by Laura London
Lorraine was silent a moment. “It… it was so dark. And I was distressed at the time. Quite… not quite myself, you see. I’m afraid I can’t recall…”
“So,” said Melbrooke, studying the pair thoughtfully. “And were you too distressed to recall also, Lynden?”
“Not at all!” replied Lynden, with spirit. “I remember him perfectly! He was the most ill-favored ruffian I’ve ever seen, with huge scars crisscross his face…” She faltered to a stop, flustered by Melbrooke’s skeptically cocked eyebrow. “Well, that was all I noticed about him. I don’t know how to describe people. I’m not a poet. That hateful highwayman has already caused us enough trouble today. I don’t intend to trouble myself further with him. Lorraine and I,” she announced, “will retire for the night!”
It was three-quarters of an hour later that Lynden, robed and bedgowned, padded down the hall to Lorraine’s bedroom to bid her good night.
“Rainey, are you awake?” whispered Lynden, tapping on the door. There was no answer, so Lynden gently lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
Lorraine was seated cross-legged on the floor, facing the desultorily burning fire, a hairbrush idle in her lap. She did not look up as Lynden entered, but continued to stare mesmerized as the flame left one ember after another, orange and white tongues of fire disappearing into glowing red coals. Lynden leaned for the poker and stirred the fire into a semblance of life.
After a moment, Lorraine spoke. “Is your bedroom pretty, too?”
“Yes. It’s like this one, rather, but done in cream and white. It’s a little longer, perhaps; there’s a part at one end with a dressing screen. Would you like to look at it?”
“Tomorrow.” Lorraine lifted the hairbrush and began to draw it through her unbound hair. “Lynnie…?”
“Hmmm?”
“I—well, my bedroom door was opened, and I couldn’t help overhearing…” Lorraine ventured hesitantly, “… Mrs. Coniston say that your bedroom was next to Lord Melbrooke’s.”
“Yes,” said Lynden bleakly. “And there’s a connecting door between the rooms.”
“I guess you’re really married now.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Lorraine said softly.
“For me also.”
They lapsed into sisterly silence. The rhythmic sigh of the brush on Lorraine’s hair was puctuated intermittently with the pop of the fire.
“Why didn’t you describe the highwayman?” asked Lorraine dreamily.
“Because you didn’t describe him. Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. But he’s not bad, Lynden, I’m sure of it. What do you think Lord Melbrooke thinks?”
“Lord knows. Probably that we’re both escaped Bedlamites.”
What did Lord Melbrooke think? The thought continued to occupy Lynden’s mind as, back in her lovely tent bed, she rubbed her feet against the brass warming pan at the foot of the bed. How little she knew of his emotions, his thoughts. They were a frightening mystery to her. She wondered what was behind his cool courtesy toward her. Only detachment? What did he intend for the future? She wondered if there was a basis for friendship in their odd marriage.
How funny she had felt when he kissed her hand downstairs, warm as if she had just blushed, though she had not. She remembered with embarrassment her soft, breathless excitement when he had kissed her that morning in church. She did not know enough about him to guess what it had meant to him: had it been convention, an impulse, or some strange practical joke? Did it mean he found her attractive? How much of a real marriage did he intend to make with her? Suddenly it occurred to her that she did not even know if he intended to consummate their marriage. The idea frightened her. Intimacy with a stranger? She wondered if she had made a strategic blunder by immediately announcing her wish to retire. What would he make of that? Would he think she was eager to be intimate with him? Lynden cringed, her cheeks burning with mortification. Perhaps she had committed an obscure breach of marriage etiquette. Perhaps he would think she was unmaidenly. Hateful, thought Lynden. Hateful! Her most powerful impulse was to present herself before Lord Melbrooke promptly and disabuse his mind of whatever false notions he might have formed of her desire to share his bed. She rolled out of bed, pulled on a quilted cotton robe, and began to pace up and down the rectangle of cream carpeting beside her bed. An ornate Cressent table clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven times as she heard footsteps in the hall followed by the muffled scrape of a wardrobe drawer in Melbrooke’s room.
She walked to the door connecting their rooms but hesitated as she raised her hand to knock. After a moment’s thought, she went into the hallway and knocked on Lord Melbrooke’s hall door.
Melbrooke’s voice answered the knock: “Come in.” But whoever he had expected to admit, it was not his teenaged bride, clad in a worn robe with a singular childish print, an expression of high drama on her face.
“Lord Melbrooke, I want you to know that I haven’t been waiting for you to come to my bed!” Lynden announced, and then regretted it immediately, because no sooner had the last words rushed from her lips than she noticed Lord Melbrooke’s valet. The man had been to her left, bending to fluff the bedpillows. But he straightened now, his jaw dropped with amazement.
Melbrooke watched as Lynden’s cheeks tinctured pink, and pitied her forlorn confusion. What an infant she was.
“You relieve my mind,” he said evenly, and then nodded to his valet. “Harley, I won’t need you further tonight.” His words produced no effect on the hypnotized valet, who gave no sign of even having heard them. “Harley?”
Harley turned reluctantly from Lynden and began to fuss with the bedclothes. “Yes, My Lord, but I must finish turning down the bed. You and Her Ladyship would like to talk, I know. Don’t mind me, please.”
Melbrooke grinned in appreciation but took the arm of his palpably interested valet and propelled him gently toward the door. “Somehow I think I’ll manage without the bed being turned down for one night, Harley. Good night.”
“Very well,” said Harley, crestfallen. He had nearly reached the door when an idea struck him, and he brightened hopefully. “But perhaps My Lady would like a drink…? I would be happy to fetch it!”
“I don’t want a drink,” said Lynden, recovering her tongue, if not her temper. “And I wish you would go!” Harley left, with a last injured glance to Melbrooke. Lynden watched as the door closed behind him, then turned to Melbrooke and said, with a sniff, “What a nosey little man! Really, you have let your servants get out of hand—they are the most familiar…” Suddenly the memory of her aunt’s voice came back to her, saying almost the same words she had used to Melbrooke, only the reference had been to her relationship with Peg. “Oh, well, then, never mind about that. Why did your man stare at me so? It was because what I said was dreadful, I suppose!” She finished, looking adorably guilty.
“Not at all,” extemporized Melbrooke. “I’m quite sure that Harley paid not the slightest attention to what you said. In truth, he is a man of somewhat conventional habits—very fashion conscious—and he was rather amazed to see that you are wearing a nightgown printed in… lollipops, I believe they are? I’m afraid that it may have offended his sense of propriety.”
“Well!” said Lynden, impressed and swallowing the story whole. “Not that I’m surprised because Mademoiselle Ambrose says often, oh, and often that servants of fashionable people are far more fastidious about such things than their masters themselves. I couldn’t help it, though, because this is my only robe. Great Aunt Penelope gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday, and even my uncle remarked at the time that he thought it a trifle young for a girl my age—though one must take into consideration that he and Aunt Penelope have been at each others’ throats since—well, but never mind that. The thing is, the wretched robe wore like armor and Aunt Eleanor would never buy me a new one because this one never wore out. You don’t have to be afraid I’ll embarrass you much longer by going abroad
in it,” continued Lynden, seriously. “Aunt’s ordered Rainey and me new clothes to come from London and… But that isn’t what I wanted to say! You’ve got me quite off the subject!”
“That was very bad of me, indeed,” agreed Melbrooke, a smile sweetening his plush gray eyes. “Would you like to sit here by the fire? You’ll be more comfortable then… and I’ll try to refrain from distracting you further.”
He took her arm and led her across the bedroom. Lynden scanned the room with some unease, taking pains to avoid observing the bed with its ominously dark hardwood headboard. The room was not large, its furnishings drawing their beauty from the fine patina of their burr-grained surfaces. There was an impression of masculine reserve which Lynden identified to herself as Melbrookeness.
Melbrooke set her down gently on a mahogany settee with cabrioles that was placed at a comfortable distance from the fireplace, where a shiny brass mesh screen reflected the active reds of the fire. Melbrooke sat opposite her in a stern armchair with a plain, curving crest. Lynden had obviously interrupted him as he was undressing for bed, as no jacket covered his white lawn shirt and his neckcloth had been removed, leaving his collar open at the throat, the skin tawny gold in the firelight. The informality of his attire, now coupled with the potential intimacy of their relationship, made her feel a nervous constraint. It occurred to her, too, that barging into his bedroom on their wedding night might appear to him as the impulsive act of an excitable juvenile, more panicked than poised. And the more she tried to find something adult to say, the more tightly her jaws seemed to be clamped shut, her tongue frozen. She would never be able to speak again and would have to move about with a painted sign draped around her neck: MUTE. If he says “cat got your tongue?” thought Lynden, I shall know without a doubt that I’ve married a man devoid of sensitivity.
Fortunately Melbrooke was a man of great sensitivity and he sat gazing dreamily into the fire. At last Lynden recovered herself enough to remark, “You misrepresented your house.”
“Have I?” he said without looking at her.
“Yes! Because you said it was old-fashioned, which may be so, as it hasn’t been recently redecorated, but the furnishings are of the first stare—even I know that and I know almost nothing about being first stare! And then there’s that picture in your drawing room that Lorraine says is a Rubens… or perhaps a Rembrandt, I forget which. You can’t pretend that such pictures are found in common houses, because if an artist is so famous that I’ve heard of him—well, there you are. You made this sound like a tiny, cozy sort of place, but it’s enormous and elegant,” finished Lynden on an accusing note.
“You’ve been grievously ill-used,” said Melbrooke amicably. “Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust me again?”
Lynden curled her legs under her and sighed. “You’re laughing at me, I can see, but I shall try to be a good sport about it. Still, if your other houses are even more elegant than this, I don’t know how I shall go on. I don’t believe I was cut out to be a great lady. And then there was that dreadful guidebook!”
“Was there? You must tell me about it,” Melbrooke said sympathetically.
“Lorraine got it to learn about the Lake District, but it is filled with the fustiest, most erroneous information! It said the Jerneaux Abbey was a noble sight, which is the most bald-faced distortion of the truth I’ve ever heard and I am sure that the local merchants there about bribed the writer to put that in to increase trade in their area! There was a section on Fern Court, too. It said that many tourists come to look at it in the summer, which I think is the vulgarest thing. Imagine having people come to gape at your house! Oh, and there’s worse yet! The guidebook called you ‘Poet Supreme’—as though you were some nasty dessert to be served at a ladies’ luncheon! I think you ought to sue the publishing company! But what I’d like to know is this: Do you intend to consummate our marriage?”
Her last question came too quickly even for self-disciplined Melbrooke. He looked at her and exclaimed, “What!”—not so much because he had not heard what she had said but because he could not believe that she had really said it.
“I said, do you intend to consummate our marriage?” shouted Lynden and promptly dropped her curly head to her lap and covered it with her hands. There was a short silence before she heard him rise and join her on the settee. She felt the touch of his fingers, light as a dove’s feather as they played thoughtfully in her hair.
At last he spoke, his voice soft. “Poor Lynden. Do you know much about it?”
“Not much” was her muffled reply. “Mostly what Mother told me.”
His fingers traced a gentle pattern around the edge of her ear. “Your mother? I’ll bet it was gruesome.”
He was rewarded by a watery giggle. “It was.”
Melbrooke stretched one arm around her shoulders and slid his broad hand down her trembling back in a motion that she found both reassuring and unsettling. The caress drew from her, like a poultice will draw poison from a wound, a single, tragic sob, a sob that so overcame her with its intensity that she bent her head further to rest it upon her knees. She remained in this position for a few moments until he was driven to investigate. Softly he slipped one hand underneath her hidden cheek and felt a tear drop from the silken moist lashes onto his waiting palm. With firm, deliberate pressure he lifted her face from her knees to gaze with interest into the brown eyes now luminous with tears. With one forefinger he smoothed the little furrow of anxiety which had formed in her brow. The smoothness was temporary, however, and the anxiety returned as he spoke to her.
“Lynden, tell me this. Do you credit what your mother tells you about other subjects? No, don’t look away from me again, little courageous one. You can say these things as well to me as you can looking away. Don’t you think it’s possible that your mother might have a distorted view?”
“Of course,” said Lynden, giving another woebegone sniff. “My mother has distorted views on how many folds to put into a handkerchief! But even taking that into account, I’d rather visit the dentist for a tooth extraction than bustle about under the covers with someone I barely know!”
Melbrooke hid a smile. “Do you think that getting to know me better will moderate your sentiments?”
“Might,” said Lynden fairmindedly. “But you’ll be angry, I suppose, and humiliated. At least, that’s what Mother says.”
Melbrooke made a very rude recommendation for a manner in which Mother might employ her time and was again rewarded by a giggle, this one considerably less waterlogged and more bell-like than the last.
“I think you’ve been very kind,” said Lynden generously. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be. It would be nothing strange if you weren’t, being as you were horridly tricked into having to marry me. I wasn’t sure, but I thought perhaps you might think that I was a willing part of the plot.”
Melbrooke had been cradling Lynden’s small chin between his thumb and forefinger; he let his thumb wander to caress the curving line of her jaw, watching the emotions flow through the warm depths of her eyes. “If I had thought that, Lynden, I wouldn’t have married you,” he murmured.
“You wouldn’t have?” inquired Lynden, considerably startled. “Well! But—well, but I don’t see how that would have altered the situation any, except for making me the sort of unsavory character that no one in his right mind would want to marry. Not that I doubt I’ll be anything but a very bad wife as it is. But—I mean, they forced you to marry me, didn’t they?” Lynden tried to read the thoughts behind his impenetrable gray eyes. It was impossible.
Melbrooke shook his head slightly. “My little kite-flying friend, this is 1817, not the Dark Ages, and no one can force anyone to marry, especially not a trio of, forgive me, marplots like your guardians.” With an almost imperceptible movement his hand left her cheek, and he leaned back to look at her, his hands resting on the arms of the settee.
“Oh,” said Lynden, taken aback. “Then—then why did you marry me?”
“
I’ve told you once before, in the library at Downpatrick Hall, though apparently you didn’t catch it.” Melbrooke’s voice was cool. “Do you remember, Lynden, I said that the world was a censorious place…?”
“Oh, that,” returned Lynden, her tone expressing her surprise that he should again raise so trivial a point. “Because people will talk about me? I don’t care about that, not a fig!”
“No, I can see that you don’t,” said Melbrooke grimly. “Very well, Lynden, if you don’t care what people say about you, then perhaps you would be more interested in what people say to you. Shall we discuss the highwayman who stopped the carriage on your way here? No, I’m not going to quiz you further for a description of him. If you and your sister choose to protect him, that’s your affair. I’ll not play the tyrant on those grounds.” He paused, then continued in an even tone. “How did you describe the highwayman’s manner? Horrid and familiar, I believe. You were traveling in my coach; news of our marriage isn’t common property yet. Lynden, it doesn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to figure out what assumptions the highwayman must have made about your status, and I’m sure he remarked accordingly, which certainly makes understandable your reluctance to repeat his words. I know you won’t like to hear this, my fiery friend, but that is but a very small taste of the treatment you would have received had rumor spread you were my discarded mistress.”
“I wouldn’t care a snap!” said Lynden gamely, her eyes misty with unshed tears.
“No? How little you know about it. Within a seven-night of Lady Marchpane’s return to London, half the rakehells in London, bent on making their reputations, would have posted to Yorkshire in hopes of succeeding me in your affections,” said Melbrooke bluntly. “With wagers made in every betting book in the city on the outcome. Who would have protected you? Your aunt and uncle? Your mother? They are more likely to have fed you whole to the sharks and washed their hands of the matter. Frankly, I think your aunt would have done so with relish. I don’t imagine she had any great fondness for you before I arrived, little one, but after she thought you and I might have an attraction for each other, I think she would have gone to great lengths to see you hurt. I don’t know whether you are aware of it, but we have a little history, your aunt and I. She has some bitter feelings toward me, as well.”
