“And so you escaped his company as fast as you could, did you?” he demanded, folding his arms and staring at her, daring her to contradict him.
“N-No, but—”
He rolled his eyes, looking frustrated. “For heaven’s sake, Ella, I can’t babysit you every moment of the evening. Show a little sense for once in your life. Surely you’re not so naïve? Men like Ranleigh are dangerous, and I’m damned if I’ll have everyone think me a cuckold on top of a—”
He snapped his mouth shut, but Ella had a fair idea of what he’d say next.
“On top a fool for getting caught with the wrong sister, yes, I know,” Ella snapped, out of patience with her husband. How dare he?
“Well, don’t you worry, Oscar. I’ll be more careful, I assure you, but you might remember you gave me permission to take a lover. You never said you had to approve of them.”
With that she stalked out of the room, sweeping past Oscar and as far away from him as she could get. For a moment, she felt a sense of satisfaction at the outrage in his eyes, but it was short-lived.
By the time the interminable evening was over and the two of them were forced to share a carriage together, it was clear that Oscar was furious with her and Ella was too miserable to be angry any longer. She huddled in the corner of the carriage, staring out at the moonlit landscape and trying to ignore the twin expressions of concern from Fluff and Mintie. The two of them exchanged silent glances but didn’t question her. It was the best end she could hope for to a frightful evening.
Chapter 9
“Wherein shiny new ideas for Oscar’s future are minted.”
“Your sister really is the most frightful bitch.”
Ella spluttered and choked as her hot chocolate took entirely the wrong route, and looked up to see her mother-in-law return a wide-eyed look of perfect innocence as she settled herself at the breakfast table.
“Well, she is, Ella, there’s no denying it. The way she was pawing Oscar last night, it made me want to retch. She’s no better than she ought to be if you ask me, but then I always thought so.”
They’d risen late after returning home in the early hours of the morning and were now alone in the breakfast parlour. Ella cleared her throat and tried to catch her breath, watching Mintie select a slice of plum cake and cut it into precise little squares. She picked one up between her thumb and forefinger and raised it to her mouth.
Assuming she meant to say no more for the moment, Ella raised her cup once more.
“I spoke to Ranleigh last night….”
Ella’s cup clattered back to the table top and she only just kept it upright. The chocolate sloshed over her fingers and Mintie went off into whoops of laughter as Ella blushed and did her best to mop up the mess.
“Well, there’s a guilty conscience if I ever saw one.”
“Oh, no!” Ella exclaimed, horrified. “You c-can’t think—”
Mintie rolled her eyes to the heavens and gave an unladylike snort. “Foolish chit. Ranleigh isn’t a man who goes around seducing innocents. Not at all his style. No, no, he told me all about it, though.”
Ella felt the colour leach from her cheeks and wondered if the duke had told her all about it. No, she assured herself, he’d sworn he’d take that story to his grave and she’d believed him.
“It explains why Oscar was in such a foul temper last night though, well that and Pearl making doe eyes at him all evening, though that’s a polite way of putting it. He’s gone, you know.”
There was a sympathetic note in those last words as Ella stared at her.
“Gone? Gone where?”
Mintie shrugged. “Somewhere he can pretend he doesn’t have a wife and responsibilities, I’d wager.”
She winked at Ella, who tried hard to muster a smile, but she couldn’t find it in her.
“Oh, don’t look so wretched, Ella. Don’t you see? This gives us the perfect opportunity.”
“What on earth for?” Ella asked, staring into the depths of what remained of her hot chocolate and seeing a life in which she and her husband were strangers stretching into infinity.
“Why, to make you all the rage.”
Ella looked up, staring at her mother-in-law in horror, but the dreadful creature only grinned at her and returned to her breakfast.
During the next weeks, Mintie took Ella in hand.
Further visits to Madam Dubois were endured, where she was stuck with pins and tried on so many gowns in differing styles she felt giddy. They all spent hours poring over the latest fashion plates. Both Mintie and Madam stared at her with their critical gazes, judging her from all angles as she felt increasingly like a prize cow at a fair. At least they didn’t ask to look at her teeth.
It was a close-run thing with Mintie’s dresser, Mrs Fenton, though. The woman, who dressed one of the most glamorous ladies of the ton, did not take on a girl like Ella without protest. Mintie, however, smoothed everything over by assuring Fenton that she alone could work the miracles they needed, and that Ella would be her crowning achievement.
Ella wasn’t sure if she ought to be insulted by this rather unguarded comment, but she was too aware of her own shortcomings and too curious to see Mrs Fenton could do to complain.
Fenton set to work, taking immediate exception to Ella’s thick eyebrows much to Mintie’s approval. The woman was less than sympathetic to Ella’s pain, plucking them until Ella wanted to cry for mercy.
In something of a daze, Ella ricocheted between dress fittings, Fenton’s less than tender care, and Mintie’s lessons on how to be a duchess.
There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to these lessons. At times they made perfect sense, lessons on how to act at a dinner table when one of your guests was drunk… quite acceptable. How to depress those insinuating persons who wanted to know you only to increase their own consequence… terrifying but illuminating. Lessons on the running of the household, on dealing with staff disputes and managing the giving of a ball were exactly what she’d expected. Lessons on how to flirt without looking a slut and still make one’s husband jealous—wildly inappropriate but nonetheless intriguing—and so the days progressed.
Mintie and Ella were sitting together in the parlour by the fire one evening, sewing in a companionable manner after Fluff had bade his lady good evening. Ella well knew that he spent most nights here, but they maintained the illusion of respectability as the viscount pretended to take himself home and then went around by the back stairs. Ella suspected they knew she knew, and only continued the farce to spare her blushes. Not that she cared a jot. It was clear the viscount was deeply in love with Mintie, and Ella could only wonder why they had never married. It was rather romantic, though, and none of her business, so Ella said nothing and—far from being shocked—could only find herself envious.
“I wonder who your cicisbeo should be,” Mintie mused aloud, causing Ella to stab herself viscously with her needle.
“What?” she yelped, cursing as she bled all over her embroidery.
“Your cicisbeo,” Mintie repeated with a patient expression. “Your paramour, or lover, if you prefer.”
“I know what it means!” Ella said, sucking at her thumb before the blood did any further damage.
“Well, do you have anyone in mind?” Mintie asked, placid in the face of Ella’s horrified shock.
“You can’t be serious? You don’t think I would ever… could ever….”
“Oh, no.” Mintie put her own embroidery in her lap and gave a huff of impatience. “I don’t mean an actual lover, I mean someone who we can make Oscar believe might be, if he’s not very careful. It would have to be someone willing to go along with it,” she added, with a thoughtful frown. “Someone who knows how to be discreet. We wouldn’t want any ugly rumours starting, but if, for instance, I let it drop that… the Duke of Ranleigh has been paying you some marked attention….”
Mintie glanced up at her, looking so utterly guileless that Ella didn’t know whether to be shocked or simply give into t
he force that was the dowager Duchess of Rothborn.
“Ranleigh?” she repeated, her voice faint.
“Yes.” Mintie nodded and smoothed a hand over her embroidery, tutting as she saw the silk had become tangled. “He’s desperately handsome, a debonair man of the world, rich as Croesus and has just the right amount of the rake about him to be wildly exciting. He’s just the sort of man a young woman would fall for when left alone by her idiot husband.”
Ella frowned, and then shook her head. “It will never work, Mintie. To be jealous, a man must care, and Oscar simply doesn’t see me that way.”
“Nonsense.”
Ella raised her eyebrows, surprised by the anger behind those words.
“Oscar cares. He cares for you deeply. Good Lord, do you think he’d allow you to trail around with him and Bertie all these years if he didn’t like your company? He adores you.”
“Yes, as a friend,” Ella replied, impatient herself now. “He loves me as he would a sister or a friend, though even that friendship seems to be on rocky ground now. He doesn’t know how to speak to me anymore.”
“Well, naturally he doesn’t. You’re not his friend anymore, you’re his wife, and that will take getting used to, but get used to it he must, and he will.”
Ella frowned, staring down at her own embroidery. The bloodstain had made a tiny heart shape on the silk and she felt her own heart was losing pints of the stuff as this farce continued.
“You cannot force someone to feel what they don’t, Mintie,” she said, her voice soft. “Oscar is a good and a kind man. I can’t blame him for not loving me. You cannot trick him into doing so.”
“Well, of course I can’t, and nor would I try to. Making the man see what is in front of his wretched nose is another matter, however.”
The words were tart and just a little defiant, and Ella didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. That her mother-in-law should make such efforts on her behalf and want her son to love her so very much, made Ella’s heart ache with gratitude, but she could not stand by and see Oscar manipulated. It wasn’t fair.
“Mintie, please stop. I don’t want to see Oscar upset or embarrassed, and I certainly don’t want to make him angry after all he’s done for me. He didn’t have to marry me. He could have left me to face a dreadful scandal and still married Pearl—”
“Oh, yes,” Mintie butted in. “Because he was so terribly eager to do that.”
Ella frowned, startled by the vehemence of Mintie’s words. “Well, I know they didn’t love each other but—”
“Ella, you goose!”
Mintie threw up her hands in despair.
“When will you realise Oscar can’t stand Pearl? Now, you listen to me: I loved his father to distraction. When he died I would have followed if not for Oscar. Losing him broke my heart. He was a good and kind and wonderful man, and so handsome.” She gave a sigh, misty eyed for a moment before her expression became rather harder. “But this ridiculous betrothal between Oscar and Pearl as infants was outrageous of him. I was never more furious. It was the one time we violently disagreed, but my husband spoke to Oscar about it in the months before he died and seemed to make the stupid boy see it was his duty to the family. I’ve never been able to make him see otherwise. Marrying you was the best thing that could ever happen to him, believe me, and eventually the foolish boy will realise it too. But he needs a… a little encouragement.”
“In the form of The Duke of Ranleigh?” Ella replied dryly, though Mintie’s words had shaken her.
“Quite so,” Mintie said, picking up her embroidery once more. “But don’t you worry, Ella, darling. You will be blameless in this whole affair. Just you wait and see.”
“No, Mintie. No.” Ella shook her head, warning in her voice. “There is to be no affair. None. Not even a whisper, not so much as a murmur. Not a sound.”
“Of course, dear,” Mintie said, her tone too innocent for comfort. “Whatever you say.”
***
Oscar sent the staff of his town house into a flurry of panic by arriving without a word of notice. Even his housekeeper, a lady who thought the sun followed wherever Oscar went, was more than a little terse and scolded him for his thoughtlessness in not sending word ahead.
That was the trouble with becoming duke at such a young age. Everyone knew you since you were a child and—despite your lofty title—felt at will to treat you the same way. Oscar had the lowering feeling that little had changed. Perhaps he hadn’t changed enough to warrant different treatment. He had run away like a scolded boy. Not his finest hour.
Guilt sat heavy upon his shoulders and finding the house shrouded in Holland covers did nothing to raise his spirits. He wished he’d told Bertie he was coming and begged him to come along. As he was deserting Bertie’s sister, he hadn’t expected Bertie to greet the idea with any enthusiasm.
Oscar strode between the chilly rooms of the grand house in Mayfair and scowled at the ghostly shapes of the covered furniture. Damn it. Why did he feel so wretched when it was Bug who had caused this infernal mess?
Because you promised her everything would be all right, retorted a little voice.
Oscar snorted. Everything was a very long way from all right.
When he’d suggested Ella was free to live her own life and take a lover if she wished, he’d seen the hurt his words had caused, despite her efforts to hide it. In that moment he’d realised that it wouldn’t be enough for her. She wanted a husband who loved her. She wanted love and warmth and no doubt a dozen children too. What’s more, she deserved all those things. He wanted those things for her, but he wasn’t the man to give them to her.
He couldn’t get past all the memories.
Memories of a sweet little girl with long dark curly hair and solemn grey eyes, her dirty skirts bunched in one hand as she ran after him and Bertie. He’d helped her climb trees and taught her to ride. He’d also insisted on teaching her how to put a worm on a fishing hook, although she looked green and horrified. Oscar had known damn well she didn’t want to touch the slimy worm, but she’d kept her complaints to herself, wanting to impress him. She’d always wanted to impress him, to please him.
It was him she had looked to for approval, not Bertie, and damn it if that hadn’t made him proud. When Ella stared at him with such admiration, it made him feel ten feet tall. He’d enjoyed her adoration, he’d adored her but… but not like that.
Oscar had spent too much of his time playing her protector, her big brother, ensuring she was safe from the world and doing his best to keep her from trouble. He loved her, but switching roles from brother to husband… panic rose in his chest. It made him feel as if he was what she needed protecting from. She was too young, to guileless and innocent of men… he just… he couldn’t.
He’d tried to make the best of it, but discovered he was avoiding her whenever he could. Polite greetings over the breakfast table or if they passed in a corridor were no basis for a happy marriage. Not for either of them. He was making her miserable, watching the fire fade from her eyes as the days passed by, and it was killing him.
No. This was better. If he left her alone it would force her to sink or swim, and there was no way Ella wouldn’t swim. She was too fearless to give up and sink. If he left she’d not sit about the house moping and looking miserable as she seemed to do now. It was more than likely she’d be furious with him, and that fury would lead to action and… and by the time he returned, she’d be living her own life. Being positive was what Ella did best. Nothing got her down for long. In fact, she was the only one who could tease him out of the doldrums when he was blue-devilled.
Oscar sighed, blue-devilled in the extreme and refusing to lament that Ella wasn’t there. She wasn’t his friend anymore, she was his wife, and until he’d seen the hurt in her eyes, he’d not understood how complex those two different relationships were.
This would not do.
He would not sit about feeling sorry for himself. Action. He needed to be busy and he ne
eded to rid himself of the pent-up emotions that seemed to have settled in a lump in his throat. Jackson’s Saloon was the obvious answer, and Oscar snatched up his hat and gloves and headed out once more. With any luck, getting pummelled or returning the favour would make him feel a deal better.
***
Ella stared at herself in the looking glass in Mintie’s boudoir and blinked. Just for a moment she wished Oscar was there to see her, but that was pointless. He was used to looking at beautiful women, and just because she looked better than she ever had didn’t mean he’d fall headlong into love with her. No, she would just have to feel satisfied on her own account because… well, because she looked rather splendid.
The dress was a deep sapphire blue with a delicate white lace trim. Short puff sleeves rested on her upper arms, leaving her shoulders bare. Sapphire studded combs glinted in her short locks, which had grown out a little, and curled charmingly about her face. Mintie had lent her the Rothborn sapphires, a parure set complete with earrings, necklace and the two glorious combs nestled in her dark tresses.
“Darling, you look beautiful!” Mintie seemed to bounce with glee, she was so thrilled with the picture her daughter-in-law made. “My word but your sister will look like she’s sucked a lemon when she sees you.”
Ella blanched, wondering if she might stay home with a good book instead. She’d spent a good deal of time thinking about Pearl of late and had concluded she well deserved her sister’s fury.
“Mintie, you can’t blame Pearl for being furious with me,” she said, accepting the guilt she’d been trying to avoid accepting as her own. Just because Pearl was a bitch and didn’t care a straw for Oscar, didn’t mean she hadn’t been wronged.
“I stole her husband and made her look a fool. Pearl has lived her whole life expecting to play the role I took from her, and she’d make a far better job of it, too. I don’t doubt she wants my blood, and for once I can’t say I’m not to blame.”
Mintie stared at her, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “The two of you never got along, did you?”
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