Married to a Perfect Stranger

by Jane Ashford

“Be careful,” Mary called.

  A few steps nearer, John was able to see past a bush and spot a large yellow dog near the garden gate. The animal rose to its feet and bared its teeth.

  “Watch it, sir. He’s savage,” Arthur said.

  “This beast has kept us pent up here for hours,” Mary added.

  The two of them peered through the iron bars like little lost waifs. The dog eyed them with what looked to John like malicious satisfaction. He had to laugh.

  “This is not funny!” cried Mary.

  “You’ve been in there for hours? Really?” The dog glanced at John, then it turned back to its captives. John would have sworn that he was enjoying himself. Laughter overcame him again.

  “Please get us out!”

  She sounded genuinely distressed. Suppressing his smile, John moved slowly closer, examining the dog. It was acting threatening but showed no signs of derangement. Its eyes were vigilant, but clear. Since he went back and forth to the livery stable alone every day, sometimes well after dark, John carried a cane. He did not raise it, however. He kept it at his side, in reserve, as he took a few slow steps closer to the dog. A growl rumbled in its chest.

  John squatted. With a firm grip on the cane, he extended his other hand and only then recalled that it held a bunch of flowers. This actually proved fortunate, for the colorful petals seemed to rouse the dog’s curiosity. Sniffing, it came closer. “You like flowers?” John said. “Be good, and you may have them.” The animal crept nearer. “Down,” John commanded.

  The dog sank onto its belly. John extended his arm and set the flowers before its nose. At once, the beast began to paw and mouth them.

  Moving swiftly but smoothly, with no sudden gestures, John rose and went to the gate. The dog gnawed on the blossoms. Mary was already opening the bars. “We will walk quickly but steadily to the house,” he said. Seeing Arthur poised to spring, he added, “Do not run!”

  Mary grasped Arthur’s arm and guided him. John took rear guard, his cane ready. But it wasn’t necessary. For some reason, the dog remained transfixed by the flowers and paid them no heed. In another moment, they were through the front door and inside the house.

  “That was champion!” said Arthur.

  John set his cane in the stand and looked at the freed prisoners. He had to smile again. “Where did that animal come from? I’ve never seen it around here.”

  Arthur’s demeanor shifted from open admiration to guilt. His mouth turned down, and his thin shoulders slumped.

  “Arthur shot him,” Mary said with some asperity.

  “Shot…?”

  “It was an accident!” The story spilled out of the boy, with running commentary from Mary. Aware of her annoyance, John pressed his lips together to restrain his laughter. When the tale was finally told, however, and Arthur dismissed to the kitchen, a burst of mirth escaped him.

  “I’m so glad we could provide you with such a cause for amusement,” said Mary.

  Her sarcasm had no effect on his laughter. “I fear your jailor ate the bouquet I brought you.”

  “May he choke on it!”

  John’s snort earned him another searing look.

  “I’ve been trapped out there for ages. I must go…” With a gesture toward the back premises, Mary rushed off.

  Half an hour later, as they sat at the dinner table, John was still subject to random grins. “Didn’t you see that your mistress was…having difficulties this afternoon?” he asked the maid. She’d been managing to set dishes before them without a single thump or spill, but now the buttered parsnips threatened to tumble onto the tablecloth.

  “Difficulties, sir?”

  “With a dog.” Mary made a sound, a kind of hmph, and he felt his smile broaden.

  “I didn’t notice any dog,” Kate said, evading his gaze. With a sketch of a curtsy, she hurried out.

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” declared Mary. “And I don’t care who hears me say so.”

  “I suppose she might have been afraid. Of the dog.” He did not add the words “You were.” He was not so foolhardy as that.

  From her flashing look, Mary heard them anyway. “The wretched animal was tired of the game by the time you got home.”

  “You are probably right.” John sampled the roast beef. He was hungry, and whatever the faults of the maid, Mrs. Tanner was a fine cook.

  “I am certainly right!” When he didn’t venture to dispute this, Mary sighed. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “I must get Arthur under control,” she said. She spoke as if she expected him to blame her for the boy’s escapade. “He seems to have a genius for doing precisely the wrong thing.”

  Without warning, a memory sprang into John’s consciousness—vivid, full-blown—four boys lazing on the moss under a trailing willow, the chatter of a shallow brook. He and his brothers in one of their favorite summer haunts. He saw himself at, what, five? And there was his oldest brother Frederick, looking as he had just before he went off to school. George would be eight then. Roger, a toddler, was tied to the willow with a long cord so he couldn’t get near the water.

  It was the day that Frederick had been reading to them from a life of Sir Francis Drake. And John had muddled up this ancient history with a British ship that attacked Spanish Puerto Rico. He saw himself launching a twig and leaf vessel into a tiny rapid, slashing the air with an imaginary sword, and declaring his plan to be a noble privateer and capture Spanish gold in the Indies.

  Frederick and George had laughed so spontaneously, so heartily, over these words. Even little Roger had laughed, though he couldn’t have understood why.

  They’d found the idea simply ludicrous, that their hapless brother John would embark on a marvelous adventure. It had been somehow established in the family, even that early, that John was a limited and bumbling creature. Their parents had said so; his brothers knew it to be true. He didn’t have a shred of greatness in him—not like Frederick with his intellectual skills or George with his stubborn courage. Even Roger, later, had been granted talents to be admired, while John remained the goat.

  The affectionate gibes of twenty more years piled onto the memory. How had it become a family joke—poor old John, who always does the wrong thing?

  “John?”

  From the way she was gazing at him, it was clear that Mary had asked him a question. “What?”

  “Do you think it best to send Arthur back to the country? Perhaps my idea was just not…?”

  “No! Let him be.” It came out more strongly than he intended.

  Mary blinked and sat back a little.

  “He didn’t do any real harm. And he apologized.”

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Mary looked both relieved and puzzled. She turned her attention to her dinner, and silence fell as they both ate. It was several minutes before she broke it, saying, “I wondered…I’d like to know more about what you do all day.”

  The question pulled John’s thoughts out of the past like the hands of the Lyra crewmen yanking him to safety after the shipwreck. He’d sailed, on a real vessel, to the other side of the globe. He’d seen exotic places, spoken to men so different they almost seemed another species. His analyses were valued throughout his department. “Various kinds of reports, from around the world, come into the Foreign Office. I—among others—read them and, ah, boil them down for the foreign secretary’s personal staff.”

  “Picking out what’s important and what isn’t?” Mary replied.

  John nodded. She’d gotten to the crux of it right away. “In order to make decisions about the country’s policy, and actions, Lord Castlereagh must have the best possible information. It’s one way England can uphold standards of justice and fairness.”

  Mary looked admiring. “Isn’t it difficult to decide which bits to include?”

 
John leaned forward a little, the remains of his dinner forgotten. “You get to know the style of the writers, you see, so that you can…feel really when they’re onto something important. We have to keep up on developments in our areas, too, of course. The sensitive spots and potential threats.”

  “Areas?”

  “There’s so much information coming in, we have to specialize. Conolly and I are East Asia. And Fordyce.” The latter name was sour on his tongue.

  “That’s why you went to China,” Mary concluded.

  John nodded. He still marveled a bit at the luck of being chosen, with no influential backers to push his candidacy. It had nearly killed Conolly to remain behind, and he would have been twice as useful as that damned Fordyce.

  Mary’s gaze was openly admiring. “It sounds like vital work.”

  John couldn’t help preening a little. “I like to think I make a contribution to the process of good government.” That sounded pompous. If his brothers heard him talk like that…

  “Tell me something you saw on your journey,” Mary added. “It must have been such an amazing adventure.”

  Struck by her choice of words, John stared at her. Mary was leaning forward. They inclined toward each other across the dining table. Her dark eyes glowed. Those kissable lips were curved with anticipation. He wanted to make her marvel. He wanted to boast and amaze. “On the voyage out, we stopped at the southern tip of Africa,” he began. “It was autumn there in March, because the seasons are opposite to ours, you know. There were birds that looked like patchwork quilts, all different colors.” Urged on by her obvious interest, he talked, his anecdotes punctuated by appreciative exclamations from his wife. She seemed to take every tale he told as true and wise and enthralling, which was rather a new experience for John Bexley.

  “You learned so much on the trip,” Mary commented after a while.

  He nodded, caught up in memories. “More than I ever expected. About the job as well as the world.”

  “The job?”

  “Hard work isn’t enough.” He shook his head, recalling a host of observations during the journey. “Though if you work harder than anyone else, it is noticed. And personal initiative—of the right sort. But success at the Foreign Office often depends on social position, or personal connections.”

  “Connections outside the office, you mean?”

  John met her dark eyes and came back to the present. He nodded.

  “So, why don’t we invite Conolly to dinner?” she added.

  “How do you know of Conolly?”

  “You mentioned him several times as you were explaining, as if he was a friend.”

  “We get along well. We work closely together.” Conolly was the opposite of Fordyce in every way.

  “I’d like our house to be a place where your friends feel welcome. And perhaps it would be helpful, too.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. He and Conolly had never seen each other outside the office. Of course, John had never had a home to invite him to before. “I’ll see if he’d care to come.”

  “Next Wednesday, perhaps? We’ll have done the baking. Or Thursday would do as well. Is he married?”

  “No.” John realized that he had no idea how Conolly spent his time away from work. He’d never asked. Their conversations were always absorbed by the details of their analyses. Yet Fordyce’s ludicrous antics, along with things he’d learned on the voyage, had made him see that people who rose higher in the Foreign Office had a whole network of social ties, some reaching back into childhood. Perhaps they could be built as well as…inherited. Perhaps the plans he’d been hatching weren’t the only resources he had for success. “I’ll ask tomorrow,” he vowed.

  Mary smiled at him. It was such a beautiful smile that John couldn’t look away. He lost himself in its present loveliness, its promise for the future.

  “Would there be anything else, ma’am?” asked a pointed voice behind him.

  Mary realized that the remains of their dinner were congealing on their plates. They’d been talking for almost two hours, and without a single dispute! She’d been fascinated, and impressed, by her husband’s exploits—the stories he told and the bravery and ingenuity so clearly implied in what he did not say. “No, Kate, you can clear up.” She turned back to John. “Shall we sit in the parlor?”

  They moved across the entryway into the sitting room. Candles Mary lit from the ones burning on the mantelpiece shed a golden glow over the comfortable furniture. The day had been warm, so they had no fire. But when they’d settled on the sofa, half-turned toward one another, the easy rhythm of conversation had dissipated. The silence felt awkward, and their long separation yawned between them once again. Mary thought of asking more about his journey, but that seemed contrived. Did they have nothing else to talk about? “I met one of our neighbors in the square today,” she said finally.

  “Before the dog?” John smiled slightly.

  Mary wrinkled her nose at him. “Before, yes. An older woman, perhaps sixty. Have you seen her walking in the garden?”

  “I don’t know. Many of our neighbors seem to be elderly.”

  “Her name is Eleanor Lanford.” John was looking at her so fixedly. She spoke more quickly. “Her house is on the other side of the square.”

  John shook his head without shifting his gaze.

  It was as if his eyes were lit from within. Like a gas fire Mary had once seen, they seemed preternaturally blue. She had to look down, but then her attention was caught by his hands. They were very attractive hands, strongly made, so much larger than hers. They looked…terribly skillful. “It’s good to know somebody nearby,” she said inanely. It was silly to be nervous, alone with this man. They’d shared a bed on their honeymoon, lived together for weeks. But that was two years ago, and he was so changed. It occurred to her that a honeymoon now might be quite different from the awkward groping at their seaside lodgings.

  Mary blushed. John shifted a bit on the sofa cushion. His shoulders were straining the seams of his coat, Mary noticed. And very fine shoulders they were. He needed a new coat to set them off properly.

  He reached out and touched her hand, then he ran his fingertips lightly up her arm and down again. Sensation shivered through her, like a hot breeze. He turned her hand over and caressed the inner side of her wrist. Mary’s breath caught as he raised it toward his lips.

  The thunder of footsteps in the entryway could not have been more unwelcome if they heralded news of disaster. Perhaps they did. It was Arthur. He stood in the open doorway and said, “That dog is still out there.” He danced from one foot to the other, brimming with energy, as always.

  Much as she liked the boy, at that moment Mary wished him a thousand miles away.

  “He’s walking round and round the garden fence. You think maybe he’s lost?”

  “I’m sure he can find his way back where he came from,” Mary replied. Her voice sounded sharp in her own ears.

  “Why don’t he go then?” Arthur wondered.

  “I’m sure he will…”

  “I feel like it’s my fault he’s out there, see. I shoulda been more careful where I was shooting. I do try to watch out. But it seems like things just go…” He flapped his hands to show he deplored the random eruptions of mayhem in his life. “Anyway, I think I oughta make amends.”

  “Amends?”

  “Help him get back home,” Arthur elucidated. “Or back where I saw him first, anyway.”

  John stood up. Mary blinked at him, startled. “Let’s find a piece of rope,” he said. “We’ll tie him up behind the house for the night. And then in the morning, you can return him to where you first encountered him.”

  “By myself, sir?” replied Arthur in a small voice. He looked at the floor and shuffled a foot. “It’s only…he was that angry at me. For hitting him with the stone. Accidental.”

  John looked down
at him. Though Mary couldn’t see her husband’s face, she had the sudden sense that it was full of compassion. She heard it in his voice when he said, “I will go with you. It has to be quite early, mind.”

  “Yes, sir! Early as you like. I’ll be ready.”

  They left the room together before Mary could speak. She didn’t know what she would have said in any case, only that her heart felt full.

  The capture of the dog developed into an epic chase around the square. Mary was amazed that no one came out of the neighboring houses to inquire about the racing footsteps and the barking and the coordinating shouts. The hour grew late, and what with one thing and another, the delicious moment that had been trembling between her and her husband was gone.

  As the night ticked over into morning, John Bexley undressed in his bedchamber. He was tired yet keyed up by the chase around the square and by all that had passed between him and Mary. His senses remained full of her, and he wanted far more than sleep.

  Shirtless, he went to the door of her bedroom and opened it. Mary was asleep. She always slept deeply; he remembered that. Breathing softly and evenly, she looked younger, with no sign of the “managing female” in her lovely face.

  He could go over and wake her and assuage this ache. He was a married man. It was his right. He’d done it before.

  John flushed a little, remembering those nights after their wedding. There had been a bit of fumbling, but mostly he’d simply taken what he wanted. If he’d thought about it then, which he had not, he would have said that Mary preferred it that way. His upbringing had given him the idea that women were not much interested in the physical side of marriage.

  Talk among the men on shipboard had shown him his mistake. And now, gazing down at Mary’s sleeping form, he was even more enflamed by the idea that she could want him as much as he did her. He’d glimpsed signs of desire in her eyes. Hadn’t he? He craved more of that—to watch them blur and drown in the throes of passion.

  John’s hand went out of its own accord. His fingertips had nearly brushed her cheek, when he caught a whiff of sweat from his run after the dog. He didn’t want to drag her from sleep and demand his rights. He wanted much, much more. Pulling back, he decided he would take the time, and the care, to get it. Jaw tight with control, he turned away and left her.