Michelle Styles

by An Impulsive Debutante

  ‘Mrs Elton…’

  ‘And I won’t volunteer information either, but I warn you, Master Tristan, this will end in tears and they won’t be mine.’

  ‘In my own time, Mrs Elton.’

  ‘You are the master here.’

  ‘That I am.’ Tristan turned on his heel.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lottie lifted the shrouds off the furniture in the morning room. The sofa and the armchairs were highly unfashionable, probably from the reign of William IV or even earlier, but they were serviceable. And a little mahogany desk was placed in just the right position for writing letters.

  Opening the lid, she discovered a supply of papers, blotter, a fountain pen and an ink well. She stretched out her hand, tempted to begin writing letters, but stopped and closed the lid down with a banging that echoed around the room.

  There was much to explore in the room and how could she begin to describe the house without sounding mean or churlish towards Tristan. He could not help the state of the house.

  Above all she wanted to keep busy and to keep from thinking about all the changes that would have to be made because she had married Tristan. Mrs Elton had had no notice. She knew that a good housekeeper could find work anywhere, but one as aged as Mrs Elton? It did not feel right. Lottie began to stack the cloths into a neat pile at one side of the room. With a few improvements, the room could be quite presentable.

  ‘Mrs Elton has agreed to stay and she sends you these clothes.’ Tristan strode into the room and placed a collection of clothes down on a chair. ‘She thought you might like to change.’

  ‘Agreed?’ Lottie lifted an eyebrow as a weight rolled off her shoulders. She liked the little housekeeper. Tristan had seen sense. ‘I thought…’

  ‘She would not hear of it. She reminded me how long she had worked for my family.’ Tristan gave a shrug and took the dust sheet from her. ‘She will stay. It will give you more time to do other things. Young married women have to be cosseted, is her point of view.’

  ‘And do you intend on cosseting me?’

  ‘I doubt you will let me.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘You refused to stay in bed this morning. I had anticipated that you would remain asleep for the whole day.’

  ‘You were gone when I woke. I went in search of you.’

  ‘And now you have found me. Mrs Elton me told that she will put out some more clothes for you.’

  ‘And a stout pair of boots.’

  ‘That as well. I am determined that your feet be properly shod.’ Tristan caught her hand and raised it to his lips. Lottie shivered slightly at the touch, pulled back as his eyes watched her. ‘You can have a few days resting and getting to know the house, then, when your feet have fully recovered, I will show you the grounds.’

  ‘Will I have any say in the decoration?’ Lottie asked to cover her confusion. What they had done last night needed to stay in the bedroom, not be out here in the open. She was sure of that, of the impropriety of it all. ‘Little things could be done to make this place more habitable. We would not need to completely refurnish.’

  ‘Any savings would be appreciated.’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘If you promise not to fill it with pincushions and have numerous At Homes for farmers’ wives, I would very much like you to make my house a home.’

  His house, a home. Lottie hardly dared breathe. She wanted to. She wanted to show him how much she could do. ‘You always bring it back to pincushions. Do you think it wrong to have an enthusiasm? What do you like to do in the evenings?’

  Tristan stared at her. ‘I play chess or read when I am at home.’

  ‘I discovered a chessboard.’ Lottie tapped her fingers against her mouth. ‘Maybe you can teach me to play chess. I know Henry plays occasionally. The rules cannot be too difficult. Henry appears to understand them.’

  ‘It is all right, Lottie, you don’t have to learn how to play simply to please me.’ Tristan’s face became inscrutable. ‘You may prick pincushions if that is what your heart really desires.’

  ‘But I want to learn…’ Lottie heard the desperation in her voice. She wanted to have a connection with Tristan; if that included learning to play chess, she would. Just as she would learn to make new chair covers and refrain from extravagances. She wanted to make this marriage a success. It frightened her that she was rapidly coming to want his regard. She wanted to see his eyes light up and to hear his laugh. She wanted to be with him. She had to make him understand. ‘It will pass the time we have together.’

  ‘We shall see this evening.’

  Lottie hesitated and said in a great rush, ‘I don’t want to have a distant marriage. Mama and Papa were happy. They shared things. They played cards and went to dances at the Assembly Rooms together. Papa used to tease her about that. I think Henry and Lucy are less happy. They have little in common except for the children. If you enjoy playing chess, I would like to learn. No one bothered to teach me. How can I know if I will like something if I am kept in ignorance?’

  Her voice wavered as she finished. She peeked at him over her hands.

  His face had paled and his Adam’s apple worked up and down several times. He started to say something, but stopped. Suddenly he appeared to regain control. He gave her an indulgent smile, like she was someone to be humored. ‘I think it is about time you got dressed. Mrs Elton will be happy to assist you.’

  Lottie blinked rapidly so that he would not see the hurt. Exactly what did he want from this marriage? ‘I will go and change. No doubt the clothes will take some alteration. It is well that I am handy with my needle and thread, particularly as I shall not be spending my evenings playing chess.’

  Tristan reached out, but she ignored his hand and he let it fall to his side. His eyes were hooded, unreadable. ‘You don’t have to do something just to please me.’

  ‘I know, but I did want to learn. It will give me something to do in the evenings. I doubt we will be going to any balls. Or if we do, I shall take a stout pair of boots with me. I will become a regular country lass yet.’ She gave a weak laugh at the feebleness of her joke. Tristan’s brow became darker and she wondered what she had done wrong and longed to do away with convention and ask him to take her in his arms. Instead, she swallowed hard and wrapped the shreds of her dignity about her. ‘I had best make myself presentable.’

  She walked quickly from the room before her tongue humiliated her further, before she asked him to kiss her. When she was in his arms, everything appeared fine. It was when they met outside the bedroom that things became more strained. She would show him that she could keep economies and could be an asset as he tried to revive this estate. Then this fragile bond between them could grow. All she wanted to do was have him like her and think well of her. To want to spend time with her, just as she wanted to spend time with him.

  Tristan only partly listened to Lottie’s earnest money-making schemes as they walked through the grounds two days later with increasing uneasiness at their situation. It was getting harder and harder to tell her half-truths.

  He had no need of the schemes. His business was healthy. The estate could be and would be easily restored, but he was impressed that she cared enough to make suggestions. Several of her suggestions, like cutting down stands of mature trees to open the view and selling off the timber, warranted a second look.

  Was Mrs Elton right? Would Lottie react badly when she learnt the true state of his wealth? Tristan rejected the idea as preposterous. She would be relieved. Yet he hesitated, unwilling to take the risk.

  He became aware that she had stopped speaking quite as excitedly and was staring at him with a quizzical glance.

  ‘You are not attending me, Tristan. And I did beat you at chess last night. Remember?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Then attend, please.’

  ‘And after we sell the timber, what do we do?’ he asked, enjoying the way the afternoon sunlight caught her curls and turned them to burnished gold. His f
ingers remembered their silken texture and he itched to smooth them from her face, itched to feel her curves against him and go down the secret pathways of desire with her.

  ‘I have gone beyond the possibility of timber.’ Lottie waved her hand. ‘You are humouring me, just as Henry does when I try to speak of funds. He seems to think that railway stocks will keep going up and up, but they can’t as who is going to be able to afford them?’

  ‘I happen to believe the same as you about the railways. And I am not humouring you.’ Tristan touched her hand with his. ‘Maybe just a little bit. You are so full of ideas that you are like a bee flitting from flower to flower, rarely stopping to enjoy.’

  ‘I would have preferred a butterfly.’ Lottie made a little moue with her mouth and Tristan remembered the slide of her lips against his. He managed to hang on to his sanity and not draw her into his arms. ‘Besides, I was not speaking of timber at all. I was speaking about a way in which we could return triumphant to Newcastle and then I spied that hut.’

  He moved closer and prepared to lead her away from the shadowy summer house where Suzanne used to entertain her lovers and complain of the boring countryside. He should have thought of it before they turned this way. He was unwilling to seduce her there.

  ‘Shall we go and investigate it? I feel the intrepid explorer.’

  ‘Why should you want to do that? It might be better off sold.’

  Lottie pressed her gloved hand against his. ‘It will be amusing to tell my friends about it when we return to Newcastle.’

  ‘We shall be living here.’

  She tilted her head. ‘Surely you will allow me to visit my mother and sister-in-law? And if we sell that stand of timber, it will provide—’

  ‘Do you always try this hard? Does it really matter if you know everything about this estate today?’

  Lottie blinked and a puzzled frown appeared between her eyebrows. ‘I wanted to seem interested. I wanted to get to know you and the estate you inherited.’

  ‘Seeming and being are two different things.’

  ‘But I am interested.’ Lottie rubbed a hand across her eyes. She forced her lips to curve upwards. ‘And the hut is intriguing. What do you think it was used for? Smuggling?’

  ‘Lottie.’ He moved closer and savoured her fresh scent, her innocence. He knew what that hut had been made for. He closed his eyes and saw every portion of it. The leering cupids, the artfully placed mirror. The peepholes for his uncle’s spying. It was not what he wanted for Lottie. ‘We have time. You don’t have to learn everything in the first week. Your feet must pain you.’

  ‘My feet will be fine. I am excited about what could be done to this estate and how it could be brought back to life. That is all.’ Lottie clasped her hands together and her face took on an earnest expression. ‘I want to make this marriage a real partnership with no secrets between us. Is that too much to ask?’

  Tristan shifted uncomfortably. Secrets. There were beginning to be far too many secrets. He kept finding reasons to put off telling her and explaining. They were growing closer and he had no wish to jeopardise that. He wanted to be certain that her desire for him was more than the duty she felt a wife owed her husband.

  ‘A marriage is a marriage.’ His hands closed over her shoulders. ‘You don’t have to try with me. Be yourself. You don’t need to spend time coming up with schemes, plots and plans if you don’t want to. The estate will take care of itself.’

  ‘But what should I do if I want to please you?’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  She raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. A quick hard peck. A dutiful kiss, not a spontaneous one. ‘There, I have done that, now will you take me to see this mysterious temple? There must be a story behind it. It looks so lost and forlorn. I want to be able to tell everyone, Martha Irons especially, as she thinks the countryside is boredom personified.’

  ‘You can give me a better kiss than that. It was like one you would give an uncle you are not overly fond of.’ Tristan touched cheek.

  ‘Someone might see.’ She lightly danced out of his reach. ‘Mrs Elton might be looking from the upper windows.’

  ‘She knows we made a runaway match. We are newlyweds.’

  ‘And of course there is the little girl who does the scullery, and the laundress and…’ Lottie began ticking names off on her fingers. Excuses rather than true concerns. Tristan knew it with a sinking heart. She had no desire to kiss him. She was attempting to change the subject. The Lottie of the daytime was not the passionate woman he held in his arms at night, and yet he knew she lurked there, waiting to be unleashed.

  ‘How did you learn about these people?’

  ‘I have eyes, Tristan. I saw them over the past few days, when you were busy riding out on the estate. Mrs Elton does not do her own laundry. Everybody sends it out. And her hands are too smooth to do the pots and pans. It stands to reason.’

  ‘But they are of no significance.’

  Tristan waved a hand. Had she guessed how many people were actually employed by the estate? Or had she even considered it? Had she begun to wonder? And why hadn’t she asked him about it? How long did they have left together in this innocence?

  Tristan knew he was not ready to welcome the world back in, not without knowing how she truly felt about him. He wanted her to desire him all the time, to be passionate, without thinking whether it was the right or dutiful thing to do. Without planning how she would conquer society.

  ‘Tristan, they are servants and servants are people.’ Lottie pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. It was no wonder that things were in a muddle if he did not know how many people Mrs Elton employed. He shouldn’t be arrogant. ‘A woman always needs to know the number and names of people in her employ. It is basic common sense. Otherwise she might make a hash of the accounts.’

  ‘I can help you with the accounts, but you are changing the subject. Tell me the true reason. Why do you feel the need to boast and brag about the estate to your friends?’

  ‘Boasting?’ Lottie hesitated. ‘I want people to hear of your accomplishments. I have no wish for people to pity me.’

  ‘You know little of my accomplishments.’

  ‘Then tell me. I am your wife. There should be no secrets between us.’

  ‘When the time is right.’ Tristan’s eyes became harder than black obsidian. ‘Not when you want to feed your vanity.’

  ‘My vanity?’ Lottie stared at him. ‘I am your wife.’

  ‘Then you should kiss me properly, instead of wondering about how to make your life in the country sound more exciting to your friends.’

  ‘Not where the servants might see.’ Lottie hoped he’d understand what she was trying to say. ‘It is terribly bad form. I don’t think I have ever seen Henry being affectionate towards Lucy. Oh, he cares about her, and they have children but I have never seen them kissing…not the way you kissed me.’

  ‘Then Henry is an ass.’

  ‘He is my brother.’ Lottie gritted her teeth. ‘You should not speak that way about my brother. Only I am allowed to speak about him that way.’

  ‘But the kiss you gave me was more like one you would give your brother.’

  She cursed the heat rising on her cheeks, and then she tilted her chin in the air. ‘What sort of kiss did you have in mind? Then I will know for the next time and keep it in the repertoire.’

  His mouth swooped down and captured hers, plundering it, feasting and calling up all the primitive sensations that Lottie had fought so hard to keep inside her today. His hands cupped her buttocks, pulled her close and left her in no doubt about the state of his arousal.

  ‘Tristan, shouldn’t we go somewhere? Somewhere more private?’ she murmured against his lips as her eyes flickered towards the house.

  His answer was to increase the kiss, to plunder more deeply until her hands curled around his neck and held him there as her back arched towards him. Her breasts swelled and pushed against the cotton. She gave a small mew
l in the back of her throat.

  He lifted his head, stepped away from her at the exact instant that her bones began to melt and she ceased to care where they were. The cool air rushed between them. His lips took on a cynical twist and his eyes travelled slowly down her form, taking in the state of her clothing.

  ‘Now do you understand the sort of a kiss a wife should give her husband of only a few days? Without being asked?’

  Lottie’s hands struggled to rearrange her clothes. She wanted her pulse to stop racing.

  ‘I did not want to presume,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Not presume? You are my wife, my bride!’

  Lottie recoiled from the suddenness of his outburst and from the way his eyebrows drew together. Her heartbeat slowed and her breath caught in her throat. ‘I am your wife and not your lover.’

  ‘And there is a difference?’ He lifted his eyebrow. ‘Pray tell me, wife, what have we been doing in our bedroom every evening? Or does that come under wifely duties?’

  She bit her lip, not wanting to show how much he had hurt her. Wifely duty—was that all it was to him? ‘There are certain expectations…’

  ‘Who has these expectations? Society? Me?’

  ‘I do.’ Lottie drew a deep breath, struggled to contain her temper. ‘I mean to be a success. And I have noticed that men treat their wives differently from their paramours.’

  ‘You have a lot to learn, Lottie. When two people desire each other, it is natural they should want to touch each other. There is nothing wrong with kissing in the open air.’

  Desire, but not love. Lottie put her arms about her waist. Desire faded, love lasted. And in love was the one thing Tristan was not with her. He might desire her. He might even indulge her, but he was not in love with her.

  All the breath left her body as she silently acknowledged that she was falling in love with him. That she loved him. Over a week ago she had not even known he existed and now her whole world was starting to revolve around him and his quest to restore this estate. She wanted to be a good wife, but she also wanted him to look at her with passion. She wanted to be important to him, and not just an object. She wanted this marriage to be a partnership, a meeting of two people who respected each other.