Endearing Young Charms Series

by M. C. Beaton

  “But—but I have been dreaming about him. Seeing his face everywhere.” Fanny looked across at the shining row of copper pans as if seeing reflections of Sir Charles. “It would be quite dreadful if he loved me and I did not love him.”

  “Hush now. Everything will be well. You’d best get off to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “But I do not think I can sleep. There are the intimacies of marriage I wish to learn about.”

  “You should ask your mama.”

  “Ma just turns a funny color and says ladies don’t ask such questions.”

  “Wouldn’t worry about it,” said Mrs. Friendly, deciding it was better for Fanny not to know what awaited her. “Just a lot of kissing and cuddling.”

  “Heavens! Is that all? And that’s how ladies have babies?”

  “Sure as sure.”

  “Well, when I walked into the kitchen last week— you did not see me—but you were being hugged and kissed by the blacksmith. Mrs. Friendly, does that mean …?”

  “All right for me,” said Mrs. Friendly defensively. “My poor Jim’s been in his grave this age.” “But are you going to have another child?” “Gracious, no!” “But you said …”

  “I’m too old. Only happens to young girls.”

  “Oh. I think I can cope with kissing and cuddling. It might be quite pleasant.”

  “Very pleasant, miss. And nothing for you to worry your head about.”

  Somewhat comforted, Fanny retired upstairs to her bedchamber. But that night she dreamed of the Sir Charles in the picture. His face was dark with spite and rage and he was advancing on her with his fists clenched. She awoke with a scream. She lay awake for a few moments. In the light of the rushlight by her bed, she could dimly make out the white glimmering shape of her wedding gown. What if she took one look at Sir Charles and loathed him? She could run from the church. But where to? She had no money. When she had been at the seminary with the other, richer girls, the talk had all been of first Seasons, and killing glances, and flirtations, and she had joined in, thinking somehow that she, too, was destined for a London Season. It had been a cold awakening to find there was no prospect of a Season, no balls and parties to look forward to. Perhaps Sir Charles would take her to balls and parties. After all, things were not so bad. She was going to London at last—and surely Sir Charles would take her to some of the entertainments. That vicious face faded from her mind, replaced by a tender and admiring one, and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Sir Charles, in morning dress—there had been no time or money to order a suit of wedding clothes—waited nervously at the altar in the church of St. Edmund’s for his bride.

  Beside him stood Tommy Hawkes, a thin bean pole of a man with large feet. Tommy thought it was all very jolly and unpretentious. The church was bedecked with evergreens, just like Christmas, and filled with country people. He was surprised there were no gentry, only the Deveneys and Mrs. Page with their servants. The vicar, the Reverend Percival Thwyte-Simpson, looked just like a vicar should look with his venerable snowy locks and rosy cheeks.

  The village band up in the gallery was playing a jaunty selection of hymns in double-quick time. Outside, pale spring sunlight was flooding the countryside and striking down through the old stained glass of the windows and on the silent marble tombs of braver Pages and more honorable Deveneys. The church, however, was very cold. Tommy could feel his first British chilblain beginning to itch and the tip of his long nose turning red.

  Sir Charles stood very still and erect, as if on the parade ground. He was wishing his bride would hurry up. The whole thing seemed unreal.

  Odd things had happened the night before. The Deveneys’ elderly footman had welcomed him home and had said, “Blessings on your return, Sir Charles. There must be carriages and carriages due to arrive with all the spoils of victory.” Sir Charles had laughed happily, thinking the old man was making a joke, and deciding later he had been serious. But everyone expected soldiers to come home dripping with the spoils of war. And why had he not been allowed to see his bride? He could not even get a description of her from his parents. What if she were a fright? Or worse, a shrew?

  And then there was a rustling behind him and the band settled down to play a measured march.

  Fanny looked down the church. A slight, fair man was standing where a tall, dark one should have been. Her step faltered. “That is not Sir Charles,” she murmured to her father.

  “Wedding nerves,” he said, patting her arm. “It’s Sir Charles all right.”

  Numb with cold and nerves, Fanny went to stand beside him.

  Sir Charles looked at her, at the glossy black curls under the coronet of pearls, and the wide eyes and elfin face. Veils were unfashionable that year, so he was able to see her clearly. Not the face of the miniature, but dainty and appealing. He let out a little sigh of relief. It could have been much worse.

  The opening speech of the wedding ceremony slid in and out Fanny’s worried brain. Why was this man so very different from the portrait?

  The voice of the vicar interrupted her thoughts. “ ‘… and therefore it is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding …

  Goodness, thought Fanny, I never really heard the words before. Carnal lusts, indeed!

  The vicar read on. “ ‘It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled …’ ”

  Nothing like the Book of Common Prayer for calling a spade a spade, thought Sir Charles.

  He sensed Fanny’s worry and distress. How awful, he thought, that such a young girl should be seeing the man she is to spend the rest of her life with for the first time. It’s like being sold into slavery!

  And then the vicar’s voice pierced his worried thoughts again.

  “ ‘I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it.’ ”

  Tommy nudged him. Sir Charles glanced down at the endearing face beside him and remained silent. Fanny half opened her mouth. She wanted to cry out that she had been tricked, that this was not the man she had promised she would marry, but fear kept her silent and the ceremony went on … and on. She promised to love and obey, she heard exortations reminding her that she was the “ ‘weaker vessel’ ” and must be “ ‘faithful and obedient to her husband; and in all quietness, sobriety and peace, be a follower of holy and godly matrons.’ ”

  And then it was over. She was Lady Charles Deveney. She smiled blindly to right and left as she walked down the aisle on the arm of her husband. Lucy Partington, a faded spinster of the parish enjoying this day of glory bedecked in white muslin, held up her train. Fanny had wanted one of her friends from the seminary to be invited but had been told that Lucy would be deeply disappointed, which had surprised her, for she had been sure that in the past her parents had refused to have anything to do with the Partingtons, damning them as genteel poor—as if their own straitened circumstances were of a higher order.

  She sat in the open wedding carriage next to her husband for the short drive to Delfton Hall. She wanted to say something, even if it was only, How do you do? Or, Hasn’t the weather turned cold? But the words seemed to be frozen inside her and Sir Charles was looking worried and abstracted.

  He said his first words directly to her as they entered the hall and he saw trunk after trunk piled up. “What a trousseau! Is that all yours?”

  “N-no,” said Fanny. “I have two trunks of clothes and two bandboxes. There they are over there. How odd! My mother and father must be going somewhere, but they said nothing of it to me.”

  “No gold plates,” remarked Mrs. Deveney at the wedding breakfast.

  “Low peo
ple here,” said the squire. “Probably didn’t want it stolen. We’ll be all right. We’ll stay away for a year. By that time the heir will surely be on the way and we’ll be able to claim we lost our fortune in the intervening time. They should have their own grand establishment by then. We’ll move in on ‘em and live like kings for the rest of our lives.”

  “Pretty wedding,” said Mrs. Page, “although I must say Sir Charles doesn’t look a bit like his portrait.”

  “Well, Fanny don’t look like that miniature you sent. Hey, could it be that the Deveneys are playing the same game?” her husband exclaimed.

  “Look at them,” said Mrs. Page comfortably, nodding toward the Deveneys. “Not a brain between the pair of them. All will be well. We’ll stay abroad until we’re sure a child is on the way and then we’ll just move in on them.”

  Sir Charles wanted to speak to his father. The squire was across the table from him at the wedding breakfast, but every time he tried to catch his attention, to signal to him that he wished to be private with him, the squire appeared not to see and immediately began to talk to Mrs. Deveney.

  Still, no doubt this new wife of his could explain a lot. They were to spend the first night of their marriage at an expensive posting house on the road to London, where they were to stay with Aunt Martha.

  He exchanged a few remarks with her about the guests, about the weather, and she answered in monosyllables and picked at her food.

  Fanny had lived in her mind for the past weeks with that tall, dark man of the portrait. She was bewildered. She could not adjust to the fact that this fair-haired man who looked younger than his years was her husband. But he looked kind, and certainly not at all threatening. She looked around at the guests. It was surely unusual for her parents to invite so many country folk, farmers, and shopkeepers to grace their table. She did not know her parents had not invited any of the local gentry or aristocracy for fear that they might gossip to the Deveneys about the Pages’ notorious lack of wealth.

  There was to be no dancing after the breakfast, no festivities. Fanny, followed by the twittering and excited Miss Partington, went up to her room for the last time, where a housemaid helped Miss Partington remove Fanny’s wedding gown and attire her instead in a modish carriage gown of blue velvet.

  Fanny kept looking toward the bedroom door, expecting her mother to arrive for a few last words, but Mrs. Page did not appear.

  When she descended to the hall, she could see through the open doors that the light was already beginning to fade. A post chaise waited outside. For some reason neither the Pages nor the Deveneys had wished to part with their traveling carriages. Sir Charles was waiting for her. He smiled and patted her hand in a reassuring way and she smiled tremulously at him.

  Her mother stood well back behind the guests as Fanny was helped into the post chaise. A ragged cheer went up and then they were off. Man and wife. Off to an unknown future.

  “Well, that went quite well,” said Sir Charles. He had a light, pleasant voice.

  “Yes,” said Fanny in a small voice. “I thought—I thought you might have made an effort to—to see me before the wedding.”

  “I was told you did not wish it,” he said. “I confess I thought it most odd. I hope, however, you are not disappointed in me.”

  She was, terribly, but could not bring herself to say so.

  It was all too much. “If you don’t mind,” she said in a little voice, “I would like to sleep.”

  “Go ahead,” he said amiably, and Fanny closed her eyes tightly and affected to fall asleep—until the affectation became reality and she slept neatly and soundly until he at last awoke her and told her they had arrived at the posting house, where they were to spend the night.

  She walked up the broad staircase with him, behind the landlord, who was singing the praises of his “best room.” She waited while their trunks were carried in, looking all the while at the large four-poster bed as if it were an instrument of torture.

  Sir Charles tipped the servants, the landlord bowed and withdrew, and the couple were alone.

  Fanny stood very still, staring at the floor. Sir Charles gently removed her hat. She still stood there.

  He thought he really ought to begin by kissing her. But she looked so odd, so frozen with fright. He knew that virgins were expected to be frozen with fright, but it did seem, on the other hand, a bit hard to drag a girl off to bed with whom he had only exchanged a few pleasantries. He remembered she had only eaten very little at the breakfast, which, like most wedding breakfasts, had been at three in the afternoon. So he pushed open a door at the side of the bedroom and said, “Look, we have a private parlor. What do you say to a little supper first?”

  “Yes,” said Fanny eagerly, anxious to stave off the terrifying moment when she would need to undress in front of this stranger.

  He opened the door and shouted for the waiter—and after ordering supper suggested they should wait in the parlor beside the fire.

  The little parlor was brightly lit with beeswax candles. It must be a very expensive place to have beeswax candles instead of tallow, thought Fanny, and then was relieved to remember that her parents had arranged all this and had paid the bill in advance.

  “Would you like to change out of your carriage dress?” asked Sir Charles, but Fanny, feeling armored in thick blue velvet, shook her head.

  “I think we should start by getting to know each other,” said Sir Charles. He looked at the little elfin creature who was sitting on the very edge of the chair opposite him. “You are not at all like your miniature,” he said.

  Those huge eyes of hers flew up to meet his. “Oh, the one Mama sent you. I never saw it. She said the artist was most eccentric and took my likeness while studying me covertly from another room.”

  “Then the fool must have drawn one of your friends. Here! Let me show it to you.” He fished in his pocket, took out the miniature in its leather case, and passed it to her.

  “But this is ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “This is not me! What has happened? Are both our parents mad? It looks as little like me as did that portrait supposed to be of you that your parents showed me.”

  “But no one has ever painted my portrait!” “It was of a dark, handsome man on a white charger.”

  “What is going on?” He looked at her in bewilderment. Then his face grew grim. “I am beginning to fear that my parents may have done everything to trap you into marriage with me.”

  “But why?” wailed Fanny. “What is wrong with you? With all that prize money you could marry anyone you wanted.”

  “I have no prize money. I have only my army pay.”

  Fanny looked at him, stricken. “I thought you knew that,” he said. “My dear, I am afraid my parents were after your money.”

  She looked at him, bewildered. “But I have no money. Your parents said you were returning home with a shipload of loot … and your mama was bedecked in diamonds when I saw her.”

  “My mother does not possess diamonds. You have no money?”

  “No, I doubt if I even have a dowry.”

  “Gulled like the veriest flat,” he said bitterly. “Now, what are we going to do?”

  At that moment the waiters entered with their supper. Both ate and drank silently until the covers were removed and the servants left.

  He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. “We can live on my pay,” he said, “but it will be difficult, especially if there are children.”

  Tears welled up in Fanny’s eyes. “I thought I was going to have some fun at last,” she said. “I thought we would go to balls and parties. I have never been to London.”

  “If only we could put the clock back,” he said. “If only we had found out any of this before we got married. Don’t cry. I’m damned if I’ll let them get away with this. You’re so young. You should have had a Season and lots of fellows to choose from.”

  Fanny cried quietly over her glass of unaccustomed wine. She had never been allowed anything stronger than l
emonade before and had even drunk the toasts at her wedding in lemonade.

  “Look here,” he said gently, “this will not do at all. I shall go downstairs and get a horse and ride home. Our parents must not be allowed to get away with this. Give me a few moments to change into my riding clothes and then you can go to bed.”

  After he had gone into the bedroom, Fanny dried her tears and blew her nose firmly. It was every bit as bad for him as it was for her. He was not a brute or a monster.

  When he returned, she gave him a watery smile. “I am behaving like the veriest weakling,” she said.

  “Never mind. Wait for me. Thank goodness I do not have very far to ride.”

  When he reached his home, he hammered on the door until he heard a faint answering shout, then a window on the ground floor opened and the elderly footman looked out.

  “I wish to see my parents,” said Sir Charles.

  “They’ve gone, sir. Wait a bit. I’ll unbolt the door.”

  Sir Charles heard his shuffling footsteps approach the door, saw the candle that he carried bobbing along the line of windows.

  The footman opened the door and he stepped into the hall. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  “It’s as much a surprise to me, sir, as it was to you. We thought all those trunks was your treasure. Gone to Yorkshire or somewheres like that and strangers coming here next week to rent the house.”

  “What about Mr. Hawkes?”

  “Reckon he was surprised as anyone else, sir. Went off to London.”

  “I had best go and see my in-laws,” said Sir Charles grimly. “They have a lot of explaining to do.”

  But at the Pages, he roused Mrs. Friendly, who told him that the Pages had gone abroad, gone just like that, and had rented their house, servants and all, to a Mr. Robinson, due to arrive to take up residence in two weeks’ time.

  “Is Lady Charles well?” asked the cook, still bewildered at all the changes—and at the sight of the bridegroom on his wedding night, standing glaring at her as if he could not believe his ears.

  “Yes, very well,” he said abruptly. “Why was nothing of this told to me? My parents have gone as well.”