After one swift glance at what she could only term the smug satisfaction on her husband’s usually saturnine features, the countess ducked her head, nodding dumbly as Stackpole proffered a variety of selections from under their round silver covers. Blast the man! And what if she had not been a virgin? Would he have rejected her out of hand? Would she now be standing beside her trunks in the foyer, waiting for the coach to be brought round? The coach that would take her into exile, abandonment, and divorce? The world, Penny thought, not for the first time, was vastly unfair to its females.
“Well, sir,” she said with more asperity than intended, “are we off to Shropshire, or are we not?”
The earl paused with a bite of beefsteak halfway to his mouth, then laid his fork carefully upon his plate. “I believe we discussed this matter at some time during the night, my dear. Did you not express a loathing to run away as we did from Constantinople?”
“And did you not counter by reminding me of Wellington’s tactics of strategic retreat and live to fight another day?”
“Perhaps I did,” the earl murmured, adding provocatively, “I fear I was not completely attending to the debate at the time.”
“Jason!” His wife, much shocked, once again bent her head to her gammon, eggs and toast.
The earl, lips twitching, resumed his attack on his beefsteak. After some moments of taut silence, he suggested mildly, that he still believed the wisest course was to return to Shropshire and let the entire matter fade of its own accord.
“That is cowardly!” Penny shot back. “All my beautiful clothes . . . I had such plans . . . ” The countess, encountering her husband’s unwavering stare, choked to a halt.
“Your gowns will be as lovely in Shropshire as they are in London,” the earl pointed out with maddening logic.
“And who will see them?” his countess demanded.
“I will.”
“Oh.” Penny, mortified, fisted a hand to her lips. Hot tears sprang to her eyes. Was that not what she had wanted all along? For Jason to see her as beautiful? Did it truly matter that this was not her year to dance at balls, reign over a salon of artists and authors, or be the so-clever hostess at dinner parties for the influential politicians of the day? Once again, she had been air-dreaming, constructing castles of glittering crystal when she needed to appreciate the good English earth beneath her feet.
Shropshire. It would be beautiful now, fulfilling the green promise of spring that had begun to decorate the hills, valleys, and gardens just before she left for town. As long as Jason came with her, as he had promised, all would be well. Her disappointments were the silly maunderings of an overgrown girl who had never had a Season. Next year would do as well, of course it would.
“Lady Rocksley,” Stackpole intoned, interrupting Penny’s penitent thoughts.
“Mama!” The Earl of Rocksley shot to his feet so fast, his napkin dropped to the floor. Penny’s surprise was so thorough only years of strict training brought her, wavering slightly, to her feet. Unconsciously, she held on to the back of her chair for support.
The lady (on the wrong side of fifty), who had just swept through the doorway, examined her daughter-in-law with exacting scrutiny. The Dowager Countess was not an imposing female, it being instantly obvious the earl had inherited his height from his father. But her garments were precise to a pin, her dark brown hair featuring enough streaks of gray to reveal that she did not resort to artifice to cover her age, and her cobalt eyes—so like her son’s—were alight with intelligence and worldly wisdom.
“So,” she declared a moment before it was perfectly plain the new countess was about to take umbrage at her inspection, “you have plunged yourself into a pickle, have you, Rocksley?”
Her son, ignoring this jibe, said, “Perhaps you would care to join us for breakfast, Mama?”
“I broke my fast at Lady Carlyle’s, where I spent the night and,” she added with a baleful glance at the pair of them, “received the full gist of this disaster. But I might be coaxed into another cup of chocolate and perhaps a rasher of bacon. I am particularly fond of bacon, you know.”
The footman immediately pulled out a chair for the dowager, and a maid scurried in with all the amenities for a full place setting. After the elder Lady Rocksley allowed she might also have one of cook’s muffins, with butter and a bit of blackberry jam, the earl dismissed the footman and calmly returned to his breakfast. His countess, however, merely stared at her plate, unable to swallow more than a sip or two of coffee.
Eulalia Lisbourne, Dowager Countess of Rocksley, finished her chocolate, placed the cup precisely in its saucer. “I must admit to being profoundly shocked, Rocksley, when you wrote to me of your marriage. And if you think I believed that faradiddle about how you came to marry this chit in the first place, you are fair and far out. Cassandra Pemberton was in her third Season when I made my come-out, and I know full well what an eccentric—”
“Aunt Cass had a Season?” Penny burbled, startled into forgetting her manners, as well as her horror at the dowager’s arrival.
“Oh, indeed she did and quite frightened off every eligible nobleman in London. A shocking bluestocking she was. Matched wits with anyone who would listen, espoused female independence, trod on every masculine feeling of superiority. And quite hoodwinked her papa into leaving her in control of all his money. Most improper! So then she was off on her jaunts, growing more odd by the year, with nothing slowing her pace, not even when she took on your care, my child,” said the dowager, looking not unkindly, at Penelope.
“But,” the dowager added, drawing breath and fixing her son with a stern eye, “if you wish me to think she did not plan to entrap you, Rocksley, you are very much mistaken—”
“No, truly—” the earl interjected.
“Nonsense! I daresay she was fit as a fiddle, laughing into the pillows of her sickbed the moment she discovered she had fooled you into acquiescing to her outrageous scheme—”
“Mama!” the earl roared. “You will listen to what I have to tell you.” And the true story came rolling out, occasionally augmented by soft, chagrined additions or corrections from the younger Countess of Rocksley.
“Merciful heavens,” the dowager gasped when the earl came at last to his renewal of vows in Shropshire. “I daresay even Monk Lewis never came up with such a tale.”
“I am so sorry, my lady,” Penny murmured. “But Jason was a hero, truly he was. If not for him, I would, this moment, be a poor soul lost forever in the sultan’s harem.” Hopefully, she peeped at the dowager countess, looking for a miracle, as she and Jason were certainly at an impasse.
The dowager countess contemplated her empty plate, raised her eyes, unseeing, to the colorful hunting scene hanging on the wall. “I believe Rocksley is right,” she said at last. “We must do as our dear General Wellington has done. This, like the campaign on the Peninsula, is not going to be an easy task. We must regroup and plan our strategy.”
Regarding her daughter-in-law’s fallen face with some compassion, the elder Lady Rocksley added, “Yes, yes, I see you wish to stay and fight, but it simply will not do, my child. Though it may be through no fault of your own, you have blotted your copy book most shockingly, you know. There is a most nasty seed of truth at the bottom of Mr. Yardley’s lies. We must . . .” The dowager tapped one slender finger against the tablecloth. “Yes, I think we must go to Rockbourne Crest, where we may plan our campaign in privacy, perhaps for a recovery during the less busy Season in the autumn.” Lady Rocksley folded her napkin, and placed it on the table. “When do you wish to leave?”
“But you have just arrived from Bath, have you not?” her son protested.
“Yes, it is most unfortunate I did not know the whole before,” she said in significant tones, “but it cannot be helped. Hopefully, my maid has not yet begun to unpack.”
In view of the dowager’s stoicism and the impossibility of the younger countess referring to her own exhaustion from a nearly sleepless night, the earl�
�s entourage of two coaches, burdened by a mountainous quantity of luggage, in addition to Kirby, Noreen O’Donnell, and Hitchins, the Dowager Countess’s most superior maid, departed in the early afternoon, returning Penelope to the wilds of Shropshire she had left with such high hopes little more than a fortnight earlier.
Shropshire
The Earl of Rocksley was decidedly fond of his mother, who possessed a great deal of good sense for a female, and to whom he would be eternally grateful for not cutting up stiff over his most peculiar marriage. But he did not want her at Rockbourne Crest at this moment. Though, in all fairness, he had to admit that if his mama had any idea she was intruding on the equivalent of a wedding journey, she would scurry back to Bath with all alacrity.
But pride would not allow him to drop so much as a hint of the turtle-like progress of his marriage. Unthinkable his mama should discover him to be such a slow-top! But it was hard, devilish hard, to find himself alone with his bride only in the late evening privacy of their suite of rooms—with the odor of greening earth and early blossoms drifting in through the open windows reminding them of nature’s renewal of life—and do anything but what was uppermost in his mind. And what, he very much hoped, was in the mind of his wife as well.
Yet, when daylight came, the passion of the bedchamber seemed part of a separate world, for his mother and his countess had plunged with near frenetic intensity into the world of women, including visits to neighboring families and taking a hand in the affairs of the village, while he was left to attend to estate business, a classic division of duties that did not, at the moment, appeal to him in the least.
The Earl of Rocksley truly did not care if Blossom and her Ned had been blessed with a baby boy. Nor that his countess was determined to find a wife for the vicar. (And spending far too much time in that blasted Greek God’s company, by Jupiter!) Nor did he wish to sit between his mama and his wife in the high-backed Lisbourne family pew while Stanmore flashed his benign gaze, perfect white teeth, and overly friendly smile upon his captive audience of a Sunday morning. But there he had been the past two Sundays—with visions of endless annoyingly erudite sermons stretching into the infinity of his exile in Shropshire.
The earl had also deigned to dine at the squire’s, a duty he could not avoid, and, indeed, his mama had pointed out with some asperity that he should get down on his knees and thank Matthew and Tabitha Houghton for arranging a dinner that included the four leading families of the area, a definite fillip to his wife’s efforts to take her proper place in society. But Jason could not help but note that the dinner had been an ordeal for his countess, even though Penny had put on a gracious social façade that had never slipped under the guests’ blatant scrutiny. Too many sideways glances, too many gleams of speculation. Too many people trying too hard to act as if the London rumors had not made their way to Shropshire.
Yet when Jason went to her bed the night of the squire’s dinner party, she lay like a stone frozen at the bottom of an icy stream. He had taken her in his arms and simply held her until her poor stiff body nestled into his and, at last, he held a woman and not a carving of ice.
Was that the night, the earl wondered, as he gazed out over his acres from a vantage point well up the steep hill above Rockbourne Crest, when the Jason Lisbourne he should have been had begun to make himself known? Just when had he begun to doubt that his odd mix of fatalism, interspersed with moments of erotic fantasy, were a proper approach to marriage.
Jason slumped in his saddle. He had ridden up the winding rocky path in a quest for the solace this particular view always brought. Yet now that he was here, he was so lost in thought he scarcely saw it.
There was something that hovered just out of his grasp, something his wife expected from him that he had not been able to give. Yet, for the life of him, he was unsure what it was. She was so determinedly willing. She had gifted him with Gulbeyaz—achingly lovely, accommodating, skilled—but the . . . eagerness was gone. Yes, that was it. Impossible as it seemed, there must have been a time at the beginning when she had loved him. Worshipped him as a hero. Waited for him to come to her.
And he had not.
So his once-shining Penny, now his tarnished bride, had settled for what life had dished out to her—a rakish earl who now wished to set up his nursery. Rather than live the life of a lonely recluse, she had agreed to be his broodmare. And even though she seemed adverse to the process, his wife now held her heart close, encased behind an iron wall he had undoubtedly helped build.
Surely their present calculated arrangement was sufficient, the earl grumbled. Many men must deal with wives who showed no interest in bedchamber activities at all. That was the way of the ton. Marriages were made by blood lines, titles, land, and wealth. In society, love was more apt to presage disaster than happily-ever-after. Look at the current disgrace of the very much married Caro Lamb chasing after that idiot Byron. And there was always the sad example of the Prince of Wales—surely the most foolishly romantic prince of all time—who had married for love a woman thrice condemned by society’s rules—a commoner, a widow, and a Roman Catholic. A sorry affair that had ended in his formal, approved marriage to a woman who so disgusted him they had lived apart almost from the moment of conception of their only child.
So he should be grateful, should he not? Jason mused. He was better off than most of his acquaintances. Penny was a delightful armful, even if he had not been able to touch her heart.
And whose fault was that? In a manner far more justified than Caroline Lamb’s blatant invitation to Byron, the sixteen-year-old Penny—Gulbeyaz, the harem bride—had offered herself to him, had indeed expected to be his wife before the world, and he, feeling only relief that Miss Pemberton’s animosity had set him free, turned his back and sailed away, refusing to accept Penny’s precious gift of love.
And now he was cursed with his mama under foot, his steward constantly prating of estate business, Stanmore declaiming pious sermons on Sunday and altogether too visible the remainder of the week. Dinner at the Squire’s. Musical evenings. Hell and the devil, how was a man to have time to think, let alone make peace with his wife?
Excuses! Nothing but excuses. Jason’s long-dormant conscience now scolded him daily. To regain his wife’s love required only that he give love in return. But that was more than a bit of a struggle, for by day his wife was as cool and tart-tongued as the woman who had arrived on his doorstep one icy February night. A second Cassandra Pemberton in the making. And she was far too much in the company of that blasted round-collared Don Juan, the vicar. How could he have been such a fool as to have appointed a young, unmarried man to such a position? Just another example of his careless, rakish ways, Jason supposed. And now he was paying for it, for every woman in the area was making eyes at Mr. Adrian Stanmore, even spinsters twice his age. Outrageous, that’s what it was.
Instantly recognizing the supreme irony of his wayward thoughts, the earl let out a rueful chuckle, then patted his horse’s neck when the animal sidled and snorted, startled by his owner’s mirth. “It’s all right,” he whispered to the stallion. And then, more thoughtfully, “Yes . . . somehow it will all come right.” Jason took one last look at the spring beauty of his acres, then turned his horse toward the path leading down to the problems that waited below.
From the age of nine, Penny had spent her life solely in the close company of her Aunt Cass. Traveling constantly, she had never had the comfort of a friend her own age. Nor had she had the benefit of the wisdom of a woman who had borne and raised three children, as had the Dowager Countess of Rocksley. Except for one or two inevitable skirmishes over which Lady Rocksley was head of the household, Penny was well pleased with Jason’s mother.
That lady had, in fact, taken the news of her son’s irregular marriage exceedingly well and was spending long hours at the secretaire in the morning room writing letters to a vast number of friends, imparting the “true” story of her husband’s marriage and his wife’s impeccable antecedents. And
at the same time the dowager had found time to support her daughter-in-law’s plunge into county life. For Penny had rushed to renew her brief acquaintance with Mary Houghton, daughter of the local squire, and with Helen Seagrave, the young gentlewoman so impoverished she was obliged to earn a few extra shillings by providing lessons on the harp and pianoforte.
Though Penny could scarce believe it, she was on her way to acquiring her first friends since the kindness of Ayshe and Leyla in the Sultan’s harem. The novelty of it touched her, spreading not only warmth but a determination to better her new friends’ lives if she could. Surely one of them might do for Mr. Adrian Stanmore, for whoever had heard of a bachelor vicar? Particularly one who was almost sinfully handsome?
Mary, the downtrodden daughter of the loquacious and overpowering Mrs. Houghton, very much needed a home of her own, and Helen Seagrave also needed some means of raising herself above the level of genteel poverty. Both women were well brought-up and kind-hearted, although Miss Houghton was far too much of a mouse, to Penny’s way of thinking. She could only hope, freed from her mama, Mary Houghton would develop a bit of backbone.
If the younger Countess of Rocksley ever gave a thought to whether her compulsion to be so busy about the affairs of others might be an attempt to avoid considering her own unsatisfactory situation, she gave no outward sign of it.
The Harem Bride Page 18
