Jason fumbled as he tied his soft wool robe about his waist. Why knot it at all? He would not be wearing it long. Just a few steps through the adjoining dressing rooms, and then . . . Lord, he was practically salivating, though his bride wasn’t half the beauty Gulbeyaz had been. Perhaps he might procure some kohl, some of the exotic scents that had wafted from his harem bride’s skin and clothing. Yes, Penelope would like that, he thought. What harm in indulging their fantasy with a few items from the East?
As he started toward his wife’s bedchamber, Jason’s knees were weak. The flood of memories! His first wedding night had been the most agonizing moment of his life. And the most glorious. Truthfully, he could hardly wait to repeat it. With a more satisfying ending.
His wife was sitting straight up in her bed, the covers clutched beneath her chin. Only slightly taken aback, Jason accepted that it was a chilly night, the fire already beginning to turn to embers. In spite of his eagerness, he took the time to add more logs, using the bellows to encourage them to burn. Then he turned back to his bride.
As Jason approached the bed, he succumbed to his unexpected eagerness, allowing his robe to drop to the floor. His wife’s eyes went wide, then instantly shifted away.
“I want you to know,” she announced in clipped tones, “that I am perfectly reconciled to doing my duty.” Chin up, eyes fixed on the heavy draperies at the foot of the bed rather than on the sight of her naked husband, she more closely resembled a Christian martyr about to be thrown to the lions than Gulbeyaz welcoming her long-lost husband.
“You are reconciled,” Jason repeated, standing with his backside roasting from the newly stoked fire and his once eager front side wilting in the fullness of his disappointment. “That is how you approach our marriage bed?”
“Is that not what you wish?” Penny asked, thoroughly confused.
“Hell and damnation, woman,” the Earl of Rocksley roared. “I want a flesh and blood woman, not a sacrificial virgin!” And with that he swept up his robe and stalked, naked, from the room, trailing the green wool behind him. When it caught in the slamming door to the dressing room, he left it there. Let the redoubtable Noreen O’Donnell puzzle that one out!
Behind him, Penny slid down and buried herself beneath the covers. What had she done? What went wrong? Just when . . .
What had happened to that glorious hero she once knew?
What had happened to her dreams of loving, bright-eyed children?
And where did their lives go from here?
~ * ~
Chapter Twelve
Lord Brawley, graciously pleading his lack of desire to play gooseberry to newlyweds, fled Rockbourne Crest directly after nuncheon. No one could blame him, for the atmosphere inside the early seventeenth century seat of the Earls of Rocksley vied with the windswept chill of winter without. And, of course, good manners dictated that no matter how bleak Lord Rocksley might look . . . no matter how pale and bristling his wife, it was time for friends to take themselves off, even when it meant leaving the unhappy pair to find their way out of whatever quagmire they had stumbled into.
But the pit between them had had nearly ten years to grow into a well of despond, the depth of their misunderstandings far beyond any single misconception or overly sensitive reaction. The earl, in the fullness of his pride, would not chance his manhood again to his wife’s obvious distaste. Penny, now certain that her behavior on their first wedding night had given her husband a revulsion of her from which he could never recover, threw herself into her household duties. Only in the dark loneliness of her bed did she allow herself to wonder about a solution to their impasse. Jason wanted children, he had told her so. So why his abrupt departure on their wedding night? Why had he not come to her since? She had told him she was willing, had she not?
Yet now she questioned even her memories. What was real? What a mere fantasy she had indulged in during her long days in the harem and in the years to come? Even now, reality was elusive. Jason had said he wanted a true wife. Then he had taken one look, turned on his heel, and stalked out. It was as if she had been transported to a moor and set down in the midst of a quaking bog. The ground trembled beneath her feet, and she could see no way out. She was being pulled under and would surely drown, while Jason stood, unmoving, on the bank and watched, this time lifting not so much as a finger to help.
The days dragged on, the earl and his countess meeting occasionally in the breakfast room, dining each evening in stiff and solitary formality at a table designed for twenty. Penny did her duty, as she had for so many years at Pemberton Priory. She continued to confer with Mrs. Wilton about the menus. She inspected every room, making notes where refurbishment was necessary. She began an inventory of the linens. Each evening she played the piano (with modest skill) while the earl listened with some attention, thanking her each time with words so stiff and formal that further conversation died unborn. Until one evening, more than a fortnight after their wedding, when the icicles had disappeared from the eaves, the snow had melted into a sea of mud, and the spike-like leaves of snowdrops and crocuses could be seen poking through the earth.
Perhaps it was this tiny waft of spring, Penny thought, but certainly some imp of change spurred her on. She might not have the courage to initiate a discussion of their obvious problem, for if she did, it seemed most likely Jason would reveal his change of mind by sending her away. But she recalled she had a legitimate topic of conversation, one which might elicit more response than the state of the weather, the roads, or even the state of the realm.
After playing a group of English country songs, mostly in a minor key, Penny embarked on a Scarlatti piece, equally sad and soulful. She did not sing, but echoed the words in her head as the song begged an unknown lover to cease to torment and wound. And if he could not, then the singer begged him to kill her. Penny found comfort in this mute protest, though she doubted the earl had the slightest idea of the song’s lyrics.
“O, lasciate me morir!” The last vibrating strings died away. Penny’s hands rested on the pianoforte’s keys. Head bent, she remained silent, summoning her courage to speak to her husband.
“Good God, woman, don’t you know anything lively?” the earl barked. “Oh, let me die, indeed! Oh, yes, I daresay I am as familiar with Italian songs as you. Did we not both make the Grand Tour?” he taunted.
How much more could he hurt her? Penny wondered, as her stomach churned. Yet anger was good, for it loosened her tongue, which had been woefully stuck to the roof of her mouth these past few weeks. She stood, with dignity, and crossed the room to sit across from him in an elegant giltwood armchair upholstered in gold brocade. The warmth of the fire was welcome, after the chill of the air around the piano, which was situated on the far side of the room. “I promise I shall not stay exclusively in the minor key, my lord,” Penny said carefully. “Tonight, I was perhaps influenced by something I wished to discuss with you.”
The earl’s face, already unwelcoming, grew more saturnine.
“I am concerned about the maid, Blossom,” Penny said.
The earl gawked. “I beg your pardon,” he murmured. What was the woman up to? Who the devil was Blossom?
“Blossom Early,” his wife said, as if he should know and recognize the name of every servant in his employ.
“You do not speak to me for days,” the earl intoned, “and now you wish to make a May game of me.”
“I have so spoken to you,” Penny protested indignantly.
“There is speaking, and then there is speaking,” Jason grumbled. “You cannot possibly claim that wishing to speak to me about someone with the outlandish name of Blossom Early can be anything but nonsense.”
“Oh,” said Penny, much struck, for in the stress of her days at Rockbourne Crest, the absurdity of Blossom Early’s name had not occurred to her. “You are quite right,” she conceded, “it does sound contrived, but that is the name she gave me, truly it is. The child is but sixteen, you see, the same age I was when—” Penny broke o
ff, blindly crumpling a handful of her rose silk gown in her fist. “Blossom,” she began again, knowing she must go on or she would never forgive herself, “Blossom is in the family way, and I fear Mrs. Wilton and I are in grave disagreement about the solution to her problem—”
“Disagreement?” Jason interjected. “You are mistress here, not Mrs. Wilton.”
“I do thank you for that,” Penny breathed, shooting him a truly grateful glance, which he felt all the way down to his nether regions. “But the problem is that even if she is not thrown out of the house without a thought for her future, as Mrs. Wilton wishes, she is still enceinte and unwed.”
“And you wish me to do what?” Jason inquired silkily. “Keep her on and raise up the brat as a stable boy?”
“You need not be difficult,” his wife snapped. “Her lover is quite willing to marry her, if only his father had not threatened to throw him off the land if he does so. For the father, you see, wishes him to marry someone a bit above a chambermaid.”
And now her summer sky eyes were truly fixed on his face, glowing with entreaty. An odd emotion poured through him. Even though the breathtaking child had become a thorny martyr, he actually wished to please her. “I take it the father is one of my tenants,” Jason said. At Penny’s agreement, he mused, “Then I believe he forgets from whose land he threatens to eject his son.”
His wife laughed aloud and clapped her hands, a childish gesture that delighted, reminding him of the young girl he had first known.
But her joy did not last, a frown wiping her smile away. “Surely, if you coerce the father, Blossom and Ned cannot be comfortable living in his household.”
Jason leaned back in his chair, stretching out one of his long legs until it came close to touching his wife’s toe. Ah, yes, he rather liked the sensation of being so close. “You may leave the matter to me,” he assured his countess. “I promise you I handle my estate affairs with greater skill than I have handled my marriage.”
Merciful heavens . . . a concession, Penny thought. Surely as close to an apology as she would ever hear from her laggard husband. A crack, the veriest chink in the solid wall built up between them. But was it a new beginning, or merely a brief flash of rapport, as swift to fade as it had burst upon them following a surfeit of doleful music?
It was enough, Penny decided. Enough to hint it would not take another ten years to mend the damage of the past. Drifting for a moment into the flights of fancy of her youth, the Countess of Rocksley wondered what would happen if she threw herself into her husband’s lap and put her arms about his neck?
But she would not, of course she would not. Pride was a terrible thing. Penny stood, sank into a respectful curtsy, and said, “My lord, I am most grateful. I am sure you will not regret any help you may give to Blossom and her Ned. Goodnight.”
Hastily, Jason pulled back his foot so she would not trip on it. Stubborn chit. She had given him nothing to go on. Not the slightest hint she was ready to declare a truce in their silent war. Blossom and Ned, indeed. Surely the way to his wife’s heart did not lie in the fate of two country bumpkins.
He had only one way to move in his marriage, Jason reminded himself, and that was up, for how could things be worse than the “reconciled” icicle he had found in his countess’s bed?
So Blossom and Ned it was. Even if he found the entire affair ludicrous.
For a considerable time the earl scowled at the pianoforte where his wife persisted in playing music so mournful it set his teeth on edge. Impossible woman! If he’d had the slightest idea what was to come, he would have joined a caravan to Persia the moment Cassandra Pemberton had turned to him for help. Damn and blast the gentler sex. They were a good deal of trouble. Grabbing up the candelabrum from a table beside him, Jason headed for his study, where a full bottle of brandy awaited him.
Penelope Blayne Lisbourne. His wife. Hell and the Devil confound it!
Rockbourne Crest, built in an era when life was still uncertain in the Marches, the sometimes rugged hill country between England and Wales, was situated on a plateau about a third of the way up a hill that looked like a mountain to someone accustomed to the softly rolling terrain of Kent. Nor did the small but sparkling lakes Penny could see from the windows of her bedchamber bear any resemblance to the flat water marshes and choppy seas of the county she had called home for so many years. Feeling almost as trapped as the young girl who had once gazed longingly from behind the lattices of the seraglio at the ships plying the Bosphorus, Penny could scarcely wait to explore the Shropshire countryside.
Therefore, when the sea of mud that passed for roads finally firmed under occasional bursts of sun that penetrated winter’s low-lying clouds, Lady Rocksley ordered up a carriage and escaped the silent but contentious atmosphere that permeated the seventeenth century stone fortress. Attempts to renovate and enlarge it over the years into something more closely resembling a nobleman’s manor house had been only partially successful.
Penny, accustomed to the bright and airy feel of Palladian architecture, based on classic Greco-Roman lines, or the graceful red brick and columned facades so popular in the previous century, found it difficult to adapt to the uncompromising solidness of Rockbourne Crest. Shut in, as she had been by the weather, she tended to think of it more as a prison than a home. And of her husband as her jailer. Unfair, perhaps, but when had she ever known freedom? As a child, her every action had been controlled by her Aunt Cass. During the past years, when she had had the running of the household and the care of her aunt during her final illness, she had enjoyed a modicum of independence but, certainly, nothing that could be called freedom. And now she was a possession of the Earl of Rocksley, his to do with as he pleased.
And it would seem he pleased very little.
As the carriage made its cautious descent toward the valley below, Penny gulped a lungful of crisp air and scolded herself for her foolishness. She was tired, tired, tired. No one could know . . . no one could even imagine what the care of an invalid entailed. Even with a houseful of willing servants . . .
In time, she would recover. Life would not seem an insurmountable obstacle dropped square in front of her by a vengeful God who did not think her fit to be a proper English lady. Penny slumped against the squabs, and for the next half mile felt quite sorry for herself, until her natural stubbornness and resiliency reasserted itself, even through an exhaustion that seemed to penetrate all the way to her bones. She was the Countess of Rocksley. She was about to make the acquaintance of the people in the village below. She would carry off this excursion as she had every other challenge in her life. If not always with triumph, she could at least manage panache.
The village of Cranmere was a pleasant surprise. The carriage crossed a stone bridge over a rushing stream that tumbled over a series of granite ledges before plunging over a fall, marked by the huge wooden wheel of a mill, and then racing off down a slope toward a small lake, or mere, that gave the village its name. A few of the houses were of red brick, but the majority of the homes and shops showed the distinctive half-timbered construction of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The church, however, appeared to have been built of the same sturdy red granite as Rockbourne Crest. It was a fine edifice, with an impressive bell tower. Penny speculated that the first Earl of Rocksley, undoubtedly more devout than the present holder of the title, had ordered the church built of the same materials as his castle.
Since one of Penny’s errands was to make sure Blossom Early and her Ned had arranged for the reading of their banns, she went first to the church, where she admired the stained glass windows and the intricate carving on the pulpit before she finally discovered Mr. Adrian Stanmore in the vicarage, hard at work on his Sunday sermon. Instead of resenting the interruption, the vicar beamed at her and urged her to take tea with him. The embers of Penny’s self-esteem, severely damaged by her husband’s disgust of her, flickered, settled into a soft glow, though ready to be snuffed out by the slightest hint of disdain.
The young vicar raised his cup of tea in salute. “Blossom Early tells me they owe it all to you, Lady Rocksley. Scarce three weeks at Rockbourne Crest, and already you are a true lady of the manor.”
“Not at all,” Penny demurred, though the small compliment touched her injured spirit like a warm rush of summer sunlight.
“Pray allow me the honor of introducing you to the village,” Mr. Stanmore offered. “I assure you they have been all agog since they heard of the wedding.”
“But you are working on your sermon, sir,” Penny protested feebly, making a valiant effort not to show how gratified she was by the vicar’s offer.
Adrian Stanmore rose, a tall blond Viking, who had somehow managed to fit into a village where the residents tended to be smaller, darker, and more similar to their Welsh neighbors than to their Saxon ancestors. “My sermon, my dear lady, will keep,” he pronounced. “After all, ’tis but Thursday. Come, let us set the village about its ears.” He proffered his arm. “Mrs. Hensley,” he called to his housekeeper, “Lady Rocksley’s cloak, if you please.”
Laughing, Penny stood and allowed him to place her fur-lined cloak about her shoulders. Indeed, it was quite wonderful to see good humor in a man’s eyes. And admiration.
Without so much as a thought for the husband who had been a ghost through all but her first wedding night, Penelope Blayne Lisbourne, Countess of Rocksley, began her tour of the village of Cranmere, happily ensconced on the arm of Mr. Adrian Stanmore.
~ * ~
The Harem Bride Page 12
