The Marriage Wager

by Ashford, Jane

  “Oh, Robin.” His face was red. He was working himself into a tantrum. Things were so hard when you were that young, Emma recalled.

  “If you are going to mock me…!”

  “I wasn’t mocking,” Emma protested.

  He ignored her. “Then it’s best that I go,” he said, his voice throbbing with emotion. He made a gesture, as if throwing something away, and stormed out. Struggling up from the deep sofa cushions, Emma heard him thundering down the stairs to the front hall. He was calling stridently for his hat as she hurried to the stairs. And by the time she reached the hall, he was gone.

  “An impetuous young man,” commented Clinton, with what seemed to Emma a hint of smug satisfaction.

  “Oh, damn,” she said.

  Clinton raised his eyebrows.

  Emma gave him a look that caused him to lower them again, and to stand up even straighter, which hardly seemed possible. Satisfied, she turned and marched up the curving staircase toward her bedchamber, determined that nothing would prevent her from reaching it this time.

  Nothing did. But unfortunately, the abrupt ending of her encounter with Robin had driven off sleep, at least temporarily. She would, however, have her tea at last, thought Emma, ringing the bell and ordering a pot when the maid appeared. By the time she had removed her crumpled gown and slipped into a wrapper, the girl had brought the tray, and Emma settled into an armchair with a steaming cup beside her and her feet on a footstool. So far, it was not particularly pleasant to be back in London, she thought. And it was perfectly obvious that more difficulties with both Ferik and Robin lay ahead. She felt a moment’s sharp longing for the peace and beauty of Trevallan, and at once suppressed it. Colin wanted to be here. His friends were here. And she had determined to make a success of life in London, as he wished. There was a pile of mail awaiting her on the small desk in the corner. Many of the envelopes had the heavy, square look of invitations. Tomorrow she would open and accept them all. Tomorrow.

  Emma rested her head on the chair back. The tea was just right; her headache was receding. She wondered if Colin had already gone to bed.

  As if cued, he opened the door between their adjoining chambers and came in. “I thought you would be fast asleep by this time,” he said.

  “There were… things to take care of,” she answered.

  “Ah, yes. Domestic harmony restored?”

  Clearly, he had dismissed all concern about the scene when they arrived, Emma thought somewhat enviously. She nodded.

  Colin came to sit in the other armchair, stretching his long legs out before him on the thick carpet. “You know, I’ve often wondered how you acquired an attendant such as Ferik. Hardly a usual choice for a lady.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a choice,” said Emma.

  “Why does that fail to surprise me?” replied her husband with a humorous look.

  “Yes, Ferik has his own mind,” she acknowledged, smiling in response. “But it wasn’t he, so much as the circumstances.”

  “And what were they?”

  Emma looked down. “We were traveling toward Constantinople, and we had stopped for the night at a village… I suppose you would have to call it an inn, though I’m reluctant to honor it with the name.”

  Colin examined her face, though she continued to gaze at the floor.

  “They had nothing decent to eat there, so I determined to visit the market that was set up in the village square and purchase some provisions for our dinner. I enlisted two of the… employees of the inn to accompany me.”

  “And where was the unlamented Edward?” Colin inquired tersely.

  Emma grimaced. “He had already found a game of some sort and would not be pulled away from it.”

  Colin sat up straight. “Your husband allowed you to set off alone with two strangers from a mean inn in a Turkish village?”

  She shrugged.

  He made a sound rather like a snarl.

  “We walked to the market and I began to examine the foodstuffs offered. It was very colorful, and there was a wonderful smell of spices.” Emma looked distant, remembering. “I did notice that people stared at me,” she went on. “Almost all the women there wear veils over their faces, so it was obvious I was a foreigner. At any rate, all seemed well until I took out my purse to pay for the things I had chosen. I didn’t have a great deal of money, but most likely it was still a fortune to the men escorting me.”

  “Very likely,” growled Colin.

  “One of them grabbed me from behind, and the other pulled out some sort of club, I believe to knock me unconscious.”

  “My God, Emma!”

  “I was quite frightened,” she admitted.

  “Do you know there is a flourishing slave trade in Turkey?” he demanded.

  “It’s odd that you should mention it, because of what happened next,” she said. “I was struggling as hard as I could, in vain, when I heard a kind of roaring sound. The next thing I knew, the man holding me had let go, so quickly that I fell to my knees on the ground.”

  Colin muttered something inaudible.

  “When I looked around, I saw what looked like a giant attacking the two who had tried to rob me. He was shouting at them in their own language, which of course I did not understand. But his meaning was clear.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Curses,” she elaborated. “He hit one of them hard enough to send him flying. Then he threw the club over the heads of people nearby. It clattered when it landed.”

  She remembered it all so vividly, Emma thought. Fear had engraved it on her memory.

  “The men ran away. A crowd started to gather around us. And I saw that some of them were pulling at my rescuer as if to draw him away. And then I saw that he was bound with long heavy chains on his wrists and ankles.” Finally, she turned and looked at Colin.

  “Ah.”

  “He was for sale!” she informed him.

  “Was he?”

  “Yes.” Emma clenched her fists just thinking of it. “Can you imagine anything more horrible?”

  “A barbaric practice,” Colin agreed.

  “No one there seemed to think so. They just stood and watched as he was taken away. One of his captors even had a whip!”

  He watched her face.

  “He looked down at me, not pleading, you understand, not as if he expected anything from me.”

  “Certainly not.”

  Emma frowned slightly. “He didn’t, Colin.”

  “Very well.”

  “Naturally, I had to buy him.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, I could not just leave him in that condition after he had saved me.”

  Colin said nothing.

  “And he has been completely loyal to me ever since and an indispensable guardian in… in any number of situations.”

  Colin scowled. He hated to think of the situations in which Emma had found herself. Ferik had his gratitude, he thought, and a place in his household no matter how troublesome. But he could not help but wonder. “Did he ever confide the, er, reason for his predicament?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why was he being sold?” Colin elucidated.

  “Oh. He was in debt.”

  “Ah.” That was much better than it might have been, Colin thought.

  “He had tried to open a hostelry of his own in the village, a better one than the place we stayed. But he didn’t have enough money to back it properly, and a string of bad luck drove him out of business.”

  “I see.”

  “And then he belonged to his creditors,” she added. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “It is rather harsh.”

  “It is outrageous.”

  “But you saved him from his fate.”

  “And gave him his freedom at once, of course.”r />
  “It goes without saying.”

  Emma looked at him. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “On the contrary. I am most admiring. I am trying to think of any other woman of my acquaintance who could have thrown off the effects of such an attack and gone on to purchase a gigantic slave with such aplomb.”

  Emma considered this. “What else could I have done?” she wondered.

  “Fallen into a fit of hysterics?” he suggested. “Fainted from the strain? Burst into tears?”

  She cocked her head. “What good would that have done anyone?”

  Colin started laughing. “Not a particle of good, my indomitable Emma,” he replied.

  ***

  The new Baroness St. Mawr walked slowly across the square toward her London town house, preoccupied with the two scraps of wallpaper she held. She looked back and forth between them, unable to decide which she would prefer to have hung in her bedchamber in Cornwall. “What do you think, Ferik?” she asked, holding them up so that her giant servant could see them. “Do you like the rose garlands, or the stripes?”

  “Neither of them is as beautiful as the other one, mistress,” was the reply.

  Emma sighed. Ferik had become inexplicably attached to a different pattern at the shop, his interested participation in the choice thoroughly scandalizing the prim proprietor. “I will not have galloping horses and raging storm clouds on my walls,” she repeated for the sixth time. “It must be one of these.”

  “The other is more exciting,” he insisted.

  “Too exciting. No, it must be one of these. I will not look at another pattern. After just one morning of it, my head is spinning.”

  “The things in English houses are in-sipid,” said Ferik.

  Emma looked up at him in surprise.

  “I have learned a new word,” he informed her proudly. “From that silly little man in the shop.”

  When she did not appear to comprehend at once, he added, “He said the yellow paper was in-sipid.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “He meant dull and without life,” Ferik continued. “He was in-sipid.”

  Emma stifled a laugh. “You must not say so, Ferik,” she admonished.

  He grunted. “Not to say, not to do, not to notice—this is the English,” he muttered. Looking petulant, he lapsed into silence.

  But Emma was used to his complaints by this time. She merely held up the wallpaper samples again. “It is so difficult to imagine what they will look like on the walls when you have only a small piece,” she said.

  “The horses would look very fine,” insisted Ferik. “Strong and splendid.”

  Emma imagined lines of snorting blue horses racing along her bedroom walls. She imagined Colin’s reaction to them. “I know, I will ask Caroline,” she decided. She tucked the samples into her bag. Colin’s sister had been very enthusiastic about Emma’s plan to refurbish Trevallan. Indeed, in the week they had been back in London, she had made a great effort to further their acquaintance. Colin’s mother, on the other hand, had done only her duty, procuring the invitations Colin demanded for his new wife and introducing her to the leaders of the ton but showing no great enthusiasm for the task.

  Approaching the house, Emma sighed. They had attended some evening party or event every night since their return. Obviously, she had been right in thinking Colin was extremely fond of fashionable society. She herself found much of it dull and irritating, but she was determined to do her part. He would not lose the life he loved because of her.

  There was a woman standing before the house, Emma noticed, gazing up at the windows as if they held some important secret. She was dressed from head to foot in expensive black mourning clothes, and in one hand she held a formal bouquet tied with long pink ribbons. The odd thing was, the flowers in the bouquet were dead; they were brown and withered to mere sticks. Puzzled, Emma stopped to examine the woman. As if sensing her regard, she turned, and Emma saw that she was much younger than she’d thought, hardly more than a girl, and very pretty.

  The unrelieved black of her costume set off shining golden hair, creamy skin, pouting pink lips, and wide blue eyes. The girl was small and delicately made, her head just topping the level of Emma’s shoulder. She looked, Emma thought, like one of the very costly dolls displayed in the most exclusive shops—except for her expression, which was willful and stormy.

  Emma walked toward the house. The girl watched her unself-consciously, surveying every detail of Emma’s dress and appearance.

  “Are you going to visit her?” the girl asked in a high little voice, when it was clear that Emma meant to enter the Wareham town house.

  “Her?” repeated Emma, confused. This didn’t look like the sort of girl who would accost strangers in the street. Everything about her, from her stylish gown to her aristocratic accent, suggested a sheltered daughter of the upper classes.

  “The new Baroness St. Mawr,” drawled the girl, as if there was something deeply offensive in the phrase.

  “Oh, no, I—”

  “I am,” declared the other. “I don’t care what anyone says. I’m going to tell her to her face how she ruined my life.” She gestured eloquently with the dead bouquet. A withered blossom broke off and fell to the pavement.

  “Ruined?” Emma frowned.

  “He was going to offer for me,” the girl continued. “I know he was, no matter what my mama says. I could tell he meant to. There are little signs, you know. But then my grandmama died, and we had to go out of town for weeks and this awful creature came along and trapped him.”

  “Did she?” said Emma, beset by conflicting feelings.

  “Yes!” The girl’s pretty mouth turned down like a child’s. “And she is a widow and old, and probably fat and ugly as well, and it is all just so unfair.” Once again, she punctuated her point with the bouquet. A few more dry fragments floated to the ground.

  “He was going to offer for you?” asked Emma.

  “Yes! He danced with me at the Boyntons’ ball and again, two different nights, at Almack’s. Susan said he was quite taken with me.”

  One of the girls Colin’s mother had urged upon him, Emma thought. “And you with him?” she asked.

  “I am deeply in love with him,” replied the girl passionately. “I will never love anyone else. I shall pine away and die of a broken heart.” She put her free hand over her black bodice as she said this, her doll-like blue eyes flashing. “And so I shall tell the… the creature who stole him from me.”

  Despite a host of dissimilarities, for some reason, she reminded Emma of another girl who had insisted just as passionately upon marrying Edward Tarrant. “What is your name?” she inquired.

  The girl blinked, as if becoming conscious that she had poured out her most private grievances to a total stranger. “Mary,” she answered. “Lady Mary Dacre.”

  Emma sorted through her memories of the people she had met or had had pointed out to her recently. This girl was the daughter of a duke, she thought. She was extremely rich, eminently well born, and totally suitable for a nobleman’s wife. In fact, she was precisely the sort of daughter-in-law Colin’s mother had wished for. Emma glanced at the girl’s obstinate expression. Perhaps, she amended silently. “I am the Baroness St. Mawr,” she said.

  The girl stared. “You?” She looked at Emma as if really seeing her for the first time. She took in the silver-gilt hair, the lovely face, and elegant bearing. “But you are not fat or…” She bit her full lower lip and fell silent.

  Emma gave a little shrug. There was nothing really to say in this situation.

  Recovering remarkably quickly, Lady Mary stared at Emma even more avidly, as if analyzing every element of her appeal. “You’re fair, like me,” she said at last, as if this explained a good deal.

  Emma blinked.

  “But too tall,” the girl added complacently. “
And your hair is not golden.”

  She had never encountered anyone quite this self-absorbed, Emma thought. Fascinated, she watched Lady Mary catalog her various features, obviously finding fault with them all.

  “This is for you,” declared the girl dramatically, shoving the dead bouquet into Emma’s hands. “It is a… a symbol of my blighted hopes.” Rather too artistically, she choked on a sob.

  Emma looked down at the dead flowers, pressing her lips together to keep from smiling. “Very appropriate,” she couldn’t help saying.

  The girl drew herself up, throwing her head back. “He gave them to me,” she informed Emma, and tossed her golden curls.

  “For your first ball?” asked Emma. It was the custom for gentlemen to send flowers on such an occasion.

  “Yes.” The word was defiant. “And I chose to carry his flowers, even though I received a dozen bouquets. And I told him so when he danced with me.”

  Emma wondered what his reply had been.

  “Pink roses,” added Lady Mary meaningfully. “The card he sent said they were just like me.”

  Walking in the gardens at Trevallan, Colin had told her he found pink roses pallid and uninteresting. However, no one would use those words about this girl.

  “His mother told me I was meant to be his baroness,” the girl added. “She was prodigiously kind to me.”

  Light began to dawn. “She presented you to him, I suppose.”

  “She was determined to throw us together,” replied Lady Mary. “I was her ideal for his wife.”

  “Were you indeed?” replied Emma dryly. She was torn between annoyance, concern, and laughter. She began to wonder if the baroness had actually sent the bouquet.

  “Yes, I was. And now you have ruined everything!”

  The girl was glaring at her as if she expected some immediate recompense for her supposed loss. “Do you expect an apology?” Emma wondered.

  Lady Mary’s pretty eyes narrowed. Her doll-like face set. She looked like an extremely spoiled child. “I’ll make you sorry,” she replied. “See if I don’t!”

  It was a child’s threat, Emma assured herself as the girl whirled and hurried away, but a thread of uneasiness remained. There had been a truly determined glint in those blue eyes. And Lady Mary could certainly do damage if she fed the gossip that still circulated about St. Mawr’s unusual match.