Duke and His Duchess Read Online Free PDF

was failing, Peter’s health was precarious, and in London, Percival would be assailed by all those seeking to curry the favor of the Moreland heir, which he could well be in a very few years.
    “I will miss you, but the children need me, Husband.” And her husband did not need her. Esther tucked closer rather than face the question of whether she needed him. “I never wanted to be a duchess.”
    Bad enough she was Lady Esther.
    “If God is merciful, we will dodge the title for many years, and Arabella is yet young enough she could have a son.”
    Arabella hadn’t had intimate congress with Peter for years. To hear the lady tell it, her husband simply wasn’t up to the exertion. Despair tightened its hold when Esther recalled that London boasted women aplenty willing to grace her husband’s bed.
    “I will miss you very much, Percival. Perhaps by the holidays I can wean Valentine, but to leave the children here, alone, in winter…”
    “I know. A doughty old duke, a preoccupied, ineffectual heir, Arabella and Gladys absorbed with their daughters… I know.”
    His understanding was something new. Esther cared neither from whence it sprang nor whether it grasped the particulars of her concern. The idea of contending here without him, each meal a battleground, each day a trial…
    She did need him, and perhaps in every way that counted, she was losing him. The thought made her want to cling and beg and weep, none of which would contribute meaningfully to the instant discussion.
    And then her husband said something that put the urge to weep in a different light, a light of intense relief.
    “Come to London with me, Esther. Pack up the children, the nursery maids, the whole kit, and come with me. In London, we’ll have command of the entire house staff, none of this squabbling over whose job it is to fetch the coal to the nursery. His Grace won’t bark at you one moment and forget who you are the next.”
    Five years ago, all Esther could see was that Percival Windham had been far above her touch, gorgeous, and possessed of blue eyes that seemed to understand much and give away little. She had adored him for his gallantry, charm, and forthright manner.
    Over time, the forthright manner was proving his best quality, and Esther rose to the challenge before common sense could lodge a protest.
    “I’ll need some time to pack.”
    His hold on her became fierce. “I can give you three days, and then, by God, the lot of us are getting free of this place.”
    The way he kissed her suggested prisoners of war had never looked forward to escape with as much desperation as her husband felt about this trip to Town. Esther was just deciding she had the energy to kiss him back with equal fervor when the door burst open and Bart declared, “We found the paper, and we’re ready to make tigers now!”
    ***
    “Why doesn’t Gladys use a wet nurse?”
    If Tony thought Percival’s question absurd, too personal, or indicative of premature dementia, he didn’t show it.
    “No coin,” Tony replied. “A wet nurse is something of a luxury, and I’m the impecunious youngest son. Then too, Gladys says children get attached to their wet nurses, and my lady wife is very particular about who gets attached to whom.”
    No coin, perhaps this, rather than the parenting biases of the mercantile class from which both Esther and Gladys sprang, was why Esther had also eschewed a wet nurse.
    The horses walked along for another furlong before Percival comprehended that Tony was referring to his wife’s opinion on mistresses. In Canada, he and his brother had spent hours on horseback like this, tramping through wilderness as yet ungraced with roads. The distances rather forced a man to parse his companion’s silences.
    “She told you as much, did she? No other attachments for you?”
    Tony stared at his horse’s mane, which lay on the left side of its neck—an oddity, that. “She said in so many words that he who goes a-Maying will come home