John lost no time in making it clear to the staff at Hammond Park that when the breakfast tray was brought, a simple scratch on the door to announce the fact would be enough, and to place the tray in the corridor. Until the breakfast tray was back outside the door and empty, there were to be no servants coming into the master’s room unless the house was on fire. As the days of June went by, he and Viola had breakfast in bed together nearly every morning.
He trounced her at chess every time they played, but let her win at piquet to make up for it. He got his wish and taught her to swim. Naked, by moonlight.
They gave a fete and all the country families came. They had dinner parties for the local gentry. They raced on the downs and he got to see her hair fly back behind her every time. He spent a lot of money on new riding hats for her. He didn’t care.
June gave way to July. Slowly, the emptiness inside John—the emptiness he had never known existed until that night in the rain in Grosvenor Square—began to give way to the contentment he so badly wanted, that he had missed for so long. The cold war of the years gone by seemed far away, and he began to forget that there had ever been a time when Viola wasn’t sleeping beside him.
They fought often. Usually because she would insist on talking about things, and he avoided it as often as possible. They always made up, and he liked that part. A lot. No matter how many times they fought, there was no sleeping on a cot in the dressing room.
He loved to tease her because she always fell for it. When she asked him if they could have Dylan, Grace, Anthony, and Daphne come for a house party, he played it for all it was worth.
“No.”
She looked at him over the breakfast tray, wide-eyed and pretty with her hair loose, surrounded by snowy white sheets and pillows. “Why not?”
“Your brother hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
John munched on a slice of bacon. “He would happily cut off my head if he could get away with it.”
“Dylan will be here to keep things civil.”
“Hah! Dylan never keeps things civil. He just sits back and enjoys the fray and laughs.”
“Grace, then. And Daphne.” She pushed the tray aside and moved closer to him. “Daphne likes you. She’s been on your side for ages. Even when I still thought you were a scoundrel, she defended you.”
“She did?” That surprised him, but then he remembered his sister-in-law’s face that day when Viola had run off to Enderby.
I know how desperation feels, Hammond.
“I have a great deal of respect for Tremore’s wife,” he said, “but it does not alter the fact that your brother loathes me.”
Viola snuggled up to him, kissed his ear. “Maybe it’s time the two of you made up.”
He turned his head, let her kiss him. Then he leaned back in bed, looking at her through half-closed eyes. “If I agree to this,” he drawled, “do I get some kind of reward?”
Her hand fluttered to his bare chest and she pressed her lips together, knowing full well she’d already won and trying not to smile about it, playing the game. “What do you want?”
He told her, and she blushed from head to toe. But ten days later the Duke of Tremore and Mr. Dylan Moore and their wives received invitations to spend the last two weeks of August at Hammond Park.
The warm, lazy days of August drifted by. Every day, John found some way to make her laugh. He made up the most absurd limericks for her, and sometimes he read her poetry he’d written. She began to sense his moods and the nature of them, though it was like prying open live oysters to get him to tell her anything of a personal nature. He usually deflected it with a witty comment or a careless change of subject. She learned not to ask such questions, coming to understand he would tell her things when he was ready to do so, and not before. On those rare occasions when he chose to reveal himself in some sort of personal way, it always took her by surprise. One evening when they were in the library and she was going over menu plans for the impending house party, John finally told her about the trifle.
She was reading through the suggestions of Mrs. Miller, shaking her head. “No, no,” she murmured to herself. “This won’t do at all.” Viola picked up a quill, dipped it in the inkwell, and crossed out one of the cook’s suggestions.
“What won’t do?” John asked over the top of his newspaper.
“Pâté. Anthony hates pâté. Always has. The very idea of liver makes him green. I won’t subject him to it.”
John laughed. “I’d love to see Tremore turn green.”
“Stop it, John.” She shot him a warning look. “This party is partly so that the two of you can reconcile, remember? I should so like it if the two of you became friends.”
“I know, I know.” He gave the sigh of a suffering husband. “No liver, then. What other delights am I going to be deprived of during your brother’s visit?”
“There won’t be any trifle, if you were worried about that,” she said gently.
“Better not be, or I shall give Miller the sack. She knows better.”
Viola wanted to ask about it but knew he would not tell her. She resumed going over the menu. She crossed off mutton, which she despised, and replaced it with beef fillets. She added a selection of chocolates to be ordered because Daphne liked chocolates. She was contemplating the wine selections when John spoke.
“It was because my sister died.” His voice was so low, she barely heard his words.
“Your sister?” She looked over at him, surprised by a comment that seemed to come out of nowhere. Her husband wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was staring down at his newspaper.
“The trifle,” he said. “It was because of my sister, Kate. I was seven, and I was in the nursery upstairs, eating my dinner when I found out. My nanny was the one who told me. My mother could not be bothered to leave her lover in Paris, and my father was at his mistress’s home in Yorkshire. It’s odd, you know,” he added, his voice so terribly soft that the sound of it hurt her heart.
She walked over to his chair, knelt beside it, put her hand on his knee. “What is odd?”
“How things come back to you and tear you up even if they happened years ago. I don’t remember anything else about that day, but I remember what dessert I had. I was sitting there staring at that damned bowl, and the only thing I was thinking when my nanny was breaking the news to me was that trifle was Kate’s favorite thing in the world, and she wasn’t going to get to eat it anymore.”
One hand balled into a fist, crumpling the newspaper. “Even now, I miss my sister,” he said through clenched teeth, as if the words were being torn out of him. He let go of the paper and rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, a savage, furtive movement with his face turned away from her.
“Kate made everything bearable, you see. It’s been twenty-eight years since then, and I know it sounds stupid, but every time I see trifle, the red jam and the yellow custard and the white cream, I am seven years old again, and my parents are hundreds of miles away, and my sister is dead, and I have that awful, sick feeling in my guts.” He did not look at her. Instead, he straightened in his chair, smoothed out the newspaper and pretended to resume reading it as if nothing had happened.
She looked at his stiff, proud profile, and she thought of why she had fallen in love with him when she was seventeen. For his smile and his wit, for his way of making her laugh. But she wasn’t seventeen anymore, and when she looked at him now, she saw none of those things that had mattered to her so long ago. And at that moment, because they were not there, Viola fell in love with John Hammond all over again.
She knew there were no words she could say that would be of any use, so she said none. Instead, she reached over and pulled the newspaper gently away from him. “Come with me,” she said, and took one of his hands in hers.
“Where are we going?”
“Just let me be in charge of things for a change, will you?” She pulled him to his feet and led him upstairs. She lit the lamp in their room and began to undress him. She removed his evening coat and his cravat and tossed them aside. She unbuttoned his waistcoat, his braces and his shirt, and pulled them off one by one. He stood there silent as she undressed him. There was no smile on his lips. His handsome face was grave as he watched her hands roam over his body. He was rigidly still, his muscles hard and tense beneath the light caress of her fingers.
She ran her hands over his naked torso—his wide shoulders and chest, along his abdomen. She sank to her knees and unbuttoned his trousers. He was flagrantly aroused as she took him in her hand. She kissed the head of his penis, and he breathed in deeply, sinking his hand into the knot of her hair. Head thrown back, he groaned as she parted her lips and took him in her mouth. She stroked him in her palm and sucked him with her mouth. With her free hand, she gently cupped his testes.
He made a rough sound and stopped her. He caught her hands and shoved them away. Gripping her shoulders, he pulled her to her feet. He kissed her hard and his hands began tugging at her skirts, pulling them up, quick and desperate, out of control.
Tossing up yards of silk and muslin, he wadded her skirts between them, then he gripped her buttocks in his hands and lifted her. “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered, and when she did, he impaled her against him as he pressed her back against the wall.
“Oh God, oh God,” he groaned, and thrust into her hard—once, twice. Then he came, tremors running through his body as he climaxed.
He held her there, pressed to the wall, gulping in air. Then, slowly, he lowered her to her feet. He caught her in a frantic hold, tight against him, kissing her hair. “Viola,” he whispered. “My wife. My wife.”