Penny allowed herself to be persuaded to a glass of O’Shea’s own brew, for which she was beginning to develop a partiality, and then she and Noreen were off to their modest cottage, tucked into the side of the narrow valley that led from the village to the Conor Pass. It was only as the cottage came into view and she saw the carriage that Penny realized there had been an underlying excitement at O’Shea’s this day. A glance, a whisper, a light in the eye. But Irishmen were adept at deception, she recalled grimly. They had had to be through hundreds of years of English occupation. They had known, Penny fumed. They had sat her down and fed her ale and kept her there just to torment her! Or to give her visitor time to ensconce himself in her parlor.
Dear God, what if the visitor whose grand carriage was pulled up at the door was not Jason?
Who else would come in such fine equipage, undoubtedly the best to be hired in Waterford?
Penny laid her hands in her lap and bowed her head. She could not move. Sean, their young man-of-all-work, had to take the reins from her hands, then Noreen took her in charge, nearly dragging the countess off her seat and through the front door, which opened directly into the parlor. Whereupon, O’Donnell bobbed a curtsy to his lordship and went straight to the kitchen, leaving the stunned Countess of Rocksley alone with her husband.
At the sound of the gig’s wheels, Jason had bounded to his feet. He stood now, confronting his wife, his mind nearly blank of all he had intended to say. Only one thought remained. He must tell her, must explain . . .
“I recall the terms you dictated quite well,” he burst out, “but there are some things I must tell you before we speak of love. Pray be seated,” he begged, waving an arm toward a somewhat battered sofa set beneath the parlor’s multi-paned front window. When his wife did not move, Jason took her by the hand, leading her to the sofa. Then, all his good intentions suddenly scrambled inside his head, he stood as if struck dumb, his eyes fixed on the lace curtains and the rugged Irish countryside beyond.
Where . . .? Where to begin?
“I . . . I wish you to understand,” Jason declared at last, standing as stiffly erect as a young miscreant before a headmaster, “that Mrs. Coleraine has not been part of my life—except in her overly active imagination—since the night of your arrival at Rockbourne Crest. Why she should have chosen to emulate Caro Lamb I do not know, but she has now seen my wedding lines—both sets of them—and has spoken at some length with the vicar, who has assured her that only God can put our marriage asunder.”
“And Parliament.”
“I have assured Mrs. Coleraine,” Jason said to his stubborn wife in a tone perhaps a tad more grim than a supplicant should choose, “that divorce is not a possibility. She has decided to winter in Bath, while choosing her new quarry for the coming Season.”
Penny’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a sound between a gasp and a chuckle. “Surely, she did not tell you so!”
For the first time since his arrival, Jason managed a tentative smile. “No, but can you think I am mistaken?”
Penny shook her head, once again reduced to silence. The road to this moment had been long and bitter. And now, to Jason fell the burden of resurrecting their marriage.
He moved closer, coming to a halt only inches from her knees. “Penny, I beg you to understand that I was a boy with his head full of idealism, as young men so frequently are. Rescuing you put me into the realm of legends, of Arthur, Lancelot, and the search for the Holy Grail. I was every knight who had ever slain a dragon or rescued a fair maiden. And when I . . . when you . . .” The earl stumbled to a halt. “On our wedding night,” he continued, choosing his words with care, “I was totally caught up in noble ideals. You will recall you appeared even younger than you actually were. To me you were a child with whom I would enact a play for our watchers. There was no question of any genuine passion. No question of any emotion of any kind between us.”
Jason managed a rueful smile. “I was an idealistic young fool, my dear. You aroused such passion in me, elicited such responses to your skills that I almost totally forgot myself. Later, I was so ashamed of my failure to be the noble hero of my imagination that I could not face you. I saw myself as completely derelict. And, later, of course, it was all so easy to blame you. To tell myself I had been made a fool of by a well-trained odalisque, instead of acknowledging I had spent the night with a naive and innocent girl who had only wished to please her husband.”
Through the last part of this speech, Penny had been staring up at him, eyes shining with tears of pity, tears of joy. “Oh, my dear,” she said softly, taking both his hands in hers, “why could you not have told me sooner?”
“I was such a fool,” Jason snorted. “One moment I blamed you, the next you were once again the fair maiden whose innocence I had defiled. I lusted after Gulbeyaz, yet could not forgive myself for touching little Penny Blayne.” The earl ran agitated fingers through his dark brown hair. “And then, when we were together at last, I made a mull of that as well.” Jason sighed, his lower lip quirking into a rueful smile as he gazed down at her.
“I wanted so much for you to love me,” Penny confessed, “yet I could not forgive. Outwardly, I made an effort to attract you, yet, inside, I held a grievance far beyond any sin you may have committed. We were star-crossed, I fear.”
“Is there hope for us then?”
Penny’s gaze now held a hint of mischief. “There is but one more hurdle, my lord,” she decreed. “If you will give me a quarter hour before you follow me up the stairs?” Gracefully, the countess rose, offering her husband a look full of promise before she headed up the cottage’s narrow staircase.
The earl, red-faced, was forced to place his hat over his lap while he waited, most thankful that no one came into the room during that tense fifteen-minute wait. By the end of it, he was certain he had put a new polish on his pocket watch from the amount of times he had taken it out to look at it.
When the moment finally came—when he mounted the steep stairs and found the invitingly open door—he came to a halt a step inside the small bedchamber and simply stared. He should have known, of course. The little witch! She stood before the dormer window, every inch of her clearly outlined by the rays of the late afternoon sun, for she was clad in nothing but the full-sleeved white gauze tunic and azure shalwar, with the accompanying jeweled satin cap and the long white silk veil, fastened beneath heavily kohl-rimmed blue eyes. Even after ten full years, he would swear he could smell the perfumes wafting from her clothes.
The eyes above the veil gazed at him quite steadily. Calmly. Coolly. Assessing his veracity, his understanding of what was happening.
“Look at me, Jason,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”
The Earl of Rocksley, once the heroic but unrealistic boy known as Lord Lyndon, had learned a great deal in the last few months. He had no difficulty at all interpreting his lady’s question. “I see Penelope Blayne Lisbourne. My wife,” he returned as steadily as her query. “I see the woman I love, the woman I wish to have for the mother of my children, the woman with whom I wish to spend all of my life, cleaving to her and no other.”
“And Gulbeyaz?”
A trickier question—the little minx!—but Jason thought he could manage that as well. “The White Rose will always be with us,” he told her, “the mistress I do not have to seek outside my marriage bed.”
And, with that, the Earl and Countess of Rocksley forgot the sun was still shining, forgot the servants breathlessly waiting below, forgot the ribald, if good-natured, jokes being passed around at O’Shea’s Pub, and tumbled upon the bed, pledging with fervor their devotion to each other.
Their supper, which Noreen finally set down on a tray outside their door before going off to O’Shea’s to recount the final happy ending of this long, convoluted tale, was found still there, unnoticed, the next morning.
“May the Saints preserve us,” O’Donnell murmured to herself. “Sure, and it must be true ‘tis possible to live on love.”
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~ * * * ~
Acknowledgments:
This book could not have been written without reference to the following: Harem: The World Behind the Veil by Alev Lytle Croutier; Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood and The Veil and the Male Elite by Fatima Mernissi; The Elgins, 1766-1917 by Sydney Checkland; Lord Elgin and the Marbles by William St. Clair.
1About the Author:
Although I’m best known for my traditional Regency romances, I love to venture into other genres and have written historical and contemporary romance, romantic suspense, mystery, and futuristic. At the moment I’m working on my first steampunk. Coming soon: O’Rourke’s Heiress, a saga incorporating characters from both Tarleton’s Wife and The Sometime Bride. For a list of my books currently available online, please see below.
In addition to making my backlist available online, I plan to upload some new works in the not-too-distant future. I’m always delighted to hear from my readers. I can be contacted at [email protected] And please visit my blog at http://mosaicmoments.blogspot.com/
Blair’s books currently online:
Mistletoe Moment (Nov. 2011)
The Sometime Bride
Paradise Burning
Shadowed Paradise
The Captive Heiress
The Courtesan’s Letters
The Temporary Earl
The Harem Bride
A Season for Love
A Gamble on Love
Lady Silence
Steeplechase
Tarleton’s Wife
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
The Harem Bride Page 22