Dukes By the Dozen

“Of course, Your Grace.” Able Martins was all wary accommodation. “Let me wish you very happy.” He bowed to Penelope. “There is already wine, and a fire laid above stairs, in your chamber, Your Grace. If you pleased to take your ease there?”

“Thank you, Martins. We’ll go up directly.” Indeed, his Pease Porridge was shivering in her snow-dampened gown. “Damn my eyes, I seem to be conducting this elopement rather badly.”

Penelope’s small smile was teasing. “Have you conducted many others?”

Marcus could only bless his stars that she met difficulties with such good humor—it boded well for them. “Not a one. You are my first. And only.” He took her hand again and kissed it before he led her up the high, twisting staircase. “You?”

She shook her head. “No. Though I will admit I contemplated one, before I came to my senses.”

He did not need to ask with whom she might have contemplated eloping. He need to remember that she was eloping with him. They were together. And he meant for them to stay that way. Always.

He took up a fresh blanket from the carved chest at the bottom of the bed to replace the snow-wet fur but could do no more than offer it to her. “Wrap yourself up in this.” With only one arm, the ability to perform that service was beyond him.

What other services he was yet to be unable to perform, he would soon discover.

Penelope seemed to feel his unease—she rubbed her bare arms. “It’s very elegant,” she said of the tall room.

“It’s overlarge,” he answered, happy to talk of easy nothings. “After the comfortably close confines of shipboard life, I will confess I find Warwick Court so big it feels empty.” He poked up the fire to chase more of the chill to the corners. “But I hope you will like it.”

Penelope took a deep, steadying breath before she stood. “I like you.”

“Brave girl.” He handed her a glass of warm spiced claret. “Get that in you to chase out the chill.”

“Thank you.” She took a sip. “Gracious, that tastes divine. Almost as good as you.”

Everything within him eased and tensed all at the same time. “I am honored you should think so.” He kissed the soft lips she turned up to him.

She tasted of wine and winter warmth, of cinnamon and nutmeg-spiced happiness. A happiness he would drink in until he was no longer thirsty. He touched her face to draw her close, to feel her petal-soft skin pressed close to his.

She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck to run her fingers through his loose hair. “Your hair is wet,” she whispered against his lips. “And your coat is damp, too. Come under the blanket with me,” she coaxed as she began to push the coat from his shoulders.

“No.” The word came out no less harshly than he intended.

“Beech.” Her voice held no rebuke, but he felt her reproach all the same. “If you mean for us to be together,” she asked quietly, “do you mean to keep yourself from me? Am I to keep myself from touching you?”

“No.” He would overcome this hesitancy—this defect, this weakness. He would trust the impulse, the surety that told him she was the one—the one who would most let him be himself.

“Has no one else touched your arm?”

Marcus drew in a deep breath and let it out, and finally said what he had not. “It is not an arm any longer—it is a stump.” He could not look at her but turned his gaze into the dancing fire. “And yes, someone has. My steward, Sealy Best, has. He was the surgeon’s assistant on Victorious and nursed me back to health after—” Marcus had spent so much time trying to forget those searingly painful, angry early days that it was difficult to speak of them now. “He stuck with me, like a barnacle on my hull, becoming my steward when I was eventually posted to my own command.”

“I’m glad—glad you had such care. But I will care for you as well. I’ll learn,” she promised. “I’ll learn what you like. If you let me.”

This is what he admired about her—she did not retreat in the face of difficulties. No polite sidestepping of the problem. She would look him in the eye and hold him to account. Just as she ought—if he was prepared to trust her with his heart, why could he not trust her with his body?

Because he didn’t always trust his body himself.

Because despite the passage of nearly two years since he had lost his arm, sometimes he felt it burn and ache as if the whole of it were still there. Because he woke from sleep gripping the sheets with a hand that was gone. Because the nightmare of the surgery visited him each and every time he closed his eyes.

Because he was not entirely himself. And he feared he never would be.

“Give it time,” was all he could ask.

“Dear Beech,” she whispered. “My time is entirely yours.”