by Mary Balogh
“He does not have to be a party to it, by thunder,” the earl said, his voice raised far above the level of courteous discourse. “It was an agreement made between his father and her father. When were the parties to such a match ever consulted for their consent? Do you have no control over your offspring, Withingsby, that your eldest son—your heir—has had the impudence to ignore an agreement entered into seventeen years ago by his father in order to marry a woman from the gutter?”
The marquess stood close to the door, his hands at his back. He spoke very quietly. He would be drawn into no shouting match. “You will choose your words with care, sir,” he said, “when you speak of my wife.”
“What?” The earl’s ample fist banged on his grace’s desk with force enough to send a fountain of ink spurting upward from the inkwell. “You insolent puppy. Do you dare open your mouth without your father’s permission? And to threaten me?”
“I am eight-and-twenty years old, sir,” the marquess said. “I have been living independently of my father since I was twenty. I live my life according to my own principles. I have married the lady of my choice, as is my right. I am sorry indeed for any embarrassment my marriage has caused you and Lady Tillden, and more sorry than I can say for any distress I have caused Lady Marie. But I will acknowledge no misbehavior in neglecting to honor a long-standing agreement concerning me, in which I had no voice.”
“I will demand recompense for this,” the earl said, pointing a finger first at the marquess and then at the silent duke. “I will blacken both your names to such a degree that you will be unable to show your faces in society for the rest of your lives.” He stood up. “I will have my carriage brought around again and my wife and daughter summoned. I will not remain one hour beneath this roof, where honor is not worth a farthing.”
“Sit down, Tillden,” his grace said, his voice wearily haughty. “Unless you wish to make yourself a laughing-stock and your daughter unmarriageable. No one outside my family knows why you have come here, though doubtless there is speculation. There was never any written contract. There was never a formal betrothal. You are here as my friend, as you have been a number of times over the years. You are here out of concern for my health. No one has ever said that the ball arranged here for tomorrow evening was to be a betrothal ball. It has been arranged to celebrate Staunton’s return home and the unexpected joy of his bringing a bride with him. It has been arranged to celebrate my family’s being together again for the first time since her grace’s funeral. And to celebrate the visit of my oldest friend, the Earl of Tillden. This thing can be carried off with dignity.”
The earl had sat again and was clearly considering the wisdom of rethinking his initial impulse.
“I am most insulted, Withingsby,” he said. “I hope to hear from you that Staunton and his—his wife are to be severely disciplined.”
“Staunton has heard my displeasure,” his grace said. “Lady Staunton is quite blameless. And in the day since I have made her acquaintance I have grown decidedly fond of her.”
The marquess raised his eyebrows.
“Even though she is an upstart nobody?” the earl asked. “Even though she was nothing more than a governess on the lookout for—”
But even as the marquess took a step forward, his father spoke coolly and courteously—and quite firmly.
“I have grown decidedly fond of my daughter-in-law, the Marchioness of Staunton,” he said.
The Earl of Tillden, the marquess could see, would stay at Enfield, at least until after tomorrow evening’s ball. He had realized that the scandal he would dearly love to visit upon the two of them would also involve his own family in ridicule and humiliation.
“You will ring for the butler, Staunton,” his father said. “He will show you to your rooms, Tillden. I trust you will find everything for your comfort there. You will escort the ladies to tea at four?”
11
SHE SAT AT HER DRESSING-TABLE MIRROR, BRUSHING her hair long after she had dismissed her new maid for the night. There was little point in going to bed. She would never sleep. Her brain teemed with activity.
It had seemed so easy at first. In return for a lifetime of security for herself and her family, all she had to do was marry a man and spend a few weeks with him, meeting his family. She had very deliberately asked no questions. She had not needed to know.
It had still seemed relatively easy even after she had discovered exactly who her new husband was and who his family was. It had been somewhat nerve-racking, of course, to come to Enfield Park and to be presented to the Duke of Withingsby and everyone else. A great deal more had been expected of her than she had at first anticipated. But even so, it had been fairly easy.
If she had just done as she had been told. If she had just been content to be quiet and demure, to be his shadow. To be a quiet mouse. If she had only not looked about her and seen people—just human people caught up in the drama of life and really not doing very well at it at all. If she had just not come to care.
She sighed and set her brush down on the dressing table. She was not even going to try to sleep yet. She would go into the sitting room and write some letters—one to Philip, one to Penny and the children. It was time she wrote to them. She had been avoiding doing so. What, after all, could she write but lies? Not that there was any point in hiding the truth any longer, she supposed, since it was too late for any of them to stop what she had done. But she could not tell them in a letter. It must be face-to-face.
She seemed to have done nothing but lie for—for how long was it? Yesterday they had arrived at Enfield. The day before that they had married. Was it really less than three days altogether? Four days ago she had not even met the Marquess of Staunton. She had merely been feeling jittery at the prospect of being interviewed by Mr. Earheart.
She took a candle with her into the private sitting room of their apartments and lit two more when she got there. She found paper and pen and ink in the small escritoire and sat down to write.
“Dear Phil …”
The Earl of Tillden had acted all evening as if she did not exist, even though his grace had seated him to her right during dinner. The countess had nodded sweetly and nervously in her direction whenever their eyes had met but had avoided coming close enough to make conversation necessary. Lady Marie Lucas had been taken firmly under Marianne’s wing. She was a beautiful, elegant young lady, who fit into the drawing room at Enfield and blended in with the family there as if she had been born to it all—as indeed she had.
The marquess had not wished to marry her. Hence his marriage to her. But he had not seen Lady Marie for eight years or longer. She would have been a child. It must have been a shock to him to see her today. She wondered if he regretted … But she dipped the pen firmly into the inkwell. If he did, it was his problem.
“Dear Phil, You must think I am lost. Two whole days and I am only now writing to you. Everything has been very busy and very new. I am only just settling. There are four children, not three, but the youngest is not ready for my services yet. He is a plump, adorable baby, who crawls into everything he is not supposed to crawl into, who puts everything he finds into his mouth, and who considers everything that happens—especially the exasperation of his nurse—worthy of a chuckle.”
It was hard to believe that such a happy child could have come from Marianne and Richard. He had her thinking wistfully of motherhood. But no matter. She would be the world’s most attentive and indulgent aunt to Phil and Agnes’s children and to Penny’s.
“The oldest child, Augusta, is eight years old,” she wrote. “She is a grave little girl who has never learned to be a child, and she is hostile to me and to”—Charity brushed the feather of the quill pen across her chin for a moment—“Mr. Earheart. But I did coax first a smile and then a giggle from her after tea today when I told her about the lodgekeeper’s two children ambushing me this morning by hiding in the branches of a tree and showering me with leaves as I passed beneath. I believe she must be fon
d of those children. I will have to see if I can arrange for them to play together occasionally. I do not believe she has been allowed a great deal of time simply for play.”
She had told Augusta about some of her own childhood exploits, including the time she had climbed to the topmost branches of a tree close to the house to rescue a kitten who was mewing most piteously, while Penny wept and Phil sniveled on the ground below. The kitten had tired of its perch and removed itself to the ground long before Charity had climbed laboriously to the top to find it gone. And then the inevitable had happened—just as it had this morning to a lesser degree with Harry. It had taken a gardener, their father, and a passing peddler—not to mention oceans of tears and much anxious and conflicting advice from the other two children and their mother—to get her down again. Charity had milked the story for all it was worth when telling it to Augusta.
Charity stopped writing. She frowned and brushed the feather absently across her chin again. She had invented ages and genders for the three mythical children she was to teach. What exactly had she told Phil? She must be careful not to completely contradict herself. That was the trouble with lies. A good memory was essential if one was going to start telling them.
But something happened to distract her. The sitting-room door opened. She looked over her shoulder in some surprise.
Her husband was standing there. He was wearing a wine-colored brocaded dressing gown with leather slippers. His hair was disheveled but only succeeded somehow in making him look even more handsome than usual. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Ah,” he said, “it is you. What are you doing?”
She half covered her letter with one hand, trying not to look too secretive about it.
“I thought I would write a couple of letters before going to bed,” she said. “I am sorry. Did the light disturb you?”
“Not at all,” he said. “To whom do you write?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “To some friends.”
“At your old home?” he asked. “I was under the impression that you were alone in London.”
She was thankful that his curiosity did not extend to strolling across the room to look over her shoulder.
“At my old home, yes,” she said.
He stood just inside the door, his hands at his back, his lips pursed, looking almost awkward. As if he felt he did not quite belong there. As if he were embarrassed. Yet he was in his own apartments in his own boyhood home.
“I never used this room,” he said as if in answer to her thoughts. “It seems like a woman’s room.”
“It is cozy,” she said.
“Yes. Well, good night.” He turned back toward the door.
“Good night, my lord,” she said.
He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. “Would you mind if I sat here while you write?” he asked. “I will not disturb you.”
This was the Marquess of Staunton—that cold, haughty, cynical man? This uncertain, almost humble man?
“I would not mind at all, my lord,” she said. “Please do join me.”
He sat on a cozy love seat, set his elbow on the arm, and rested his closed fist against his mouth.
“Proceed,” he said when she continued to look at him.
His eyes looked darker than usual—it must be a trick of the candlelight. But no, she thought as she turned back to her letter. It was more than that. Something had been lifted behind his eyes. But she would not turn back to see if she had been correct.
It had been a difficult letter to write even when she was alone. It was next to impossible now. In the course of fully twenty minutes she limped her way through another few sentences and brought a very unsatisfactory letter to an end. She waited for the ink to dry before folding the page carefully. She would have to take it into the village tomorrow. She could not set it on the tray downstairs addressed to Mr. Philip Duncan.
“I have finished.” She turned and smiled—and was jolted to find that he was sitting exactly as he had been twenty minutes before. He was still watching her.
“It is a very short letter,” he said. “And it is only one. I broke your concentration.”
“It does not matter,” she said. “I can write another letter tomorrow.”
“You are gracious, Lady Staunton,” he said. “Always gracious. My father appears to have grown remarkably fond of you.”
“He is kind,” she said.
He laughed softly. “ ‘My dear,’ ” he said in his father’s voice. “ ‘Dear daughter. My dear daughter, come and seat yourself on this stool at my feet.’ And then a careless hand resting lightly and affectionately on your shoulder. A soft look in his eyes.”
“He is kind,” she said again. The duke had made a potentially impossible evening really rather pleasant for her.
“His grace is never kind,” he said, “and never affectionate. He plays a game with you, my lady. Or rather he plays a game with me. We play cat and mouse with each other.”
By each pretending to an affection for her to infuriate the other. Neither of them felt the fondness for her that they showed in public.
“Does it hurt you?” he asked.
Yes, it did. It hurt dreadfully to be seen and used as a pawn rather than as a person. But she had freely agreed to be so seen and so used and she had ignored the advice to make herself into a mere shadow. Shadows had no feelings of personal hurt or of pity for those who did the hurting.
She shook her head. “It is just a temporary arrangement,” she said. “It will soon be over.”
“Yes.” He gazed at her and she was sure she had not been wrong about his eyes. Some of the defenses had been allowed to fall. Perhaps he felt safe with her here in his own apartments late at night.
She got to her feet. “It is late,” she said. “It is time I went to bed. Good night, my lord.”
“Let me come there with you,” he said as she reached the door and lifted her hand to the knob.
She realized her naiveté then. She had felt the atmosphere ever since he stepped inside the room, and she had thought it to be mere self-consciousness on her part. She recognized the tension now for what it had been from the start. They both—oh, yes, both—wanted to lie with each other again. It was open now in his words and the tone in which they had been spoken. And it was open too in her body’s response to his words. There was a heavy throbbing in that most secret inner place where he had been two nights ago—and where she wanted him again.
It would not be wise. It was not love or even affection. It was not even marriage. It was need, the need of a twenty-three-year-old woman to mate, to celebrate her womanhood. It was a need that had lain dormant and almost unfelt in her until two nights ago. Now it was a need aroused with almost frightening ease. It was a need, she suspected, that might well grow into a constant craving if she gave in to it and became more familiar with the earth-shattering delights she had discovered two nights ago.
“You may feel free to say no,” he said. “I will not force you or even try to persuade you.”
And yet if she was honest with herself she would admit that it was already too late to prevent the craving. It had been there last night, it had been one reason for her staying up tonight, and it would be a demon to be fought for years to come. Tonight she had a chance to experience that delight again, to savor it, to commit it to memory for the barren years ahead.
“Allow me to open the door for you, my lady.” His voice came from just behind her. “It was no part of our agreement. You must not feel coerced. I will not trouble you by asking again.”
“I would like to lie with you,” she said.
One of his hands touched her shoulder. The other reached past her to open the door. “I will take you to my bed, then, if you have no objection,” he said.
“No,” she said. “No, I have none.”
His bedchamber was identical in size and shape to her own, but his was a masculine room, decorated in shades of wine and cream and gold. It smelled masculine—of leather and
cologne and wine and unidentifiable maleness.
Did it matter that it was not for love? Or even for conjugal duty? Did it matter that it was just for need—for craving? Did the absence of either love or duty make it immoral? He was her husband. She turned to him and looked up into his eyes. Her very temporary husband. She would think about morality when he was no longer her husband, when she was alone again. Alone with her family.
Alone.
IT HAD BEEN the day of his final triumph, the day when he had at last won his undisputed independence and had moreover forced his father publicly to accept it. He had come home and faced his demons and even made some peace with them. It would no longer be a place to be avoided and his family would no longer be people to be avoided. He could be civil to Will again.
He should be rejoicing. He should be planning his return to his own life. He should be turning over to his man of business the matter of his wife’s settlement.
He was not rejoicing. He was restless. He tried lying down. He tried willing sleep. It would not come. He was going to have to stay at Enfield, he admitted to himself at last. His father was gravely ill—dying, in fact. The admission brought him momentary panic. They were going to have to talk—really talk. His father was going to have to be persuaded to let go the reins of power so that he could relax and perhaps prolong his days. That meant that he, Staunton, was going to have to take over. He was going to have to stay. Indefinitely. He could not—would not—let his father die alone.
He could not keep his wife here indefinitely. He stood at the window of his room looking out into the darkness. Clouds must have moved over—there was no moonlight. There was no need to keep her here longer than a few days more, in fact. Once Tillden and his family returned home, she might be allowed to leave too. After all, he had not deceived his father about the true nature of his marriage, and he had no real wish or need to deceive him. The point was that the marriage was real and indissoluble. His father, being a realist, had accepted that. She had served her purpose. Now, soon, she might be allowed to go.
