Free Claimed by the Rogue by Hope Tarr

comedy, their romantic entanglements had been sorted to the supreme happiness of all parties—or so it had seemed.  
    Chelsea’s face, more radiant than any candle, proclaimed her to be a well-satisfied wife. “Married life must agree with you,” he conceded. “You’re more beautiful than ever.”
    She let out a laugh. “At the moment I only know I feel large as a house. You, on the other hand, look as though you’ve lost a stone.” Shifting to face him, she poked a finger in the vicinity of his belly.
    He fell back against the headboard. Two years’ enslavement in the granite quarry had chiseled away anything of him that was soft or surplus, firming his will to survive along with his body. “Mind you don’t let Caleb hear you say that. He takes great pride in having fattened me up.” It was thanks to Caleb’s regimen of strengthening herbs that Robert could no longer count his ribs or feel the knobs of his vertebrae when he lay abed.  
    “Who is Caleb?”
    He hesitated. How to explain the complexity of their relationship in terms his very English sister might understand?  
    “Caleb is my manservant, though our relationship is more complex than that. We are bound in ways no European master and servant would ever be. I saved his life and now he insists that it belongs to me. For what it’s worth, I consider him a friend, almost a brother.”
    She reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “I shall look forward to meeting him. For the moment, you’ll forgive me if I can’t seem to think much beyond my next meal. Come below with me, and we’ll raid the pantry as we used to when we were children. You can regale me with your adventures,” she added as though speaking of his travels and travails were some sort of inducement.
    Quite the opposite, Robert had hoped to postpone the inevitable questioning at least until the morrow. “Anthony won’t have my head for keeping you up?”
    Already on her feet, she laughed. “Not if I tell him it was all my idea, which happens to be the truth. At this stage, I only sleep in snatches. The poor man can only profit from a few hours’ freedom from my tossing and turning.”
    Whereas most couples of their class slept separately, an adjoining dressing closet serving as a discrete portal for conjugal calls, Chelsea and Montrose must still share a bed. Once Robert had taken it for granted that he and Phoebe would enjoy a similarly passionate, unconventional union. Now he was no longer so certain.
    Tucking in his shirttail, he followed her over to the door. “Very well, lead the way.”
    Like the truant children they once had been, they tiptoed through the corridor. A servant’s passageway and a steep set of plain back stairs brought them to the basement, a spare, tidy space of flagstone flooring and plain plaster walls. Few ladies of rank would condescend to come in to this humble area of the house, but Chelsea had always abided by her own rules, not those of society. She navigated the low-ceilinged labyrinth with the foot surety born of familiarity, steering them through scullery, laundry, china pantry, larder and lastly into the kitchen.  
    “Sit.” Crossing to the meat safe, she motioned him to the planked pine table bracketed by backless benches, but Robert stayed standing.  
    “You’ll pardon me if I don’t fancy being waited upon by my pregnant sister.”
    Ignoring her fussing, he found the flint box and set to work resurrecting the banked fire. The parlor and other rooms relied upon coal for heat, but Chelsea’s kitchen followed the English culinary tradition of cooking over wood. Though he hadn’t much occasion for fire-making in the Orient, he’d hardly forgotten how. He’d soon raised a cheerful blaze and set the kettle on the hob to heat.
    Sometime later they sat across from one another, crumbs all that remained of their impromptu feast of Stilton cheese, crusty country bread and thinly sliced roast beef. Robert hadn’t thought he was hungry, but