The Earl's Countess 0f Convenience (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 1)

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘You have. You first met me three years ago, remember. I was reading Candide.’

  He laughed. ‘We shall have to practise telling our story if we are to be word perfect when we recount it for an audience.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘A week or so? I’ve been thinking that it would be a good idea to hold a formal reception to celebrate our nuptials. We can introduce ourselves to London society, including my cousin Raymond, get it all over with in one fell swoop, rather than an endless round of social engagements. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it would be a baptism of fire.’

  ‘But we would be facing it together.’

  He was smiling again. There was so much in what they had talked about that she needed to mull over, so many questions he had, she was sure, expertly fielded, but on such a momentous day as this, she wanted him to keep smiling. ‘Then how can we fail?’ Eloise said.

  Chapter Six

  The morning sun poured in through the full-length windows of the ballroom at Fearnoch House, which opened out on to a small balcony overlooking the back gardens. Corinthian columns of black marble and gilded acanthus leaves flanked the room. The same black marble was used to form the door pillars, topped with gilded cupids. Two large fireplaces bookended the huge room for warmth, while three extraordinary chandeliers formed of beaten bronze provided light. The room itself was empty save for the grand piano occupying one corner. Eloise’s steps echoed on the polished floorboards as she walked the length of the chamber.

  She and Alexander had breakfasted together in one of Fearnoch House’s more intimate rooms, a charming parlour with cream walls adorned with painted plasterwork garlands, swags and flowers, the beautiful designs continuing on over the fireplace, the pastel colours soothing. He had called her his love and kissed her cheek, for Wiggins was attending them. It had been astonishingly easy, to sit with her husband at the round rosewood table and map out their day. Which started with planning for their wedding party.

  ‘How many people will expect to be invited?’ Eloise asked.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  Alexander, wearing top boots and dove-grey pantaloons, with a matching dove-grey waistcoat, but no coat, threw open the double doors, which led out on to the narrow balcony. He stepped outside, beckoning her to join him. The air smelled fresh and the lawn was still damp with dew.

  ‘Did you manage to sleep, Eloise?’

  ‘Eventually. Knowing that I was not sleeping in the same bed as any of the previous Countesses helped, I must admit. Mrs McGilvery was a little surprised when I told her we had no intentions of occupying the state bedchambers, but...’

  ‘I am very relieved that you did. Occupying my forebear’s home is one thing, but as for sleeping in his bed...’ Alexander winced.

  ‘Did you manage to get some rest?’ she asked. ‘I will take that as a no, then,’ she added, when he rather irritatingly merely shrugged, demonstrating yet again his taciturn nature.

  ‘Look.’ He put his arm around her to direct her view. ‘More trees than you could ever hope to climb.’

  ‘I would need a set of ladders to reach even the lowest branches of those enormous specimens,’ Eloise replied. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a tree house built, a bolthole where no one can find me.’

  ‘We’ve only been married for two days, and already you’re wanting to hide from me. All jesting aside, promise me you won’t be so foolish as to attempt to climb any of them. If you fell you would break your neck.’

  She shrugged, playing him at his own game, and then turned to face him. There were shadows under his eyes. He smelled of shaving soap. ‘It’s not you I’d be trying to escape from, it’s the servants. I seem to trip over one every time I move. I counted five on my way from my bedchamber to breakfast. In such a huge house as this, it shouldn’t be so difficult to be alone.’

  ‘We’re alone now.’

  It was absurd, the way her stomach lurched when he said that, as if he’d told her something she didn’t know. Something exciting, that made her pulses flutter and her mouth go dry. ‘There are probably at least two footmen guarding the ballroom doors. And gardeners—there are bound to be gardeners out there, looking up, catching a glimpse of the newly married Earl and his Countess surveying their domain.’

  ‘The newly married Earl and his Countess enjoying a rare moment of privacy together,’ Alexander said. ‘Relishing the opportunity too, because once they launch themselves into the preparations for their wedding ball, they are not likely to have many more such moments.’

  One of his hands was resting lightly on her waist. The other was at the nape of her neck. Heat was radiating from the point where his fingers made contact with her skin. If they were being watched, it would seem odd if she simply stood there like a wooden mannequin. Eloise put her hand on Alexander’s shoulder. Her legs brushed his. She reached up, feeling the smoothness of his freshly shaved jaw under her palm, curling her fingers into his hair. It was as silky as it looked. Her heart was hammering, but she was acting, that was all, she was playing her part as the recently married Countess of Fearnoch, deeply in love with her husband.

  She stepped closer. Her breasts brushed his chest. His hand tightened on her waist. If she really was alone with her husband for the first time that morning, she would...

  His lips touched hers before she had finished the thought, and her heart began to beat wildly. There was a pause, an aching pause, and she realised hazily that Alexander was giving her time to draw back, but a newly married countess would not draw back from kissing the husband she loved, so she did not. And he kissed her.

  But she had never been kissed. She had no idea how to respond. Did you simply press your lips against each other like this? Which was delightful, but surely this couldn’t be all? She pulled away. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know how.’

  He studied her for a moment. ‘Do you want to learn?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes. We should—I mean we would, wouldn’t we? Relish the moment, you said.’

  His smile was one she hadn’t seen before, but she had no time to analyse it. ‘Close your eyes,’ Alexander said, kissing her lids shut. ‘Tilt your head just a little—like that.’

  He kissed her again, soft little kisses all the way along her bottom lip. Delicious. So the Countess would think. And if the Countess liked it, then surely the Earl would too. She kissed him back, the same little kisses, and felt his breath quicken. He licked into the corners of her mouth, and when her lips parted in surprise, he moulded his mouth to hers and he began to kiss her and she knew then that this was a real kiss. A tiny moan escaped her as she followed his lead. Her mouth opened to his. Her senses clamoured, her pulses raced.

  * * *

  Alexander ended the kiss, stepping back, dazed. What the devil was he playing at!

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’ Mortified by his all-too-evident arousal, he could not, for a moment, fathom what Eloise meant. ‘Nothing,’ he said, belatedly realising how his abrupt termination of their kiss must appear to her. ‘On the contrary, you were so convincing that I was in danger of forgetting that we were acting.’

  He had completely forgotten, in fact. He didn’t know what had come over him. No, that wasn’t true. What had come over him was a very urgent desire to kiss her, not because they were playing their allotted roles, but because he wanted to kiss her. And having kissed her, he wanted to kiss her again. Having had no urge to kiss a woman for so long, this was not something he’d anticipated.

  ‘But we were acting, weren’t we?’

  Eloise looked—frightened? No, but anxious. ‘Putting on a show for any watching staff,’ he said, because clearly that’s what she wanted to hear. ‘Of course we were.’

  Her smile of relief told him that he’d said the right thing. ‘I thought so. Do you think the gardeners witnessed our most excellent performa
nce?’

  ‘I think we’d better concentrate on convincing our expected guests rather than worry too much about the gardeners,’ Alexander said. ‘If this is to be our wedding celebration, we’ll be expected to lead everyone on to the dance floor.’

  ‘Dear heavens, I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t waltz.’

  ‘You mean you don’t think you are very good?’

  ‘No, can’t, as in I have never learned, having had no need to.’

  He swept her into his arms. ‘It is not inordinately difficult, my lady. Put your hand on my shoulder. Now you clasp my other hand like this. The basic steps are very simple. You follow me, mirror what I do, with the opposite foot. Ready? One. Two. Three.’

  ‘Sorry. That was your toe.’

  ‘Several of my toes. Let’s try again.’

  ‘I have no sense of rhythm. Ask Estelle. I can’t sing—well, no, that’s not true, I can sing, but I can’t hold a tune. I’m very good at remembering the words though. I know the entire libretto of the Marriage of Figaro. The one that starts “Say goodbye now to pastime” is my favourite, but it drives Estelle mad when I sing it. I think Estelle would make a very good dancer.’

  ‘I am not married to Estelle. But talking of which, Eloise, I don’t think we should invite your sisters to our wedding dance. I am sorry, but...’

  ‘Oh, no, I completely agree. We cannot risk them inadvertently giving the game away. We must maintain a believable façade.’

  ‘As we did a moment ago, when I kissed you. I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

  ‘You didn’t. I alarmed myself by my reaction,’ she admitted bashfully. ‘I didn’t think I’d like it, and I did, if you must know. Well, not kissing generally, but kissing you.’

  Alexander had absolutely no inclination to laugh at this astonishing confession. ‘And you don’t want to like it too much?’ he asked gently, for that was suddenly abundantly clear to him.

  ‘No. I don’t. I truly don’t.’

  ‘It frightens you.’

  ‘Terrifies me. I don’t want to be like my mother.’

  ‘Eloise.’ With great difficulty, he stopped himself from pulling her into his arms and instead took her hands. ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘I do. I’m wondering whether I can trust myself.’

  ‘Now you know perfectly well you are being ridiculous, don’t you?’ This time, he did permit himself a small smile. ‘We were kissing as Lord and Lady Fearnoch. A performance, for the benefit of the gardeners.’

  Eloise nodded. He eased his conscience, telling himself it was more important to reassure her than to admit to the truth. And perhaps the truth was that he had simply become carried away. After two years of celibacy, it was understandable that he had reacted as he had to kissing a beautiful and desirable woman. Nature and instinct had taken over, making him forget, temporarily, the reasons why he had vowed never to surrender to such temptation again. But he remembered now.

  Having reassured himself as well as his wife, Alexander clasped her hand. ‘Talking of performances, I think our waltz needs a little more practice.’

  * * *

  Their afternoon was spent shopping. Alexander took her first to a silk warehouse in Spitalfields. Though the restrictions on the importation of French silks were now relaxed, the silk produced in the East End of London was still the most sought after for its intricately woven patterns. Stepping over the threshold, faced with bales and bales of fabrics stacked from floor to ceiling, Eloise felt as if she had arrived in paradise.

  The plain silks were arranged by colour, the deepest shades on the bottom shelves, with the lightest at the top. Forest green bled into emerald, sea, pea, moss, sage and mint, then a pale hue Eloise had no name for. Mahogany became garnet, segued to vermilion, then scarlet, cherry and rose. The blues took up even more space. There were blues for every colour of sky, from a pale winter morning, to the azure blaze of late summer, the grey-blue of a stormy autumn day, and the indigo of a balmy night. The golds and oranges could be used to construct a sunrise for every season. White became silver became pewter which seeped into dark grey, then ebony. There were silks the colour of every flower Eloise had ever seen and more, an exotic desert garden of colours that made her head spin with ideas.

  In a trance, she wandered around the warehouse, caressing chiffon and crepe, georgette and gauze. And then she reached the figured silks, and stopped in awe, as an art lover would before an old master. There were plain silks patterned with one colour, flowers and leaves in the most exquisite of stitches, white figured on silver, blue, green. On others, flowers spilled out in a riot of colour over a white or cream background, vibrant pinks in clusters on green stems or branches of gnarled wood so lifelike that she felt she could pluck them from the fabric, bury her nose in their scent. The most costly and complex were the quilted silks, heavy with silver and gold thread, and the broad bands of finishing silks for hems and sashes which were so densely embroidered very little of the silk base was visible.

  ‘No need to ask if this was a good idea,’ Alexander said, appearing at her elbow as she reverently ran her fingers along a bale of emerald green worked with tiny white knots of flowers. ‘I only wish I could claim it as my own.’

  ‘Neither of my sisters can possibly have known that this Aladdin’s Cave existed,’ Eloise said, smiling hazily. ‘So a great deal of the credit must go to you. If one could be intoxicated by fabric, then I think I might just be in my cups. Thank you.’

  ‘It is a pleasure, though I fear it presents you with a dilemma. I can tell from your expression that you would love to purchase the entire contents of this warehouse. But even if you changed your gown six times a day and lived to a hundred, there would still be some left unused. So the question is, how are you going to narrow the choice?’

  ‘I can eliminate all of these for a start,’ Eloise said, indicating the selection of figured silks. ‘They are far too costly and most of them are far too ornate.’

  ‘Must I remind you that you are a countess?’

  ‘You need not worry, I won’t embarrass you.’ She fingered the emerald-green silk distractedly. It was so fine, the little flowers so tiny that they would not interfere with the flow of the fabric. It would not rustle the way stiffer, more coarsely woven silks would, this would generate the merest whisper. She would make the skirts of a gown made from this silk full, but the gown itself would be plain. Slashed sleeves, perhaps, aw low, scooped décolleté with a lace edging. And underskirts in layers of other shades of green, graduating from dark to pale, like the petals of a flower, which would whirl around her as she danced.

  ‘I take it that you have decided on this one, then?’

  ‘For our wedding ball. It is extravagant, but—may I?’

  Alexander summoned one of the attendants, waiting discreetly at the end of the aisle. ‘This one,’ he said. ‘My wife will tell you how much she requires. And she will tell me,’ he said to Eloise as the man bustled away, ‘what it is that is worrying her.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  Alexander raised a brow.

  ‘It is only that I have no idea what life will be like for me now,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘How can I shop for dresses when I don’t even know what I am doing tomorrow, never mind next week, next month, next year?’

  ‘For the immediate future, what you will be doing is planning for a ball. After that—I seem to recall that you told me that having absolutely no idea what you would do was such an exciting idea that you could, to use your own words, hug yourself. What has changed?’

  Eloise laughed nervously. ‘It is being faced with the reality of it and finding nothing familiar. I’m a bit lost at sea, I suppose, with no anchor.’

  ‘You have me.’

  For how long? How long did it take to establish a marriage? Once their wedding ball was over, would Alexander consider himself free to resume his old life? But wasn�
��t that what she wanted too? ‘I’m being silly,’ Eloise said. ‘It’s only been a few days.’

  ‘Are you missing your sisters already?’

  ‘No,’ she said, after thinking about this for a moment, ‘it’s not that at all. I think that I had become a little too set in my ways at Elmswood Manor. It was a cosy, familiar haven.’

  ‘The perfect refuge after the storm that you were forced to endure for the first nineteen years of your life.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.’ She pondered this insight. ‘Maybe you’re right. It’s time for me to step blinking back into the sunlight and stand on my own two feet without even you to anchor me down. I know how eager you are to return to your Admiralty career.’

  He took her hands in his, drawing her closer. ‘This is our life, for the time being. Let’s enjoy it for what it is.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ Save for their hands, they were not touching, but as their eyes met Eloise remembered their kiss that morning. The way it had made her pulses race, had seemed to heat her blood, made her body crave more. She had been pretending, she reminded herself, and so too had Alexander. He’d said so. But now, as she looked at him, as he looked at her, it was as if their bodies had found a role they wanted to perform again, regardless of whether they were on stage. She wanted to kiss him again. She knew he was thinking that he wanted to kiss her because he was urging her closer, and his head was lowering to hers.

  Behind them, the warehouseman cleared his throat, making them both jump apart. ‘Excuse me, my lord, my lady, I was just wondering if you needed any more assistance?’

  So they’d had an audience, after all. Alexander must have noticed and played to it, even if she hadn’t. She ought to be relieved, not disappointed, though why he felt it imperative to prove to a complete stranger that he loved his wife...

  Deciding that there was no merit in pursuing the answer to this question, Eloise turned her attention to the question of fabrics and gowns, abandoning herself to the hedonistic pleasure of shopping without any regard for cost.