Far from it. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, her back straight and not touching the bench; on her head was a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied at her nape to slant over her face. She was dressed entirely in white, which Geoffrey guessed was intended to make her appear more demure and virginal, or perhaps penitent. He didn’t care for it; the white diminished her somehow, and he preferred her in the bright, more intense (if unfashionable) colors that she usually favored. It was as if his brilliant butterfly had been reduced to a pale, papery moth.
But the closer he came, the more he could see how it wasn’t just her clothes. Her face was pale as well, her golden skin turned almost sallow, and her amber-colored eyes were uncharacteristically ringed with shadows making them flat and expressionless. He was accustomed to seeing a touch of sadness or melancholy in her expression, but not the abject misery he found there now. With concern he wondered what her family had done or said to her by way of a punishment to reduce her to this condition, and he wondered, too, what he could do to relieve it.
“Good day to you, Lord Geoffrey,” Lady Morley said, granting him a slight nod as she rose from the bench. The little dog jumped up to the place she’d been sitting and leaped into her arms, where she turned him on his back and cradled him like a fat, furry baby. “Such a pleasant day, is it not?”
She was doing her best to make it seem as if they all were in fact back in the days when he would meet the two ladies in the park, as if nothing else had happened in the meantime. But there was sadness behind her smile as well, and a disappointment behind her determination to be cheerful.
“Good day, Lady Morley,” he said. He raised his hat to her, even as he couldn’t keep his gaze from sliding back to Serena. “I trust Fanfan is well?”
“Oh, yes, he’s in splendid fettle, as you can see for yourself,” she said, giving the dog a fond pat on his rounded belly. “But you did not come here to visit with me, or Fanfan, either. Serena, my dear, Lord Geoffrey has come to call upon you.”
Slowly Serena rose from the bench to face Geoffrey, and sank into a curtsey before him like a white-petaled flower crushing to the ground.
“Good day, Lord Geoffrey,” she murmured with her head bowed to avoid meeting his eye. There was misery in her voice as well, misery and unhappiness nearly beyond bearing.
“Well, then, Fanfan and I will leave you to each other,” Lady Morley said. “But I shall not be far away, Lord Geoffrey, and I will ask you be most decorous in your attentions to my niece.”
She smiled purposefully, and retreated toward the house, Fanfan in her arms. Geoffrey assumed she went inside; but he did not know for certain, because he couldn’t look away from Serena, her head still bowed and hidden by the brim of her hat.
“Jēsamina,” he said softly. They were too far away from the house’s open windows to be overheard, yet the knowledge that they were being watched made him lower his voice just the same. “Will you not look at me?”
Slowly she raised her chin, and her gaze with it. Now he could see how her eyes were red-rimmed from weeping. Of course she would have shed tears; the brimming unhappiness in her eyes must have spilled over at some point.
“I’m sorry,” he said, an all-encompassing apology for having put her in this situation, for contributing to her suffering; even, perhaps, for first approaching her and asking her to dance for the sake of a wager. He hadn’t needed the promise to her grandfather to make him wish to make her happy. He had felt that way toward her almost from the beginning. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“You needn’t apologize,” she said swiftly. “You did nothing that merited it. No matter what Grandpapa and my—my uncle said to you in the house, there is no blame, no fault that can ever be attached to you.”
He was taken aback by the vehemence in her words.
“They were somewhat forceful in their arguments, yes,” he admitted. “But I would venture the reason is that they care very much for your welfare.”
“My uncle does not care for me,” she said, and for the first time he saw the familiar spark light her golden eyes. “All Uncle Radnor cares about is that I bring no shame to him, or his place in the world. My father despised him. He called his brother the worst kind of bully, and he is. I despise him, too.”
Abruptly she turned away, again hiding her face from him. She should be resting her face against his chest instead, with his arms around her to comfort her.
“Walk with me,” he urged. “Please.”
She shook her head. “We shouldn’t.”
“Please, Serena,” he said. “It will be much better than standing here like a pair of stone statues.”
She sighed restlessly. “We must stay in sight, or else they’ll come out and hunt you down.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” he said, even though he didn’t exactly believe it himself. Her father had been right: her uncle did have all the marks of a prime bully, and no matter how Radnor had shaken his hand, Geoffrey suspected he would like nothing more than an excuse to try to pound him to an insensible pulp. But he’d risk it for Serena, and he held his hand out to her.
“We’ll walk back and forth across this path,” he said, “six paces one way, six paces the other. Not even I can be accused of seducing you like that.”
She stared down at his offered hand for a long moment. “We cannot touch,” she said at last. “But I will walk beside you.”
She folded her arms over her chest as if to remind her wayward hands to keep from his, and began to walk, taking two quick short steps before Geoffrey joined her.
“They did not believe me when I said you hadn’t ruined me,” she said, the words tight and bitter. “Uncle Radnor was the worst. He called me a slattern and a whore, and—and many other things. It was not pleasant.”
Anger swept through Geoffrey, but for her sake he kept his voice calm. “He had no right to call you any of that.”
He wasn’t sure she heard him.
“It was his idea to send for a midwife to examine me,” she continued. “He accepted her word over mine that I was still a virgin.”
“Damnation, Serena, that is unspeakable,” he said, appalled. If for no other reason, he should marry her just to remove her from her dreadful family. “That he would humiliate you like that because of his own—”
“It is done,” she said, with a resolution that left no opening for further discussion. “I know why you’ve come today, Geoffrey, just as I know it’s not what either of us want.”
“Perhaps it is,” he said slowly. “What of kismet?”
She glanced at him sharply. “This would not be kismet. This would be my grandfather and my uncle forcing their will upon us.”
“Fate, and kismet, can take circuitous paths to the same place,” he said. “You can see it as coercion, or as that different path.”
She shook her head, unconvinced. “You are not obliged to follow their demands.”
“But I am,” he said. “By my honor as a gentleman, and by my regard for you.”
“Please don’t, Geoffrey,” she said, looking down. He could hear the warble of more tears in her voice, equaled by the determination not to shed them. “If you ask, then I must say yes. That is what my grandfather wants.”
He reached into his pocket and drew out a clean handkerchief. He’d learned long ago, from his father, to always carry a spare or two for occasions such as this one, and he offered it to her now. She looked at the snowy handkerchief marked with his monogram and sniffed, then shook her head, refusing it. From that sniff, he believed he knew better, and gently tucked the white linen square into the crook of her arm. Startled by his touch, she looked down, and after a moment she plucked the handkerchief free and used it to blot her eyes. She didn’t thank him; he didn’t expect it, either.
“Your grandfather seemed to believe you would welcome my, ah, attentions,” he said ruefully. “After everything that has passed between us, I rather believed that was the case as well.”
She shook her head again
, pressing his now-damp handkerchief into a tight ball of linen in her palm. “I wished to be your lover, to belong to you in that way, as you would to me. I never wanted to be your wife.”
He considered this, chagrined. He’d always thought that when the time came for him to wed, the lady he chose would be eager to marry him. He’d never imagined this unequivocal refusal.
“It is possible to be both, you know,” he said, striving to turn her argument around. “For every gentleman I know who keeps a mistress, I could name another who cannot wait to return home each night to the happiness he finds with his lady-wife. I’ve witnessed it within my own family, with my cousins and my father and older brother. I see no reason for us to be any—”
“My father loved his concubines far more than his wife,” she shot back. “That was never in question.”
Surely she must be the only lady in town who would manage to introduce concubines into a marriage proposal. Still, it also explained her reluctance. If she’d witnessed how her father had neglected her mother in favor of his mistresses, then she’d every right to be wary of marriage.
“When I marry,” he countered, “I don’t intend to keep a mistress or a concubine. I dare to hope I’ll be sufficiently content with my wife.”
The look she gave him showed she did not believe him, and worse, was faintly pitying him for being naïve.
“You will not persuade me, Geoffrey,” she said. “Especially not with an argument like that.”
“Even for the sake of love?”
“This has nothing to do with love,” she said wistfully. “How can it?”
She was right, of course. To the best of his knowledge, what existed between them wasn’t love, not in the grand poetical sense—or at least it wasn’t love yet. He liked Serena; he liked her very much. He thought about her constantly when they were apart, he relished her conversation and company, he desired her more than he had any other woman, enough to have gotten himself into this mess in the first place. But he wasn’t in love with her, not enough to make a comment like that. He didn’t know what had made him say it, anyway, and he deserved her rebuff. But in some perverse way, the more determined she became to refuse him, the more he wanted to marry her. “Yet if I ask you, will you say yes?”
“I will, because I must,” she said, her unhappiness and desperation clear. “Because I have no choice. Oh, Geoffrey, can’t you understand? You should marry some cheerful, fair-haired lady who will give you fat-cheeked sons and daughters with golden curls. That is who will make you content. You deserve a lady who is worthy of you, who is without complications, who is not me.”
She’d painted a nearly exact portrait of the wedded life he’d previously envisioned for himself, at least when he’d bothered to envision it. But that was before he’d met her, and before he’d realized she would make a much better wife for him than all those fair-haired, uncomplicated ladies he had danced with in his life. He had realized that. Now all he’d have to do was convince her.
“Forgive me, but I believe I know what kind of lady suits me best,” he said. “I would be bored within a week with one of those fair-haired ladies you describe. It’s the one—the only one—with complications who intrigues me.”
She stopped walking to look up at him, tipping her head back so that he could see all of her face beneath the hat’s curving brim. She was fragile and achingly beautiful, and when she gazed at him like this with her eyes so large, he knew that honor had nothing to do with him making the right decision.
“Oh, my dear, dear Geoffrey,” she said softly. “You do not understand, do you? You couldn’t. You can’t. And yet I so want you to!”
“But I do understand, Serena,” he said, kneeling before her on the garden path. He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out the small, leather-covered box. “I understand this. Will you do me the inestimable honor of becoming my wife?”
She pressed one hand over her mouth, and made a small whimper: of dismay, of surprise, of happiness? He wasn’t sure, but he decided to consider it enough of a consent, and persevered.
Gently he took her free hand and uncurled her fingers. His balled-up handkerchief dropped to the path, and he saw that she’d been gripping it so tightly in her hand that her nails had left little crescent-shaped marks on her palm. The vulnerability of those marks touched him deeply, and he couldn’t help kissing them lightly, barely grazing his lips across her palm. Then he slipped the ring on her finger, gliding it down its length. It looked right there, as if it could belong on no other hand, the golden stone and diamonds winking in the sunlight.
He rose, still keeping hold of her hand. He knew they’d have only a few more moments alone before the others in the house came to join them.
“My own Serena,” he said, happiness welling up within him. “My own Jēsamina.”
But she did not smile as she looked down at the new ring on her finger.
“Oh, Geoffrey,” she said sorrowfully. “What have we done? What have we done?”
“We’ve done what we both wanted,” he said firmly. “To be together always, never to part. That is kismet, and so is this.”
He raised her hand to his lips, and she let her gaze follow. He was looking at her with such intensity that she nearly couldn’t bear it. No, it went deeper than that. The last time anyone had looked at her like this had been Father, because he had loved her.
She had always believed that a broken heart was a contrivance of poets, not reality. Yet when Geoffrey looked at her in this way, with such warmth, she felt something in her chest break open and give way, and the pain of it made fresh tears fill her eyes.
“I would take you from this house and marry you tonight if I could,” he was saying. “I want you with me always, Serena. I want to keep you safe, and make you happier than you’ve ever been. I never want to see tears on your cheeks again, unless they’re tears of joy—which I certainly hope that those are.”
He found yet another handkerchief in his pocket and gently blotted the corners of her eyes with it.
“There,” he said softly, intent on wiping away her tears. “I told you I would do whatever I must to make you happy, because I want you to be my lover and my lady-wife, my dear begum.”
His dear begum: oh, it was that single Hindi word that undid her. In India, she would never have been regarded as a begum, a genteel married lady of high rank, because of her mother. But here Geoffrey was giving her his name and his rank and his protection because he wanted to, and because he wanted her.
If only he knew the truth. If only she could tell him.
He was smiling crookedly, and she realized she hadn’t said a word in response.
“I’ll ruin you,” she said, as close to that truth as she could dare to be.
His smile relaxed, with a relief that only tormented her more.
“Then we are even,” he said. “By all counts, that’s what I’ve done to you already.”
She could only shake her head. But she did not pull off the ring he’d given her: such a beautiful, beautiful ring, made a thousand times more so because he had put it on her finger.
“Say yes,” he said, half-teasing and half-serious. “That one word is all I wish to hear from you now. Say yes.”
He linked his fingers more closely into hers. With his thumb, he traced lazy small circles over the inside of her wrist, over her pulse, in the exact place to make her shiver. He was right when he’d said she wanted this. She’d never wanted anything more than to be his, no matter the risk, the challenges, the dangers.
She heard the garden door open behind her, and Grandpapa already beginning his bellowed congratulations. She didn’t look back, but instead turned her face up toward Geoffrey.
“Yes,” she whispered, for only him to hear. “Yes.”
The wedding date was set for the first week of June, exactly three weeks from the date that Geoffrey had proposed. Three Sundays fell into that span, just sufficient for reading the marriage banns. There was considerable speculation about tow
n as to the haste of the wedding, but once the Duke of Breconridge publicly smiled and said he could think of no good reason for his second son to wait any longer than that to marry the beautiful Miss Carew, the whispers quieted, and the gossips instead settled down to the more serious topic of the lady’s dress and jewels, who would be attending the ceremony, and where the newlyweds would reside.
While an engagement of three weeks’ duration might be adequate for the Church of England, it was shockingly short to the tradespeople who were responsible for Serena’s wedding clothes. Although the ceremony was going to be modest, with only the closest of family in attendance, Serena’s gown would also be the same one she would wear to be presented at Court as Geoffrey’s new wife. No expense was spared, for she was marrying into one of the wealthiest and most influential of noble families, and she would be expected to dress like it.
The gown was a robe à la Française with elegant pleats trailing from the back shoulders. The fabric was a shimmering silk cloth-of-gold over wide hoops, with swirling embellishments of costly Venetian lace and silk ribbon on the skirts. More lace trimmed the sleeve flounces, and pearls and brilliants were scattered over the entire dress to catch the light and sparkle. When she was presented at Court, she would of course wear three tall, white ostrich plumes in her hair to signify her status as a newly married lady, but for the wedding, she would have a scarf of more lace pinned like a veil to the top of her hair and falling over her shoulders.
There was, however, much more than her dress to be created and purchased in these three short weeks before the wedding. According to Aunt Morley, Serena required an entire new wardrobe to befit her soon-to-be position, and their days were filled with unending visits to mantua-makers, drapers, shoemakers, hosiers, lace-makers, and milliners. Also to be purchased was a prodigious amount of linen for the tables and beds in her new house, plus china to be ordered and silverware to be engraved with her new husband’s monogram.
A Sinful Deception Page 17
