An Infamous Marriage

by Susanna Fraser

  “Yes, I suppose the only ladies your age were the younger Dryden daughters.”

  “Indeed. Even if they hadn’t married and gone to live elsewhere, they would never have been my friends.”

  “I daresay Sir Henry and Lady Dryden at least will be at the Ildertons dinner tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth sighed, sobered out of her pleasure in the evening that had just passed by her anticipation of the one to come.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next afternoon, Jack again waited at the bottom of the stairs for his wife to appear. When she did, he smiled at the sight. She’d chosen the green dress she’d worn the night he came home, and nothing suited her better. Her smooth skin looked so creamy he wanted to lick it, and the green flecks in her hazel eyes shone with peculiar vividness.

  He wished they didn’t have this dinner to get through. He would far rather stay home and see if he could persuade her out of that dress once their own quiet meal was done. It wouldn’t be much longer now, he could tell. They’d come to a place of friendly ease with each other, an ease only disturbed by the way they tensed and shuddered whenever they touched or came close to it. He wanted her, and he could tell she wanted him, too. She tried to hide it, but he knew the signs too well. With her relative inexperience, he doubted she even realized how her breath quickened, her color rose and her light eyes darkened, the black pupils crowding out the golden brown and green irises. It made him wild. Patience, he told himself.

  When Elizabeth reached the bottom of the steps, he caught her hand and brought it to his lips. She smiled, flushed and, rather than immediately drawing away, swayed a little closer to him, so he turned her hand over to press a kiss into her palm.

  “Mm,” she murmured.

  Hang this dinner, if only they could go straight back upstairs and to bed! “You look lovely,” he said. “Green suits you.”

  For once, she didn’t deny the compliment. “Thank you.”

  “We must see about getting you more jewels.” All she wore were the sapphire ring he’d bought her in London and an old-fashioned gold cross pendant she had inherited from his mother.

  “What, so I’d look grander than any other lady in Selyhaugh and put on vain airs?”

  “Why not? You could pay Selina Dryden back in her own coin.”

  Elizabeth chuckled. “It isn’t worth it.”

  “No. But I want to see you in emeralds, and that’s reason enough for me.”

  Her eyes danced. “If that’s how you choose to spend your fortune, I’ll be happy to wear them.”

  Ah, at last she was learning to take pleasures for herself, to enjoy beauty and luxury for their own sakes. A good sign—and an appetite Jack knew how to satisfy. He was less confident in his abilities to provide the steadiness, the security, the constancy he sensed his wife needed. It was one thing to be faithful to his wedding vows from now on—he had undertaken that as a duty, and he was too good a soldier to fall short. But he sensed there was something more she needed, something he was only beginning to grasp. When she’d had a choice, she’d picked Giles, a man with a sweet, patient and gentle nature Jack knew he couldn’t begin to imitate, but he was determined to find the key to making Elizabeth happy whether it came naturally or not. Perhaps emeralds, emeralds and many books, and London, Paris, Rome and Vienna in the bargain would be enough until he could work it out.

  The short ride to the Ildertons’ home in Selyhaugh proper passed almost entirely in silence. Normally Jack felt compelled to fill such quiet with speech, but there was something so restful about Elizabeth’s presence. He enjoyed her conversation, of course, but there was something to be said for knowing that when he did wish to speak, he could talk to her of horses or Canada or books or any number of other things, but that he didn’t need to prove himself amusing or clever or entertaining at every moment. It was another new and unfamiliar departure in his marriage, something he’d never known with anyone else, man or woman, but an entirely comfortable and satisfying one.

  The peace ended once they reached their destination, however. As chance would have it, the Drydens arrived just before them, and as Jack and Elizabeth followed them up the steps, Lady Dryden turned over her shoulder to smile archly. “In the carriage tonight, I see. We’re becoming quite grand, aren’t we, Sir John?”

  As a mere holder of a knighthood, Jack knew his Sir didn’t quite place him on a par with Sir Henry the baronet, who had inherited his honor from his father and would pass it to his eldest son. But Jack sensed Lady Dryden would far rather no other man in Selyhaugh be any kind of a Sir.

  “On the contrary, madam,” he said smoothly. “I would never have dreamed of asking my wife to walk or ride in an open curricle on so cold and wet a night. If that is grandeur, then I have always had it.”

  “Hmph,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath as they handed their wraps to the Ilderton servants. “Our carriage is at least thirty years old. We haven’t changed anything.”

  “Shh,” he whispered in her ear. “And have I mentioned how much you sound like my Uncle Richard whenever you say hmph?”

  She shot him an annoyed look, then grinned. “I suppose I did pick up the habit from him. I miss him. He was an acquired taste, but after the first time or two I always looked forward to his visits.”

  “I miss him, too. I’m glad you’ve picked up the hmph. It keeps his memory alive.”

  “You keep his memory alive. You look just like him.”

  Jack thought of Uncle Richard, fierce with his dark, dark eyes in a sun-lined face, framed by a shock of white hair, and blinked at his wife in speechless dismay.

  “That is, you will look like him in thirty or forty years.”

  “Ah.” That was better, at least so he hoped.

  As they waited outside the parlor door while the Drydens made their entrance, he took advantage of their momentary solitude for further commentary on their fellow guests. “If it troubles Lady Dryden so much merely to be obliged to call me Sir John, what would she do if faced with an actual peer? Would it drive her mad if there were a duke in the neighborhood, or even a mere baron?”

  “Oh, I wish one could be persuaded to purchase an estate near here, simply to see what she’d do. I daresay she’d be obsequious and try to flatter herself into their friendship, so she could go on about her dear friend the duchess as she always does her dear son-in-law in Parliament, the Earl of Roxdale’s second cousin, don’t you know?”

  After that byplay they were smiling and at their ease when they entered the parlor. It was good to gather with his old neighbors again—all of whom, with the exception of Lady Dryden, he’d always got on well with—and to watch Elizabeth gradually emerge from a bashful fit. By the time they entered the dining room, she was laughing with Mrs. Ilderton and her eldest daughter, the vicar’s young wife.

  Dinner was something of a crush since the Ildertons’ dining table barely seated twelve, but the food was excellent, and Jack enjoyed his hour over port with the gentlemen. Sir Henry Dryden was far less obnoxious than his wife, and Jack discussed Europe with old Mr. Branley, who had gone on the Grand Tour as a young man before the French Revolution, and army matters with Mr. Young, who had served briefly in India before illness had obliged him to sell out.

  He wondered whether Elizabeth was finding the company of the ladies likewise congenial and was glad when Mr. Ilderton at last suggested they rejoin them. In the parlor he discovered Elizabeth and Lady Dryden holding what looked to be tiny rival courts, seated on opposite sides of the room. Elizabeth was flanked by Mrs. Ilderton and her daughter, and Lady Dryden by the other two lady guests.

  Jack immediately crossed to his wife’s side, at the far end of the room. His leg had stiffened as it often did when he sat in one position for a long stretch of time, so he was limping more noticeably than he had at the beginning of the evening. He was so accustomed to his new limitations that he thought little of it until he saw Elizabeth’s gaze drop to his leg, then come back up to meet his eyes with a conscious look that ma
naged to combine sympathy for his pain with a promise to rub the leg later, and let the consequences fall where they may.

  He took a place on the sofa beside her, content with the world and his place in it, when Lady Dryden’s voice rang out across the room. “We were so sorry to hear about your dreadful injuries, Sir John, and to see that you are still not entirely healed from them.”

  Somehow she made what ought to be kind words sound like an insult, and Jack felt Elizabeth bristle beside him. “I am as healed as I need to be,” he said smoothly. “I can ride as well as any man and walk almost as well. If I grow tired upon sitting for any length of time, there are worse impediments for a man in an active profession.”

  “Oh, to be sure. But your dancing days are done, and I fear they were rather few to begin with.”

  Was she really still trying, after all these years, to twit him about his first ball and the time he’d asked Harriet to dance? Abruptly Lady Dryden looked small to him. Yes, she had made him and his family unhappy. But he no longer wanted to make her suffer for it. He was the bigger person, with a broader, greater life to live. The best revenge he could imagine was simply to ignore her.

  But not by giving her the cut direct while seated in their neighbors’ parlor. That would give her more importance than she deserved. So he leaned back on the sofa, stretching his aching thigh and brushing it against Elizabeth’s leg in the bargain. “To a man in my profession, and in my time of life, a ball simply isn’t significant.”

  Lady Dryden bristled, as well she might, since her annual Christmas ball was the most elegant entertainment Selyhaugh could offer, and she had always preened herself on the grandeur of the Dryden House ballroom.

  Later, when he and Elizabeth were riding him in the carriage, he explained the revelation he’d had about Lady Dryden’s insignificance.

  “You’re right, of course,” his wife said. “I do wish we weren’t obliged to see so much of her just because our society here is so small.”

  “We needn’t always live only here, after all.”

  “The farm...”

  “Purvis and his sons manage it very well, and you know it.”

  “They do, I suppose. When I first married you, I left everything to them, but your uncle informed me a good officer’s wife must take an interest in all aspects of her husband’s property while she is its caretaker.”

  “No doubt he was right as a general principle, but this officer says that his good wife should trust our tenants who have lived there enough generations to love the land at least as much as we do, and explore the world with me and come with me on any future postings.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  “Good.”

  “What on earth did Lady Dryden mean, though, about your dancing days? Why shouldn’t you have danced as often as any other gentleman?”

  “Oh, she was only reminding me of my first ball. It was her Christmas ball, and despite her sentiments toward my family, I was invited simply to help her make up the numbers of gentlemen. I was sixteen and about to go away with the Forty-Ninth for the first time, so I felt myself a man even though I knew I didn’t look it.”

  “And Lady Dryden or one of her daughters disabused you of that notion?”

  He laughed, for the first time finding himself able to recall that moment without pain. “How did you ever guess? You’d think I would’ve learned, after what happened when my brother tried to court Clara Dryden, but I’d been so young that I hadn’t really understood. In any case, Clara was fond of Ned. It was her mother who put a stop to it. Harriet Dryden was just a year younger than I was, and I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen so many yet, you understand.”

  “Oh, naturally.”

  “She was, of course, several inches taller than I was, and thought herself a fine young lady even at fifteen. I asked her to dance, she laughed in my face and I spent the rest of the ball sulking in a corner. I wish I didn’t remember it like it was yesterday, when it was more than half my life ago.”

  “I remember any number of incidents from when I was fifteen or sixteen with far more clarity than I can recall—not the last month, you’ve made that remarkable enough—but say two or three months ago. I think it’s the nature of being at that age.”

  “Do you have any dreadful memories of balls?”

  “No, because I’ve never been to one. I wasn’t quite out yet, when Father...when my parents died. My dreadful memories are all of hearing the dancing going on next door or across the way, and thinking how I would’ve been invited were it not for what he had done.”

  He reached across to take her hand. “My poor Elizabeth. That settles it. We simply must find a ball for you. And a dancing master, if need be.”

  “Oh, I know how to dance, though I daresay I’ve forgotten some of the steps. I was almost old enough to make my come-out when everything went wrong, after all. Naturally my mother had engaged a dancing master.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. And a ball would be very well, but I couldn’t dance with you.”

  He took her hand. “Never mind that. It would be a pleasure to watch you.”

  Not only did she let him keep her hand, she slid closer to him. He could feel the light pressure of her shoulder against his, and her skirts brushed his leg. “For perhaps a dance or two,” she said, “but then I would understand perfectly if you escaped to the card room with all the other military and naval gentlemen to trade war stories.”

  “Generous woman.”

  The carriage rolled to a halt before Westerby Grange. As Jack handed Elizabeth out, he bent to murmur in her ear, “Perhaps tonight—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, Ben Purvis rushed up to them from the stables. “Oh, thank God you’re home. We’ve been called to my aunt’s deathbed—Father’s older sister, you know—but he thinks Penelope might be near her foaling. One of us can stay with her, of course.”

  “Nonsense, Ben,” Elizabeth said bracingly. “Sir John and I are well able to keep watch in the barn and manage the foaling if need be.”

  “Oh, thank you, ma’am. We’ll see to the carriage and then be off, with your leave.”

  “Of course,” Jack said.

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth murmured. “It wasn’t to put you off.”

  “I know, and we’d be a poor sort of master and mistress if we didn’t give them leave to go.”

  They hurried inside and to their separate rooms to trade their finery for older and warmer attire. Within half an hour they were alone in the bastle barn, seated on the straw in an empty box stall across from Penelope’s.

  For now the mare seemed hale and strong, though restless, so they settled in for a long vigil. Elizabeth had brought an old woolen blanket in addition to the warm pelisse she wore buttoned to her neck, but Jack had only his army greatcoat, and on impulse he draped it around her shoulders and took the blanket for himself.

  She snuggled into the greatcoat, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “It smells of wood smoke.”

  “And so it should. I’ve stood before many a campfire in it, though not all of them fueled by wood. I’m glad you don’t find that it smells of buffalo dung.”

  At that she stopped burying her nose in his coat and wrinkled it instead. “Buffalo dung?”

  “Yes. The Indians of the prairies burn it for the same reason we generally burn coal—wood is too rare and precious to waste on a fire.”

  “I like coal better, though I should like to see a buffalo someday. You hunted them with the...the Sioux, was it? I remember something of the sort from one of your first letters.”

  “If you can call my part in it hunting. I observed and tried not to get in the way. You never saw such riding, and bareback, without stirrups to keep their balance.” He wove a tale of the hunt and the feasting that had followed after, while Elizabeth sat enthralled.

  “The one thing I don’t understand,” she said at the end, “is what you were doing there. T
hat prairie is part of American territory, isn’t it? That they bought from France, oh, ten or twelve years ago.”

  “It is,” he assured her. “Which is why I tried to say so little about it at the time. I wasn’t there officially as a British officer, but in the guise of a trader, trying to see how the Indians were disposed if war came.”

  “And how were they disposed?”

  “Oh, a good number did fight on our side, but I think many of them saw the war as too far from them and their interests. And who knows? Maybe they’re right. The buffalo country is such a desert, all grass with hardly a tree to be found. Perhaps the Americans will leave them in peace.”

  “I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t land that’s good for buffalo be just as good for cattle?”

  Jack sighed. “I suppose it would. I hate watching this happen to men I counted as friends, men I fought alongside, and knowing there isn’t a single thing in the world I can do about it. And I’d love to condemn the Americans for it, but I doubt we’d be behaving any better if the colonies had never revolted. It would be our immigrants and our colonists’ sons hungering for new land, and it would be the growth of our farming and trade to deal falsely with the Indians and take it away from them.”

  “But Bonaparte would never have sold all France’s North American lands to us,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, but that would have been all the more reason to settle every scrap of land up to the Mississippi, to keep the French from attacking us there. Who knows? If there had never been a revolution in America, perhaps there wouldn’t have been one in France, and the last twenty-five years would’ve been a golden age of peace.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “So everything is America’s fault?”

  Jack chuckled, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t go so far as that. It gives them too much credit.”

  They sat silently for a time. Jack checked on the mare, then returned to the vacant stall, this time sitting beside Elizabeth rather than across from her. He had never wanted a woman more, and he could not understand how he had ever thought his wife was plain. So her coloring, size and form were nothing out of the ordinary for an English woman. What of it? Her soft, light brown hair suited her smooth, fair skin, and her changeable hazel eyes were every bit as entrancing as sky-blue or flashing black ones.