by Mary Balogh
“Yesterday,” he said. “A union that was consummated last night,” he added, glad suddenly that it could be said in all honesty. Though he would have been just as married even without the consummation.
“Who is she?” the duke asked.
“She was Miss Charity Duncan, a gentlewoman from Hampshire,” the marquess said. “She earned her living as a governess before marrying me.”
“I suppose,” his father said, “you were seduced by blue eyes and a seductive smile and bold impertinence.”
Seductive? Bold impertinence? His quiet little mouse? His lips twitched but he said nothing. His father would soon realize how far wide of the mark his initial judgment of his daughter-in-law was, though it would not hurt at all if she smiled more often. He turned from the window and looked at the duke, who was seated, as expected, behind his desk—from which vantage point he had dispensed chill justice on servants and children alike for as far back as his son could remember. And no love at all.
“I married her,” he said quietly, “because I chose to, sir. I passed the age of majority seven years ago.”
“You married her,” his grace said, “in defiance of me and in defiance of your upbringing. You have married a woman of shabby gentility and questionable manners. She was very carefully chosen, I daresay.”
“Yes, sir,” his son said, the sense of triumph building in him. “For love.”
It was something he had not intended to claim, something he had never even considered claiming, since love—in any of its manifestations—was an emotion that gave him the shudders. But the idea had occurred to him when she had so shocked his family with a single word and a dazzling smile. It was a good idea. The Dukes of Withingsby and their heirs did not marry for love—especially shabby gentlewomen. The idea that his heir had been indiscreet enough to form a love match would strike his father as the ultimate vulgarity.
“Tillden will be arriving here tomorrow with his countess and his daughter,” the duke said. “They are coming to celebrate the formalizing of a betrothal between Lady Marie Lucas and my eldest son. There is to be a betrothal ball the night after tomorrow. How will you explain yourself to them, Staunton?”
“I believe, sir,” the marquess said, “I have no explaining to do.”
“You were fully aware of the match agreed upon seventeen years ago,” his grace said. “And if you had forgotten, my letter of a couple of weeks ago would have reminded you—the letter you received even before you were acquainted with the present marchioness, I daresay. Tillden may well consider you in breach of contract.”
“If there is a contract in existence,” his son replied coolly, “it does not bear my signature, sir. If the agreement was verbal, it was not ratified by my voice. The contract is not my concern.”
“A young lady who has grown up expecting to be the Duchess of Withingsby one day,” his grace said, “is about to be severely humiliated.”
“I had no part in raising her hopes,” the marquess said. “And I believe you must agree, sir, that this conversation is pointless. I am married. The ceremony has been performed, the register signed and witnessed, and the union consummated.”
His father stared at him coldly and quite expressionlessly. It was a moment of acute triumph for his son, who held his gaze.
“It is to be hoped,” his grace said at last, “that you know how to dress your wife, Staunton. The garments she wore for travel will disappear without trace after today, I trust? It was my distinct impression that my housekeeper mistook her for a maid.”
So that was why she had still been standing just inside the door when he had turned to present her to his father? The marquess smiled inwardly.
“My wife pleases me as she is,” he said. “I care nothing for the clothes she wears.”
“A nonsensical attitude when the appearance of your wife reflects your own position in society,” his grace said. “As she appeared on her arrival, she is hardly fit to occupy a place in the kitchen.”
“As my father and our host,” the marquess said, the stiffness and chilliness of his voice quite at variance with his secret satisfaction, “you have the right to say so, sir. I will, however, be pleased to debate the issue with anyone else who feels obliged to utter similar sentiments.”
What did she have in that small trunk of hers? he wondered.
“You will wish to go upstairs before coming to the drawing room for tea,” the duke said. “You will wish to escort Lady Staunton down. You will not wish to be late. And you will instruct her ladyship on how I am to be addressed, Staunton.”
His son stood looking at him for several moments before moving to the door without another word. He could remember how as a boy he had adored his father, whom he rarely saw, how he had fed off every comment about his own likeness to the duke, how the whole of his boyhood had seemed to be shaped about the desire to please his father, to emulate him, to be a worthy heir to him. All his efforts had gone unnoticed. And yet every failure at a lesson, every episode of boyish mischief, every reported bickering with a younger sibling had brought him to this very room for an interrogation and a lecture, while he had stood before that desk, knowing that at the end of it all there would be the command to bend over the desk for the painful and never brief caning.
He could not count the number of times he had been caned by his father. Neither could he count the number of times his father had shown him affection, since there were no such numbers to count.
He might have forgiven his father’s harshness toward himself—perhaps. But the duke had shown no love to anyone—not even to his wife, who had borne him thirteen children and had miscarried four others. And his grace had expressed only impatience and irritability when his eldest son had tried to persuade him to see his youngest daughter after her birth—and after the duchess’s death.
It had been one of his reasons for leaving home.
He had come to hate his resemblance to his father—the outer resemblance and, more important, the inner resemblance. He had come to hate himself. Until he had freed himself. He was free now. He had come back when summoned, but he had come on his own terms. The Duke of Withingsby no longer had any power over him.
But devil take it, he thought as he took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time, that dome was pressing down on his shoulders again.
THE APARTMENTS HE had occupied from the time he left the nursery until the time he left home had been prepared for him again. They must have been kept for him all this time, he thought. His declaration that he was leaving, never to return, had been disregarded—and indeed, here he was, back again. He had rather expected that the apartments would have been given to William and Claudia. But apparently not. They must be in some lesser apartment.
He found his wife in the private sitting room. She was standing at the window, looking out, though she turned her head as soon as he opened the door. The room, which he had never used, looked strangely cozy and lived-in and feminine, he thought, though nothing had changed in it except for the fact that she was standing there. It was a woman’s room, he realized, or a room that needed a woman’s presence.
It seemed suddenly strange to have a woman—a wife—in these long-familiar rooms.
For the first time since he had known her she was not wearing brown. She had changed into a high-waisted dress of sprigged muslin. It looked somewhat faded from many washings. Her hair was simply styled and knotted behind. It was lighter in color than he had thought at first. She looked, he thought, like someone’s poor relation—a very poor relation. She also looked surprisingly young and pretty. She had a trim figure—a rather enticing figure, as he remembered clearly from his exploration of it the night before.
“The view is magnificent,” she said.
“Yes.” He crossed the room to stand beside her. He had always been somewhat oppressed by the house. In the outdoors he had known freedom—or the illusion of freedom. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the lake, turning it to dull gold. The woods beyond—his boyhood playg
round and enchanted land—were dark and inviting.
“You are very like your father.” She was looking at his profile rather than out the window.
“Yes.” His jaw tightened.
“And you hate being like him,” she said quietly. “I am sorry I stated the obvious.”
He did not like her insights, her attempts to read his character and his mind. He shared himself with no one, ever—not even his closest male friends. She must understand that she was not to be allowed a wife’s privilege of probing into every corner of his life—the very idea was nauseating. She must be reminded that theirs was purely a business arrangement.
“I married you and I brought you here, as you very well know,” he said, turning to look at her—she looked very directly back with those splendid blue eyes of hers, “to prove to his grace that I live my own life my own way. No one is allowed to direct my life for me and no one is invited to intrude on my privacy. I am the Duke of Withingsby’s heir—nothing but my death can change that. But beyond that basic fact, I am my own person. You are the proof I have brought with me that I will not do anything merely because it is expected of the heir to the dukedom.”
“You did not have the courage merely to tell him that?” she asked.
“You, my lady,” he said, “are impertinent.”
She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again without saying anything. She did not look away from him, though. She stared at him with wide eyes. He had the strange feeling that if he looked deeply enough into them he would see her soul. If she kept herself that wide open, he thought in some annoyance, sooner or later life was going to hurt her very badly indeed.
“You played your part well on your arrival,” he said. “You may confidently continue as you began. You need not be embarrassed by your lack of a fashionable wardrobe. And you need not be embarrassed by any lack of conversation—my family is not easy to converse with. We are expected in the drawing room immediately. You may stay close to me and leave the conversation to me. There is no necessity for you to impress anyone.”
She half smiled at him. “Augusta must have been very young when you went away,” she said.
“She was one week old,” he told her. “I stayed for my mother’s funeral.” He had shed no tears for his mother. He had sobbed painfully, the child in his arms, just before he left. The last tears he had shed—the last he would ever shed.
“Ah,” his wife said softly, and he could have sworn that she had slipped inside his head again and knew that he had wept over his last ever contact with love. Over his last foolishness.
He would not have her inside his head—or anywhere inside himself.
“Ours was a brief courtship,” he told her briskly. “You were governess at the home of an acquaintance of mine. I met you there, we fell in love, and we threw all caution to the winds. We married yesterday, mated last night, and are embarking upon a deeply passionate relationship today.”
She blushed and her eyes slipped from his for a few moments. But she looked back at him steadily enough.
“Then, my lord,” she said, “you must learn to smile.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You look,” she said, her eyes roaming over his face, “like a man who has married a stranger with the sole purpose of angering and perhaps disgusting someone else. You look like a man who is wallowing in bitter and unhappy triumph.”
His eyes narrowed. He found himself wondering if one short interview two days before had been sufficient time in which to learn about her character—or what he had thought to be lack of character. But perhaps she had a point, he had to confess.
“You will have your smiles, my lady,” he said. “But below-stairs, where they will be seen by others. We have no need of them when we are alone.”
“No,” she said.
“Take my arm.” He offered it. “We are late. His grace does not tolerate unpunctuality.”
“That is why we have stood here talking instead of going down immediately?” she asked him. There was a look very like merriment in her eyes.
But he merely waited for her to take his arm.
THE DUKE OF Withingsby’s family had moved directly to the drawing room from the hall. Although the fine weather might have tempted some of them out of doors to stroll until it was time for tea, they all felt an unexpressed need to remain together and to be out of the earshot of servants.
“One might have guessed,” Lord William Earheart said, the first to speak after the door had been closed, “that when he so meekly agreed to return to Enfield scarcely more than a week after his grace wrote to him, Staunton would have a trick or two up his sleeve. I would have advised his grace to leave the letter unwritten if my opinion had been sought.”
“Oh, William,” his wife said reproachfully, releasing his arm and setting hers about Augusta’s shoulders, “you would not have. You know you have longed for Anthony’s return as much as anyone.”
“What in thunder are you talking about?” He frowned moodily. “Have you been longing for his return?”
“I cannot believe it,” the Countess of Twynham said, sinking gracefully onto a sofa. “I cannot believe it. How could he? It is one thing to run away to town for a few years—I would imagine it is many a young man’s dream to do so. It is one thing to live wildly there and to gain a reputation as a—” She glanced at Augusta. “Well, it is one thing. It is another thing entirely to marry without his grace’s permission and to bring his bride home here without a word to anyone. Did you see her, Claudia? I would die of humiliation if my maid were seen in such garments.”
Claudia, Lady William, had led Augusta to the window and had sat with her in the window seat. “Perhaps, Marianne,” she said, “they had a trying journey. There was all that rain yesterday, you will remember. Who would wish to wear good clothes in that weather?”
“But who the devil is she?” the Earl of Twynham muttered while busying himself at the sideboard, pouring a glass of brandy while there was still time. No hard liquor was permitted during tea at Enfield. “Did Staunton say? He would have if she had been anyone, you may be sure. It will be a trifle embarrassing when Lady Marie arrives tomorrow, eh?”
“Oh!” Marianne waved a handkerchief in the air as if she were about to succumb to a fit of the vapors, and then pressed it to her nose. “I shall die. And it is too late for his grace to stop her from coming. And Tony knew about her coming. He must have known. How could he do this to us? I cannot believe it. He has married a nobody and brought her here to humiliate us all. And she is a dreadfully vulgar creature, as was plain for all to see.”
Lord William combed his fingers through his hair. “She called his grace Father,” he said and winced. “She had not been in the house five minutes. Can you imagine Lady Marie calling him Father? She would know better. I would not be in his grace’s shoes tomorrow for all the tea in China.”
“But Lady Staunton does have a lovely smile,” Claudia said. “Perhaps we should wait and make her acquaintance before making any hasty judgments. What do you think, Charles?”
Lieutenant Lord Charles Earheart was standing beside her and Augusta, looking out of the window.
“I would not have come home on leave if his grace had not summoned me,” he said. “Not when I knew that Staunton had been invited too. I have no thoughts on his arrival or on the fact that he has brought a wife with him. It is nothing to me.”
If he had intended to speak with cold dignity, he failed miserably. His voice shook with youthful passion. Claudia reached out and touched his hand. He did not pull away, but neither did he turn his head to acknowledge her smile of sympathy.
“And what do you think of your eldest brother, Augusta?” Claudia asked.
“I think his lordship looks very like his grace,” Augusta said. “I think he looks disagreeable. And I think her ladyship is very ugly.”
The Earl of Twynham sniggered while his wife waved her handkerchief before her face again. “ ‘Out of the mouths of babes …’ ” she said
. “You are quite right, Augusta. He looked very disagreeable indeed, as if he were enjoying the whole dreadful scene. And she has no pretense to beauty or anything else either, I daresay. It would not surprise me to learn that Tony had found her in someone’s kitchen—or in someone’s schoolroom more like. One wonders if she is even a gentlewoman. I will find it extremely difficult to be civil to her.”
“His grace will be civil, you may be sure, Marianne,” Lord William said. “And he will expect no less of us. She is Lady Staunton, after all, whoever or whatever she was before Staunton decided to marry her.”
“And she will be the duchess in time,” his sister said in deepest disgust. “She will be the head of this family and will take precedence over Claudia, over me—over all of us. It will be quite insupportable. Twynham and I will come to Enfield very rarely in the future, I daresay. Well, there are ways and ways of being civil, Will. I shall be civil.”
Lord Twynham sniggered again. “One wonders how Withingsby will manage things tomorrow,” he said. “Tillden will not be amused, mark my words. And she already takes precedence over you, Marianne. She is Staunton’s marchioness.”
“We must all be civil today and let tomorrow look after itself,” Claudia said. “Anthony has come home again and he has brought a bride of whom he is fond. He called her my love. Did anyone else hear him? I was touched, I must say.”
Her husband snorted. “The Dukes of Withingsby and their heirs do not marry for any such vulgar reason as love,” he said, “as you know very well, Claudia.”
She flushed and lowered her face to kiss the top of Augusta’s head. Lord William had the grace to flush too, but there was no chance for any more conversation. The doors opened to admit the duke. He crossed the room in the silence that greeted his arrival and took up his stand with his back to the unlit fireplace, his hands at his back.