“I do,” he drawled. He’d come to know Katherine enough to know nothing would deter her from whatever she endeavored to do.
“And you’ll not issue any further complaint on the matter?” She eyed him with the skepticism of one who expected she was being tricked in some way or another.
“Katherine, would any complaints on my part yield a different outcome?”
She chewed at her lower lip. The wind caught a brown ringlet. It fell across her eye. She blew it back. “No.”
He gave a curt nod, and shifted his bundle.
“I should also inform you now, husband,” he’d noted she seemed to use the term husband when she was upset with him. “I intend to celebrate with a great Yule log and a magnificent feast,” she said as they stomped through the snow.
The British would be wise to turn his relentless wife upon the French to halt Boney’s mad efforts of domination. The bloody French would be powerless when faced with Katherine’s steely resolve.
Lost to his own ponderings, it took a moment for Jasper to realize Katherine no longer walked beside him. He paused, and turned back around.
Katherine stood frozen in the winter landscape.
“What is it?” The quiet of the winter storm carried his words with a false loudness.
“I don’t even know what you eat.” Her warm breath blended with the cold, and sent little puffs of white air past those plump lips.
“What I eat?” A branch fell from his arm, and Jasper cursed. He bent down to pick it up. With her abrupt shifts in conversation, Katherine would drive him madder than a Bedlamite.
She gestured with her hands. “Well, that is to say, I do not know what your favorite meals are. It just seems like the thing a woman should know about her husband.” Red color slapped her cheeks. Katherine glanced down at the snow, and scuffed the tip of her black boot along an undisturbed patch of earth. “Not that we have a true marriage, of course.”
An overwhelming desire to take her in his arms and explore each corner of her body, filled him. With her clever and courageous spirit, Katherine was so vastly different than any young lady he’d ever known.
A snowflake landed on the tip of her nose. She stared at it until her eyes crossed in the middle.
He shifted his branches and brushed away the moisture.
Katherine widened her eyes, seeming as startled as he himself was by his touch.
Jasper turned around and resumed walking.
He knew the moment she’d reached his side, not simply because of the crunch of snow under the heels of her serviceable boots but because his body seemed to have developed an innate sense of awareness. Perhaps it came of a bond shared from saving a person from certain death, or perhaps it was something more, something he could not allow himself to think of.
“I prefer roast chicken,” she continued, “and croquettes of sweetbread. I adore them served hot with a slice of lemon.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mother detests lemons and is always insisting Cook finish the sweetbread with parsley, but sometimes Cook will set aside a dish served with lemon just for me, and I’ll sneak down to the kitchens late at night. Of course, the sweetbread is no longer hot at that point, but the gesture is a lovely one, don’t you think?”
He believed his wife talked—a lot.
“If you’ve not given a consideration for the Christmas meal,” she went on.
“I have not,” he said curtly.
“Then, perhaps you’ll allow me to see to the preparations with Cook,” she said, as though he’d not even spoken.
They reached the base of the hill, and started down the path Jasper had followed when he’d first set out in search of Katherine. Only now, a fresh cover of snow had covered all trace of his boot steps.
“And of course, no feast would be complete without a splendid dessert.”
“Of course.”
At his dry response, Katherine shot him a sideways glance. She pressed her lips tight together, and jerked her chin up a notch in clear displeasure.
The swirling wind, and the freshly-fallen snow turned up by their steps the only sounds in the silence, it struck him then, how just the sound of her voice filled him with a lighthearted enjoyment he’d thought forever lost. He mourned the absence of her words, spoken with such enthusiasm.
They continued on. By the stiff set to his wife’s shoulders and the swiftness of her step, he deduced he’d earned his wife’s displeasure. And why shouldn’t she be annoyed? Always smiling and merry, she’d bound herself to him, a miserable, cold, unfeeling blighter.
The long drive came into focus. Jasper paused at the edge, even as Katherine marched ahead. “Turtle soup.” His voice echoed around them.