Always the Bluestocking

by Murdoch, Emily E K

  The degree she had so recently been given slipped through her fingers, falling to the stage as Mariah gasped. Mind teeming with thoughts and heart overflowing with love. Marry him—become Patrick’s wife?

  It was the second thing she had ever wanted, and now he had given her both.

  He laughed as he picked up the degree and held it aloft. “I have no wish to say that we come as a pair, but if you refuse my hand, I will take it away!”

  Mariah laughed and pulled him to his feet. “Prepare yourself for many lessons, Patrick. Of course I will marry you.”

  His lips crushed hers, and she welcomed his passion, throwing her hands around his neck. He was everything to her, supporter, lover, advocate, friend. She had never believed it possible to find a gentleman who understood her, really understood her—but Patrick did not merely understand her but celebrated everything that she was.

  It was only when the cheers and laughter of the room registered that Mariah broke away from Patrick, her cheeks blazing.

  “I cannot believe how happy you have made me,” Patrick whispered, hands clasped around her waist, refusing to release her.

  Mariah sighed happily. “This is a new type of experiment we are undertaking, you know.”

  He nodded. “A very long one.”

  “For the rest of our lives.”

  Epilogue

  The carriage bumped heavily against the uneven road as it rushed around another corner, her hands pressed against the cushions as she attempted to remain steady. Her heart raced as lightning cracked overhead.

  Rain poured down as thunder answered the flash that had lit up the carriage mere moments ago.

  Was he following her? Her heart wrenched painfully at the thought. Surely he was; surely, he would make their rendezvous safely. He must have been able to escape the prison where they had been forced to spend day after day.

  The carriage almost tipped onto two wheels as it jolted around another corner. Had her last message been lost? Would she arrive at their destination and find herself completely alone?

  Her heart began breaking almost before the thought had finished in her mind. The idea that he would not be there to…

  Mariah took a deep breath and turned the page.

  It was a wild adventure chase, and if the length of the remaining book was any guide, it was all going to come to a head very soon. Surely the heroine could not be so gullible to believe it was possible to keep their escape attempt completely secret—but then, the terrible Sir David did not appear to be the smartest captor. Perhaps if she were lucky…

  Laughter interrupted Mariah’s concentration, and as she looked up wildly, it was with some surprise that there was another person in the room.

  Miss Priscilla Seton laughed again. “Mariah Wynn, you are meant to be getting married in less than an hour, and you are not even dressed yet?”

  Mariah’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room—which was showing a quarter to eleven.

  “You are right,” she said, stunned. “I am supposed to be at the church in forty-five minutes!”

  Carefully placing a bookmark in the novel she had been entirely lost in for the last hour, she put the book down and rose, conscious she was still in her dressing down.

  “I will admit, I completely lost track of time,” she said ruefully.

  Priscilla rolled her eyes. “I am aware of that, but if you do not wish to leave your future husband standing at the altar, a little concerned that you have decided after all not to wed him, we need to move, and quickly!”

  Before she could say another word, however, there was a banging at the door.

  “The bride is not ready yet!” Priscilla shouted.

  “Then tell the bride to put the book down!”

  Mariah sighed. “My brother believes himself to be a wit. I do apologize for him. He thinks he understands me.”

  Priscilla raised an eyebrow as she picked up the offending distraction. “He knew you well enough to know that you had been distracted by a book.”

  “Everyone who has met me could guess,” Mariah started to say, but she could not complete her sentence as a lady’s maid bustled in and started pulling away her dressing gown.

  It was impossible to speak as she and Priscilla forced Mariah into a corset, but it gave her some time to think—not that her thoughts were in any way organized.

  Marriage. She was getting married today, and to Patrick. She would cease to be Miss Mariah Wynn, and instead become Mariah O’Leary, Viscountess Donal.

  It was a heady thought, and not just because the corset was being tightened to within an inch of her life.

  “Remember, I will need enough breath to say ‘I do’!” she managed.

  “Stop complaining, Mariah,” Priscilla said distractedly as she carried the wedding gown over. “Arms up.”

  This was truly happening. She had dreamt about it so many times in the weeks leading up to this moment. Against all the odds, the sun was shining. The sun was out on the day she was to be married.

  “Are you feeling quite well, Mariah?”

  Priscilla’s words cut through her own thoughts, and Mariah nodded. “I will admit, I can barely believe that this day is happening. I did not even know I wished for this until it was before me.”

  She turned to allow the lady’s maid to tie up the gown and caught a wistful look on her friend’s face.

  “I cannot imagine what that feels like,” Priscilla said quietly. “Perhaps I will find out one day. Perhaps not.”

  It was such an intriguing statement that Mariah opened her mouth to inquire further, but she was interrupted by the door slamming open and a gentleman rushing in.

  Her brother was smiling. “So, I see you are not ready then.”

  Mariah frowned. “I am ready.”

  Edward Wynn looked her up and down and then shook his head. “I see no jewels, no feathers, silks, ribbons—”

  “I have no need for frippery nor silliness,” Mariah interrupted firmly.

  Her brother hesitated. It had only been a few months since they had begun to really understand each other as adults; there was so much pain here from when they had been children, and they still danced delicately around certain topics.

  But this was not one of those times. Edward pulled a blue velvet box from his pocket and opened it.

  Mariah gasped. Inside was a delicate single-tier pearl necklace. They shone in the sunlight, but without the gaudy glitter of diamonds.

  “This,” he said quietly, “was Mother’s. She asked me to give it to you on your wedding day.”

  Mariah reached out and touched the pearls.

  “I had planned to give it to you this Christmas if you had not wed by then,” her brother continued hesitantly. “It…it is important to me that you have it. Will you wear it today?”

  Her mouth had fallen open. She had never seen such a beautiful thing as this pearl necklace—her mother’s favorite. Their mother’s favorite.

  “I thought this had gone to Aunt Meredith,” she breathed, unable to consider removing the necklace from its box.

  “Aunt Meredith?” Edward shook his head. “She asked for it, but I removed it from Mother’s room before she could find it.”

  “She…Mother wanted me to have it.” Why were these words so hard to say? Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. Her mother would have wanted to be here this day, and it was painful that she was not, but this was a small part of her.

  And her brother—her brother had honored his mother’s request. She looked up and saw his wistful smile.

  “I miss her,” he managed.

  Mariah swallowed. “I would give almost anything to have her here today.”

  Edward removed the pearl necklace and placed it around her neck and then touched his chest where his heart was. “She is.”

  Someone cleared their throat. Both Edward and Mariah jumped, and Priscilla said apologetically, “I am sorry, but if we do not start for the church now, there will not
be a wedding. It is rather a challenge without a bride.”

  Mariah instinctively looked around for her book, and Edward laughed. “Mariah, this should be the one time you do not need to take a book with you to entertain yourself.”

  She smiled. “Old habits are rather difficult to shake off.”

  He offered her his arm, and it felt strange taking it. They had never been close, and this newfound rapport was taking some getting used to.

  “I like Patrick,” her brother said abruptly as they descended the stairs. “He seems a little wild, though. Reckless, perhaps.”

  Mariah nodded. “He is.”

  Edward opened the front door and chuckled. “You belong together, then.”

  The church was only a five-minute walk around the corner from her rooms. It was a little odd that she was getting married in Oxford, yet she could not imagine getting wed anywhere else.

  No one stared as they walked down the street. Why should they? She was not overly dressed in finery as many brides would be, and so they reached the church door with absolutely no incident.

  Mariah paused at the door. The gentle tug on his arm made Edward stop and examine her face.

  “You do not have to go through with this if you do not wish to,” he said quickly. “You will always have a home with us, with Letitia and me, if you want.”

  She shook her head eye. “No, ’tis not that. I am merely attempting to completely capture this feeling.”

  “Feeling?”

  The organ had started in the church. It bellowed out of the building and soared into the sky, and Mariah breathed it in.

  “This is the last time I will be purely a bluestocking and not a bride or wife,” she said, “and I wish to recall it for posterity.”

  Edward laughed. “You are so like a scientist, Mariah.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Not like a scientist. A scientist.”

  They walked down the aisle, and she was finally standing opposite Patrick O’Leary.

  He grinned and whispered in an Irish lilt, “Ye managed to put the book down, then?”

  “Why does everyone think,” Mariah began in a hiss, and then stopped. “Yes. Priscilla took it away from me.”

  Patrick snorted, and Charles Audley, his best man, glanced at him.

  The priest merely tutted under his breath and then began the service. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

  There were gasps throughout the church, and Patrick frowned. “You…you did tell your family that you had converted to Catholicism, did you not?”

  Viscount Donal was a Catholic, and his heirs must be the same. Mariah had been unattached to the Church of England and so had seen no complication. Her friends and relatives, on the other hand…

  “I may have told half and not the other half.”

  He chuckled. “Another experiment?”

  It was impossible not to smile. “Won’t it be fun to see how different their reactions are, later on?”

  “I am never going to get bored of you, am I?”

  “All evidence points to that result,” Mariah whispered. She reached for Patrick’s hand and was immediately reassured by his comforting warmth. No matter where they went, what he asked of her, what she asked of him, they would be together. She could fight the world by his side, or curl up with a good book and ignore the world completely, and he would support her.

  The vows were over before she knew, and she had to restrain herself from pulling him into her arms and kissing him wildly. Not in church.

  That restriction disappeared the moment they stepped out of the building, and she gave in to the temptation. He responded warmly, his arms around her, and they both ignored the cries of surprise from their guests.

  Who cared what the world thought? What did it matter if they danced to a different tune? They had each other, and that was all that mattered.

  By the time they had arrived at Wessex Hall—a perk of being a graduate, Patrick had whispered—the day was starting to feel real. There was a golden ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, and a string of pearls around her neck. No jewelry had ever felt so right.

  As they accepted the best wishes—or the scandalized remarks about the priest—from their loved ones, Mariah looked around the hall. Up and down the walls hung portraits of severe-looking individuals, some in wigs, a few bald, and all of them gentlemen.

  “One day,” she whispered to her husband during a lull of congratulations, “my portrait will be up there. Or a young lady like me.”

  “I have absolutely no doubt.”

  Minutes, hours sped by, and Mariah could barely count them. A troupe of musicians arrived after the food tables had been cleared, and she took to the floor with her husband by her side. When she had run out of breath, she dropped into a chair.

  Priscilla was beside her. “How does it feel to be a bride?”

  “Marvelous,” Mariah sighed. “Exhausting. Why do you not dance, Priscilla—I can see the Duke of Orrinshire there.”

  As though he had read her mind, Patrick had grabbed Charles’s arm and was pulling him over to them.

  “What, Charles?” Priscilla colored and laughed loudly. “I cannot dance with Charles! He is an engaged man.”

  “Dance?” Charles and Patrick had reached them, and the former barked a laugh. “I do not think my future wife would approve of such a thing!”

  “It simply would not be right,” declared Priscilla, flushed.

  “Absolutely not,” said Charles, but his gaze lingered on Priscilla before he walked away.

  Mariah looked at her friend and saw something akin to pain in her eyes. Before she could say a word, she was interrupted.

  “Miss Wynn—Lady Donal, I should say.”

  It was Miss Caroline Herschel. She stood with her brother and his wife, all three of them beaming.

  Determined to solve the puzzle of Priscilla later, Mariah rose to greet her friends and was presented with a heavy wooden box.

  “What is this?”

  “That,” Professor Herschel said decidedly, “is your wedding present, and I beg you to bring it with you for your first lesson.”

  Mariah looked between them with a confused look. “Lesson?”

  “It is a telescope,” Miss Herschel said. “My brother and I will be giving you lessons three times a week if you can spare the time. You are ready to learn more, my child.”

  “And if you are not careful, they will attempt to drag you away for your first lesson now!” Patrick’s voice came from just behind her, and he took the heavy telescope in its case from her hands.

  Mariah smiled. “It is a tempting offer. Do you have a better idea?”

  “I do indeed. Come on, wife.”

  Putting the telescope in her friend’s arms with a quick request to deliver it to their rooms, her husband pulled her away from the crowd and down a corridor she had not walked before.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not where you would expect,” Patrick said.

  Mariah opened her mouth to ask a further question and gasped. Instead of continuing toward the obvious door at the end of the corridor, Patrick had stopped and pushed part of the paneled wall—which swung back like a door.

  It was a door. A secret door.

  “I thought you would like it,” he grinned. “Come on.”

  They crept through the doorway and along a dark corridor. Around another corner, and it opened up into a large chamber full of golden light streaming through glass windows.

  “Where are we?”

  “A special part of the college,” Patrick said, his voice echoing in the empty room. “It has been used for a number of things over the years, apparently. A storeroom, a meeting room, a clandestine space for lovers…”

  Mariah looked around her. A secret place, somewhere only she and Patrick shared in this moment. “Another perfect part of the most incredible day of my life.”

  She leaned up and kissed Patrick fervently. All she wanted was to lose herself in him,
to know him even better.

  “There is nothing,” he breathed, “that could make this day more perfect.”

  Her hands entangled in his hair, Mariah shook her head. “Almost nothing.”

  His tongue ravished her, and she could feel the hardness of his body, desperate for her.

  When they finally broke apart again, her hair was almost falling out of its pins, and there was a look of desire tangible in his eyes.

  Patrick murmured, “Together, we will work toward women getting an education.”

  “And the vote?”

  He grinned. “One thing at a time. And at this moment, I can think of one thing I would greatly love to do, which will bring this woman particular pleasure.”

  Mariah did not take her eyes from her husband as she took a step toward the wall and hitched up her skirts. “You are not leaving this room until you make me scream.”

  Patrick grinned. “Whatever you command, my bluestocking.”

  About Emily E K Murdoch

  If you love falling in love, then you’ve come to the right place.

  I am a historian and writer and have a varied career to date: from examining medieval manuscripts to designing museum exhibitions, to working as a researcher for the BBC to working for the National Trust.

  My books range from England 1050 to Texas 1848, and I can’t wait for you to fall in love with my heroes and heroines!

  Follow me on twitter and instagram @emilyekmurdoch, find me on facebook at facebook.com/theemilyekmurdoch, and read my blog at www.emilyekmurdoch.com.