Are you ready for our outing?”

“I will be, as soon as you tell me where we are going.”

“Let’s go fishing.”

Elizabeth clasped her hands together in excitement.

“That sounds wonderful! Let me dress, and I shall be ready to go.”

*

“Do you prefer to go in the carriage or to walk?”

“Walking, always,” she told him as she pulled on her gloves. “I can never get enough exercise.”

“Well, slow down, we’re not in a hurry.”

“Maybe you're not,” she grinned at him as she walked briskly like she always did.

Not for the first time, Talbot admired his wife’s way of moving through the world, the strong sense of purpose behind every step she took. As they walked on, all her anxiety from that morning seemed to bleed away, and she became more animated as she talked and motioned at the nature around them.

She sometimes spoke with her entire body. He’d never had the chance to fully experience that part of her in London. The longer they were alone here in the country, the more she shed the bindings that had held her in place. He hungrily waited for each new layer of her to be revealed.

“Whenever I see something beautiful, I think to myself, God could have created a world that was ugly, but He didn’t . And then I am overcome by such love and gratitude, and I feel so close to Him, is that silly?” Elizabeth asked.

“Don’t you think we would be less likely to worship Him in an ugly world? You would never experience that love and gratitude, for instance.”

She thought about Talbot’s words. “I don’t think so.

I think people would worship Him more, but it would be due to fear, since they would be more aware of how weak and small and powerless they were.

And they would be less distracted by all this beauty.

It is by God’s grace that we were given all this. ”

“Both grace and temptation, you say,” Talbot said, and they were both lost in thought for a while.

“What kind of fish are we going to catch?” Lizzie asked as they sat down on a blanket by the water, and she untied her bonnet.

“We are game fishing for trout, which is the only kind of fish in this pond.”

“What other fishing is there?” she laid the bonnet down next to her.

“There is coarse fishing, in public rivers and ponds, angling for fish far less delicious than salmon and trout.”

“Interesting,” his wife said, and he hoped that he was imagining the hint of reproach in her voice.

Talbot helped her with baiting the hook and casting the rod, touching her perhaps just a little more than necessary in the process.

“Will Mrs. Clark prepare our fish?” she asked after a while.

“If you manage to catch anything, she will,” he teased her. “Hold your rod like I showed you.”

“You should be giving me advice instead of teasing me,” she replied in the same tone.

“Perhaps you could sing to the fish and attract it to us that way, being the siren that you are.”

“Don’t you know my singing has driven a music teacher away? I can’t imagine it would do anything different to fish.”

“Did that really happen?” he asked, incredulous.

“Almost,” she smiled, “I wasn’t that bad at singing, but the teacher gave up on trying to teach me to play.”

“I play well enough for both of us,” he replied frankly, and Elizabeth laughed.

“I shall very much like to hear you play,” she admitted.

“Very well, tonight, after dinner,” he said and turned to look at her.

Elizabeth sat next to him with her eyes closed and her face turned to the sky.

Thanks to the bonnet being gone, he was able to discover that her brown hair had been hiding a glint of auburn inside it.

Her cheeks were rosy from the exercise and the sun.

Her gloves lay on the grass next to her.

She was smiling at the idea of hearing him play.

I love her, he realised. The discovery was sudden, unexpected, and terrifying .

But there simply was no other word or explanation for this blooming feeling in his chest that now slowly bled into the rest of his body.

He leaned over and gently kissed her lips.

Elizabeth opened her eyes in surprise and then gave him a delighted smile.

They ended up talking so much and so frequently that every single fish in the pond knew to stay away from them. Neither was unhappy about their empty rods. Instead, they discovered an abundance of woodland strawberries nearby and Elizabeth enthusiastically embarked on her first foraging adventure.

“I cannot wait to write home about all this!”

“You’ve truly never picked strawberries before?” he asked as he speared the strawberries he had picked for her with a blade of wild rye, like his father had done for him when he was a boy.

“Where in London would I have gotten the chance to do that?” she asked, laughing at his incredulity.

Talbot tilted his head, thinking.

“There must have been a meadow or a park somewhere in the city for you to run around as a young girl.”

“What kind of birds are those?” She abruptly stood and walked over to a tree.

It was clear to Talbot that she was avoiding the topic, so he decided to let it rest for the time being.

“Some kind of tit, I believe,” he stood as well and joined her by the tree, making sure to brush his body against her back.

*

That night in the library, she urged him to play for her, going as far as sitting on the piano bench next to him. Her body radiated excitement like it did whenever they discovered something new together.

“Do you know what you want to play?” Elizabeth asked him as he looked over the music sheets.

“Yes,” he replied without looking up, “Concerto 21 by Mozart, specifically, the second movement.”

“Is it a difficult piece?”

“Not for me, no.”

Elizabeth laughed, and he finally looked up. Her eyes were shining and alight with joy, and her delicate dimples looked like little parentheses for her pink, soft lips.

How long have I been in love with her? Colin wondered as he started playing, more nervous than he could remember being since his childhood days, back when his music teacher occasionally had him play for his parents.

As the music wove its enchanting web around the two of them, his wife put her head on his shoulder. The emotion this provoked inside him startled him so much that he actually made a mistake in his fingering.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she said and jerked away, “I must be impeding your movements like this.”

“No, you’re not,” he stopped playing and turned to her, vehement in his denial. “You can leave your head if you’d like.”

“Only if you are certain.”