“Tolerably,” she said.
“We’ll go out tomorrow,” he said, and turned back to his soup, and that was that.
That night, after he had wrung her body out of what she was certain was every ounce of pleasure allowed, they’d gone to bed. At Winfield, they’d settled into his bedchamber. She still had heradjoining rooms, but this bed, their bed, was where they both slept. She found she was already quite addicted to the warm, familiar weight of him beside her.
Chapter Twelve
June, 1816
The kittens had been entirely unplanned.
He wanted that on the record, at least internally, because he was not a man who did unplanned things. Except when it cameto his wife, who seemed to inspire all manner of spontaneity in him.
The weather was uncharacteristically awful. No sunshine, bitter cold winds, and the occasional bite of snow and ice. In June. Needless to say, he had more than his fair share of work managing the tenants and their subsequent weather-induced problems.
The sequence of events had been as follows: he had gone to the barn to speak to Groves about the east field drainage, which was a legitimate and fully planned errand. The kittens had been a subsequent discovery, entirely incidental, the barn cat having produced them some three weeks prior in the space behind the feed bins where she always produced them and which Groves had apparently failed to mention in any of his recent reports.
There were five of them.
He had noted their existence, completed his conversation with Groves about the drainage, and left the barn.
He had then stood in the yard for approximately forty-five seconds and thought about Imogen, which was, he was finding, a rather frequent occurrence.
He thought about the library. About the window seat, and the way she read with her feet tucked up beneath her and one hand in her hair, and the small, involuntary sounds she made when she reached a passage that interested her.
He thought about the walled garden, and the way she had come in last Thursday with mud on her gloves and a look of such genuine satisfaction on her face that he had stopped mid-sentence in whatever he had been saying to his land steward and lost his place entirely.
He thought about the fact that Whitmore, which he had always found a comfortable and well-ordered house, had recently begun to feel like something more than that. Somethinglivelier. Something that had been, without his noticing the precise moment of transition,inhabited.
Then he thought about the bloody weather. Currently, the sharp cold wind nipped at his exposed skin, making him shiver inside his great coat.
He went back inside and found her in the library.
“Come with me,” he said.
She looked up from her book. “Where?”
“Barn.”
She uncurled herself from the window seat without further question. He helped her wrap herself in her warmest cloak, then led her across the grounds to the barn.
Groves had, at some point in the intervening hour, moved the feed bins slightly to give better access. The barn cat, a large, opinionated tortoiseshell named Margaret, was visible in the corner. She was lying on her side grooming herself while her kittens climbed over her in their exploration of the space.
Five kittens. Various colors. Various states of alertness. One was attempting to climb the side of the feed bin. One was asleep in a configuration that suggested he had no bones.
He heard Imogen’s breath catch.
He looked at her.
She was standing completely still with both hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes had gone entirely soft.
“Oh,” she said, from behind her hands.
“The barn cat produces them seasonally,” he said, which was not the most romantic framing available but was accurate. “Groves keeps one or two for the barn and finds homes for the rest.”
She was already crouching down, moving toward them with the particular slow deliberateness of someone who understood animals and did not wish to alarm them. Margaret watched her approach with yellow-eyed suspicion, then apparently reachedsome internal verdict, because she shifted her tail and permitted the inspection.
“But with the horrid weather, I was thinking they might need to be somewhere warmer,” he said.