Page 98 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“Have you no admiration for physicians, Mother Hobb?”
“I do,” she said serenely, “I admire their handwriting.”
She fixed him with that winter-blue stare and, for the first time that morning, he felt seen as more than a height and a name, “and I admire a duke that brings a girl to the inn rather than dragging her back up the hill to wait in a draughty old house for an over-priced quack.”
He stilled. Saw Christine’s eyes flick to him, felt his lips twitch. Mother Hobb turned, picked a leaf from her basket, crushed it between finger and thumb, and held it under Christine’s nose.
“Peppermint,” she said, “For the shakes. Smell it when the memory comes back.”
She tucked a folded paper of dried leaves into Christine’s hand. “And when your thoughts run too fast for your feet. Drop them into hot water. It also soothes the stomach. Pregnant women swear by it.”
Twenty-Eight
Christine’s eyes shone. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by eating,” Mother Hobb retorted, already repacking her basket, “and by not marrying a fool.”
Tristan said, too smoothly, “She is in luck.”
He looked to Christine, his mind full of Mother Hobb’s words about pregnancy. He saw his own thoughts reflected in Christine’s brightness.
I do not need to consider her as the mother of my children. Or the act which would put her into that state.
But once imagined, it could not be dismissed. He knew her body, had sampled it, tasted it. The roundness of her bottom and her breasts, a supple and delicious softness that demanded not just to be touched but caressed, kissed, tasted.
Christine was a gourmet banquet that he had barely sampled. Looking at her now, he could see her as she would be in the moments before the joining that would make her one of those women who swore by peppermint. Body pale against the bedclothes. Perfect with skin that made satin seem hessian.
Arms languid above her head, breasts pert and crying out for the warmth of his mouth. Stomach flat, slightly concave, and then the soft, heart of her womanhood. The image of her pregnant with his child, glowing with maternal radiance and naked, sent such a fire through his veins that he barely suppressed the urge to take her into his arms there and then. Christine’s lips were slightly parted, and her cheeks held spots of color.
The effect of the medicine, that is all. Then why do my cheeks feel hot?
Reeve cleared his throat and approached the table with a sheaf of papers.
“My lady, if your strength allows, I’ve put down a few notions for the ball, names of those who might supply what’s wanted. And, if I may, how the green might be dressed so as not to trip the old folk.”
“We would like the ribbon,” Christine said, smiling. She took the list, her fingers steadied over the ink. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“Your Grace thinks I think of coin,” Reeve said, not quite looking at Tristan.
“He’s not wrong. But I think of people more often.”
That was a rebuke. Tristan remembered the anger of a teenage boy confronted with this same innkeeper. His color deepened.
“Faces do not thatch roofs,” Tristan said, out of habit.
“No,” Reeve agreed. “But they stand under them.”
Silence. The old man was right; the world was full of nauseating truths today.
“True enough,” Tristan finally granted, “I thank you for the trouble you have taken, Mr. Reeve,”
Reeve puffed up like a bantam. Christine smiled, and Tristan felt glad that he had given credit where it was due. For that smile, he would do much.
Reeve slid out, shutting the door with a respect that did not feel obsequious. The room went quiet except for the faint noise of geese somewhere below and the far bell of a hammer at the smithy. Sunlight had eased across the floor by a foot while they talked; it touched the hem of Christine’s gown, turned the muslin pale as breath.
“You are pleased with your mayor,” Tristan said at last, standing by the window as if the distance mattered.
“I am pleased that the people of your parish feed one another,” she said, “it makes me like your house better.”
