Текст книги "The Duke and His Duchess"
Автор книги: Grace Burrowes
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“Your son enjoys healthy digestion, madam.” She expected Percival to hand the baby back to her, but he kept the child tucked against his shoulder. “And as to that, I don’t see how you could have been happy at Morelands. I doubt if anybody is happy at Morelands, save the livestock and the pantry mouser.”
Percival had not been happy at Morelands.The realization struck Esther along with a pang of guilt. She was tired, lonely, and out of sorts, and her husband—in the same sorry condition himself—was offering her understanding. When he could have fallen exhausted into bed, he’d sought her out and extended this marital olive branch.
Another silence ensued, this one more thoughtful.
“We should go to bed, Percival. You don’t often get in at a decent hour, and you need your rest too.”
She was dodging behind the mundane realities, but her husband did not accommodate her.
“Esther, I am worried about you. Organizing this trip seems to have overtaxed you, and you fainted again yesterday morning. A moment earlier, and you would have fallen to this very carpet here with Valentine in your arms.”
Esther closed her eyes against this unforeseen assault. She knew how to handle blustering and shouting. Percival’s rages against this or that governmental excess or insult to the Crown were mere display, and his frustrations at Morelands resolved themselves with regular applications of hard work.
But this… concerndevastated her. “You must not trifle over female vapors. I will recover my strength directly. If you want to stand for a seat, we can entertain, attend all the necessary functions, and flit about Town from now until Michaelmas.”
Percival rose and crossed into the next room, Valentine in his arms. When he returned to the playroom, having cleared the field of noncombatants, he resumed his seat and advanced his forces again.
“I think you should consult a midwife, Esther, if not a physician.”
She did not want a doctor or a midwife. She did not even want a nap. What Esther wanted, just then, was her husband’s embrace. The impulse was surprising, but it did not fade as it ought. “I am not sickening, Percival, and as far as I know, I am not carrying.”
He should know that too. They slept together and shared a bedroom. Some husbands might not notice a wife’s bodily cycles, but Percival was in nowise some husbands. Reconnaissance came to him as easily as command.
“You’ll think about it? A little bleeding can rebalance the humors.”
He wasn’t wrong, and yet Esther had parted with enough blood in her various lying-ins to feel rather possessive about the quantity yet flowing in her veins. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
And then, just when she thought the skirmish had played itself out, he took her prisoner. Scooped her up against his chest and carried her from the room, the spoils of an altercation Esther hadn’t seen coming and certainly hadn’t won.
* * *
An officer could raise his voice when the situation warranted, could swear a bloody streak, drink himself into oblivion, and order some miscreant flogged for serious transgressions.
A husband and father had no such outlets, not with children sleeping in the next room and a wife who looked so lovely and sad nursing her infant that Percival wanted to tear his hair in panic.
In his arms, Esther felt light as a wraith, and her very docility scared him worse than the French, the Indians, or the wild creatures of the Canadian forest ever had. She offered not even a “Percival Windham, put me down,” across the length of the entire house—and with such a precious burden, he did not hurry.
He deposited her beside their bed then divested her of her robe. “To bed, madam, and you will sleep in tomorrow. If you are fatigued, and you refuse to consult medical authority, then you will submit to myauthority when I tell you to rest.”
His authority was nonexistent with her. He’d known that before they married and had delighted in her independence. A man in love was a fool.
While he tried to glower at her—please God, let his glowers be more effective with the children than they were with his wife—she met his gaze. He knew that look, knew that obdurate, mulish expression, and felt a predictable response to the challenge it portended. His blood quickened in anticipation of a great row—maybe their most rousing argument so far—when Esther slowly, deliberately, crossed her arms and inched her nightgown up over her head.
Sweet suffering Christ. Like a damned upstart colonial, she was launching a sneak attack.
“I’ve missed you, Percival. Perhaps you’d like to get into this bed with me.”
She flung the words at him like a gauntlet, an accusation of intentional neglect that was not at all fair. Then the infernal woman plastered herself—her entire naked, warm, lithe self—against him and took his mouth in a kiss.
“Esther…”
Holy God, she felt wonderful. His hand, sliding down the elegant turn of her flank, gloried in the absence of flannel and propriety. Could a man’s hands be hungry? For his surely were—for the feel of her, for the exact contours and shifts of her muscle and bone beneath his palms. Her nudity, so rare in recent months, topped any argument his reason might have put forth about their mutual need for rest, or a man not pestering his wife beyond the necessary.
This was necessary. It was necessary that Percival fling his clothes away between kisses; it was necessary that he heave his wife onto the bed like he hadn’t since the early weeks of their marriage. It was as necessary as his next breath that he climb over her and trap her body beneath his, the better to plunder her mouth with his own.
And then—because he was not just a husband and father, but also a man still in love, it was necessary that he try to exercise some damned restraint.
“I should find a sheath, Esther.” Though the sheaths were clear across the room, secreted somewhere in the wardrobe—halfway to Canada, according to the compass needle pointing directly at Percival’s wife.
She got her mouth on him again, sank her teeth into his jawbone, not enough to hurt, but enough to distract. “Sheaths break. Love me.” To emphasize her words, she traced his lower lip with her tongue, dipping inside his mouth then feinting back.
“Esther, I am concerned for—” Worried sick, he was. Somewhere beneath the tempest of passion she was evoking, he was worried for her, for their marriage, for his family. Nigh distraught with it.
His cock, however, was distraught in an entirely different and—just at that moment—more convincing manner.
“Love me.”
“I do. I do love you, dammit, but for the love of God, if you don’t stop—” He went on the offensive, covering her mouth with his own, trapping her hands beneath his against the pillow.
She went still, breasts heaving beneath him, a tease and retreat of puckered nipples against his chest. By the narrowing of her eyes, he realized she understood what even her breathingdid to him.
“I love you,” he said again, more softly. A plea this time. “Let me love you.”
She closed her eyes, as much surrender as he would get from her in a duel he neither understood nor welcomed. When he kissed her cheek, the grip of her fingers in his shifted, became a joining of hands rather than a prelude to whatever sexual hostilities she had in mind when she’d challenged him with her nudity.
“I love you, Esther. I will always love you.”
Howto love her was becoming both increasingly obscure and increasingly more important.
Joining with her, though, remained within his gift, thank God. For a small eternity, he kissed her. He reacquainted himself with the texture of each of her features, used his lips and his nose—Esther had once admitted to an affection for his nose—to map her face. He used the tip of his tongue to trace her lips, then paused to rest his chin, then his cheek, against her hair.
He loved her hair, loved the golden abundance of it spilling over her shoulders before she trussed it up in thick, shiny braids.
When she began small, restless movements of her hips, he settled between her legs and by lazy, comforting increments, threaded himself into her body.
How had he forgotten this? How had he lost the memory of that first, beautiful, soft sigh near his ear when he pushed himself inside her?
Before they’d found a rhythm, before he’d given her a hint of satisfaction, he damned near spent, so startling was the depth of pleasure he found in his wife’s body. She flung herself against his thrusts, strained against him, and made a solid bid to wrestle Percival’s control from his grasp. While Percival held the balance between a ferocious determination to please his wife and the equally ferocious effects of sexual deprivation, he dimly perceived that something besides desire had Esther in its grip.
The first shudder went through her; then she bucked against him, signaling that he could follow her into pleasure. He thrust hard, then harder as she clung and moaned, then harder still.
His last thought—a desperate flight of imagination surely—was that Esther’s passion was real, but as she shook and keened and beneath him, she was wrestling not only with desire but also with despair.
Three
“Esther, this remove to Town has you looking peaked and wan. Percival must be beside himself.”
Gladys had sent word that another day cooped up at Morelands would give her a megrim, and Tony, apparently having a full complement of prudence and a mortal fear of his wife’s megrims, had collected his family from the country accordingly.
Having rested for all of one night, nothing would do but that Gladys would muster the troops for an outing to the park, regardless of the cold, regardless of anything.
“I haven’t bounced back from the upheaval,” Esther replied slowly. She could be honest because the boys were in the next coach back, with the maids and Gladys’s eldest daughter.
Gladys glanced over at her sharply. “From the move? You haven’t bounced back from the move up here?”
“Not from that either.” Dawning truth was not always a comfortable thing, but there was relief in it. “From Valentine’s birth, I think.”
The coach clattered along past the dormant trees and dead grass of Grosvenor Square. Gladys peered out the window then huffed a sigh.
“It was worse for me with Elizabeth. I thought I’d never stop weeping. Her Grace, of all people, was a comfort.”
The idea that Her Grace could have been a comfort to anybody was intriguing. “How?”
“She’d lost Eustace, you’ll recall, when he was only five. She said a mother must not give in to the melancholy, that your children will always be with you in some regard, despite that you must send them out into the world. I think she also cornered Tony and told him to cosset me within an inch of his life.”
“As if he doesn’t anyway?”
They shared a smile, though as conversation again lapsed, Esther marveled that she and Gladys hadn’t had this discussion before. Perhaps, with six children between them under the age of six, they’d been too busy.
Melancholy was a serious word, a potentially dangerous word. “I don’t weep, much. Hardly at all, but there’s a sense…”
Gladys barged into the silence. “Your heart aches abominably after the baby arrives. When I was girl, we used to go to Lyme in the summer. I’d stand on the beach in my bare feet and let the water swirl about my ankles. After Elizabeth was born, I felt like something was dragging at my ankles the same way, taking all my happiness and pulling it out to sea. I’d cry at anything and nothing.”
In for a penny… “Did you faint?”
“Not until Charlotte came along.”
Another shared smile, nowhere near as merry.
“I don’t think I’m carrying again.” Though after last night… Last night had been a mistake in some senses, and much needed in others. Esther hadn’t completely sorted the whole business out, but she’d slept well, and she had not made arrangements to consult any physicians.
Nor had Percival brought it up again at breakfast.
“Esther, lower the shade.” Gladys reached over and unrolled the leather that covered the window.
“Why are we shutting out the last sunshine we might see for days?”
“Because that beastly O’Donnell woman was sitting in her open carriage, flirting right there in the street with some poor man.”
“She must earn her living too, Gladys.” Esther could be charitable, because Percival had assured her early in their marriage—early and often—that he’d been ready to divest himself of the drama and greed of professional liaisons.
At the time, she’d believed him. Through a crack between the window and the shade, Esther studied Cecily O’Donnell, one of Percival’s former mistresses—the tabbies had been all too happy to inform a new bride exactly where her competition might lie. The lady’s coiffure was elaborate and well powdered, a green satin caleche draped over it just so. Her white muff was enormous, her attire elegant to the point of ostentatious, and in her eyes there was a calculation Esther could see even from a distance of several yards.
The carriage rolled past Mrs. O’Donnell’s flirting swain, and Esther thought of Percival’s words from the previous night: I do love you. I’ll always love you.
She’d believed him then. She still believed him in harsh light of the winter day.
* * *
“Good of you to receive me, Kathleen.”
Percival bowed over the hand of a woman he had seen little of in the previous five years, and had seen every inch of prior to his marriage. Her hands were still soft, her smile gracious, and her modest house welcoming.
And yet, she had aged. The life of a courtesan was a life of lies, of making the difficult look easy and fun, when it was in truth dangerous and grueling. Percival knew that now, now that he was married.
Or maybe he’d always known it, only now he could afford to admit his part in it.
Kathleen St. Just rose from a graceful curtsy. “My lord, you look well. May I offer you refreshment?”
He loathed tea, and he did not want to consume anything under her roof for reasons having to do with Greek legends regarding trips through the underworld. He parted with her hand.
“Nothing for me, and I won’t take up much of your time. I trust you are well?”
She glanced around the room, which, now that he studied it, was also showing a few signs of wear. By candlelight, the frayed edge of the Turkey carpet would not be obvious, nor would the lighter rectangle on the wall where a painting had hung.
In the harsh light of day, the decor had deteriorated significantly.
“I’m well enough. I hear you are a papa now.” She led him to a sofa Percival recognized from his visits here more than five years ago. He sat as gingerly as he could, having taken his pleasure of the lady more than once upon its cushions.
This sortie was proving damned awkward, but sending a note would not do.
“I am blessed with four healthy sons, if you can believe it.”
She considered him. Her hair was still a rich, dark auburn, her eyes a marvelous green. Even without her paint and powder—especially without it—she was a beautiful woman, and yet… the bloom was off her. She’d been, in cavalry parlance, ridden hard and put away wet too many times, and all the coin in the world could not compensate her for that.
“And your lady wife? How does she fare?”
The question was a polite reminder that Kathleen St. Just did not permit married men among her intimate admirers—or she hadn’t five years ago. Percival had liked that about her—respected her for it.
“It’s about my lady wife that I have presumed to come to you.”
He rose, the damned sofa being no place to discuss Esther’s problems.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to drink, my lord?”
My lord? She’d seldom my-lorded him in the past, but there was comfort in the use of the title now. Kathleen was a fundamentally considerate woman, something he hadn’t appreciated enough as a younger man.
“Nothing, thank you.” He paced away from her to peer out her back window. In spring, her tiny yard was a riot of flowers, but now it was a bleak patch of dead, tangled foliage and bare earth, with a streak of dirty snow by the back fence. “I need advice, Kathleen, and information, and I cannot seek them from the usual sources.”
“I will not gossip with you, my lord. Not about anybody. I know how you lordly types like to revile one another by day then toast one another by night.”
He turned and smiled at her. “You know, my wife frequently takes that same starchy tone with me. I have always admired a formidable woman.”
He’d confused her with that compliment. Beautifully arched brows drew down. “Perci—my lord, what are you doing here?”
He admired women who could be direct, too.
“My lady wife is sickening for something, and she won’t consult a physician. She didn’t refuse me outright when I suggested it, but she has a way of not refusing that isa refusal. Whatever’s wrong with her, it’s female. You always had a tisane or a plaster to recommend when I was under the weather, and your remedies usually worked.”
Kathleen left the sofa too and went to the sideboard. None of the decanters were full—in fact, they each sported only a couple of inches of drink. Her hands on the glass were pale and elegant, though the image struck Percival as cold, too. He swung his gaze to the bleak little back garden, where a small boy was now engaged in making snowballs out of the dirty snow.
“You love your wife, I take it?” In the detachment of her tone, Percival understood that the question was painful for a woman who would likely never marry and never have any pretensions to respectability again.
He kept his gaze on the small boy pelting the back fence with dirty snowballs. The boy had good aim, leaving a neat row of white explosions against the stone wall at exactly the same height. “I love my wife very much, else I would not be here.”
Kathleen said nothing for a moment while the snowballs hit the wall, one after another. “Describe her symptoms.”
He did as best he could while the boy ran out of ammunition and knelt in the snow and mud to make more.
“Is she enceinte?”
Percival shook his head, much more comfortable watching the busy little soldier in the back garden than meeting Kathleen’s gaze. “She doesn’t smell as if she’s carrying.”
Kathleen came to stand at his shoulder. “What on earth does that mean?” A touch of their old familiarity infused the question. Just a touch.
“My wife always bears the scent of roses. I don’t know how she accomplishes this, because she doesn’t use perfume. Maybe it’s her soap or the sachets in her wardrobe. It’s just… her, her fragrance. Blindfolded, I could pick her out from a hundred other women by scent alone. When she’s carrying, there’s more of a nutmeg undertone to the scent. Very pleasant, a little earthier. I realized it with the second child, and it was true with the third and fourth, too.”
He glanced over at her and saw she was watching the boy too. The look in her eyes reminded him of Esther—whose name he had managed not to utter in this house—when she was nursing Valentine. Sad, lovely, and far, far away.
“My guess is nothing ails your lady that time will not put to rights, my lord. She is likely weakened by successive births and weary in spirit. My sister has nine children, my brother’s wife eight. You must be considerate of her and encourage her to rest, eat good red meat—organ meat, if she’s inclined. Steak and kidney pie or liver would be best. Under no circumstances should she be bled; nor should she conceive again until her health and her spirits are recovered. You should get her out for light exercise for her spirits—hacking out or walking, nothing strenuous.”
Esther loathed organ meat. He’d never once in five years seen her eat either liver or kidney.
“How long will it take her to recover?”
Kathleen crossed her arms and considered him. She was a tall woman and did not have to peer up but a few inches to meet his gaze. “You might ask a midwife, or one of those man-midwives becoming so popular among the titled ladies.”
“I’ve yet to meet a member of the medical profession not prone to gossip and quackery—unless you can suggest somebody?” This was what he’d come for—a reliable reference. The ladies of the demimonde could not afford to jeopardize their health, especially not in its female particulars.
“Let me think for a bit. If some names come to mind, I can send them to you.”
“That would be appreciated.” It would also let him end this very awkward interview. As Percival gave Kathleen his direction, the little boy had abandoned his play and disappeared from the back garden. Percival wondered vaguely to whom the child belonged, that he was allowed to play unsupervised on a day that was growing colder, for all it was sunny.
Kathleen showed him to the door, and in her eyes, Percival might have seen either disappointment or relief that he was going.
The entry hall was devoid of flowers—Kathleen had always loved flowers. That he knew this about her was both melancholy and dear in a sentimental sense that made him feel old.
He paused as he pulled on his gloves. “Kathleen, do you need anything? Is there something I might do for you?”
No servants, no flowers. Scant drink in the decanters, paintings likely pawned… She was succumbing to the fate of all in her profession who overstayed their dewiest youth.
She looked haunted, like she might have asked him for a small loan then loathed herself—and him—for sacrificing this last scrap of pride to practicalities. A door banged down the hallway, and the small boy came pelting against Kathleen’s skirts.
The lad said nothing, but turned to face Percival with a glower worthy of many a general. The knees of his breeches were wet and muddy, his hair was an unkempt, dark mop, and his little hand—red with cold—clutched a fistful of his mother’s skirt.
“Hello, sir.” Percival said. This fellow looked to be about Bart’s age, perhaps a bit older, and every bit as stubborn—which was good. Boys should be stubborn. “A pleasant day to you.”
Kathleen smoothed her hand over the lad’s hair and said something to him in Gaelic. The boy looked mutinous, but swept a bow and muttered “G’day, m’lord.” The glower never faltered.
As Percival took his leave, he realized why he’d felt such an immediate affection for the pugnacious young man: Kathleen’s son had the exact same shade of green eyes that Percival’s own boys shared. The same stubborn chin Gayle sported, the same swooping eyebrows Victor had had since birth, the same tendency to muddy his knees Bart delighted in.
Amazing how small boys could come from such different stations and be so alike.
* * *
Mama grabbed Maggie by her shoulders and turned her forcibly toward the water. “Those boys are your brothers.”
There were two of them, scavenging the verge for rocks to throw at the ice forming along the edge of the Serpentine. One boy was blond, the other had hair several shades darker than Maggie’s red hair, and both—like most boys—were good at throwing rocks.
“I would rather have sisters.” Sisters would not be doing something as silly as breaking ice that was just going to form again.
Mama’s fingers pinched uncomfortably on Maggie’s shoulders. “Be glad at least one of them is male. Your papa’s papa and your papa’s older brother are in poor health and failing rapidly, but should one of them outlive your father, that blond boy will become the next duke.”
Mama sounded fiercely glad about this. Maggie had no idea why. From what little she knew, being a duke was also silly.
“Who is that lady?”
“That pale Viking creature is your papa’s wife, and may he have the joy of her.” Mama fairly snarled this information. Maggie would have bruises from the way Mama gripped her shoulders now.
“And the other lady?”
“Lord Tony’s wife, your papa’s sister-by-marriage. Why Lord Tony married a horse-faced Valkyrie when he could have had his pick of the heiresses escapes me. Windham men are headstrong. Remember that.”
Remember it for when? Unease shivered down Maggie’s limbs along with the cold. “I need the necessary.”
Mama shook her. “No, you do not. I told you to go before we got in the coach.”
Which had been ages ago, since Mama had taken to lurking in the park and rolling around Mayfair by the hour, hoping to catch another glimpse of Maggie’s papa.
And yet, Maggie wanted desperately to get away from those laughing, rock-throwing boys and the pretty blond lady smiling at her red-haired friend. Their very joy and ease made Maggie anxious.
“I really do have to go, Mama. I’m sorry.”
Of course, Mama slapped her. A slap against a cold cheek had a particular pain to it, a sting and a burn made worse for the frigid air. Maggie would remember that, and she would not cry—crying was for babies.
“You vile little rat,” Mama hissed. “Everything I do, every single thing, is for your benefit, and yet you must whine and carry on and foil all my plans. I should have left you as a foundling on the steps of the lowest church in the meanest slum—”
Maggie cringed away, expecting the inevitable backhanded blow, but down by the water, the boys were no longer throwing rocks. They were staring at her and at Mama. They weren’t laughing anymore.
“They’re watching you, Mama.”
All of them, the boys, the two ladies, a nursemaid who had a tiny girl by the hand, a footman near the boys, and a second nursemaid. All of them had gone still, watching Mama raise her hand to strike Maggie again.
That hand lowered slowly and straightened the collar of Maggie’s cape. “Let them watch. The performance is just beginning. Come along.”
Maggie had to run to keep up with Mama on the way back to the coach, run or be dragged. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the boys were still watching, and so was the tall blond lady.
Papa’s wife was pretty, and she looked worried—for Maggie. The lady kept watching until Mama bundled Maggie into the coach, and even as the coach pulled away, Maggie peered out the window and saw her watching still.
When I grow up, I want to be a Viking creature too.
* * *
Esther regarded her husband over a glass of hearty red wine—she preferred white, but somebody had mixed up the menus, so a roast of beef had been served instead of fowl.
“Have another bite, my dear.” She obligingly nibbled from the fork he proffered. “Did you enjoy the outing to the park today?”
“I did, and I think the boys did too, very much.” She had enjoyed most of it, despite the chill. She was also enjoying her husband’s attentions, which had been marked throughout the meal. “Is there a reason we’re dining in our chambers, Percival?”
“Tony and Gladys sought some privacy.”
This had the ring of an improvised untruth. Tony and Gladys found privacy throughout the day, and sometimes didn’t bother to find privacy when they ought. Esther munched another bite of perfectly prepared beef and cast around for a way to brace her husband on the day’s events.
“And what did you find to do with yourself today, Percival?”
He studied the next bite of beef skewered on the silver fork. “This and that. Have you given any more thought to consulting a physician?”
“I have not.” Nor would she, not when all that ailed her was a crushing fatigue and a passing touch of maternal melancholia. “You’re neglecting your meal, sir.”
He studied braised carrots swimming in beef juices. “Peter has not left his chambers since we departed for Town. He doesn’t come down for meals.”
Esther’s ire at Percival’s mention of a physician faded. She spoke as gently as she could. “Hectoring me to see a doctor will not restore your brother’s good health, Husband.”
He sat back, his expression unreadable. “Will you come riding with me tomorrow? Take a short turn in the park at midday?”
He was up to something, though Esther had no idea what. Percival worried about Peter, about the duke, about the infantry in the colonies, and about the king’s health.
And her husband worried about her.
“Of course, I’ll ride with you, weather permitting.” She’d be in the saddle by midday if she had to be carried to the mews. “Have you given any more thought to a seat in the Commons?”
That was stab in the dark, because no matter how she studied him and reviewed the day’s events, Esther could not fathom what burr had gotten under Percival’s saddle. Peter had taken to his bed before, and Arabella jollied him out of it eventually.
They finished the meal in silence, and when the dishes had been removed, Percival confirmed Esther’s suspicion that he was pursuing some objective known only to him—for now.
“I’m for bed, Wife. You will join me?”
She’d like nothing better, unless it was to have an honest answer from him regarding his present preoccupation. Not until they were in bed, side by side and not touching, did it occur to Esther that her husband might be feeling guilty.
Last night might have resulted in conception—it probably had, in fact. They were that fertile—that blessed—as a couple.
“Percival?”
“My dear?”
“Do you regret last night?” She could ask that in the dark. She could not ask him what was wrong and what she could do to help him with it. Beneath the covers, she felt his fingers close around her hand.
“I could never regret making love to my wife.”
Another prevarication, though not exactly an untruth. Esther rolled against his side, hiked a leg over his thighs, and felt his arms encircle her. She remained silent, and that was a form of prevarication too.
What Esther wanted to say, the words that were burning to fill the darkness of that bedroom, had to do with a single, sharp moment etched into her memory from their visit to the park.
Cecily O’Donnell had emerged from her coach when the boys had vanquished a patch of ice along the Serpentine bank. She had towed a small child with her. A girl sporting hair as red as Mrs. O’Donnell’s was revealed to be beneath her striking green caleche.
Esther had been helpless not to watch as the solemn child had regarded Bart and Gayle hurling their rocks, laughing, and carrying on like boys who’d been cooped up too long.
The girl was stoic, not succumbing to tears even when slapped stoutly by her mother—for she had to be Mrs. O’Donnell’s child. She had her mother’s generous mouth, had her mother’s red hair. If Esther had to guess the girl’s age, she’d place her a year older than Bartholomew at least, based on height and also on a certain gravity of bearing. She was pretty now and destined for greater beauty in a few years.
