And he would hate her for all of it.
So, all his efforts since they’d married—his apology for behaving like a primitive brute and threatening her business with disaster; his solicitousness for her care and comfort; his loving behavior and looks, nay, his love itself—because she knew he loved her—all of those efforts were for naught. He couldn’t make her love him—she already did.
Melissa told herself that she’d entered this marriage knowing it was not legal because of her love for him—not that he would see it that way when he eventually found out her deceit. But sometimes you had to do things for those you loved even though they would not thank you for it.
She would stay with him only as long as it took to see to the sale of The White House—an action she could take without subterfuge as he’d already indicated he wanted her divorced from the business. With the money from the sale and her savings she would be able to leave him and live a comfortable if not luxurious life. She might stay in England and find another small village like New Bickford—she found she enjoyed the country. Or she might simply leave England altogether and begin anew somewhere on the Continent. She could raise their baby in peace. He would be devastated for a while, but he was resilient and would heal, in time. After all, it would be better to be the victim in a tempest in a teapot than trapped in a marriage that could only end in unhappiness and pain, most especially because they loved each other.
He could not see that, nor could he see that she would destroy his life, and her love for him would destroy hers. That’s what they were to each other, whether he saw it or not: mutual destruction.
Chapter Fifteen
In front of other people—innkeepers, servants—Melissa was polite and pleasant.
But the moment they were alone together, she became a stranger: a hostile stranger. Unfortunately, they were alone together for the better part of two days and she’d not even begun to thaw.
Last night they arrived at his aunt’s cottage—more of a manor house, Magnus supposed—and it had been too late to do much but introduce her to Mr. and Mrs. Hixon, the couple who lived at Moor House and acted as caretakers.
Despite the tension between himself and his wife, Magnus had felt at peace the moment he’d stepped into Moor House. Of course, he’d felt pain and loss, as well, but it was still the place where he could feel traces of his beloved aunt’s presence.
Magnus had considered leasing out the house, but he’d loved his Aunt Eudora deeply and couldn’t bear thinking about somebody else using her things or—even worse—replacing them. Eventually he’d have to do something with the place; it wasn’t right to leave it as a shrine.
But for now, he’d been grateful there was somewhere he could take his new wife that was not London, not his family’s home in Yorkshire, and not back to New Bickford.
After the angry incident at dinner that first night Magnus had quickly realized that his initial plan—to take her to visit his family—was beyond foolish.
No, they needed to spend some time alone together—somewhere they would not be bothered by outside distractions—and learn to rub along before he settled her into the curate cottage.
He’d learned that very first evening of their marriage that the place to learn about his new wife most certainly was not London.
At Melissa’s request, Magnus had left her alone at Darlington House after they’d finished their disastrous wedding dinner. No doubt his abandonment of her had shocked the servants, but Magnus had been too bruised by her obvious hatred to care how it might appear to others. Mingled with his pain was guilt and shame at his high-handed treatment of her and the mess he’d made of both their lives.
His father, a staunch Whig, maintained a membership at Brooks for all his sons, despite the fact Magnus hadn’t been to London in years. So, he paid a visit to the club for lack of anything better to do.
Of course, he’d encountered people that he knew, friends of his brothers mostly, and also a schoolmate from Eton. He’d had several drinks while they’d teased him about casting off his blacks for an evening of debauchery. He’d not had the courage to tell them he’d just married that very day. Besides, that news was for his family first, not a bunch of drunken bucks.
They’d been mocking him mercilessly when somebody suggested, “We should take him over to The White House and show him what a good time is all about!”
The name set Magnus’s head buzzing.
“I hear Mel Griffin is back in the saddle and taking new customers for the first time in years.”
Magnus’s head jerked up then.
“Look,” one of the others said—he hadn’t known or cared who it was—“Even curates from rural counties have heard of our Ice Madam.”
“Ha, not yours, Devlin. You’re too bloody ugly for the likes of her.”
“Dev’s too bloody poor, is more likely,” somebody else said, causing laughter all around.
“But seriously, Mag,” John Taylor—one of his brother Michael’s friends—said, “is it against the rules to enjoy a little carnal pleasure?”
“Yes, old man, surely you need to know what to preach against before you can be persuasive,” another man said, setting them all off into gales of laughter again.
“Mag? You all right?” John leaned closer, his forehead creased in concern. “Don’t be angry, it’s just a bit of teasing. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Still, Magnus couldn’t seem to speak. The others were describing something one of them had done during his last trip to Melissa’s—his wife’s—place of business. Perhaps they were even describing something she had done.
“I swear, Peggie,” said Viscount Royce, a man closer to Magnus’s age and one whom he’d never particularly liked, “that girl could swallow a cricket bat. And having the two of ‘em going at me at once, well, it was—”
“Who?” Magnus’s rough word surprised him more than the sweating, rotund lord, who merely blinked.
“Er, what’s that, Stanwyck?”
“I said, who? Who could swallow a cricket bat?”
The men had gone still around him.
Royce blinked while John set a hand on Magnus’s shoulder, but he shrugged him off.
“Don’t you know the girl’s name?”
Royce’s laughter was nervous. “Not that I can recall,” he glanced around at the others, as if looking for guidance. “I mean, she was a whore, Stanwyck, not a girl in her first Season who expects chit-chat.”
“The White House isn’t where we go for pleasant conversation,” another one added. “It ain’t bloody Almack’s.”
A few of the men chuckled.
Encouraged by his friends’ laughter, Royce relaxed, his sly, disgusting smile returning. “The women at The White House have been trained up right and know how to serve a man just the way I like it—which means they can’t talk.”
The others laughed heartily and equilibrium was restored. Magnus glanced around at these men—his peers—while they told increasingly raucous stories, one-upping each other and boasting about their sexual prowess.
Had one of these men been inside Melissa? Had any of them done these things with his wife? His head had become so hot—his vision so blurry and red—he’d actually worried about his sanity.
He’d left then. Right bloody then, lurching to his feet and making a beeline for the door, ignoring their calls, not stopping until he was three streets away. Only then realizing he’d gone in the wrong direction.
He’d hoped to enjoy the luxurious surroundings of Darlington House for a few weeks since going North was now out of the question. But less than an hour at Brooks made him accept that he needed to get the hell out of London before he did something irreversible and foolish.
When he finally arrived back at Darlington House he’d immediately written a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Hixon, the couple who managed his Aunt Eudora’s house, telling them to ready the house for him and his new wife’s arrival.
He’d also needed to send a message to his own wife the
following day when she’d not come down for breakfast and again at lunch. He’d told her to prepare to travel early the next morning, once again displaying a high-handed manner but seeing no way around it.
He’d had hopes for the ride to Bodmin Moor, reasoning that being in an enclosed space would throw them together so they’d have to talk. He’d clearly been wrong on that score. He told himself that he must keep hoping and trying, but it was getting more difficult to come up with ways to interact with her.
Today had been their first full day at Moor House and he’d spent most of it in his aunt’s study going over the ledgers Mr. Hixon kept for him. He didn’t see Melissa leave the house; in fact, he didn’t see her at all until dinner. Although the dining room was considerably more intimate than Darlington House, the dining experience was exactly the same; well, minus the broken wine glass.
They ate their meal with Magnus asking questions and Melissa giving monosyllabic answers. She’d left him alone to his port—which he didn’t drink—and refused his invitation to join him in the library.
As they’d done the night before, they each retired to their respective quarters, the master and mistress’s chambers. He supposed she would have like the room farthest from him but Magnus would be damned if he’d embarrass himself in front of the Hixons, who already must wonder at their less than amiable behavior toward each other.
Magnus paced his room as he listened to the activity next door. Neither of them had brought body servants with them and were doing for themselves. It sounded as though she was putting the contents of her trunk into the dressing room.
It was an hour before the room became quiet, but a line of light beneath the door indicated she’d not yet gone to bed. Magnus inhaled deeply and went to the connecting door, giving it a sharp rap. The pause was so long he thought she was going to ignore him. What would he do then? What would—
The door jerked open and she stood in the opening. “Yes?” Her eyes were hard green stones in her pale face. She wore an emerald green negligee that caused him to immediately begin sweating.
“I would like to speak to you,” Magnus said, wishing his voice was not so harsh.
“You are speaking to me.”
He clenched his jaws. “May I come in?”
She made him wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually, she spun on her heel and went back into her room, leaving him to follow.
There was a sofa and chair in front of the crackling fire and she draped herself on the loveseat, tucking her bare feet beneath her. Her pose reminded him, uncomfortably, of the way she’d been lying on her chaise with that bloody Hugo. His groin stirred at the thought and he wanted to howl: how could he possibly find such a memory arousing?
“What do you want, Magnus?” She was studying him with a dispassionate gaze that gave him a hopeless, falling feeling. Was this it, then? This life of anger and animosity?
He sighed and lowered himself into the chair. “I’m well-known in the area and Mrs. Hixon has already said our neighbors to the south, the Tenleighs, are eager to meet you. I would like to pay them the respect of calling first. Will you accompany me?”
“Of course, I will.”
Magnus was nonplussed; that had been easier than he’d expected. “Thank you.”
She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Anything else?
He cut her a glance that she returned with a blank stare. So, she was going to make him work for every inch.
“There are a few important matters I’d like to discuss with you—matters I do not wish to decide alone.”
She snorted. “Really? I thought you would be doing all the decision-making for the both of us.”
Calm. Stay calm. Remember, you deserve all of this and more. “This has to do with my family. I was contemplating writing them a letter. I believe we should tell my parents the truth.”
She bolted upright, swinging her feet down to the floor with a loud thud.
“Are you mad?” she asked, the question reminding him of the last time she’d asked him the exact same thing: the day he’d forced her to marry him. “Do you think because your parents are viewed as the beloved eccentrics up in the North that they are so removed from the influence of the ton they would embrace a madam as a daughter-in-law?”
So, Magnus realized, she had been listening to his long, droning stories about his family in the carriage while pretending to read a book or examine her fingernails. The thought gave him hope—if only a little.
“Just because your mother paints landscapes and wears the clothing of an artist and your father holds meetings where he shocks the other wealthy, country gentlemen with his radical intellectual notions does not mean they want to acknowledge a whore as their favorite son’s new wife.” Her eyes narrowed when he winced. “You may not like the word, Magnus, but that is what I am. If you can’t accept the truth, perhaps you shouldn’t have threatened me into marrying you.”
“Of course, I accept your past—enough to wish to deal truthfully with my family. I cannot leave them in the dark on this matter forever, Melissa. Although they don’t often go to London my father will go to partake in the Session, and my mother will accompany him. And then there is the fact I wish to take you to my brother’s wedding next month in London. I would like to tell them the truth before then.”
She snorted, the sound slightly hysterical. “Did you marry me with the intention of heaping humiliation on me?”
“No, of course not, Melissa.” Magnus was so tired—so very tired of bickering. “Why do you say things like that? I’ve married you—does that seem like the act of a man bent on humiliation?”
“Ha!” She stood and strode to her dressing table in a cloud of silken fabric and subtle, intoxicating perfume, dropping onto the padded silk bench and snatching up her hairbrush.
Magnus stood behind her and met her furious gaze in the glass.
Her hair was a froth of dark, curly auburn that hung to her waist. It was shiny and thick and each stroke of her brush filled the air with its clean fragrance. They had not slept in the same bed and it did not appear they ever would. He knew he was a swine to want her when she was so angry with him—justifiably, he admitted—but, heaven above! She was so beautiful and desirable.
And of course there is the fact you want to claim what is yours—to wash away any memory she might have of Hugo-of-the-fondling-hands-and-stiff-cock.
Magnus closed his eyes and heaved a sigh.
“Of course, I should be grateful you have deigned to marry me—not only a—”
His eyes flew open and he moved toward her, taking her shoulders in a gentle, but firm grasp. “Please, not tonight. Please.”
She was breathing heavily, her eyes burning into his, her expression as hard as granite. Magnus tried not to see their lives stretching before them, a repeat of this day forever, but that was all his tired mind could seem to offer.
Her eyes dropped to where his hands rested on her shoulders and he removed them, stepping back.
“I shan’t say anything to my parents, or anyone else, until you agree it is time.”
“Which will be never,” she flung at him. She snatched up her brush. “May I finish?”
“Of course. I’m sorry for the interruption.”
She went back to her brushing and he left her, closing the door and leaning against it while he stared at the bed, his bed. Thankfully he had no valet to bear witness to the state of affairs, although he’d made a fool of himself mussing bedding that morning for the maid’s benefit.
He wrote a letter to his parents, as planned, but left out anything that had to do with Melissa other than telling them she was the orphan daughter of a well-off merchant who’d died when she’d been a child. She’d been raised by her aunt and uncle, another London merchant. Her uncle died several years earlier and her aunt brought her to New Bickford after a bout of illness the prior fall.
As he sealed the letter Magnus realized he didn’t know much more about Melissa Griffin than his parents did; aside from the obvious.
They’d been married six days and he’d hoped to know something about her past by now, about where she came from, who she really was, and how she’d ended up at The White House. Of course, he’d reckoned without Melissa’s ability to hold a grudge.
Magnus shrugged out of his black coat and tossed it over the back of a chair, toed off his dress shoes, and slipped out of his dress breeches and small clothes before donning one of the flannel nightshirts he’d found in his old chambers. And then he pulled back the covers and climbed into the cold, lonely bed. He’d put a book his mother sent him on the nightstand, but he was too miserable to read. So, he blew out the light and tried to sleep.
But images of the last week, and the miserable month that preceded it, filled his head. Here he was married, the woman he loved in the next room, and he was further away from her than ever.
Be careful what you ask for, his old nurse had chided him when he’d been spoiled or greedy.
Well, he’d not asked—he’d demanded—and it was far too late to be careful.
∞∞∞
Melissa put down the brush as soon as Magnus shut the door. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, hating what she saw. She was such a horrid, cruel shrew and she was not sure how much longer she could maintain her act.
He looked so beaten down. She knew he was the architect of his own misery but causing him pain was making her life hell. And not touching him . . . well, that was becoming its own special torment.
Add to that were her rough mornings and unusual aches and pains. Yes, she was pregnant with his child. When she’d missed her first cycle a few weeks after returning from New Bickford she’d thought nothing of it—even when she’d missed her second. But now. . . There was no doubt in her mind. Part of her was overjoyed: she would take a part of him with her when she left.
Thinking about his child growing inside her just made her more aroused for her husband and it also made her aware of how little time they had left together.
Melissa and The Vicar (The Seducers Book 1) Page 19