The Making of a Marquess

by Lynne Connolly

  Nothing like she was feeling inside. There, she was rioting, running around the room with her hands in the air, cheering. At last, the day of days, the one none of her friends thought she would see, not to mention herself, had arrived. She could hardly drink the chocolate the maid brought to her.

  Ben met her outside her room. He lifted her hands to his lips, one after the other, pressing a gentle kiss to each. “It does my heart good to see you. I can hardly wait for us to marry. Come.”

  “I didn’t sleep much last night.” She’d spent hours staring into the darkness, convincing herself this was real, that she was marrying the one man who mattered, the one she’d fallen in love with.

  After the short ride to the village, Ben helped her down from the carriage and they entered the small church, which had been there since the Conquest. That stone tower had seen many changes in its long life. To their left was the window that had been pieced together from the shattered remnants Cromwell’s men had left behind. There was a face here, a piece of sky there. None of it made sense, but the pools of colored light it cast on the flagged floor of the church reflected God’s glory as well as it had ever done. The font stood below it, the cover attached to the chain by which it was opened when a new life came to receive its blessing.

  The vicar, dressed in his green ordinary vestments, a stole draped across his shoulders, stood before the altar, smiling a welcome. Standing facing the cleric, Dorothea’s brother and his wife turned to watch Dorothea and Ben walk up the aisle toward them. Angela stood by Ann’s side, and next to her, Hal Evington. Angela had offered Lord Evington and Dorothea’s brother and sister-in-law the use of her carriage, leaving Ben and Dorothea to make the journey alone. And to have the privacy of their own closed carriage on the way back.

  Nobody else attended. But instead of feeling lonely, Dorothea loved the intimacy. Only the people she truly cared about were here. She enjoyed the traditional aspect. Most aristocrats obtained a special license and married in their own chapels. But doing it here, where generations of families, wealthy and otherwise, had plighted their troths, meant so much more. Following them filled Dorothea with humility. She was just one more bride, and she liked that.

  To one side of the main body of the church lay the Cressbrook Chapel, which contained the remains of previous holders of the title. Ben’s ancestors. They would witness this joining.

  The service itself seemed to take no time at all. Only when Ben turned to her and pushed the gold circlet onto her finger did time stop. She gazed up at him, smiling, and he smiled back. Such a precious moment, and one she would remember forever.

  After they’d signed the parish register, Ben asked if he could look through the previous pages. Dorothea knew why. But this was a new volume. The vicar spread his hands. “Unfortunately, the previous register went missing recently. I have looked for it, and no doubt I’ve mislaid it somewhere. This one is just as valid.”

  So someone had been here before them. Dorothea would not allow the tinge of disappointment to spoil her day. Tomorrow was soon enough to investigate the disappearance of the records of the second wedding between Ben’s parents. For today, she’d taken a step that would change her life, one way or another.

  Ben treated her tenderly. But when they were back in the carriage and they’d left the village behind, he took her in his arms and kissed her, long and sweet. Only the jolting of the vehicle broke them apart. He took her hand, grinning. “I don’t seem to be able to stop smiling. Except when I’m kissing you, of course.”

  “Yes. That would be difficult.” She seemed to have caught his condition, because she couldn’t stop smiling, either.

  They swung into the drive, slowly, because that was the safest way. “I don’t want a fuss,” she said. “With the house in turmoil, I don’t wish to add something else. And perhaps cause trouble between you and Honoria.”

  “Cause whatever trouble you like. You are the important person in this, not her. If you wish, I’ll have her moved. The marchioness’s apartments should be yours.”

  She shook her head, concerned. “That wouldn’t be fair. In any case, I’m not the marchioness. I may never be the marchioness, and I doubt Sir James would take kindly to such high-handed behavior. What has upset you?”

  She read banked anger in his eyes. They darkened when he was affected by anger or passion. She tried not to think about the passion. Not yet.

  He regarded her steadily. “You should know, although it’s a distasteful subject. But you need this information in case she talks to you.” He leaned back against the squabs and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. But he kept hold of her hand. That link warmed her, a physical demonstration of how close they’d become. “Yesterday Honoria suggested that we could marry, now her husband was dead.”

  Judging from the still, calm tones, he was deeply disturbed. The calmer he appeared, the more upset he was. Not without cause. With her husband but a day dead, the widow was thinking of moving on?

  Would she feel the same if Ben had been killed? Her heart missed a beat and an echo of might-have-been filled her mind. No, of course not. She’d be mad with grief. Even if she and Ben had been on bad terms, she would not have considered the possibility of marrying again. Far too soon.

  Ben continued in the same flat tones. “That way she could bear me a child, and the disputes would be solved. She also intimated that she knew about the second marriage between my parents.”

  Did she indeed? Dorothea didn’t credit her with knowing, but using it as a ploy. If Honoria could cold-bloodedly discuss moving on so soon after the death of the husband she professed to adore, then surely, she was capable of murder.

  Ben agreed with her when she said so. “But if she knew that, she was aware Louis was lying when he produced only the evidence of the first, flawed marriage.” He turned to face her. “Dorothea, I’m tired of it all. I’m within an ames’ ace of telling them they can do what they want with the estate and returning to Boston. Should you mind doing that?”

  She couldn’t reply, since the carriage had drawn up outside the front of the house, and a footman hurried to open the door and let down the steps. Just as well, because she wouldn’t have known how to respond. On the one hand, she would go with Ben anyway, but on the other, leaving when the issue was unresolved itched at her.

  When he had alighted, she tucked her arm through his and waited until the servant was out of hearing distance before giving him his answer. “Consider me Ruth. Whither thou goest, I will go.”

  Given a choice, she’d always choose Ben.

  He patted her hand. “I had thought to leave you here to manage the estate while I went to Boston. If I gave you ample funds, you could oversee the restoration of the house and estate. I have complete faith in you.”

  Dorothea’s heart sank. If he refused to take her with him, there was little she could do. Follow him? Would he take her, or send her home? Besides, a lone woman traveling across the ocean on her own was asking to be robbed and murdered.

  For him, she’d do it. Not the murdered part, though. She said nothing, not knowing where to start.

  “But I don’t think I could bear to be apart from you for so long,” he added, almost casually.

  Schultz flung open both double doors to give them access. Ben’s words surprised Dorothea so much she was through the doors and into the great hall before she could get her breath back.

  Had he really said that? Oh, she knew he was fond of her, but not bearing separation? She felt that way, but he knew that.

  He turned to her, a light in his eyes that she couldn’t remember seeing before. “I love you, sweetheart.”

  Dorothea caught her breath. “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, goodness!” Heat rushed to her face when she realized he had not lowered his voice. Every servant in the hall must have heard him. One came forward to claim her hat and gloves. She gave them
to him numbly. “I—I love you too.”

  “I remember.” He smiled at her, the warmth almost too much to take. “Whatever happens next, we are together.”

  “Yes.”

  Catching her hand in his, he led her toward the back of the hall. “Tea in the small breakfast room, if you please, Schultz,” he said.

  By the time they’d reached the breakfast room, Dorothea had regained her senses. He’d sent her reeling with his simple, honest statement. But that was so like Ben, to tell her with no frills, only the truth.

  She’d seen it in his eyes. And when the door was closed, he tugged her to him and carried on where they’d left off in the carriage.

  They shared a sweet kiss that turned incendiary very quickly. He stroked her back, the heat of him burning through the layers of her clothes, even her stays. He nudged her fichu aside to caress her bare skin at her neck. “Not another night apart,” he murmured.

  When the door opened, she pulled back, but he wouldn’t release her, keeping her attention while the maid put down the tray of tea and beat a hasty retreat. Dorothea laid her hands on his shoulders, laughing up at him. “You’ll shock them to the core.”

  “Good. Let them gossip. That way we won’t have to tell anyone we’re man and wife. I’m proud to make you Mrs. Thorpe.”

  “What about the Marchioness of Belstead?”

  “Do you care?”

  She gave a slight shake of her head, a strand of hair catching in a button on his coat and coming loose from her coiffure. “You’re still Ben, whatever people call you.”

  “Yes, I am.” He twisted the hair around his finger and tickled her neck with the end, smiling when she twitched in response. “Your husband. We could probably have a better life were I not the marquess. The estate needs restoration, and the vultures are hovering, waiting to attack. With the estate comes responsibilities I thought I’d escaped. I knew what was going on. Hal kept me informed, but I chose to stay away. I blame myself for not returning when Louis began his depredations, but my life wasn’t here. It was in the colonies. It could be again.”

  While she was apprehensive of traveling so far, knowing nobody but Ben, the knowledge that he loved her changed everything. She would go anywhere with him now. To see the light of love in his eyes, to have the right to claim him, as she had not before, that meant the world to her.

  “Ben, whatever is best, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Yes, we will.” The lines at the corners of his mouth deepened, a sure sign that something had disturbed him. “But I don’t want to leave my mother. Louis and Honoria told everyone she had gone senile and then run mad. So that’s what Hal told me. He said she had her first attack after my father died, and she’d never recovered. So there was no reason for me to come home. She wouldn’t know me if I appeared before her. Or so Louis and Honoria claimed, and since only her companion saw Mama, I had no way of discovering anything different.” He closed his eyes. “I could have written to Schultz, I could have sent someone to see her, but I did not, and I will not forgive myself for that.”

  He twisted the strand of her hair between his fingers. She didn’t pull away, but remained in his arms, nestling close. He needed her while he talked about his mother. She would speak when he had done, but she sensed that he hadn’t told this to anyone before. He had to say it now, or it would become a festering sore inside him.

  Ben kissed her forehead. “I was running away. I was still mourning my father when I got the news about her. My father had ordered me to leave and not return, part of the reason I never did come back. We were not close, and he chose to believe other reports, rather than Hal’s. I confess he had reason. I was wild in those days.”

  “He should never have turned his back on his own son.” Hadn’t he known that at his heart Ben was a man of integrity and honor? He hadn’t known his son at all.

  “But he did. I loved him all the same. My mother fell ill, and Louis took care of her. He’d wronged me, but I appreciated what he was doing for her. If she was mad, as he claimed, he could have sent her to an asylum.” He sighed. “But I had no idea he was keeping her alive so that he could question the marriage if he had to. Only when I returned from the dead did he have to play that card. I shouldn’t have come.”

  This time she did pull away, wincing when the hair tugged at her scalp as it unwound from his finger. She needed that tea. “That’s just nonsense. If you try to blame yourself for everything that happened, I will lose patience with you, sir.” Lifting the pot, she concentrated on pouring the brew. The housekeeper had provided deep cups. She’d need every drop, since she didn’t intend to turn to strong drink at this hour. “You made mistakes, but so did everyone else. We do, because we are human.”

  She poured a drop of milk into each dish, and picked up one by its saucer, handing it to him.

  He was smiling again. At least she’d forced him out of his orgy of self-blame. “Thank you, sweetheart. Not just for the tea. You’re right. Louis kept my mother’s state from the world, and I believe he did her a kindness by doing so. She probably told him to keep people away from her. That would be typical of her. She hated to display her weaknesses. But I cannot leave her again.”

  “No, of course not. Can we take her with us?”

  “I will certainly look into it. Or stay here with her. Some days she knows me. Some she doesn’t. She is weakening. Her morning constitutional takes less time than it used to, her maid informed me, and she needs her cane.”

  “We should go to see her.” Putting down her dish and saucer, Dorothea went back to him. “Tell her our news. Whether she understands or not, she has a right to know.”

  “You would do that? On what should be a happy day?”

  “It will make the day happier if we tell her.”

  Chapter 25

  When he told Dorothea he loved her, something settled in Ben’s mind. The words coalesced all the feelings that had been churning inside him since he had asked her to marry him.

  He’d never felt like this about any woman before, though he’d liked a few, loved a few. This emotion was all-encompassing. He was never happier than when she was by his side, in bed or out of it.

  After a painful visit to his mother, in which she didn’t know them at all, he took Dorothea up to the nursery wing where they spent a soothing half hour playing a foolish game of Speculation with the girls. Their laughter healed some of his pain and gave him a chance to think.

  How could he have not known he loved her? He had not loved her when their families had been arranging their marriage, but he’d been too callow and self-centered to know what true love was back then. His overwhelming need to cherish and protect her was a result of his love, not the cause of it. No moment marked the instant he’d fallen for her, but a collection of them: when their gazes had met in perfect understanding, when they’d shared a joke or comforted one another in sorrow. And, to be honest, the first time he’d seen her naked and touched that gloriously silky skin.

  Perhaps she’d become a marchioness.

  He didn’t want the marquessate, but he would step up to the mark if he had to. He wasn’t sure how Louis could so comprehensively have laid waste to the holdings, but he had, and there it was. He would have to buy property back, redeem mortgages, and work to restore the respect that had previously gone with the title. William was perfectly capable of doing all that, although it would take him longer because he didn’t have Ben’s resources. Ben had no intention of breaking up what he’d built to prop up a title he had no interest in. He’d only bought the estate’s fleet because it was so cheap he couldn’t ignore it.

  He took Dorothea to his room—their room, and closed the door, warming at the knowledge that he had the right to do so.

  “What do you say to us staying in this part of the house if Sir James decides in our favor?” he asked her.

  Her face lit up, and he was happy he’d given
her pleasure. “I would love that. The rooms are spacious, and we could make them grand with no effort at all. There are three good rooms, which would make a bedroom each and a sitting room.” Pink tinged her cheekbones. “Not that I’ll be sleeping in my bedroom.”

  “No, you will not, unless we choose that one to make our own.” He reeled her in and treated them both to a lingering kiss. For two pins he’d say to hell with the world and take her to bed. But she would not thank him for that. She had yet to come to terms with the married state, where people knew the couple were spending time together making love. She would become accustomed to it in no time at all.

  When he lifted his head, that slumberous, seductive look had returned to her eyes, and her lips were reddened. She was ready for love. He was so tempted. “We could say you’re indisposed,” he suggested.

  “I—I’m not sure.”

  He chuckled. “It’s not fair of me to ask it of you. No, we’ll go to dinner, although I can’t promise we won’t have an early night. And we’ll be late up tomorrow.”

  When she buried her head against his chest, he laughed and stroked her hair, tugging at her little lace cap and dislodging a few hairpins. “I intend to spoil you. Only the best is good enough for my wife, whatever the name she goes by. Now go before I change my mind and take you to bed. I promise you, I’m hard-pressed right now to resist.” When she slipped a hand between them and cupped his burgeoning erection, already painfully hard, he choked.

  Covering her wicked fingers, he squeezed, relishing the sensation she never ceased to bring, making him helpless. He wanted her badly, but the knowledge that he could take her to his bed tonight and every one after that relieved his desperation a little. Enough to enable him to ease her away. “Don’t forget to call for the maid to come to you.”

  Her laugh echoed down the corridor as his wife headed for her room. The kind of tease a wife would offer her husband, knowing he would get his revenge later, in the sweetest way.