by Mary Balogh
“Perhaps,” he said, his eyes narrowing on her, “it is what you hope for, ma’am. Perhaps you would like to emulate my mother with seventeen pregnancies during the next twenty years. I might be persuaded to comply with your wishes. My own part in such an undertaking would, after all, be slight—and not by any means unpleasurable.”
“I would be a fool,” she said quietly, “to want a relationship of any extended duration with you, my lord. You are not a pleasant man. The only reason I endure you at all is that I cling to the belief that somewhere behind your very carefully shuttered eyes is a person who perhaps would be likable if he would only allow himself to be seen. And there is nothing so very horrifying about large families. They happen. The agony of losses in childbirth or infancy is often offset by the great happiness of family closeness and love.”
“Something you would know a great deal about,” he said. He heard the sneer in his voice at the same moment as he saw the tears spring to her eyes. She had no one. Even her parents were dead, and she was only three-and-twenty.
“I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “Please forgive me. The words were spoken heedlessly and hurt you.”
When she looked at him, her eyes were still large with tears. How could he ever have convinced himself that she was plain? he thought. But irritation saved him from feeling more discomfort. Damn it all, but she was becoming a person to him. A person with feelings. He did not want to have to cope with someone else’s feelings. When, for God’s sake, was the last time he had apologized to anyone? Or felt so wretchedly in the wrong?
“You have a father,” she said, “and brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces. They are all here with you now. Perhaps tomorrow or next month or next year they will all be gone. Perhaps you will be separated from them and it will not be easy or even possible to be with them again. Pride and other causes I know nothing of have kept you from them for eight years. You have been given another chance. Life does not offer unlimited chances.”
Lord. Good Lord! Deuce and the devil take it! He had married a preacher. One with large, soulful blue eyes that he would fall into headlong and drown in if he did not watch himself.
An avalanche of leaves cascading downward over his hat and into his face broke his train of thought. He was aware of his wife waving them away from her own face and exclaiming in surprise. There was the sound of muffled giggles. Well. He and Will had done the same thing once with gravel and had been soundly spanked for it, the two of them, by the head gardener, who had soothed their pain when he was finished by promising not to report them to his grace.
His wife was looking upward, her head tipped right back. “It must be autumn,” she said with loud and exaggerated surprise in her voice and in her expression, “and all the leaves are falling off the trees. I believe if you raise your cane, my lord, and swish it through the lower branches, you will dislodge more of them.”
More smothered giggles.
“It is not autumn, my lady,” he said, “but elves. If I poke them with my cane, they are like to fall out of the tree and break their heads. Perhaps I should give them a chance to come down on their own.”
The giggles became open laughter and one small boy dropped onto the driveway in front of them. He was dirty and untidy and rosy with glee.
“We saw you coming, Aunt Charity,” he said, “and lay in ambush.”
“And we walked into the trap quite unsuspecting,” she said. She looked up again. “Are you stuck, Harry?”
Harry was. It seemed that he was marvelously intrepid about climbing trees but found it quite impossible to descend again—or so his brother claimed. The marquess reached up and lifted him down. He was quite as dirty as the other child. He was also blond and green-eyed and scarcely past babyhood. He was just as his own son might have looked, the marquess thought, if he had married …
“You may make your bows to your Uncle Anthony,” his wife was saying. “These two elves are Anthony and Harry, my lord.”
“I was named for you, sir,” the elder boy said. “Papa told me so.”
Ah. He had not known that. So these were the two children they had produced, Will and Claudia.
“I am going to tell Mama that you are coming,” Anthony said, taking to his heels.
“And I am going to tell Papa. You are not to tell first, Tony.” Harry went tearing along behind. He would not catch up, of course. Younger brothers never did. Until they grew up and could use stealth and deceit.
“We must be close to the dower house.” His wife smiled at him.
“We are.” And Will must be at home. “Take my arm. We are supposed to be in love, after all.”
“You must smile, then,” she reminded him.
“I shall smile,” he promised grimly.
HE NOT ONLY smiled. He slid an arm about her waist and drew her closer to his side as they approached the house through neatly laid-out parterre gardens. But his arm, she could feel, was not relaxed. Neither were the smiles on the faces of Claudia and William, who had come out of the house to meet them. The little boys came dashing out ahead of them.
But at least they were smiling. They were all smiling.
“Charity,” Claudia said, “I am so glad you came. And you brought Anthony. How delightful.”
“Anthony?” William inclined his head. “My la—” He looked acutely embarrassed. “Charity. Welcome to our home.”
There was something, Charity thought. Something very powerful. It was not just that he had offended them by going off eight years ago. They had married one month before he left. One month before Augusta’s birth, before the duchess’s death. Claudia was very beautiful. William and his elder brother were very close in age. Had her husband loved Claudia too?
“Thank you,” she said. “It is very splendid. In fact yesterday when we were arriving, I mistook it for Enfield Park itself and was marvelously impressed.”
They all joined in her laughter—all of them. She had never heard her husband laugh before. He was looking down at her—He should be on the stage, she thought—with warm tenderness in his eyes.
“You neglected to tell me that yesterday, my love,” he said.
“You would have laughed at me,” she said, “and I cannot abide being laughed at. Besides, I could not speak at all. I had my teeth clamped together so that they would not chatter. You would not believe how nervous I was.”
“With me by your side?”
Her stomach performed a strange flip-flop. On the stage he would draw a dozen curtain calls for each performance.
“You were just as nervous,” she said. “Confess, Anthony.” She turned her face from him and smiled sunnily at the other two adults. “But the ordeal of yesterday is over and we may relax in congenial company—until this afternoon, that is. Your Anthony and Harry mounted a very successful ambush on us out on the driveway. We were showered with leaves. We had no chance at all to take cover.”
“I will not ask if they were up in a tree,” William said dryly. “There is a strict rule in this family that no tree is to be climbed unless an adult is within sight.”
“There was an adult within sight,” the marquess said. “Two, in fact. So no rule was broken.”
“Uncle Anthony had to lift Harry down,” Anthony said.
“Hence the rule,” his father added. “Harry would find a whole day spent in the branches of a tree somewhat tedious, I do not doubt.”
And so, Charity thought, they had established an atmosphere of near-relaxation through some pleasant and meaningless chitchat. But preliminaries had clearly come to an end.
“Charity.” Claudia stepped forward to take her arm. “Do come inside. I plan to tempt you. But perhaps we should consult Anthony first. We never go to town, a fact about which I make no complaint at all. But I do like fashionable clothes and it pleases William to see me well dressed—or so he declares when I twist his arm sufficiently. And so twice a year he brings a modiste from town down here to stay for a week or so with her two seamstresses. They are here now a
nd I am trying my very best not to cost William a fortune. It has occurred to me that since the two of you married in such a hurry that you had no time to shop for bride clothes, you might wish to make use of her services too.”
“Oh.” Charity flushed and was afraid to turn her head in her husband’s direction. The poverty of her wardrobe was very deliberate on his part. But was there any more to be proved by it now?
“I am to be saved after all, then,” he said, “from the faux pas of having been so besotted and so much in a hurry to wed that I forgot I was bringing my wife directly from the schoolroom to Enfield? It is no excuse, is it, to protest that to me Charity would look beautiful dressed in a sack. Clearly his grace would disagree. Will you have clothes made, my love? For all possible occasions? However many you wish?”
Poor Anthony. He had been given very little choice. Charity could not resist looking at him and smiling impishly. “You may be sorry for offering me carte blanche,” she said.
“Never.” He grinned back at her and tipped his head toward hers. For one alarming moment she thought he was going to kiss her. “You must have something very special for tomorrow evening’s ball.”
The ball that was to have celebrated his betrothal to the Earl of Tillden’s daughter? Would it still take place? She supposed it must. All the guests would have been invited. And she was to attend it? A full-scale ball? As the Marchioness of Staunton? She was not sure if the weakness in her knees was caused more by terror or excitement.
“Oh, splendid,” Claudia said. “Come along, then. We will leave William and Anthony to become reacquainted—and to look after the boys, since their nurse has been given the morning off. Have you ever seen such ragamuffins, Charity? But in this house, you see, I insist that children are allowed to be children. And William supports me.”
The two men, Charity saw, had been left standing face-to-face in the midst of the parterre gardens, looking distinctly uncomfortable. They were brothers, one year apart in age. What had happened between them? Was it Claudia?
But her mind did not dwell upon them. She would have had to be made of stone, she thought, as Claudia took her into the house, not to be excited at the thought of new clothes. And not just one new dress, but dresses for all occasions. As many as she wanted. It was a dizzying prospect. And a ball gown!
THEY STOOD QUIETLY facing each other while their wives walked away toward the house, arm in arm. The two little boys were running about the paths dividing the parterres, their arms outstretched. They were sailing ships, blown along by the wind.
The Marquess of Staunton met his brother’s eyes at last. It was an acutely uncomfortable moment, but he would not be the first to look away—or to speak.
“She seems very—amiable,” his brother said at last.
“Yes,” the marquess said. “She is.”
“I have feared that Lady Marie would not suit you,” Lord William said. “I am glad you shocked us all to the roots and married for love after all, Tony.”
“Are you?” The marquess looked coldly into his brother’s eyes. “You have changed your opinions, then.”
“I had hoped that in eight years all that business would be behind us,” Lord William said with a sigh. “It is not, is it?”
“You argued most eloquently once upon a time against my making a love match,” the marquess said, “and against my marrying beneath myself in station.”
“An elopement would have been disastrous,” his brother said. “And it would have been the only possible way. His grace would never have forgiven you.”
The marquess smiled—not pleasantly. “Well,” he said, “you showed a brother’s care, Will. You saved me from myself and from our father’s wrath. You married my bride yourself.”
“She was not your bride,” Lord William said sharply.
“And when I challenged you to meet me,” the marquess said, “you went running to his grace for protection. I am glad you approve of my marrying for love, Will. Your good opinion means a great deal to me.”
“Your eyes were clouded, Tony,” his brother said. “You were beside yourself with worry over Mother—”
“Leave our mother out of this,” the marquess said curtly.
“Mother was at the center of everything,” Lord William said.
“Leave her out of it.”
Lord William looked away and watched his sons blow out of control in the midst of an Atlantic storm and sail through a forbidden flower bed. He did not bellow at them, as he would normally have done.
“Come and see the stables,” he said. “I have some mounts I am rather proud of.” He called to the boys, who went racing off ahead of them, sailing ships and Atlantic storms forgotten. “I was less than thrilled when I knew you were coming home, I must confess, Tony. Time had only increased the awkwardness. But we had to meet again sooner or later—his grace cannot survive another attack as severe as the last, I fear. Can we not put the past behind us? There are parts of it I am not proud of, but I would not have the outcome changed. I am comfortable with Claudia—more than comfortable. You do not still have—feelings for her, do you?”
“I love my wife,” the marquess said quietly.
“Yes, of course,” his brother said. “Everything has turned out rather well, then, has it not?”
“Admirably,” the marquess said. “The stables here did not used to be in such good repair.”
“No.” Lord William paused in the doorway and looked to see that no groom was within earshot. “Friends, Tony? There is no one whose good opinion I crave more than yours.”
“Perhaps,” his brother said, “you should have thought of that, Will, before taking his grace’s part over my chosen bride merely so that you might steal her from under my nose.”
“Damn it all to hell!” Lord William cried, his temper snapping. “Is Claudia a mere object? A possession to be wrangled over? She had to consent, did she not? She had to say yes. She had to say I do during the marriage service. She said it. No one had a pistol pointed at her head. She married me. Did it ever occur to you that she loved me? I always took second place to you, Tony. You were so damned better this and better that at everything from looks to brains to sports, and of course you were the heir. I never resented any of it. You were my elder brother, my hero. But I do not suppose it even occurred to you that in one significant matter I outdid you. She loved me.”
The Marquess of Staunton stood very still, his nostrils flared, his hands balled at his sides, reining in his temper. “This is all pointless stuff now, Will,” he said. “You and Claudia share an eight-year marriage and two sons. I have recently married the woman of my choice. We will forget the past and be brothers again if it is what you wish. I wish it too.” Damn his prim wife and her harping about family affection and second chances. Here he was forgiving the brother who had betrayed him?
Their eyes met once more—hostile, wary, unhappy.
Lord William was the first to hold out a hand. The marquess looked at it and then placed his own in it. They clasped hands.
“Brothers,” Lord William said, but before the moment could become awkward again his two sons came dashing out from some inner stalls and wanted to show their uncle their ponies. And then they wanted their uncle to see them ride their ponies. They mounted up and rode about a fenced paddock, displaying the fact that they had been given some careful and superior training despite their youth.
Will loved his boys, the marquess thought, watching his brother’s face as much as he watched the two children. There were pride and amusement and affection there—as well as a thunderous frown and a loud bellow of stern command when the older boy began to show off and threw his pony into confusion. Will had not followed in their father’s footsteps. But then Will had always been able to withstand the gloom of Enfield better than the rest of them. He had been superior in that way too.
Had he really felt so very inferior?
Had he really won Claudia’s love?
She had not married him in bitter resignation a
fter it became obvious that she was not going to be allowed to have the man of her choice—himself—because she was a mere baronet’s daughter?
Had she married for love?
It was a thought so new to him that he could not even begin to accept the possibility—the humbling possibility—that it might be true.
10
YOU ARE PROBABLY FURIOUS WITH ME,” SHE SAID, “and that is why you are striding along looking shuttered and morose.”
There were too many people at Enfield Park looking that way, she had decided. She was not going to be drawn into becoming one of them. And she was no longer going to be a meek observer—though from the start she had not been quite that. She had spent a splendid hour and a half with Claudia and Madame Collette—whose elaborate French accent acquired suspicious cockney overtones from time to time. They had pored over patterns and rummaged through fabrics. They had laughed and talked and measured and planned. The modiste, it appeared, was all but finished with Claudia’s new clothes and had been planning—reluctantly, she declared—to return to London within a few days. But now she had agreed with great enthusiasm to go back to work, to produce a complete and fashionable wardrobe for her ladyship in very little more time than it took to snap her fingers—thus. The ball gown, of course, would take priority over all else.
Claudia had told all about the session when they had finally rejoined the men, and had forced from the marquess the declaration that he had never been so happy about anything in his life. He had smiled that dazzling smile again—directly into Charity’s eyes.
But now he was striding along the driveway, staring straight ahead of him, looking too morose even to be satanic.
“What?” He stopped walking and swung around to face her, causing her to jump in some alarm. “Shuttered and morose, ma’am? Am I to grin inanely at the tree-tops? Am I to wax poetic about the beauty of the morning and the wonder of life? And why would I be furious with you?”