She laughed, and her mother clasped her hands to her bosom and beamed with delight. Alexander leaned back in his chair and smiled fondly from one to the other of them.

* * *

Anna had thought she was traveling in great comfort when she came to London in the chaise Mr. Brumford had hired, with her small bag containing most of her worldly possessions and Miss Knox for companionship. What a difference a few weeks had made. She traveled back west in a carriage so opulent that even the lamentable state of English roads could not seriously disconcert the springs or make the seats seem less than plushly comfortable. This time there was so much baggage that a separate conveyance was coming along behind, together with a valet and a maid.

For companionship she had Avery, who asked her about her education and told her about his own, who conversed with her about books and art and music and politics and the war. He told her about Morland Abbey, his home in the country, hers too now, a house with character surrounded by a vast landscaped park complete with follies, a wilderness walk, a lake, shaded alleys, and rolling lawns dotted with ancient trees. He was sometimes serious, sometimes outrageously funny in his own peculiar way. He talked a great deal, and he listened just as much, his head usually turned toward her, his eyes regarding her in their characteristic lazy but attentive way.

Often they did not talk at all but watched the landscape passing by beyond the windows. Occasionally they nodded off to sleep, his head wedged into the corner beside him, hers burrowed between his shoulder and the back of the seat. Sometimes he held her hand and laced their fingers. If they had been silent too long, he would tickle her palm with his thumbnail and smile lazily when she turned her head.

They traveled at a far more leisurely pace than she had on that other journey. Whenever they stopped to change the horses, he always stayed out in the yard to look over the replacements, often with a pained expression because this journey had been planned in too much of a hurry to allow time to send his own horses forward to the various staging points. Then he would join Anna for refreshments or a full meal, always in a private parlor, even when it seemed the inn at which they stopped was full to overflowing. They were treated with a deference often bordering upon obsequiousness that amazed Anna, though she realized that Avery was so accustomed to it he did not even notice. His coat of arms was, of course, emblazoned on both doors of their carriage, and his coachman and footman and two outriders were dressed in a distinctive livery. There could be no missing their passage west. Even if he had been alone, though, and without all the trappings, Anna suspected that everyone would still have known at a single glance that he was no ordinary gentleman but a distinguished member of the Quality.

They stayed two nights on the road in the very best of accommodations with the very best service. They were presented with a seeming banquet each evening, walked for a couple of miles afterward since the days of travel allowed no chance for exercise, and then went to bed, where they made love, slept deeply, and made love again in the early dawn.

Anna fell more deeply in love. But no, that was not quite accurate, since she had probably been in as deeply as it was possible to get even before they left London. On the journey she began to love him as she got to know him more—his intellect, his knowledge and opinions, his obvious love of his home, his brand of humor, his way of making love. Though there was no single way about that. Every time was different from the time before and the time after.

They were in what some people referred to as the honeymoon stage of their marriage, of course, and she had too much good sense to expect it to last indefinitely. But, forced into each other’s company as they were for the first two and a half days of their marriage, a certain ease had developed between them. They could sit in silence without embarrassment. They could doze in each other’s company. More important, something of a friendship was surely being built, and that perhaps would carry into the future so that they could be comfortable together even when the passion died—as surely it would.

An ease of manner in each other’s company and a friendship would be enough in the years ahead. And—oh, please, please—children. He had actually referred to them on the day of their wedding. And he must, of course, want sons, an heir. No, she told herself firmly when once or twice doubt teased at the edges of her mind, she had not made a poor decision. She was happy now. In the future she would be content to be content. She smiled at the thought.

“A penny for them, my duchess,” Avery said. They were somewhere south of Bristol, not far from the end of their journey. It always amused her to be called that—or aroused her if he said it in bed.

“Oh,” she said, “I was thinking that I could be contented with being contented.”

He looked pained. “You cannot, surely, be serious,” he said. “Contentment, Anna? Bah! Utter blandness. You were not made for any such thing. You must demand blissful happiness or grapple with deep misery. But never contentment. You must not sell yourself short. I will not allow it.”

“You intend to be a tyrant, then?” she asked him.

“Did you expect anything less?” he asked her. “I shall insist that you be happy, Anna, whether you wish to be or not. I will not brook disobedience.”

She laughed, and he turned his head. “That is your cue to say, Yes, Your Grace, in the meekest of accents,” he added.

“Ah,” she said, “but I never learned my part. No one gave me the script.”

“I shall teach you,” he said, turning his head away to look out at the countryside.