Page 82 of Better Love Next Time
He passed the library door at the foot of the stairs. Three of Oliver’s daughters attacked him. Uncle Julian, he made out between the screeching and joyful cries. One of the girls, Edie, who was actually crying, he hauled up in his arms. He let them drag him to the yellow sitting room.
Sophia, the oldest, rose from a cozy chair with a book in hand. She dropped a curtsy, and when Julian beckoned her with a smile, she ran into his arms. This struck jealousy in the other two middle daughters, Mariah and Casey, who competed on who could embrace Julian longest and hardest.
He danced with all of them. He played dolls with Edie while Casey critiqued their play—they did it all wrong—and after an argument, they ordered him to tell them sailing stories. He obliged with his best privateering tales while the girls circled around him on the floor.
Sophia, the serious sister who knew their time was at an end, said, “How long are staying, Uncle?”
“Perhaps another week.”
Sophia followed with, “Will you return to us every day?”
Children, he thought. “I will try.”
“Try?” Mariah said. “What sort of trying? One just walks themselves along the street, and by what I can see, your legs are in good order.”
Casey, for once her life, agreed with Mariah and Edie started to sniffle.
“I will return every day,” Julian promised in haste.
Disaster averted, Julian exited his brother’s home.
He felt a strange yearning for his wife, a condition brought on by Oliver’s daughters and the memories of his brother as a younger man. Kitty had been a continuous presence in his life for two years and often a thorn in his side. But shewasa habit.
And God, how he had once loved her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
April 1759
Notfelle Estate, Huntingdonshire
Kitty scoopedher cream soup back to front without making a sound. Her hands trembled as they had for the last three days. Lord Staverton sprawled next her on her right, dwarfing the dining chair and slurping his soup. He smelled. Having been too close to him on a number of occasions, she recognized it as an odor arising from uncleanliness and the build-up of sweat in the copious folds of his belly. Her breasts were smaller than his.
Easter was a week away. Seven days of torture before her. Julian’s nightly visits to her room were thrilling. They explored each other’s bodies. Kissed for hours. Whispered of their shared dreams and fell asleep in each other’s arms. But Julian had been nowhere near when Lord Staverton had caught her walking to her room and pinned her to the paneled wall. He had tried to kiss her. She had twisted away, and he had lapped his thick tongue across her cheek.
He had breathed in her face the awful scent of fish. “I’m going to lick you all over, little chick.”
Kitty set down her soup spoon and wiped her cheek at the memory.
Nor had Julian been present when Lord Staverton had forced her to walk outside in the cold and pinched her bottom. She had slapped his face on Julian’s advice. To which Staverton had leered and said, “Strike me, little chick. It don’t matter. I’m to have you this time. And I’ll soon be doing the striking if you don’t mind me.”
How far would she have to go to repel him?
The second course was served. Lady Stockton, seated at Sir Jeffrey’s right, conversed with Mr. Delaney, but really the lady was displaying her bosom and batting her lashes while Mr. Delaney droned on about his coin collection. Lord Stockton, on Sir Jeffrey’s left listened to Sir Jeffrey relate the Babbington’s esteemed history and the Protestant trickery which lowered it. Her brother, Shelley, sat mum at the foot of the table staring like a puppy at Lady Barbara Stockton while she and Mrs. Delaney babbled on fashion with Father Dunlevy stuck between them.
Father Dunlevy sent her a conspirative smile where Kitty sat, wedged between Lord Staverton and his skinny mother, the Dowager Lady Staverton.
“My boy says you play pianoforte well,” the dowager said.
Boy?Lord Staverton was at least sixty. “He is all kindness.”
Sir Jeffrey had agreed to sell her mother’s pianoforte to Julian’s uncle for double the price offered by the other buyer, and soon it would be gone. Or safe, Kitty amended. She forced a bite of venison with an eye to the antlers above her.
The dowager cut into her pheasant and sniffed her bulbous nose. Her voice was haughty and thin and her accent Northern. “Explain to me how you have improved yourself this year past. My boy says the last he visited, you displayed a troublesome nature. I counseled him to quit his suit. A Staverton wife mustbe obedient and beyond reproach.” She glared at Kitty, not a foot between them. “Though you are quite taking.”
Kitty set down her fork and sipped her fortified wine. Here, in the dowager’s craggy lines and thin lips, was where she might repel.
“I am the same, my lady,” she replied with a smile. “Perhaps more emboldened and independent.”
