by Mary Balogh
“Though of course,” she added, “the houseguests are expected tomorrow afternoon. You must come in the morning, then, unless you are a late riser. I daresay you are not, though, if you are accustomed to presiding over a schoolroom.” Her words were spoken without any apparent contempt.
The houseguests—yes. The duke had spoken of them at dinner. The Earl and Countess of Tillden and their daughter were coming. It surprised Charity that guests were expected when the duke was clearly ill and it had been his failing health that had caused him to summon her husband home. But perhaps the earl and his family were close friends. Somehow it was difficult to think of the Duke of Withingsby as having close friends.
Certainly the advent of guests would add to her own awkward position. She had no experience with anyone more illustrious than Sir Humphrey Loring. And she had so few clothes, and nothing at all suitable for such company. But she would not allow herself to panic. That was the whole point, after all, was it not? She had been brought here in order to be an embarrassment.
“Lady Staunton,” Marianne said loudly when the gentlemen had joined them in the drawing room, “do please favor us with a rendering on the pianoforte. I will not insult you by asking if you play. Teaching the instrument must have been one of your duties as a governess.”
“Yes, indeed,” Charity said, getting to her feet. “And I had the best of teachers too, Marianne. My mother taught me.”
The pianoforte was a magnificent instrument. Charity had been itching to play it ever since teatime. She sat and played, aware as she did so that the duke stood before the fireplace. Marianne began to converse and laugh with her brothers and sister-in-law, Lord Twynham settled low on a sofa for an after-dinner nap, and the marquess stood behind the pianoforte bench.
“Wonderful, my love,” he said when she was finished, smiling into her eyes and taking her hand to raise to his lips. “Will you not play again—for me?”
“Not tonight, Anthony,” she said, leaning slightly toward him and looking into his eyes with warm affection before he released her hand—she had not really expected when she had agreed to all this that she would be called upon to playact. It felt disturbingly dishonest. But something else had been bothering her. She got to her feet and crossed the room to the fireplace. She hesitated for a moment—the Duke of Withingsby was a very formidable gentleman. It would be so easy to fall into the habit of cowering before him. And it was not part of her agreement to do anything more than be her husband’s shadow. But she would not cower. She slipped her arm through his and smiled as his eyes came to hers in open amazement.
“Father,” she said, “will you not have a seat? You look very tired. Shall I ring for the tea tray and pour you a cup of tea?” He looked downright ill. He looked as if he held himself upright by sheer effort of will.
A strange hush fell on the room. Even breathing seemed to have been suspended.
“Thank you for your concern, my lady,” his grace said after what seemed to be an interminable silence, “but I stand by choice. And I do not drink tea in the evening.”
“Oh.” She seemed to be stranded now, holding on to his arm with nothing further to do or say and with nowhere to go. “Then I shall stand here with you for a short while. The paintings in this room are all landscapes. Are there any portraits elsewhere? Family portraits?”
“There is a gallery,” his grace said while everyone else continued to listen with apparently bated breath. “With family portraits, yes. It will be my pleasure to escort you there tomorrow morning, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I should like that. Is there one of you? And of—of Anthony?”
He pursed his lips and reminded her even more of her husband. And then he told her of the family portrait that had been painted only two years before her grace’s passing. He spoke of some older family portraits, including two by Van Dyck, one by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
His hand, Charity noticed, was long-fingered and well manicured, like his son’s hands. It was also parchment white, the skin thinly stretched over the blue veins. He had not lied in order to lure his son home, she thought. He was ailing. She felt sad for him. She wondered if he was capable of love. She wondered if he had loved his wife. She wondered if he loved his children, if he loved her husband.
And she reminded herself that she was not interested in this family, that she was here merely to act out a charade, merely to earn her future with her own family. She wanted as little as possible to do with this strange, cold, lonely man and with his silent, morose, troubled family. And with his son, whom she had married just the day before and with whom she had lain last night. Her husband. Her temporary husband.
It had been an odd, disturbing day. She was glad it was almost at an end.
8
THE MARQUESS OF STAUNTON HAD WOKEN AT DAWN and found himself unable to sleep again even though it had taken him a long time to get to sleep the night before. He had lain down and stared upward in the near-darkness at the familiar pattern of the canopy above his bed. He had stood at the window gazing out at moonlit darkness, his fingernails drumming on the windowsill. There had been a sheen of moonlight across the lake.
He had felt restless. His brain had teemed with jumbled memories of the day—his father’s gray complexion, Charles’s transformation from an awkward boy to a tall, self-assured young man, Claudia’s mature beauty, William’s reticence, Augusta’s formality, Marianne’s affectionate treatment of himself, his wife seated behind the tea tray at teatime, his wife making conversation with Twynham and Will at dinner, his wife playing the pianoforte very precisely and skillfully, his wife with her arm linked through the duke’s, smiling at him and forcing him into conversation.
He had smiled himself at that last memory. His grace hated to be touched. He never smiled or was smiled at. No one ever initiated conversation with him. And of course no one ever called him Father.
She was quite perfect. She was far better than the quiet mouse he had thought would do the trick. As a mouse she would merely have been despised. She would not have disturbed the atmosphere of the house. As she was, she was causing alarm and outrage. Doubtless the very, very correct Duke of Withingsby and his offspring thought her vulgar. She was not, but in their world spontaneity was synonymous with vulgarity. And she was his wife, the future duchess. The knowledge would gall them beyond bearing.
And he had understood, standing there at the window, one definite reason for his insomnia. She was in the next room, only their two dressing rooms separating them. She was his wife. The night before he had consummated their marriage and she had responded with flattering passion. He would not at all mind repeating the experience, he had realized in some surprise—he really did not think of her as desirable.
He had gone back to bed and lain awake for some time longer, remembering the smell of her hair. It was strange how a smell—or the absence of a smell—could keep one awake. And soap! He had never found even the most expensive of perfumes particularly alluring. He could remember breathing in the smell of her hair very deliberately as his body had pumped into hers, and enhancing his own sexual pleasure with the sense of smell.
There had been definite pleasure, not just physical release.
At dawn he was awake again and could not get back to sleep. The sky looked bright beyond the curtains at his windows. There was a chorus of birdsong in progress. It was an aspect of country living he had forgotten. He threw back the bedclothes impatiently. He would go for a ride, blow away some cobwebs, rid himself of the feeling of oppression the house brought to him.
But when he stepped through the front doors some minutes later, on his way to the stables, he stopped short at the top of the marble steps. On the terrace below him stood his little brown mouse, her head turned back over her shoulder to look up at him. She was up and dressed and outside at only a little past dawn?
“Good morning, my lady,” he said, amazed that he could have lain awake last night wanting this drab creature—even her eyes were shadowed by the br
im of her brown bonnet.
“I could not sleep,” she said. “The birds and the sunshine were in conspiracy against me. I have been standing here undecided whether to walk to the lake or up onto the hill.”
“Try the hill,” he suggested. “A picturesque walk has been laid out there and will lead you to several panoramic views over the park and estate and surrounding countryside.”
“Then I will go that way,” she said.
He tapped his riding crop against his boots, undecided himself for a few moments. “Perhaps,” he said abruptly, “you will permit me to accompany you?”
“Of course.” She half smiled at him.
He walked beside her, his arms at his sides. She clasped hers behind her. She walked with rather long strides, he noticed, as if perhaps she was used to the countryside. But she walked gracefully too. What had life with her father been like? How long ago had her mother died? Was she dreadfully lonely? Had the father been quite unable to make provision for her, even knowing that his estate had been entailed on a male relative? Had the relative been unwilling to provide for her? Did she miss her home and the countryside and the life of a lady? Had there been love in her home? Had there been love outside it—had there been a man she had had to leave behind in order to work as a governess? He was glad when she spoke and made him aware of the direction of his thoughts. He had no wish to feel curiosity about her or to know anything about her beyond what was necessary for his purposes.
“Your father really is ill,” she said. “Have you discovered what is wrong with him and how serious it is?”
He had spoken briefly with Marianne in the drawing room last evening. “It is his heart,” he said. “He has had a few mild attacks during the past few months. The physician has warned him that another could be fatal. He has advised almost constant bed rest.”
“I believe,” she said, “that your father finds it difficult to accept advice.”
“That,” he said, “would probably be the understatement of the decade.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “he would listen to you if you spoke with him. Perhaps he invited you home with the hope that you would speak, that you would lift the burdens of his position from his shoulders.”
He laughed, entirely without humor, and her head turned in his direction.
“Do you love him?” she asked quietly.
He laughed again. “That is a foolish question, my lady,” he said. “I broke off all communication with him for eight years. During those years I deliberately made myself into everything he would abhor. I lived recklessly, I involved myself in business and investments, I made a fortune independently of the land, and I became—”
“A rake.” She completed the sentence for him when he hesitated.
“I freed myself,” he said, “from him and from all this. When I returned, I came as myself, on my own terms. No, I do not love him. There is nothing to love. And I am incapable of love even if there were. You were perfectly correct yesterday when you commented on my likeness to my father.”
“Why did he ask you to come back here?” she asked.
“With the intention of asserting his dominance over me once more,” he said. “With the intention of making me into the person he had planned for me to be since birth so that I might be worthy of carrying on the traditions he has so meticulously upheld.”
“And perhaps,” she said, “so that he might see his son again before he dies.”
“Tell me, my lady,” he said, his voice testy, “do you read romantical novels? Sentimental drivel? Do you picture to yourself an affecting deathbed scene in which father and son, drenched in tears, the rest of the family sobbing quietly in the background, are finally reconciled? Finally declare their love for each other? Promise to meet in heaven? Pardon and Peace—the book might be called that. Or The Prodigal Son, though that title has already been spoken for, I believe?”
“But not in a sentimental novel,” she said. “In the Bible, my lord.”
“Ah. Touché,” he said.
She smiled softly at him and said no more. He was agitated. Her silence had deprived him of the opportunity to work off his irritation on her. They had reached the rhododendron grove and the graveled path began to climb. Soon it would turn and they would reach the little Greek folly, from which there was an uninterrupted view down over the house and the lake beyond it.
Perhaps it was time she knew the full truth behind their marriage. “His grace summoned me home in order to marry me to the bride he chose for me seventeen years ago,” he said and felt a sense of almost vicious satisfaction when her head jerked around so that she could gaze at him. “A dynastic marriage, you will understand, ma’am. The lady is the daughter of the Earl of Tillden, a nobleman of ancient lineage and vast properties, a man as high in the instep as Withingsby himself.”
Her eyes widened—he could see them clearly now even beneath the brim of her bonnet. “They are the visitors expected here this afternoon,” she said.
He smiled. “I was expected to come home and to conduct a very brief courtship of Lady Marie Lucas, to celebrate my betrothal to her at a ball planned for tomorrow evening, and to marry her before summer is out,” he said. “I was expected then to do my duty by getting my heirs and my daughters on her annually for the next twenty years or so. The Duchesses of Withingsby are chosen young, you see, so that there are sufficient fertile years ahead of them. It is a pity, after all, to waste such impeccable lineage on a mere couple or so of children, is it not?”
She had stopped walking. They stood facing each other. “And so you advertised for a governess and offered your chosen candidate marriage,” she said. “What a splendid joke.” She did not sound amused.
“I thought so,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “I still think so. The guests will arrive this afternoon, my lady, unaware that they come in vain.”
Her eyes searched his and he felt the familiar urge to take a step back. He did not do so. There was something unfamiliar in her eyes—anger? Contempt? He raised one eyebrow.
“I believe, my lord,” she said, “you were less than honest with me. I did not know I was to be used as an instrument of cruelty. I believe I might have rejected your offer had I known.”
“Cruelty?” he said.
“How old is she?” she asked.
“Seventeen,” he said.
“And she is coming here today for her betrothal,” she said. “But she will find you already married—to me. To a woman who is older than herself and by far her social inferior. Oh, yes, my lord, you are to be congratulated. It was a diabolical plot and is working very nicely indeed.”
Her quiet contempt goaded him. How dared she!
“It seems to me, my lady,” he said, “that you were ready enough to take my money and enrich yourself for a lifetime. You asked precious few questions about what would be required of you as my wife. The only question that seemed to concern you was my ability to fulfill my financial commitment to you. You forced up my price. You insisted upon an extra clause that ensured a continuation of your annual allowance in the event that I predecease you. And are you now to preach morality to me?”
Her chin jerked upward and she continued to look at him, but she flushed deeply.
“I have never made any promise to Lady Marie Lucas,” he said. “I have never had the smallest intention of marrying her.”
“But it did not occur to you to write to your father explaining this,” she said, “telling him firmly that it would not do and that he must inform the Earl of Tillden of your decision. Instead you married me and brought me here to embarrass and humiliate them all.”
“Yes,” he said curtly, thoroughly irritated with the way she was making him feel guilty. He had no reason for guilt. His life was his own. He had made that clear eight years ago, and if the message had not been taken, then he was making it crystal clear now.
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but she closed it again and turned to walk on. He fell into step beside her. “Perhaps,” she said at las
t, “she has had a fortunate escape, poor girl. One would not wish an innocent child of seventeen on you.”
“You, of course,” he said, “are far better able to handle me.”
“I do not have to,” she said. “When may I leave? After today’s humiliation is complete?”
“No,” he said. “I will need you for a while yet.” He must stay here for a while yet. There would be no real need to do so after today. He could return to his life in town and feel assured that his family would never trouble him again. But having come back, he knew he could not go again so soon or so easily. His father was ill, probably dying. William and Charles were his brothers. Marianne and Augusta were his sisters. Having seen them again, he felt the burden of the relationships again. And one day—perhaps soon—he would be head of the family. No, something had to be settled before he left Enfield—and before he could set his wife free. He was not sure what he meant by a settlement—not at all sure.
They walked onward in silence until she noticed the folly and stopped again.
“Walk around to the front,” he told her. “There is a splendid view. There is even a seat inside the pavilion if you wish to sit for a while.”
She did as he suggested though she did not sit. She stood for a long while in front of the folly, looking down at the house and beyond it. The scene was at its best, bathed in early-morning sunshine. If they had heard a chorus of birdsong from the house, there were whole vast choirs of them at work here.
“It will all be yours,” she said after a lengthy silence. She seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. “Yet you do not feel the need to pass it on to a son of your own.”
He turned his head sharply to look at her. She stood with a very straight back and lifted chin. Such a proud, erect posture was characteristic of her, he realized. Dressed differently, she would look like a duchess. And dressed differently, she would look beautiful. It was a jolting thought. Not that dress created beauty, of course—it merely enhanced it. But he was already familiar enough with her face to admit—reluctantly—that it possessed far more beauty than he had thought at first. She had been wearing a careful disguise of nonentity when she came to her interview on Upper Grosvenor Street. Only the eyes had almost given her away, and she had been clever enough to keep them hidden most of the time.