Contracted as His Countess

by Louise Allen

  Jack took a deep breath, fastened an expression suitable to a bridegroom on his face and led Madelyn closer to the edge of the steps. ‘Let the artists have a good look at you, my dear. You want your gown to be accurately depicted, do you not?’

  She went, obedient to his direction, and when he glanced at her she was smiling serenely, lovely in the sunlight, a figure out of time magicked there by some mysterious force. ‘You do not mind?’

  ‘I mind like hell,’ Jack said pleasantly. ‘But if you think I am going to make a scene about it in public, you are very much mistaken.’ He turned more towards her, the picture of a devoted husband, blinking at the reflected light from the barbaric splendour of the rubies and emeralds on her breast. ‘That will do, the carriage is here, we have guests to entertain and, I imagine, gate-crashers to repel once word of this gets around.’

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘Not now.’ He helped her mount the step into the open landau, settled her on the cream-leather upholstery and sat beside her. At least that spared him from having to face her directly.

  ‘I wanted to appear my best for you and I know I cannot do that in modern clothes.’ Her voice shook, despite the defiance, and he turned to look at her fully for the first time. Her chin was up, the smile was fixed in place, but tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘What flatters you does not matter,’ he said harshly. ‘And keep your voice down,’ he added low-voiced with a jerk of his head towards the coachman and the grooms. ‘Conforming matters, fitting in matters, appearing normal matters. I thought you understood that. Or do you think this marriage is all about gaining a legitimate father for this brood of children you want and then retiring to your confounded moated castle to raise them in your fantasy land?’

  Meanwhile I am left, the Earl who married this mad woman for my lands... No, she is not mad, just far cleverer than I realised. Cleverer and more ruthless.

  ‘I am now a countess,’ Madelyn said in an intense whisper. ‘I am a rich countess with my own sense of style. I do not care what they say and neither should you. I thought you were too proud and too independent to care.’ The tears had gone, replaced by a look of sparking anger. ‘After all, you are the man who had the nerve to reject his own title out of a sense of self-esteem.’

  I had years of seeing my father and brother behave with utter self-indulgence, neglecting their lands, ignoring their tenants and every one of their responsibilities. Years of sneers over my lack of land and now the knowing looks and admiring remarks about my skill at catching an heiress. How much worse will it be as word spreads that by marrying you I have restored my inheritance? Do you think I want to continue to be an outsider? Do you think I do not want my children to grow up ordinary, accepted, members of society?

  He almost said it all, but he was not pouring out his heart with two pairs of ears flapping on the box and another pair clinging on behind.

  ‘We are nearly there,’ Madelyn said as the landau swung out of Old Bond Street into Piccadilly. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘At the wedding breakfast? Smile, my dear. Smile,’ Jack said grimly. And afterwards? How was he going to come to terms with a wife who so utterly failed to understand what was important? Then a cluster of crossing sweepers on the corner of St James’s Street set up a cheer at the sight of the carriage and its ribbons. Madelyn smiled at them and waved and he thought, She looks like a queen and I want her. I have made a devil’s bargain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jack was formidably angry. The very control he was exercising told Madelyn that. His smile was wider, tighter; the beautiful blue of his eyes was cold; the grip of his hand as he helped her from the landau was that of a jailer, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to restrain any attempt to bolt.

  As though I am going to run away now, Madelyn thought. She felt sick with nerves and with the realisation that her act of defiance had gone so very wrong. She had thought that Jack would see how much better she looked in her own style, she had imagined that the guests would be intrigued, or perhaps charmed, by such a harmless choice. It is my wedding day.

  But at the church the guests had reacted as though she had appeared in wild animal skins, and Jack was livid, even though, when he looked at her, she could sense desire smouldering behind the anger.

  He handed her over to Louisa as though delivering a fragile, dangerous object and turned to poor Mr Lyminge, who was lurking in the hallway, not quite wringing his hands.

  ‘It seems I must thank you, Lyminge, for rescuing us from the consequences of a serious oversight.’

  ‘I apologise for my presumption, my lord, but there did not appear to be any alternative.’

  ‘No, do not apologise. After all, if you had not stepped into the breach Lady Dersington would have had to give herself away.’ Jack’s expression when Lyminge lapsed into confused silence showed that he would not have put that past her, either.

  Louisa was tugging at her sleeve. ‘Come upstairs, dear. You will want to change.’

  Madelyn followed obediently, but she had no intention of removing her gown, of backing down now. She would take off her wreath, have Harper re-dress her hair and go down dressed just as she was. Let the guests have a good look at her clothes and her jewels.

  ‘Now, Harper, where is that pale yellow gown we bought from Madame de Grange’s?’ Louisa was flinging open doors in the dressing room without waiting for the maid to reply.

  ‘I am not changing, Louisa. Harper, please braid my hair into a coronet.’

  ‘But you cannot—’

  ‘Harper, please excuse us for five minutes.’

  ‘My lady.’ Harper bobbed a curtsy and went out.

  ‘As you just heard, Harper recognises the fact that I am now the Countess of Dersington. I am not going to wear the new gown and, much as I have appreciated your advice and support, Louisa, I am going to make my own decisions from now on.’

  ‘But you do not seem to understand,’ Lady Fairfield protested.

  ‘I understand that when I dress as I wish I have the confidence to face those people downstairs and to behave as I should. Please do not try to dissuade me. You have been such a good friend to me and I would hate to part on bad terms with you.’

  Louisa sniffed into her handkerchief, then straightened her back. ‘I will tell Harper to come back and then I will go downstairs and see what I can do.’ She put her head to one side and peered at Madelyn through narrowed eyes. ‘Lady Dorothy Carstairs, who is a cousin of Lord Dersington, is one of the guests. She writes pieces for the Repository under the nom de plume “A Lady of Fashion”. Perhaps I can persuade her that you are starting a new trend.’ She peered distractedly into the mirror on the dressing table, took off her bonnet, patted her hair into place and hurried out.

  ‘Lady Fairfield is going to see if she can bring my style into fashion,’ Madelyn told Harper when the maid came in and began to unpin the wreath of flowers. She tried to focus on that and not on the memory of the nerve jumping in Jack’s cheek as he had stood beside her on the steps of the church, a smile fixed on his lips.

  ‘I think maybe that might happen when the ladies see the other gowns you’ve had made. They seem to be much more of a compromise between the old style and modern modes and they are very flattering and romantic.’ Harper began to make two plaits of hair from the sides to form into a crown, leaving the mass of Madelyn’s hair to fall down her back. ‘We will have to work on hairstyles, though, my lady—’ She broke off to concentrate on pinning the coronet into place. ‘There now. It’s a pity you’ll not be back in London for some weeks because you could wear your new fashions straight away and let everyone become used to them.’

  It did feel like running away now. When Jack had proposed going into Suffolk for several weeks he had intended allowing the talk about the wedding to die down, but now she had caused such a stir, Madelyn wondered if that would work. But now sh
e must go downstairs, greet thirty members of the ton as they arrived and deal with their reactions. At least that would stop her wondering what Jack was going to say to her once they were alone.

  * * *

  He was waiting for her just inside the door of the drawing room where they would greet their guests. She could hear the sound of subdued voices from the dining room where the staff were putting the finishing touches to the wedding breakfast and there, just within sight in the hall, was Partridge in his best suit of clothes waiting to direct the footmen and announce each arrival.

  ‘Jack—’ He looked at her, frowning as though she was a cipher he could not read, then there was a sudden breeze and the front door was opened.

  ‘His Grace the Duke of Ospringe, Her Grace the Duchess of Ospringe, Viscount de la Salle, Lord James Howlett.’

  ‘As Charlie Truscott would say,’ Jack muttered, ‘we’re off.’

  * * *

  It was not as bad as it might have been, Madelyn concluded when the front door closed behind the last guest. Everyone had been polite, Jack had acted as though he entirely approved of her gown and only three people—all young men somewhat high flown on champagne—had asked him if he was practising jousting or had taken up falconry or had been measured for a suit of armour yet.

  The ladies had been polite and curious and Lady Carstairs—‘Call me Dotty, dear, after all we’re cousins of some sort now’—had been the most friendly. Probably hoping to extract juicy titbits for her column, Madelyn thought warily. But she smiled and chatted and hoped she had managed to convey the impression that she dressed as she did because it suited her and not because she was some eccentric obsessed with the Middle Ages.

  Then the Duke had asked Jack where they were going to spend their honeymoon and he had replied, ‘Dersington Mote.’

  ‘You bought it back as well as this place? Well done, Dersington, I like your attitude,’ the older man said. ‘Damn shame when old family properties are lost like that. Who had it, can I ask? They kept very quiet about it. My man had a look at it a while back, but heard the owners couldn’t get tenants, which made him wary.’ All the guests within earshot were unabashedly listening by then. Jack had expected the rumours about the estates to have spread far and wide, he had told her. Apparently not.

  ‘It came with my wife,’ Jack replied coolly. ‘That and all the Dersington estates.’

  If someone had said out loud, ‘So that’s why he married her!’ Madelyn would not have been surprised. In a way the heavily tactful silence was worse. Jack had been right to want to leave London, she realised. They would be out of town while that was talked about and digested and he would not have to lose his temper and hit anyone, or even call them out. By the time they got back, surely a viscount’s wife would have run off with her footman or the Prince Regent would have done something outstandingly stupid and extravagant and she and Jack would no longer be of much interest.

  When they were finally alone she left her husband in the drawing room while she sought out Partridge and the staff to thank them for their efforts and then went upstairs to her bedchamber. It was not running away, she told herself, resisting the temptation to lock the door.

  With the reinstatement of the ground-floor rooms the upper floors had been cleared of surplus furniture and had been renovated. Only the servants’ rooms and the kitchen remained, but Partridge assured her that he had those in hand and that everyone was comfortably accommodated.

  Now she sat at her dressing table and stared at the connecting door through into Jack’s room. Behind was a room of pale cream walls above oak panelling with dark blue curtains and fine old furniture that now gleamed with polish—lemon polish, she had instructed the staff. There were Chinese bowls full of dried lavender on the table tops, the scent of Jack’s childhood memories as best as she could recreate them. And against the wall facing the window was the bed.

  Madelyn had skirted around it, not looking at it directly, on all the occasions she had been in the room ever since she had realised that this house was where she would be spending her wedding night. Dersington Mote was over eighty miles away, deep in the Suffolk countryside, a full day’s drive with an early start. They would leave tomorrow morning and arrive in the evening, but tonight there was an entire evening to get through, alone with her husband. Her very angry husband.

  Now she wondered whether perhaps she was supposed to wait for her bridegroom in her own bed. The only wedding customs she knew about were hundreds of years out of date, from a time where the bride and groom were led to the bridal bed by their cheering guests, some of whom stayed to witness the consummation if the couple were of high rank. Madelyn shivered. It was going to be bad enough without a bishop to observe proceedings.

  Who could she ask? Louisa had left, returned to her own home. Harper was unmarried and therefore, even if she did know, it was inappropriate to ask her. She supposed she would have to ask Jack.

  But even with the worry about which bed to choose, she felt more apprehensive about the evening than the night. Once they were together, surely the desire that had gripped them in the carriage returning from the masquerade would sweep them up, take them past recrimination and mistrust. But now she was faced with hours alone with a man whose pride had taken some hard knocks that day and who had been confronted with a bride who must have seemed to be flaunting every desire he had ever expressed about her behaviour.

  ‘I will bathe and change, Harper. The half-dress evening gown, I think. And my hair in some simple style, perhaps just in one long plait.’ She had worn the gown she had always dreamed of for her wedding, she had made her point that this was her style, who she was. She could afford to be less provocative now.

  * * *

  When she emerged from her bath somewhat less tense, Harper was laying out her fresh clothes. The new gown was less dramatic, although the fabric, as befitted an evening dress, was a damask silk in deep emerald green. The sleeves were tight to the wrist, the pleating far simpler than on the wedding gown, but it still brushed the floor when she walked and was cut so that it supported her breasts without the severity of the stays.

  She fastened the sixteenth-century gold and freshwater pearl necklace around her neck and added pearl ear drops. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Six, my lady.’

  I am ‘my lady’. Lord Dersington is my husband.

  How long was it going to take to become used to that? Madelyn descended the stairs and could not help smiling at how much better she felt in the heavy, sweeping skirts and with the familiar weight of braided hair. No silly little curls to tickle her cheeks, no flimsy fabrics to flutter around her ankles and no corset to make breathing an effort.

  The smile stayed on her lips when she found she had the drawing room to herself. Lord Dersington was bathing, Partridge informed her. The light supper she had ordered would be served at eight. Might he pour Her Ladyship a glass of sherry?

  Madelyn had never drunk sherry and she had already learned to be wary of the bubbles and dry, deceptively light taste of champagne, but if sherry was what countesses drank in the evenings, then she would learn to like it. ‘Thank you, Partridge.’

  It was sweeter than she had expected and the taste was almost nutty, with fruity overtones that made her think of plum pudding. It tasted quite innocuous, in fact, and it slipped down with no difficulty at all, warm and soothing. She felt herself relaxing with the first sip. ‘You may leave the decanter there, Partridge.’

  Should she ring for the footman to fetch her embroidery frame? Perhaps that was rather too prosaic for a wedding night and, besides, Jack might see the designs as medieval, a provocation. On the other hand, she would never be able to concentrate on a book and Louisa had said that embroidery was a perfectly acceptable occupation for a lady. Charles, the junior footman, came when she tugged the bell and set the frame in its stand beside her, fetched the basket of wools and refilled her sherry glass. Perhaps the
rhythm of setting the stitches would calm her enough to cope with Jack’s reproaches with, at least, some dignity. She took another reviving sip of sherry.

  * * *

  How the devil was one supposed to fill the hours before bedtime under these circumstances? Tanfield, relieved of all the other duties he used to perform for Jack and now solely his valet, had produced a freshly sharpened razor, clearly expecting his master to go to his marital bed with a perfectly smooth chin, so Jack had submitted to the second shave of the day. Then he had lingered over dressing again, finally changing shirt and neckcloth and resuming the elegant suit he had worn for the wedding.

  Scooping up one’s bride and carrying her off to bed at seven o’clock was hardly civilised behaviour. It might be excusable for a couple wildly in love, but not as a tactic to avoid making conversation. Nor, however angry he was, could he spend their first evening as man and wife haranguing Madelyn on the subject of inappropriate wedding gowns. The wedding breakfast had not been quite the nightmare he had been braced for. Madelyn seemed to be the subject of more curiosity than outright condemnation and a marriage to reclaim his family estates had found approval from the Duke. Had he overreacted in the church? He found himself walking slowly downstairs rehearsing topics of conversation in his head as though for a difficult dinner party.

  Ridiculous. Jack stopped on the half landing and absently stirred his fingers through the bowl of dried lavender on the small chest that stood there. Lavender and lemon and beeswax polish. Madelyn had listened when he was reminiscing in that maudlin way in the study. Listened and acted. His bedchamber and the dressing room had been comfortable and elegant, masculine yet light. Those rooms had been his grandfather’s and his memory of them was of gloom and clutter and faded textiles. Madelyn’s hand had transformed them without, he realised, losing their essential nature.