He sent up a prayer for his wife.

How long had it been since Esther had enjoyed her husband’s embrace? Between the baby being not quite weaned, the older boys climbing all over her, and Victor grabbing at her hands and skirts, Esther often felt her only privacy was in the bath, and then only if her husband did not walk into the room and offer his dear and dubious brand of “assistance.”

Something he hadn’t done in… quite some time.

And yet, Percival still wore the sandalwood scent he’d used when they courted, and she still loved it. She still loved how his hands felt caressing her back in slow, smooth sweeps, still loved that he could tease about locked doors and broad daylight.

Loved him.

The realization brought relief, because it was also true she didn’t always like the man she’d married, and often didn’t agree with him.

“I don’t know if I’m carrying. My monthly is not regular.” Hadn’t been regular since she’d started keeping company with her husband. Percival shifted beneath her while Esther tried to recall if they’d even had relations since last she’d bled.

His hand on her back went still. “Ah.”

What did that mean? Ah?

“Do you want more children, Percival?” In the name of marital diplomacy and not shouting at Percival when anyone could hear, she refrained from bellowing: You can’t possibly want more children, can you, Percival? Not so soon…

He was silent for a moment while his fingers resumed tracing the bumps of her spine. Esther strongly suspected he wanted some daughters. Once upon a time, they had both foolishly admitted to wanting a large family, equal cohorts of sons and daughters.

“I want my wife to be healthy and happy more than I want anything in the world.”

He sounded like he meant it, also like he only realized he meant it as the words left his lips.

“I’m in good health. I’m just… tired.”

“Tired to the point of fainting, Esther?” He kissed her brow again, something he did with breathtaking tenderness.

“Thomas should be pensioned. I swore him to secrecy, and I was light-headed only because I stood up too fast.”

When she had been pregnant, she’d expected the occasional swoon, though none had befallen her. Ladies in the country, particularly women with a baby at the breast, wore front-lacing corsets without stiff reinforcement and were thus able to breathe easily.

Esther closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the languor her husband was weaving right there in the nursery.

“Come to London with me, Esther.”

In his way, that was a question, an invitation phrased as an order. Put like that, the idea of leaving Morelands, with its confused duke, its ailing heir, and its upset household staff held a wistful sort of appeal.

“I’m still nursing Valentine every evening. He won’t settle without it.” And sometimes, the little mite woke up fretful in the night, and Esther indulged him again because nothing else consoled him. The man who snored the night away beside her might have known this. He might also have known that most midwives swore breastfeeding made it harder to conceive babies in close succession.

Percival was quiet in the manner that told Esther he was strategizing, weighing alternatives, considering angles. The military had lost a great general-in-the-making when Percival had sold his commission. Esther felt not the least twinge of guilt over their loss.

“I would miss you, were you to remain here,” Percival said. This time he kissed her closed eyelids. “Keeping the army in decent boots and dry powder is important too. Lives depend on it.”

Despair tried to push aside the sense of sanctuary Esther felt in her husband’s arms. His Grace 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 to find his wife has gone a-straying.”

“My sister-in-law is a poetess. What happened to your gray gelding?”

“Sold him. A man can ride only one horse at time.”