Kasey Michaels - How to Wed a Baron

“I’d rather he was eighty, and with one foot teetering over the grave, too crippled with gout and dissipated by drink to worry about such things as his new wife,” Alina said truthfully, for she saw nothing wrong with wishful thinking. “What am I supposed to do with a man no older than Luka? What will he want from me?”

Tatiana giggled, putting her pudgy hands to her mouth. “Should we tell her, Danica?”

“That is the job of the husband, and not for us to say. It is proper for a lady of breeding not to know—”

“About breeding?” Tatiana quipped, and then covered her smile with her hand.

“You have never been amusing, Tatiana Klammer,” the dresser said, turning her back to the woman, who promptly stuck her tongue out at her.

Alina sighed. It had been thus ever since they’d begun their journey, the two women always jabbing at each other, the dresser believing her position to be higher than that of mere paid companion, the companion believing the dresser was altogether too full of herself. She had begun to wish Danica had not accompanied them to England, for the woman was stiff, humorless and full of rules.

Plus, she clearly didn’t like her new mistress, something Alina couldn’t understand, because everyone liked her. Well, perhaps not Aunt Mimi, definitely not Aunt Mimi. But everyone else.

She closed the sketchbook and put it to one side. “That is not what I meant, Danica,” she said testily. “I don’t know if he will want my company and conversation, or if he will ignore me for the most part, as I hope, and allow me to go my own way. I already know he will kiss me and give me babies. My mama explained that to me years ago. It’s the only way to get babies. I asked her, and she told me. I am…resigned to that.”

As her mother had been dead these past three years, it could be wondered just how specific the lady had been with her explanations.

The way Danica rolled her eyes as she turned about once more, Alina now wondered exactly that herself.

“What? What did I say that is so impossible that you made that terrible face?”

“Danica means nothing, my lady,” Tatiana said quickly, and the dresser returned to her duties, laying out a pair of fine stockings with a flourish before dropping a rather insulting curtsy and leaving the room, muttering darkly under her breath.

“I don’t like her,” Alina told her companion, not for the first time. “And I don’t think she really wished to come here. I shall have her sent home immediately.”

“The Entschlossen sailed on the evening tide, my lady, along with all those handsome guardsmen. I saw it leave from this very window. You were sleeping, and I didn’t think to wake you. I would have, had I known you were planning to send Miss Pickles and Sour Cider packing.”

Alina slid off the side of the bed, her bare feet encountering the cool wooden planks. “Yes, well, there’s no use for it then, is there? She was Aunt Mimi’s choice, and she’d only have replaced her with someone even worse. We’ll have to make the best of things. You don’t suppose I could take a quick trip outside and find a nice fat toad to put in her bed?”

“Oh, my lady, you are such a joy to me,” Tatiana said, dropping to her knees and helping to fit a pair of satin slippers on Alina’s slender feet. “But so very young, for all your fine ways and wonderful ideas. Now I think you should tell me more about what it was your dear mother told you about kisses and giving babies.”

Alina sighed. “Then Danica didn’t pull that monkey face of hers simply to vex me, did she? What else do I need to know, Tatiana? I shouldn’t wish to have to ask the baron the time of day, so I most certainly don’t want him to be telling me anything else. He should believe I am a woman of the world.”

The companion, old enough to be Alina’s mother, but not accustomed to speaking frankly on a subject she knew about but, in her spinster state these past forty years, had no personal knowledge of, struggled to her feet once more.

“Husbands do not care to think of their brides as women of the world, my lady,” she said, avoiding Alina’s eyes. “They get really put out about it, as I’ve heard the thing. Best you should do as Danica says, I suppose, since your mother didn’t see fit to explain the way of the world to you, and let his lordship tell you. Not that Miss Uppity knows any more than me, for there was never a man eager enough to brave that one’s embrace. Be like bedding a board.”

Tatiana, an earthy woman for all she had been serving in the manor house for most of her life, ran her hands down over her own considerable curves, then hefted her massive breasts one at a time, so that they fit more comfortably above her corset. “Not that these things don’t get in the way, from time to time. Still, better a handful of these than those sorry pimples of Danica’s.”

Alina giggled. “You’ve got considerably more than a handful, Tatiana,” she said, and then sobered. Swallowed. Looked down at her own muslin-covered breasts that were somewhere between Danica’s pimples and Tatiana’s impressive largesse. “Why should that matter?”

“No reason, my lady,” the maid said hurriedly, pulling a handkerchief from between her bosoms and dabbing at her suddenly damp upper lip. “No reason at all, and I meant nothing by it, truly I didn’t. I could go to the kitchens and beg something for you to eat. You nary had a thing but some watered wine and dry biscuits pass your lips since this morning. The crossing was a mite choppy, and I didn’t eat anything, either, but I surely made up for that lack earlier. English food isn’t so terrible, my lady. Just let me nip off downstairs and—”

“Tatiana,” Alina intoned severely, hiding her apprehension. “I asked you a question. Why should it matter if a woman…if she has pimples or handfuls?”

“It’s…um…the thing is, my lady—your mother said kisses give you babies?”

Alina was beginning to feel very silly. “I saw Jurgen in the hallway behind the silver room one day, and he was kissing Astrid.”

“Astrid, is it? The girl is a round-heeled fool, tipping over for any who ask her.”

Round-heeled? And what did that mean? Silly was rapidly escalating to uncomfortable. “That’s neither here nor there, Tatiana. We’re much of the same age, and I thought I should know what she was doing, as it was…she seemed quite distressed. Moan…moaning and everything, and saying in this absurd voice, ‘Oh, yes, Jurgen, my stallion.’ Um…so I asked my mother, and she told me that Astrid was a very reckless and uncouth girl, and that kisses lead to babies, and that was why I should have nothing to do with kisses until I was married and my husband kissed me, as she had done with my father, and as good and chaste people have always done.”

Tatiana pulled a face, the more round-cheeked version of the same expression Danica had displayed a few minutes earlier. “And now Astrid has two babies and no husband. A stallion, indeed! Jurgen? But, see, my lady, your dear mother was correct in what she told you.” The maid turned companion sighed. “And that’s all she told you? Truly?”

“You know how ill she was, Tatiana. I could see that the subject distressed her, so I thanked her and left her to her prayer book. And…and then she was gone, and I had never dared to trouble her with more questions. I suppose I could have applied to Aunt Mimi, but I didn’t want her to…to know that I didn’t know. I…I’m supposing there’s more than just kisses, and I’ve heard things a time or two at court.” She shook her head in denial. “But they can’t possibly be true. Nobody would do that.”

Tatiana looked about the room, spying out the small table with a decanter of wine that had been sent up by the baron, whose man said that it was safer by far to sip wine than to get within ten feet of the inn’s supply of water unless it was for one’s bath. She hesitated only a moment before pouring herself a full glass and drinking the contents in three nearly desperate gulps.