The Marriage Wager

by Ashford, Jane

  Sir Richard brightened. “Did she? An heir for the crumbling acres, eh?”

  “He called them that, but I understand it’s a tidy little estate. And very good prospects from his wife’s father,” put in Major Graham.

  The cloud passed by. Colin refilled their glasses with the last of the claret.

  “You’ll be setting up your nursery before we know it,” Graham said to him. “A real beauty you’ve got yourself. I said so at the wedding.”

  “Repeatedly,” agreed Sir Richard.

  “Well, she is. Do you deny it?”

  “Not me, old boy. Colin’s a lucky man. It almost tempts one to follow in his footsteps.”

  “Who’d marry you?” mocked Major Graham.

  Sir Richard, whose engaging homeliness had never hindered him with the ladies, merely grinned.

  “There he is!” exclaimed a tipsy voice behind them. “Just the man we were speaking of. Hi, Eddie! Here’s St. Mawr.”

  Several diners began to converge on their table from different directions. One of them staggered and slumped onto a seated guest, who pushed him off with a frown. Colin cursed softly under his breath. None of those approaching were men he liked, and all were chiefly known for the extremes of their wardrobes and their propensity to gossip.

  “St. Mawr!” A heavy hand dropped on Colin’s shoulder.

  They had made his presence a focus of attention for everyone in the room, he thought with gritted teeth. “Steyne,” he acknowledged tersely.

  “Man of the hour, eh?” declared the newcomer. The scent of brandy wafted over the table, carried on his breath. “Never knew you were such a one for the ladies, old man.”

  “Got to watch the quiet ones,” said one of his companions in a slurred voice. “Always up to something on the sly.”

  “Got them dying of love for you,” giggled Steyne. “Or nearly. Morland’s daughter is recovered, they say.”

  “A sad misunderstanding,” Colin managed. His fists were clenched under the table.

  “That wife of yours must be a saucy little piece, to lure you away from a dowry that big,” laughed Steyne. He leaned down to speak confidentially. “A widow, eh? No green girls for you. She knows a thing or two about keeping a man satisfied, I suppose?”

  Blood slammed into Colin’s temples, and molten rage gripped all his limbs. His vision reddened. Before he could think he was on his feet and had somehow gotten Steyne’s throat between his fingers. The sensation as he squeezed and watched the man’s face darken and eyes bulge was enormously gratifying.

  “Here,” babbled one of Steyne’s companions ineffectually. “Here, now.”

  Colin had a vague impression of men rising from tables, of voices raised. But all he could really see was Steyne’s purpling features and the fear in the man’s close-set little eyes.

  “Colin.” Someone tugged one of his arms, but he resisted.

  “Colin, lad.” Someone else had the other arm. The two of them were pulling him off Steyne. He struggled.

  “Come along,” added Sir Richard. “Let go. There you are.”

  Regaining his senses, Colin let his hands drop to his sides.

  “No need for a public brawl,” Major Graham assured him. “We can easily find an excuse for you to call this numbskull out. And you can run a sword through him without breaking a sweat.”

  Steyne, who had been gasping and sputtering and holding his bruised throat, started to cough at this. “Apologize,” he croaked, beginning to back away. “Meant no offense.”

  “Great fuss over nothing,” chimed in one of his friends. He took Steyne’s arm and urged him off. “All a mistake,” he added.

  The pair stumbled, but recovered quickly.

  “Heard him incorrectly,” jabbered the friend. And then the whole group of intruders turned and fled.

  Sir Richard eased Colin back into his chair. He turned a blandly threatening gaze on the crowd in the dining room, who suddenly found their dinners of interest once more.

  “Worm,” muttered Graham. “Like to set him down before a French cavalry charge and watch him disgrace himself.”

  “All right now?” asked Sir Richard. He poured wine from his own half-full glass into Colin’s empty one and offered it to him.

  Colin waved it aside. “I’m fine,” he replied rather irritably.

  “Are you?” Sir Richard examined his face. “Not like you, to fly off like that.”

  It wasn’t, Colin thought. He had been known throughout his regiment for being slow to anger. They had called on him to settle disputes and intervene in quarrels. His men had relied on him to be even-tempered and coolheaded.

  “Fellow deserved it,” muttered Graham. He gestured peremptorily at the waiter and ordered another bottle of the claret.

  Something had snapped when that idiot, who really didn’t matter in the least, Colin acknowledged, had made slighting remarks about Emma. It had been intolerable.

  “We could go after him,” suggested Major Graham. The wine arrived, and he filled his glass. “Give him the thrashing he deserves. Saber’s too good for him!”

  “Do be quiet, Laurence,” said Sir Richard.

  Colin waved them both off. “I’m fully recovered,” he said. “Steyne’s not worth thinking about. Everyone knows the man’s a fount of malice and half-truths.”

  “There you are,” said Sir Richard, obviously relieved.

  “Ought to rid the city of vermin like that,” muttered Graham. But he was only fulminating by this time, and all of them knew it.

  “Let us have another glass and forget the incident,” said Colin. “And then I must be on my way.” He had an intense, somewhat irrational, need to get home. He wanted to see Emma, to speak to her and make sure all was well. Senseless, he admitted to himself, but well-nigh irresistible.

  “To old friends,” said Sir Richard, raising his goblet.

  They echoed him and drank.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Colin stood in the doorway separating his bedchamber from his wife’s and watched her brush her hair. It was like a veil of silver gossamer falling around her shoulders, he thought. She wore a low-cut nightgown of dark blue silk and cream lace. Her skin glowed. Everything about the room—the delicate objects, the light, sweet scent, the roses on the mantelshelf—was new to his life, filling some of the yawning emptiness that the war had left behind.

  Following the mesmerizing movement of her arm, he felt an unfamiliar tightness in his chest. It was not desire, though he was certainly feeling that as well. It was not fear. That he knew only too well from the battlefields. And he was not afraid; he had no doubt he could protect Emma from anything that might come. No, it was more amorphous, a new emotion. He could not define, even to himself, its nature. The uncertainty made him uneasy, and he brushed it aside. “Did you have a pleasant day?” he asked, moving into the room.

  Emma turned to smile at him. “Hello. You’re earlier than I expected. How are your friends?”

  “Much the same,” he answered. He came forward and put his hands on her shoulders, meeting her eyes in the vanity mirror. Emma put down the hairbrush. “Anyone bothering you with this silly gossip?” he asked.

  Emma shook her head, setting the candlelight dancing in her hair. “You?”

  He ignored the question, fervently hoping that no one would be crude enough to tell her of the incident at the club tonight. “A lovely gown,” he commented.

  Emma’s smile grew impish. “It arrived today. Rather expensive, I’m afraid.”

  He smiled back. “Worth every penny.” He bent to kiss her neck just where it curved into her shoulder, and there was a knock at the door. “What the devil?” said Colin, straightening.

  Emma met his inquiring glance with a shake of her head.

  “Yes?” snapped Colin. “What is it?” Emma drew a wrapper around her shoulde
rs.

  The door opened to reveal Ferik, in all his giant duskiness, carrying a tray on which rested a decanter and two glasses. “I heard you come in, lord,” he said. “I was listening for you. I have brought you brandy.”

  Colin simply looked at him. Emma closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “You drink brandy in the evening,” added Ferik with a good deal of satisfaction. “I have noticed this.” He carried the tray in and set it on a small table in the corner.

  “Yes, sometimes,” Colin allowed. “But I did not call for any tonight.” He was eyeing the huge man with puzzlement.

  “You could not,” replied Ferik complacently. “Mr. Clinton is asleep. The others are asleep. But me, I do not sleep.”

  “Not at all?” wondered Colin skeptically.

  “Not as long as my lord and my mistress wake,” he said. “And there is any service I may perform for them.” Clasping his hands on his chest, he bowed deeply to them.

  Colin watched this performance with fascination.

  “Thank you, Ferik,” said Emma. “We won’t need anything else tonight. You may go to bed. Really.”

  Ferik shook his head. “I shall not sleep for a long time,” he told Colin. “You may call me if you wish for anything at all.”

  “I shan’t need you,” Colin assured him.

  Ferik’s massive shoulders rippled in a shrug. “Who knows what may come?” he intoned. “I always await your commands, lord.” He bowed again, then backed out of the room, shutting the door as he passed through it.

  “What the devil was that about?” exclaimed Colin.

  Emma’s laughter escaped in a sputter. “He is trying to win your favor,” she explained.

  “My…?”

  “And to discredit Clinton, so that he may have his place.”

  “As butler!” He imagined Ferik opening his door and greeting visitors, and grimaced.

  “Well, as head of the staff,” said Emma.

  Colin frowned. “Clinton has been with me since I first set up my own establishment. There is no possibility…”

  “I know. I have told Ferik over and over, but apparently he does not believe me. Intrigue is the rule where he comes from, you know. Every servant is always plotting against the others.”

  “Well, he cannot do so here.”

  “I have told him,” Emma repeated.

  “Perhaps I had better tell him as well.”

  “Yes, why don’t you,” she agreed. “He might listen to you.”

  “You don’t sound confident.” Amusement was beginning to tinge Colin’s voice now.

  “Well, Ferik is very… unpredictable.”

  “Is he?” Colin looked haughty. “If he interrupts us here again, he will discover that I am very predictable indeed, and not very forgiving.” He wondered whether to tell her about Great-Aunt Celia’s opinion of Ferik, and decided against it. “Would you like to go riding in the morning?” he added instead. He was thinking of Cornwall and their rides there.

  Emma flushed. “I… I have an engagement,” she had to reply, thinking of the plan she was setting in motion.

  “Too bad.”

  Emma suffered a sudden attack of uneasiness. “Colin?”

  “Yes?”

  “If I did something that you didn’t quite like, that… annoyed you…” She stopped. She didn’t think he would like her plan at all, so she did not intend to tell him about it until it was well under way. But keeping it from him was a bit uncomfortable.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She wished she hadn’t brought it up.

  “Then neither do I,” he replied. “If you took a lover, I would wring your neck.”

  “Colin!”

  “But if you, oh, quarreled with the cook so that she left us, I would merely beat you a little and send you to the kitchen in her place.”

  “And I would poison you at your next meal!”

  He chuckled softly. “What mischief are you planning?”

  “None.” It wasn’t mischief to save him from the vulgar tongues of gossips, Emma thought. But she couldn’t rid herself of that nagging uneasiness.

  “Then we needn’t worry our minds over the question.”

  “No,” Emma said softly. “I’m sure there is nothing to worry about.”

  ***

  Colin rose early the next morning to ride in the park. He preferred the place soon after dawn, when all the fashionable promenaders who would crowd it later were still safely in bed and out of his way. Then, he could almost imagine himself at Trevallan, with miles of open country around him and the possibility of riding as long as he liked without encountering any simpering gossips or insincere heartiness. Had the war spoiled him for London? he wondered as he urged his mount to a gallop in the silent, empty parkland. Not really, he concluded. He had never been much taken with the city, despite his mother’s love of it. How he would have liked to remain in Cornwall, he thought, his heart lifting at the idea. Then he remembered recent events. If they ran from the wagging tongues and malicious stares, the ton would consider the worst confirmed, and Emma’s chances of taking her proper position in society would be ruined. Scowling, Colin turned his horse back toward home. He would have to call on his mother, he supposed, and find a way to combat the gossip. He would far rather have faced a line of French infantry, bayonets at the ready, than deal with this, he thought.

  Striding into his own drawing room a little later, still holding his riding crop, Colin found not Emma but a young girl dressed all in black who sprang to her feet as soon as she saw him. “Good morning,” he said politely.

  “I am not here by my own will,” she exclaimed dramatically. Her large blue eyes bored into him. Her lower lip trembled. She brought one small gloved hand to her breast.

  Startled, Colin blinked.

  “I would never, never have intruded upon your household after what has passed between us, but my mother and your”—she choked artistically—“your wife have fixed it all between them. I was not consulted.”

  “Er…” temporized Colin, playing for time.

  “I know,” she declared. “It is excruciating. But others do not possess the same depth of emotion as we do, you see. So they have no idea what it is like.”

  Suddenly, he realized who she was. “Good God,” he said.

  She nodded as if he had expressed something profound.

  Colin looked around, hoping to discover some other member of his household nearby.

  “I cannot help my feelings,” she was continuing, “but I shall not embarrass you by expressing them.” Belying her words, she gazed at him longingly and twisted a handkerchief in her hands. “You have made your choice,” she added, in a voice that throbbed with the emotion of an opera singer. “We shall not speak of regrets, or mistakes.” She moved a step closer. “Although I shall never recover,” she finished in a piercing whisper.

  Colin took a step backward.

  She followed. “I think you might tell me, however, what you found lacking in me that—”

  “Excuse me a moment,” he muttered, backing out of the room.

  “Can you not bear it?” she asked, trailing after him. “I do not know how I am doing so myself. My mother says women are the stronger, but I do not think—”

  “Must go,” said Colin hurriedly. “Duties.”

  “Duty.” She sighed. “We are all of us terribly constrained by duty, are we not? My mother says it is my duty to be here, but—”

  Colin turned and fled.

  “It is terribly hard, seeing one another again,” murmured the girl, as if someone was still there to hear, or as if she was composing an anecdote to entertain a sympathetic audience. “To come face to face, alone, with no one to hinder us from opening our hearts to one another. And yet duty prevented it.” She sighed again, heartrendingly.


  Encountering the footman in the hall, Colin demanded, “Where is her ladyship?”

  “I believe she is upstairs, getting ready to go out, my lord,” John replied, a bit startled at his master’s savage tone.

  “Thank you,” Colin replied, and started up the steps two at a time.

  John rolled his eyes and went to inform the staff that their master was in a taking about something.

  “Emma!” said Colin when he burst into her bedchamber and found her at her dressing table. “The Morland chit is in our drawing room.”

  Emma turned with a smile despite the sudden acceleration of her pulse. Lady Mary had arrived early, and she had been confident they would be out of the house before Colin returned home. “Yes, I know.”

  “What in blazes is she doing there?” Remembering the encounter, he shuddered. “It’s clear the girl really is suffering from some form of mental disturbance. I suppose we should pity her.” He grimaced. “I find it difficult to do so. She spoke to me in the oddest way. And the look she gave me, Emma, was enough to freeze one’s blood.”

  “She is somewhat upset because—”

  “She?” He turned back toward the door. “To have the effrontery to come here. It shows what a disturbed state she must be in. I’ll get John to escort her home, and I’ll send along a note to Morland, by God, telling him—”

  “No, wait,” said Emma. “You can’t. We… we are going driving in the park.”

  “As soon as she is gone, we will do so,” he replied.

  “No,” she said again. “I mean, Lady Mary and I are going.”

  “What?”

  “I arranged for her to go driving with me, because—”

  “With you?” he exploded. “After the things she has said? Have you gone mad as well? The chit has spread the most insulting rumors about both of us, and you wish to take her for a drive?”

  “But don’t you see, that’s just it. If she is seen to be friends with me, people will be much less likely to believe the stories they hear.”