‘Really?’ Daisy affected a puzzled frown. ‘Whatever gave you the notion that I would take no interest in my husband’s people and wish to meet them?’
Mrs Knowles gave an arch little laugh. ‘Well, we all know that you are used to much finer things. A much better class of person.’
‘My dear,’ the vicar began, gravely, ‘I did warn you not to take notice of gossip. My wife,’ he said apologetically, ‘has heard from acquaintances with whom she corresponds that you were a very top-lofty sort of person, my lady. That is why she has not so far plucked up the courage to pay you a courtesy visit. She did not think she would be welcome.’
‘Not welcome the wife of the spiritual leader of the parish?’ Daisy raised her eyebrows in a gesture of astonishment. ‘What nonsense. You must come to tea,’ she said to a fiercely blushing and clearly irritated Mrs Knowles. ‘I have much to learn about the parish and its inhabitants, and who better to ask about them than you?’ She then gave Mrs Knowles the benefit of the kind of smile that probably only Ben could see was rather ironic.
Having thoroughly confounded the vicar’s wife, Daisy turned from the porch door to begin making their way down the path.
They were stopped almost at once by the bulky form of Colonel Fairfax, the local squire, with whose wife and daughter Mrs Knowles had been standing.
‘Hah. Hmph,’ he said. ‘Surprised to see you at church, lad. I mean, my lord,’ he corrected himself, turning red. ‘I...ah...’ He glanced at Daisy. ‘Felicitations are in order, I see.’
The squire was a blunt sort of fellow so Ben took his words at face value. But his wife was another kettle of fish. While Colonel Fairfax was shaking his hand, Mrs Fairfax was running her eyes over Daisy, pursing her lips in a way that suggested she was totting up how much her hat had cost and guessing that her elegant gown had come from one of the most exclusive London modistes, before lifting her brows at the sight of her shoes, which were still damp from walking through the long grass to get here.
‘I heard you had done very well for yourself,’ said Mrs Fairfax in a rather scathing tone. If she’d been a man Ben would have been sorely tempted to plant him a facer. Even though they were in a churchyard with the entire population of Bramley Bythorn looking on. To openly accuse him of marrying Daisy for her money was such an insult...
‘Thank you,’ said Daisy sweetly. ‘How kind. Mrs...?’
‘Colonel and Mrs Fairfax,’ said Ben through gritted teeth.
‘Fairfax?’ Daisy looked around the churchyard and spotted their daughter, standing nearby, her back turned, apparently deep in conversation with the vicar’s wife. ‘I recognise the name. You have a daughter, I believe?’
Colonel Fairfax smiled. ‘Indeed I have. Betsy!’ His parade ground bellow gave his daughter no choice but to look their way and, when he beckoned, to come over for an introduction.
Daisy smiled at her as though she had no previous knowledge of the girl, let alone that she’d seen her hanging round Ben’s neck like a limpet. But Miss Fairfax herself could look neither of them in the face as she made her curtsey. Daisy’s only sign that this was not in fact their first meeting was the way she clung to his arm in a manner he couldn’t help feeling was a touch possessive. She kept hold of his arm all the way back down the village street, nodding and smiling at all the locals who came to bid her good morning as they went. For show, of course. It was extremely foolish of him to wish that she might be doing so out of affection.
‘Phew,’ she said, once they’d reached the safety of their own grounds once more. ‘I am glad you came with me. I wouldn’t have wanted to face that on my own.’ She gave a mock shudder.
He patted the hand she had tucked through his arm, then left his hand there, so she would have to tug hard to release hers. He wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He was enjoying having her so close far too much to relinquish the pleasure of the slight warmth that penetrated through the sleeve of his jacket. The barely perceptible brush of her skirts against his legs as they walked.
‘On reflection,’ he admitted, ‘it might not have been so bad had you been on your own. You might have instead met with a great deal of sympathy, for having been married for money...’
‘When I am so notoriously top-lofty about the company I keep,’ she added.
‘The Fairfax females have clearly been busy,’ he growled. ‘Did you see the pair of them prattling away with Mrs Knowles before the woman came and spoke so disrespectfully to you?’
‘I did.’
‘They are what passes for society in these parts,’ he explained. ‘So it is obvious that it was they who tried to malign you in her eyes. For I cannot see how anyone could have written such unpleasant things about you, as the vicar claimed.’
‘Oh, I can,’ she said, flushing slightly, ‘if those friends to whom she wrote were in London for any part of the Season. I didn’t exactly...cover myself in glory, did I?’
He wished he was a bit better at saying clever, soothing things. This was just the sort of situation where a cleverer, smoother man would have been able to pour oil on the troubled waters. Whereas anything he said would be like pouring oil on a naked flame. Because it was true that Daisy had not shown herself to advantage in polite society. Anyone who didn’t truly know her might well have thought she was...top-lofty, she’d appeared so cold and withdrawn.
At his side, she heaved a sigh. ‘Your silence speaks volumes,’ she said. ‘And you are right. I behaved very badly. Rather often. Although, in my defence, I would like to explain that at first I did try to make friends. I had never had any before I went to London. Well, you know what it was like at the Priory. A haven for males of all ages, but not exactly the kind of place females would stray into, if they had any sense. Besides which Father actively discouraged females from penetrating the fortifications he’d thrown up around his sons. In case their presence led to...lewd behaviour, I suppose.’
He’d never seen it like that before. But it was true. Daisy’s father seemed to have a deep-seated mistrust of females. He’d lectured all his sons on the perils of lewd behaviour, as Daisy put it. And even given him a lot of advice about avoiding having casual relations lest it lead to disease.
Daisy might well have become very lonely, and miserable, if she wasn’t such a self-sufficient kind of girl. Or if she hadn’t found so much solace in her books.
‘There were several girls, in London,’ Daisy continued, ‘who...who pretended they liked me, and wanted to spend time with me. But it didn’t take me long to discover that I was just a means to an end. That their interest was in James, and his title. They thought he was a marital prize, you see, for whom any amount of trouble was worth taking. Even to the point of attempting to befriend an awkward, rustic female with whom they had nothing in common.’
Awkward and rustic? He glanced at her sharply. She’d said that with such bitterness, as though somebody had said that to her. Or about her, within her hearing. Lord, but he knew how that felt...overhearing words intended to wound.
‘Well,’ she continued, with a defiant tilt to her chin, ‘after falling for that sort of approach a couple of times I started taking all friendly advances with a hefty pinch of salt.’
He frowned. ‘Surely there were girls there with whom you could have...’
She shrugged. ‘Possibly. But after a week or so of being courted because I was a way of getting close to James, I... I suppose I threw up my own set of fortifications. And froze everyone out.’
She’d never looked all that happy during her Season. Jasper had said it was because she was shy. But it sounded as though the truth was that she’d kept on getting hurt. And had sealed herself up from risk of it happening too often. And he didn’t blame her. He did the same himself.
‘I spent so long looking forward to my Season and hoping it would be... I don’t know, fun, I suppose. And then after only a week or so all I wanted to do was go home. Where
at least, even if I didn’t have any friends, I had...’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, my books.’
‘Ah, yes. That was the first place you went, wasn’t it? The library. I should have known.’
‘And there was Jasper, feeling sorry for me and egging you all on to take pity on me too, and propose...’
She started to walk a bit faster. Anger was driving her, he supposed. Which was typical when she’d just given him such a golden opportunity to explain that he would never have proposed to her out of pity...
‘And all that rot,’ she said, swiping at a clump of nettles with her parasol, causing a flight of butterflies to erupt into the air in alarm, ‘about Lord Martlesham not coming up to scratch...’
‘What? But I thought...we all thought...that you were smitten with him. You certainly favoured him above all your other suitors.’
‘Other suitors? What other suitors? The only men any of my brothers allowed anywhere near me were their own friends. Boys I had known all my life, and grown to heartily detest!’
Well, that told him, didn’t it?
‘I mean,’ she added hastily, ‘not you, Ben, of course. You never joined in those beastly tricks the others delighted in playing on me, did you? Not after the summer of the collar bone.’ She looked up at him as though she’d never really seen him before. ‘And you never gave away any of my hiding places, which helped me get out of any number of nasty situations. But the rest of them...’ The considering look she’d given him vanished as she shuddered in remembrance of what to his friends, had seemed like just high spirts. Horseplay. Fun.
He gazed at her flushed, angry face, wondering. Did she mean, by what she’d said, that she...liked him? No, no, the best he could assume from what she’d just said would be that she didn’t heartily detest him. But at least it put him slightly ahead of all the other males she knew.
Except Lord Martlesham. She still hadn’t finished explaining about Lord Martlesham.
‘Lord Martlesham,’ she said, after they’d walked in silence for several yards, his brain seething with so many questions he wanted to ask that he didn’t know where to begin, ‘just sort of...pushed past my brothers. Defied them. For a while, I looked upon him as a...knight, a champion. Running the gauntlet of their disapproval because he...’
She shook her head. ‘Well, he clearly did like me. Or at least, my pedigree, and my fortune. Because he did propose, in the end. But by then it was too late. I’d seen through him, too,’ she finished morosely.
Seen through him? ‘No, Daisy, I’m sure he didn’t only propose because of your wealth, and your title. You are...’ So beautiful.
She gave an inelegant snort. ‘When he saw me behaving like an icicle? Being a complete...’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t have the words to describe my behaviour. Not words I can utter on a Sunday, anyway. But he couldn’t possibly have wanted to marry me because he liked me. I mean, what sort of man could possibly fall in love with...with, well, a walking icicle? Which was what I must have seemed like to everyone, if persons I have no recollection of speaking to have written to people I never expected to meet about how top-lofty and unapproachable I am? I didn’t like the person I became in London, so how could Lord Martlesham? No, it was very apparent he was only interested in my...my pedigree, for want of a better word. But...’ she drew a deep breath ‘...the thing is, none of that mattered in the end. Because I saw him talking to James one night, and it was as if the scales fell from my eyes.’
‘I am sorry, but I don’t understand...’
‘No, and it isn’t easy to explain.’ She walked for a few moments, her head down, the only sounds the frip-frip of her skirts as she strode through the long grass and the murmur of the servants who were dawdling along behind. ‘You see, when I met him, he seemed so...elegant, and charming, and cultured. He said all the right things to me and behaved with total correctness. And he was so handsome, too. I started thinking that he was different. Just like a hero out of a book,’ she said dreamily.
‘And then, one night,’ she said, with a shake of her head, ‘I saw him standing next to James, and they were laughing about something. Some shared joke, I suppose. And it hit me. James looked charming, and elegant, and civilised, in his evening clothes, too. And when he was in a ballroom, he behaved properly.
‘But I knew it was only a façade. A façade, I suddenly saw, that Lord Martlesham was putting on as well. And then I looked around at all the rest of you. And how you all pretended to be civilised beings when you were in a ballroom. And I knew, I just knew, that Lord Martlesham wasn’t any different at all. I knew that when he’d been a boy, he’d pushed girls into ponds, and got into fist fights with other boys, and revelled in rolling about in mud and getting black eyes and split lips. And that he probably still went to mills, the way you all do, and cock fights, and all those other horrid pastimes that so thrill my brothers.
‘That he was, in short, merely an...an ape in elegant clothing. Who would be far happier swigging from a brandy bottle and swinging from a tree branch than reading a book or conducting a meaningful conversation. And so, when he asked me, in an extremely lukewarm fashion might I add... I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. And, oh, he was so cross with me. And Father accused me of leading him on, which was, to my shame, perfectly true... And said he wasn’t going to waste any more of his money or his time hanging around London just for me to turn my nose up at any more matrimonial prizes...’
He stepped in front of her and caught her by the upper arms. ‘Daisy, I am so sorry. I had no idea. I thought you... I really thought you liked him.’ It had been eating him up inside. But she wasn’t hankering after Lord Martlesham. She wasn’t mourning an unrequited love. On the contrary, she’d spurned the man because all of a sudden he’d reminded her of an ape! A lukewarm ape, at that.
This meant he didn’t have a rival for her affections. Even if she did resent the fact she’d had to marry him, she wasn’t pining for any other man. And what was more, he recalled, a lot of the anger she’d displayed on her wedding day hadn’t been directed at him at all.
It had been the slugs.
‘I still don’t understand why your father had to remove you from London, though,’ he said, since he didn’t think it would be appropriate to throw back his head and let out a yell of triumph when what she’d told him had clearly made her very unhappy. ‘Surely there was plenty of time for you to meet someone you could...’ He swallowed back the word love. He couldn’t bear to think of her loving anyone else. He didn’t know how he could have even got to the verge of saying it.
Except he wanted her to be happy. He’d thought so far that he would never be able to make her happy. That there were too many factors ranged against him. But it turned out that some of what he’d thought he was up against had only been a case of a fleeting infatuation, and slugs, after all.
And she’d also just admitted that she didn’t detest him as heartily as she detested every other male she’d ever known.
He was, by default, the clear front runner.
‘It would have been no use staying in London,’ she said, gazing up at him mournfully, while out of the corner of his eye he noticed Vale and Marcie taking a wide berth as they passed by. ‘Father was right. I would never have been able to agree to marry any man I’d met under those circumstances. I wouldn’t have been able to trust him. Marrying you, the way it all happened, was probably the only way he would ever have got me off his hands.’
Got her off his hands? How could her father have made her feel as though she was a burden to be got rid of like that? Damn him!
‘I’m just sorry you are lumbered with me now,’ she began.
‘Lumbered with you? Daisy, I...’ He sucked in a deep breath as he considered what to say. And breathed in her scent. And then he became aware of how close to each other they were standing. And how she was gazing up at him with sorrow and trust in her eyes.<
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And how much he wanted her.
And how long he’d wanted her.
And that he had no rival.
And that she was his wife.
And he couldn’t behave like a gentleman any longer.
He pulled her close and kissed her. Rather clumsily, because he wasn’t used to kissing beautiful women. Or any women, come to that. And because he’d seized the chance before he could think better of it and talk himself out of it.
She gasped in surprise.
He braced himself against the moment when she pushed him away or slapped his face.
But it never came.
Instead, she went pliant in his arms, and tipped her head to one side, so that their noses were no longer getting in the way. Which meant that he could kiss her more deeply. More thoroughly.
With predictable results. He became so hard, so swiftly, that it was almost painful. All he wanted to do was push her down in the long grass and make her his.
He groaned. He could just imagine what would follow if he slaked his lust, like an animal, outdoors, with a girl who’d just told him she thought men were all savages. He’d confirm her opinion. He’d never be able to get anywhere near her, ever again.
She might even hate him if, in his haste, he hurt her as well as humbled her.
He had to draw back. He had to.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. Physically.
But when he looked down into her face, half dreading what he might see there, he was glad he’d stopped, even though he wasn’t sure how he’d manage to walk home with so much of his blood throbbing between his legs.
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