by Mary Balogh
Tomorrow was his wedding day. Merely another day in his life.
3
TRUE TO HIS PROMISE, LORD ROWLING ARRIVED IN Upper Grosvenor Street in good time the following morning to accompany the groom to the church, where the marquess’s man of business, as the other witness, awaited them. The Marquess of Staunton, to his friend’s fascination, appeared as coolly composed—and as immaculately tailored—as if he were planning a morning stroll along Bond Street.
“You are quite sure about this?” Lord Rowling asked as they prepared to leave the house. “There is nothing I can say to persuade you to change your mind, Tony?”
“Good Lord, no,” the marquess said, placing his hat just so on his head and raising his eyebrows to his servant to indicate that he was ready to proceed out of doors.
The church was not one of London’s most fashionable. It looked gloomy enough to Lord Rowling, as did the street on which it was situated and as did the heavy gray sky overhead. The groom appeared quite unaffected by gloom—or by elation either. He nodded to his man of business and strode without further ado toward the church door. His two companions exchanged glances and followed him.
Inside the church, seated quietly in a shadowed pew at the back, the bride waited. She was dressed as she had been the day before, her bridegroom noticed immediately. She had made no attempt to get herself up in a bride’s frippery. He had not thought to give her money to buy herself new clothes, the marquess thought belatedly—a new dress for today, bride clothes to take with her into her more affluent future. And they were to leave for the country soon after the wedding. There would be no time for shopping. Well, no matter. It would be better to take her exactly as she was.
“Miss Duncan?” He half bowed to her and held out his arm for hers.
“Yes, sir.” She stood up, looked at him briefly, and then lowered her gaze to his arm. She appeared not to know whether she should lay her own along the top of it or link her own through it. He took her hand in his free one and set it on his wrist. He did not pause to present her to Lord Rowling. He was impatient.
“The rector is waiting,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” She glanced to the front of the church.
His mouth felt surprisingly dry and his heartbeat surprisingly unsteady. She was a total stranger. She was about to become his wife. For the rest of a lifetime. For a moment his mind touched upon the notion that he might live to regret this day. But he suppressed the thought, as he had done when he had awoken soon after dawn and again while he had breakfasted. He despised last-minute nerves. He led his bride forward.
Without all the pomp and ceremony that had accompanied every society wedding he had ever attended, the nuptial service was really quite short and unremarkable, he found. The rector spoke, he spoke, she spoke, Rowling handed him a ring, which he placed on her finger, and he found that it was too late to wonder if he would regret the day. Miss Charity Duncan no longer existed by that name. She was his wife. His first feeling was one of relief. He bent his head and briefly placed his closed lips close to the corner of her mouth. Her skin was cool.
The rector was congratulating them then with hearty good humor, his man of business was doing his best to look festive, and Rowling was smiling and being charming. There was the register still to sign.
“My very best wishes to you, Lady Staunton,” Rowling said, taking one of her hands in both of his and smiling warmly at her.
“Wh-what?” she asked.
“You are unaccustomed to the sound of your own new name,” he said, raising her hand to his lips. “My best wishes for your felicity, ma’am.”
“You are Charity Earheart,” the marquess explained to her, “Marchioness of Staunton.”
“Oh,” she said, looking full at him with wide and startled eyes—and this time he really did take a step back. “Are you a marquess?”
“Staunton, at your service, my lady,” he said. He really should have given greater consideration to those eyes yesterday. But it was too late now. “May I present Lord Rowling?”
It was raining when they came out of the church—a chilling drizzle oozed downward out of a gray and dreary sky.
“A good omen,” Rowling said with a laugh. “The best marriages always proceed from wet wedding days, my grandmother is fond of saying. I believe she married my grandfather during a thunderstorm and they enjoyed forty happy years together.”
But no one seemed prepared to share his hearty optimism. The Marquess of Staunton hurried his silent bride toward his carriage. There was breakfast to take with their two wedding guests, his wife’s trunks to collect from her lodgings, and a journey to begin. He had written to his father to expect him tomorrow. He had not mentioned that he would be bringing a wife.
He seated himself beside her in the carriage, lifted her hand to his wrist again, and held it there with his free hand while the other two men seated themselves opposite. He felt almost sorry for her—a strange fact when he had just ensured her a future infinitely preferable to what she could have expected as a governess. Besides, he was unaccustomed to entertaining sympathetic feelings for anyone. For the first time it struck him as strange that no one had accompanied her to her wedding. Was she so totally without friends?
The leather of her glove was paper thin on the inside of the thumb, he noticed. There was going to be a hole there very soon.
He was a married man. The stranger whose gloved hand rested lightly on his wrist was his wife, his marchioness. There was a strange unreality to the moment. And a stark reality too.
SHE WAS A married lady. She had walked to that quiet, rather gloomy church this morning, gone inside as herself, as Charity Duncan, and come out again a mere half hour later as someone different, as someone with another name. Everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again. She was Charity Earheart, the …
She turned her head to look at the taciturn man beside her on the carriage seat. He had not spoken a word since his footman had carried out her small trunk from Philip’s lodgings—the carriage had appeared to fill the whole street and had attracted considerable attention—and he had asked her in seeming surprise if there was nothing else.
“No, sir,” she had said and had thought that probably she should have called him my lord.
She was … She felt very foolish. And he must have felt her eyes upon him. He turned his head to look at her. His eyes were very dark, she thought. They were almost black. And quite opaque. She had the peculiar feeling that a heavy curtain or perhaps even a steel door had been dropped just behind his eyes so that no one would ever be able to peep into his soul.
“I am—who?” she asked him. She could not for the life of her remember. “You are the Marquess of What?”
“Staunton,” he said. He had an aquiline nose, rather thin lips. One lock of very dark hair had fallen across his brow above his right eye and curled there like an upside-down question mark. “Eldest son of the Duke of Withingsby. His heir, my lady. We travel to Enfield Park, his seat in Wiltshire, so that you may be properly presented to him.”
He really was a marquess. Lord Rowling had not been teasing her. He was not after all plain Mr. Earheart. But of course his servants had called him my lord and had called her my lady. And he was the son and heir of a duke. The Duke of Withingsby. He would be a duke himself one day. She would be … No, she would not. Not really.
“Why would you marry without your father’s knowledge?” she asked. “And why me? I am a gentleman’s daughter, but one would expect a future duke to look for somewhat higher qualifications than that in a wife.”
His smile was rather unpleasant, she thought, despite the fact that it revealed very white teeth. But the smile in no way touched his eyes. “Perhaps, my lady,” he said, “that is just the point.”
He had married her to spite someone? His father?
“Do you and your father have a quarrel with each other?” she asked.
He continued to smile—with his lips. “Shall we say,” he said, “that the mo
re displeased his grace proves to be, the more gratified I shall be?”
She understood immediately. She would have had to be stupid not to. “So I am a mere pawn in a game,” she said.
His smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. “A very well-paid pawn, my lady,” he said. “And one who will be titled for the rest of her life.”
It was as well, she thought, that they were to remain together for only a few weeks—just until she had given the Duke of Withingsby a thorough disgust of herself, she supposed. She did not believe she could possibly like this man. What sort of man married a stranger merely to displease his father?
Not that she had any cause for moral outrage, of course. She had accepted the offer he had made yesterday—gracious, was it really only yesterday?—without demanding to know anything about the man beyond the fact that he had the means to keep the promises he made her. She had married him for those promises. She was the sort of woman who would marry a stranger for money. It was an uncomfortable admission to make, even—or perhaps especially—to oneself.
It would be very difficult for this man to become anything but a stranger, she thought, even though she was apparently to spend a few weeks in his company. Those eyes! They had no depth whatsoever. They proclaimed him to be a man who chose not to be known, a man who cared nothing for the good opinion of others. They almost frightened her.
“Was it not rather drastic,” she asked him, “to marry beneath you merely to score a point in a game? Would not the quarrel have blown over in a short while as quarrels usually do?” She should know. She had grown up in a household with five brothers and sisters.
“Perhaps my father and I should have kissed and made up instead?” he said. “You may spare such shallow observations on life for your pupils, my lady. Though of course there will be no more of them, will there?”
Charity was hurt. Shallow? As the eldest she had learned early to understand others, to identify with them, to be a mediator, a peacemaker. What a thoroughly unpleasant man he was, she thought, to speak with such contempt to a lady—and again she was jolted by the realization that he was her husband. She had promised him obedience. For the rest of her life, even after these few weeks were over and she was back home with the children, she would not really be free. Any time he chose he could demand anything he wished of her. But no, that was a foolish worry. He would be as glad as she to sever all but the unseverable tie that bound them.
“I would have thought,” she said after a couple of minutes of silence, “that a man who expects to be a duke one day would have wished to produce some heirs of his own.” Even as she spoke she wished she could simply stop and bite down hard on her tongue. She felt as if her cheeks had burst into flames. She had been trying to understand clearly his motives for marrying her—and had unfortunately thought aloud.
“Indeed, my lady?” The tenor lightness of his voice did not at all match his dark, satanic looks, she thought. At the moment it was quite soft—but deadly cold. “Are you volunteering your services?”
She found herself desperately and deliberately wondering if he had tied the intricate knot of his neckcloth himself or if his valet had done it for him. She lowered her eyes to it. She had lain awake last night wondering, among other things, if … His words now seemed to indicate that he had not intended that to be one of her duties during the coming weeks.
“You are my wife.” His voice was still soft and pleasant—and seemingly chiseled out of the ice of the North Pole.
“Yes, sir.” She knew very well that his valet must have helped him into his coat. He could never have shrugged into it himself. It fit him like a second skin and displayed admirably the breadth of his shoulders. She wondered if the famous and very expensive Weston was his tailor.
“We are going to have to stop early,” he said, looking past her to the window and narrowing his eyes again. “Confound it, it is raining again and heavily too.”
She found the rain a welcome relief from the direction the conversation had taken. It was something—one of about a hundred questions—she ought to have asked yesterday before agreeing to anything, certainly before signing any papers. But she had not thought of it until much later, until she was sitting at home darning Philip’s stockings, in fact. But then she could hardly have asked the question anyway—“Do you intend to bed me, sir?” The very thought of asking such a thing aloud could turn her alternately hot and cold.
He was very handsome and even rather alarmingly attractive. He was also quite unpleasant. Quite undesirable as either a husband or a l—or a lover.
If it did not happen, of course—and fortunately it seemed very unlikely that it would—then she would go through life without ever knowing what it felt like to be fully a wife. She would never have children of her own. It was something she had fully expected for a long time—certainly since Papa’s death and her understanding of the family’s poverty. It was also something that seemed even more depressing now that there was no doubt at all, now that there was no hope … She would have liked to know … She thought she knew what happened, but knowing such a thing and experiencing it were vastly different things, she supposed. But the trend of her thoughts distressed her. They were not the thoughts of a proper lady.
The rain became first heavy and then heavier and finally torrential. The road became a light brown sea of mud, and it was impossible to see more than a few yards from the windows of the carriage. After fifteen minutes of very slow progress and some alarming slithering, the carriage turned into the cobbled yard of a wayside inn that was not at all the sort of establishment one might expect the Marquess of Staunton, heir to a dukedom, to patronize. At least, that was what his disdainful expression told Charity as they waited for the door to be opened and the steps to be set down.
She thought of what Lord Rowling had said of rainy wedding days. If he was correct, theirs should be the most blissful marriage in the history of the world. She smiled rather ruefully to herself.
She was hurried inside the dark, low-ceilinged taproom of the inn beneath a large black umbrella that the marquess held over her head. She stood shaking the water from the hem of her dress and cloak while he talked with the innkeeper, an enormous man who looked more irritated than delighted at the unexpected business the rain was bringing to his inn.
“Come,” her husband said finally, turning back to her and gesturing her toward the steep wooden staircase up which the innkeeper was disappearing. “It seems that the inclement weather has made this a popular hostel. We are fortunate to have arrived in time to take the last empty room.”
It was not a large room. The ceiling sloped steeply down fully half of it. One small window looked down upon the inn-yard. There was a washstand and a small table and chair. There was really no room for any other furniture, for the rest of the room was dominated by the large bed.
“You may leave us.” The marquess nodded curtly to the innkeeper, who withdrew without a word. “Well, my lady, this will have to substitute for the suite of rooms I have reserved at a posting inn fully twenty miles farther along the road. We must dine in the public dining room and trust that the fare will be tolerably edible.”
The bed was like an extra person in the room, unavoidably visible, embarrassingly silent.
“I am sure it will be, sir,” she said, tossing her bonnet and her gloves onto the bed with what she hoped was convincing nonchalance.
“You will wish to freshen up and perhaps even to lie down for a short while before dinner,” he said. “I shall leave you, my lady, and do myself the honor of returning to escort you to the dining room.”
She had no idea where he would go in such a shabby little inn. To the taproom, probably, to imbibe inferior ale. Doubtless his jaded palate would object quite violently. But she did not really care. She was too busy feeling relieved that at least for the moment she was to be alone in this horribly embarrassing chamber. She had never before thought of a bed as an almost animate thing. She had always thought of beds as merely pieces of furniture u
pon which one slept. But then she had never before stood in a bedchamber with any gentleman other than her father or her brothers. She had never had to contemplate spending a night in a bedchamber—and in the same bed—with a gentleman.
But she was married to this particular gentleman, she reminded herself, lying down on the bed—it was decidedly hard and rather lumpy, though it appeared to be reasonably clean—after removing her shoes and her hairpins. Philip would be thinking about her all through the day, imagining her getting to know Mr. and Mrs. Earheart, her new employers, and their three children. He would be hoping that they continued pleasant and that the children were not taxing her energies too much during the journey. He would be looking uneasily out at the rain, worried for her safety. He would be waiting for her first letter.
What would he be thinking, she wondered, if he knew that she had been wed during the morning, that she was now Charity Earheart, Marchioness of Staunton, one day to be the Duchess of Withingsby? That during the coming weeks she was to be used as a pawn in a foolish quarrel between the marquess and the duke, his father. That after that she would be a lady of substance with six thousand a year in addition to a home and servants and a carriage. Papa had never kept his own carriage. They had only ever had Polly as a servant and she had stayed for the last ten years or so only because she considered herself one of the family and had nowhere else to go.
Oh, Phil, she thought, closing her eyes. He would be able to have their own home to himself. He would be able to take Agnes there, and they could begin their own family. Without the burden of Papa’s debts and the necessity of supporting and providing for all the children, he would be able to manage very well as a country gentleman.
Oh, Penny. How was she managing at home alone, without either Phil’s help or her own? Penny was just twenty. And pretty and sweet-natured. She should be thinking of beaux and of marriage. Were the children all well? Did they have enough to eat? Did they all have sufficient clothes? Were they missing her as dreadfully as she was missing them?