The Marriage Wager

by Ashford, Jane

  “It sounds lovely,” she said, too aware of his nearness.

  “Perhaps there will be time to show it to you tomorrow.” His arms slid around her waist from the back.

  Emma tried to relax against him, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She was trembling slightly, she noticed, and she began to fear that she was going to make an utter fool of herself. She pulled out of his embrace. “I just… excuse me a moment,” she said, and moved quickly into one of the adjoining bedchambers, closing the door behind her.

  Everything was completely different, including herself, Emma insisted silently, as she stood rigid in the luxurious room, fists clenched at her side. But all she could think of was that night eight years ago, when she had been left alone with her new husband in the bedchamber of a run-down inn and suffered the first great disillusionment of her marriage.

  After a very long day of travel and tension over whether they were pursued, they had both been tired, Emma supposed. She had been exhausted, and disappointed by the haste and plainness of the wedding itself. She desperately wanted some sort of reassurance—a declaration of love, a promise for the future, even a simple smile to say that despite the difficulties, he was glad to be there with her.

  But Edward had just stripped off his coat and begun to struggle with the bootjack, taking off his muddy boots.

  Not knowing exactly what to do, Emma had laid aside her cloak and gloves and taken the pins from her bonnet, setting it on the wide window ledge. The only furniture in the room was a large four-poster bed. There wasn’t space for anything else.

  When she turned around again, Edward had removed his shirt and was standing before her wearing only riding breeches. He was smiling at last, but it was not the sort of smile Emma had looked for. Thinking of it now, Emma realized that it was rather predatory. He had stepped over and turned the key in the door, saying, “We don’t want to be disturbed, eh?”

  And then he had come and given her one of his crushing kisses that mashed her lips against her teeth. He pulled at her gown, and grew impatient when he couldn’t find the fastenings. “We’d best get into bed,” he’d said, drawing back. “This room’s damn cold.” And with that he had turned his back, taken off his breeches, and climbed into the high bed, leaving Emma standing beside it, trembling.

  Somehow, she had stumbled out of her clothes. He had enjoyed watching that, she realized now. He had always enjoyed it when she was feeling clumsy and afraid. When she got into the bed, he had jerked her against him and given her another bruising kiss. His body was hot and seemed full of sharp angles. Very soon after that, he rolled on top of her, fumbled for a moment, and then consummated their marriage. When Emma could not restrain a small cry of pain, he had laughed. And though she had tried to tell herself since then that he had mistaken her reaction for enjoyment, she knew it wasn’t true.

  A knock at the door made her jump. “Emma?” said Colin.

  No two men could be more different, she reminded herself. Colin found no enjoyment in tormenting others, and he certainly had not married her for her fortune. But though she called up the memory of his kiss, she still could not move.

  “Emma?” he repeated. “Is something wrong?”

  She was being ridiculous, Emma told herself. She was not a girl any longer, but a grown woman. She had made a bargain. It was too late to regret it or draw back now, and in any case, she kept the promises she made. Moving a bit jerkily, she went to the door and opened it.

  Colin was standing just outside. He examined her face very carefully as she emerged, but said only, “They’ve brought supper. Are you hungry?”

  She had no idea, but the respite was more than welcome.

  A small table had been set up before the fireplace, where a fire burned despite the mildness of the evening. There were slices of cold chicken and fresh bread, a round of cheese, and a compote of apples and pears that gave off a rich, fruity scent. Colin poured a glass of wine and offered it to her. Emma took it eagerly and drank nearly half in one quick swallow before seating herself on one side of the table.

  Colin raised one eyebrow and seemed about to speak. Then he thought better of it and took the other chair. “Ralph and I were at school together,” he offered as he began to fill their plates. “We became fast friends at the age of six, when we discovered a mutual passion for ferrets.”

  Emma smiled, partly from relief. She was hungry, she realized, extremely hungry. She began to eat.

  “He had actually brought one of his favorites with him to school,” Colin went on. “And he managed to keep it, secretly, living in his pocket for nearly a week before the masters found out. My admiration for him never wavered after that.”

  “One can see why,” replied Emma. She drank deeply of her wine again.

  During their meal, Colin chatted amiably about the house and his friend Ralph and the adventures they had shared there. His steady voice soothed Emma as much as the food and wine. And she was soon calling herself six kinds of idiot for her earlier behavior. By the time they rose from the table, a mellow glow had replaced her tension, and she felt prepared for whatever was to come. Indeed, she didn’t want to put it off any longer, for fear she would lose her nerve again. Taking a quick breath, she marched up to Colin and put her arms around his neck.

  He looked a little startled.

  “I’m ready,” she declared.

  “Ready?” he echoed.

  “Yes.” The word came out loud. She had had more wine than she was used to, Emma realized. But that was probably all to the good. Standing on tiptoe, she placed her lips on Colin’s and closed her eyes.

  He gave her only a light kiss. “Ready for what, precisely?”

  “To… to do my wifely duty,” she asserted. She was not going to think of anything at all, she decided. And she felt much better now in any case.

  “Duty?” he repeated, sounding half amused, half outraged.

  “Yes.” She tugged at his neck, trying to pull his head down to her again.

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “I do not go back on my bargains,” Emma declared, slightly irrelevantly. “I’ve married you, and I know what that means.”

  One side of his mouth twitched. “Do you indeed?”

  “Of course I do!” The wine was like a muffling blanket over her wits. “I’m not a child.”

  His violet eyes gazed very directly into hers. “Do you want to tell me what is the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Emma insisted. “Are you going to kiss me?” she added a bit querulously.

  Colin gazed at her for one more long moment, then said, “Oh yes, I am going to kiss you.” He pulled her close and did so—slowly and for a long time. His lips were soft and coaxing, by turns gentle and exploratory and urgent.

  Emma was dazzled. It wasn’t that she had forgotten his kisses, just that old, bitter memories had diverted her from more recent ones. She let herself melt against him, feeling the strong length of his body supporting her. When she raised her head briefly, she found that colors seemed brighter. She let out her breath in a long sigh.

  “Yes?” said Colin. He looked pleased with himself, and yet still perplexed about something as well.

  “Perhaps it will be all right, after all,” slipped out of her mouth.

  “All right?”

  “Not so unpleasant,” she clarified.

  “Unpleasant!”

  “You keep repeating everything I say,” Emma pointed out dreamily. Her mind was even fuzzier, and she was starting to feel extremely sleepy as well.

  Colin drew back.

  He had an odd look on his face, Emma mused. “We should get this over with,” she suggested. “It’s hard to stay awake.”

  “Hard to…!”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  His jaw hardened. “It has been a tiring day,” he said. “You should get some rest.”<
br />
  She was too surprised to answer.

  Colin escorted her into the bedchamber where her luggage had been placed. Her legs were wobbly, Emma noted. And the walls were showing an inexplicable tendency to waver. “Do you require assistance?” he asked crisply. “Shall I ring for one of the maids?”

  “But what about the bargain?” she wondered. “You said an heir…”

  “That is something we can consider at another time,” he retorted. He turned and strode out, shutting the door with a snap behind him.

  Emma had a vague sense that she had made a mistake. But fatigue was overwhelming her. She fumbled out of her clothes and put on the nightgown that had been laid across the bed. When she crawled between the sheets, there were a few bad moments when it seemed the room was spinning sickeningly around her. Then sleep descended with irresistible force.

  ***

  Sometime in the night, Emma woke to a great swath of moonlight across the coverlet. The air held the scent of starched linens and river mist and was filled with the sounds of crickets. Her head ached a bit. Moments passed before she remembered where she was.

  Stiffening, she sat up in bed. She remembered the events of the evening all too clearly. Wasn’t one supposed to forget the idiotic things one did under the influence of alcohol? she asked silently.

  With a soft groan, she put a hand to her forehead. “Not so unpleasant,” she murmured aloud. “What a charming thing to say.” She had been as witless and tactless as any of the budding debutantes Colin had refused to marry, she thought. No doubt the same thing had occurred to him.

  What had come over her? She was not the sort of person who indulged in groundless fears or made great fusses over small matters. She did not enact dramatic scenes. She was reasonable, practical, clearheaded. She never overindulged in wine or spirits.

  Emma groaned softly again.

  Unable to sit still, she threw back the covers and went to look for her dressing gown. When she had put it on, she quietly opened the door into the sitting room and stepped through.

  A few coals still glowed in the fireplace. With moonlight streaming through the windows, she could see that the remains of their supper had been cleared away, though the table and chairs had been left in front of the hearth. The sofa and armchairs on the other side of the room looked gray and ghostly. The ticking of the mantel clock was barely audible, and simply emphasized the silent emptiness.

  Emma went over to the door that led into the other bedchamber. It was securely closed, the bland white panels offering her no information. She could open it and walk in, she thought. She was married; she had the right. But the idea was intimidating. Did she propose to wake her new husband from a sound sleep in the middle of the night to… what, apologize? To explain that she had been thinking of the disappointments of her first marriage, and that had made her act so irrationally?

  Emma shook her head and turned away from the door, only to be stopped by a sound from within Colin’s bedchamber.

  As she turned back, it came again, sharp and exigent—a cry or a protest. It was his voice, yet so harsh and agitated that she just barely recognized it. Even as she wondered, she heard it once more. It sounded like, “No!”

  “Colin?” said Emma tentatively.

  There was no response. Probably, she hadn’t spoken loudly enough to be heard through the door, Emma thought. After a brief hesitation, she grasped the doorknob. Taking a breath, she readied herself to step inside. She twisted the knob, and found that it wouldn’t turn. She tried turning it in the other direction; it rattled a little, but didn’t move. The door was locked.

  Emma took a step backward. He’d locked the door against her. He had quite consciously shut her out of his bedchamber.

  Standing alone in the silent parlor, she wrapped her arms around her waist. Was he so angry over her behavior tonight that he didn’t want her in his room? she wondered. But he hadn’t seemed so when they parted earlier; she could remember that much. She remembered his kiss as well—vividly. What could have led him, after that, to go into his room and turn the key in the lock?

  She heard another sound from within—an agitated muttering that rose and fell for nearly a minute before silence surrounded her again. She drew her arms tighter around her body. What was it that he did not wish her to know or see?

  Emma waited for a long time outside that locked door. Though she strained her ears, she heard nothing further as the moon shadows wheeled across the carpet and the crickets continued to rasp outside. When at last she returned to her own room and to bed, she did not sleep. She lay staring at the pale canopy over her bed and wondering what unexpected darkness lay at the heart of this marriage on which she had gambled everything.

  ***

  After six days of hard traveling south and west, they arrived at Trevallan on the coast of Cornwall just at twilight on a still, warm August day. Leaning out of the carriage as they drove up, Emma could see the outlines of a long stone building with many windows—only two of them lit. The air smelled of sea salt and evergreens; spines of gray stone pushed through the earth here and there on the property. There was a good feel to the place, she thought, a kind of energy in the atmosphere that penetrated even her deep fatigue.

  Though Emma had not noticed anyone along the road, somehow the staff had been made aware of their approach. When they climbed stiffly down from the carriage and walked through the wide front door, they found a long line of servants waiting to greet them in the cavernous great hall. Candlelight illuminated the white aprons of the housemaids and starched collars of the men against a backdrop of dark wood and tapestries and swaths of thick shadow. Emma was tired from the long jolting journey, but she summoned up reserves of strength to smile and respond to the introductions of the housekeeper and other senior servants. The housemaids and footmen merely curtsied or bowed as she was led past them.

  Everyone was very kind, but fatigue made the offers of assistance, the well-cooked dinner, and the covert appraisals by the older servants something of a blur. Emma was very glad to go to bed early. “Her ladyship always sleeps in this room,” the housekeeper told her complacently as she showed her into a large square bedchamber. “The master’s through there, with a dressing room between.”

  Emma looked at the indicated doorway. It was slightly ajar. She did not go near it, however. She felt as effectively barred as if a great metal padlock secured it.

  That was the way the subject of their wedding night was being treated. She had tried to say something the following morning, perhaps make amends for her childish behavior, as well as discover some reason for his locked door. But Colin had brushed her attempt aside as if it were a matter of no importance, and indeed not much interest to him. And yet he had shown no resentment. He had chatted with her and maintained a calm concern about the strains of the long journey. And at each inn they patronized along the way, he had engaged a separate bedchamber for her, making no move to join her there. It was as if the night had never happened. It was almost as if their marriage had never happened, and they were simply cordial acquaintances journeying together.

  He was so skilled at keeping things on the surface, thought Emma as she got wearily into bed. Perhaps that was what he wanted, what he had meant by comradeship and a comfortable bargain. She, however, was finding it something of a strain. Maybe things would change now that they were settled in his old family home? As Emma fell asleep, she found herself fervently wishing that it might be so.

  Though he was also tired from the journey, Colin found that sleep eluded him. He lay quiet in the thick darkness, listening to the distant rhythms of the sea and to the familiar creaking of the old house. He had many memories of this place, going back as far as memory went, but this particular arrival had brought back one of the few painful recollections he associated with Cornwall.

  Just before his father died, when he was seventeen, the former baron had called Colin to him in th
is bedchamber and committed his mother and sister to his care. “The name is yours now, Colin,” he had said, “to uphold and to carry on. I know you’ll bring honor to it, lad.”

  The pain of that early death returned to him now. It had been so hard to lose his father. And along with the personal loss and grief, he had felt such a heavy weight of responsibility. Honor and duty—those had been his watchwords ever since, and they had almost never let him rest.

  This was why he had brought Emma here first of all, he realized. As if he could present her to his dead father and show that he had done well—that the name would be carried on, that he had not forgotten his obligations despite going off to war. Though he loved Trevallan, he had hardly come here since his father’s death. The atmosphere had become oppressive to him, heavy with expectation. But now, that feeling was gone; he felt as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. The place was his in a way it had never been before.

  And Emma? inquired a sardonic inner voice. She was not his, Colin acknowledged. Not yet. But now that they were no longer spending their days in a jolting carriage, and their evenings in a public inn, there would no doubt be time to remedy that. He would find the cause of the apprehension and reluctance he had seen in her eyes that first night, and banish it. And then she would give way to the eager response he had felt in her more than once, he thought, and she would find he had much to show her. Much, he repeated silently as he at last fell asleep.

  The rambling old stone house settled into silence. Outside, the sea wind fingered its walls, as it had done for hundreds of years. The waves murmured on the rocks below. The kitchen cat prowled through long grass, alert for the scent of field mice on the salt-laden, piney air. It was a soft, warm night, with a thin haze, like a gauzy shawl, over the stars and no moon as yet. Colin moved restlessly under the bedclothes and muttered softly in his sleep. Emma turned over without waking. Everything about the scene suggested peace and tranquility.