The Notorious Marriage

by Nicola Cornick

  By the time that the carriage rolled into Montague Street the next day, Eleanor’s nerves were at screaming point. She had slept very little the previous night, had rejoined Kit for a poor breakfast of stale rolls and weak tea and had spent the journey mainly in silence, pretending to an interest in the countryside that she simply did not possess. It was raining again, and it seemed only appropriate. Kit had been as silent as she on the journey—Eleanor thought that he looked tired and he had seemed withdrawn. All in all it was enough to make her retreat even further into herself and to reflect that her life from now on would be a pattern card of superficial contentment. She and Kit would preserve a surface calm, and no one would know that underneath it her feelings were still aching. Least of all her husband. And one day, perhaps, she would feel better.

  Eleanor could well remember her mother, the Dowager Viscountess of Trevithick, instilling in her day after day that a lady never gave way to any vulgar display of feeling and particularly not in public, but when the carriage steps were lowered and Kit helped her down, her composure was put to the test almost immediately.

  ‘But this is not Trevithick House!’

  She saw Kit smile. ‘No. Naturally I would expect my wife to live with me in the house that I have rented for the Season!’

  Eleanor stared. ‘But my clothes—all my possessions…’

  Kit took her arm, urging her up the steps, out of the rain. ‘They were sent round from Trevithick House yesterday.’

  Eleanor was outraged at this apparent conspiracy. ‘But I don’t want to stay here with you! Surely Marcus—’

  ‘Your brother,’ Kit said, with a certain grim humour, ‘whilst disapproving heartily of the whole matter, was not prepared to come between husband and wife! Come now, my dear, we are getting wet and achieving very little standing here…’

  Eleanor allowed him to help her up the steps and through the door of the neat town house. The butler came to meet them; Eleanor recognised his face and flinched away. How could she fail to recognise Carrick, whom she had last seen fetching a hansom to take her back to Trevithick House five months before? She had been pale and exhausted from crying over Kit’s disappearance and Carrick’s face had mirrored the pity and concern he felt for her. Now, however, he was smiling.

  ‘Welcome home, my lady. I will show you to your room.’

  Eleanor raised her chin, horrified to realise that she was almost crying again, uncertain if it was because of the unlooked-for warmth of his welcome or for other reasons. This was ridiculous. She was turning into a watering-pot and could not bear to be so feeble. This rented house, comfortable and welcoming as it looked, was not her home and she did not want to be here, especially not with Kit. She managed a shaky smile—for the benefit of the servants.

  ‘Thank you, Carrick.’

  The butler looked gratified that she had remembered his name. Eleanor felt even worse. She followed him across the hall and up the staircase, very aware that Kit was bringing up the rear. She wanted to tell him to go away. Instead she ignored him. It was the best that she could do.

  The house was small but extremely well appointed. Eleanor could not fail to notice that the carpet was a thick, rich red, the banisters polished to a deep mahogany gleam. There were fresh flowers on the windowsill and the smell of beeswax in the air. It was charming and she could not fault it. It was simply that she did not want to be there.

  Her suite of rooms consisted of a large, airy bedroom and an adjoining dressing room decorated in cream, gold and palest pink. A small fire burned cheerfully in the grate though the May morning was promising to be warm.

  Carrick bowed. ‘I will send your maid to you, my lady—’

  ‘In a little while, Carrick.’ It was Kit who answered, before Eleanor could even thank the butler. ‘There are some matters that Lady Mostyn and I have to discuss first.’

  The butler bowed silently and withdrew. Eleanor straightened up, marshalling her forces. She looked at her husband as he lounged in the doorway.

  ‘Must we speak now, my lord?’ she asked, just managing to achieve the bored tone she strove for. ‘I am unconscionably tired and want nothing more than some hot water and a luncheon tray. Then I think I shall sleep. I fear that I had very little rest last night.’

  Kit strolled forward into the room, swinging the door carelessly closed behind him.

  ‘It will not take long, my dear,’ he said, effortlessly matching her sang-froid. ‘I simply wanted to mention that I understand there is to be a ball at Trevithick House in a couple of days and we shall attend.’ His smile deepened. ‘It will be the perfect occasion to demonstrate our reconciliation!’

  Eleanor grimaced. The Trevithick ball had been planned for some months but now it threatened to turn into more of an ordeal than ever.

  ‘I am not sure that I wish to attend…’

  Kit wandered over to the window. ‘If you are as intent on presenting a good face to the Ton as you implied last night, you will have to be there.’ His tone was sardonic. ‘People will talk otherwise. Moreover, we shall have to be seen to pay at least a little attention to each other!’

  Eleanor sighed. ‘This is all very difficult…’

  ‘It is indeed.’ Kit’s voice betrayed his tension. ‘But I am tolerably certain that we shall pull through—provided that we do not ask each other any difficult questions, of course!’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Do you think that is sufficient understanding between us?’

  Eleanor clutched her reticule to her as though it was a lifeline. Her heart was beating fast and she felt panic course through her.

  ‘Lud, my lord, we do not need an understanding!’ she said, in a brittle tone. ‘We are married, after all! That should be understanding enough.’

  Kit’s expression closed. ‘Very well. In that case I will just add that I do not expect to have to fight my way past every rake in the Ton in order to claim a dance with my wife! It may be unfashionable in me to expect it, but you will behave with circumspection, my dear. Is that understood?’

  Eleanor narrowed her eyes. ‘I shall behave precisely as well as you do, my lord.’

  Their gazes, dark blue and dark brown, met and locked, then Kit inclined his head. ‘Capital! Then we may preserve that excellent pretence that you alluded to so charmingly last night. Neither too warm, nor too cold! Delightfully mediocre, in fact.’

  Just for a moment Eleanor thought that she had detected something else in his voice other than a bland lack of concern, a hint of bitterness, perhaps, which was gone so swiftly that she decided she must have been mistaken. She looked at him uncertainly. He was still looking at her, with a mixture of speculation and amusement.

  ‘Was there anything else, my lord?’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Kit murmured. His gaze drifted from her face, which was becoming pinker all the while under his prolonged scrutiny, down her slender figure and back again. His eyes lingered, disturbingly, on her mouth. Eleanor stiffened.

  ‘I wished to disabuse you of any notion you might have of a marriage of convenience,’ Kit said slowly. ‘All this talk of going your own way and I going mine might lead you to imagine…erroneously…that ours would be a marriage in name only.’

  Eleanor stared at him. Her face, so flushed a moment previously, was now drained of colour. Her heart fluttered and she felt a little faint.

  ‘But I…You…We cannot…’

  ‘No?’ Kit had come closer to her, unsettlingly close. ‘It would not be the first time.’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor snapped, moving away abruptly in order to conceal her nervousness, ‘only the third! It is out of the question, my lord! You may disabuse yourself that there is any likelihood of our marriage becoming a true one! I married you for your name and your protection, and just because I made a bad bargain I need not pay any more for it!’

  Kit nodded thoughtfully. Eleanor was disconcerted to see that he did not look remotely convinced.

  ‘It is a point of view, certainly. But not one that I can share. Mayb
e it is old-fashioned in me to wish for a true marriage—and a family. However, that is how I feel.’

  A family! Eleanor shivered convulsively. She walked across the room to her pretty little dressing-table, simply to put some distance between them. Kit’s proximity was too disturbing and his words even more so. She started to fiddle with some of the pots on the tabletop and kept her face averted.

  ‘I believe we are at an impasse, my lord,’ she said. ‘I cannot agree with you.’

  Kit smiled a little mockingly. ‘I dare say it will take you a little time to grow used to the idea, Eleanor. And since I have no wish to force my attentions on an unwilling woman, you are quite safe—for the time being.’

  Eleanor doubted it—not the truth of his words but the strength of her own determination. Already he had come dangerously close to undermining her resolve, or rather, she had been in danger from herself. It seemed that she could dislike Kit intensely—hate him for the way he had behaved to her, she told herself fiercely—and yet feel a confusing mixture of emotions that owed nothing to hatred. She shivered.

  Kit raised her hand to his lips and she snatched it away, but not before his touch had sent a curious shiver along her nerve endings. Eleanor flushed with annoyance. She did not intend to give him the impression that he still had any power over her feelings.

  ‘I will send your maid to you, my dear,’ he said, and sauntered out of the room leaving Eleanor to let her breath out on a long sigh.

  She heard his voice in the corridor, speaking to Carrick, then his footsteps died away and she was alone.

  Two minutes later she was sitting on the end of the bed, staring into space, when the door opened and Lucy, her maid from Trevithick House, came in with an ewer of water. Eleanor thought that the girl looked excited. Goodness only knew the stories that were circulating in the servants’ quarters.

  ‘Oh milady! Is this not grand! The master returned and the two of you together again…’

  Eleanor sighed. So that was the story—some highly coloured romance, no doubt encouraged by Kit to give the impression of a happy reunion! She knew that she should be grateful, appearance mattering above all, but it felt hollow and a sham.

  Lucy was still chattering as she emptied the water into the bowl for Eleanor to wash her face.

  ‘They say that his lordship has been abroad for a space, ma’am…’

  Eleanor nodded listlessly, not troubling to reply. What could she add? He was on the Continent with his opera singers. She started to unfasten her spencer.

  ‘In Ireland, ma’am…’

  Eleanor frowned, her fingers stilling on the buttons.

  ‘On government business, I understand…’ Lucy nodded importantly. ‘Bromidge the first footman said that his lordship has done such work before, in France, for the War, ma’am…’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Eleanor said sharply, slipping the damp spencer from her shoulders and sighing with relief. She started to unpin her hair and Lucy came to help her. ‘I am sure that Lord Mostyn has been doing no such thing, and if he had it would be a secret…’

  In the mirror her eyes met those of the maid. Lucy’s eyes were as round as saucers. She gave a little conspiratorial nod.

  ‘Oh no, of course he hasn’t been abroad or…or doing any such thing, ma’am!’

  Eleanor sighed again. So now they were both involved in some imaginary conspiracy of silence to do with Kit’s absence. This was getting foolish. She really must tell him not to spin such tales to the servants.

  To distract Lucy’s attention, she pointed to a door at the opposite end of the bedroom. ‘This is really a very pleasant house, but what is through that door, Lucy?’

  ‘That’s his lordship’s dressing-room, ma’am,’ the maid said, picking up the hairbrush again. ‘His suite of rooms is next door, and then the guest suite. It’s ever so pretty, ma’am, furnished in blue and gold…’

  Eleanor was not listening. She had hurried across to the connecting door, only just managing to stop herself opening it through a sudden, belated realisation that she was now in her shift and Kit might well be on the other side.

  ‘His lordship’s dressing-room! But I had no idea he was so close…’

  The maid smiled. Indeed it looked to Eleanor as though she almost winked, but thought better of it at the last moment.

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am! This is a most convenient house, if you take my meaning! Well-situated rooms—’ She broke off as she caught Eleanor’s quelling look. ‘Yes, ma’am, and may I fetch you anything else?’

  ‘Just a carpenter to fix a large bolt upon the door!’ Eleanor said brightly, happy to see that she had wiped the complacent smile from the girl’s face at last. ‘And if you cannot find one, Lucy, bring me a hammer and nails! I will do the job myself!’

  ‘Truly, Kit, what do you expect? A hero’s welcome?’

  It was seldom that Lord Mostyn had to face the combined disapprobation of both his sister and his cousin, who were the only people on the face of the earth who could make him feel as though he were back in the nursery. He now reflected wryly that he had rather face Marshal Soult in the Peninsula again than take on the combined forces of his relatives. Not that anyone knew he had been in the Peninsula. That had been when he was supposed to be working for the East India Company, and before that…Kit sighed, and sat back, accepting the cup of tea that Charlotte passed him. She gave him a severe frown at the same time. Kit offered her a weak smile in return.

  ‘You look radiant now that you are a married woman again, sis—’

  ‘Gammon!’

  ‘And Beth…’ Kit manfully braved the glare that his cousin was directing his way ‘…increasing already! You are to be congratulated…’

  ‘Pray spare us, Kit!’ Beth said shortly. ‘You cannot be glad to see either of us married into the Trevithick family, but since you were not here to advise us you must just accept the consequences!’

  Kit raised his brows. ‘Would you have accepted my advice, Beth?’

  ‘Certainly not! Especially with the example that you have set us!’

  It showed all the signs of degenerating into a nursery tea party. Kit sipped his tea and wished he were at his club. He had hoped that his sister and cousin would be pleased to see him, fall on his neck with tears of joy, and provide the welcome that Eleanor had so singularly failed to do. He shifted uncomfortably. He was already grimly aware that he had no right to expect a warm reception from his wife and the fact that her coldness had hurt him was just too bad. He would learn to live with it.

  To be fair to Charlotte and Beth, they had greeted him very warmly when he had first arrived at Charlotte’s town house that morning. Now, however, they were over their initial relief and pleasure and were full of questions—and recriminations.

  ‘How could you do that to poor Eleanor!’ Charlotte was saying, strongly for her. ‘To marry her and leave her all in the one day! To marry her in the first place so precipitately…’

  ‘To seduce her in the first place!’ Beth put in, eyes flashing. ‘Yes, Kit, I know that Eleanor ran away to you, but you could have exercised some restraint…’

  Kit gave her a speaking look. Beth looked at him, looked down at her own swelling figure and after a moment, burst into a peal of laughter.

  ‘Oh, very well, I know I cannot upbraid you when my own behaviour has not been above reproach, but what an odious wretch you are to remind me, Kit! And I shall have you know that I am most respectably married now, and even if the tabbies count the months they can go hang—’

  ‘Beth!’ Charlotte said warningly. ‘You become ever more unbridled in your speech!’ She passed her brother a biscuit. ‘As for you, Kit, you know you have no defence. Your treatment of Eleanor has been truly dreadful!’

  Kit sighed. He dipped the biscuit into his tea—it immediately broke off and sank to the bottom of the cup. It seemed all too apt.

  ‘I never intended to treat Eleanor so shabbily but matters fell out that way. I am not at liberty to explain…’

&
nbsp; He shifted uncomfortably. They were watching him with scepticism and it made Kit feel both guilty and annoyed. He did not like the sensation of feeling in the wrong—and he felt it most strongly.

  ‘It was a difficulty relating to business that kept me away so long…’

  ‘Oh, please…’ Beth murmured, putting her teacup down with a disgusted clink of china.

  ‘I am sorry that I cannot be more precise…’

  He thought he heard Beth say something that sounded like: ‘Pshaw!’

  ‘It is not important for you to explain to us, Kit,’ Charlotte said gently. ‘Eleanor is the one who requires an explanation—and an apology. I feel sure that you are able to take her into your confidence.’

  Kit shrugged, hiding his frustration beneath a nonchalance he was far from feeling. ‘I have tried to offer Eleanor an explanation, sis! She would not let me speak. She has decreed a marriage of convenience and she says that she has been enjoying herself hugely as a married woman without the constraints of a husband!’

  Kit cleared his throat and looked away from his sister’s penetrating eye. He had no wish to allude any more precisely to his wife’s disgrace and he hoped that he had not given away too much already. But perhaps Charlotte and Beth already knew all about Eleanor’s behaviour. It seemed that the whole of the Ton knew.

  Charlotte and Beth exchanged glances over the teacups.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Beth said. ‘Eleanor has taken this every whit as badly as I would have expected.’

  ‘She is very young and has all the Trevithick pride,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘Besides, she has suffered a great deal. It is no wonder she is so adamant.’