by Sophia James
CHAPTER FIVE
For a moment Simeon wondered just where he was. A strange room. A quilt pulled up across him. The light filtered through pale blue curtains, birdsong and sunshine.
He felt the warmth behind him like a shock, snuggled in, one small hand tucked across him, pale hair flowing in a tangle of curls, a scent of lemon and flowers and woman.
The old servant woman was standing there in the doorway, her mouth open, and when she cried out the cup she had been carrying fell, the hot and scalding tea leaving small plumes of steam rising as it ran into the gaps between the floorboards.
Adelia had scrambled up now from behind him, her shift low across her bosom, her legs bare. The bruises he had seen the night she’d first visited were faded now, only a small shadow of them behind her neck remaining.
Oh, hell. Had he slept with her here at Athelridge Hall on the night of their union? How on earth had he got here? The last he remembered he was in a tavern at the end of Regent Street in the company of Tom Brady and a dozen other men they knew. Drinking as quickly as he could and trying to drown his sorrows.
His wedding night.
Consummation?
Had he hurt her? Had he been rough? The fragments of worried questions piled in, each one barely thought of before another took its place.
Some of his clothes were still on him at least. His waistcoat, shirt and trousers. Even his belt was buckled at the waist.
Not that, then? But what?
The thin pale mother was there now, too, her mouth also wide-open, but without words. Like a play he had seen in a theatre in Covent Garden, a comedy, a tragedy, a satire. No end to the misunderstandings.
Adelia was shooing them out, shutting the door behind them and locking it. He saw the deep breath she took before she turned.
‘It can’t be undone now, this marriage of ours.’ There was fire in her eyes.
‘But I didn’t…’ He stopped, knowing that it would make no difference now there were witnesses.
The silence stretched out, a raft of questions, a slew of uncertainties. He could think of absolutely nothing he might say so he simply watched while she took her shawl and wrapped it around her, the tight cocoon of light blue wool hiding any hint of skin whatsoever.
‘My God, I cannot believe this.’ The blasphemy fell into the growing silence, making her wince. ‘How did you get home from the chapel?’
‘I pawned your ring and my necklace. The minister drove a hard bargain.’
Her answer was so unexpected he hardly knew what to say. Every time he had seen her she looked different. This morning he could see how young she truly was and he felt at that second every one of his own twenty-seven years.
‘Where do we go from here?’ His words came without thought.
‘You go on with your life and I go on with mine. I promised you that you were free to do just as you wanted and I meant it.’
He laughed, though the sound held no humour for he knew that his old life was gone. Adelia Worthington was not the bride he would have chosen, but right now she was playing by the rules. She had not reneged on the things she had promised him and for that at least he was grateful. It seemed it might be possible to leave her here, away from his own life, away from wifely demands and needs and tantrums.
If he played this right, he might not have to be bothered with her again and yet in that thought he felt some sort of regret. The vestiges of Holy Matrimony, he presumed, or the calm after the storm. Her hair fell almost to her waist in a curling mass of wheat and gold and white.
‘Why did you have so many bruises on your arms when first I met you?’
Fright kept her still and a defensiveness that he had not seen in her before rose, closing down her face.
‘You do not need to worry about me, Mr Morgan. I am fine.’
‘Fine to live in a house that looks as though it might fall about your knees? Fine to sleep in a bed with a hole in the roof above it?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I will send one of my bookkeepers to take a look around. Once he understands the basic needs here we can form a monthly budget.’
He watched as she sat down hard upon a chair by the window, hands on each side as though she was shocked. She was so thin she looked like a large gust of wind might simply knock her over.
‘Food. Clothing. Heating. That sort of thing. Medicine if your sister needs it. She does not look well.’
* * *
Adelia felt her head spinning, every one of his words like an answer to a prayer. He would help them? He would not abandon her to the trials of impending poverty even given her deceit?
He was standing now, reaching for his boots and slipping them on, his other clothing laid across his arm as though he would carry them. In the light she could see the quality of everything he wore, the cut of the excellent fabric and the expertise of every stitch. His wedding clothes were rumpled, but still beautiful. Hers, on the other hand, had had one wear too many.
She noticed another scar across his right hand running from the base of the thumb completely over the top to his little finger.
‘Simeon Morgan was brought up hard.’
She had heard that said of him many times at the balls. His name had come up often at such events because most of the girls and their mothers hoped he might attend. Money, she supposed, paved the way for anything and it was whispered loudly that he had a fortune. Her own lack of it was one of the reasons they had had to make a dash from London. Although she had told her mother she had paid all their outstanding bills, in truth she had not been able to. Should she say something about that now?
She decided not to, for the détente they shared was too fragile to be broken. Perhaps she might mention it to the bookkeeper he spoke of when he came. If he came.
‘Do you keep horses here?’
She nodded. ‘One. A stallion.’
‘Would he get me to London, do you think?’
‘I doubt it, but the village would be within his range if you rode him very slowly.’
‘And I could find another steed there?’
‘Certainly. The Stanley Stables would happily provide you with a transport back to town.’
She saw him look around the room, at the ring of flowers wilted now on the side table and at her wedding dress hung on the front of the wardrobe, dirty and still damp. She was glad the boots were out of sight because even she could tell they would never be the same.
‘It seems a long time since yesterday,’ he said and she knew exactly what he meant. Everything from their wedding was spoiled or missing, rumpled or wilted.
Without pause, she decided to throw another of her secrets into the mix.
‘My mother is an ardent Catholic and I have taken up some of her beliefs.’
‘I know. I saw a rosary dangling on the picture downstairs and there is another one beneath your pillow.’
‘Mama is most devout for religion is her great crutch. I tell you this because surprise is often unwelcome, I find, and it is always better to have formed some plan as to how you might react before the truth can stun you.’
‘Is that how you have managed so far?’
‘I played it a little false when I told you I was an unmitigated success in society. At first that was true, I suppose, but after a while… I wasn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I couldn’t understand what it was they wanted from me. When Mr Anstruther pushed me up against a tree in Hyde Park and tried to fondle my breasts I had had enough. I hit him with my umbrella and he fell over. It was just unlucky his head struck the tree trunk as he went down.’
‘What happened next?’
‘His mother and her friend came at my calls and both blamed me. They said I was a tease. They asked me to leave and so I did, though later I heard it said I had deserted a wounded man in the park and had m
ade no effort to help him. My character was deemed to be a selfish one with little to recommend it and the swains drifted off. I was glad for it, but my father was not.’
‘He wanted you married?’
‘Like any father would, I expect.’
* * *
Something had changed as soon as her father was mentioned. Simeon knew it by her tone as she turned away, her hand pushing back her hair. As a child he had become so adept at recognising untruths he was always surprised when others seemed to have no notion of it.
He wished they could go back to where they were a moment ago, having a conversation that was not forced or unnatural. Adelia was beautiful when she was being honest.
‘He was a man I disliked, your father. He felt the same about me.’
‘You were not the only one who disliked him, Mr Morgan.’
‘Sim,’ he returned. ‘It’s what my friends call me.’
She was still. ‘And am I that, then? A friend?’
‘You are my wife, Adelia, and in private we can at least be polite to one another, can we not?’
He held out his hand and she gave him hers. It felt small in his grip and the ringless state made him frown.
‘I think you lied about our engagement to save your family. At least I hope it was for that reason because anything else would be…’
‘Dishonourable?’
She finished the sentence for him, but did not add further explanation.
‘And I hope that you are not that.’
With care he let her hand go, watching as she withdrew it and folded her arms defensively.
‘Life requires a certain ruthlessness to survive I have found, Mr Morgan. I have heard it said that you are ruthless in your sphere of work.’
He smiled. ‘Perhaps my enemies might say that of me or men who failed in their quest to take a share in the fortune that the railways offer, but I hope I have always been fair.’
Her watching green eyes were bruised in uncertainty. ‘Do you have family? There were none at the chapel.’
‘I had an uncle.’ He tried to keep the sadness from his tone, but her next query told him he’d been unsuccessful.
‘And you wished that he might have been there? This uncle?’
Such perception worried him. If she could figure that out, what else might she come to know about him? There were so many damn things about his past that would shock her.
Leaning down to retrieve his necktie from the floor, he stepped away.
‘I will send your missing jewellery back with my bookkeeper.’
‘I am sorry.’
He paused. ‘It is too late now, Adelia, for any regret.’
Once outside, he was glad for the air against his face and the sky above him. The last twenty-four hours had been mad, uncontrolled and frenzied. He could not remember ever feeling quite so uncertain.
A new bride. A wild ride north at night in a rented hackney. A shared bed and a marriage consummated to all intents and purposes.
Why had he come here? What had he expected might happen? It seemed any sense and logic he normally had were submerged by strong liquor. He had jumped from the frying pan straight into the fire and all by his own accord.
At least it seemed that this new wife might stick to those arrangements she had promised him at their very first meeting.
‘I should not stop you from making your own personal choices. I would be compliant, dutiful and discreet. I would run the estate with diplomacy, refinement, grace and tact.’
Perhaps it could work. Perhaps in the machinations of controversy there lay a solution that was viable and possible. A marriage of convenience for them both, a formal and recognised contract that gave each of them their freedom. Not together, but apart.
He could stay in London and she could live here. He’d seen alliances with a lot less going for them in his lifetime and the few that were a love-match were often stormy with outbursts of desire, anger and fervour.
He couldn’t expect love.
That thought came as easily as all the others.
No, this was the best he could hope for, perhaps, a woman who appeared much less prone to bad temper than the one he had imagined and a wife who might actually abide by the promises she had made him.
When the sun came out overhead he saw it as a sign and he was grateful when the old roan stallion in the Athelridge stable looked willing enough to ferry him into the nearby village.
* * *
Once back in London, Simeon spent the next few hours in the company of his bookkeeper, instructing him on his needs and wants.
Peter Shelman was curious about the news of the marriage and had questions.
‘I haven’t heard much mention of your new wife before, Mr Morgan. How did you meet?
‘Her father and I knew each other.’
‘Lionel Worthington? The Viscount? Wasn’t he recently involved in some sort of carriage accident that killed his mistress? There were rumours that it was deliberate.’
Simeon decided he needed to be more honest. ‘Worthington and I weren’t actually friends.’
‘I see.’ There was a glint of puzzlement in the other man’s eyes. ‘I’ve heard talk of the daughter, of course, through my own wife’s family. She is a rare beauty by all accounts.’
Everything Shelman was not saying was there in his face.
‘She’s a lot more than that,’ Simeon returned. If his mother had taught him anything in life, it was the ability to fold the truth around a lie and make it stick.
Standing, Simeon found two glasses and a bottle. Better to pretend he was a happily married man or the difficult questions would start.
When he gave Peter Shelman a glass, his bookkeeper raised it high. ‘Well, here’s to marriage, then, Mr Morgan, and to your future.’ Simeon was glad for the change of tone.
‘So you wish for me to travel personally to Athelridge Hall and go over the accounts with Mrs Morgan? Are there limits to be placed on expenditures?’
‘No. I want the estate running smoothly. Give my wife what she asks for and take someone with you who can identify the needs of an old building. I don’t want it falling down around the family’s ears.’
‘You won’t be there?’
‘I won’t.’ He did not qualify that with more even as his bookkeeper turned his glass, the sunlight from a nearby window catching the crystal.
‘I shall get back to you with the numbers, then, after I visit Athelridge Hall. I shall venture up there before the end of the week.’
‘I look forward to your findings.’
Packing up his ledgers a few moments later, Shelman left, the lack of sleep and the effect of heavy liquor making Simeon feel tired, the bright light hurting his eyes. He did not know what Adelia might be to him. Lover? Enemy? Trickster? Helpmate? At the moment she was simply there, at Athelridge Hall, his wife of a day. Unknown.
The memory of the night they’d met at his town house was as strong as ever in his mind. Lust and desire held chains, he supposed, but they would never be enough. His first marriage and numerous subsequent mistresses had taught him that. He hoped she would not be too greedy in her demands for the estate and momentarily wondered if he should have placed a cap on her expenditures, but even that held the promise of difficulties he did not wish for.
If he had to have a wife in the wings, he wanted her content, for his childhood had shown him many examples of the vengeance of disgruntled spouses and it was never an easy thing to manage. No, reprisals and retribution were messy emotions that often led to even more misery; a misery he’d spent all the years since his childhood trying to limit.
He’d deliberately formulated a world of temperance and self-discipline around him until he had met Miss Adelia Worthington. Now all he could foresee was chaos and he wanted such confusion tempered and toned down wherever possible.
He was not a young green lad, for God’s sake, but a twenty-seven-year-old businessman who had acquired a fortune in a game he could play with growing surety. He was usually even-tempered and unflappable, any emotion pared down to the barest minimum.
That was what had surprised him so much across all his dealings with Adelia Worthington and shamed him, too, though she was every bit as much to blame for the turn of affairs as he was.
Stop. Another voice sliced across his growing wrath. This bitterness was exactly what he did not wish to foster in himself. He would see to her needs and keep her happy and stay well away until he could truly decide just how to deal with her.
Their marriage of inconvenience.
He smiled at the thought and finished off the rest of his drink, the warmth of the brew softening his anger.
* * *
The bookkeeper Simeon Morgan had mentioned arrived at Athelridge Hall on the Wednesday of the week after their marriage.
He was tall and dour and as she led him into her father’s office, Adelia felt as if she were being judged and found wanting. For the first time she saw Athelridge Hall through the eyes of another. Weary. Broken down. Worn out by a lack of money and of care. The man he had brought along with him was one who placed values on buildings and for a moment Adelia thought her husband meant to sell her home off to another.
‘Your husband has asked that repairs of the larger structural problems be noted and duly begun, Mrs Morgan. My colleague is here to identify the problems. Is it all right if he has a look around the place?’
‘Of course.’
She watched the man saunter off, his hands on the wall to his left as though even in feeling the stone he might understand the deficiencies in the place.
Taking Mr Shelman into the library, she gestured to the large walnut desk at one end of the room, watching as he removed a stack of notepaper and a small book from his briefcase. Sitting in the chair behind the desk, he laid out a pot of ink and a blotter, lifting his pen and turning it this way and that before writing Athelridge Hall in capitals on the first blank page and underlining it. Twice.