The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife (Lords of the Matrix Club #1)

by Jen YatesNZ

  ‘Is it safe to enter?’ she asked. ‘Are you all right, Jassie? Mrs. Jolly seemed to think you’d had a fall, or maybe something ‘more dastardly’! She said you definitely weren’t yourself. What on earth has happened since this morning? Maybe you should listen to Dobbie and take young Jem with you instead of traipsing all over the shire on that huge great horse on your own.’

  Jassie flopped back into the chair, closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, before saying in a relatively even voice, ‘It’s safe to come in, Fran. Chester only looks huge to you because you’re terrified of any animal taller than a beagle and when have you ever known me to fall off that horse—or Chester to let me? I wasn’t alone. I was riding with Lord bloody Windermere.’

  ‘Jassie! Oh my God. I’ve never heard you use such a word before and well, if you didn’t have a fall then—you look as if you—you’ve—been—’

  ‘Raped,’ Jassie finished for her. ‘That’s what he called it too.’

  ‘R-raped? You? And—the Earl?’ The door shut with a slam and Francine was instantly on her knees at Jassie’s side. ‘Jassie, he wouldn’t! I mean, he’s never even touched you. It’s what you’ve always been complaining about. You’re not making sense.’

  Francine’s voice trailed off into uncertainty and she tentatively closed her hand over Jassie’s where they kept fisting in her lap.

  Jassie turned her gaze on the carefully manicured wilderness that was Brantleigh Manor’s front garden, a riot of color, textures, shapes and energies created by her grandmother and lovingly tended by the garden staff ever since. None of it registered. All she could see was a pair of deep blue eyes filled with horror, anger, bitterness and something disturbingly like fear. She was agonizingly afraid nothing would ever erase the memory.

  ‘Of course he didn’t. I instigated it. We are to marry on Saturday a fortnight hence.’

  It was the first time she’d ever seen Francine truly shocked.

  ‘But you said—he’d never—he’d vowed—’

  ‘Yes.’

  She ground her teeth in an effort to hold in the tirade that wanted to pour out of her.

  Francine stared at her accusingly and then asked in an oddly censuring tone, ‘Jassie, what have you done?’

  Heat rushing into her cheeks, Jassie turned to stare once more out the window while fighting to bring the explosion that threatened within her, under control. Francine was her companion and a very close friend and she’d alienated enough people today. She was not going to add Francine to their number.

  Letting her breath sigh out between her lips and striving to keep emotion out of her voice, she said, ‘I’ve done the most dreadful thing, Fran. I’ve—quite selfishly—achieved my deepest desire and thereby lost a most valued friend.’

  Jassie turned her head to stare into Fran’s summer blue eyes that were shadowed with concern. Tears burnt at the back of her own eyes and she bit hard on her lips in an effort to stem the flow. She might never stop if once she began to cry.

  Francine levered herself up and drew another chair to Jassie’s side. Taking Jassie’s restless fingers in hers once again, she said, ‘Tell me all.’

  Jassie swallowed, considered Fran’s solemn countenance and managed to dredge up a smile for this best of friends. Francine understood heartache and grief. She’d suffered more than her fair share. There was nothing she couldn’t tell her, nothing they wouldn’t share with each other. The story dropped from her lips and became easier in the telling with each revealing word. She’d reached the point of her ignominious flight down Neave Tor when the arrival of the footman with the bath finally halted the flow.

  When her maid, Ruby, offered her services, Jassie dismissed her saying Mrs. Lyndon would attend her.

  As soon as the servants were gone, Jassie stood up and began unbuttoning her jacket, still unable to let go of her miserable story.

  ‘When he told me we’d marry I thought I’d die. His face was a mask of—lord, I don’t know what, Fran! He’d become someone I’d never seen before.’

  She tossed the jacket onto the chest at the foot of the bed and began on her shirt buttons, so recently refastened by Rogan’s large hands. That memory had her squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth. His touch had been so precious, so wanted. And none of what had transpired between them had lessened the soul deep yearning to feel it again.

  ‘So you see,’ she muttered when her heart stopped gasping in her chest like a starveling bird, ‘I will finally become Lady Windermere as I’ve always dreamed I would—and Windermere hates me.’

  The shirt fell on top of the jacket and she turned her back to a silent Francine so she could loosen the ties of her corset. Her voice would scarcely work but she had to ask.

  ‘It wasn’t rape, was it, Fran?’

  ‘Not if you welcomed it, Jassie,’ Francine answered quietly.

  Peeling the corset from her body and clad only in her chemise, she turned to face Francine.

  ‘Thanks dear friend. I can manage now.—What’s the time?’

  ‘Almost half after two.’

  Jassie felt her eyes widen with shock.

  ‘Truly?’

  Where had the morning gone? Oh stupid question!

  ‘Would you like a tray sent up?’ Francine asked as she turned to the door. ‘You missed luncheon.’

  Jassie shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think I could eat anything. Maybe just a cup of tea. And then I think I just want to be alone, Fran. Do you mind?’

  Francine crossed back to hug Jassie.

  ‘Whatever you need, Jass. You know that.—When you need me just ring. I have such an easy life with you. You totally spoil me. God knows how I’d have coped as companion to some high-nosed old biddy who just really requires a willing doormat. Always supposing I could have found one willing to hire the widow of a man killed in a duel for cheating at cards! Oh!’

  She stopped. Her eyes filled with horror and her face drained of color.

  ‘Will you—once you’re married—you won’t need a—’

  Jassie snapped out of her mental fug and cut in.

  ‘Don’t even say it, Fran. I will need you more than ever. Who will talk sense into me when I’m up in the boughs over Windermere? Who will talk nonsense to me when I’m in the black pit of despair—which I can’t help feeling is waiting to swallow me up.—You know, I have the most dreadful feeling Windermere intends to dump me at the Abbey and disappear, honor taken care of. What is he so afraid of? For I’m sure fear was his over-riding emotion and what he said—‘did I now have an inkling of how he was’. What did he mean? He certainly wasn’t afraid to take me. Quite the opposite, I would have said.—Like a dam bursting,’ she ended in a mumble.

  ‘But how he took you is the problem, Jass! No real gentleman would have attacked you like that—as if you were no more than a doxy in a brothel! Especially not when he knew you were a virgin. And he knew it. That’s what he was trying to tell you.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be like that?’ Jassie asked in a small voice. ‘But it was terribly—exciting, Fran. How—how should it have been?’

  ‘Like it was later, when he came to his senses again—slow, gentle, loving, so that you were both aroused and wanting to the point of reaching that amazing peak, that ‘bliss of the soul’ together.—I say again, Windermere knew that, was probably absolutely appalled at what he’d done.—What do you really know of Windermere, Jass?’

  ‘Huh? I’ve known him all my life! He claims he was once allowed to hold me when I was a very tiny baby and that I grinned at him and he’s been my slave ever since!’

  ‘So why, when you grew up, didn’t he marry you? I’ve always wondered. You two were made for each other. You’re together every day when he’s at the Abbey. He’d have to be daft not to know your feelings. You’ve never made any secret of them. And contrary to what you might think he is not unmoved either. It’s in his eyes when he watches you—especially when you’re with other men. It would have been interesting to see
what he did if you’d ever encouraged any of them.’

  ‘Then why, why, why?’

  ‘Only Windermere can answer that, Jass,’ Fran murmured, finally leaving the room, eyes dark and troubled.

  At the closing of the door Jassie stripped off her chemise and stood before the mirror of the tall mahogany armoire, staring at the evidence of her passage to womanhood. Twenty-five and no longer a virgin—finally. Almost involuntarily her fingers crept across her skin to caress the dried smears of blood on her thighs—thighs that had cradled Rogan’s, her womanly portal that had welcomed his manhood, his joining of them as one being. There had been pain; sharp and intense though brief. But she found she could scarcely recall it now, having been obliterated by what came after. She tried harder to recall the piercing sensation that had made her cry out, for the moment was precious in that it was a necessary precursor to all that followed.

  And what followed had felt so right, so blessed—until she remembered the look in his eyes and then his words. ‘I’m so sorry. It should not have been like that.’

  And those other ugly words she’d tried to tell herself he hadn’t uttered.

  How should it have been? The words were a wail in her head. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be, that each was totally lost to the ecstasy of being joined as one with the other? Jassie wasn’t sure how it could have been better. Admittedly she was ignorant—this once being her only experience. The books she’d read were mostly about the mechanics and variations rather than what either partner should be experiencing emotionally.

  But when she thought of his hand manacled over her wrists as if he’d never let her go and his body pounding into hers as if he’d lost all control, had simply been overcome, finally, by what he felt for her—what she’d always, deep down, known he felt for her—she simply wanted to hug herself with bliss.

  So why, why didn’t Rogan feel that same euphoria in the aftermath that she did?

  And was Fran right? Did she really know the Earl of Windermere? By far the greater proportion of his time was spent in London or fulfilling his secret courier missions onto the Continent for the War Office. She had little or no idea of the circles he moved in, who he really was. She’d had her first season in London when she was eighteen and she now knew his secret service career began that year of 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte had usurped the Spanish throne in favor of his brother, Joseph. British Forces, led by Lt. General Sir Arthur Wellesley had stepped in to drive the French from Spanish soil. They were becoming far too powerful, having overrun a large part of the European Continent and as such constituted a grave threat to Britain.

  Windermere had definitely played least-in-sight during that season and the ones that had followed. He’d rarely appeared at any events she attended except those he couldn’t refuse, such as her come-out ball and any affairs his mother, Lady Olwynne Windermere, had organized as Jassie’s sponsor into society. His father had died in March of 1809 while delivering an impassioned speech about the cost of the war against the Bonaparte in the House of Lords, effectively curtailing Jassie’s second season before it had truly begun.

  She’d gone to London for the seasons of 1811 and 1812 and stayed with Lady Augusta Parmenter, Lord Windermere’s great aunt. But after that first season he’d put in an appearance at very few events, principally those organized by Lady Augusta or close friends. Even so he’d only ever danced once with her at each of these occasions and had conspicuously avoided ever dancing a waltz. Although, she’d taken comfort from the fact that he stood up with no one else and always left right after their dance.

  Where had he gone thereafter? Why was he never seen at any other society events? He’d said he found them dull, that he couldn’t stand the way the society mama’s and their whey-faced daughters stalked his aristocratic eligibility. He wasn’t looking for a wife so why would he parade through the marriage mart as if he were?

  She’d accepted his answer back then but was there another, more sinister reason for that vow of eternal bachelorhood?

  Jassie caressed the dried smears on her thighs one more time, wishing wistfully there was some way she could preserve them, like pressed petals in a book. With a sigh she stepped into the waiting bath and considered what advantage she might take of the greater freedom of the married state to discover more of the hidden life of the Earl of Windermere.

  Rising and breakfasting early next morning as she always did, Jassie took Chester out for a wild gallop across the Downs in the opposite direction to Neave Tor. She wasn’t sure yet whether she would ever visit that place again. She’d dressed accordingly in buckskin riding trousers as she often did when riding alone on Brantleigh land, and young Jem rode at her heels, a sop to Dobbie for her curt behavior of yesterday; a buffer between herself and Windermere should he put off his return to London and ride out to try and intercept her instead; and a greatly appreciated treat for Dobbie’s horse-mad grandson whom he was training as a groom. But no matter how hard and how fast they raced, into the wind or away from it, she could not outrun the travail of her thoughts, the leaden feeling of guilt that lay in her stomach as if she’d ingested a huge cannonball.

  What pain had she caused the man who held her heart, by forcing him to take the only honorable course of insisting she become his wife? What did this breaking of his vow portend for him?

  For them?

  It wasn’t until she sat down to luncheon, bathed and dressed in a sunny yellow silk day gown trimmed with emerald braid at neckline and hem and tied with the same colored ribbon beneath her breasts, that Willis, the round-cheeked Brantleigh Manor butler, handed her a folded note stamped with the Windermere seal and the pair of riding gloves she’d left on Neave Tor.

  ‘This came from the Abbey this morning, Miss Jassie,’ he said, his eyes twinkling as they always did, as if he shared whatever secret was in the air on any given day.

  ‘Thank you, Willis.’

  Jassie’s heart thumped violently against her ribcage as she laid the gloves on the table then let her fingers close over the expensive piece of heavy, hand-pressed paper embossed with the Windermere crest, hoping she’d kept her voice even and shown no undue emotion to the elderly servant.

  ‘That will be all. Mrs. Lyndon and I will serve ourselves.’

  With a nod, Willis backed out of the room and Jassie wondered what the gossip had been in the servant’s hall after yesterday’s debacle. Her fingers clenched on the letter, crunching it into her palm. What did Rogan have to say today? Was he perhaps, crying off? How would she feel if he did? What a coil! For no matter the depth of her guilt she desperately hoped he had not. Being ruined and ostracized by society held no terror so bad as that which attacked her at the thought of Rogan ostracizing her.

  ‘Are you going to read it before you destroy it?’ Francine asked.

  ‘What if—what if he wants to cry off?’

  ‘You’ll let him,’ Francine responded promptly; firmly but gently. ‘But I’d be very disappointed in Windermere if that were the case.’

  Jassie bit down on her lip, breathed deeply, broke open the seal and quickly scanned the contents in Rogan’s familiar bold scrawl. It was impossible to keep the outrage from her expression when she looked up at Francine.

  ‘What does he say to put that scowl on your face,’ she asked, eyes widening in trepidation.

  ‘There is no salutation. —‘I have spoken with Mr. Worth, the vicar, this morning and the wedding is set for 3pm in Windermere Chapel on Saturday May 20th. Please order the event as you wish. Mama will make out our list of guests.

  As soon as I have sent Raoul off with this, I ride for London. I will acquire the special license and send it to you by courier for safe-keeping.

  I will also put a notice in the London Times. Windermere Abbey will be ready for you to move your things over by Friday 19th. Mama is ecstatic. She is expecting you will call. You might try for a happy countenance when you visit. She indicated this was all she’d been waiting for, to see you settled—as Lady Winderme
re. She also has a selection of rings from the Abbey vaults for you to choose from. My fancy is the topaz.

  Until we meet at the altar,

  Windermere.’

  ‘Well, that about covers everything. I wonder how long I am to be served cold shoulder. Bodes well for a happy marriage, don’t you think?—Oh Fran, how am I to act for Lady O as if—as if all is as fine as fivepence when it so definitely is not! She’s not one to be fobbed off with gammon. Never has been.’

  Jassie closed her mouth with a snap before a great wail of despair issued from it.

  ‘Are you thinking Windermere actor enough to fool her? Don’t you think she knows her son quite well? Mothers do, you know. Why not confide in her Ladyship? She has always struck me as a very wise woman.’

  ‘Windermere is the Inscrutable of Inscrutables. I would never play poker against him—and he’s had years of practice at bamboozling his mother.’

  ‘Being inscrutable wouldn’t convince Lady Windermere her son was happy.’

  ‘She probably wouldn’t see that as any different from normal.’

  ‘I think you underestimate the Countess, Jassie. She might be ailing in her body but her brain is still as sharp as ever.’

  Jassie sighed.

  ‘You’re right of course—and she knows me just as well as she knows Windermere. And I’m just now realizing what a lot there is to do—since it doesn’t appear his Lordship is about to allow anything to stand in the way of his honor, not even a vow he made goodness knows how many years ago! Certainly before I was sixteen! I guess I’d better start with informing the staff so they don’t have another reason to feel slighted. And then I will go over and visit with Lady O. It would look rather shabby if I didn’t.’

  Francine nodded.

  ‘And since you really don’t need me for any of that, shall I start making a list of people locally who should be informed and invited? Then we could start writing the invitations this evening.’