by Mary Balogh
“It was a wonderful evening,” Lord Poole said, turning to Elizabeth with a look of satisfaction when they were finally inside his carriage.
“Do you see how everyone adores her, Elizabeth? The Regent is going to be forced to give her her rightful place at court, and then you may be sure she will remember who helped her to achieve it. And if the Tories continue to support the Regent, they will soon be dragged down with him, victory or no victory.” He took her hand. “You were magnificent.”
She drew her hand away. “What you did was deplorable,” she said.
“You should have asked me first, Manley, if I wished to enter her box. I would certainly have said no.”
His eyes blazed instantly. “You would have said no, madam?” he said. “I would remind you that you are my betrothed and will be my wife soon.”
“I still have a mind and opinions of my own,” she said. “I found that display quite undignified.”
“I will decide what is to be in your mind and what your opinions are to be, Elizabeth,” he said. “And I will decide what is dignified.”
She could turn their disagreement into a full-scale quarrel, she thought. She could break off the betrothal that very evening. It was a tempting thought. He would even be glad to see the back of her. But his anger appeared to have disappeared as quickly as it had flared.
“Forgive me,” he said, taking her hand again. “I forget sometimes that you are a strong-minded woman, Elizabeth, and that I respect you for it. I am sorry that you did not share my feeling of triumph this evening.” He smiled at her.
She had to meet him halfway. She owed him that. “I am glad you found it so satisfactory,” she said. “And I applaud your courage in making such a public gesture, Manley.”
He appeared relieved. “I am looking forward to tomorrow evening,” he said. “All the fashionable world will be there. It will be a night for reputations to be made. We will see how many people remember what I did tonight—what we did. You will see that we are not despised for it, Elizabeth, but rather admired.”
“I am sure you are right,” she said.
“And it will be a night for reputations to be broken,” he said, smiling directly at her. His eyes glittered suddenly with the reflected light of a passing street lamp. “I pity anyone foolish enough to set a foot wrong tomorrow evening.”
“Surely no one would be that careless or that unfortunate,” she said, allowing him to raise her hand to his lips as they arrived at her father’s house.
She rather regretted, as he handed her down from the carriage and she hurried inside the house, that she had been unable to carry their quarrel to its completion. It would have been an easy way out. Now she would have to face the more difficult task of telling him that their betrothal was at an end without a quarrel to help her along. But it would have to be done after tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night was to be devoted to making him feel and look respectable.
And tomorrow, she thought, with a sick lurching of the stomach, was to be her wedding day.
John was falsely hearty; Nancy was smiling constantly and stiffly; Christopher was looking morose; Elizabeth was pale and expressionless; Christina was loudly excited. It was a strange wedding party.
They could take his carriage to the church, John offered rather too loudly, rubbing his hands together and smiling jovially at everyone around him. Nancy smiled determinedly back. It had been brought out anyway and his horses needed more exercise than they had got coming from Grosvenor Square.
“Is everyone ready?” he asked.
Christopher and Elizabeth rose silently to their feet. Christina was bounding up and down close to the door.
“Yes, of course,” Nancy said. “We must not be late.”
“You are well?” Christopher asked Elizabeth as they left his suite.
Her arm was resting formally and stiffly along his.
“Yes, quite well, thank you,” she said.
Christina was jumping down the stairs with both feet together, her aunt and uncle flanking her.
She did not look in the best of health, Christopher thought, glancing down at his bride. She was pale and unsmiling, obviously less than delighted to be on her way to marry him. But she looked very lovely nevertheless in a pale green muslin dress with slippers and bonnet of a darker shade. She was more lovely than she had been the first time she was his bride. And more desirable.
They sat side by side in the carriage, Christina between them.
Nancy and John carried on a bright conversation about the weather.
It was amazing how much could be said on the topic when silence was the alternative.
Christina was stroking Christopher’s leg and gazing shyly up at him. “You are going to be my proper papa,” she said. “I am going to be Christina Atwell instead of Christina Ward. Mama told me.”
“Lady Christina Atwell,” he said, his expression softening as he looked down at her. “And Mama is going to be Lady Elizabeth Atwell, Countess of Trevelyan. Rather grand, isn’t it?”
Christina nodded and he reached out to rub two knuckles across her nose.
He did not look pleased to be getting married again, Elizabeth thought. He had not once smiled at her, and his face looked cold and harsh—until he had started to talk with Christina, that was. She must always remember why he was marrying her again. She must never allow herself to become vulnerable by hoping that perhaps there was more to it than love for his children.
But he looked so very handsome, she thought, swallowing. He was wearing a green form-fitting coat, surely a creation of Weston, and a paler green silk waistcoat with buff-colored pantaloons and shining Hessians. He wore crisp white lace at the throat and wrists, as if he were attending an evening entertainment. At least, she thought, he had dressed for a wedding. He had shown her that much courtesy.
Not that his manner was discourteous either. Just cold and distant. She wished she did not love him. It would be easy to marry him again if it were just for the children’s sake. It would be easier to forget that there were huge barriers between them.
“Well,” John said with hearty lack of necessity when the carriage stopped outside a modest church far from the fashionable center of town, “here we are.”
“Yes,” Nancy said brightly and foolishly. “And so we are. Will you hold my hand inside the church, Christina? We will stay close to Mama and Papa, but they will have business to conduct with the rector.”
Christina nodded. “Mama is going to marry Papa,” she said.
Christopher had been very relived to find that their daughter had not thought to ask why they were not already married. The questions would doubtless come later, when she was a little older, but by that time perhaps they would have had a long enough and stable enough relationship that they could answer truthfully without doing her any serious emotional damage.
“Well,” he said, lifting Elizabeth to the pavement after the others had already descended and keeping his hands at her waist for a few moments, “this is where I entered at a gallop on your last wedding day.”
He did not know why he said those words. He certainly had not planned them or even thought them before he said them. For a moment there was a ghost of a smile on her face, but then it disappeared to leave her pale and serious again and to leave him wondering if he had imagined it. He hoped not.
The church was dark and cold inside and empty. It was very different from the light coziness of the chapel at Kingston where they had married the first time seven years ago to the day. And vastly different from the splendor of St. George’s, where she was to have married Manley less than two months before in the presence of half the ton.
This was where they were to marry. By the time they emerged into daylight again, they would be man and wife once more. The reality of it hit her. She turned to look up at him. It was a beautiful church in which to marry. And all she really needed or wanted was him there with her and her brother and his sister and their daughter.
She closed
her mind to all the barriers there were to . their happiness. She tried to see him as she had seen him when her memory was gone and found that after all it was not so difficult. Not now on her wedding day anyway. She loved him. It was as simple as that. Not simple at all, of course. Love never was. But simple enough for a wedding day if one held one’s thoughts blank and allowed feeling to dominate.
He would have liked to offer her more, he thought. More than an obscure and not particularly lovely church with only their child and two adults as witnesses and guests and well-wishers. And a strange rector to perform the ceremony. And yet for himself he could not imagine anything that he might find more moving. He had Elizabeth there and their daughter and their unborn child, and by the time they left the church they would be a family again, bound by the ties of church and state and honor. He could not possibly wish for more. He loved her. And soon—perhaps even that very day or the next— he would be able to lay his innocence of those seven-year charges at her feet and there would be no barriers left to their happiness.
She might grow to love him again, he thought. She had.loved him when she married him the first time. She had loved him at Penhallow.
And then the rector, garbed in his clerical robes, was bowing before them. And it was all beginning: the rector’s words and admonitions, their vows to each other, the gold ring on her finger, the sudden—was it really to be this quick and this simple, then?—pronouncement that they were man and wife. He had eyes only for her face, she for his hands. They listened to each other, and both heard their daughter whispering behind them and being hushed by Nancy.
Christopher kissed his new wife, very briefly, on the lips and a certain spell was broken. The rector was offering his congratulations; John was hugging Elizabeth; Nancy was weeping in Christopher’s arms; Christina was clinging to Elizabeth’s skirt. And then John was pumping Christopher’s hand and slapping him on the shoulder; Nancy was weeping in Elizabeth’s arms; Christina was clutching Christopher’s leg.
Elizabeth and Christopher bent down at the same moment to pick her up. They looked into each other’s eyes and each picked her up with one arm. She wrapped her arms about their necks.
“Am I Christina Atwell now?” she asked.
“Lady Christina Atwell,” Christopher said.
“Yes, sweetheart,” Elizabeth said.
“I like it better than my old name,” Christina said. “I am Lady Christina Atwell, Uncle John.”
“And so you are,” he said. “Am I to bow to you, scamp?”
“No, silly,” she said, giggling.
They all went back to the Pulteney. It felt strange. They seemed not to have been gone long. And yet everything had changed.
Elizabeth looked down at the ring she had refused to look at for several years, though she had carried it around with her always in her reticule. She was Elizabeth Atwell again. She had stopped thinking of herself by that name a long time ago. She was the Countess of Trevelyan.
She looked at Christopher, who was sending his man, the strange Mr. Bouchard, downstairs for wine and cakes. He was her husband.
She wondered briefly what her father would say when he knew and what Martin would say. She felt guilty particularly about not saying anything to Martin. He would be upset to know that John had been at her wedding but not he. She pushed the thought from her mind.
Tomorrow she would explain to Manley, and then she would be free to tell her father and her stepbrother the truth.
In the meanwhile it was her wedding day, and her seventh wedding anniversary. She looked at her husband again. He had sat down, and Christina had climbed onto his lap.
“You will be coming home with us, Papa?” she asked, gazing up at him hopefully. “You won’t be staying in this place any longer now that you have married Mama and are my real real Papa? Aunt Nancy can come too.”
“Not today, sweetheart,” he said. “Perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Today we will enjoy ourselves by keeping it all a secret, will we?”
“I can’t tell?” she asked.
“It will be much more fun if you can tell after keeping it a secret for a whole day or maybe two, won’t it?” he said. “Think how surprised everyone will be.”
She smiled a little wistfully. “I wanted you to come home with Mama and me,” she said.
“I tell you what.” He cupped her chin with one hand. “Mama has to go to Carlton House this evening to meet the queen. It was arranged some time ago. I’ll not be going and neither will Aunt Nancy. How would you like a real adventure and come to stay with us here tonight?”
He had not said anything yet to Elizabeth, though Nancy knew all about it already and had willingly given up the chance to be part of the Carlton House reception. She would not want to go anyway, she had said in all honesty, if neither Christopher nor John was going to be there.
“Just me?” Christina said. “Not Mama?” She turned to look at Elizabeth with shining eyes. “May I, Mama?”
Elizabeth was looking tense and bewildered. “I tell you what,” Christopher said. “I’ll talk it over with Mama before she takes you home. I’ll see if I can persuade her to say yes.”
Conversation became labored again after the refreshments arrived, though both John and Nancy worked very hard to prevent silences and to make it appear that a wedding celebration was indeed in progress. John proposed several toasts. But finally he got resolutely to his feet.
“Nancy,” he said, “you look as if you could do with a walk in the park. A long walk. Even a very long walk. And Christina certainly looks as if she can do with the exercise and perhaps even an ice at the end of it all since by that time all the cakes will have been walked off. Put on your bonnets, both of you. I’ll be the envy of every other man with a lady for each arm. Elizabeth, I’ll deliver Christina safely to her nursery in Grosvenor Square some time this afternoon before escorting Nancy back here. I’ll send a servant upstairs when we arrive, Christopher.”
By the time he had finished this speech Nancy had her bonnet on and tied and was helping Christina with hers.
“You are not coming, Mama and Papa?” Christina asked.
“Gracious no,” John said. “Then there would be only three ladies for two gentlemen. I would not like the odds at all, scamp. Ready?”
“We will be very delighted to have you walk with us, Christina,” Nancy said, holding out her hand.
Christina took it, turned to wave the other hand to her parents, and disappeared through the door her uncle was holding open for them. A moment later the door closed and left silence in the room behind it.
Both its occupants drew a deep and slow breath.
Chapter 28
SHE turned to him resolutely. Anything was better than the awkward silence.
“What did you mean by asking Christina to spend the night here with you and Nancy?” she asked.
“I meant just that,” he said. “This is a special day for her too, Elizabeth, and it is true that you will not be home this evening. You could see that she liked the idea. We will set up a truckle bed in Nancy’s room for her.”
“She belongs at home,” she said firmly.
“Precisely,” he said. “Home is where her parents are, is it not?”
“I meant Grosvenor Square,” she said. “She belongs there.”
“I am her father, Elizabeth,” he said, “and your husband. I want her here with me tonight.”
“Ah.” She looked at him angrily. “So you are going to use your authority over me without any delay, are you? I am to discover immediately that you mean to be obeyed?”
He looked at her and said nothing.
“You are going to take my children from me, aren’t you?” she said.
She could feel panic knotting in her stomach. What had she done?
“I’ll not allow it, Christopher. I’ll fight you.”
“It takes two to quarrel,” he said. “All I am asking, Elizabeth—or demanding, if you like—is one evening with my daughter. After tomorrow we will be free to
announce our marriage quietly to your family and leave for Penhallow. You will be living there with me and our children. We will have equal access to them. There will be no competition.”
She had wanted a quarrel, something on which to focus the tension that pulsed between them. But he spoke quietly and reasonably.
“I hope you understand,” she said, “that this is to be a marriage of convenience.”
“Meaning that it is to be without sex?” he said. “Do you seriously believe that we can live together for the rest of our lives and abstain, Elizabeth?”
She had given him an ultimatum. There were to be no more mistresses or whores in his life. She had also told him that she would try to satisfy all his needs. She waited for him to remind her of those two details, both of which made nonsense of her claim now that she expected a sexless marriage.
And did she? She looked at him and wished that he had not dressed so carefully for their wedding. He looked overwhelmingly attractive. But then he always did, whatever he wore—or did not wear. She had an unbidden image of the beauty of his naked body with which she had grown familiar at Penhallow.
“We have married because of the children,” she said.
“Both of whom exist because we had sex together,” he said.
There was no answer to that. She looked down at her hands. John had left them alone, taking Nancy and Christina with him and making it clear they would all be gone a long time and would not return without warning.
Christopher stood looking at her, at her pale and fragile beauty. He crossed the room to her and cupped one hand lightly about her cheek, stroking his thumb across it. She did not look up, but she dropped her arms to her sides. She did not pull away. He slid his hand down the side of her neck, across her shoulder, beneath the light muslin fabric of her dress. Her skin was soft and warm, like silk.
She was his wife. They had married in an obscure London church just a couple of hours before. Their signatures were side by side in a register there. His wedding ring was on her finger. He let the wonder and the reality of it envelop him.