by Mary Balogh
THE WEDDING BREAKFAST PROCEEDED with surprising ease. Perhaps it was because everyone—except Jennifer—tried very hard. Almost too hard, the Earl of Thornhill thought. The topics of conversation were too trivial and were clung to for too long. There was too much animation over trivialities and far too much laughter, especially from Frank and Bertie, and from Miss Newman. But he was grateful even so. Awkward silences and inappropriate solemnity would have been unbearable.
He was married. Without any chance to make his own choice, without any time to consider and digest what it was he had been forced into, he was married—to a woman who hated him with very good reason. She believed his perfidies far worse than they really were, and perhaps in time he could clear himself of some charges to her satisfaction. But he could not clear himself of everything.
He was horribly guilty. And if she knew the full truth, it would be worse for her than what she now believed. At least now she believed that he had wanted her and had deliberately set about getting her. How would she feel if she ever learned that he had not wanted her at all?
No, that was not strictly true. He had been moved by her beauty and by her innocent charm from the first. And powerfully attracted sexually. Perhaps if he had met her under different circumstances, he would indeed have set about wooing her. But he had not.
Bertie had been coldly satisfied at his news and had held out a hand as a signal that their quarrel was at an end. He had even agreed to attend the wedding. Frank had been incredulous and then inclined to find the whole matter a great lark. He too had agreed to come.
It felt somehow reassuring to have his closest friends at his wedding. He had relatives scattered about the north of England—and of course there were Catherine and the child who was officially his half-sister in Switzerland. But there had been no time to summon any of them, even if it had seemed appropriate to do so.
He took his bride home in the middle of the afternoon. It was perhaps only then that reality began to hit him. He was taking her to his home, now hers too. Her belongings had been delivered there in the morning. Maids had been bustling in the dressing room adjoining his own before he had left for church, unpacking her clothes. His servants, well aware that this was his wedding day and that his bride was coming home with him, were dressed in their best uniforms and had been lined up for inspection in the hall. There was a general buzz of excitement, hastily quelled by one frown from his housekeeper, as he stepped over the doorstep with his countess on his arm.
His servants applauded with an enthusiasm that went a little beyond politeness.
He smiled down at Jennifer and was relieved to see that she too was smiling. Whatever her personal feelings for him—he had not had one smile from her all day—she was prepared to play her part for his servants and hers, it seemed. He walked with her along the row of servants while his housekeeper introduced each to his wife. She smiled at all of them and stopped to talk to a few.
And then his housekeeper was preceding them up the stairs at his direction.
“You will show her ladyship to her rooms, if you please, Mrs. Harris,” he said, when they reached the first landing.
She nodded politely and went on ahead to stand a few stairs up the next flight of stairs, out of earshot.
He kissed his wife’s hand. “You are exhausted,” he said. “You will rest for a few hours, my dear. Alone. I will not disturb you.”
She flushed, her eyes on their hands.
“We will leave that for tonight,” he said, “after the theater.”
It had been arranged during the breakfast that her aunt and her cousin and Frank would share his box at the theater with them this evening.
But she raised her eyes to his. “You cannot really be serious,” she said. “I cannot be seen at the theater. Not after what happened just the evening before last. It would be far better if we left for the country.”
“No,” he said, “it would not, Jennifer. Frank and Bertie will be putting it about this afternoon that we have been wed this morning. By this evening it will be general knowledge. News of you and me will travel faster even than usual under present circumstances. Tonight we must appear in public. And we must smile and look happy, my dear. We will dare anyone to cut our acquaintance. If we creep away now, we may find it impossible ever to come back.”
“I do not want ever to come back,” she said.
“You will.” He released her hand. “If only to bring out our own daughters when the time comes.”
She bit her lip.
“Go now,” he said, “and rest. We will face the ton together this evening, and you will find that it is not impossible after all. Very few things are.”
She turned without a word and left him. He watched her climb the stairs behind Mrs. Harris, tall and elegant and shapely, her dark red hair arranged in intricate curls at the back of her head and down over her neck.
Perhaps he would not have chosen a bride quite so precipitately if he had been given the choice, he thought, and perhaps he would not have chosen her. But one thing was sure. His loins ached for her. It was no easy thing to watch her go to her bed in the apartments adjoining his own and to know her his wife, their marriage as yet unconsummated, and yet not go to join her there.
He wished at least as strongly as she did that there was not this infernal compulsion to appear before the ton tonight as man and wife. He would give a chunk of his fortune to be able to go to bed with her instead and seek out an evening’s entertainment of a different nature.
SHE WAS POWERFULLY REMINDED during dinner of the one vow she had made to him just that morning. She had promised to obey him for the rest of her life.
Somehow, seated adjacent to him at the long table in the dining room, she responded to his efforts to keep a conversation going. A little social training was a marvelous thing, she thought. One was able to talk politely on a variety of topics even when there was nothing to say and even when talking was the last thing in the world one felt like doing.
But one topic was difficult to introduce. She left it until she could not delay any longer without leaving it altogether.
“My lord,” she said, looking up into his face for one of the few times since the meal had begun, “will you please excuse me from attending the theater this evening? It has been such a busy day. And I did not sleep very well either last night or this afternoon. I have a h-headache. I do not feel very well.” Her voice trailed off. She sounded feebly abject even to her own ears.
“Gabriel,” he said, reaching across the table to touch his fingers lightly to the back of her hand. “I will not be ‘my lorded’ all through life by my own wife. Say it.”
“Gabriel,” she said obediently. The most unsuitable name there ever was.
“I do not believe you, my dear,” he said. “And if I did I would require you to attend the theater anyway. And I will ask you to smile and hold your head high. You have done nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing whatsoever.”
“Except,” she said softly, “being naive enough to fall into your trap.”
He removed his hand from hers. “Tomorrow evening,” he said, “we will be attending Lady Truscott’s ball. You will find it a great deal easier to do if you keep your courage this evening.”
“If?” she said. “I do not believe I have a choice, do I?”
“No,” he said, “you have no choice, Jennifer.”
She could scarcely move her mind beyond the terrifying ordeal of appearing before the ton less than forty-eight hours after being stranded in the Earl of Rushford’s ballroom while he read that letter aloud. But if she did try to edge her mind forward to assure herself, as she would normally do, that it would eventually be over and she could creep home to the comfort and privacy of her bed, she realized that there was no comfort to be had there.
Today was her wedding day. Tonight was her wedding night. Before she could expect any privacy or comfort tonight, there was that to be lived through. She looked involuntarily at her husband and shivered. What would it feel lik
e? she wondered. Would the pain be more powerful than the humiliation? She knew what was to happen. She had known for some time, but if she had been in any doubt, Aunt Agatha had put it to rest early this morning by describing the process with brisk and surprisingly graphic frankness.
She owed him obedience. She must let it happen. And she must hope that she could keep her mind as mercifully blank as she had kept it this morning.
“It is time to leave,” he said, setting down his napkin on the table, getting to his feet, and reaching out a hand to assist her. “The carriage will be here soon. You certainly do not want the added embarrassment of making a late entrance, I am sure.”
Jennifer scrambled to her feet with almost ungainly haste.
IT SEEMED THAT THE very doormen at the theater stared at them askance. It seemed that everyone else who was within the doors or on the stairs or otherwise not yet within the theater moved aside to give them room and fell into an incredulous silence. It seemed that all eyes in the theater, many of them assisted by quizzing glasses or lorgnettes, turned their way as they stepped into the earl’s box, and as if all conversations were instantly terminated and others begun after but a moment’s pause. Excited, buzzing, shocked conversations.
It seemed—no, it was, Jennifer thought. She clung to her husband’s arm and looked frequently up into his smiling face, her own mirroring his expression. She responded to what he said to her with words of her own. She had no idea what he said or what she said in reply. She kept her chin high.
Lord Francis Kneller was there already with Aunt Agatha and Samantha. He got to his feet, took Jennifer’s hand and kissed it, smiling at her and leading her to the chair which her husband held for her. She seated herself.
“Bravo, ma’am,” Lord Francis said and winked at her before resuming his seat beside Samantha.
Her husband sat down beside her and lifted her arm to rest along his. He bent his head close to her as she directed her eyes on the empty stage.
“You look lovely and wonderful and regal,” he said. “Look about you and smile even more if you meet the eye of someone you know.”
It was the hardest thing she had yet done. Except that she found when she did it that eyes were not directed at her at all. No one had even as much courage as she, she thought, raising her chin a notch higher. They could not meet her eye to eye and so pretended hastily to be looking elsewhere. She saw Sir Albert Boyle in a box opposite with Rosalie Ogden and her mama and another older gentleman, and smiled warmly at him. He smiled and bowed his head in her direction.
It was working, she thought several minutes later, just as the play was about to begin. Their entrance had obviously caused something of a sensation. Most people would not look directly at them when they thought themselves observed. But there had not been a great booing or hissing. No one had jumped up onto the stage to demand that they leave and not dare to contaminate decent people with their presence ever again. A few people had inclined their heads to her. One or two had even smiled.
Everyone, her husband had said, would know that they were married. Sir Albert and Lord Francis had made it easier for them by making sure that word spread this afternoon. Doubtless they had ridden in the park and made the wedding the sole topic of their conversation.
Two evenings ago, she thought suddenly, perhaps at about this exact time, her betrothal to Lord Kersey was announced. This evening she was another man’s wife.
Before she could shake off the distressing thought and before the play could begin, she was aware of another of those almost imperceptible pauses in the general conversation, followed by a renewed buzz of talk. And she saw instantly why. The box close to theirs in which she had sat one evening last week had been mercifully empty thus far, but now it was filling—with the Earl and Countess of Rushford, another older couple whom Jennifer did not know, and Viscount Kersey escorting Horatia Chisley.
It was perhaps the most intensely painful moment of her life, Jennifer thought. A hand clamped down hard on hers as she was about to get to her feet to flee she knew not where.
“Smile!” her husband commanded. “Look at me while I talk to you.”
She smiled and looked. And had no idea what he said to her, his eyes warm on hers.
“Brave girl.” She heard his words at last. “It will become easier, my love. You do not think so now, but it will. I promise.” He raised her hand and held it to his lips.
She felt intense hatred for him. He had caused this. She should be there in the other box with her betrothed, radiant with the expectation of her coming nuptials. This man had seen to it that that dream was shattered. To be replaced by this.
Samantha leaned close to say something to her. She was flushed and bright-eyed and looked very unhappy, Jennifer thought. Poor Sam. All this must be ruining her Season too.
And then, as the play began and she turned her attention at last and gratefully to the stage, she heard the echo of Lionel’s laugh. Was he too masking heartache with laughter? she wondered.
Oh, Lionel. Lionel.
“THERE. YOU SEE?” HER husband said hours later when they were in the carriage on the way home—Lord Francis had escorted Aunt Agatha and Samantha—“It is all safely in the past. You carried it off wonderfully well.”
She set her head back against the cushions of the carriage and closed her eyes. “Gabriel,” she asked quietly, “why did you do it? Could you not have simply asked me and if I had said no accepted defeat? Why the letter? I was in the ballroom when it was read, surrounded by half the ton. You cannot imagine the horror and humiliation. How could you have done that to me?”
He did not touch her. There was a short silence.
“I know nothing of the letter,” he said. “I did not write it or have it written or send it. Someone else did so, knowing that it would be easily believed in light of other things that had happened between us.”
“I suppose,” she said wearily, “that it was not you who kissed me in full view of everyone at the Velgards’ costume ball either? And that you did not deliberately kiss me there instead of out on the balcony or not at all?”
He did not answer.
“It does not matter anyway, does it?” she said. “We are married and I am halfway to being respectable again and there is no point in hankering after what is gone forever.”
“Kersey?” he said. “The time may come when you will realize you had a narrow escape from him, Jennifer.”
She could not speak for a while. Her teeth were clamped together. “I cannot command anything, can I?” she said. “I would ask you, Gabriel, I would beg you please never to mention his name to me again. If there is one shred of decency in you, do that for me.”
They traveled the rest of the way to Grosvenor Square in silence. And entered the house and ascended the stairs together in silence. He stopped outside her dressing room door. The door was ajar and there was light within. Her maid was in there, waiting for her.
“I will join you shortly,” he said, bowing over her hand.
“Oh, yes, I have no doubt of that,” she said, her voice bitter, knowing that she would be wiser to keep her mouth shut. “It is what you have waited for, is it not? But not really for very long at all. You have arranged all with admirable speed.”
She wondered as he set his hands behind him and regarded her quietly if he would break the promise he had made to her yesterday morning. She wondered if he would cuff her. Or if he would set about a more ordered chastisement. She would have no recourse. She was his property. And she had provoked him.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “it is what I have wanted. I will be with you shortly, Jennifer, to make love to you.”
And there. As she stepped inside her dressing room as he pushed the door open for her, her stomach churned quite as painfully as her face would have done if he had given her the back of his hand. He had put it into words and terrified her.
She heartily despised herself.
Her maid, she saw, had set out her best nightgown and was smiling kn
owingly at her.
14
IT HAD NOT BY ANY MEANS BEEN AN EASY DAY. HE still could not quite digest the fact that he was married. The evening had been a dreadful ordeal. He had had to force himself through this twice now, facing the ton, refusing to hide from them, daring them to cut him. Except that this time it had been worse because this time an innocent was involved with him, and loss of reputation was always worse for a woman than for a man.
Kersey had basked in the situation at the theater. He had looked tragic and brave and had been gravely attentive to Miss Chisley. He had laughed once early in the evening, seemed to realize that gaiety was not appropriate to the image he wished to project, and had not laughed again. Far from being embarrassed at the ending of his betrothal, he was cleverly enlisting the sympathy of the ton.
It would be the greatest pleasure in the world to kill him.
But it was his wedding night, the Earl of Thornhill reminded himself after he had dismissed his valet. And it was difficult to face, much as he wanted her. She hated him. She had not made any secret of that. It was going to feel like violation, like rape. And yet it was something that had to happen. The only chance either of them had for a measure of contentment in their future was somehow to make something normal out of their marriage.
Her dressing room was empty and in darkness. He passed through it, tapped on the door into her bedchamber, and opened it. His wife’s room. It felt strange to know that this empty room in his house was now his wife’s.
She was not in bed. She was standing facing the fireplace, looking down into it though there was no fire. She wore a white, lace-trimmed nightgown. Her hair was loose and hung heavy and shining to her waist. He had hoped she would not braid it or try to stuff it beneath a nightcap. She did not turn, though she must have heard his tap and the opening of the door. Her shoulders hunched slightly.
