Chapter Twenty-one
Rules are made to be broken.
In a thoroughly agreeable mood, Aideen wandered down the principal staircase to the sound of voices from the breakfast room. Alex and his mother if she wasn’t mistaken.
Yawning, she stretched in a most un-duchess-like manner and groaned lightly. Certain areas of her body ached this morning, but she wouldn’t change it for all the whisky in Ireland.
Her husband had been true to his word last night and loved her gentle until she’d been driven mad with pleasure.
Understanding his past explained so much. He shied from intimacy like a beaten hound, snarling from the corner after a harrowing experience. But quite honestly, she didn’t want him to change – she adored his cold glances and brusque demeanour, his teasing taunts and malevolent smiles.
There might be something awry within her character for liking such conduct, but then there weren’t many gentlemen who would enjoy her own pert retorts or lack of reserve either.
How odd, but they matched – despite station in life and their squabbles, they matched.
And she loved him. Completely and deeply.
Meghan’s raised voice could now be heard from the hallway, and Aideen paused to listen. They were arguing, and it didn’t sound good.
“Really! I’ve never seen anything quite so ridiculous,” the dowager duchess stated, with the tone of a governess to their ill-behaved charge. “She is no senseless young miss!”
Staying her entrance, Aideen wondered who they were talking about.
“Of course not,” Alex replied smoothly, “and hence I am sure she will not be offended by some…guidance. Aideen understands my worry.”
Oh.
“Number one – Do not speak to strangers!” the ever-elegant dowager duchess screeched at full pelt. “Breadcrumbs and fishhooks, Alex, you’d lock her in a box if you could.”
Oh dear.
“Strangers could be undercover spies or assassins.”
“And strangers could also be nothing like.” There followed a raft of Celtic babbling.
“Mother, I do understand Welsh and that is not anatomically possible.”
“That is rather the point, twpsyn.”
Aideen couldn’t bear mother and son to be so at odds, especially over her, thus she pushed open the door.
Her husband was sitting at the breakfast table, a hunk of bacon stuffed between thick bread paused at his mouth whilst the dowager duchess paced the blue Aubusson rug.
“Good morning, Meghan, Alex.”
They both nodded, Meghan with features tight, but the duke…
Although fully starched and wearing an even deeper black, if that was possible, he appeared slightly more…relaxed was going too far, but certainly more at ease.
Meghan grabbed her reticule from the sideboard and dashed over. “I must go or I shall cosh that thick jolter-head with my coffee cup.” She bussed Aideen’s cheek. “I’ll never know how I raised such a dogged numbskull, and if you can’t bear it, dear, then come and stay at my house and we can peruse maps of Egypt. Once Napoleon has been seen to again, I’ve a particular fancy to go hunting the lost emerald mine of Cleopatra.”
Nodding as Meghan breezed through the door, Aideen shifted from foot to foot, now a little unsure. She may feel at peace with the world this morning, but Alex had a bad habit of blowing hot and cold for inexplicable reasons known only to himself and God… And even God was probably somewhat perplexed at times.
“Egypt?” He rose from the table, eyebrow raised, lips twitching at the edges, and her insides burbled their delight. She chastened them severely.
“Your mother wishes to visit Egypt and has said that if you annoy me enough, I can join her.”
He came to stand close, looming over her with masculine intent. Placing his hands on her shoulders and bending down, he gave her the most searing, deep kiss that surely anyone had ever experienced before nine in the morning.
“Do I annoy you?” he whispered against her lips.
“Yes, but I rather like it.”
He smiled and backed away to return to his bacon. “I am grateful to you for the vast improvement in cuisine. It’s superb. Did you dismiss the last fellow?”
Wandering over to that superb selection, Aideen debated telling him the whole story, but she could imagine her haughty duke not being best pleased with charlatan staff. “We have an Irish chef now. Very talented.”
“Well, my duchess, I am indebted.”
She loaded her plate with a piece of everything and took Meghan’s vacated seat. It felt odd taking breakfast with her husband when they were in accord. A mite…unnerving.
“What were you and Meghan discussing and why are you a numbskull?” Perhaps a light bicker would settle those nerves.
“Ah. Hmm. Yes.”
Having never heard Alex hum and haw, Aideen glanced up from a perfect fluffy egg, solid in all the right places. “Is it so bad?”
“No. Well, I didn’t think so, but Mother…” He perused the ornate plasterwork on the ceiling before straightening his serviette. “As you know, I worry greatly about your safety.”
Slathering butter onto the thick yeasty bread, Aideen nodded. Nothing wrong with that. She equally worried about his, despite knowing he was fully able to protect himself with sword, fist or boot.
“So, I have compiled a list I would like you to…observe. In order to keep safe.”
That didn’t sound too bad, but…
“Can I see it?”
A sheet of paper with an inordinate amount of script was nudged across the polished table. It was numbered from one to…twenty-three.
Oh, Saint Tuda’s relics, what was it about men and their lists of rules?
She scanned the paper. Some were eminently sensible:
Number twelve – Take two footmen on all outings. Practical, as they could carry hat boxes.
Number twenty-one – Always take the enclosed ducal carriage. Useful for inclement weather.
Number sixteen – Wear that garter knife AT ALL TIMES. Tolerable, but was that solely for her benefit?
Other rules were not:
Number five – Do not go out after dark unless accompanied by myself or Lord Winterbourne. Dusk arrived at the hour of three on a winter’s afternoon. She’d never leave the house.
Number eleven – Take one footman INTO the modiste. Madame Chevrolet would be rightly outraged.
Number eight – Learn how to swim. What?
“I…” she began and then stopped. Her temper wanted to assert its irritation. Tell her husband he was being absurd, but her reason cautioned because at the base of it all sat Alex’s anxious fears.
He worried for her. He didn’t want to lose her. He…cared for her.
But equally what he didn’t do was trust her.
Gwen had been eighteen and, by his own admission, a headstrong girl. Aideen was no schoolroom fledgling and although bold, she understood caution.
Despite Alex’s regrets over confiding in Gwen, Aideen did believe forewarned was forearmed, and after being kidnapped last year, she never travelled anywhere without certain…accessories.
She also knew how to shoot a pistol and how to whack a man in at least five extremely painful places – perhaps she should make a list.
“Erm. I can swim. I learned in the River Suir.”
His shoulders visibly relaxed. “Ah, you can cross that off then.”
“So, the list is…adaptable?”
The shoulders stiffened, his narrowed eyes as dark as ivy this morning. She could tell he wanted to say no, but it seemed they were both seeking to foster the trait of patience. “It depends,” he finally bit out.
“So, if I cross out those which I think are” – absurd, outrageous, suffocating – “not applicable, and then give it back for your perusal, maybe we could…compromise?”
The unpleasant word stuck in her throat and she had to slosh it down with tea.
“There are not many I would…compromise on,” he said tightly, also gulping chocolate, she observed.
“I see there is no rule about learning to defend myself.”
“Unnecessary if you are not placed in a potentially hazardous situation. Which this list precludes.”
“But, Alex, what this list doesn’t take into account is that I can shoot. I can also wield a knife and over winter, Uncle Seamus taught me how to defend myself if need be.”
He stiffened further. “My wife shouldn’t need to–”
“Too late. You have a wife that can. Your mother was right, this list is for a schoolgirl. I wouldn’t even give it to Cordelia.” She mentally apologised to her friend. “Some are sensible, but… Number fifteen – Don’t stand by windows?”
“Maybe that is–”
“Alex, I will take every precaution, but I would drown under such rules. Can we at least talk about–”
Abruptly, he rose, and she didn’t like the way his eyes deadened, the green ivy frosting with the encroaching cold.
“Perhaps we will have to revert to our previous marital arrangement then. Separate.”
The blackmailing dullard.
She also stood, leaning forward, hands on the table. “And to be sure, that was so successful.” Desperately she tried to recall Mrs Beckford’s advice on patience but never was it mentioned how one acted if one’s husband was a controlling, obstinate mule. “Can I amend the list and we’ll discuss it tonight?”
“No,” he thundered. “The list is–”
That was it. Patience be damned. She’d tried, she really had, but enough was enough. “Listen to me, husband,” she said, hands now on hips. “If you wanted a milksop wife then you should have married one, but I believe you like my fiery nature. Am I right?”
No answer. He just glared that glare he typically cast upon pallid debutantes, causing them to quake and quiver.
“Am I right?” she repeated, only quivering with sheer temper. “Or heaven help me I will curse you to hell and mean it.”
Finally, a nod.
Stalking over to him, she grabbed hold of his immaculate cravat and yanked him close, fisting the material. “Then don’t smother it, Alexander. For it will go out.”
She released her grip and stomped from the room with the dratted list clutched in her fingers.
Rakecombe scowled into the large mirror above the mantel.
Creases. Goddamn creases.
Did she not understand how long it took Thorn to fold the bloody neckcloth, despite his preference for this simplest form? Not only that but there was now a small splodge of bacon grease on it from his wife’s grubby fingers.
He raised his eyes to his own in the mirror and hated the angry hard look in them compared to when he’d woken.
As Aideen had quoted some of his guidance, it had sounded a dash extreme, but surely one had to begin strict in order to then loosen. He didn’t want to quench Aideen’s fire, but she must see his point of view.
Yes, avoiding windows might seem marginally outlandish, but when he’d written the list, he’d thought of all the ways that fellow spies had met their untimely end over the years.
Harris had been shot whilst standing at a brothel casement window.
Middleton had been drowned in his bath tub.
Gilmore had been stabbed at the tailors with a pair of cutting scissors.
So, it wasn’t as if he’d invented them.