Page 108 of The Language of Love

Henry rolled onto his back, relieved to change the subject, even though the topic was almost as unpleasant as his wife’s love for another man.

“Stoke was a shambles when I last saw it twenty years ago. I daresay it is far worse now.”

“Your cousin was poor?”

“The family was not rich,” he admitted, “but a good part of that was because of mismanagement. My uncle could never bring himself to make improvements to either Stoke or the tenant farms, and his son was much the same, I fear. A few years of doing without hunters or riding with the Quorn would have left enough money to make much-needed repairs, but he wasn’t willing to sacrifice such pleasures.” He turned to her and pulled a face. “You will see when we get there that everything in the area has suffered because of my family’s neglect.”

She reached up and cupped his jaw with one of her small, warm hands. “But you will fix all that.”

Her tender gesture touched him more deeply than was comfortable. “We will fix it together, Annis. Stoke needs a good mistress, too.”

“Was your cousin not married?”

Henry felt his face twist into a sneer. “Oh yes, he was married. But if Julia is anything like she was back then, she will have joined my cousin in syphoning money off to fund her own pleasure.”

Annis lowered her hand, an expression of concern in her blue eyes. “You dislike the countess?” She paused. “Well, I suppose she is the dowager countess now that we are married.”

“I’d not thought about that.” Henry smiled; Julia would not care for that at all. He caught Annis’s hand and kissed the back of it. “As to whether I like her? Let’s just say there was no love lost between us by the time I left.”

“But she makes her home there? Won’t your dislike make living together… uncomfortable?”

“Don’t look so worried, darling, we shan’t have to live with her for long. She has the Dower House.” Not that she could live in it without the expenditure of thousands of pounds, if the letters from the Stoke steward could be trusted. Well, now that he was married, he’d spend the money to fix the bloody house just to keep her away from him.

“Will you tell me about your childhood, Henry? I never knew how much was really true and what you made up.”

“I stuck close to the truth in essentials,” he said. “It wasn’t a happy childhood, although I was fed and clothed well enough,” he admitted. “I grew up in the servant quarters at my uncle’s house.”

Her lips parted in horror. “But why would he do such a thing?”

That was the last thing he wished to get into.

Henry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he lied. “Suffice it to say that everyone in the area took their cues from my uncle when it came to how to treat me. In fact, he showed his displeasure to anyone who had the audacity to be kind to me.”

Annis gasped. “Did nobody show you any kindness at all?”

Henry felt a strange tightness in his throat and rolled back onto his back. “Mrs. Jenkins, the housekeeper, wasn’t so bad,” he said gruffly.

She was still there. Henry knew that because he’d seen her name on the list of employees that he’d requested from the Stoke steward, Stephen Milner. The first letter he’d written to Milner had included a substantial raise in pay for Mrs. Jenkins.

“I’m sorry you had a miserable childhood.”

Henry snorted, feeling like a whiny infant. “I was fed, housed, and cared for,” he said. “That’s a lot more than many people can claim.”

She kissed his arm and then laid her silky, fragrant head on his shoulder. “You’ve got me to love and care for you now, Henry.”

Henry’s heart pounded painfully in his chest at her words, and he opened his mouth to say—say what?

Besides, she hadn’t meant that she loved him. It was just a figure of speech.

So, instead of responding, Henry closed his mouth and said nothing at all.