Gentle conquest

by Mary Balogh

  Both brother and sister flushed. Gloria looked away and busied herself with folding her shawl.

  "Perhaps that is for Boscome and Gloria to decide," Ralph said gently.

  "Yes," Georgiana persisted, "but they have wanted to marry these six years past. It is your mama who has always found reason to put off the wedding. That is not really fair, is it, Ralph?"

  Ralph put down his book and took his wife by the elbow. "Let us go upstairs to the drawing room for tea," he said. "You must be thirsty after your walk. If Mama has advised Gloria to wait, dear, I am sure she has a good reason."

  "But six years, Ralph!" Georgiana trotted along beside him as he led her across the hall and up the stairs. Gloria came quietly behind them. "You could permit them to marry. You are the head of the family. The Reverend Boscome is almost old already."

  "Only four-and-thirty, Georgiana," Gloria protested from behind her.

  "He will be too old to romp with his children if he does not have them very soon," Georgiana said severely, preceding her husband into the drawing room. She appeared not to have noticed the embarrassment of her companions at her earlier mention of children.

  "Just a cup of tea for me, Ralph," Gloria said. "We ate at the vicarage, and I am not hungry."

  "Me either," Georgiana said absently. "Ralph, I have had a famous notion. Do let us give a dinner party for your neighbors. We could have cards and music afterward, and perhaps even some charades or dancing. This room would be quite splendid for the dancing if the carpet were rolled up. It is big enough, and I would not think there are a great many people to invite, are there? Oh, do let's, Ralph. I have never had a chance to have my very own evening party before." She was almost dancing around the room, viewing its possibilities from various angles.

  Ralph looked inquiringly at his sister and then smiled warmly at his wife. "I cannot think of a better way of introducing my countess to the neighborhood," he said. "It is many years since Chartleigh was used for parties. Papa used to have hunt dinners, but the guests were almost exclusively male."

  Georgiana clapped her hands. "Oh, splendid!" she said. "We shall have such fun. I shall go right now to confer with the cook on the menu. You must tell me how to reach the kitchen, Ralph."

  His smile had turned to a grin. "I think Cook might have an apoplexy if you rushed at her with such a proposition at the moment," he said. "Cook is a very excitable person, and I am sure that at this time of day she is very busy preparing our dinner. Perhaps later tonight, Georgiana, or tomorrow morning? I shall take you down myself and introduce you to her. She is an old friend of mine."

  Georgiana had stopped bouncing around. She came to sit demurely in a chair across from her husband's. "Oh, very well," she said. "I shall wait. Though it is very provoking to have to do so when one's mind is once set on something. I suppose the cook also fed you shamelessly between meals when you were a child. I believe you must have had all the servants wrapped around your little finger, Ralph."

  He looked sheepish. "I was such a puny little boy, you see," he said. "Everyone thought I needed fattening up. Georgiana, are you sure you are up to giving a party? You will be expected to entertain a large number of people and will be very much on display. No one will expect such an event from a new bride. Would it be better to wait until we return to London, when Mama can help you and perhaps be official hostess?"

  Georgiana stared at him. "What nonsense!" she said. "What is so difficult about conversing with a dozen or so people who are no different from you and me? I do not need to shelter behind your mama or anyone else, Ralph."

  He smiled warmly at her. "What a brave girl you are, Georgiana," he said. "I do admire your spirit. And I shall be at your side to help you, you know."

  "Of course you will," she said. "Gloria, I have just had an inspired thought. I shall buy you that chip bonnet as a gift because I have just become your new sister-in-law." She beamed with delight at her own ingenuity.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE DINNER PARTY was set for an evening nine days after Georgiana conceived the idea. She found herself very busy during those days. There was all the planning to do for this, her first party. Not that there was really very much to be done. Once she and the cook had decided on the menu, there was nothing else she could do about the food, and once the gardener had informed her of what flowers would be available to decorate the dining room and drawing room, there was little she could do until the day, when she planned to make the floral arrangements herself.

  But Georgiana was excited at the prospect of entertaining guests. She planned her wardrobe with care and changed her mind about it every day. She planned the entertainments and decided definitely that there must be dancing as soon as she learned that Miss Dobb, unmarried sister of Mrs. Horsley, played the pianoforte with some skill and that Mr. Chester, a gentleman farmer, enjoyed some local fame as a violinist. She planned seating arrangements for the dinner table, the arrangement of furniture in the drawing room, even the topics of conversation that would be introduced during the meal.

  But it was not just her party that filled her days. She was visited by all the prominent matrons for miles around and returned their visits with Ralph. She walked several times into the village with Gloria as a type of youthful chaperone to permit her sister-in-law to call at the vicarage. She attended church. She spent hours with the housekeeper, the cook, and the gardener, getting acquainted with the home of which she was now mistress. She rode with Ralph each day and soon became familiar with every corner of the estate and every soul living on it. She wrote letters to her parents and to Vera.

  In fact, she decided at the end of the first week of her marriage, she had been busy doing all the kinds of things that she would have found a horrid bore just a few weeks before. Even the party that she was planning with such minute care was the sort she would have avoided like the plague back in London. What real enjoyment could be expected from a gathering of country people who probably had no particular elegance and no very amusing conversation?

  She dismissed her thoughts with a shrug. This life was a novelty. That was why she was enjoying it. There was something exhilarating about finding oneself suddenly a countess and the center of local attention. It was only now after all the fuss of the wedding was over that she was fully realizing the fact that she was the Countess of Chartleigh, mistress of one of the grandest estates in southern England. Although she was only eighteen, and in fact nowhere near nineteen, she was suddenly no longer treated like a very young girl, with either impatience or an amused tolerance. She was a married lady, and a very important one at that, and she was deferred to as such, her opinions on all matters listened to seriously.

  Georgiana was enjoying herself. She had been somewhat horrified to know that they were to come here for the wedding trip. She would literally die of boredom in the country, she had thought, especially with such a boy for a companion. There could not possibly be any enjoyment in being with such a shy young innocent. At least if he had taken her to the Continent, there would have been so much to see that she could have ignored his presence.

  Now she was surprised to discover that her days were not boring at all. Not yet, anyway. Once the party was over and the novelty of her situation wore off, she supposcd, she would be very ready to get back to London. But really, so far, the days were just not long enough.

  Something else that surprised her a great deal was that she almost enjoyed Ralph's company. He was not at all her type of man. His age was against him. He was too young to interest her to any great degree. And he was always very gentle and agreeable. There was nothing wrong with that, but sometimes she did enjoy a good sparring match with a male companion, if not an out-and-out quarrel. And there was no mischief in Ralph. She often wondered with inward hilarity how he would react if she suggested doing something quite outrageous like putting a lidded saucepan full of grasshoppers on the kitchen table for Cook to discover, or having a race down the elm grove by swinging from tree to tree.

  No, he was really
not her type of man. But granted that she was stuck with him, whether she wished to be or not, she had to admit that she was not finding his company or his person repulsive. And she could no longer think of him as weak. He might not be what she had always considered manly, but he had a great deal of character. He had a library brimful of books and had awed her by admitting, when she asked, that he had read most of them. She did not see how the contents of all those volumes could be stored in one brain, but she knew he was not a liar. He had an intimate knowledge of his estate. There was not a question of hers that he could not answer, and she asked a great many. And everybody on the estate loved him. Everybody. He had an almost awesome patience and kindness with other people, herself included.

  He had never once spoken unkindly to her or looked frowningly at her. Even when she pestered him about Gloria and the Reverend Boscome's marriage. And she did pester him about that. She could see very well-it was as plain as the nose on her face-that those two were very well-matched and that they were drifting perilously close to middle age. She had made it her crusade to see that they were allowed to marry soon. Ralph would only smile at her and tell her gently that Gloria was of age and must herself come to some arrangement with Mr. Boscome and her mother. He would speak to the latter when they returned to London, he said. And that was the only concession he would make to her nagging. It was annoying, but then, Papa would have roared at her long since to hold her tongue and mind her manners.

  There was, in fact, only one unpleasant fact to mar Georgiana's happiness. And that was the fact that her marriage was still unconsummated. Ralph had made no attempt to come to her since that first night and had made no reference to his absence. She had expected him on the second night. She had brushed her hair and perfumed herself with special care and had arranged herself in her bed as invitingly as she knew how. But he had not come, and finally she had been forced to blow out the candles and try as best she could to go to sleep. She had prepared herself with less hope the following night. Since then she had tried not to expect him at all.

  She was not happy with the situation. Mainly, she persuaded herself, she felt guilty. If only she had behaved herself like a well-bred young lady on her wedding night, all would have been well. Ralph would not have lost his courage. By now she would have been able to receive him in her bed with unconcern. She would know exactly what she was to do and would be past the embarrassment of having to allow him such intimacies. She was terribly afraid that he might never again have enough courage to try what he had failed to do that night. Perhaps she had destroyed his manhood for all time.

  Georgians did not like to admit to herself that there was some personal disappointment in her unhappiness too. She had decided with such certainty that Ralph was not her type of man, that he was too young, too boyish in physique, too sweetly good-looking, too shy, too good to attract her in the least, that she was almost unaware of the fact that she stared at him frequently, at his tall, slender figure, his thick, wavy, always unruly hair, his long, slim hands, and his smiling eyes and mouth, and imagined her own body in contact with his. On their wedding night he had been nervous and clumsy. But if he were not nervous, she thought sometimes, if he were relaxed and bent on giving them both pleasure, how would those hands feel-on her naked breasts, for example? ff ever she did catch herself in these daydreams, she would always shake them off with a shudder and a grimace.

  And she was so accustomed to believing that she did not want him physically that she was unaware of the fact that she made no effort to avoid his touch. Sometimes he would hold her hand-if she was talking to him when they sat side by side on a sofa, perhaps, without the presence of Gloria, or when they had dismounted from their horses and were walking together over part of the estate. She was never the one to break the contact. Sometimes, in fact, she would unconsciously move closer so that their arms and shoulders were in contact too.

  And he had kissed her twice since their wedding night, once the morning after in the poplar grove, once in the library after he had told her that he would speak with his mother about Gloria. Both kisses had been brief and very gentle-not by any means of earth-shattering sensuality. But she found herself sometimes looking at that good-humored mouth with a slight breathlessness and a shudder, which she took to be of distaste, and remembering how warm and reassuring it had felt on her own. How would it feel to trace the line of his lips with her finger? With her tongue? She had recoiled with hot disgust at herself on the one occasion when she had become conscious of this deviant desire.

  On the whole, Georgians was a great deal better pleased with her marriage after nine days than she had expected to be. If only she were a wife in deed as well as in name, she would consider herself no worse off than hundreds of other women of her class who had been persuaded into marriages with partners not of their own choosing. There was even a good chance, she felt, of a mild affection developing between her and her husband. If only he would bed her soon!

  ***

  The party at Chartleigh was seen as a big occasion by the gentry for miles around. All of them had heard with deep interest the news of the marriage of the young earl to a viscount's daughter. They remembered the earl as a thin, shy, but sweetly cheerful young boy who had shot to a tall and gangly young manhood before leaving for university. They had seen little of him since then. His father's death and funeral had brought him home briefly, but the family had stayed at the house most of the time. They found it hard to believe that the new Lord Chartleigh could be grown up enough to have taken a bride.

  After visits at the house had been eagerly made and had been returned, not only by the countess, but by her husband too, opinion was mixed. Several of the older men lamented the days when the house had been open to them during hunting season, the liquor flowing free. This quiet, polite stripling could not be more different from his father if he tried.

  Almost all the ladies, except perhaps the very young, saw the young couple as unutterably romantic. The countess was extremely youthful-little more than a schoolgirl. But she was pretty and sprightly. There was nothing affected about her manners, though all of her visitors were her inferiors in rank. The earl, too, still looked younger than his one-and-twenty years, but he had matured since the days when they had known him well. He was still quiet, still flushed easily. But there was a charm about his manner that won their female hearts. And what lady could resist a man who was so obviously devoted to his wife?

  The very young ladies, perhaps, could do so. Ralph- and even Georgiana-would have been surprised to know how many of these girls looked at his lean height, his fair hair, and his smiling face with quickened heartbeats. Georgiana was a figure of envy to these females.

  Thirty-four people sat down to dinner at Chartleigh. It was a prodigious crowd, Georgiana admitted when the cook repeated the number with some incredulity, but one had to invite all the guests to dinner. Even those who lived closest had a few miles to drive, and it would be unreasonable to expect any of them to travel the distance merely for the evening's entertainment. Ralph had fully agreed with her.

  Georgiana, from her place at the foot of the table, gazed down the vast length of tablecloth to Ralph and felt a thrill of satisfaction. Everyone was engaged in conversation. Ralph did not seem to be unduly daunted by the presence of Lady Quentin on his right and Mrs. Hadleigh on his left. Georgiana was free of the conversation of Sir Harold Quentin for the moment. Mr. Hadleigh, on her other side, had an ear bent to some observation of his other neighbor. She had a free moment in which to admire the fruits of her own careful planning. The two floral arrangements on the table looked quite superb, even if she did say so herself. And Cook had excelled herself. She must remember to make a personal visit to the kitchen tomorrow to tell her so.

  She did wish that she could have seated Gloria and the Reverend Boscome together. She had fully intended to do so, but Gloria had looked over the first seating plan and asked that it not be so.

  "But why?" Georgiana had asked.

  "It would
look too contrived," Gloria had replied. "I believe some people have an inkling of our understanding, but it has never been announced. I would not wish to start any gossip."

  All Georgiana's protestations of the utter foolishness of this idea had not changed her sister-in-law's mind. She was beginning to lose a little patience with the situation. She had decided that she liked Gloria, who was gentle, sensible, and affectionate, despite her rather severe appearance. But she could not imagine that anyone could be so spiritless. In Gloria's situation she would have grabbed her man and headed for Gretna a long time ago and been done with the whole business. At the rate the betrothal was progressing, it might be another six years before the banns were called.

  And Ralph was no help. She caught his eye across the length of the table for a moment and returned his smile. He would do nothing to cross his mother, who was clearly opposed to this marriage. Those two lovers needed a helping hand. It would have to be hers. No one else in this family had any gumption. A wild plan was already forming in Georgiana's head when Mr. Hadleigh turned toward her.

  It was many hours later before she had a chance to put her plan into effect. She had had so little time to think about it in the meantime that there had been no opportunity to deliberate on its wisdom. But Georgiana had never been strong on forethought. Enough to have conceived an idea. It must immediately be acted upon. One would find out later if one had been wise or not.

  When all her guests had served themselves with supper and were seated, Georgiana looked about her with flushed pleasure. The dancing had been a great success, though most of the older people had disappeared into the card salon. Miss Caroline Horsley had told her that it was an age since there had been a dance anywhere near. For some reason dancing in the country was considered a winter entertainment, unless it were around a maypole out-of-doors.