“Father,” Alex said, his voice sounding strained. He tried to sit up but found Jessica clinging to him like a barnacle.
She opened her eyes only enough to smile at Sayer.
“Jess!” Alex hissed.
Sayer waved his hand. “Let her sleep. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I had no idea you’d still be in bed,” he lied. “Nicholas, take me in to breakfast.”
Nick carried the old man out of the room, giving Alex a wink before he shut the door.
Alex was half sitting up, Jessica wrapped around him. There was sweat on his brow.
“Alex,” she whispered and turned her face up toward his in a way that meant that she wanted to be kissed.
He drew back from her. “Jessica, it seems to me that you’d be amenable to copulation. I believe it could happen. If you whisper vulgar words to me and—oh yes, tell me dirty stories, and dance, naked of course, the more suggestive the better, then in an hour or so, I might be able to perform. Of course you’ll have to get on top and be very, very quick. I tend to find procreation rather dull—and messy. But if you are determined to use my body, you may do so.”
It took Jessica a moment to recover herself, then she began to laugh. “Oh, Alex, what an imagination you have.” She rolled away from him and got out of bed. “Someday, I’ll have to tell you about real men. Poor Sally Henderson.” She looked back as she heard a thud behind her. It almost looked as if Alex had fallen out of bed, as if he’d made a grab for something and missed.
She started to help him up, but he looked up at her in fury. “Touch me and you’ll regret it.”
She drew back. “Alex, you get the vapors more often than a woman,” she said before leaving the room.
* * *
“What have you been doing to Alexander?” Eleanor hissed an hour later.
“Absolutely nothing. He is as untouched as when I found him,” Jess said, her mouth full of breakfast.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think he looks like he’s been crying.”
“It couldn’t have been anything I did. Eleanor, where are the household accounts? I’d like to look at them.”
Chapter Sixteen
BY noon of the day after the marriage, the Montgomery household was well aware that they had a new mistress. Jessica treated the rambling old house as she would have a ship, and the overfed, underworked bondsmen and women as her crew. Ceilings and floors were washed, as well as everything in between. She set Nicholas to hauling barrels out of the cellar so she could take inventory of supplies as well as send the ratcatcher in to do his work.
John Pitman boarded himself inside his office, Marianna decided to visit the sick people of Warbrooke, while Sayer had himself carried to the common room where he could help Jessica bellow orders. Everyone said he’d never looked happier.
Alexander disappeared right after breakfast and by sundown he still hadn’t returned. By then most of the men of Warbrooke were telling themselves they were glad they’d not won Jessica’s hand. There was much sympathy for poor Alexander who was run from his own house so soon after their marriage.
“If she’d spent a night with me, she wouldn’t have so much energy this mornin’,” was what one man after another said.
They all chuckled smugly.
* * *
“Sit down!” Eleanor commanded her sister. “You’ve worn everyone—including me—out. It’s time to rest. Where’s your husband?”
“Husband? Oh, Alex.”
“Yes, Alex. Where is he?”
“I have no idea.” As Jess looked out the window, she saw John Pitman walking down the hill toward town. “Where’s he going?”
“To a meeting with the admiral. He’ll be back later.”
“You mean he’ll be away through dinner?”
“Jess!” Eleanor called, but Jessica was already on her way down the hall.