Pinned between the competing demands of honesty and promises, of loyalty to the family that raised her and the new family she had entered as a wife, she had done what she thought best for all parties concerned. How could she have done otherwise? And yet, James was right. An honest woman could not be happy married to a liar and a cad. Sebastian’s treatment of her had proved him to be both. But until James had spelled it out for, she had not thought of Sebastian in those terms. He had still been the golden idol of her childhood, a man who deserved whatever he wanted.
How could she live with herself, knowing that another woman, her friend, her sister-in-law, was married to a scoundrel and unhappy in her life, and that she, Lucy, was the cause? And how was she to go on here, married to a husband who despised her, with her love for him and her surrender to him bleeding her like knife wounds? How could she bear any of it?
James hardly knew what to do with himself and his anger once the library door had slammed behind him with a crash that had felt satisfying for perhaps five seconds. The library was his sanctuary, but Lucy was there. Rather than stand in the hall, his fury on view for every servant who passed through, he took himself to the parlor and stared gloomily up at his mother’s portrait.
So Lucy had been engaged to Arrington when James met her. He never would’ve guessed it, but it fit all he knew of Arrington. Desperate not to marry the mistress he had grown to despise—or that he’d despised all along, even as he’d bedded her—of course he’d offered for the most conveniently available eligible female, the young, unworldly cousin who lived in his mother’s own household. Just as naturally, when a better opportunity had presented itself, he had discarded her.
He could pity Lucy for the way her cousin had treated her, but it was a cold, distant sort of pity such as he might have felt for a stranger’s plight. She could have told him—should have told him—and if she’d had half the courage and pluck he’d credited her with, she would have.
If only Lord Almont had set his eyes on any young lady but Portia Arrington to serve as his broodmare. Then Anna would never have met Lieutenant Arrington, and she would still be her happy, free self, journeying home with their aunt and uncle to another carefree summer in Scotland.
But then Lucy would be married to Arrington. Would that be so much better? No. No woman deserved such a man. As furious as he was with his wife, he couldn’t wish her married to Arrington. He could only wish they weren’t trapped with each other for the rest of their lives.
What was to be done? He didn’t wish to shame Lucy with a formal separation, at least not immediately. But he could claim that business had called him to London and take up residence in the town house, leaving her here for the time being. Later he would find a cottage in some suitably distant county and send her there to live. She would never want for anything, and her brothers would be provided for. The marriage settlements assured that. But he could not see how they could continue to live as husband and wife now.
He wished he could ride for London that very afternoon, but he could not. He must talk to Anna first, try to separate her from her husband and see her safely on her way to Scotland. It would delay him a few days at most; Anna and Arrington were set to leave Gloucestershire in three days’ time for Portsmouth and passage to the Peninsula. In the meantime he and Lucy would simply avoid each other as best they could. Tomorrow, when they were both a little calmer, he would explain what they must do.
Suddenly he took up a china figurine from the mantel and dashed it against the hearth. Aghast, he stared at the pieces. It wasn’t an heirloom—not a treasure from India, nor a piece beloved by his mother—but he had never done such a thing before. He knew he had a temper, but he had always kept it under careful rein.
But he had never been anything like this unhappy. He couldn’t even begin to separate his helpless anger at Anna’s fate from his own pain and sense of betrayal over the loss of all he had thought he’d found in Lucy. All he knew was misery.
As soon as Lucy could dry her eyes enough to emerge from the library, she went straight to her room and stayed there the rest of the day and through the night. James did not seek her out. When Molly came to dress her for dinner, she claimed an indisposition. The worried maid insisted on bringing her a tray, but Lucy couldn’t bear the thought of food and only took a few sips of wine.
After a tearful and almost sleepless night, she arose to discover that her monthly courses had begun. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. A pregnancy might have proved a means to reunite her and James, something they would have been obliged to share. But she had no idea how long James’s bitterness against her would last—or even if he would ever forgive her—and it would be a terrible thing to be the child of parents who could not even tolerate each other.
She had no idea what to expect. She had never seen James like this before. While she still loved him, she couldn’t think of anything to say to earn his forgiveness. So she determined to wait until he was ready to speak to her and then to follow his lead.
Again she stayed in her room for breakfast, but hunger and exhaustion had made her lightheaded, so she devoured the buttered toast and steaming hot chocolate Molly brought, though it tasted strangely devoid of flavor.
Not long after she finished eating, a soft knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” she said shakily, hoping and fearing that it would be James.
Instead it was Thirkettle, the butler. His face was as correctly blank and impassive as always, but Lucy thought she detected a certain tension, an added rigidity to his correct posture. Of course the servants must realize that their master and mistress had quarreled, though she hoped they did not suspect its cause or severity.
“Good morning, my lady,” he said. “My master asks that you join him in the Little Parlor at your earliest convenience.”
Lucy swallowed. It could not be a good sign that James was still too angry and bitter against her to come to her room himself. “Thank you, Thirkettle,” she said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. “Please inform Lord Selsley that I shall be down directly.”
Lucy took a moment to examine her reflection and gather her courage before leaving her room. The face in the mirror was sallow and drained, with eyes bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. She wore one of her plainest dresses, a dark blue calico left over from her Swallowfield days. She looked dreadful, but she felt far worse.
She made her way downstairs on shaky legs. When she entered the Little Parlor, James was waiting for her, standing by the hearth. He looked pale, but his countenance was severe, not anguished like her own. She would never have imagined that his beautiful, merry blue eyes could turn so cold and distant. And no old, shabby clothes for him. He was impeccably groomed, clad in a black coat fitted tightly to the shoulders that she had loved to caress and pillow her head against, along with a fashionably knotted cravat, a waistcoat ornately yet subtly embroidered and buckskin breeches that showcased his muscular thighs. He looked perfect. He looked like a stranger.
With a negligent wave of his hand, he indicated a chair. “Please sit.”
Lucy obeyed, perching nervously on its very edge. James sat opposite her, some five feet away. It was the distance of a formal interview, not of the intimate conversations they had shared sitting knee to knee on the sofa in this very room.
“We cannot continue in this fashion.” His voice was distant and calm. “This is a large house, but not so much so that we can share it without seeing each other.” He paused as if respecting a response.
“No,” Lucy said. His words could be a prelude to an offering of peace and forgiveness, but Lucy doubted it.
“I have been giving some thought to what we ought to do,” he continued. “I don’t wish to put either of us through the scandal of a formal separation, but clearly we must live apart.”
She gulped and blinked. She refused to seal her humiliation with tears.
“Once Anna and Arrington have left for Portsmouth, I shall say that business has called me to Lon
don. You will remain here. I will visit on occasion for a year or two to maintain appearances, after which you will announce that your health requires you to live at some spot where you can take the waters or have recourse to regular sea-bathing.”
“James, please—”
He overrode her. “I will purchase a suitable house at whatever such spot you choose. You will of course retain the pin-money that is yours by our marriage settlements, and you may apply to my steward should any unusual need arise. If you are now with child—”
“I am not. This morning—” She met the dark ice of his eyes and checked herself. She no longer wished to share such intimate details with him. “I am certain that I am not.”
He nodded shortly. “Very well.”
She hated what she was about to say, but she must let him know she was willing to fulfill her duty. “I’m sorry. I know you need an heir, so…” She let her voice trail off, hoping he would understand her offer.
He shook his head. “I don’t need an heir. That’s the benefit of a new title. I don’t have the ghosts of centuries of ancestors to haunt me for ending the line, and I wouldn’t weep to see the property go to Anna’s children or my cousins. However,” he said, still coolly, “I don’t wish to leave my title to another man’s son. I do not require you to remain celibate for life, but if you find yourself with child, I ask that you go away somewhere discreet to have it.”
Lucy gasped. How could he think that she would betray her marriage vows, even now?
“I don’t ask that you give up your child,” he said, misinterpreting her shock, “only that you maintain a decent fiction. Send it to a wet-nurse for a few months, then bring it into your household and call it an orphaned cousin or somesuch.”
“There will not be a child,” she said resolutely.
“A lifetime is a long time. Do not make promises you cannot be sure of keeping.” His eyes flashed momentarily to life, furious life.
Now she could not hold back her tears, though she managed to check her sobs and stay silent. Had she really allowed this cold, angry stranger to bind and blindfold her only three nights before?
He stood and handed her a handkerchief. It was a thoroughly impersonal gesture. “You may claim an indisposition for the next few days,” he said. “I’ll avoid your bedchamber, your sitting room and the gallery, so you may be sure of not meeting me there. I shall inform you as soon as I’ve made plans to remove to London.”
She scrubbed her eyes dry, stood and backed away from him. “Very well.” She wished she could say more, ask if he might forgive her someday, but his remoteness silenced her. Instead she hurried back to her room and tried to prepare herself for a life in exile.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You do not wish to accompany me?” Anna asked her husband, not certain she’d heard correctly. Sebastian had not permitted her to so much as pay a call without his presence since their marriage, and now he meant to let her go to Orchard Park all alone to spend almost the entire day saying farewell to James and Lucy and organizing such of her possessions as remained there.
He shrugged. “I do not suppose he was your own brother,” he said, with an air of reluctant concession. “And the coachman will tell me if you stop elsewhere.”
“Sebastian, I swear to you, there is no he.” It was the litany she had repeated again and again since their wedding night, and she could not stop asserting her innocence despite how clear it was becoming that nothing would make him listen and believe.
As usual, he shot her a look full of contempt. “I know what I saw—and didn’t see.”
What he hadn’t seen was blood on the sheets. For reasons Anna couldn’t fathom, she had not bled upon the loss of her virginity, and that fact, coupled with what Sebastian had declared to be an unladylike display of eagerness and enthusiasm for the act, had convinced him that she had not been a maiden at all. So he had struck her and demanded the name of her lover—a name she could not give him because there was no such person.
She had tried so hard to make him see that a woman intent upon deceiving him would have made more of an effort at trickery, which she in her innocence had not. But he had scoffed at this argument and said that now he understood why she had been so eager to marry a man of lower rank and fortune—her lover would not or could not wed her, so she had chosen someone beneath her, thinking he would be too awed by her wealth and breeding to complain of her stained character.
Today she would at least have a respite from his presence. One of the Almont carriages was sent for—she and Sebastian were still living in purported honeymoon bliss in the Almont dower house—and she rode off in it, alone, while Sebastian settled in to spend his day visiting his sister Portia and making arrangements for their journey to Portsmouth the day after tomorrow.
She looked forward to James and Lucy’s more congenial company. While they had not struck her as wildly, blissfully in love, she had been impressed by the air of content and harmony between them when the two couples had dined together. Her brother and sister-in-law had seemed to almost divine each other’s thoughts just as Aunt Lilias and Uncle Robert did, and Anna found profound consolation in the thought that her brother at least was happy.
She wished she could confide in James and ask his help and advice, but she knew it was impossible. First of all, Sebastian had ordered her not to, saying that no one would believe her, and that therefore if she spoke of it she would only bring public shame upon them both. That on its own would not have been enough to keep her from telling James. But she knew him well, how loyal and passionate he was, and she feared the consequences of telling him just how badly her marriage had gone wrong and why. If he knew, he would rush off to challenge Sebastian to a duel, and Sebastian would choose pistols—what had possessed her to laugh with him about James’s poor aim? She must remain silent to protect James.
But she wished she could talk to someone, someone who might be able to explain what had happened to her. Could a woman simply be born without a maidenhead, a defect like a harelip or a sixth finger, only much less evident except at one critical moment? It seemed the only explanation, assuming, of course, that she was sane and her memory intact. Sebastian was so insistent that she could not be innocent, that she must have had a lover, that she had begun to doubt herself. Might she have taken a lover once, allowing herself to be tempted by some London dandy or perhaps a strapping shepherd near Dunmalcolm, only to feel so guilty in the aftermath that she had blocked all memory of the tryst? Or could she have been violated at some point in her youth and been so terrified by the experience that she made herself forget what was too painful to remember?
All she knew with certainty was that her life had gone horridly wrong in a way she could never have imagined. Her world, which just a fortnight past had seemed full of joy and adventure, had constricted into a choice between two dreadful options: she could tell James some version of what had happened, asking him for sanctuary and help planning a separation, or she could stay with Sebastian and try to redeem their marriage despite its misbegotten beginning.
Confused and terrified as she was by her wedding night and its aftermath, she still felt it was far too soon to seek a separation. She had always wanted marriage—the love of a husband, children, a household of her own—but if she walked away from Sebastian now, that life could never be hers. She would have to live quietly at Dunmalcolm, accepted by her affectionate family but too scandalous to move freely within society. She would never have children of her own to love and protect, and she would never know the sort of easy intimate affection with a husband that her aunt and uncle had and that James and Lucy seemed to be developing.
But if she stayed with Sebastian, there was still a chance. Surely if he saw her day in and day out behaving in a modest, ladylike fashion, giving him wifely devotion and never acting fast or flirtatious, eventually he must realize that he had been wrong. When he did, surely he would apologize and revert to the deliberate, gravely affectionate man she had fallen in love with, and they
could begin to be happy. It would, of course, never quite be the same. Anna could forgive, but she did not think she could ever forget that he had struck her, or all the insults he had heaped upon her since that night.
Still, this was the only marriage she had. James had been right, and she had been ten thousand kinds of a fool to marry in such haste. But there was no undoing it now, and she must either make the best of it or live a dried-up shadow of an existence at Dunmalcolm. She would not give up after less than a fortnight. She would go to the Peninsula and follow the drum, and she would show Sebastian how faithful, devoted, brave and uncomplaining she could be. If he still despised her when the campaign ended, that would be soon enough to think of separations.
As the carriage rolled to a halt in front of Orchard Park, Anna steeled herself to be strong in front of James and Lucy. She supposed it was unrealistic to hope they would not worry about her at all. Even if they hadn’t had reason to suspect her marriage was unhappy, she couldn’t expect her family to feel completely calm about her going to war. Still, she must minimize their concern, and above all give James no reason to challenge Sebastian to a duel.
So she smiled as she accepted a footman’s assistance to descend from the carriage, just in case James or Lucy was watching from one of the windows, and she maintained the expression as she ascended the steps.
Thirkettle, the butler, waited at the open door. “Why, Miss Wright-Gordon!” he said. “Ah, I beg your pardon. Mrs. Arrington. Do forgive me.”
“That’s quite all right, Thirkettle,” she said as she stepped through the entrance. If only her name still were Wright-Gordon. “Is my brother at home?”
“He has not yet returned from his morning ride,” Thirkettle said, smooth butler dignity restored.
A Marriage of Inconvenience Page 28
