“You do please me, Lucy,” he said, pressing her hand in token of his earnestness.
She knew that wasn’t quite the case, but she smiled at him. “Well, today I decided to endeavor to please myself as well.”
“Hence Minerva Press?”
“Yes, and the chicken we’ll have at dinner tonight, and the watercolors I hope to get in Great Alston. So you see how I begin to exercise my power.”
“Very good.”
“I don’t mean to be petty and selfish, you understand. But, I know how to please myself. I’m not sure how I ought to go about pleasing anyone else, or improving the world. I’d be very glad of your advice.”
“I’ll be very glad to give it to you.”
The next four days passed in happiness for Lucy and, she hoped, for James. A set of watercolors and other painting supplies were delivered from Gloucester, and Lucy began painting her new home and its gardens and fields. She spent hours in the gallery with her sketchbook, endeavoring to understand the masters’ work. Molly altered one of Anna’s riding habits for Lucy’s use, and James gave her daily lessons on Barbara. At first he kept her on a leading rein so she could concentrate on learning the correct posture and balance in the saddle, but by the fourth day she managed her own reins, circling the stable yard at a sedate walk.
She and James spent long hours together talking over matters critical and trivial. He told her about his work in Parliament, his friends and rivals, people she would soon meet. He supported a number of worthy causes, ranging from campaigns for the abolition of slavery to foundling homes and orphanages he assured her were carefully monitored to ensure they were run upon more humane lines than the workhouse she had endured. Lucy thought she would like to join him in those works, but she also wanted to be a patroness for the arts, making Orchard Park’s collection more widely known and supporting promising young painters and sculptors in their training.
The only blot on her happiness was that she still could not quite manage to relax in bed. She supposed it was considerate of James to feel that his own pleasure was incomplete unless she shared in it, but the pressure to meet his expectations was becoming maddening.
She was trying, she truly was, but every night she would reach a point where she felt as if her whole mind, all her logic and coherent thought, was melting away, where the most natural thing in the world seemed to be moaning or bucking and writhing. And she would be so appalled by her own urges and so terrified of yielding to them and losing control that she would instantly go rigid, taking deep breaths until she felt she was herself again.
And then James would stare down at her, so hurt, so disappointed, and at that moment she would loathe herself, but she still couldn’t do what he wanted. He had kept his word not to speak of it or chastise her, but she knew how displeased he was, and a certain tension lingered between them.
But she set aside her worries over pleasing James on the day they were to host Sebastian and Anna for dinner. She had not seen either of them since their wedding four days before, and while she no longer regretted losing Sebastian—how could she, when she had James?—she still worried that this first meeting with both couples married would be odd and awkward. Also, it would be her first dinner party—those family meals while Anna and Lord and Lady Dunmalcolm had been in residence hardly counted—and she was anxious to do her part well.
So she conferred with the cook, ensuring that dishes favored by both Sebastian and Anna would grace the table. She paced through the garden, selecting the most beautiful flowers and arranging them with her own hands. She wanted this dinner to be perfect, so Sebastian would see how content she was and know she had no regrets, and so Anna would see that she was ready to accept her as a sister.
By late afternoon all was in readiness, and Lucy waited with James in the little parlor, dressed in the turkey-red gown that was her favorite of the dresses Mrs. Dyer had delivered for her so far, with the topaz pendant she had worn to her wedding at her throat.
“Stop pacing,” James said. “You’ve nothing to worry about. This is only a family dinner, and in any case I’m sure everything will be wonderful.” His eyes narrowed. “Or are you worried about seeing your cousin again?”
She stared at him. “What? I don’t wish for a trade, if that’s what you mean.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t, actually. It’s not like you to be this prickly.”
She frequently felt prickly, but most of the time she simply restrained herself. And James wondered why self-control was so important to her. “Perhaps you don’t know everything there is to know about me as yet,” she said, almost a snap.
Before he could reply, they heard horses’ hooves and carriage wheels approaching on the drive. Their eyes met, and while neither spoke an apology, they took deep breaths and nodded, almost in unison. They would not quarrel before guests. Now they waited in silence, Lucy rehearsing her words of welcome.
Those words died on her lips when Sebastian and Anna stood framed in the doorway. Something was wrong. Only someone who knew him well would see it, but Sebastian held himself even taller and straighter than usual, and his bearing was not merely cool and dignified but cold and rigid. As for Anna, all the sparkle and vivacity Lucy had so envied had gone out of her, and the eyes that before had been so bright and full of mischief looked dull, almost dead. Lucy knew at once that compared to whatever troubled Sebastian and Anna, the little quarrel she and James had just had was nothing, and that even their difficulties in bed were trivial.
She glanced at James. Did he see it too? From the horror in his eyes, she knew he must. But there was nothing they could do, not here and now. One could hardly greet dinner guests, even one’s closest relations, by asking them what had made them so miserable. She held her husband’s gaze for long enough to be sure he saw she shared his dismay, took a deep breath and stepped into her role as hostess.
Chapter Seventeen
James silently blessed Lucy for her level head as she assumed a calm, welcoming smile and stepped forward to greet Lieutenant Arrington and Anna. He couldn’t have managed any such thing. More than anything he wanted to throw Arrington against the nearest wall and demand to know what the cur had done to Anna.
He took a deep breath to collect himself enough to join Lucy. The other couple’s unhappiness was no longer quite so tangible; it was as if the butler had opened the door too soon, before they had quite managed to assume their facades. Now Anna was smiling brightly as she chatted with Lucy, and only someone who knew her as well as James did would notice the expression’s brittle quality or the dullness in her eyes that belied her pretense of animation. Arrington was hovering over her, his hand resting on her shoulder, with an air of fond possessiveness—though James guessed that only the possessive part was real.
Good God. What could have gone so badly wrong in less than a week? In all James’s worries over this hasty, ill-advised marriage, he had pictured the couple gradually drifting apart over months, even years if Arrington spent enough time away at war to delay their coming to a true understanding of each other’s characters. They shouldn’t be disillusioned already. If anything, their infatuation should’ve been driven temporarily to a new height by its physical fulfillment. What he’d seen in Anna’s eyes wasn’t mere boredom or regret. His sister was cowed, broken, and James seethed with fury to see it.
But, to his regret, he found himself too civilized to make a scene. Soon they were all seated at the dinner table, and James was carving the roast beef, imagining with a savagery he’d never suspected he possessed how satisfying it would be to turn the knife on Lieutenant Arrington and wipe that cold smile from his face forever.
As he filled Lucy’s plate, she lifted her eyebrows the tiniest fraction of an inch: a warning look. He smiled despite himself at the implied rebuke. Lucy at least was growing in courage and confidence.
“So, Anna,” Lucy said when no one else spoke, “have you decided where you shall stay first when Sebastian joins his regiment? Will you go to Scotland, or
do you accept Lady Ockley’s invitation to visit her in Surrey?”
Anna glanced nervously at her husband for a moment before pasting on the brightest smile James had seen from her that evening. “Neither,” she said. “We’ve decided I should follow the drum after all.”
“I simply cannot bear to let her out of my sight,” Lieutenant Arrington said smoothly.
There were any number of things James could have said to that. He thought of the harrowing, snowbound retreat the army had endured just six months before, with the officers scarcely better housed and fed than their men. Was Anna, who had never known a hardship greater than Dunmalcolm Castle’s winter drafts, to endure such conditions?
“It will be a great adventure,” Anna said brightly. “You always said I’d be wasted as a society matron with nothing to do but plan my next party, after all.”
Lucy frowned at Arrington. “You told me, cousin, and not so very long ago,” she said, “that you didn’t believe it was proper for a lady to follow the drum, unless she happened to be an officer’s daughter inured to the life.”
Arrington reddened, though James couldn’t tell if he was angry or embarrassed. “I was speaking in generalities only, and many a man has renounced a foolish principle upon finding love.”
“Generalities,” Lucy said, her eyes momentarily as cold as her cousin’s. “Of course.”
“I’ll be with family, after all,” Anna said into what was beginning to be an uncomfortable silence. “It’s been an age since I last saw Alec and Helen, and I still haven’t met the baby.”
Lucy smiled, seeming to shake herself from a reverie, and asked a question about Helen. Throughout the meal the two ladies kept up a determined flow of conversation with very little help from their husbands. During the second course, Lucy hit upon the expedient of pumping Anna for embarrassing stories from James’s childhood. If James thought this ploy a trifle underhanded, he had to give Lucy credit for finding a topic that drew a few genuine smiles from his sister.
After what seemed like an eternity, dinner came to an end, though James noticed that Anna struggled to finish one small slice of the raspberry tart Lucy had instructed Cook to make just for her. Normally she would have polished off two hearty servings, laughing at her own greed.
Lucy rose and smiled at Anna. “Shall we leave the gentlemen to their port?”
Anna stood with alacrity. “Of course.”
As she turned to go, Lucy looked at James, a meaningful look that managed to blend Naturally I’ll see what I can discover with Remember that he is my cousin and try not to commit murder at the dinner table. He gave her a small nod, assuring her he had understood both of her messages. Whatever their problems, James supposed it was a good sign for their future happiness that he and Lucy were already learning the important marital art of unspoken communication. Abruptly it also occurred to him that Lucy was giving him the subtlety that Eleanor had always criticized him for lacking.
“So you’re taking my sister to Portugal,” James began as soon as the door had shut behind the ladies.
“Yes,” Arrington said as James poured his port. “Truly, I cannot bear to be parted from her, and as she says, her cousin is in the regiment as well.”
“It will be a very difficult life for someone as accustomed to luxury as Anna is.”
“Perhaps. But she assures me she does not mind facing the hardships.”
Suddenly too impatient to fence with him any longer, James slammed his glass down on the table hard enough that its contents sloshed onto the pristine tablecloth. “Damn it, Arrington, what happened? What did you do to her?”
The lieutenant turned bright red, and James half expected him to strike him—almost hoped for it, because then they would fight a duel and James might succeed in killing him. Of course, he’d have to take Lucy and flee somewhere to escape prosecution for it—the Continent? Not with a war on. No, America would be better, more peaceful—but just then a life in exile on the other side of the Atlantic seemed a small price to pay to secure Anna’s freedom.
But the moment passed. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” Arrington said in a careful, level voice.
“I know my sister,” James replied, matching his tone. “She isn’t happy.”
“She assures me she is.”
James stared hard at his brother-in-law, then gave up. Short of actually resorting to violence, he could hardly force the man to talk. Instead, distasteful as he found the situation, he forced himself to speak of neutral matters, dragging out the conversation in hopes that Lucy was having more luck extracting the truth from Anna.
Throughout the meal, Lucy had pondered what she must say to Anna once they were alone. She hardly knew what to think. Clearly Sebastian and Anna were miserable, and just as clearly James blamed Sebastian for the whole. Lucy even had her doubts as to the wisdom of leaving the two of them alone in a room containing sharp knives. But Lucy was torn. Sebastian had been so kind to her from her childhood right up to the point he had broken their betrothal. Could he really make a woman miserable if she’d done nothing to deserve such treatment? And yet the broken betrothal had shaken her faith in his honor, while she had no reason to think any ill of Anna.
Perhaps it was simply a misunderstanding and neither was truly to blame. Lucy prayed that it was so, and that the other couple would forgive each other and find peace and happiness. She loved them both too well to bear the thought of them making each other miserable.
After she closed the Little Parlor door behind them, she turned to Anna, poised to ask her if everything was quite all right.
But her sister-in-law was too fast for her. Anna smiled brightly and took her hand. “Could we have another one of our duets, Lucy?” she asked, her words tumbling rapidly out. “I enjoyed them so—I think our voices blend beautifully—and the pianoforte at the Almont dower house is sadly out of tune, and of course when I’m with the regiment I won’t have an instrument at my disposal.”
Lucy hid a rueful smile. She’d been thoroughly outmaneuvered. “Of course,” she said. “That sounds lovely.”
They sat together at the pianoforte, and Anna selected her music—some of Robert Burns’s songs. But tonight she did not choose the merry tunes that they had sung together in the few days after Lucy’s wedding and before Anna’s. Instead she began with “Highland Mary”—a lament for a beloved who had died—and moved on to “My Heart’s in the Highlands.” Lucy had never sung either before, so she followed along as best as she could, though she felt unequal to the heartbreak in Anna’s voice as she sang the latter song.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of valor, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
As the last chords died away, Lucy rested her hand on Anna’s before she could reach for another song. “Anna. Are you certain—that is, do you really want to follow the drum? If you’d rather stay with your aunt and uncle…”
Anna started and blinked at her. “No, of course not. This is what I must do—it wouldn’t do at all to be separated so early in our marriage, and I’ve always longed for a chance to see more of the world. Naturally I’ll miss Dunmalcolm, but it isn’t as though I’ll never see it again and—this is what I must do.”
Comparing sister to brother, Lucy added the habit of talking rapidly and incessantly when anxious to long noses, dark curly hair and fine eyes on her list of characteristic Gordon traits.
“Only if you’re quite certain,” she said after a moment’s thought. “You’d be very welcome to stay here as long as you wished, if you wanted to be within an easier distance of the coast so that you could go to Sebastian if he is injured. James and I would be very glad to have you.”
“Oh, Lucy!” Anna swept her up in an impulsive embrace, and they clung together for a moment. Lucy could feel her shoulders shudder and knew she was fighting tears. But when they separated, Anna’s face wa
s calm and shuttered. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s so kind of you, and…perhaps in time I’ll accept. Perhaps Sebastian will—” She cut herself off abruptly, shaking her head. “But for now I must go.”
In other words, Lucy realized, Sebastian had ordered her to accompany him, and Anna felt she had no choice but to obey. What could have happened to have changed his mind so drastically from that day, less than two months before, when he had told Lucy no gently bred lady had any business following the drum?
Before she could form a suitably delicate but probing question, their husbands rejoined them. Conversation among the four of them was stilted and awkward, and soon Sebastian sent for their carriage.
James and Lucy watched from one of the parlor windows as the carriage rolled away into the twilight. James let out a long breath and shook his head. “I hate to let her go off with him.”
Lucy sighed, at a loss for words. She’d been so certain she was doing the right thing by keeping her broken engagement a secret, ensuring Sebastian and Anna’s happiness at the sacrifice of a small portion of her own peace of mind. But now she couldn’t help but reflect that if only she had spoken out, Anna’s family would never have permitted the marriage, and the misery she had witnessed this evening would not have come to pass.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” James said, misinterpreting her silence. “I know he’s your cousin, but tonight—tonight I could’ve cheerfully plunged my carving knife into his throat.”
She smiled with a ghost of amusement. “I know. It was written all over your face.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. Your emotions can be rather transparent at times.”
“While you keep your counsel.”
She shrugged. “I don’t intend to. It’s simply a habit of mine.” Another form of self-control that had become so ingrained that it controlled her rather than the other way around. “But I don’t blame you for taking your sister’s part. I do, too. She’s clearly not herself.”
A Marriage of Inconvenience Page 24