An Ideal Husband?

by Michelle Styles

  He looked forward to initiating Sophie tomorrow afternoon in the art of bedsport, but first he had to deal with his mother.

  ‘Congratulate me, Mother, I am going to marry.’

  His mother’s face pursed like she had just swallowed a sour plum. ‘To the common chit whom you have used as a decoy when you were negotiating Hannah’s marriage? But how? Why? You have barely spent any time with her beyond your duty.’

  ‘To Sophie, yes.’ Richard frowned. His mother had no right to speak of Sophie in that fashion. And he had kept his visits with Sophie private. Sometimes his mother was a worse snob than his aunt. ‘You will like her when you meet her. You will find her an admirable daughter-in-law. There is nothing common about Sophie at all. You will see why I married her once you are acquainted with her.’

  His mother raised an eyebrow. ‘I have heard from your sister that Miss Ravel is a classic Beauty with a friendly unaffected manner. However, Hannah is no judge of character. I thought we had agreed—there is no need to actually marry the girl. If a woman wishes to ruin herself, allow her. You did the honourable thing. You proposed, she refused. You have squired her to a few amusements, but you were well chaperoned.’

  ‘She has accepted my offer. My second offer.’

  ‘This woman was merely the excuse you were going to give your father if he required an answer.’

  ‘You chose to believe that, Mother. I saw no need to correct your assumption.’

  ‘Are you telling me that there was more to it?’ His mother paled visibly. ‘What have you done, Richard? How did she trap you?’

  ‘Mother, my relationship with Sophie is none of your business.’ Richard breathed deeply. His mother had never met Sophie. She could not possibly understand why he needed to be certain that she would remain in his life. He wasn’t even sure he understood. He only knew that he had to have her. ‘Why did you allow Hannah to go to the match today? I asked you to prevent it.’

  ‘She wanted to. Ronald wanted her there.’ His mother ran a finger along the oak table. ‘I don’t see why you had to take rooms here in Granger Street. Your man does not clean properly. You could have stayed with us. It would have been good to have you there when you were needed, rather than me having to seek you out.’

  Richard gave a faint shudder at the thought of staying any length of time with either of his parents. With his father, they were at least able to be in separate wings. His mother’s house on Charlotte Square was a reasonable size, but not overly large. And given his impending marriage, these rooms would have to do as a bridal suite. He withdrew the licence from his coat pocket.

  ‘I will be married tomorrow, Mother, and that is the end of it. Remember, Sophie is my chosen bride and address her civilly. Otherwise don’t bother.’

  ‘May I come to the wedding or am I to be forbidden as unfit for society? My father was a baronet. And now every door is shut to me.’ His mother slammed her fists together. ‘Why? Because of your father and his vindictive nature.’

  ‘I haven’t told Sophie about you and Hannah yet,’ Richard admitted between clenched teeth. Trust his mother to hit on the nub of the problem. His plans had moved at a breathtaking rate after Sophie melted in his arms. He had to trust Sophie would understand why he hadn’t told her before the wedding. ‘Events rather overtook us. If there was any trapping to be done, it was me who pushed. I want her for my bride. You who followed your heart and abandoned your family surely must understand this?’

  His mother digested the news with difficulty. ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘What does love have to do with it?’ He refused to discuss his feelings for Sophie with his mother of all people! They were far too new and raw. He had never felt like this about anyone before. All he knew was that he wanted her in his arms for always. He also knew he’d forced the marriage, rather than trusting Sophie to make the right decision.

  ‘I know what it is like to be in a loveless marriage, Richard. I suffered dreadfully. You have no idea how it can suffocate you. I thought I’d go mad if your father mentioned his pigs again.’

  He crossed over to the desk. ‘My father has written. The letter arrived this morning. He is coming to Newcastle. I have no idea when he will arrive. I thought you should know. He is apparently prepared to leave his pigs to meet Sophie.’

  His mother went white and she staggered over to the sofa. ‘You swore this wouldn’t happen. He never travels up here. He knows I am here. Whatever am I to do? Do you suppose he knows about Hannah’s impending marriage? Could Parthenope have heard a whisper? That woman is a menace! She has always aided and abetted your father.’

  ‘He wants to meet Sophie. He makes no mention of you or my sister.’ Richard’s mouth twisted and he clenched his fist. He’d been the one to taunt his aunt at the At Home. Now, he potentially had both his parents thinking Sophie was beneath him. ‘I suspect my aunt did not send a favourable report. And I do not intend to have any of his interference in my marriage.’

  His mother nodded as she withdrew a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. She gave a shuddering sigh before she continued. ‘Perhaps you are wise. It is best your bride meets your father without knowing about your sister or me.’

  ‘Why? I would have thought Hannah would want to go to my wedding.’

  ‘Your bride-to-be is the one who was supposed to be keeping your engagement quiet, but before twenty-four hours were up, she announced it to the packed Assembly Rooms in a very dramatic fashion. If she meets your father, she might suddenly take it into her head to blurt out about Hannah and her engagement.’

  ‘There were circumstances beyond her control.’

  His mother gave a faint shudder. ‘Can you trust this Sophie with the secret? With your father in the same city as me? After all these years? Don’t you care about your sister and her happiness?’

  ‘Mother! You are speaking about the woman who will be my wife. If I didn’t trust her, I would hardly marry her.’

  His mother raised her hands in supplication. ‘Let me get your sister properly married first. After that, your father can’t touch her. Please, for Hannah’s sake. I’ve told you how vengeful your father is. How he hounded me and wouldn’t rest. How he refused to hand over any of my dowry. He will destroy Hannah out of sheer spite, if he realises the true reason why you travelled up here. I know he will. Is this such a little request to ask of you?’

  Richard pressed his lips together. The excuse would serve. The last thing he wanted was Sophie having to deal with his mother’s unwarranted snobbery on her wedding day.

  On the way back from the Bishop’s, he had stopped at John Ormston shipping agents on the quayside and booked two first-class tickets to Hamburg, reserving the best cabin. Sophie and he could spend the summer touring Germany and Austria, taking the waters in various fashionable resorts. For Sophie, he’d brave the crossing. The agent promised as-smooth-as-glass sailing at this time of the year. They could return in the autumn, in time for Hannah’s wedding. It would give his mother enough time to realise Sophie was his wife, rather than a woman who could be snubbed.

  ‘I agree, Mother. I will tell Sophie everything eventually … when the time is right, but she will dance at my sister’s wedding.’ He glared at his mother. ‘It will mean you and Hannah will not be able to come to my wedding.’

  Tears glimmered in his mother’s eyes. ‘I knew I could count on you to understand, Richard. It means I fulfil my final promise to my beloved and see our daughter properly settled. It has been a worry and a bother for many years. Hannah’s future must come first. You will explain that to this bride of yours. You have a title and an inheritance. Dear Grayson’s daughter has nothing but her beauty and sweet nature. She must make this match.’

  Richard nodded, knowing his mother had made a choice, the same choice she had made years ago when she had chosen bringing up Hannah over maintaining any contact with him. Her excuse was that he was his father’s heir and his father would never have allowed him to go. His mother could never understand why he kep
t in contact with his father after knowing the truth about how she was treated. But his father was his father and he loved him for his eccentricities and for the way he had been there when Richard needed him as a boy.

  ‘Happy to oblige.’

  Sophie stood next to Richard before the high altar in St Nicholas’s church, waiting for the ceremony to begin. She grasped the tiny nosegay of baby’s breath and rosebuds, which her stepmother had managed to procure in time from the florist, tightly to her bosom and drew a quick breath. Yesterday at this time, she had just agreed to play in the cricket match, and today she was a properly attired bride.

  Everything seemed to happen at such a speed, once she received Richard’s note that the wedding was set for eleven this morning because of the Bishop’s commitments.

  Jane, her lady’s maid, had been up until the early hours making sure the ball dress was properly altered and the veil securely attached to her newest straw bonnet. When she looked at herself in the full-length mirror just before going downstairs, she had to agree with Jane’s assessment that she was fashion-plate perfect. It might be a rushed wedding, but the bride would not disappoint the crowd.

  Sophie wrinkled her nose. Not that there were many gathered when she arrived in her stepmother’s carriage.

  The large Gothic interior of St Nicholas’s church loomed around her. Cold and silent. Her footsteps had echoed when she walked to the altar. Besides her stepmother, Jane and Richard’s valet, the church was empty of witnesses.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Richard asked in an undertone. ‘You appear pale.’

  ‘I think my corset is one notch too tight, but I won’t lock my knees and faint. I’ve no desire to collapse at my wedding like my friend Judith did.’

  ‘I will catch you if you faint.’

  ‘I believe you would.’ Sophie pasted a smile on her face. Richard was here and that was all that mattered.

  The Bishop began to intone the words of the service and Sophie turned to look at her bridegroom and make a memory.

  Richard stood upright with a very serious expression on his face. He answered the Bishop in a loud ringing voice, whereas Sophie found it difficult to utter the words above a whisper.

  ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

  The Bishop’s words as he concluded the ceremony sent a shiver down Sophie’s back. And the enormity of what she had just done hit her. For better or for worse, she had married Richard Crawford and was now Lady Bingfield.

  Until a few weeks ago, they had been strangers. Not like Henri, who had known Robert for years before they married, or even Cynthia, who had known her new husband for a year before they eloped. All she knew was that she had to do it or face ruin. She couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Richard again and she couldn’t trust herself to stop the next time. She was so glad that Richard had given her a choice.

  She would make it for better, she decided. She would be a good wife.

  Richard raised her veil and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. The gentle touch did much to settle her nerves. He did want her as his wife.

  ‘It is done,’ she said, looking into his burning-gold eyes.

  ‘Let no man put asunder,’ Richard replied with a determined set of his jaw. ‘We are properly married, Sophie. No one can remark now. Shall we go and have the wedding breakfast your stepmother prepared, even though I’d prefer to get straight to the wedding night?’

  Sophie’s cheeks heated as his warm voice did things to her insides. ‘You mustn’t say such things, even in jest.’

  He lowered his voice as his hand squeezed her waist. ‘But I am thinking them. Know that I am counting the minutes until I get you alone and in my bed.’

  ‘Hush! My stepmother will hear and she was up nearly all night making the wedding breakfast. She even made her famous seed cake.’

  ‘I am honoured. I will eat a slice and then we shall make our excuses. Your stepmother will understand.’ He started to escort her down the aisle. ‘Neither of us is hungry for food.’

  ‘What is going on here?’ a loud overbearing masculine voice thundered at the back of the church. ‘Richard, I went to your rooms and they said you were at church. Is this harum-scarum affair your wedding? And this woman—is she the common chit your aunt wrote me about?’

  Sophie halted. She looked up at Richard, whose face had gone thunderous before becoming a mask of urbanity.

  ‘The Bishop finished not a moment too soon,’ Richard murmured. His hand tightened on Sophie’s elbow. ‘My father has arrived and is his usual charming self. Shall we go and greet him before he bellows the church down?’

  ‘Did you know he was coming to Newcastle?’ Sophie whispered, an uneasy feeling creeping up the back of her neck. Richard had known his father wouldn’t approve of the match.

  ‘I knew he had plans to travel to Newcastle. I didn’t know when he’d arrive.’

  Sophie stared at her new husband. He had deliberately kept his father’s imminent arrival from her. What else had he hidden from her? ‘You should have said.’

  ‘What, and risk giving you or your stepmother a chance to delay the proceedings?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Not likely. You are hard won, Sophie. I want my prize. I want you in my bed and this is the only way I could get you there.’

  Hard won. Her heart did a little leap, but a niggling doubt filled her. Did he think his father would object to her, was that why he’d rushed the marriage? He had given her a choice, hadn’t he? ‘But your father …’

  He pulled her closer and whispered in her ear, ‘Remember you are my wife, Sophie. There is nothing my father or anyone else can do about it. You are Lady Bingfield now. You are my chosen bride. It matters not a jot what my aunt or indeed my father thinks of you. It only matters what I think.’

  Sophie bit her lip. Richard made it sound as though she was somehow likely to be found wanting by Lord Hallington. Her pedigree might not be top drawer, but she was hardly a pauper. Her father had wanted her to marry into the aristocracy. She had had the right sort of education. She wasn’t some governess or vicar’s daughter, but … All the memories of feeling inadequate and that people were whispering behind their hands at her during her first Season came flooding back.

  She regarded the red-faced Lord Hallington. Despite his high colour, she could see the family resemblance. She would have known that he was Richard’s father anywhere. They shared the same facial structure and their eyes were the same colour. She tried to breathe. This was not how she had envisioned spending her first few moments of married life, confronting an irate father-in-law and trying to convince him that she was the proper person to marry his son, when she knew she had behaved very improperly. She knew the true reason for the haste.

  ‘Meet your new daughter, Father,’ Richard said, putting his hand about Sophie’s waist as his gaze warred with his father’s. Lord Hallington was the first to look away, defeated.

  ‘You have married the chit!’ he growled. ‘Do you know what your aunt wrote about her and her family? Parthenope did not mince her words. Do you know how her father made his money? How he got his start?’

  ‘Hardly a chit, Father, Sophie is my bride. Be civil,’ Richard said, giving his father a hard look. He could happily murder his aunt. ‘I have no idea what sort of report my aunt wrote, but I assure you that Sophie is my choice. I am the one who married her. My aunt had nothing to do with it. The sort of woman she approves of leaves me cold. As Sophie’s father died years ago and I never met him, I can offer no opinion on his manners, but I’ve been increasingly impressed with Sophie’s gentility and civility. Her stepmother is one of the kindest souls I have ever met.’

  His father’s frown increased. ‘You would say that!’

  ‘Sophie is now Lady Bingfield and my wife. She shares my status. I married her because I wanted to. I was determined to have her.’

  ‘Just as you were determined to have that other chit, the one who died, the one who had you sent down from Oxford. Marry in haste, re
pent at leisure as my dear mother used to say.’

  Sophie went cold. She’d known Richard had been sent down from Oxford, but he’d never said about wanting to marry anyone. How many other things had Richard kept from her? How well did she really know her husband?

  ‘I see little point in bringing up ancient history, Father, and as I only received your letter after I made the appointment with the Bishop, your assumption is incorrect.’

  His father spluttered something incoherent.

  ‘If you wish to cause mischief, you may leave,’ Richard continued. ‘Now, you may begin again and give my bride proper congratulations or you turn around and go. I do not care which.’

  He waited, barely clinging on to his temper. His father should know better. The last thing he wanted was to have a fight with his father on his wedding day, but he would protect Sophie.

  His father’s shoulders sagged and he appeared to age, but his face remained an unnaturally red colour. Richard braced himself for the next onslaught. Silently he thanked his guardian angel that his mother and sister were not here. When his father was in these moods, there was no reasoning with him. It was only after the colour receded that some semblance of normality returned. His father always regretted his actions, but that was not the point.

  ‘Welcome to the family, Sophie,’ his father said, holding out his hand. ‘You must forgive my rough speaking. Lately I have been spending much of my time in the company of pig keepers.’

  ‘My father’s passion is pig-breeding,’ Richard explained between gritted teeth. His father’s bad grace was clearly evident with the way his mouth curled. He had to hope that neither Sophie nor her stepmother had noticed the rudeness. ‘It is why he rarely travels far from Hallington. It rules him.’

  ‘That is not true, Richard,’ his father protested. ‘I went to the Great Exhibition last year in London. I wanted to see the improvements in pig farming that the Americans had. Excellent farmers, those Americans. They truly know their pigs.’

  ‘Did you see anything else?’ Richard enquired. ‘Be honest, Father.’