The Ideal Wife

by Mary Balogh

  “No,” she said, “not if you do not wish for it.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “Something has made me tired. I cannot imagine what.”

  “My tedious conversation, perhaps,” she said.

  “Perhaps.” He laughed softly and pecked her on the nose with his teeth to take any sting from the word. “Go to sleep, Abby.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  “I don’t have a mistress, I promise you,” he said. “And at the moment I have no hankering for one, either. None whatsoever. Now, will you sound less forlorn and go to sleep?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t plan to say a word. I wanted you to fall asleep before you remembered that you should go back to your own bed.”

  “Did you?” he said. “You would rather I slept here?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You are going to have to be quiet, then,” he said, “or I shall flee screaming to my own rooms.”

  She chuckled.

  “Go to sleep,” he said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  She slept almost immediately.

  7

  WELL, THE SMUG BRIDEGROOM.” SIR Gerald Stapleton stopped in the doorway of the reading room at White’s, strolled inside, and peered over the top of the Morning Post at his friend. “You are looking very pleased with life, Miles.”

  The Earl of Severn folded his paper and got to his feet. “Let’s find a room where we don’t have to strain our voices whispering,” he said. “And why should I not be feeling pleased with myself, Ger? A two-day bridegroom, the notice in this morning’s papers for all the world to see, and everyone eager to offer congratulations.”

  He stopped to shake hands with a well-wisher to prove his point.

  “And after two full days you have been driven to finding more congenial surroundings,” Sir Gerald said. “I must confess I was looking for you all day yesterday. I was obliged to go to the races with Appleby and Hendricks and to spend the evening with Philby and his crowd. You might have saved yourself the expense of the notices in the papers, Miles. I told everyone your sad story and they all commiserated.”

  The earl chuckled. “The confirmed cynic,” he said. “I left Abby composing a letter to a relative in Bath and tickling her nose with the quill and ordering me from the room because she could not think with me there and finds the writing of letters difficult under the best of circumstances.”

  His friend looked at him dubiously. “Oh,” he said. “And you left meekly, Miles—not only the room but also the house? Driven from your own dwelling after only two days? Not an auspicious beginning, old chap.”

  Lord Severn laughed. “I was also excused from an outing to Bond Street later this morning,” he said. “One of Abby’s new dresses is ill-fitting and needs some alterations.”

  “Doubtless you will be happy to be at some distance when she gives the dressmaker the length of her tongue,” the other said. “So, Miles, are you finding that your bride is exactly as you expected—quiet, demure, very ordinary, someone to be largely ignored, in short?”

  “Do I detect a note of malice?” the earl asked. “You will be pleased to know, then, my friend, that Abby could probably talk nonstop from dawn to midnight without once running short of a topic or an opinion if no one insisted on having his say or if she did not occasionally notice that she is talking too much.”

  “Ah,” Sir Gerald said. “I suspected as much on your wedding day, together with the fact that she is quite good-looking enough to cause you trouble if she so chooses. I am sorry, Miles. But you cannot say that I did not warn you.”

  “No,” the earl said with a grin, “I cannot say that, Ger. She set Mama and the girls in their place quite magnificently yesterday.”

  “Your mother?” Sir Gerald said, impressed.

  “Told her to be seated and not to trouble herself about running my life,” the earl said, “now that I have a countess to take precedence over her.”

  “She said that?” Sir Gerald sounded awed.

  “Actually,” Lord Severn said with a laugh, “she told my mother to sit down while she rang for a pot of fresh tea. But the other was what she really meant. I think my wife has backbone after all, Ger.”

  “In other words, she will be running your life just as the females in your family have always done,” his friend said gloomily. “You have jumped from the frying pan into the fire, Miles. And you continue to grin like an imbecile and look as if the world is your oyster—to mix metaphors quite atrociously. You will be a poor abject thing before the year is out. Mark my words.”

  The earl threw back his head and laughed. “I think she will suit me, Ger,” he said. “I think she will. Despite the talkativeness, which has taken me by surprise, I must admit, there is a basic shyness, I believe, and an eagerness to please. I like her.”

  “Eagerness to please?” Sir Gerald said. “Enough to compensate you for the loss of Jenny, Miles?”

  “Now, that,” the earl said, raising one finger to summon a waiter, “is privileged information, Ger.”

  “Did you know that Northcote and Farthingdale are fighting over Jenny?” Sir Gerald asked. “And that her price is going up and up? It is doubtful that Farthingdale can afford her anyway. Though he is more personable than Northcote, of course, and Jenny is quite discriminating.”

  “How is Prissy?” the earl asked. “Still threatening to move back home to the country?”

  “Some rejected swain wants her back,” his friend said, “even knowing what she has become. She should go, I keep telling her. She does not really suit the life of a courtesan. It’s time I found someone else anyway. A year is too long to spend with one mistress—makes them too possessive. How about a stroll to Tattersall’s this afternoon, Miles? I have my eye on some grays.”

  “I have promised to take Abby driving in the park,” the earl said. “And before that I will be giving her waltzing lessons.”

  His friend stared at him.

  “She has never waltzed,” Lord Severn explained. “And Lady Trevor’s ball is this evening. I promised to teach her.”

  “Good Lord,” Sir Gerald said. “I see the noose tightening with alarming speed, Miles. I strongly advise you to tell your good lady quite firmly that you are going to Tattersall’s. Better still, send a note.”

  “You play the pianoforte,” the earl said. “You confessed as much to me in one rash moment, Ger. Come and play for us. Otherwise I will be reduced to singing a waltz tune. I don’t think Abby sings. At least, when I asked her, she dissolved into peals of laughter, had me laughing too, and never answered the question.”

  “Don’t try dragging me into this cozy domestic arrangement you have,” Sir Gerald said with an exaggerated shudder. “If your wife wants to waltz, Miles, hire her a dancing master, and take yourself off about some more manly pursuit while the lessons are in progress. You’ll be sorry if you don’t, mark my words.”

  “I knew you were a true friend,” the earl said, getting to his feet. “We will expect you at three, Ger?”

  “I say,” his friend said.

  “Don’t worry if you are a little early,” Lord Severn said. “My wife and I will both be at home.”

  He grinned, turned to shake hands and exchange greetings with another pair of well-wishers, and made his way from the room and the club.

  Gerald could be right, he thought as he made his way home. Abby was certainly not the quiet, timid creature he had taken her for on first acquaintance. Perhaps she would in time try to dominate him and he would have to exert himself to be master in his own house, as he had never done with Mama and the girls.

  But he did not think so. Despite her talkativeness and her firm and clever handling of his mother the day before, he believed there was a certain innocence and basic shyness in Abby. And he had spoken the truth to Gerald: in two days she had shown an eagerness to please him, refusing to demand his company, entering wholeheartedly into the scheme to convince his mother that they had fallen deeply in love, wearin
g her hair as he liked it at night.

  And she had made no protest against anything he had done to her in bed, claiming in that unexpectedly candid way that always had him laughing that she found it not at all unpleasant, though he had touched her more intimately than he had expected to be allowed to do with a wife and had prolonged his love-makings beyond the limits he would have expected her willing to endure. She had not complained about being taken a second time on both their wedding night and the night before. He had restrained himself at dawn that morning, when he had wanted her again.

  She had even said that she wished him to sleep in her bed. He had plans for taking her into his own that night, making it a permanent arrangement. She could use her own room during the daytime when she needed rest.

  Yes, he thought, he had unwittingly made the wisest move of his life when he had impulsively asked Miss Abigail Gardiner just four days before to marry him.

  She was going to make his life comfortable, he suspected. And to hell with Gerald, who warned him differently. What did Gerald know about marriage, anyway?

  ABIGAIL HAD AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR during the morning. Who would it be? she wondered as she hurried down the stairs to the yellow salon, where she herself had waited just four days before. Her mother-in-law or one of her sisters-in-law? But no, they would have come up. Laura? Mrs. Gill? Some stranger who had read the marriage announcement in the paper that morning?

  She felt apprehensive. But when she stepped inside the salon and saw who her visitor was, she cried out in delight and went hurtling across the room.

  “Boris!” she cried, hugging the tall, thin young man who stood where she had stood on a previous occasion. “Where have you been? I have not seen you in an age. How did you know I was here? Did you read the announcement of my marriage? What do you think of it? Were you ever so surprised in your life? I would have liked to tell you before the wedding, but I never know where you may be found. Have you come to congratulate me? How thin you are! You are not eating well, are you? Are things not going well for you? Have you—?”

  “Abby,” he said, with a firmness of voice that seemed well accustomed to breaking into her monologues, “hush.”

  “Yes,” she said, smoothing her hands over the lapels of his coat. “It is just that I am so very pleased to see you, Boris. Miles is from home. What a shame! I do so want you to meet him. He is our kinsman, you know. Did you know that the old earl was dead? Or did you think I had married a white-haired old man?”

  “Abby,” he said, and she could see at last that he was not sharing her delight, “you did not come begging to him, did you?”

  “Begging?” she said. “No. Not for money, anyway. Mrs. Gill dismissed me from my post, Boris, and would not supply me with a character. I thought the earl would give me a letter, he being our cousin and all. That is all. It was not really begging.”

  “He is not our cousin,” he said. “Even the old earl was not, not really. The connection was very remote, and you know very well that he would not have acknowledged any connection at all with us, Abby. We have always been disreputable.”

  “No,” she said, all the joy gone out of her morning. “Only Papa, Boris, and he could not help it.”

  “Not to mention Rachel,” he said.

  “Our stepmother?” She spread her hands before her and examined the backs of them. “Perhaps she had good cause too, Boris. Papa was not easy to live with.”

  “We are off the point,” he said. “Why did he marry you, Abby?”

  “He fell in love with me?” she said, looking at him inquiringly, eyebrows raised, willing him to believe her.

  “Nonsense,” he said impatiently. “This is real life.”

  “He needed a wife,” she said, “and wanted to marry before his mother and his sisters arrived to try to arrange a dazzling match for him. He wanted someone quiet and sensible and good-natured—those are his exact words. And so he asked me.”

  “Quiet?” he said. “Sensible? Come on, Abby. Was he born yesterday? Did he tell you that he had an understanding with Lord Galloway’s daughter?”

  “Who?” she said, frowning.

  “The Honorable Miss Frances Meighan,” he said. “Reputed to be a rare beauty. A friend of the family. All the right connections and an enormous dowry. He didn’t tell you, did he? He married you out of pity, that’s what, Abby.”

  “He did not,” she said indignantly. “That is not true, Boris. Men don’t marry women out of pity.”

  “Why, then?” he asked.

  “I don’t know why,” she said, “apart from what I have told you. Don’t spoil things, Boris. You always do that. Just when I am happy, you always come along and try to convince me that I am being unrealistic.”

  His shoulders slumped suddenly. “I’m sorry, Abby,” he said. “You are happy with him, then? How long have you known him, for goodness’ sake? I have never had wind of it. Come and be hugged, then. Yes, I wish you happy, of course I do. Oh, of course I do, Ab.” He hugged her tightly. “You of all people should have an eternity of happiness. And of course you are right. He would not have married you out of pity. People just don’t do that. He has probably been wise enough to discover just what a gem you are.”

  “He can help you,” she said eagerly, pulling away to look up into his face. “You are not doing well, are you, Boris? You really are very thin—and marvelously handsome. Are all the ladies swooning over you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said with the boyish grin she remembered from earlier days. “Women have a habit of swooning over penniless adventurers.”

  “They do,” she said. “You never did understand women, Boris. “I am going to ask Miles—”

  “No!” he said sharply. “Absolutely no, Abby. I am going to find my own way in life, do you hear me? I am going to pay off Papa’s debts if it is the last thing I do. And then I will find something to do with the rest of my life—without your help and without Severn’s help. If you try getting him to assist me, Ab, I will disappear entirely from your life and you will never see me again. Understand?”

  She sighed and pushed a lock of fair hair back from his forehead. “I have just written to the girls’ Great-Aunt Edwina,” she said. “I am going to have them back, Boris. Miles said I might.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, smiling fondly at her. “They belong with you, Abby, and you with them. I had better be on my way.”

  “Stay to luncheon?” she said.

  He shook his head and reached out to touch her cheek with one knuckle. “Mad, mad Abby,” he said.

  “How long did you know him before you married him, anyway? You did not answer my question.”

  “Two days,” she said. “It is four days now.”

  He stared at her for a moment before chuckling softly.

  “Well,” he said, “it is about time life started to turn around for you, Ab. I will just hope that this is it. I’ll see you again.”

  She could not persuade him to change his mind about staying. She stood at the door a minute later, watching him striding down the street. And she raised a hand to brush a tear from her cheek.

  NOW WOULD COME the main test, Abigail thought, taking a deep breath and resisting the urge to reach out a hand to cling to her husband’s sleeve. Now and this evening.

  It was true that she was wearing another new outfit, a dress and pelisse of spring green and a straw bonnet trimmed with spring flowers that one would swear were real, though they were not. And true too that Miles had taken her by both hands before they left the house, squeezed them, and declared that she would cast all the other ladies in the park quite in the shade.

  But bridegrooms were supposed to pay such lavish and foolish compliments to their new brides. The ton would doubtless see her as very plain and ordinary and wonder what on earth the very handsome Earl of Severn had seen in her to marry her, considering the fact that she was a nobody and had had nothing by way of a fortune to bring to the marriage.

  The Earl of Severn was turning the heads of his horses thro
ugh the gateway into Hyde Park, which was already crowded with horses, carriages, and pedestrians. It was right on the fashionable hour.

  This was it, Abigail thought. The notice of their marriage had appeared in the papers that morning, and the ton must be agog to see Miles’s bride. The ladies must be all poised and ready with their spiteful tongues and their cats’ claws. And who could blame them? Miles had doubtless been the most eligible and the most desirable bachelor in London just four days before.

  She would probably die of the ordeal ahead of her.

  Her very best plan would be to remain quite silent and to smile and nod graciously at anyone to whom Miles chose to present her. That was what she would do, she decided.

  “I feel like a performing bear tied to a post,” she said. “Very conspicuous and very much in danger of being torn limb from limb.”

  “Do you?” The earl turned to smile down at her.

  “We will just take one turn about, then, Abby, and go home again. But it will make things a little easier for you tonight if you are familiar with at least a few faces.”

  “Sir Gerald Stapleton,” she said. “Your mother and your sisters. That sounds like plenty of faces, Miles. I really don’t think I dare try doing the waltz, do I? That is, assuming that anyone asks me, of course. But you will, won’t you? And with you I can do it, Miles. You have the remarkable ability to keep your feet from beneath mine. I did not tread on them more than three or four times, did I? And that was at the beginning, when we were both laughing so hard and Sir Gerald was playing so many wrong notes that we were not concentrating at all.”

  “Staying away from your feet is called good leading, Abby,” he said. “Most gentlemen are quite skilled at it, I assure you. You need not be afraid.”

  “Did you mind my inviting Sir Gerald to spend the summer at Severn Park?” she asked. “I realized as the words were coming from my mouth that I should have asked you first, Miles. But it seemed such a splendid idea for you to have a friend with you. If your mother and Constance come, with me that makes three ladies—not to mention Bea and Clara—and you all alone.”