But with each passing year, her position had become steadily more unbearable. She wanted — all the time — to live. She had no relationships independent of her mother, except, that is, for her relationship with the palace pages. And if Nurse ever caught wind of that, she would report back to Lady Doverdale and that too would be summarily stopped. So much of the time, she felt so very alone. In truth, it had not seemed so very bad, until she had made friends with the Countess Vawdrey. Fenella was her very first court friend, and while she had felt so proud that Fen had even felt her worthy of befriending, it had opened her eyes to the half-life she was enduring. She had been embarrassed that when they made arrangements to meet, she was always accompanied by her childhood nurse. Fen was too kind to even raise an eyebrow, but for the first time Mathilde had felt the keen sting of embarrassment. She wasn’t stupid, she knew people laughed up their sleeves at her at court, but that hadn’t mattered somehow. But Fen was her friend, and her opinion did count. Fen treated her like an equal, but strangely enough, it was that very fact that made Mathilde realize she wasn’t one. Not in semblance or plain fact.
And then there had been the magical day when she had held Fen’s nephew, baby Archie, in her arms. Her heart had swelled so hard, she had thought it would burst. The baby had looked right into her eyes, almost as if he could see into her soul. By some miracle what he had glimpsed there did not put him off. He had not found her wanting in any way. Instead he had burrowed into her arms for comfort, had lain his head on her breast, had turned to her. Mathilde had rocked him in her arms, she had dried his tears and sung him a lullaby. And in that instant, she had known. She wanted so much more from this life. She wanted to be a mother. It was from that very moment, that she could trace the point in time her sleepwalking had ended, and her heart truly started to beat. From that minute, she had looked about her critically at the gilded cage she had been living in, and started to make plans for her escape.
“You ride well.” The words were almost an accusation and startled her out of her reverie. Lord Martindale’s critical gaze was sweeping over her again.
“Thank you.” They were approaching a thick wooded forest now. The bare trees were covered in glittering snow.
“Surely,” he said with a frown, “as a high-born lady, you would have learned to ride side-saddle?”
“Yes,” Mathilde agreed. Then she noticed his hard stare. “This last month though—” she began, but he cut her off.
“Of course,” he said. “I might have known, this last month has been enough for you to adapt.”
Mathilde darted a surprised look at him. Why did he sound so skeptical? “After all,” she pointed out, “it’s much harder to ride side-saddle.”
He seemed to consider this, and after a moment, gave a shrug. He twisted back in his saddle, to check on the progress of the others. “There’s a track down here that’s wide enough for the cart. It will take us through the wood,” he said, raising his voice so the whole party could hear him.
It was hard to make out any track under the snowfall, but it seemed that her husband knew well the lay of his land. They made good progress, but Mathilde was surprised at how long the ride through the trees took them. It was a good hour before she began to see light breaking through and saw they were approaching a clearing. “This is surely farther than three miles,” she hazarded, glancing at Lord Martindale.
“We could not take the direct route, due to the wagon,” he replied.
“Oh!” Mathilde sat up straight in her saddle. “I think I see it!” She pointed in excitement. “There! Is that it?”
He was watching her with a hooded gaze. “Yes,” he said, his eyes still on her.
Mathilde turned back to it with delight. The hunting lodge was a timber framed building of brown and white with a pointed tiled roof and latticed windows with wooden shutters. Mathilde had lived nearly all her life, certainly as long as she could remember, in magnificent royal palaces of imposing gray stone. The rustic hunting lodge enchanted her. The idea of living in such a place, however temporarily, filled her with a giddy sort of pleasure. She would have clapped her hands if she weren’t already holding her horse’s reins.
“It’s not been used in recent years,” Lord Martindale was saying. “Since the war.”
“Oh,” the smile wiped off her face and she nodded. “I see.” The war. She kept forgetting that in these parts the outcome was not a celebrated one. “I’m sure it can be set to rights in no time,” she said, and glanced back at Prudence who had a sour look back on her face and seemed to be muttering under her breath. “I can help,” Mathilde offered glibly. After all, it did look a lot of work for one servant. She felt her husband’s eyes on her again, but when she turned to meet his gaze, he had already looked away.
VIII
Guy was no nearer to exposing the wench. Just when he thought she had given herself away, a niggling doubt would cross his mind again. No lady of noble birth, he told himself, would roll up her sleeves and join in so wholeheartedly with the cleaning. Then he noticed how spectacularly bad she was at it. Her attempt to sweep a floor merely seemed to be an exercise in moving the dirt around it. When she dusted she got more cobwebs on herself than on the cloth, and when she tried to clean a window, she put her foot through a woven stool and tore her stocking. In the end, he simply scooped her up and set her down next to the newly lit fire in the kitchen. “Sit here,” he barked, placing her next to a large pile of freshly chopped wood he and Waldon had fetched in.
“Should I feed logs to the fire?”
“Don’t — touch — it!” But he was too late. She had already smothered it with an ambitiously large piece of wood.
“Oh dear!” She gazed down at the extinguished fizzle of smoke with dismay. She was so fucking useless that Guy was starting to think she must be a lady born and bred. Where the hell did she get that large smut of dirt across her cheek? Every time he turned his back to her, she seemed to stumble into some new misfortune. “Um…” She snatched up another log and seemed to be trying to fan the non-existent flames. “Perhaps if I just—?”
He took the chunk of wood out of her hand. “Sit still,” he said sternly and crouched down next to the fire. She bit her lip and collapsed back down on the low stool, looking so crestfallen, he found himself relenting. Why, he had absolutely no idea. “Watch what I do,” he said in a low voice. Immediately, she perked right back up, tucking her hair behind her ears and scrambling forward to watch his attempts to rekindle the abused fire. He watched her covertly as he set about rebuilding the kitchen fire. No one could have been more impressed than she, when the flames started to lick about the kindling.
“You did it!” she cried, turning to him triumphantly.
What it didn’t explain was his almost overwhelming impulse to lean across and kiss her firmly on her pretty mouth. Would she draw back? Reproach him for such familiarities? Glance at him beneath her lashes? Employ one of a hundred such feminine tricks that those well-versed with entertaining men used? He forced himself to consider the likelihood she was deliberately playing with him. Worryingly, he wasn’t even sure such behavior would put him off. He reminded himself he heartily detested artifice and coyness in the opposite sex. Then again, she had acted far from demure earlier that day, when she had told him outright she wanted his babe. His heart pounded. Perhaps she would be bold in her desire for him to bed her. He shivered. My Gods. Did he want that? He gave his head a quick shake to clear it. Admittedly it had been a few years since he had bedded a woman, but he had never had such tastes before. Then again, pre-war Guy seemed like a wholly different person in his memory. Perhaps the last five years had warped him.
He must be mad to let her twist him round her finger like this. This little dab of a female! He gave her a sidelong look. Why was he even letting her affect him this way? He straightened up, and turned from her, clearing his throat. He wanted to appear icily detached and forbidding. To let her know that he, Guy Randall, Marquis of Martindale was nobody’s fool.
Men feared him, and women frankly, made sure to stay out of his way. She must be mad to try and provoke him like this!
The truth was, though, that he felt far from detached. He felt edgy with… He paused. What even was it? Some weird need. Almost a yearning to possess what was rightfully his. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Why the hells was he thinking of her as his? The thought stunned him. But when he tested it, he knew that was exactly what he was doing. It could be the only explanation for why every word Firmin had uttered earlier had pissed him off. She wasn’t his wife, he reminded himself angrily. He was almost certain of that. There was no rational reason for him to be having these feelings for her. So why was he? Distractedly, he stared out the window, trying to marshal his thoughts. He wasn’t used to his thoughts and impulses being so out of accord. What am I doing?
In vain, he reminded himself he was tucking her away in this hunting lodge for perfectly logical reasons. Even Firmin had agreed with the notion in principle. Why then, was he suddenly so filled with unease and self-doubt? He felt his face heat. He knew full well why, he berated himself savagely. Underneath his actions, had been another motivation entirely, a selfish one he had refused to acknowledge. The hunting lodge had been a place of escape and release. When he had come here, first with his father, and later with his friends, it had been in the pursuit of leisure and relaxation. Had he set his little false bride up here, because he thought of her in those terms? As an illicit pleasure, for him to enjoy in secret?
The hand that stroked his short beard trembled slightly. You selfish bastard, he told himself bitterly. You stupid, selfish bastard. You’re playing right into your bitch of a wife’s hands, because you can’t resist this poisoned chalice she’s sent you. He glanced back over his shoulder at her. He wanted to take her upstairs, is what he wanted to do. He didn’t care about the fact she had a smudgy face and was likely covered in dirt. Or the fact she was likely an accomplished little play-actress. Does she have no sense of danger? he wondered, breathing hard. She sat there so serenely, gazing at the fire with a smile on her lips, while he was aching and trembling with the effort to contain himself. He ought to dump her here, in the middle of the woods and run like hell. But that wasn’t what his every impulse was clamoring for. He drew a frustrated breath and ran his fingers through his hair.
A footfall behind him, made him turn. Waldon had come through the door, dragging a large mattress for his bed. For her bed, he corrected himself harshly. Guy crossed the room and grabbed the other end. He looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t touch that fire,” he warned her direly. She nodded and hugged her knees. Dimples, he noticed. She has dimples in her cheeks.
He and Waldon bore the mattress up the stairs and set it down in the master bedroom. The whole time Guy strove to get his rioting senses under control. By the time they had set the mattress into the bed frame, he wasn’t shaking any more. The familiarity of the lodge soothed him a little. He had forgotten how much he used to love the place. The main bedchamber was a large one, with a huge vaulted ceiling of sloping exposed beams and a good deal of antlers and horns strung up around the walls. His father hadn’t been exactly known for his subtlety. Come to think of it, neither was Guy. He just hoped she — Mathilde, as she insisted on being called — didn’t feel like a cornered doe up here. Frowning at his own fancifulness, he regarded the canopy above the massive dark wood bed. It was of a faded scarlet patterned with gold. The bad-tempered servant had driven all the dust from the room, but it still seemed dark and masculine, and entirely wrong for the female he’d left below stairs.
“The boy will be down the hall in the end room,” Waldon said interrupting his thoughts. “And the maid, Prudence, has already set her things up in one of the attic rooms.”
Guy grunted. He crossed to the window and looked out at the small garden. Robin was down there rigging up some temporary fencing for the hens. It will need to be more substantial than that, Guy thought with a glance at the encroaching woods, if it is to keep the foxes out. “You’d better help the boy set up a run for the fowls,” he said. “Or they’ll all be carried off in the night, like as not.”
Waldon came to his side and looked down with interest. “You’d almost think he’d never done such work before,” he said shaking his head.
They both made their way back down the stairs and Guy directed Prudence to go now and make the beds up with sheets and blankets. Waldon took himself outside to help with the chickens and Guy settled himself once again across the fireplace from Mathilde. He stared at her broodingly. “You see yourself being comfortable here?” he asked abruptly.
“Oh yes,” she replied readily enough. “In fact, I think it’s a very good notion of yours, my lord. For this way we can quite get to know each other, can we not? In more intimate surroundings.”
His throat instantly became dry. Intimate. It was a suggestive word. Was she telling him her bedroom would not be barred against him? Even more importantly, did she not realize that she was already failing in her mission to discredit him? He was installing her in a separate household to his own. That was not something one did with a wife. It was something one did with a mistress. Her employer, his wife, would no doubt be furious at being outmaneuvered. “Of course” he said aloud. “You realize I’ve many demands on my time. I’ve an estate to run. It will be several days until you see me again.”
Instantly, her expression turned to seeming dismay. He tensed, waiting for her to argue or complain at such treatment, but she did not. “I see,” she said slowly. “Well then, I will simply have to make the most of things when you are here.” She smiled at him again, and Guy felt robbed of his breath.
Footfalls were heard on the stair. “The beds are made, my lord,” announced the maid Prudence in her rather grating voice.
“Tell your mistress, not me,” he replied, his eyes still on Mathilde.
“The beds are now done, my lady,” Prudence said, after a moment’s heavy pause.
“Thank you Prudence,” Mathilde replied, holding his gaze steadily, if a little shyly.
Was there an invitation in them? If she knew how long he’d been without, she wouldn’t be issuing it so glibly, he thought grimly. Guy did not allow himself to dwell overlong on the idea. That way lay disaster. He jumped to his feet. “I’ll take my leave of you, my lady.”
“Mathilde,” she corrected him swiftly.
He cleared his throat. “Mathilde,” he said, trying it out. He noticed she didn’t look remotely uncomfortable about laying claim to it as her own. She was a cool piece. He needed to watch his step around her. In truth, he should probably stay the hells away from the conniving little madam.
“I hope we will see you very soon,” she said, clasping her hands together.
I bet you do, he thought harshly, and cursed himself for a fool, when he felt how his had pulse had quickened at her words.
IX
Mathilde was enchanted with her new abode. As soon as her husband left, she took herself over the lodge. She wished he had given her leave to call him Guy, but he had not. Still, you could not rush these things, she told herself as she peeped into Prudence’s attic room. She did not want to invade her maid’s privacy, so instead she poked around the vacant room next door to it. They were both decent sized and this second room seemed to have been used for storage of bits and pieces of furniture in varying states of repair. There was a third attic room which was a good deal smaller than the other two and had a low truckle bed in it and no window at all. She supposed in the past it must have been used for the lowest ranking servant, and felt heartily sorry for them, stuck in that poky little hole.
On the next floor down, she found Robin’s room to be a very pleasant room, of middling size with a large tapestry depicting a hunting party decked out in outfits of blue, with many dogs and horses and attendants with golden horns. She inspected the stitches with interest. Whoever had worked this piece had been highly skilled, and master of some techniques Mathilde was not familiar with. She turned the ed
ge of the tapestry to look at the back. While she was here it would be good to pick up some new methods, she thought. What a pity that her husband’s household seemed to have so few women. She should have asked him to send her some tapestry supplies, she thought, biting her lip. That had been remiss of her. Back at court, working with the loom and needle was generally how she filled her days.
Leaving Robin’s room, she walked down the hall and found her own bedchamber, which was huge and handsome, yet seemed delightfully airy and open. She loved how light the interior of the lodge seemed, doubtless because all the walls between the beams were painted white. The manor house had seemed filled with dark wood paneling and furniture and seemed rather oppressive and gloomy. She pulled up her uncomplimentary thoughts of her husband’s home quickly. No, that wasn’t fair. She had only seen a very little of Acton March Manor. She had not been given a tour. Still, she knew which property she preferred.
The bed canopy and curtains of red with gold leaves were perhaps a little faded, but she liked the overall impression of rose-gold it gave now, possibly more than the flaming scarlet it would once have been. Ten of her could fit comfortably in that massive bed. She wandered over to the window, past the bench with the matching cushions and the large dresser with mirror. The view was over the garden below, which was overgrown and straggling and would need a good deal of work come spring. Would she still be here by then, she wondered idly? Or would she have taken her official place as Marchioness of Martindale by then?
Wed By Proxy (Brides of Karadok Book 1) Page 7
