Married to a Stranger

by Louise Allen

Callum was sitting at his desk, his head bent over some papers, one hand raking through his hair. He seemed completely engrossed, but as she watched him he looked up, straight into her eyes, as though she had called his name. He got up and crossed to the bedchamber, tugging the bell pull as he came in. ‘Better?’

  ‘Much better, thank you.’ She pulled the covers around her like a shawl, sat up and swung her legs off the bed. ‘You have magic in your hands.’

  He shrugged, but he seemed pleased with the compliment, she thought. ‘I have rung for Chivers. If you want to get up, I wondered if you would keep me company in the study.’

  ‘Will I not distract you?’ The idea was intriguing.

  ‘No. You could read. Or draw if you like. Use my things.’

  ‘I would like that, thank you. I saw the slope in your study.’ She stumbled to a halt. He would know she had been in there looking around. Then she recovered herself. It was her house and she was in charge of it. Of course she would check all the rooms.

  ‘I used to have one in India and I brought that one up from the Hall without thinking. My sketchbooks went down with the ship.’ He turned away abruptly. ‘Somehow I don’t feel much like taking it up again.’

  ‘Did you draw landscapes?’

  ‘Some. And people.’ He became very still, his attention apparently fixed on the bed post. ‘I drew Dan. I wish now I had sent some home before we sailed, but I never did and now—’ He shrugged. ‘I do not expect I will start again.’

  ‘You painted in watercolours, did you not?’ Sophia asked. He looked puzzled. ‘You told me when we were driving to London. Would you teach me, Callum? I have never been able to master it.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I might not be good enough.’

  ‘Then we can struggle with it together,’ Sophia said. Best perhaps not to push him, there were some painful memories involved. ‘Here comes Chivers, I’ll order luncheon to be sent up.’

  She had thought Callum healed after Daniel’s death. But it seemed the scars were still tender and the hurt lurked close to the surface. Then she recalled the look in his eyes when he had raised his head and seen her watching him. Perhaps, after all, she was helping him, just a little.

  ‘I will just read, I think,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t want to bend over a drawing book at the moment.’ The truth was, she was itching to pick up a pencil, but how could she, in his own study, after what Callum had just told her?

  ‘You are not bored, I hope?’ He laid aside his pen. ‘I thought of having a dinner party next week. And now you are making calls we will start to receive any number of invitations.’

  ‘No, I am not bored,’ she promised him. If truth be told, despite her longing to make friends, the thought of plunging into London society was just a little daunting. So long as she could draw, then she would not be bored.

  Callum was scrupulous in avoiding her bed. At first Sophia told herself that she was glad to have her bedchamber to herself and that it was delightful to be able to curl up in bed and read for as long as she wanted to, just as she had before she had married.

  After four days these protestations were wearing somewhat thin. The truth was, she knew that she wanted the closeness that lovemaking brought even more than she wanted the frustrating pleasures that her husband’s touch brought her. There was something more, she knew that, but somehow she could not reach it, nor could she bring herself to abandon all reserve and allow him to completely overwhelm her.

  For that was what it would be, she suspected. If she once yielded utterly to Callum, then she would no longer be herself, the woman she had been. She would feel for him more than she wanted. Certainly more than a man who had married out of duty would want.

  But she needed to hold Callum and to be held and she needed the nearness that she had experienced when he had soothed her pain and allowed her to sit quietly in his study while he worked.

  In an effort to fill the void she drew with an almost feverish urgency, tearing off pages and throwing them on the fire in frustration at their inadequacy to express what she saw and felt.

  The sketches she had drawn of the imaginary, adult Daniel almost followed the still lives, the portraits of the servants and views from the windows onto the fire, but something held her back from destroying them. At first she thought it was because they were rather better than she had thought when she was creating them, then she had to admit that she kept them because they were uncannily like Callum. With a sigh she tucked them under the cover of her portfolio. What she really wanted was to draw her husband, but he was hardly at home these days and when he came back in the evening it was always with a pile of papers and work to be done after dinner.

  ‘Madam?’

  She glanced up. There was Andrew with a salver. ‘The second post, madam.’

  And there they were, the first of the expected invitations. Sophia spread them all out and looked at the dates. None of them were on the same night, all of them could be, and doubtless Callum would say, must be, accepted. A musicale, a soirée, a reception and a dinner party. She reviewed her wardrobe and decided that she was adequately gowned for all these. There was nothing for it but to put on her best behaviour and do Callum credit.

  Andrew moved around the room, quietly, efficiently repairing the small untidinesses she had created, then whisked out. The house ran like clockwork. Callum’s house, Callum’s servants who hardly needed to refer to her, although, of course, they did. Callum’s contacts and friends and superiors who she must cultivate for the sake of Callum’s career.

  Stop it! she thought. He had rescued her from spinsterhood and paid drudgery and given her a life of ease and security. He had saved Mama from genteel poverty and, as soon as Mark was ordained, he would make sure that Will found her brother a good parish, even if Mark had bored and patronised him on their wedding eve.

  But, ungrateful as it was, she missed her old life. In Hertfordshire she had managed the house, the budget. She had contrived and schemed and kept them going, somehow. She could see who she wanted of her friends and she could draw whenever the mood took her. She had been free and her mind had been exercised to its utmost.

  There was a snap and Sophia looked down to see the pencil held tight in her fingers was broken. But she still had this, still had her art. She opened the portfolio again. It was good, wasn’t it? Or was she deluding herself? Was she simply a moderately talented young lady? If her art sold, then she would know she had talent, know there was something that remained of the old Sophia. Dare she put it to the test?

  ‘I am working at home this morning,’ Callum said as Sophia poured him a second cup of coffee at breakfast, six days after she had told him that she was not yet with child. ‘I thought perhaps you would like to go for a walk in Green Park this afternoon. Unless you have more shopping to do.’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. I would like that very much.’ Sophia heard the excitement in her own voice and wondered at herself. Her husband—the husband to whom she had been married for two weeks and two days, she reminded herself—had suggested a walk and she was so pathetically grateful for the simple treat that she sounded as though he had offered her a box at the opera for a year or a carriage and pair for her own use.

  ‘It would be pleasant to stretch my legs,’ she added in a more moderate tone. ‘I had thought to go to Hatchard’s, and I have some trifling shopping, but I can do that this morning, it is nothing of importance. I must buy more silk stockings, I laddered a pair at Mrs Sommerson’s musicale last night.’

  ‘Very well. I will see you at luncheon at one o’clock.’ Callum folded his newspaper, picked up his coffee cup and went out, leaving her to finish a mental shopping list. It proved remarkably difficult. Tooth powder, a nice big bath sponge … I should tell him that he can come back to my bed. Stockings. Better get silk ones and some cotton ones. Shall I go and tell him now? But it will make it sound as though I am lusting after him. But I miss him … Don’t think about it. Tooth powder …

  Chapter Fourteen
/>   Sophia was still brooding on the best way to convey that she was ready to welcome Callum back to her bed as they walked the short distance down Half Moon Street to cross Piccadilly and enter Green Park. Callum certainly appeared to be in an amiable enough mood. He had complimented her on the luncheon, admired the moss-green walking dress with darker green pelisse and matching bonnet with grosgrain ribbons.

  Now there was nothing for it but to meet his eyes when he guided her across the road and turned back from flipping a coin to the crossing sweeper. ‘I—’

  ‘I think perhaps we should discuss the … disagreement we had on the subject of mistresses,’ Callum said. Sophia was so taken aback that she stumbled on the kerb and he had to catch her hand to steady her. ‘I rather lost sight of my sense of humour,’ Callum continued. He kept hold of her hand, which was rather pleasant. ‘Or perhaps I should say that you touched my conscience on a sore spot. You have not mentioned it again, but I sense it is not forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten? No, I have not forgotten. I was … tactless and naïve. Why should you have a guilty conscience about having a mistress in India when you had no obligations elsewhere?’ Sophia freed her hand, slid it into the crook of his arm and let him guide her down the diagonal pathway.

  ‘I did not say it was logical.’

  ‘I thought you were—logical, I mean. The organised brother, the sensible one.’

  ‘Sensible?’ Callum snorted, but he did not explain his amusement and his expression, when she glanced up at his profile, was rueful. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. Most of the time.’

  ‘And Daniel was not?’

  For a moment she wondered if she was wrong to ask him to talk of his twin, then he shrugged. ‘Daniel was not … Daniel was impulsive. He let himself feel and then acted on those feelings without, sometimes, thinking it through.’

  ‘Such as the time he proposed to me?’

  ‘Perhaps. He was spontaneous and open and generous.’

  ‘You are generous,’ she offered.

  ‘But not spontaneous and open.’

  ‘That does not mean you do not feel, that you do not care. That you do not have as much emotion inside, even if you do not show it on the outside.’

  ‘Would you wish me to be more open about my feelings, Sophia?’

  She looked up from under the brim of her bonnet and caught a glimpse of heat that made her heart skip a beat. Did he mean physically? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I would.’ He said nothing, simply tucked her hand more firmly into the crook of his arm. ‘I like it here,’ Sophia remarked a few minutes later when it seemed that the subjects of mistresses and feelings were to be put behind them without further discussion. In the distance she could see the towers of Westminster Abbey floating like a mirage above the trees. I really am in London, she thought. This is my new life.

  ‘London?’

  ‘Green Park. I do not feel ready to face the fashionable throng in Hyde Park, even if it were proper that I should.’

  ‘Because you are shy?’

  ‘I am afraid so!’ She laughed at her own nervousness. It was absurd that she, who only weeks before had been resolved upon making her own way in the world by finding employment, should become anxious when she had a gentleman to protect her. Or perhaps that was the problem: Callum would tell her what to do, provide for her, and she would become a grateful, obedient puppet.

  There was that uncomfortable thought about independence again. Well-bred ladies observed certain constraints on their behaviour, of course, but she had as good an education as a girl could hope for, she had ideas in her head, some talents to her name. She wanted to spread her wings, to be herself.

  ‘You have no need to be shy,’ Callum said when she did not expand on her admission. ‘You are personable, you have all the social arts. You were a great success at the party last night. You enjoyed it, did you not?’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, I did find it entertaining.’ And she had. How foolish to have accepted a marriage of convenience and then wish for more.

  Callum pointed out some of the fine buildings overlooking the park and they stopped to admire the elegance of Spencer House. ‘Rather more splendid than our little dwelling,’ he said. ‘A house in Half Moon Street is hardly up to what you might expect after Flamborough Hall.’

  ‘But it is a very fashionable street and well located. What on earth would I do rattling around all day in something the size of the Hall?’ she asked. ‘I never expected a large town house.’

  ‘When I am able to sort out my affairs, and can see how I am placed now I am settled in England with this new post, then we will find something larger. Half Moon Street is too small for a family, in any case.’

  Startled, Sophia looked up at him and realised her free hand had gone to her belly in an instinctive gesture. ‘Well, that will not be for nine months at the very least,’ she said. ‘If you want … I mean, it is convenient again …’ Her voice trailed off.

  Was he thinking about lovemaking too, or her failure to conceive yet? His arm tensed, pressing her hand tighter to his side and he shot her a dark, smouldering glance that made her toes curl in her kid half-boots and sent a shaft of heat into the pit of her stomach. Goodness, that answered that question! When he looked like that he disturbed her too much for her own peace of mind. She still hoped that when they made love she could overcome whatever it was that seemed to stop her giving way to the feelings she knew hovered just out of reach. But she had told him to be more open, she had invited this.

  ‘Shall we walk on?’ Callum changed direction, back into the centre of the park, and Sophia struggled to find a safe topic of conversation. Do you mean to take me home and make love to me in daylight? was probably an inadmissible question.

  ‘Would it be considered fast if I were to come here to sketch?’ she asked as they approached a small stand of trees ringed by shrubs. ‘I would bring Chivers, of course. Or should it be a footman?’

  ‘A footman might be wise, just in case some park saunterer takes a fancy to annoy you,’ Callum said. ‘That looks a pleasant spot.’ He strolled towards a bench that stood in a green glade almost surrounded by bushes. Sophia’s pulse gave a little kick of anticipation, but all he said as they seated themselves was, ‘Tell me more about your art. You said it was the most important thing to you after your family.’

  ‘Mainly I draw in pencil or in chalks and pastels. I draw anything and everything,’ she added. ‘Portraits, landscapes, still life … But I am only an amateur.’ Even as she said that she felt uncomfortable to be belittling such an important part of her life, her creative expression. She knew many gentlemen would consider it unsuitable for their wives to have an almost professional interest in what should be a lady’s genteel diversion. If Callum knew she was contemplating selling her drawings he could not approve, she was certain. A dutiful wife would not even contemplate it.

  ‘I suspect it will be better than that.’ Callum shifted on the bench and laid his arm along the back of it behind her shoulders. ‘I can recall when Daniel was courting you that you were always smudged with charcoal or leaving white fingerprints from chalk. And there were attempts at portraiture that Daniel bore very patiently.’

  ‘They were very bad,’ Sophia admitted, recalling the best of them, the miniature that she kept with his letters. Those had stayed behind in her old room in Hertfordshire.

  ‘But I cannot believe you have not improved with practice,’ Callum said.

  ‘I hope so, or I am seriously deluded!’

  ‘This is a good spot. We will come here one day and I will try again with watercolours and you can sketch—or perhaps learn from my daubs.’

  ‘I would like that. Thank you.’ It felt as though a barrier had been breached between them.

  Callum set his high-crowned hat on the seat beside him and leaned closer, his attention fixed on her right cheekbone.

  ‘What is it? Do I have an insect on my face?’

  ‘No. Speaking of art has made me study the nearest lovely thing more clos
ely.’ She shook her head at the arrant flattery, but he continued to look at her face. ‘Only the faintest little heart-shaped freckle. Just … there below your lashes.’ His fingertip touched her skin, then trailed a quivering trace of sensation along the top of her cheek. ‘Are there any others? I haven’t noticed any, but by candlelight they may not be so easy to find as in the daylight.’

  ‘I don’t know. I used to have freckles, but Mama made me use Denmark lotion and I thought they had all gone.’ Her voice was shaking and she tried to steady it, but to do that she must control her breathing and that was all over the place and he was leaning closer now. It was the first time he had ever caressed her during the day and they were in the open, in public.

  ‘A pity. Poor little orphaned freckle.’ Callum’s lips pressed against the place where his finger had touched. His hair, almost as dark as hers, tickled her face and she put up a hand to steady herself against his chest.

  ‘It might not be the only one. You could look,’ Sophia suggested, greatly daring.

  ‘I could. What a provoking suggestion, my dear.’ His voice was growing husky and he moved, just enough to bring his mouth to hers, so close his breath brushed her lips and made her laugh. ‘I have missed you.’

  ‘That tickles!’ He laughed too and her wariness was gone, replaced by a new, strange sensation that was making her tense, but in the most delightful manner. Was this desire? ‘I missed you too,’ Sophia ventured. If only she had the courage to reach out to him, not to make love, but for closeness and companionship. But if she did, and he found that intrusively familiar, it would hurt too much. She must wait for him, it seemed. Married couples were not supposed to be demonstrative, Mama had warned her about that. Coward, she told herself.

  Behind Callum’s head she saw movement and pulled back. ‘Someone is coming.’

  ‘Damn. I had hoped to kiss my wife in sylvan solitude for a while.’ He sat back a little, just enough for propriety, but he did not turn and his expression held wicked promises for when they could be alone. ‘Who is it? A picnic party or a governess with a swarm of infants?’