As was their habit after an early end to an evening out, the backgammon board lay open between Bella and Myron, the third game to determine the best three of five, Bella in the lead. Candles and lamps burned low in the library of their townhouse, thankfully leaving the dated, dull décor in shadow. Myron had stirred the fire up before he sat down. To Bella's mind, it was always too cold in England, and her husband was nothing if not solicitous.
Myron rolled a one and a two, closing a point, but still making little progress. Bella's lips twisted, as she had been hoping to hit at least one of the solo tiles on her next roll.
Instead of the two and six she needed to take one of his pips to the bar, the dice turned up a one and a four.
"Blast!" She now had no option but to break up a made point to leave two draughts vulnerable to his next move.
Myron's only reaction to her language was, "Captain Johnson is an admirable man, my dear, but his vernacular no example of propriety." She merely grinned at the long-established reproach, and eventually he followed with a sigh and a more productive topic.
"Two investors in the new cargo ship," he said, "and I won six hundred guineas for the alms box. Not such a bad evening."
Myron was forced to gambling to court the investment of wealthy gentlemen who spent their evenings playing cards, but always donated his winnings to the poor, since he considered gaming for money as sinful as adultery or imbibing spirits or making a business deal without a contract.
"According to the whispers," she said, pouring him a cup of tea and adding a splash of milk, "we will be the Earl and Countess of Huntleigh by daybreak tomorrow."
"Pinnester says the end of the week. Nevertheless, you mustn't succumb to the sin of pride, my dear. Earls and countesses are no closer to the heavenly host, and gossip does not signify. It won't do to count eggs before they are laid, especially when a capricious king must do the laying."
She tried to stifle her giggles at the thought of Prinny's bulk sitting on a bird's nest, riffling his feathers, forcing an egg from his nether regions. Myron chortled at her sniggering description before they both erupted into full-blown hilarity.
Eventually, she wiped a tear from under her eye and chided herself, "How unfeeling of me to poke fun at His Majesty when the poor man just lost his father. And he is so very kind to us. Surely such incivility must be more sinful than taking pride in my husband's many accomplishments." She patted his wrist.
Myron rolled a four and a six, miraculously missing both of her lone tiles, but bringing his first into the home board. He contemplated her suggestion, most likely measuring against biblical precepts, but only replied, "Perhaps."
Even while considering how to make amends to the king for a passing thought to which he would never be privy, she revived the conversation. "I am certain the card room was not nearly so awful as the ballroom."
"Which is why I can nearly always be found playing whist."
She snorted, and he gave her the mischievous smile of a ten-year-old boy, without the least bit of chagrin. He grasped her fingertips and rubbed them between his. "And I know you can be counted on to manage the ballroom much better than I."
"Not in London," she muttered, rolling a one and a three, but spoke more clearly when she followed with, "I am so sorry about the—"
He held her hand tighter and did not allow her to finish. "Is it a surprise your nerves might compel you to a slip of the tongue?"
She tugged her hand back, though only to more easily move one of her tiles to yet another open point, sighing at the sheer number of pips open to his solidly made points, most stacked with three or more draughts.
"But—"
He pushed her pip back to its original position and moved another three spaces instead, closing a point. "I do hope your unwarranted guilt won't force poor judgment on the backgammon board." His next roll allowed him to knock one of her stones out of play. She passed a hairpin across the table, adding to his pile, already twice as large as hers. It was lucky for her he only gambled for money if it were obligatory.
"Charlotte is right," she mumbled. "No one in London is going to buy anything from you now."
"Really, dearest," Myron guffawed, "you give the upper classes far too much credit for moral certitude. You could appear at St. James's in the buff, drunk as David's sow, trailing a string of gypsy lovers, and as long as Seventh Sea issues ample dividends, my business won't fall off a whit." His chuckle and brief touch of her hand was intimate in a most unromantic way, but the familiar tenderness filled a much deeper need. "Not that I condone such things, you understand. I'm sure Our Lord would be scandalized by drunkenness and gypsy lovers, even if His Majesty would not."
Her double sixes brought her tile back into, then out of, his home board and into hers, pulling ahead by numbers, if not by hairpins. Luckily, she only had to win by numbers.
"If you say 'gypsy lovers' anywhere in public, they will be added to the list of men with whom I must have fornicated." She sighed as he shook his dice cup and pulled her shawl tighter, looking up to assure herself the curtains were tightly shut against the chill.
"God and your husband both know you to be virtuous, and ours the only judgment with which you need concern yourself."
She raised an eyebrow. "If only God were the arbiter of proper behavior in London."
"England would be the better for it," Myron agreed.
A few turns later, sending hairpins across the table in both directions, she said, "If you are so concerned for proper behavior, you might do well not to insult a duke in the middle of Almack's. He was only being polite, asking me to dance."
His face darkened and his voice went cold. "Malbourne is a scourge, and his advances are not to be tolerated. You are to refuse his company in no uncertain terms, or I shall do it for you."
Her eyes were wide as she stared across the expanse of the card table. "What is so wrong with the Duke of Malbourne?"
She knew exactly what was wrong with him. The man was forward, and although that was to be expected of any Frenchman, he was also exceedingly handsome. So striking, she was ashamed to admit, that the thought of him already sent tingles into parts of her body entirely unaccustomed to titillation. She had been wondering all night what it might be like if his hand had followed the same course as his eyes, but with every passing notion, she was reminded how unworthy she was of the attentions of such a venerable gentleman.
"What I know of him is not to be repeated in the hearing of my wife," Myron snapped, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, "nor any gently bred woman."
"But—"
His voice softened and grew conciliatory. "Please, my dear, do as I say in this. I have only your best interest in mind."
"Of course, but I wish you would—"
"Now then, I think it wise we should discuss your plans for the rest of the Season. You will have need of a new husband soon enough, and while I understand why you find London so disconcerting, it will not do for your fear of British aristocrats to keep you from exploring the field of eligibles."
Her shoulders straightened and she scowled at him. "I will not need a new husband, and I am not afraid."
"No?" He rolled a two and a three, closing three consecutive points. Had she not escaped the bar and his home board on the last turn, she would probably now be trapped. "Then why is it you hid behind Charlotte and declined to dance with Lord Pinnester, who wishes only to advance your good name?"
As she shook the dice in the cup, he chided, "Come now, my dear. You would never have insulted those ridiculous women but for nerves."
She stared down at the board, shaking the dice much longer than necessary, in no hurry to take her turn. Her shoulders slumped away from her indignation. "Heaven help me if anyone flirts." Heaven help her when Myron found out Malbourne already had.
He patted her hand, then pulled her eyes up with a crooked fingertip under her chin. "If someone flirts, you will engage your considerable charm to keep him both content in his manhood and in his place, as you always have."
"This is London," she whispered. "If anyone flirts, I will panic and faint dead away."
Before he could respond to her cynicism, she saw his face screw up in pain, so she set down the dice and moved to reposition the heavily padded gout stool and help him pull up his leg to lie across it. As she did so, she removed his shoe, setting the gold buckle on the black Chinoiserie card table he had insisted on bringing from his cabin on the Arabella, the raised edges reminding her of every backgammon game ever interrupted by a sudden gale.
Chiding the choice of evening wear that did not take into account his body's weaknesses, she clucked her tongue at his insistence on proper attire every minute of the day. His dress was always simple in design and color, lacking the excessive adornment he considered vain, but perfectly tailored in the finest fabrics to be had anywhere in the world. If she didn't know better, she might assume he had been born in a cravat and kidskin gloves. Just as she might believe his immaculate Town manners were innate, not drilled by his new wife in long hours aboard ship and during his first diplomatic post in India.
After removing the low-heeled shoe, Bella followed it with his fine wool stocking and the tight bandage underneath. Although his twisted toes were not currently inflamed, the red, swollen ankle and calf were fiery, veins running so close to the surface, she was afraid they would burst; it was a wonder he could walk at all. Without his obduracy, he might have been bedridden years ago. As it was, she could barely keep him seated most days, much less confined to his bedchamber.
"Before you say it, Bella, no, I will not countenance another leeching. It makes no difference and the revolting things make me want to vomit." His face looked like he might yet cast up his accounts as he sucked in a breath and let his head fall back at the lightest touch to the exposed leg. She tried to place her palm across his forehead, but he yanked away before she could judge the heat.
"You will have a fever if we do nothing. I should call the doctor."
"I want nothing to do with that man," Myron declared, "no matter who has recommended him."
"Dearest, the king has provided his own physician. You must not refuse such a generous offer from our sovereign."
Myron grumbled, "If I do not summon that charlatan, His Majesty will never know, and the man will not try to bleed me and feed me cod liver oil by the barrelful. I forbid you to send for him." They both knew he could forbid her anything but this. His health was one of the few—very few—reasons she would defy him with no compunction.
She bustled around Myron, removing the shoe and stocking from his good leg. She loosened the too-tight laces at the knee of his breeches, untied his cravat, removed his jacket, unfastened the buttons at his throat and wrists and folded his sleeves up his forearms, plumped the pillow behind his back. Soon enough, while he vociferously objected to being "unclothed" in the library, she placed one hand behind his neck and the other on his forehead, the lines between her brows furrowing at the temperature, even as he tried to twist out of her implacable hold.
"You must allow me to bring the salts so you can soak your foot, my love," she insisted. After six years of ever-more-frequent flare-ups, they both knew immersion in hot water and the mineral salts she had found in Bolivia would bring better relief faster than anything else, even additional cups of the nettle and cherry-stone tea she forced on him three times daily.
"I will soak the foot," he pronounced, "but will not subject myself to that miserable quacksalver."
She crossed to the bell pull to summon a maid to bring a bucket of hot water and the mineral salts. As she did so, she said, tentatively, "I have heard the waters at Bath are particularly good for gout. I've sent a courier for a few gallons, but it might behoove us to—"
He banged his hand on the table, the backgammon pips jumping at the blow. "I am not travelling to Bath! Regardless of who has decided he thinks it best for me."
"His Majesty is only trying to—"
"His Majesty and his plans for my sickroom may go to the very Devil!"
Bella stepped back. Consigning someone to the Devil was not in Myron's nature, especially a monarch. He took the concept of Hell quite literally, far more than Bella, who owned she had lived there the first nineteen years of her life, so had little to fear from Satan. She moved to the fireplace to add wood, stirring the embers to warm the room, allowing her husband his justifiable irritation, raising crackling sparks and tendrils of smoke that smelled faintly of apple.
"I am not an invalid and will not be treated as such! I have a place in Parliament and a business to manage!"
The fire tended, she stepped behind Myron with her hand on his shoulder. Twisting to look up at her, he argued, "If my Lord and Savior has decreed I should suffer this illness, then by the name of Heaven, I shall suffer it."
She patted his shoulder and kissed the crown of his head. "Of course, my darling."
When Mrs. Jemison appeared, Bella gave the order for a basin of hot water and the mineral salts, as well as cold water and cloths to keep the incipient fever at bay, the bottle of cod liver oil, and a cup of the nettle tea.
"Lady Holsworthy," Mrs. Jemison said, looking away from Myron, "The messenger returned this afternoon with the waters you requested from the Pump Room in Bath."
"Excellent. We will use it to brew the tea."
Myron snarled, "You would have me die ingesting English water?"
As the housekeeper left, avoiding Myron's mutinous looks, Bella added, "Bring the angelica, elderberry, and yarrow, too, please, and a teapot."
"This will become a production, then?" he griped.
Rather than answering, Bella took her seat and shook the dice cup. "If you believe I will be distracted by your querulous bleating or concede this game out of pity, you are mistaken, Sir. I shall have my hairpins back within a quarter-hour or double the dose of cod liver oil."