Married to a Stranger

by Louise Allen

  ‘I was very tanned when we left. We always swam, year round, where it was safe,’ Callum said. He sat on the edge of the bed, still in evening breeches and stockings and Sophia studied his muscles sidelong through her lashes. ‘And bachelors are careless about lounging around in the heat in shockingly little clothing in their own compounds. Even in the shade the sun is so intense in India that one colours easily.

  ‘Then on the ship it was hot for much of the voyage and the men were casual in their dress during the day. You see?’ He lifted her hand and traced with her fingertips the darker vee of skin where his shirt must have lain open.

  ‘And here.’ There was another line just below his elbows. The hair on his forearm felt rough and she turned his hand so she could trace the smooth, paler skin on the inside of his arm. He gave a little shiver, so she tickled the inside of his elbow and made him laugh.

  ‘Be careful—I might retaliate.’ She stopped and he smiled. ‘Keep touching me, I like it.’

  Greatly daring, Sophia transferred her explorations to his chest. The miracle that Callum was relaxing with her, opening himself to her just as she realised she had fallen in love with him, was still too fresh; she felt too insecure to trust it would last.

  She flattened her palm against his flat belly and ran it upwards, fingers spread so they raked through the dusting of dark hair to his nipples. They crinkled and tightened as she scratched lightly with her nails, delighted by his sharply indrawn breath.

  ‘We both have altogether too many clothes on,’ Callum said and stood up, reluctant, it seemed to her, to leave her caressing hands. He unfastened his breeches, pushed them down, taking stockings and garters with them.

  ‘You swam naked,’ she said as he twisted to toss them onto a chair and she could look at the tight curve of his buttocks, the length of hard-muscled thighs.

  ‘Of course,’ he said and turned back to her.

  Sophia swallowed. Now they were more relaxed together she was looking at him properly for the first time and the reality of aroused manhood so close she could reach out and touch was more disturbing than it had been on their wedding night, somehow. She lifted one hand and hesitated.

  ‘Touch me,’ Callum said, so she did, stroking down the surprisingly soft skin over the pulsing hardness. When she dared look up into his face his eyes were closed and his jaw taut. A pulse leapt in his cheek as though he was holding himself still with enormous effort and, before she could think about it, tell herself it was wanton and lewd, Sophia leaned forwards and kissed him, her lips lingering. It was shocking, she wanted to take him in her mouth, to lick to—

  ‘Oh, my God.’ He moved too fast for her to protest. One moment she had been bent over him, her hand hesitating just at his hip, wanting to hold him still, and the next she was on her back, her nightgown bunched around her waist as Callum plunged into her.

  ‘Sophia, I—’ With what seemed a superhuman effort he stilled, dropped his head until his forehead rested on hers, his breath warm on her face. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop, Callum.’ She tipped her head back so that his mouth came down on hers and held him hard and close as he moved within her and the tension that had been inside her since that first night built to a swirling knot and then broke apart into shuddering delight and she lost all sense of where she was, only that she was with Callum and she loved him.

  The fog was swallowing her up. Dark, grey like cold smoke. He had needed her, reached for her and now he was being punished for it. ‘Come back!’ She turned, held out her hands to him, but the fog seemed to pull her, the long tendrils like tentacles around her waist, her throat, dragging her into its depths. And he was in water, his limbs leaden, his shoulders burning with the effort to stay afloat, his vision blurred and he could not reach her. ‘Sophia!’ She was gone.

  Cal whistled as he rode up Cornhill to Leadenhall Street. After the first few days in London he had grown tired of rattling to and from the office in a musty hackney carriage and had sought out a livery stables in a nearby mews that provided him with the daily use of a neat bay gelding. With a change of formal clothing kept in his office it meant he could ride when the weather held fair.

  Today riding suited his mood perfectly. Sophia had made love last night with a warmth and a responsiveness that had, for a while, chased away the shadows that had been haunting him. But he had dreamed last night, even so, woken in a muck sweat, the bedclothes tangled round his legs, his throat sore as though he had been shouting. Another nightmare, although he could not recall the details, the old one about the wreck and Dan merging into a new one about losing Sophia.

  But that was worth it, even if it was the price of their lovemaking. Sophia’s gaze had been clear and open as she had lain in his arms and looked at him. She said his name as it was dragged from her at the height of her pleasure. In the days since their marriage he had done everything in what he knew was a considerable repertoire of technique to make her feel comfortable with him, to relax enough to allow him to pleasure her and, after all, it had simply taken light and openness and giving in to his own rush of desire for her to respond with innocent passion.

  There was still something, a reserve that he could not identify, but perhaps he was expecting too much, too soon. All he could ask was that she was happy and content married to him.

  For himself, he was very well pleased with his wife, he thought as he reached the East India Company offices and swung down to the pavement. The house ran to perfection, Sophia was a pleasant and intelligent companion and the nights were going to be satisfying. He had not looked for any of that in this marriage of duty, but then it seemed to him that he had hardly been thinking clearly at all.

  He had thought he was. He had believed himself healed after Dan’s death, ready and able to move on with his life. One thing had nagged at his conscience—Sophia—and doing the right thing for her chimed exactly with his growing awareness that he needed a wife for his career and to give him his heirs.

  It had seemed very simple then. Now he was actually married he was discovering nuances of emotion and feeling he had not considered for a moment. Sophia made him think of Dan and he realised that once the first raw grief had subsided he had avoided doing that. It was painful, but it was also strangely soothing. People avoided speaking of his twin, but Sophia did not, although he could tell she was still distressed over her realisation that she had not loved him.

  It was more difficult than he had imagined it would be to have someone living so close, so intimately. When he stayed at Flamborough Hall the place was so big that he and Will virtually had to make an appointment to meet. In their succession of bungalows in India life with Dan had been so normal, so relaxed, he had hardly thought of it. They had each gone their own way, known how the other was feeling.

  But in the little Mayfair house he was forced into domestic intimacy with his wife at every turn. And that was both pleasant and, when he suspected that he had upset her, uncomfortable. He had not wanted to become close to her and yet he was, day by day, finding her entangled more and more in his life. And on the whole that was oddly pleasant. But the danger was always there. It was one thing to enjoy the company of his wife, another to give over his heart to be broken. It was all right, he told himself, he had his feelings under control.

  A porter sent out a messenger boy to hold his horse while he unbuckled the saddlebags with the day’s papers and then led it away, a big smile on his face at the size of the tip Callum had tossed him. Yes, he was feeling good today, better than at any time since that moment when the Bengal Queen had struck the rocks and his world had shattered.

  ‘Morning, Pettigrew,’ he said as he walked into the office he shared.

  ‘Morning.’ The Honourable George Pettigrew glanced up from his desk as Callum strolled into their shared office and tossed the saddlebags on to a chair. ‘You sound on good form, Chatterton.’

  Callum grinned. He felt it. Staggeringly good sex, Averil and Luc d’A
unay back in town and the house in Half Moon Street beginning to feel like home.

  ‘I’ve got the latest China trade figures for that report you’re doing for Arbuthnott. I need to go down to the counting house, but I’ll hang on until you’ve checked them through in case there are any queries.’ He unbuckled one of the bags, passed over a fat budget of papers and watched the other man skim through the summary and conclusions. He was impressed by Pettigrew. The man was intelligent, steady, but not stodgy, and worked hard. He’d invite him for dinner, he thought. Sophia would like him.

  ‘Thanks, this is just what I need.’ The other man tapped the papers back into a tidy pile and pulled some folded sheets from his portfolio. ‘Don’t want to buy a ship, do you?’

  ‘A what?’ Arrested, Callum stopped checking through the morning’s post and stared at the other man.

  ‘Big thing with sails, takes cargo back and forth. Makes money.’

  ‘Oh, that kind. Sinks occasionally.’ His stomach knotted even as he made the wry joke.

  ‘That’s what insurance is for. I’ve got a chance at a quarter-share in an East Indiaman, but that’s far too rich for me. Wondered if you’d like to come in with me and split it? I’ve got the details here.’

  Callum pushed aside the post and reached out a hand for the report. ‘I’m interested. Tell me more.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  He was not a bachelor any longer, Callum reminded himself that evening as he watched Averil and Sophia sitting with their heads together in companionable discussion. He had a wife now. And yet now he woke at night in a cold sweat, dreaming that something had happened to her, that he had grown to love her, that she would break his heart. It was almost as bad as the old nightmare, the one about the wreck.

  ‘No doubt discussing their unsatisfactory husbands,’ d’Aunay said with a chuckle as he poured more wine into Callum’s glass.

  ‘No doubt,’ he agreed. ‘I have been found wanting only this evening—arriving just in time to change when we had been invited here for supper is obviously unacceptable behaviour.’ Instinct told him to keep Sophia at a distance, not to let her into every aspect of his life. And when she objected he felt guilty and then he wanted to resent her and somehow he could not.

  The other man grinned. ‘You have responsibilities. Sophia will learn that and learn to forgive you for them.’

  ‘I suppose so; at least I did not have a vase thrown at my head.’

  ‘In my experience that is mistress behaviour,’ d’Aunay said with a chuckle. ‘I think wives are too aware of the value of their household objects and are more likely to punish us in more subtle ways.’

  ‘True.’ But this had not been a tantrum. Sophia was hurt that he had not remembered to let her know. He did not want to hurt her. His resolution not to care was melting away.

  Callum watched one ringlet slide free of its pins and fall to Sophia’s shoulder. The skin was very soft there, silken under his lips, and her hair smelled of rosemary and lemon and … There were sure to be many enjoyable ways to make up a domestic tiff. Too many ways to become closer and closer to the stranger he had married, too many ways to lay his heart open to the knife again.

  He turned to the man beside him. ‘When do you go back to sea? Or is that confidential information?’

  ‘Not in general terms. It will be a month, perhaps. I must go down to the dockyards at Chatham in a few days to inspect my new command. They are refitting and I have learned not to trust the quality of work to chance—not after the time we unfolded the spare sails at the bottom of the sail hold and found a damn great cannon hole through one.’

  ‘I wonder if you would be willing to look at a ship on my behalf,’ Callum said, thinking aloud. ‘I’ve been offered a share in an Indiaman. The reports look good, but I’d appreciate a professional eye on it. She’s in the East India docks now.’

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s an interesting investment.’ D’Aunay sat back and crossed his long legs, very much at ease, except that the assessing look in his eyes was not lost on Callum. ‘Any more shares going?’

  ‘There might be,’ Callum said. ‘Are you free on Monday? We could go and look at it with Pettigrew—he’s the colleague who put me on to it.’

  ‘Are you working at home today?’ Sophia asked on Monday morning. Callum had spent much of Sunday closeted in his study, emerging only for meals and to escort her to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace for morning service. Now he lingered far longer over his coffee and newspaper than he usually did.

  ‘Hmm? No, I’m going down to the docks with d’Aunay and a colleague from Leadenhall Street in about half an hour to look at a ship. I’ll be out of your way.’ He went back to his newspaper.

  ‘I was going to go to Ackermann’s in the Strand to buy more drawing materials,’ Sophia said. She did not want him out of her way. Last night had been very harmonious. She smiled a little at her choice of word.

  ‘Yes? You must show me your drawings.’

  ‘Oh, no. Not yet. Not until I practise some more,’ she prevaricated. The more she had drawn since her marriage the more she felt there was an improvement. She had looked at them only the day before and thought they were of a publishable standard. But she could be deluding herself. The only way to find out was to submit her work to a professional for his judgement and the easiest way she could think of to do that was to show her best sketches to Mr Ackermann and ask his opinion.

  ‘Do ladies ever sell their art?’ she asked on a sudden impulse to test his reactions. ‘There must be many very talented artists—so many girls are taught young. It would be encouraging to see the work of other women.’

  ‘Ladies sell their art? Of course not! At least, they may do, but it is certainly done anonymously. It would cause more scandal if it were known than that wretched Lamb female’s capering about on the stage. Nude models and orgies and loose living—you can just hear the old tabbies yapping about it. It doesn’t matter how much of a nonsense that is, that is the way such things are looked at. I’ll take you to the Royal Academy, but you will not see any ladies exhibiting there.’

  ‘I see.’ Anonymously. It did not sound as though he disapproved as such, only recognised the scandal that would happen if something leaked out.

  Callum pushed back his chair and got up. ‘I’ll go and collect d’Aunay.’

  ‘Will you invite your colleague to join us this evening?’ Sophia asked on impulse. They had invited Averil and Luc for dinner, her first formal party. She knew Callum had made the party that small to give her confidence as a hostess, but it would be pleasant to show him that she could manage more.

  ‘All right, if that would please you. Pettigrew is pretty sure to say yes, even at short notice. He’s a bachelor and always complaining that he never gets a decent dinner.’

  ‘We must convert him to the delights of married life in that case,’ Sophia said and twisted round for the expected peck on her cheek. Instead she received a kiss full on the mouth.

  ‘I don’t expect you to demonstrate all of them to him,’ Callum growled, then nuzzled her cheek and walked out. She heard him laugh at something Hawksley said in the hall and her heart lifted.

  Mrs Datchett was delighted at the prospect of a larger dinner party and threw herself into finalising the menu with gusto. Once it was agreed she bustled off, leaving Sophia with the realisation that she still needed to unpack the wedding presents to create a table setting worthy of guests.

  She had been avoiding the wedding gifts because the memory of the day itself, the anxiety and indecision that had led up to it, had clouded the memory for her. Perhaps it was because her marriage was giving her more happiness than she had ever expected, but the morning passed pleasantly as she unwrapped and looked carefully for the first time at fine china and crystal, silverware and linen. Despite the short notice, and the surprise of the Chatterton family and their friends, they had rallied round and given generous, thoughtful presents. For the first time Sophia felt herself part of that wider circle:
she was a Chatterton now.

  Over a light luncheon she decided that all the preparations were made for the evening. Now she could go and buy the drawing supplies and perhaps, if she felt brave enough, ask for an appointment with Mr Ackermann.

  ‘Ma’am, Mr Ackermann says he has looked at the drawings and can see you now if that is convenient.’ The young assistant smiled happily at her, neat in his green-baize apron and sleeve protectors, his hair slicked down, his face shining with enthusiasm. He looked about fifteen. Sophia’s stomach contracted with nerves. What had she let herself in for?

  She followed him and waited for the door to the inner sanctum to be opened for her. She should have brought her maid, she realised. But she had not wanted to involve Chivers in what she could not help but feel was deceiving Callum. She should have discussed this with him first, she knew that. And she knew, perfectly well, that he would object in no uncertain terms to his wife offering her art for sale. Better to prove that she could do it, without scandal, and then confess when he could see his opposition was quite unnecessary.

  ‘These would be suitable for one of our series of memorandum books.’ Half an hour later Rudolph Ackermann spread a dozen small sketches of flowers, trees and fragments of landscape on the desk. ‘Charming. We could put Illustrated by a Lady of Quality on the title page.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I would not wish for my name to appear.’ He liked them! The majority of her sketches lay in the portfolio, but even so, to have any singled out as suitable for publication was both a shock and a delight.

  ‘Indeed.’ He named a sum of money and Sophia repressed a gasp of pleasure. She did not need it, but it was proof, at last, that her work was good enough. ‘I will have an agreement drawn up for your perusal if you would care to call again in a few days,’ Mr Ackermann continued. He glanced at the portfolio. ‘Your figure drawing is also interesting, although all these examples are too personal to be of use to me. However, if you were to work on some classical studies, or figures in a landscape, I would be interested in seeing them.’