by Mary Balogh
She had actually been blushing when she had joined him in the inn dining room for breakfast. She had looked like the stereotypical bride the morning after her wedding night. She had even been looking almost pretty—not that he had spent a great deal of time looking into her face. He had addressed himself to his breakfast without being in any way aware of what he ate beyond the fact that it was inordinately greasy.
What the devil had possessed him last night? He had felt not one glimmering of sexual interest in her from the moment of spying her in the shadows of the salon where she had waited to be interviewed to the moment during which she had started to talk about sheep and Wales and lumpy mattresses. Not one iota of a glimmering.
And yet he had consummated their union during the very first night of their marriage—and had done so with great enthusiasm and more than usual satisfaction. He had fallen asleep almost immediately after lifting himself off her and had slept like the proverbial baby until dawn.
What if he had got her with child? It had been almost his first thought on waking up—after he had rejected the notion of waking her up and doing it again with her. A pregnancy would complicate matters considerably. Besides, children of his own body were the very last things he wanted. The very idea of impregnating a woman made him shudder. He had always been meticulous about choosing bedfellows who knew how to look after themselves—until last night.
He had the uneasy feeling this morning that he might have been at least partly deceived in his wife. True, she had been innocent and ignorant and awkward and virgin. She had also been a powder keg of passion just waiting to be ignited. And he had provided the spark. And had heedlessly spilled his seed in her.
She had proved him wrong in his conviction that he had nothing new to learn sexually except what it felt like to mount a virgin. Very wrong. He had known women come to sexual climax. It happened routinely with all his mistresses. But he had understood last night with humiliating clarity that women faked climax just as they faked delight in the whole process, knowing that for a conceited man it was important not only to receive pleasure in bed but also to believe that he gave it. Thus many women earned their daily bread—making their employers feel like devilishly virile and dashing and manly fellows.
Charity Earheart, Marchioness of Staunton, had taught him a lesson last night—quite unwittingly, of course. The shattering reality of her own untutored, totally spontaneous response to being bedded had exposed all the artificiality of all the other women he had ever known. His wife had made him feel stupidly proud of his performance. She had made him want more—he had wanted it as soon as he awoke.
He was furious, the more so perhaps since he did not quite know on whom to concentrate his fury. On her? She had merely reacted to what he did to her. On himself? His lips thinned. Was he incapable of being alone with a woman—even such a woman as the one he had married—without making an idiot of himself?
“It is pretty countryside,” she said, breaking a lengthy silence.
“Yes, it is.” She had tried several times to initiate conversation. He had quelled each attempt with a curtness bordering on the morose. He had no wish to converse, especially on such intellectually stimulating topics as the prettiness of the countryside.
It would not happen again, he decided. They would have separate bedchambers at Enfield, of course, and would be expected to keep to them except for brief, discreet, and dutiful couplings. But the door between their rooms would remain firmly and permanently closed. He would not touch her again with a ten-foot pole.
“What is Enfield Park like?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Large,” he said. But such a brief answer crossed the borderline between moroseness and downright rudeness. She had done nothing wrong, after all, except to say yes last night. But he was the one who had asked the question. “The house is Palladian in style, massive, with wide lawns and flower beds and ancient trees all about it, sloping down at one side to a lake and up on the other side to woods and planned walks and artful prospects. There is a village, there are farms, some old ruins—” He shrugged again. “There are all the usual trappings of a large estate. It is extremely prosperous. Your husband is like to be a very wealthy man, my lady—far more wealthy than he already is—and quite well able to keep you in comfort for the rest of your life.”
“Is your mother alive?” she asked. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“My mother died,” he said curtly, “soon after giving birth to her thirteenth child. There are five of us still living.” He did not want to talk about his mother or about her frequent pregnancies and almost as frequent stillbirths. The number thirteen did not even include the four miscarriages. Devil take it, but he hoped he had not impregnated his wife. “I have two brothers and two sisters.”
“Oh,” she said. He could see that her head was turned in his direction. He kept his eyes directed beyond the window. “Are they all still at home?”
“Not all,” he said. “But most, I believe.” Marianne wrote to him occasionally—she was the only one. She had married the Earl of Twynham six years ago. They had three children. Charles must be twenty now. Augusta would be eight—twenty years younger than he. There had been seventeen pregnancies in twenty years for his mother. He did not want to think of his mother.
“How happy you must be, then,” his wife said—he had almost forgotten that she shared the carriage with him, “to be coming home. How you must have been missing them.”
She set one hand on his arm and he turned his head sharply to look pointedly down at it and up into her eyes. “It is the first time in eight years, my lady,” he said, and he could hear the chill in his voice. “And my absence has been entirely voluntary. I come now only because the Duke of Withingsby is in failing health and has summoned me, doubtless so that he can assail my ears with a recounting of my shortcomings and a listing of my responsibilities. There are certain burdens attached to being the eldest of five living children and to being the heir to a dukedom and vast and prosperous estates.”
Her very blue eyes had widened. They were a truly remarkable feature, lending considerable beauty to the rest of her features. He felt annoyance that she had kept them hidden through most of their initial interview. They detracted severely from the overall image she projected of a quiet brown mouse. Had she trained them on him from the start of that interview, he would not even have asked her to sit down. He would have dismissed her almost immediately. And her face was definitely heart-shaped.
“You have been without your family for eight years?” she said, her voice warm with sympathy. “Oh, it must have been a dreadful quarrel indeed.”
“It was a matter with which you need not concern yourself, my lady,” he said chillily, attempting to stare her down. It was something he was adept at doing. Very few people in his experience had been able to hold his gaze when he had no wish for them to do so.
She gazed right back at him. “I believe you must have been very deeply hurt,” she said.
He clucked his tongue, made an impatient gesture with one hand, and turned back to the window. “Spare me your shallow analysis of what you know nothing about,” he said, “and of a person you know nothing of.”
“And I believe,” she said, “you have protected yourself by shutting yourself up inside yourself—like a fortress. I believe you must be an unhappy man.”
He sucked in his breath. He felt furious almost to the point of violence. Except that he had never been one to work out his anger or his frustrations in violence. He felt the icy coldness that the effort of control always caused in him. He turned his head once more to look at her.
“My lady,” he said, his voice very quiet, “you would be very well advised to be silent.”
Something flickered for a moment in her eyes—he thought it was probably fear—and was gone again. She tipped her head to one side, frowned fleetingly—and held his gaze. But she obeyed him.
He set his head back against the comfortable cushions of the carriage and closed h
is eyes. He kept them closed for a long time, letting the anger flow out of him, admitting that it was ill-founded. The woman was his wife and was being taken to his childhood home to meet his family. It was to be expected that she would feel some curiosity even if the arrangement they had was more in the nature of employment than marriage. He could not expect her to behave as if she were totally inanimate, after all.
He spoke again at last, without opening his eyes.
“You do not have to concern yourself with what will happen when we arrive at Enfield Park,” he said. “You need not worry about creating a good impression or any impression at all for that matter. I will speak for you. You may think of yourself as my shadow if you will. You may behave as you did when we met two days ago.”
“Why?” It was not a defiant question. It sounded merely curious.
“The Duke of Withingsby is extremely high in the instep,” he said. “He has an enormous sense of his own consequence and of that of his whole family. Although his heir has been busily sowing his wild oats for eight years and acquiring an unsavory reputation as a rake—did you know that about your husband, my lady?—his grace will now expect great things of him. A glittering and politic marriage, for example.”
“Your marriage to me will of course be seen as a disaster,” she said.
“Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “I have married a governess, an impoverished gentlewoman. At least I have spared him someone from the demimonde.”
“And you wish for a wife who is not only of inferior birth and fortune,” she said, “but also lacking in charm and manners and conversation. A mere shadow.”
“You need not worry,” he said. “No one will openly insult you. Anyone who dares do so will have me to deal with.”
“But who,” she asked in her low, pleasant voice, “will protect me from your insults, sir?”
His eyes snapped open. “You, my lady,” he said, “are being paid very well indeed to serve my purpose.”
“Yes,” she said, looking steadily back at him, “I am.”
The words, even her expression, were quiet and meek. Why, then, did he have the distinct impression that war had been declared?
He closed his eyes again.
5
ENFIELD PARK IN WILTSHIRE WAS DAUNTINGLY grand. Yet even as the thought flashed into Charity’s mind she realized that it was a gross understatement. She had lived most of her life in a cottage that boasted eight bedchambers abovestairs and was set amidst a few acres of pleasing parkland. She had been a frequent visitor at nearby Willowbourne, the home of Sir Humphrey Loring and his family—Cassandra Loring, a mere eight months younger than she, was her particular friend—and had always thought it imposing. Both properties would fit into one corner of Enfield Park and never be noticed.
At first, after the carriage had passed between massive stone gateposts and by a small stone lodge, she mistook the dower house off to the right of the driveway for the main house itself and then felt foolish when she realized her mistake, though she had not spoken it aloud, for she had been almost awed by its size and the classical perfection of its design. And that was just the dower house? It must be—the marquess had murmured the information and the carriage had continued on past.
The driveway wound between flowering hedgerows, beyond which stretched dense and ancient woodlands. They seemed to have passed into a quieter, more shadowed world despite the clopping of the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the carriage wheels. Charity stared about her in wonder. But the woods fell away behind them as they approached a river and crossed it over a covered Palladian bridge—it was a magnificent structure, she saw, leaning closer to the window. The driveway climbed slightly on the other side of the bridge, passing between well-kept lawns and flower beds and the occasional old tree with massive and gnarled trunk. There were wooded hills over to the right, Charity could see. But almost before she could notice them, her attention was taken wholly by the house itself, which had just come into view.
It was an almost laughable misnomer to call it a house. It was a vast mansion of classical design. It was grand enough to do a king justice. It could easily be a palace. But it was the home of the Duke of Withingsby, her father-in-law. One day her husband would be duke and owner of it all. And she had thought yesterday morning that she was marrying a plain Mr. Earheart.
Charity swallowed. He was very silent—as he had been for most of the day and yesterday too. She had tried to make conversation, though admittedly she had chosen topics that did not lend themselves to a great deal of intelligent discussion. She had expected this morning—naively, as it had turned out—that it would be easier to communicate with him today. Though she had not for a moment mistaken what had happened the night before for love and had not expected it to make any difference at all to his plans for the future, she had nevertheless expected that there would be greater ease and warmth between them.
How wrong she had been. The opposite was true. The fact that they had had conjugal relations—though it was very hard to believe that it had happened with this elegant, almost morose man beside her—appeared to have meant nothing at all to him and merely made her annoyingly self-conscious. She kept remembering where and how he had touched her and tried not to stare at his hands—they were long-fingered, very masculine hands. She kept remembering that he had been deep inside her body, and moving vigorously there for what must have been several minutes. She kept remembering the amazingly intense pleasure his movements had given her.
It had happened with this immaculately tailored, stern-faced, very handsome stranger. It should have brought them closer together, even without the dimension of love. How could they continue strangers when they had shared bodies? But she had a great deal to learn, it seemed. He had told her earlier that he had earned a reputation as a rake. That meant that last night’s activity was very familiar to him. She was merely one of a long string of women—and without a doubt the least expert of them all. It was a strange thought. To her the experience had been earth-shattering. She was not yet sure whether she was glad to have experienced it or whether in light of the future it might have been better if she had never known.
But the carriage was fast approaching the house—the mansion—and the discomfort she had lived with all day increased tenfold. Even if she were coming here as a governess she would be quaking with apprehension. But she was not coming as a governess. She was coming as the wife of the heir—the temporary wife. The unexpected wife. She smoothed her hands over the folds of her brown cloak and was thankful that her gloves had not worn into holes—yet.
“Ah,” her husband said from beside her, “my arrival has been noted.” He chuckled softly—a rather chilling sound.
The great doors at the top of the marble steps had opened and two people—a man and a woman—had stepped outside. For one foolish moment Charity forgot that the duchess was deceased. Two such grand personages, both dressed elegantly in black, could only be the duke and duchess, she thought. But of course they were not. They were merely servants—the housekeeper and the butler at a guess.
“His grace observes every occasion of any significance with the utmost formality and correctness,” the marquess said. “The return of the prodigal heir is an occasion of significance.” His second chuckle sounded just as mirthless as the first.
There was no time for Charity to become even more nervous than she already felt. Liveried footmen had appeared on the terrace, and they opened the door of the carriage and set down the steps almost before it had rolled to a complete halt. And then she was standing on the cobbles, feeling dwarfed by the massive pillars that flanked the steps and overwhelmed by the occasion, watching her husband receive the homage of the black-clad servants with icy courtesy. They turned to precede him up the steps while he offered her his arm.
His face was hard and cold, his eyes opaque. His face was also devoid of all color. He wore so heavy a mask, Charity realized with a sudden flash of sympathy, that there was no penetrating it to the real man behind. Not even th
rough the eyes, usually a mask’s weak point. He was coming home to his father and his family after eight years. How different from the homecoming she imagined for herself in a few weeks’ time.
He dropped her arm when they reached the wide doorway and stepped inside ahead of her. This was the point at which she was to become his shadow, she thought, but rather than being offended that he did not lead her forward, she was glad of the chance to be insignificant. Her first impression of the hall was of vastness—of marble and pillars and classical busts and a towering dome. It would have been an intimidating room under any circumstances. But these were clearly not any circumstances. Two rows of silent servants, women on the left, men on the right, flanked the central path across the hall to a short flight of wide steps that led up to what might be a grand salon.
At the foot of the steps, arranged as if for a theatrical tableau, was a group of people, clearly not servants or even ordinary mortals. In the center, and slightly in front of all the others, a man stood alone. A man who so closely resembled the Marquess of Staunton as he might appear in twenty-five or thirty years that for a moment Charity felt somewhat disoriented.
She was, she realized then, in the presence of the Duke of Withingsby.
The marquess paused for a moment to look left and right, an ironic half-smile on his lips. Then he fixed his eyes on his father and moved forward across the hall, his boots clicking hollowly on the marble floor. Charity took one step forward to follow him. But a hand closing firmly about her upper arm stopped her progress. She turned her head to look into the disdainful face of the housekeeper.
“You will move to your left, girl,” the woman said quietly, “and stand behind the line of servants until someone can attend to you.”
Charity felt a welcome wave of amusement. She had been mistaken for a servant! “Oh, I think not,” she said, smiling. But she stood where she was.
“Impertinent baggage,” the housekeeper said coldly, her voice still low enough that it did not carry. “I will deal with you myself later. Stand where you are.”
