He could only imagine the looks on their faces when they had heard who the young Squire’s new wife was. Edward would have paid a hundred guineas to have been there to witness it when they realised she was well and truly out of their reach.
He looked up. Selina had progressed to feeding Tips small morsels of bacon—rather brazenly, in Edward’s opinion. The dog’s skinny tail wagged and he peered up at the Roma girl with adoring eyes.
‘I’ve been thinking. We’re going to need to be seen together. People have started asking questions, and the only real way to answer them is to let people see you with their own eyes.’
Selina’s hand stilled on its journey back to the meat platter. ‘Seen together? Where?’
‘Society venues, I’m afraid. I don’t care for them any more than you do, I can assure you.’
‘If you don’t like them, must we go?’
‘It would be a good idea. People are curious about you. I’d much rather we met them where we can leave if we like, rather than sit through hours of dull visits.’ He raised an eyebrow at her rigid face. What could be her objection? ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer to receive endless streams of visitors here, with no chance of escape until they leave?’
The notion of a host of nosy society busybodies descending on his house made Edward want to curl his lip. Unless he debuted Selina in public, however, he couldn’t think how such a thing was to be avoided. It was customary in his circles to welcome a new bride, and there was little point in trying to avoid it, however much he might want to.
Her silence was more unnerving than any words she might have spoken. Edward allowed the quiet to stretch for a few moments before leaning a little closer to her chair. It had been raining again, and he just caught the appealing scent of damp earth and cut grass that clung to her, enticing him to lean closer still.
He sat back again smartly. ‘Come along, Selina. It isn’t the end of the world. You never know—you might even enjoy yourself.’
‘Might I?’ Her voice was quiet, restrained. ‘Do you truly think I’m likely to find any enjoyment in meeting all your high-class acquaintances?’
Edward frowned. He understood her reluctance—given the choice he wouldn’t venture out either—but certainly the prospect of a society outing wasn’t so bad.
‘Selina. This is part of our bargain. I have shielded you from your troublesome situation, and now you need to play the part of a squire’s wife for me—only until you leave.’
‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’ A touch of something like a warning had crept into her tone, and the hands that lay on the table had balled into fists. ‘Marrying you and taking your name is one thing. Your insisting on parading me about like one of your society ladies is quite another.’ She lifted her chin and looked him directly in the eye. ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be around those people.’
Frustration broke over Edward like a wave, surprising him with its intensity. He’d allowed himself to believe they had managed to make some headway, to find at least some tiny shred of accord between them. Evidently he had been wrong, and he disliked the heavy feeling of disappointment that mixed with his annoyance.
‘I’m afraid I must insist. We needn’t stay very long, and you needn’t enter into any deep conversations, but you must be seen with me as my wife until we have our annulment.’
He saw the anger that rose up in her face. It looked to Edward as though it was mingled with something else—something complex that was almost like anxiety. But what was there for her to be anxious about? What did she really have to fear from such a plan apart from a few hours of crushing boredom?
Selina stood up. An ingrained sense of etiquette dragged Edward to his feet likewise, and they faced each other across the expanse of table between them.
‘I said I don’t want to go.’
‘Even if it will make our lives easier if you do?’ Edward fought to keep the edge of frustration from his voice. ‘Would you really rather half of society descends on this house to peer at you like a creature in a zoo?’
Both voices were tense. The old dog took one look at each of the set faces, tucked his tail between his legs and crept beneath the table.
‘Of course I don’t want that. I won’t be seeing anybody, anywhere. I’m not one of your kind, Edward.’ Selina shook her head, her eyes filled with that strange emotion Edward couldn’t seem to place. She looked almost haunted. ‘I can’t—I can’t walk among them and pretend I belong.’
Edward raked his hand through his hair, struggling to restrain his exasperation with his determined wife. There was high colour in her cheeks now, a dusky pink that, despite the depths of his ire, Edward couldn’t help but note suited her.
The thought only fanned the flames of his irritation. ‘Why are you doing this? Why must you make this simple thing so difficult?’
‘You think me difficult because I won’t be a good wife and do as you demand? Don’t forget you were the one who never wanted a good wife.’
It was all he could do to bite back a growl. He was well aware of the unsentimental terms of their marriage, despite his confusing stirrings to the contrary. Surely it was Selina who needed a reminder of her part in their scheme.
‘You didn’t answer the question. Why are you so set on denying me this request? Is it simple spite? What?’
She was moving away from him. One part of Edward’s mind reeled at her poor manners—turning one’s back in the middle of a conversation?—while another merely raged at her obstinacy. She couldn’t possibly have a real rationale for her actions; she simply wanted to wound him.
The realisation stung.
Selina paused in the doorway, one hand resting on the handle. She turned back to him, an expression of intense feeling written upon her face. ‘Nothing I do is ever born out of spite. I was raised better than that.’
‘Then what is your reason?’
Edward knew his voice was raised more loudly than a gentleman’s should ever be, but the provocation was too much to bear. He flung the words at her back, but she had already thrown open the door and disappeared from his sight.
* * *
Selina’s heart thudded in her ears as she swept down the cobbled path to the stable yard.
How could he?
Wasn’t it enough that she’d sacrificed so much already? That she’d already swallowed her pride and tasted the bitterness of leaving her home, her family, her entire way of life to help Edward claim his precious inheritance? Certainly he had aided her in return, and for that she was grateful, but surely he was demanding more now than she could ever be expected to give.
The sound of her footsteps on damp cobbles rang out across the yard, and the two stable lads dipped their heads in respectful greeting as she strode past. Even that added fuel to the flames of her fire. All the servants were by now aware of her origins, she knew that for certain, and yet they still ‘yes, ma’am-ed’ her as if she were a born lady. It was all so false. Everything of Edward’s class was so insincere, so built on illusions and glamours. And now he wanted her to embrace it even more, to mingle with those but for whom she would still have a mother.
Djali flicked his ears at her as she approached, his huge grey head poking out over his stable door. Well used to his moods, Selina could tell just by looking that he was irritable at being cooped up. Roma horses were allowed much more freedom than gentry mounts, and Djali didn’t seem to be taking to the upper-class way of life any better than his mistress.
Selina unbolted the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her. The horse eyed her for a moment before turning to his trough, and Selina perched on the edge of it, her arms folded across the worn fabric at the bodice of her dress.
She hadn’t seen Edward close to losing his temper before, and she would confess she hadn’t enjoyed the experience. Following their dance lesson, and his wholly unexpected kiss, she had no
ticed his behaviour towards her undergo a subtle change. Whereas previously he had been polite but distant, he now seemed more inclined to seek her out during the day for innocuous conversation—conversation that, mortifyingly, Selina found she was beginning to enjoy.
Returning to her room after the events of that morning, Selina had seated herself in front of her looking glass and gazed long and hard at her reflection. Her mirror image had stared back unflinchingly, almost challenging her to voice the confusing array of thoughts that chased each other through her mind.
She had danced with Edward. And she had liked it.
Even worse: he had kissed her. And she had liked it.
Despite herself, her better judgement and all her attempts to squash it, her worrying attraction to Edward showed no signs of diminishing. Her thoughts of him would not cease to plague her day and night. The memories of how good his hand had felt on her waist, how his lips had moved on hers so urgently, were burned into her mind like a brand, and nothing could free her of their grip. It was an unexpected complication to feel her weakness for him increasing rather than the reverse, and the knowledge that Edward would be horrified by her fledgling feelings for him only made her feel worse.
Hadn’t he made it plain that he wanted a wife who would form no attachment to him? His kiss must have been some strange lapse of thought—a thing of no importance that she ought to try to forget.
Tears pricked at her eyes. Sitting in the calm stillness of the stable, surrounded by the heady scent of hay and horse, Selina felt a sudden wave of powerful homesickness threaten to engulf her. The smells were of her childhood, when Papa would take her with him to market to look over some new pony, and for a moment she wondered if she should just take Djali and ride back home to Zillah. Hang Edward and everything he stood for—why should he be allowed to make her feel such confusion?
A shadow sliced across the cold sunlight filtering through the stable door.
‘Selina?’
Edward’s voice was quiet. Glancing up, she saw him looking over the split door, an unreadable expression on his infuriatingly handsome face. She said nothing as he entered the stable and leaned against one wall; his silence matched her own.
Tiny motes of dust danced in the shaft of light that streamed through the doorway and outside Selina could hear the stable lads sweeping the cobbles, one of them humming to himself as he worked. Djali stood close by, the grinding of his teeth against oats his only contribution to breaking the strained silence that neither Edward nor Selina seemed willing or able to end.
After what felt like half a lifetime Edward spoke. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead his attention was fixed on the marked flanks of the steadily chewing horse.
‘I keep meaning to ask you. How did Djali get his scars?’
Selina felt herself tense. She knew he was just trying to break the tension between them, but of all the questions he could have asked he would have to stumble across the one she would have given anything to avoid answering. Her heart rate, already raised at his entrance to the stable, picked up speed.
‘It’s not a story I like telling.’
Edward scuffed the toe of one immaculate boot through the straw strewn at his feet. ‘Why is that? Was it an upsetting event for you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Her voice was low and bitter. ‘You might certainly say that.’
How could she tell Edward the truth of it?
She risked a glance in his direction—a quick sideways cut of her downturned eyes. He seemed to be waiting for her to elaborate, and Selina turned her face away. There was no way of explaining what had happened to Djali without revealing all: how the fate of her mother was tied to it, and the role his own family had played in the whole sorry business. To confess the full story to Edward would be to reveal his uncle’s wickedness—surely he would not thank her for that.
‘I’m not sure you would enjoy hearing about it.’
She stared down at the floor, noticing a new tear in the hem of her dress. Another thing to repair. If only her heart was as easy to mend.
The familiar dull ache she felt whenever her final day with Mama was recalled settled beneath her breastbone again, a weight in her chest she had grown used to carrying since childhood. Perhaps she should tell Edward exactly why the Roma hated his class, she thought, a sudden feeling of hopelessness stealing over her. It wouldn’t change anything, but then he would know why she couldn’t bring herself to walk among those responsible for causing so much pain to her people.
At least then he would understand—and besides, wasn’t there some secret, shadowy part of her that wanted him to know she wasn’t as heartless as he obviously thought her to be? She shouldn’t care what he thought—she knew that—and yet that small part of her was undeniably there, and its whisper caused her to make up her mind.
‘I’d like to think I could cope with whatever you have to say.’
Edward sounded far away, although he couldn’t have been more than a few yards from where Selina sat stiffly, hunched slightly as though in pain. She forced herself to look up at him, watching her from across the stable floor. ‘Would you truly like to know?’
‘If you would be so good as to tell me.’
Selina could feel the jumping of her pulse at her throat, but her voice was calm and cold. ‘Perhaps I should. I hope then you’ll see why I can’t bring myself to mix with the people you think of as friends. Only...’ She tailed off for a moment as worry gnawed at her.
I hope he won’t react too angrily. I can’t imagine he’ll like me calling his uncle a murderer, even if I suppose it was an accident.
‘Only recall that I warned you first you wouldn’t enjoy this tale.’
Edward opened his mouth to reply, a frown appearing between his brows, but Selina began to speak, forcing him into silence.
‘Djali was a gift from my father to my mother. Mama broke him in herself. Papa told me it took her weeks to get a saddle on him, but she was the only one who ever could have done it. Papa bought Djali cheaply, because of his bad temper, but Mama managed to see the best in him and he loved her, too.’
She swallowed, her mouth dry as she considered how to proceed. Edward watched her closely, the frown replaced by a look of wary concern.
‘A good horse is worth its weight in gold to the Romani; it makes things a little easier as life on the road is hard. There are times when there’s no food, no coal for our stoves. Winters are always the worst.’
The edge of the trough was digging into her thighs. Selina stood up and moved across to the doorway, standing with her back to her waiting husband.
‘The winter when I was eight years old was the coldest I can remember. Papa was out trying to find work and Grandmother was sick with a fever, so it was just me and Mama who went hawking. We thought we’d test our luck at the nearest gentry house, see if anybody would buy our wares. We tied Djali up not far from the house.’
She swallowed hard. Just say it. There was no going back now.
‘In fact, it was this very house. Blackwell Hall.’
Edward started, straightening up immediately from his position leaning against the stable wall, but Selina allowed him no time to speak.
‘It was a freezing, iron day. We were so, so cold, and so, so hungry. I knew Mama was desperate. When the front door opened I swear to you I believe she thought our luck had changed.’
‘But it hadn’t.’ It wasn’t a question. Edward’s voice held a world of grim foreboding.
‘No. It hadn’t. At the first sight of us standing on the doorstep your uncle bellowed at his men to release the dogs.’
Her chest was rising and falling faster than she could control as she saw Edward’s mouth drop open, his face rigid with naked horror.
‘So we ran. We ran as fast as we could away from those hounds and we heard your uncle Charles laughing as we went.’
Her voice was
thick with emotion. How ugly it must sound to Edward, some distant part of her thought, but she couldn’t stop now—not until the whole tale was told.
‘We ran back down the drive and through the gates, and we were almost back safely with Djali when Mama slipped on the frost and fell down. The dogs were still coming. I could hear them barking as they got closer and closer, and Mama was still on the ground—’
It was as though she was living it all over again. The sounds, the sight of the pack of hounds almost upon her, and the worst, the very, very worst of it all: Mama lying among the sharp frosted blades of grass, so terribly, unnaturally still, her lifeless black eyes gazing upwards with no earthly way of knowing what they were seeing.
‘I thought the dogs were going to tear us apart. I tried to help Mama up but she didn’t move. I know now that she hit her head on a rock, killing her instantly, but at the time I just couldn’t understand it.’
Tears were coming thick and fast now, falling from Selina’s burning eyes. She could no longer see the stable yard beyond the door, her vision blurred and her mind fixed on the horror that consumed her.
‘But then Djali leapt out in front of us. I still don’t know how he managed to break free from where he was hitched, but he put himself between me, my mother and the dogs and he took the savaging they would have given me onto himself. He saved my life. I remember every moment: how the dogs snarled and howled and lunged at him, over and over again, and how he fought them back, biting and kicking until they ran away—and then how he stood over Mama so quietly, touching her with his nose so gently. He must have known she was gone. From him. From me. From both of us. Forever.
‘After a little while he came over to me. He was covered in blood and so many bites I don’t know how he survived. I heard them tell Papa later, when they thought I was asleep, that I had followed Djali back to camp and then he had guided them to where my mother was lying. I don’t have any memory of that. Only of what went before.’
The Marriage Rescue Page 12