A Gamble on Love (30 page)

“
Shall I ring for a hot toddy?” she
inquired anxiously.

“
I’ve already had two,” Thomas
admitted. “Relia?”

“
Yes?” Eyes wide with concern, his wife
awaited his next words.

“
There is something you might do . .
.”

“
Anything,” she declared
earnestly.

“’
Tis said there’s nothing as effective
as body heat in warming up someone who is well nigh
frozen.”

His wife blinked. Her gaze plummeted to her
toes. “Thomas,” she whispered, “I am not quite certain what you
mean.”

“
You know exactly what I mean.” Instead
of blushing, she turned pale. As if his bed were occupied by a
ghost. A venal one, at that. “Be a good girl and lock the doors,
Relia. The candidate would like a few moments alone with his wife.
God knows I’ve earned them,” he added softly, but not so softly she
did not hear him.

Relia considered swatting him with a pillow,
but decided, in all fairness, that he was probably right. Nor was
she anxious to return to the days of their constant sparring. There
were moments, like this one, when the wise woman kept her silence.
Even if it meant . . .

She marched with deliberate step,
crisscrossing the bedchamber to lock both the dressing room and
sitting room doors. But her step slowed, the brave set of her
shoulders slumped as she turned back toward her husband’s imposing
bed. He looked her up and down, shook his head. “Skin to skin,
that’s the only remedy,” he told her. “Turn around, so I can do
your buttons.”

To his surprise, she approached the bed,
meekly turned and presented her back. Thomas nearly stopped
breathing. In his eagerness he fumbled the task, yet somehow her
gown slipped off her shoulders, fell away. “Leave it,” he ordered.
“No hands,” he added as she criss-crossed them over her thin
chemise, eyeing him askance. If that was the only undergarment she
had worn at the Festival, she needed warming as much as he!
Incredible. She wasn’t even wearing stays.

Thomas lifted the thick pile of bedcoverings,
silently inviting his wife to join him. Truthfully, he was so hot
he needed a dose of cool flesh to slow him down, keep him from
frightening the dear girl to death.

Heart pounding, but spirit willing,
Relia snuggled down beside him.
A-ah!
Poor darling, he must indeed be freezing,
for there was a part of him that seemed as stiff as a board. Men
were built very oddly, it seemed. Her lips curved in a soft, secret
smile. It was high time she discovered the why of male
anatomy.

Mr. Lanning was all too willing to
demonstrate.

~ * ~

Mrs. Thomas Lanning and Miss Olivia Lanning
stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the foot of the wooden steps that led
up to the hustings. Both ladies were clad in the bright blue velvet
pelisses and off-the-face hats with scarlet ostrich plumes that had
been worn so frequently over the past weeks that they were now
familiar friends instead of garments to be despised. Beside them
was Master Nicholas Lanning, who had blossomed into such a
quick-witted and competent young man during the campaign that few
doubted he would one day follow in his brother’s footsteps. All
three kept their eyes fixed on the Whig candidate as he ascended
the steps, stated his name, proclaimed his occupation as investment
counselor, avowed he was a freeman, resident of the parish of
Peven, and qualified to vote in said election. He then moved on to
the table manned by a solemn-faced polling clerk and, in a voice
that boomed out over the hushed crowd, stated that he voted for
Thomas Lanning, the Blue and Red candidate for Member of
Parliament.

A great cheer went up. A signal from Patrick
Fallon, and the first parade of voters came marching up the street
toward the market square, banners flying, feet synchronized to the
tune of a lively band of musicians. It was the delegation of hops
workers from Pevensey Park. Similar arrivals had been carefully
scheduled to enliven the voting over the next six days, in addition
to catching the attention of those laggard electors who had not yet
made up their minds.

After Candidate Lanning descended from the
platform, beaming and catching outstretched hands proffered from
all directions, he and his family were whisked off into the
relative quiet of a private dining room at The Hound and Bear,
where they sank gratefully into chairs around a table piled high
with food and drink. No one could ever say Mr. Carleton Westover
did not know how to manage every aspect of a campaign.

“
Almost over,” Thomas said to his wife,
with a wink that promised so much more.

Although the candidate and his wife had
reached an accommodation in the bedroom, Aurelia Trevor Lanning had
not given up her spirit. “All this,” she sighed into the quiet that
ensued as the others turned their attention to the high-mounded
plates of food, “for a job that pays not a single ha’penny.”

Hands froze in mid-air. Everyone stared.
Thomas burst into laughter. From Carleton Westover down to Nicholas
Lanning, the Whig campaigners, reassured that Mrs. Lanning was
merely funning, joined in the general amusement.

“
How fortunate that I married you,”
Thomas drawled, “for I have no doubt Westover has gone through my
entire fortune.”

“
Thomas!” that gentleman protested, “we
have spent a mere pittance compared to some campaigns I’ve
managed.”

“
And more to come, I fear,” said
Patrick Fallon. “We haven’t heard the last of Trevor’s bully boys,
and I’d swear Gravenham has a trick or two left up his
sleeve.”

“
But the voting has begun,” Nick
said.

“
Six days, lad. Six days,” said Mr.
Westover. “We’re allowed up to fifteen, but this borough has a
tradition of managing the matter in six. And campaigning continues
as long as there’s a voter who has not climbed the hustings.
Anything may yet happen.”

And, of course, it did.

“
Thomas, Thomas! It’s Charles. Wake
up!” Although Mr. Saunders was well pleased by the reconciliation
of his friend and his wife, on this, the eve of the fifth day of
voting, their recent practice of locking all three doors into the
hallway was a confounded nuisance.

Thomas dragged himself to awareness, fumbled
to light a candle, then gazed down at his wife, who was also awake,
eyes wide with anxiety. “I doubt the house is about to burn down
about our ears,” he assured her, “and all else we can manage.” He
brushed a kiss across her lips, threw on his dressing gown and
padded barefoot through her dressing room, where he opened the door
and peeked down the hall. “Wrong portal, Charles,” he called with a
wry grin to his friend who was pounding on his own dressing room
door.

“
This is not the time for humor,” Mr.
Saunders grumbled, after jogging down the hall to meet his
employer. “Gravenham has brought in men who are pitching tents on
all the abandoned properties he owns. He’s given them snatch papers
to attest their right to vote. Big Mike just sent a messenger,
wanting to know what he should do.”

“
Clever devil,” Thomas murmured,
rubbing his stubbled chin. “Tents, you say?”

“
Yes. ’Tis enough to show the land is
occupied. Devious, but legal. Each and every one of them has papers
from Gravenham stating they have the right to vote that burgage
property. Temporary, of course. That’s why they’re called snatch
papers.”

“
Do we not have a hundred and more
votes coming down from London in the morning?”

“
We do, but I cannot like the earl’s
maneuvering. ’Tis not fair to invoke old rights that have fallen
into disuse for good reason. Empty land should not have a
vote.”

“
Ah, Charles, you would back me into a
corner.” Thomas frowned and shook his head. “I must think of
Captain Fortescue and his family and the years to come when we must
all live together in this borough, Whigs, Tories, and Independents
alike.”

“
And I say Gravenham has gone too far,”
declared Relia from over his shoulder. “You will win, Thomas, and
you must begin as you mean to go on. In this borough the electors
should be freemen and freemen only. Marcus Yelverton broke
Gravenham’s stranglehold on the voters. You must make sure it stays
that way. Is that not what the reform you want is all
about?”

“
Bloodthirsty wench,” Thomas murmured,
reaching behind him to draw his wife close. “Very well, Charles.
Tell Big Mike that I find tents a disturbance to the fine Kentish
landscape. And I also believe we should do these snatch visitors
the courtesy of preventing them from freezing their— From
freezing,” Mr. Lanning hastily amended, dropping his voice. “Tents,
snatch papers, and men are to be gone before the polls open in the
morning . . . but with as few cracked heads as possible, if you
please.”

“
It’s done!” After a decisive nod,
Charles Saunders made an abrupt turn and strode off down the main
hallway at a rapid clip.

Thomas closed and locked the door, then swept
his wife back through her dressing room to the warmth of her large
bed, where they promptly encased themselves inside the screen of
peach velvet bedhangings, newly fixed in place. The bedhangings
that had once been such a bone of contention. The candidate rolled
onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow and leaned over the
vague pale shadow that was his wife’s face. “Now that we’re awake .
. .,” he said, his warm breath fanning across her cheek.

“
Thomas?”

“
Yes, my dear?” He nuzzled her ear,
trailed butterfly kisses over her cheek, pulled aside the stiff
white cotton of her winter nightwear to press lips of fire to her
neck, her shoulder—

“
Thomas!” The palms of two small hands
delivered a surprisingly firm shove to his chest. “There is
something I must say to you,” Relia gasped. “I attempted to do so
earlier, but you . . . we were . . .um . . .”

“
Distracted?” Thomas suggested. “Like
this, I believe.” And kissed her full on the lips.

His wife pounded him on the back. “Stop it!
There is something I must tell you before the votes are counted,
and there is not much time left.”

“
Oh, very well, if you must.” With a
great sigh, the Whig candidate subsided onto his pillow.

“
Well . . .,” his wife whispered into
the darkness. “I want you to know—” She clasped her hands tightly
on her chest, took a shuddering breath. “Ah . . . this is so much
more difficult than I had thought! No wonder you have never told
me—” She drew a deep breath, began again. “It is quite simple,
really. I sought long and hard for a dragonslayer. When I finally
found him, I tolerated that he was a man of City because I had need
of him. At least that is what I told myself. The truth is . . . the
simple truth is I took one look at you and knew that, for all the
odd looks you cast my way, you would do. More than do.”

Relia reached out, ran soft fingers down her
husband’s arm. “But it was only recently,” she admitted in a rush,
having gained courage from the feel of him, “that I realized I
loved you. That I will love you, win or lose. That I wish to bear
your children, grow old with you—”

With a groan Thomas took his wife in his
arms, his mouth devouring hers in a kiss so intense they both
forgot to breathe. When, after at last gasping for air, Thomas
found his voice, out tumbled all the words he had hoarded up over
the long months when he had been certain his wife scorned all but
his abilities as a knight errant. Among them was the admission that
he, too, had fallen in love at first sight. And was almost equally
blind in recognizing that tender emotion for what it was. “Do you
suppose,” he said in one of those maddeningly analytical moments to
which political candidates tend to be addicted, “that Westover and
Miss Aldershot ever feel like this?”

“
Thomas!”

“
Your captain and Mrs.
Edmundson?”

“
He’s not my captain!”

“
Good. Then he can live,” declared Mr.
Lanning, expansively.

“
I pray you, Mr. Candidate, do not let
the election go to your head.”

“
Unlikely, for I shall always have you
to remind me of my shortcomings, Mrs. Job-with-No-Pay.”

Relia chuckled, then instantly sobered. “Do
you truly love me, Thomas, or was that just another campaign
promise?”

“
You have forgotten something, my love.
Women don’t have the vote.”

“
Oh. Then kiss me again, my princely
Cit. We’ll work on the rights of women another day.”

In the By-Election for the seat held by Mr.
Marcus Yelverton, the Whig MP, Thomas Lanning, won by a decisive
margin. He endured the “chairing” with right good will, carried
through the streets of Lower Peven in a chair festooned with blue
and red streamers behind an honor guard of equally gaudily attired
horses and riders. Fortunately, the occasional brick and roof
slate, thrown by die-hard adherents of Mr. Twyford Trevor,
missed.

~ * ~

Aurelia Trevor Lanning sat on the marble
bench in the rotunda and gazed out over Pevensey Park in near
perfect contentment. It was mid July, and the countryside was so
breathtakingly lovely that it might have been the product of some
beatific dream. But, in spite of the verdant landscape, the soft
warmth of the breeze whiffling around her face, and memories of
countless political picnics over the last twelve years, one
long-ago Winter Festival captured her thoughts. Those horrifying
moments when she had thought Thomas lost beneath the icy black
water. The look on his face—hopeful but wary—when he had lifted his
bedcovers, inviting her in. The moment, a few nights later, when
they had each shed the last barriers between them and admitted—