In truth, he had gone to the altar today with less reluctance than he had thought he would, and that disturbed him. At five-and-thirty, he was too old and wise to lose his heart to a woman. The fate of his father and brother had proven the folly of that.
He glanced out at the white world speeding past the carriage window. This winter of 1814 had been the coldest anyone could remember, and snow lay heavy upon the ground. A frosty sun, rimmed with clouds, was sinking toward the western horizon. Marc dropped his gaze from the chilly scene to his wife.
Would she keep the conditions he had imposed upon their marriage? Given her defiant spirit, why had she agreed to them?
As if sensing his scrutiny, Tia’s gray eyes opened.
“Why did you marry me?” he asked abruptly. “Was becoming a duchess that irresistible to you?”
Her eyes narrowed angrily. “No! You will no doubt disbelieve this, but I never aspired to a titled husband.”
“What did you aspire to? A great love?”
“I told you I was not at all romantic. My aspirations were humbler,” she said with her customary forthrightness that he so liked. “I hoped for a kind and faithful husband whom I could respect and admire and share my life with,”
The unconscious wistfulness in her voice pricked Marc. Instead he had promised her only infidelity, neglect, and loneliness. But a duke of Castleton did not show shame, and he responded as he always did when he was discomforted—with icy haughtiness. “Then why did you marry me?”
“Mostly for Freddie’s sake.” She told Marc of her father’s plan to ship the boy off to the Navy. “I could not let Papa do that.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Freddie is so delicate, it would have been his death.”
Her husband had to agree with this assessment, and it made him more amenable to taking Freddie under his roof. Tia’s love and concern for her frail little brother touched his normally unsusceptible heart. He had felt the same way about Paul.
“Why would you not let Freddie accompany us to Rosedale?” she asked.
“It is customary that newlyweds spend their honeymoon alone, unchaperoned by little brothers, so that they might get to know one another more—ah—intimately,” he said coolly.
“But you said we would see very little of each other,” she protested, sounding a bit desperate.
Taken aback that she seemed so uneager for his company, he said tartly, “Have you forgotten that I married for an heir? I know of no way of siring one from a distance.”
“But what of your ‘other interests’?” she asked. “Won’t you miss them? Or have you one ensconced at Rosedale?”
For an instant, he suspected her of waspish sarcasm, but her anxious face and tone disabused him of that. He was grievously insulted that she could think he would install a mistress under the same roof as his bride. “I assure you that you will be my only interest during the next month.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed.
He was dumbfounded—and infuriated—that she so clearly hoped his attentions would not be directed toward her. Well, he would see that she did not feel that way for long. Before he was done, he would make her hunger for him! By God, she would! “How fortunate I am to have such a generous and accommodating wife,” he said acidly.
She looked genuinely perplexed. “Why are you angry? I should think you would be pleased that I welcome your other interests. One of your stipulations was that I not object to them.”
Her logic left him speechless. So did the realization that while he might not want her to object to his amours, even less did he want her to welcome them.
Recovering his voice, he asked in a strangled tone, “To what do I owe your remarkably broad- minded outlook on such matters?”
“Mama said a wife should be thankful if her husband has interests elsewhere because he will leave her alone.”
Considering Mr. Easton, Marc was not surprised by Mama’s attitude. No doubt the selfish bore had been as sorry a lover as he was a father. But Marc would make certain that Tia felt very differently about his attentions.
They rode in silence for several moments until Tia observed, “Antony wrote me about how good you were to him.”
In addition to buying her brother his commission, the duke had paid for the expensive military attire and equipment Antony would need and had made him an allowance to supplement his meagre pay.
Tia’s gray eyes glowed with gratitude. “You have given him much more than I asked for, and I am so grateful.”
Marc was unused to being thanked with such obvious sincerity by a woman. Most, like Lady Todd, had taken whatever he had given, no matter how generous, as less than their due and asked for more.
Tia looked so appreciative that he could not resist teasing her. “Does that mean you no longer dislike me?”
She was silent for a moment. Then, terminally honest as always, she said, “I don’t know.”
Although her answer did not please him, he preferred her candour to the false assurances that would surely have been his lot from most women. Gazing down at her expressive face, seemingly incapable of deceit, he smiled lazily. Her skin was as fine as bone china, her hair matched the rich shade of her pelisse’s sable collar, and her mouth was wide and full—inviting a man’s kiss. His long, graceful fingers rose to tilt her chin gently up as his lips descended upon hers.
“Perhaps I can help you make up your mind,” he whispered as his mouth closed over hers. She stiffened, but as his lips softly caressed hers, he felt her resistance slowly ebbing away.
Suddenly, the coach slowed. Marc reluctantly lifted his head and saw that they were pulling into the yard of a posting house. Smothering a curse, he straightened and slid a little away from her on the seat.
As the coach halted, she asked, “Why are we stopping?”
“To change horses. It will take but a minute; we need not get out,” he said, anxious to reach Rosedale as quickly as possible.
“But I would like to stretch my legs. May I?”
He could not refuse her request, much as he begrudged the wasted minutes. As the duke helped his wife down from the equipage, the ostlers, trained to change horses with great speed, were already freeing the team from the carriage and leading out its replacement.
The second coach, its roof piled high with their luggage, pulled into the yard and rattled to a stop. Inside, Puck could be heard barking furiously.
Above his noise, Tia thought she heard a weak voice calling her name. It sounded like Freddie, but it was so faint that she wondered whether she was hearing things. But then it came again from among the baggage atop the second coach. Tia stared up in horror. Surely her brother would not... could not have hidden on top of the coach, not on a winter day as cold as this. His delicate constitution would not stand such exposure. Trembling with apprehension, she cried, “Freddie, are you up there?”
“Oh, Tia, I’m so cold.”
The duke was at her side now, rapping out orders. Two ostlers scrambled up on the roof of the vehicle and found the boy, covered by a blanket, wedged between two trunks.
“Poor little mite,” one of them said as they lifted him from his hiding place. “‘E be half-frozen.”
A moment later, Freddie’s thin form was dropped down into the waiting arms of the duke. Tia, catch in sight of her husband’s grim face, feared he was furious at the boy.
Instead of handing his burden to a groom, His Grace carried him into the posting house, demanding in a tone that brooked no demur, a private parlour with a warm fire already lit.
This precipitated a moment of panic in the breast of Mr. Shelton, the proprietor. He had just such a room in readiness for my Lord Vinson, whose arrival was expected momentarily.
It took only an instant, however, for the proprietor to resolve this conflict between two pinks of the nobility My Lord Vinson, after all, was only a viscount and rank, especially when it came in such a daunting size and demeanour as Castleton, must rule. Without the least compunction for the unfortunately visco
unt, Mr. Shelton gave his parlour to the duke.
“Have a tisane brewed at once,” Castleton ordered as he was shown into the room. He grabbed a comforter from a sofa and carried it and the shivering child to a wing chair by a red brick fireplace where a coal fire glowed.
The duke set the boy in the chair, wrapped him in the comforter, then removed his boots. Freddie tried to protest, but his teeth were chattering so badly he could not force any intelligible sound through them.
Castleton instructed Tia to rub the boy’s hands briskly while he did the same for his feet.
Mrs. Shelton arrived bearing the tisane, and Tia coaxed Freddie to drink it while her husband continue rubbing his feet. The boy’s teeth stopped chattering.
When feeling was restored to his numb extremities, Tia dared to hope that no serious harm would befall him from his exposure to the cold. She was grateful for her husband’s quick, masterful handling of the situation.
He studied the boy carefully. “I think he is none the worse for his foolish action. Now we must be on our way.”
“I’m hungry,” Freddie protested.
“He needs food,” Tia said firmly.
“Yes, I collect he does,” the duke said with a sigh. “I had hoped to have a late supper at Rosedale, but we have been so much delayed that we will have to eat on the road. It might as well be here.”
Never before had it been the privilege of Mrs. Shelton to serve dinner to a duke and duchess, and she was determined to prove herself worthy of the honor by presenting an impressive array of dishes.
Unfortunately, they were not quickly prepared, and it was more than an hour after Castleton bespoke dinner that at last it was served to its famished recipients, who would have been happier with simpler and speedier fare than a brace of pheasants, chicken breasts in aspic, beef and kidney pie, potatoes hollandaise, carrots a la Flamande, and Bavarian cream with walnuts.
When they finished eating, Marc told Freddie, “Get your coat. I will have my valet take you back to Mobry Park.”
“No-o-o!” Freddie shrieked, throwing his arms around his sister and clutching her like a drowning man clinging to a bit of flotsam in the sea. “Don’t let him send me away, Tia. I want to be with you.”
His pathetic plea wrung her heart, but it seemed to have no effect on her husband. “No,” he said sharply.
“I beg of you, don’t make me leave him,” she pleaded. “I shall live in terror that he may have contracted an inflammation of the lungs from this day’s mischief.”
Castleton, besieged by two anxious faces, said nothing for a long moment. His own hard expression did not soften, and Tia waited in an agony of apprehension. Then an odd look came into his eyes as though he had been assailed by a painful memory.
“Very well,” he said brusquely. He turned on his heel and marched out of the room.
Tia hurried after him to thank him.
Favoring her with one of his rare smiles, he said wryly, “I told you once I was not an ogre—although I suspect I may be a fool.”
Chapter 6
The newlyweds, with their little chaperone in tow, arrived at Rosedale a few minutes past midnight. As they approached it in the dark, a dozen flambeaux, lit in expectation of the duke’s arrival, bathed the Corinthian columns and great stone pediment of the portico in their blazing light, but the remainder of the massive house was no more than a shadowy outline of monumental proportions. Tia, awed by its size and splendor, could not believe that she was now the mistress of such grandeur.
Marc handed Freddie, who had fallen asleep an hour earlier, out of the coach to a footman. The exhausted child scarcely stirred.
In the entry hall, Tia stared in amazement at all the gold and marble. The grand staircase of white marble was lighted at intervals by wax tapers in gold wall sconces. Even the intricately wrought balustrades were gilded. The floor was inlaid with marble in a complex black and white pattern. Soaring forty feet above it, a mural of celestial figures covered the ceiling.
They were greeted by an aging butler, Coles, who was as stiff and unbending as a whalebone corset. He was, Tia thought, even haughtier than his master.
She did not tarry long in the hall but went to put her little brother to bed. Fortunately, the duke insisted that at least one guest room be kept in readiness at all times for unexpected visitors to Rosedale. He ordered the footman to carry the sleeping Freddie to it.
He muttered crossly when Tia removed his clothes, replacing them with a nightshirt of her husband’s. By the time she tucked him in and kissed him good night, however, he was once again asleep. She left a single candle burning in deference to his fear of the dark and went to her new quarters. They were part of the duke’s palatial personal apartment that included separate bedchambers, dressing rooms, closets, and sitting rooms for him and his duchess.
The light from a half dozen hammered silver candelabra and wall sconces cast a soft, romantic glow over the room. Its walls and the canopy of her big bed were draped with sky blue silk. Several deeply cushioned arm chairs and an inviting chaise were covered in a deeper blue velvet. The flames in the marble fireplace danced brightly. Tia thought it the prettiest and most inviting bed chamber that she had ever seen.
Marie, the abigail Aunt Augusta had found for her, helped her new mistress out of her lavender traveling dress. Tia had begged her aunt to hire a young girl because she would not be comfortable with a haughty lady’s maid years older than herself. Her aunt had complied. Marie was two years younger than Tia with a pretty. freckled face and a sweet disposition. This was her first position as a lady’s maid, and she was eager to oblige.
Tia looked dubiously at the delicate bed gown of rose lace and sheerest silk that Marie laid out for her. “I have another gown I prefer for winter nights,” she said, thinking of the heavy flannel that she slept in at Birnam Wood where no fire was ever laid in her cold bedroom.
“But Your Grace, Lady Mobry instructed me to see that you were to wear this gown tonight.” The maid’s pretty face reflected her unhappiness at being caught between Tia and the marchioness who had hired her.
Taking pity on Marie’s distress, Tia put on the rose gown. Seeing her reflection in a long gilt- framed mirror, she discovered to her embarrassment that it was even more revealing than she had first suspected. The bodice was entirely of lace and the clinging silk skirt all but transparent. Her modesty was revolted at the thought of having to stand before her husband’s icy blue eyes in it. The color of her cheeks deepened to that of the gown.
Marie freed Tia’s long hair from its elaborate coil. It fell to her waist, and the maid brushed it out so that it spread about her like a silken train. When she finished, Marie moved about the bedroom extinguishing candles, leaving only those in one silver candelabra burning, then departed.
The instant the door closed behind the maid, Tia ran into her dressing room. Puck, sleeping on a cushion laid for him there, awakened and watched with tepid interest as his mistress hastily threw on her voluminous flannel gown. Its yards of material, gathered high at the neck by a drawstring, fell in shapeless folds to the floor. It was very old, and Tia was embarrassed by how frayed and faded it was, but it could not be helped.
As she went back into her bedchamber from the dressing room, her husband, resplendent in a banyan of figured silk brocade, came into the room. With only the one candelabra and the fireplace for illumination, the spacious room was cast in a soft, golden twilight, and her husband’s face was in shadow as he moved toward her. Her heart beat faster with each step he took.
Suddenly Puck, peering through the half-open dressing room door, recognized the heartless villain
who had snatched him from his mistress’s lap and cruelly tossed him among strangers. Growling
fiercely, the spaniel raced into the bedroom, trip pin on his own long ears as he ran across the Aubusson carpet, and attacked His Grace’s ankle.
The duke, questioning Puck’s ancestry in explicit terms, snatched him up. He stalked to Tia’s dressing
room where he unceremoniously dumped the snarling snapping canine, then slammed the door, imprisoning him there. Puck did not take kindly to this second defeat at the hands of his enemy and
gave furious voice to his displeasure.
As her husband stalked back to her, he said darkly, “Tomorrow he goes to the kennel.”
“No, I swear I will see he never bothers you again,” she cried. “Surely he did not hurt you.”
“Not for lack of trying,” snapped Marc, whose dignity had been more injured than his ankle. Tia
had the most undisciplined dogs, he thought ruefully First that wretched hound in the woods at Ashmore and now this. Beginning to recover his sense of humor, he said wryly, “An attack by his
bride’s dog is not what a husband expects on his wedding night.”
Tia giggled but her amusement died as she saw the stunned look that suddenly appeared on Marc’s
face. He was staring at the flannel gown, as shape les as it was voluminous, that hid every inch of her from the neck down.
“What the devil are you wearing?”
Startled, Tia stammered. “My... my bed gown.”
“It looks more like a potato sack! A very old, very large, and singularly ugly potato sack! Surely that atrocious garment is not part of the trousseau Lady Mobry gave you as a wedding present.”
“No,” Tia admitted, wondering why he was so upset.
“Where is the gown she gave you?” he snapped. Tia stared down at the floor. “I’m wearing it, too.”
“Good God, how many layers have you encased yourself in?”
She pleaded nervously, “I will freeze in the gown Aunt Augusta gave me. I cannot conceive what she could have been thinking of.”
“I can,” he retorted dryly. “Now take that repulsive tent off.”
When Tia hesitated, he observed sarcastically, “This room, in case you have not noticed, is quite warm.”
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