Married to a Perfect Stranger

by Jane Ashford

  Mary had to laugh. Still, it was different knowing her neighbor’s rank. She wouldn’t have felt so comfortable when they first met if she’d been conscious of talking to a countess.

  “What have you been painting today?” Mary shrugged, not certain she wanted to show her sister’s portrait. The glance she got in return was uncomfortably keen. “Walk with me a little,” said Eleanor, and she took Mary’s arm.

  They strolled a path that curved around the far end of the garden. The wind had been freshening, and now a gust shook the branches above them. Yellow leaves swirled through the garden. “There will be rain soon,” Eleanor said. “I must go in. You should, too.”

  Watching the scudding clouds, Mary had to agree. Would she see her new acquaintance at all once winter descended? She’d barely begun to know her.

  “My granddaughter Caroline is coming tomorrow to stay with me for a while,” the old woman said.

  “Have you many grandchildren?” Mary replied politely.

  “Six. Caroline is the oldest girl. Nineteen.”

  She spoke the final number as if it was ominous. Her tone, and wry expression, roused Mary’s curiosity. “You’ll be happy to see her.”

  “Very,” was the firm reply, as if the remark had been a challenge. “Come to tea tomorrow and meet her. I think you’ll like her.”

  “I…thank you. I’m sure I shall.”

  With a smile and a nod, Eleanor turned toward the gate. Mary went to collect her painting gear, her mood buoyed by the invitation.

  Back home, she returned her paints to the parlor across from John’s study. She’d set up this chamber as her retreat, studio, and sitting room, and now she traded her brushes for a pencil and sketchbook. Eleanor’s face emerged on the page, Mary’s hands confidently filling in a portrait that spoke more than she could ever have put into words. She was unaware of all else until the impulse to draw had spent itself. Then she stood back and looked at what she’d created.

  Here was her new friend—gracefully aged, elegant, and…sad? No, that wasn’t the right word. Weary…pensive…distressed? No…troubled. That was it. That fit what she saw in the face on her page. Troubled about what? Slowly, Mary tidied her materials away. Probably she couldn’t help. Eleanor seemed far wiser than she. But she would keep an eye out for any opportunity.

  * * *

  “You know, I don’t see why I was chosen over you to go to China,” John said to Conolly as they left the office to find sustenance at midday. He’d been chewing over this puzzle in the back of his mind since Conolly revealed his ancestry.

  “I expect they wanted the best man for each place,” Conolly replied, with no sign of discomfort at the frankness of the question. “They knew you’d do well on the voyage, and they knew I could manage all the information flooding into our offices alone. Because I am a ‘blinkin’ marvel’ at the job.”

  John smiled at his friend’s cocky grin. “You are that. But that’s not how it’s done, Conolly. Men get preferment based on who they know.”

  “Less now than in the past. British interests are more far-flung and complicated every day. You can’t run that kind of enterprise strictly on patronage.”

  John hoped this was true. Indeed, he was counting on it. But just this morning he’d heard of a senior appointment that was clearly based on lineage rather than ability. He named the man now, “LaRoche.”

  Conolly shrugged. “There is the way things were done, and there is the future. We are betwixt and between. Family connections matter. I’m sure they always will. But they aren’t everything.” If he realized why this topic might be of particular interest to John he didn’t show it, for which John was grateful. With a nod, he let it drop.

  Near the end of the working day, he went to hand in an important report. “What’s the gist of it, Bexley?” asked his superior Harkness as he took the pile of pages.

  “We need more information sources inside China,” John said. “Someone with access to the emperor’s court, preferably. Perhaps one of the mandarins who disagrees…”

  “No nobleman would betray his sovereign for pay,” said a drawling voice from the outer office. John hadn’t seen Fordyce come in. “It’s called honor, Bexley. Noblesse oblige. Not something you’d know anything about, I suppose.”

  “A mandarin isn’t a noble,” John replied. Fordyce’s ignorance was almost as galling as his insults. Almost. “He’s a bureaucrat. And often quite susceptible to bribery.”

  “Very true,” said Harkness. “I must read this.” He waved them both away.

  John walked out. Unfortunately, Fordyce followed. “I suppose you have to memorize facts when you don’t know any important people,” he said.

  “Memorize?” The word so misconstrued and belittled the nature of his work—their work, actually, if Fordyce ever did any. It was what they did with the flood of facts that inundated the Foreign Office that mattered. “Can you really not bother to use whatever brainpower you have?” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If I thought so, I might grant it.”

  “What?”

  “What indeed? I haven’t time for this.”

  Back in the room he shared with Conolly, empty just now, John couldn’t quite settle into the pleasure he usually found diving into waiting stacks of intelligence. Fordyce might be a snob and an ass, Conolly might be reassuring, but it was still true that a powerful family made a vast difference to a man’s prospects. Hearing news like LaRoche’s appointment could be discouraging.

  John sat back in his chair. He didn’t have aristocratic parents, but he had ideas. He’d discovered that he had more energy and determination than Fordyce could imagine.

  He shook his head. Before his trip to China, he’d pottered his way through his workdays, the Foreign Office merely his lot in life. He’d ambled through life without significant highs or lows, not giving anything much thought. How had he stood it? Would he really have gone on like that for…decades? John’s mind crackled with denial. The point was moot. He’d…woken up, and nothing was going to stop him now.

  * * *

  After they finished dinner that evening John headed for his study, leaving Mary alone in the parlor. When he went up to his desk, he always said it would take him only half an hour or so. Perhaps he even believed it. But once he started working, he hardly ever emerged before she went up to bed. She pointed that out. He denied it.

  Restless, annoyed, Mary couldn’t settle to a book or sewing. On impulse, she fetched a warm shawl and her bunch of keys and let herself quietly out the front door.

  Their neighborhood was deserted at this time of night. Still, she wouldn’t have considered lingering outdoors if she hadn’t had a key to the private garden. No random passerby could get in there, and none of the neighbors were likely to be out.

  She walked quickly across, unlocked the gate, and slipped inside, closing it securely behind her. As she moved along the gravel path to the center of the space, a late September moon lit her way. Puffs of wind set the tree branches rustling. It was a world of black and silver, secret and separate from the everyday. A thrill went through Mary; she’d so seldom been outside alone in the night. It felt daring and yet safe in this secluded enclosure. She pulled her shawl close around her and sat down on one of her favorite benches.

  Shadows dipped and shifted. The lighted windows around the square seemed to recede. Mary began to feel unmoored, like a boat adrift on a powerful current.

  A strong gust of wind lifted a branch higher, and Mary realized that she could see into the study on the second floor of her house. She stood and moved around the tree. There was John, outlined by golden candlelight, bent over his papers. She couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, but she imagined he was intensely focused, his thoughts a thousand miles away from her. Her connection to her husband felt like these windblown branches. They swayed a little cl
oser to each other and then away, pushed by forces beyond her control.

  Above, in the window, John rested his forehead in his hand, a tired gesture. Of course his work was important. She would never argue that it was not. She only wished to be included, to enter more fully into this pivotal part of his world. He had to understand this.

  Mary walked back to the gate, unlatched it, and stepped through. As she did, she thought she saw someone crouched near their front parlor window. She stopped, staring, trying to separate a human figure from the general darkness. No one should be about at this hour. She stared at the house. Nothing. It must have been a bit of shadow shifting with the wind.

  She gazed up at John one last time. He straightened as if he could feel her gaze and looked around. Though she knew she couldn’t be seen, Mary looked back at him, willing him to recognize her presence. Of course, he didn’t. She walked swiftly across the pavement and back inside.

  Upstairs, John gazed at his reflection in the black glass of the window. But the feeling of being watched had gone. And it was high time he dispensed with the illusion that someone was looking over his shoulder and criticizing his work, a lingering relic of his school days. It was ridiculous. There was never anyone there. He turned back to his report, trying to concentrate through his fatigue.

  Footsteps on the stair signaled that Mary was going up to her room, although it was rather early. It was a melancholy sound, John thought, and then he was surprised at himself. Perhaps he ought to get up and… The footsteps stopped outside the study door, followed by a knock. “Yes?”

  Mary came in and stood before his desk, hands clasped before her. “This is unacceptable.”

  “What?”

  “You up here so many evenings, leaving me alone downstairs during the only time we have together.”

  “I’ve explained to you that I have work…”

  “And I know your work is important, but I don’t see that it needs to separate us so.”

  There was a slight tremor in her voice. Moved by her wistful expression, John rose and walked around the desk to take his wife’s hand. “I know it’s been difficult, moving far from your family. Once you have some friends of your own…”

  “Is that what you wish?” Mary interrupted. “That I find my own friends apart from you? Perhaps you would like me to go out with others in the evenings and let you be?”

  Sharp denial spiked in John’s chest at this picture and called up a quick shake of his head.

  “What then? I won’t be pushed aside as if I were stupid or…simply negligible. I’m not going to sit back and let that happen again.”

  “Again?”

  Mary pulled her hand free and paced the room—once, twice. The folds of her skirt rustled with the sharp movement. Her hands moved as if to grasp something floating just out of reach. Then she stopped and faced him, her expression now fiercely resolute. “It is just that I do things in my own way. I’m perfectly capable of helping you.”

  “Helping? With what?”

  “Wasn’t our dinner for William Conolly a success?” She waited for his nod. “You’re trying to make our country just and fair as well as great. I want to…”

  “You give me too much credit,” John had to say, though he hardly minded the admiration in her dark eyes, in the lines of that eminently kissable mouth.

  Mary shook her head. “I saw how Conolly respected your opinions. There must be more I can do.”

  The resolute set of her chin was charming. Her resolute gestures, all of her was so distracting, so…arousing. He took a step closer. In this mood, she was really irresistible.

  “I want to be part of it all,” Mary said, spreading her hands.

  John took another step and yielded to the overwhelming impulse to pull her into his arms. She looked up at him with wide startled eyes. She felt slight and soft and thrillingly pliable under his hands. He bent and took those enchanting lips for his own.

  There was a haunting familiarity in the taste of her. But the memories of their brief month together were rapidly submerged in new sensations. He was a different man, kissing a different wife, in an altered world. His heart raced as she melted into him.

  Mary had never been kissed like this in her life. It surpassed any fantasies she’d indulged in. John held her with an authority and demand that took her breath away. She’d felt his body along the length of her own before; she’d kissed these lips. But not like this. Her knees went weak. Her hands closed on his shoulders and clung. She nearly whimpered when he drew back. But then he pulled her closer and kissed her even more thoroughly. The second time he raised his head, they were both breathing hard.

  John found that he’d pushed his wife right up against the desk. She was bent a little backward above it, and one of his knees had slid between hers. His pulse thundered in his ears. An errant thought made him picture the papers shoved to the floor, Mary on the desktop unclothed. She gazed up at him, her eyes huge and nearly black, her lips slightly parted. One shoulder of her gown had slipped, and he was ready to tear the rest away.

  “Oh my,” she breathed. “That was so much…better than before.”

  “Before?”

  “At the seaside, when we first… I wasn’t sure I would ever like it then. I didn’t realize it could be like this.”

  John felt as if she had thrown some of that cold seaside water in his face. “I didn’t realize it had been so bad,” he said.

  “Not bad. I didn’t mean… Just…awkward. You know. And a bit, um, uncomfortable.”

  John moved a little away from her. Of all things, he did not want to think about this now.

  “It was just…we seemed to be always bumping elbows and…”

  She trailed off, looking worried. John remembered one of the fellows on the China ship saying that there was nothing worse than a woman who chattered during intimacies. He hadn’t much cared for that man. He’d found his conversation coarse and disrespectful. But right now he felt a certain sympathy with this remark. Had Mary really needed to point out his previous inadequacies? Right at this moment? John stepped back. That awkwardness of two years ago almost seemed to enter the room.

  “John, I didn’t mean… I said it was better. Much, much better. Wonderful!”

  She reached out to him. But the instinctive certainty of moments ago had evaporated. He didn’t want to do anything that would evoke past clumsiness. His gaze brushed the pages on the desk. Firmly, familiarly, anchored on the desk. “I must get back to work.”

  “Now?”

  The incredulous reproach in her tone stung. He hadn’t been the one who brought up old grievances. “Yes.” He returned to his chair, picked up a page, and pretended to be able to read it.

  The door to the study opened and closed with an angry snap. John put down the report and bent his head. His breath came out in a long sigh. He felt as if he’d been thrown from a cantering horse—from headlong to a slamming stop all in an instant. Knowing it was irrational and unwarranted, he wanted to hit something.

  Alone on the stairway, Mary put her hands to her forehead. Why must he be so difficult? All right, she’d said the wrong thing. Yet again, unconsidered words had gotten her into trouble. But hadn’t she told him how much better those kisses had been than the half-forgotten ones from the past? All she’d wanted was another, and more, far more than that.

  She would go back in right now and tell him. Or shake him until he admitted he was being an ass.

  Mary reached for the doorknob, started to turn it, and balked. It had felt so dreadful to be pushed away—like a blow to the heart. She saw her hand tremble and drew it back. She listened for some sound from within. All was quiet. Had John actually gone back to work, as if the kisses had never happened? As if she didn’t matter?

  She stood on the landing for long minutes, her stomach churning. She couldn’t make herself go in. She couldn’t bear another reject
ion just now. Blinking back tears, she crept silently up the stairs to her room.

  Seven

  When Mary came downstairs the next morning, John had already left the house. No one remarked on this, since it was his established habit. Mary ate her breakfast, conferred with her staff about the day’s tasks, and went about her own—all as usual. But through the routine her mind seethed with determination to make a change.

  At eleven, she walked into her parlor studio and set up her watercolors. She would rely on her own unique abilities to find her way through the thicket of emotion where she floundered. She sat before her small easel, cleared her mind, and, instead of waiting for a subject to arise on its own, called up a memory of William Conolly’s face. This was a new thing for her, and she worried a little that insisting on a particular image might not work. But Conolly was the only person she knew from John’s work life, her only avenue into this crucial part of his world. She didn’t know how else to enter it.

  Her fears proved groundless. Her pencil began to move over the paper in response to the visualized image. Conolly’s face started to form, and Mary was soon lost in the process of creation. After a while, she abandoned the pencil for a watercolor brush and began adding color and highlights. The man’s crisp black hair, bright hazel eyes, narrow face, and mobile features emerged. She worked quickly, surely, happily, immersed in her natural element. Time became irrelevant. Detail accumulated, bit by bit forming a greater whole. Mary reveled in the sense of rightness and harmony that came when she drew.

  Finally, with a long breath, she sat back and considered the portrait she’d produced. She’d clearly captured Conolly’s jaunty presence. The man looked out at her much as he had over their dinner table. She could almost hear a quip drop from those smiling lips. But what else was there to see, if she looked deeper?

  Trustworthy—that word came to her. She was already aware of his intelligence. And he had demonstrated ample good humor during their evening together. Under all that, though—a spark of rebellion and…anxiety? Tension? Resentment? It seemed like a mixture of all three of those. Like every person Mary had ever drawn, he wasn’t one simple thing.