The Changeling Bride

by Lisa Cach

  She kicked him in the calf. She rolled over, shifting as roughly as she could. She fluffed her pillows. She tugged at the covers.

  A soft snore was her answer.

  She sat up and peered into his face, barely able to make out his features. It was sorely tempting to pinch his arrogant nose between her fingers, and cut off that self-satisfied snore.

  In the end she threw herself back to her side of the bed, disgusted more with herself than with him. What was wrong with her? She should be rejoicing that he was ignoring her.

  She turned onto her side, her back to him, and tucked her hands up between her breasts. She told herself the position was to keep her hands warm, but she knew what the truth was. It was to keep from reaching out and touching her sleeping husband.

  “I believe your countess has won back the affection of the impressionable Peabody,” Richard commented.

  Henry joined his friend at the window and looked out into the gardens. Elle and Lawrence were sitting on the edge of a ruined fountain, heads bent together over paper. Lawrence was drawing and gesturing with an animation such as Henry had rarely seen, and Elle’s posture bespoke an attentive and engaged listener.

  “Lady Allsbrook is having a transformative effect upon our Lawrence. One might almost say she had swept him away with her feminine charms.”

  “He would be a stammering pool of jelly if that were the case.”

  “My mistake. You are correct; he does not look the least bit flattered by her attention.”

  Henry narrowed his eyes as Elle laughed at something Lawrence said. “She is trying to make amends for embarrassing him.”

  “And doing a lovely job of it.”

  “She is not flirting with him, Richard, if that is what you are trying to imply.”

  “I had not thought that she was.”

  Henry could not tear his eyes from Elle and Lawrence. “Then why are you going on about it? They are discussing the fountains. There is no harm in that.”

  Richard laughed, and Henry finally turned from the window, scowling at his friend. “What, pray tell, do you find so amusing?”

  “You, Henry. I had thought you above such inferior emotions as jealousy. Indeed, for the past several years I had thought you above all emotion entirely.”

  “I have never been above emotion. I remain master of it, is all.”

  “Aye, well, I think you have lost the upper hand.”

  He did not deign to reply.

  It was while changing for dinner that Elle noticed, with both delight and dismay, that her much-anticipated period had at last arrived. Marianne reacted to the blood-stained petticoat as if it were a tragedy.

  “Milady, I am so sorry!”

  “It will wash out, won’t it?”

  “The baby, milady . . .” There were genuine tears in Marianne’s eyes.

  “Come now, Marianne. It was too much to hope for, wasn’t it? A baby this soon? There’s plenty of time yet.”

  “You are so brave.”

  “One does what one must.” Marianne continued to brush at her eyes, so Elle continued. “A countess can’t afford to take these little setbacks to heart, you know. And neither can her maid.” Marianne’s back straightened. “I need you to be strong for me, Marianne. I need you to go on as if nothing has happened.”

  “You are right, milady,” she snuffled. “I need to be as strong as you.”

  “Now, I’ll need some fresh water to wash with. . . .” She trailed off and let Marianne get to work.

  True to form, Marianne neatly laid out the items necessary for the situation, and when it came time to dress once again, Elle had only to make a vague gesture implying she wanted some privacy, and Marianne obeyed. The maid was getting used to her mistress’s ways.

  It took only a few minutes to figure out the items on the dressing table. There were, as she had feared, rags. And a belt, and pins. The arrangement looked uncomfortable, and that quickly proved to be the case.

  No matter that her roommate Sarah had laughed at sea-sponges for dealing with that time of the month. When the sponges arrived, they were going to be used for more than just birth control.

  After dinner the men adjourned with Elle to the drawing room without their customary break for private indulgences. They protested that they did not wish to leave her delightful company and that it would be too ungallant to leave her alone while they drank and conversed amongst themselves.

  “And we have learned not to let down our guard,” Henry told her under his breath, as he escorted her across the hall.

  Lawrence engaged Henry in a game of cards, and Richard brought his snifter of brandy over to where Elle sat by the fire and settled down beside her.

  “Henry introduced you as his business partner, Lord Atherton, and I was curious, in what type of business are the two of you engaged?” She was not really interested, but his questions were wearing her down. It was time to turn the tables.

  “A number of ventures. Property speculation, international trade, manufacturing.”

  “I take it Henry is a small investor?”

  “Actually, he has much more invested in them than I do, and I can only thank God I had the wit to go in with him when he first suggested we pool our resources.”

  “You’ve done well, then?”

  “Thanks to your husband. He taught himself the ways of business over his father’s protests that the heir to an earldom should not engage in any manner of trade.”

  “I had thought Henry was completely without funds. You know it’s why he married me.”

  The viscount swirled the brandy in his glass. “It is a relative question, how much money is enough. In my case, I need only enough to support myself and maintain my town house. I have a minor title, but no lands to go with it, and I only stand to inherit an estate if several distant male relatives meet an untimely demise, God forbid.” He smiled wickedly at her. “My style of life is more, ah, extravagant than Henry’s, to be sure, but that is a matter of priorities.”

  “Are you telling me he has money? That he’s not the pauper he claims?”

  “As I said, it is a relative question. The profits we have made in our ventures together, while substantial, are nowhere near enough to repair the damage to the estates done by his father. Of course, he could always sell the lands, but Henry does not see that as an option. He takes his responsibilities rather seriously. Too seriously, I often think.” He took a sip of his brandy, then continued. “I do not make it a habit to discuss the financial affairs of my friends, and certainly not with their wives. I thought it was important, though, that you understood.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to see him happy, and I like you well enough to think that you have a chance of bringing that to him.”

  And despite herself, what Richard said played through her mind as the night wore on. It did matter to her that Henry had been successful on his own, that he knew how to handle money. It mattered, too, that he easily sacrificed his own comfort to fulfill his responsibilities to others. It must be a genetic female trait, being impressed by a good provider.

  She shivered. She was beginning to think like a future mother.

  Henry appeared in her bedroom late that night while she was lying on her stomach in bed, reading a warped copy of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. After a day of walking around with that chafing rag, worrying about whether or not blood would leak through and show on her skirts, it was no longer a mystery why women had once spent the week of their period in bed.

  “I thought we had an agreement?” he asked.

  She looked up from her book. “I don’t think you want to share my bed tonight.”

  He came over to the side of the bed and took the book from her hands. “Move over.”

  “Henry, you really don’t want to.”

  “Do you care to explain why not?”

  “It’s a female thing, if you get my meaning.”

  “And female things are supposed to keep me away? Move over.” He pulled back t
he covers, and she scrambled to the other side of the bed. He got in, and his strong arm reached out and dragged her back beside him.

  “Henry, don’t!”

  “I will not molest you beyond reason, my dear. We do have an arrangement.”

  She struggled against him. “Just let me sleep on my side of the bed. Don’t hold me tonight, please?”

  “Are you in ill? In pain?”

  “No . . .”

  He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “Then what is it?”

  She turned her face away from him. “It’s that time of the month,” she mumbled.

  “And?”

  She didn’t answer. She felt bloated, plumped up like a sausage. Her tummy and thighs felt like they’d gained fifteen pounds, and she thought she might just curl into a ball and die if he accidentally touched the bulky, bloody cloth fastened between her legs.

  His finger trailed down her cheek. “You know, there is something appealing about you when you are being shy.”

  “I feel about as appealing as a pudding at the moment: I’m spongy and full of fat.”

  He kissed her cheek and her temple. “I like puddings.”

  “Do you like flabby tummies and lumpy thighs as well?”

  “Are you referring to these?” His hand moved over her thigh, kneading the flesh, then moved upward to gently caress the softness of her belly.

  “Yes,” she gritted between her teeth, pushing at his hand. Why hadn’t she gone on a diet? Why hadn’t she locked her door?

  He slid down until he could nuzzle her breasts through her shift, then dropped dozens of kisses over her belly. “I would not have you any other way.” His fingers dug gently into her hip, and then around to the fullness of her buttocks.

  “I should lose weight,” she groused, unable to enjoy his touch as she worried about whether he would feel the belt tied around her hips.

  The kisses stopped, and his face appeared above hers, almost angry. “I forbid it.”

  “I should do some exercise, build some muscle tone.”

  “Absolutely not! You will remain exactly as you are. I will not have my wife possessing the body of a field-worker. You think a man does not like something soft to hold?” He rolled onto his back, then pulled her against him so that she had her head resting on his shoulder and was forced to lay one leg over his for balance. He kissed the top of her head. “Silly woman. Go to sleep.”

  “Yes, master.” She dozed off with a smile on her lips, her rounded belly pressed to his side.

  Viscount Atherton left the next day, and during the following week, Henry noticed with some relief that Elle was settling into a routine of meeting with the seamstress and the craftsmen and salesmen who arrived daily. Cyril Tey reported that she had spoken to him about hiring new kitchen staff.

  A couple times a day she would appear at his side, asking questions about what he and Lawrence were doing. He began to become accustomed to her brief visits, and to look forward to them.

  One afternoon she found him and Lawrence looking over the drawings for the new housing he planned to build for farmers dislocated by the enclosure of the open countryside. She sat quietly at the end of the desk, listening to them talk, and he wondered what she could possibly find so interesting about water sources and the difficulties posed by pollution from human waste.

  It was a surprise when she finally spoke. “Why don’t you put in some sort of sewer system, if you’re going to be constructing new houses? Or even a decent septic tank and drain field, if the houses are going to be too far apart?”

  “Sewers are precisely the source of the trouble,” Lawrence explained to her. “They clog and waste backs up, flooding houses and streets, unless men or children are sent crawling inside the sewers to clean them of accumulated filth.”

  “A proper septic tank would not flood,” she said. “It would drain into channels under the ground. And sewers drain if they’re constructed properly. I mean, if the Romans could do it, why can’t the English?” She leaned over and looked at the plans. “Wait a minute . . .” She picked up the plans, dragging them onto her lap. “What are these square things?”

  “The sewers, of course,” Lawrence said.

  “You mean they have flat bottoms?”

  They both looked at her. “Of course.”

  “Then no wonder they don’t drain. You can’t have a flat-bottomed sewage pipe. It has to be round! Or at least I think it does.” She looked again at the plans. “Well, I don’t really know, but it seems to make more sense. I mean, the Romans got sewage to flow, and they used round pipes, didn’t they? Or did they?”

  “The Romans had water rushing through their sewers and drainage systems to get things moving,” Henry said. “Lawrence, what do you think?”

  He looked up from the paper where he had been sketching. “Round pipes. Or maybe even more narrow at the bottom. . . .” He went back to his internal world without answering, his pen scratching across paper, losing himself in possibilities.

  “And the water?” he asked his wife, curious for what answer she would give.

  “You have hills. Build a reservoir or a cistern of some sort, and let gravity do its job.”

  “And where will all this waste go? I do not want it sent into the river.”

  Lawrence answered that question, his eyes coming up from his papers. “To the same place it did in Athens. It collected in a tank, and then was diverted into the fields. Good irrigation, good fertilization.”

  “I never heard that.” Henry said.

  Lawrence looked slightly offended at the comment. “I know my field. I just had not thought of applying such ancient principals to a modern problem. And there are new pumps that could help. . . .”

  Henry turned his attention back to Elle, until she began to fidget under his gaze.

  “What?” she said.

  “I am impressed. Judging by his enthusiasm, I believe you have set Lawrence upon the path to a solution.”

  Lawrence continued mumbling to himself, his eyes unfocused.

  Elle shrugged. “I’ve only pointed out an idea that has been around for centuries.”

  “An idea that we were both aware of, yet had not the wit to use. Once again,” he said, “you have proven you know well when to apply an idea gleaned elsewhere to a present situation.”

  He saw her cheeks pinken with the compliment and was struck anew by her loveliness. It seemed to grow daily. He hoped those damn sponges had arrived.

  She left a few minutes later, and half an hour after that Lawrence gathered up his papers and left as well, leaving the door ajar. He was just out of sight around the door when Henry heard his wife’s voice.

  “Lawrence,” he heard her whisper loudly. “Lawrence!”

  Curious, Henry came around his desk, and cautiously peered around the door just in time to see Elle shush Lawrence and pull him quickly into a room down the hall, shutting the door behind them.

  He stood motionless as he processed the information. There was no doubt but that she had not meant for anyone to see that. In his mind he saw her sitting on the edge of the fountain with Lawrence, saw her teasing him at dinner, saw her hanging around when he and Lawrence were working together. He had assumed, somewhere inside, that she paid those visits to be near him, her husband. Not his friend.

  He had suspected from the beginning that she was not innocent about men and had had the proof of it from her own mouth. He had convinced himself, though, that it had been a single affair long in the past now that she was married.

  His stomach churned with acid. More fool him. This is what came of letting emotions infect the brain. At least he could trust his friend not to behave dishonorably.

  “The door’s open, Lawrence,” Elle called from her dressing room at the sound of knocking. It was a few days and many secret meetings after that discussion about sewers. She was studying the fireplace and the bathtub. Her bedroom door opened and closed, and then she heard footsteps crossing to the dressing room door. “How’
d you manage to sneak away so soon?”

  “He did not.”

  Elle whirled. Henry stood in the doorway, a black expression on his face. “Oh. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Where’s Mr. Peabody?” she asked nervously.

  “Funny, I thought you called him by his Christian name. You two have become quite close, have you not?”

  “He’s a nice man.”

  “You meet together in secret, you exchange little knowing glances; I see you two with your heads bowed together, whispering. And now I find you waiting for him in your dressing room.”

  “What are you implying, Henry? Do you think I’m in love with Lawrence Peabody?”

  “Is there another reason for inviting a man to your room?”

  “You’re jealous!” she said, hardly believing it. “You’re jealous, and you’re being irrational. The reason I invited him here is none of your business.”

  “Do you make a habit of affairs, my dear? Or is this the first since we have been wed?”

  “What is wrong with you?” She stared at him in consternation. This was not the Henry she was familiar with. Where had the cool, composed man gone, the one who made sense? “You’re not acting like yourself. Are you ill?”

  He approached her, and lifted her chin in his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Tell me, Elle. How many other men have there been in your life?”

  “None since I met you.”

  “Before me.”

  “Why does it matter? There’ve been women before me, haven’t there? It’s not like you were a virgin when we married.”

  His face darkened. “Just tell me.”

  “It’s the past, Henry. Leave it alone. It has no bearing on what happens between us.”

  “And all that talk about being afraid of pregnancy, was that a lie? Or was there someone else for whom you were saving your favors? Or several someones?”

  “No!”

  “Or maybe it was true, but the real reason you are afraid of it is that you have been through it before.”

  “Did you see stretch marks on my skin? No, you did not. And if I was going to have an affair with Lawrence, don’t you think I’d be a little more clever than to do so in my own dressing room? Get a grip on yourself, Henry. You are insulting me.”