by Mary Balogh
When they were together, there were very few silences, and even when there were, they were not the bitter or sullen silences she might have expected from the inauspicious beginning of their marriage. They talked on a wide range of topics. She found him surprisingly easy to talk with.
It seemed that for now, anyway, they had both decided that what could not be helped might as well be accepted as cheerfully as possible. It seemed that they were both trying to make something workable of their marriage.
He slept in her bed with her all night and every night. It was hardly surprising, Catherine thought, that that part of the marriage was good—very good. He had pursued her vigorously enough during those weeks at Bodley, and she had been unable to quell her desire for him. He had even been prepared to offer her marriage before he had been compelled to do so just so that he could bed her.
It was very good, what happened between them in bed. He was a wonderful lover and a good teacher too. He had insisted that she let go of all her inhibitions one at a time so that she could enjoy all the pleasures that could be had of the marriage bed. Even in her wildest imaginings she had not guessed that there were so many pleasures to be had—and every night brought new ones. He seemed insatiable—always once a night, often twice, sometimes more than twice. But then, she was insatiable too. The thought could warm her cheeks.
Of course, she did not expect it to last. She had married a rake, she knew. A man of such devastating good looks—she saw how all the women of the neighborhood, young and old, looked at him—and of such vigor could not be expected to be satisfied with the charms of one woman indefinitely. The honeymoon would be over sooner or later. Perhaps when she conceived. She would know within the next few days if that had happened during the first month or not.
She would accept reality when it happened—when he finally turned his ardor elsewhere. She had become very good at accepting reality. Disloyal as the thought seemed to her precious little cottage and her life there, she was happier here. There was more of a sense of familiarity, of rightness, about this life than she had ever known at Bodley-on-the-Water. She would continue happy here. It was not, after all, as if she loved him.
And yet the thought of his ardor cooling could bring a twinge of something—of some unidentified pain. Life was good as it was now. Sometimes, if she really thought about it—fortunately she did not have a great deal of time for private thought—she had to admit that it felt good to be with him in company, to see the deference with which he was treated by other men, to see the awareness of him as an unusually attractive man in the eyes of women, and to know that he was her husband, her lover. And it felt good to be alone with him, to have a companion, someone with whom to share her thoughts and opinions.
It felt good to have a lover, someone to make her feel alive and young and beautiful and feminine. She had lived a life of suspended animation for so long, it seemed. It felt good to know that she had a certain power over him there, in bed. She knew how to heighten his pleasure, how to have him gasping, how to make him lose control, how to make him moan and cry out. She liked to hear him complain about her magic hands and threaten to tie them behind her. She liked to hear him call her a witch.
It was a good thing she was not in love with him, she decided. It was going to feel bad enough when the change came, as it inevitably would, without her feelings being deeply involved. Yes, it was going to feel bad. . . .
But she was too busy to think such thoughts enough to destroy her basic happiness.
• • •
“IT is beautiful,” she said with a little sigh of contentment. “Is it the loveliest estate in England, or am I just partial?”
“It is the loveliest estate in England.” He grinned. “But then, I am partial too, you know.”
It was a perfect spring day, one that felt more like summer, but without summer’s oppressive heat. The sky was a clear blue. There was the merest breath of a breeze.
They were standing at the middle of the Palladian bridge, looking down into the still waters of the river and at the overhanging boughs of weeping willow trees, and beyond to the park and the house. Every view from the bridge had an extra charm in that each was framed in some way by its pillars and arched roof. His great-grandfather had built the bridge almost a century before.
He had hurried home from estate business that might have kept him out until luncheon time or even later. He had hurried home because she had told him at breakfast that the seamstresses had demanded a final fitting with her during the morning. She would not be going out, then. She would be at home. And so he had hurried home. They were giving Toby his exercise—that pampered terrier had still not been turned over to the stables and the care of grooms or footmen. He was trotting along now beside the river, trying to catch flying insects.
“I have been wondering if the drawing room would be improved with lighter draperies,” she said. “It is such a magnificent room, Rex. But there is something wrong with it. I have been puzzling over it for two weeks. And I thought yesterday that the heavy wine velvet perhaps takes some of the light and the—splendor from the room. What do you think?”
She was frowning slightly, obviously seeing the drawing room in her imagination and concentrating on her picture of it. One thing had surprised him and puzzled him and intrigued him. She was obviously quite at home in a place like Stratton. She had taken easy command of his household. Mrs. Keach deferred to her with as much respect as if she had been mistress here for a decade. And she had been received by his neighbors as if she were a princess. She moved easily in their company without any sense of awe or awkwardness—and without any arrogance.
“I think you probably have a surer eye for such things than I have,” he said. “If the draperies must be changed, then they will be changed.”
She was still frowning. “I do not intend to change the character of your home,” she said. “It is too precious as it is. And I do not intend to spend all your fortune. But there are a few things. . . .”
He chuckled, and she turned her face, lost her frown, and chuckled with him.
“No more than half a dozen things,” she said. “Well, perhaps a dozen.”
He was becoming almost accustomed to the slight lurching of his insides whenever she looked at him and smiled at him. But then, so he should be. Whenever she looked at him, he was almost inevitably gazing back at her. It was something he had become aware of when they were out in company together—one of his neighbors had remarked upon it, and two other gentlemen who were within hearing had laughed and said something about bridegrooms and their new brides.
But it was not well-bred to be staring at one’s wife all the time, mesmerized by her beauty and her charm, when one was supposed to be conversing with society. And so he tried not to look at her so often. It was not easy. He was constantly finding himself backsliding.
He waited for his obsession with her to pass. He had had her now every night—and usually several times each night—for two weeks, if he did not count his wedding night. It was time, and even past time, that his interest began to wane. It would be as well when it did. He was not sure it was quite the thing for him to be haunting his wife’s bed as he was.
“A dozen things,” he said. “Well, as long as one of those things does not include a complete rebuilding of the house and another a complete refurnishing of it, then I suppose I must consider myself fortunate.”
She was still laughing. “And parterre gardens on all four sides of the house,” she said, “and a bridge to match this one on each of the other three sides. Oh, and a marble fountain with a naked cherub. And—”
He set a finger over her lips to silence her. “We have no river on the other three sides,” he said. “Do you suggest that I have a moat constructed all around the house?”
“Could I increase the number from a dozen to thirteen?” she asked.
That was another surprising thing about their marri
age. They usually talked quite seriously with each other. But sometimes their conversation became absurd, as it had now. They could laugh together. He liked to see her laughing. It took away some of his guilt. He wondered sometimes if she was merely putting on a good act or a brave face. He wondered if deep down she would prefer to be in her idyllic little cottage by the river.
And he wondered consciously if she still pined for the man called Bruce. He tried to put the unknown man and his name from his mind, but the mind is not easy to control. Jealousy gnawed at him when he was not careful enough to guard his thoughts.
It was a good thing, at least, he thought, that he did not love her, even though he had never wanted a marriage without love. If he did, he might be feeling considerable pain along with the unexpected happiness these first few weeks of his marriage were bringing him. Of course there was something like pain. . . .
They both turned their heads at the same moment to look toward the great stone gateposts at the end of the drive, not far distant from the bridge. A strange carriage was turning in the direction of the house.
“Who is it?” she asked. “Is it someone I have not met yet?”
But he was smiling as he took her elbow and hurried her across the bridge so that they would not be bowled over by the approaching carriage. Toby came tearing toward them, barking with excited ferocity, as he did at all their visitors—it had not taken him long to lay claim to this new territory.
“No,” Lord Rawleigh said. “One stranger to you, Catherine. And perhaps two old acquaintances. Yes, indeed.”
The carriage had stopped as soon as it crossed the bridge, as its occupants had obviously spotted them. The viscount stepped forward to open the door. Lord Pelham jumped out without waiting for anything as unessential as steps to be set down, and proceeded to slap his friend on the shoulder and pump his hand.
“Rex, you old sinner,” he said. “Married without even waiting for your friends to arrive in their wedding finery. Congratulations, old chap.”
He turned to Catherine while Nathaniel Gascoigne took his place, laughing and slapping and assuring him that he was a lucky dog, luckier than he deserved. He demanded that Eden stand aside so that he could hug the bride and steal a kiss since he had not been at the wedding to do so.
And then the Earl of Haverford came jumping out of the carriage. The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse—tall, blond, and elegant.
“Rex,” he said. “My dear boy. What is all this?”
They hugged each other. It had been several months since they had seen each other. Once upon a time they had lived and breathed together and fought side by side constantly—and almost died together on more occasions than they would care to remember.
“I read your letter with some amazement,” the earl said. “And then Nat and Eden informed me that your marriage was no big surprise to them at all. I take it unkindly that you would not hold back the wedding for us. But then, perhaps we would have fought over which of us was to be your best man. I take it Claude did the honors?”
Lord Rawleigh nodded and grinned. “Three best men—four with Claude—might have been considered a little eccentric,” he said. “But you felt compelled to come, and three of you. All the way from Cornwall. I am honored.”
The Earl of Haverford clapped a hand on his shoulder and turned to meet the bride, who was laughing and being laughed over by the other two. But they stood aside so that their other friend could be presented to her.
Lord Rawleigh looked at the earl, about to make the introductions. But he paused, seeing the arrested look on his friend’s face.
“Why, Lady Catherine,” he said.
A quick, sharp glance at his wife revealed to the viscount a face that had lost all color and eyes that stared with fear and recognition.
“My wife,” he said, somehow keeping his voice on an even keel. “Kenneth Woodfall, Earl of Haverford, Catherine. I take it the two of you have a previous acquaintance.”
His wife was curtsying. “My lord,” she said through bloodless lips.
“Yes, indeed.” Ken spoke loudly, heartily, quickly. “Pardon me, ma’am. It is Lady Rawleigh, is it not? Yes, I do believe we were in town at the same time a number of years ago. I was invalided home from the Peninsula for a few months. You persuaded Rex into matrimony, then, or the other way around. Nat and Eden have been telling me all the way here what a lucky dog he is. Now I can see for myself that they did not exaggerate.” He was taking her hand and bowing over it. He raised it to his lips.
“I am perfectly well aware of my good fortune,” the viscount said, taking her hand—it was icy cold—and drawing it through his arm as he smiled down at her. “It seems, my love, that we are to have houseguests.”
“How very pleasant.” She managed to smile. There was even color in her cheeks again. “I saw for myself at Bodley that Lord Pelham and Mr. Gascoigne were my husband’s particular friends. I am delighted to meet another. It will be lovely for you all to be together again.”
“We should have had that hound in Spain with us,” the earl said. “He would have sent the French scurrying back across the Pyrenees for safety even before the first battle was fought. Yours, ma’am?”
Toby had pranced about in an ecstasy of ferocity and exuberance ever since the carriage had turned between the gateposts. It had not helped matters that Nat had wrestled with him.
They made their way to the house, all talking at once, it seemed, rather too loudly, rather too heartily. There was a great deal of laughter and excited yipping.
Lady Catherine.
The recognition and the fear in her eyes.
Ken’s hasty cover-up. Too late.
Lady Catherine.
• • •
COOK managed to supply luncheon for three unexpected guests at very little notice at all. There was a great deal of talk and laughter at the table. Afterward Catherine had several visits to pay alone while the men remained behind to spend the afternoon together. Dinner was almost a repeat performance of luncheon. In the evening they all went to the Brixhams’ for conversation and cards—her husband had sent notice of the arrival of three friends and the invitation had been extended to them too. The unattached ladies of the neighborhood were considerably charmed.
It was a day like most others—crowded with activity. There had been not a moment to themselves since the morning on the bridge.
Catherine undressed for bed, had Marie brush out her hair, and dismissed her for the night. She put on her dressing gown and went through to her sitting room rather than the bedroom to wait. She was shivering, she found, even though her husband’s friends had been commenting on the fact that it was an unusually warm evening for spring.
They were such pleasant gentlemen. They had gone out of their way to make her feel comfortable, to make her laugh despite the fact that she was the one woman among four men. The Earl of Haverford had been especially charming. He had not shunned her or treated her as if she had the plague, as she had rather expected as soon as she had recognized him.
She had a vivid memory of him as he had been that spring, exceedingly handsome in his scarlet regimentals, romantically pale from the wounds that had almost killed him in Spain. All the young ladies of the ton had sighed over him—herself included, though she had never done more than dance the occasional set with him at a ball.
“Toby.” She allowed her dog to jump up onto a love seat beside her, even though he was learning not to dare make himself comfortable on furniture when her husband was present. She wrapped her arms about him and set her cheek against his warm neck. “Oh, Toby, this was bound to happen. Why did I not tell him at the start? Before we were married. Before I started to—care a little bit. Oh, I knew I should never allow myself to care for anyone. Not even a little bit.”
Toby licked her cheek. But before he could participate further in the conversation, the door opened and he jumped hastily dow
n.
“Ah, here you are,” her husband said. “It was wise to come here rather than go to the bedroom, I suppose.”
He did not look particularly angry. But then, why should he? He had known that there was much of her story he had not heard. He had not tried to insist that she tell it. And she had never lied to him. Not really. She wondered what Lord Haverford had told him during the afternoon. But she knew the answer immediately. Nothing. He would have said nothing. She found herself on her feet.
“Well, Lady Catherine,” her husband said, “at least now part of the puzzle has been explained. You have settled to life at Stratton as if to the manner born. It appears that you were to the manner born. Are you coming to bed? You look as if you are set for confrontation, but it does not have to be that way. I can hardly insist now that you spill all, can I, not having done so from the start. And you can rest assured that Ken will keep his lips buttoned.”
“Lady Catherine Winsmore,” she said quietly, “daughter of the Earl of Paxton.”
He said nothing for a while, but stood close to the door, his hands clasped behind him, his lips pursed. “Ah,” he said at last, “you are going to tell me more after all, are you? You had better sit down, Catherine, before you faint. Is it really such a dreadful story?”
She sat and clasped her hands loosely in her lap. She looked down at them. Yes, she was going to tell him more. She was going to tell him everything. But only one foolish thought lodged in her mind while she tried to compose herself and decide where to begin.
She was in love with him after all, she thought. What a time for such a discovery!
She was in love with him.
19
HE crossed slowly to a brocaded chair close to the fireplace and sat down on it—not too close to her. Toby sniffed at his slipper and then lay down with his chin resting across it.