“It’s been a while since I asked you this question, but I’m in the mood for it again,” she said. “So . . . why did you marry me?”
With a thud of his heart, he recognized the significance of the question. Much of her distrust must have arisen from the fact that from her point of view, he appeared to make major decisions for no logical reason—the foremost of which being, of course, his marriage.
Asking him to explain himself meant that she was willing to reexamine her prejudices against him.
If only he didn’t actually deserve those prejudices.
He pushed away the thought—some things she didn’t need to know.
“I didn’t want you to have to marry your butcher,” he began with a partial truth. “You didn’t sound as if you were too thrilled with the idea.”
She made a face. “So you were just being charitable?”
“Hardly. Every day of my bachelorhood, women married for reasons that did not thrill them and I did not make them my concern. You mattered because I didn’t want you to be nice to the butcher in bed. And since you insisted only a man who married you could have the privileges I wanted . . .”
She grazed the ends of a strand of hair against her jawline. “What if I tell you that you showed your hand far too soon? If I couldn’t find another means of support, eventually I would have agreed to your initial offer—it was hardly certain that Mr. Charles would have been willing or able to take in Matilda.”
He had her brush the palm of his hand with the same strand of hair; it tickled pleasantly. “I took that into account. If not the butcher, there would still be a lawyer, an accountant, or a greengrocer waiting somewhere in the wings, with matrimony on his mind. What man with an ounce of sense wouldn’t want to marry you?”
She looked away for a moment, as if embarrassed by his compliment. “If I understand you correctly, you married me because you wanted me too much to take the risk that someone else might come along and waltz me to the altar.”
“And if your next question is why, if I wanted you so much, I stopped sleeping with you right after our wedding night, the answer is, I didn’t like realizing just how much I wanted you.”
It was the closest he had ever come to admitting this particular wrinkle of his psyche.
She considered his confession, her index finger resting against her cheekbone. “Does that mean you’ve since learned how to want me less?”
He took a deep breath—it still went against every grain of his temperament to concede such knowledge. “No. I became mortal and learned to live with it.”
She bit a corner of her lower lip, then reached out and touched his cheek. “Thank you, Felix.”
His breath caught. He had asked her to use his given name, but she never had, until this moment. He placed his hand over hers. “What for?”
“Now things actually make sense. I prefer a husband whose actions I can interpret and understand—at least somewhat.”
She nestled closer to him and kissed him on the mouth.
Later, when he kissed her good night upon leaving her bed, she reached up and touched his cheek once again. “Sweet dreams, Felix.”
• • •
They had meant to slip in and out of London undetected by Society, but Louisa could not refuse an invitation from Lady Balfour, who also happened to be in town, for an afternoon tea party held to celebrate a niece’s birthday.
Louisa arrived at the party by herself, with a promise from Felix to come as soon as he was finished with his solicitors. Not five minutes after she sat down, she looked up and saw someone she had never seen under Lady Balfour’s roof: Miss Jane Edwards.
“I do believe you have already met Miss Edwards, Lady Wrenworth?” Lady Balfour loved to call Louisa by her new honorific. “Miss Edwards and Mrs. Summerland have become rather fast friends, you see, since they met in the Ladies’ Literary Club.”
Mrs. Summerland was another one of Lady Balfour’s daughters. Louisa pulled together a stiff smile for Miss Edwards. Miss Edwards, however, shook Louisa’s hand most amiably. And she didn’t stride off after that convivial greeting, but stayed by Louisa’s side.
Lady Balfour left after a few minutes to greet a pair of late arrivals.
Miss Edwards leaned forward. “My congratulations on your marriage, Lady Wrenworth,” she said warmly.
Louisa had trouble believing this was the same icy woman she had once fancied for a sister-in-law. But then again, now that Louisa was married, she was no longer a competitor for Lord Firth’s affection.
“Thank you,” she said carefully, trying not to imagine what Miss Edwards and her half brother did in private.
“I would like to take this chance to apologize,” Miss Edwards said with great sincerity, “for my earlier rudeness. I hope you will forgive a sister’s protective instincts.”
Louisa kept her expression bland. “I’m sure I do not understand.”
“Please excuse my bluntness. But you see, Lady Wrenworth, for much of the past Season, I was worried that you might be after my brother only for his income, and not because you cared particularly for him. And for that reason, I’m afraid my conduct was less affable than convention dictated.”
Louisa didn’t quite know what to say, given that Miss Edwards was largely correct in her conjecture. “Well, I did think Lord Firth a very fine, upstanding man.”
She had, but no more.
“Yes, that he is,” Miss Edwards concurred proudly. “The finest man and the best brother there is.”
Louisa could only nod.
“The poor darling.” Miss Edwards sighed fondly. “He was heartbroken over your engagement, Lady Wrenworth. For days on end he lamented that he should have been more outspoken with regard to his sentiments and that he should not have decided to wait until the end of the Season to propose to you. And that was when I became terribly ashamed of my behavior. Perhaps he would have had a better chance with you had I been more civil.”
Louisa was less shocked by the revelation of Lord Firth’s matrimonial intentions than by Miss Edwards’s regret that they never came to pass. She didn’t sound the least bit jealous that her brother was in love with someone else. “I’m . . . I’m afraid I had no idea.”
Miss Edwards shook her head. “He can be too taciturn at times, my brother.”
She was about to say something else when a tall, handsome man came up to her with a cup of tea.
“Oh, thank you, my dear.” Miss Edwards clasped his hand. “Lady Wrenworth, may I present my fiancé, Mr. Harlow.”
Miss Edwards, engaged? But of course, he was the man Louisa had seen with Miss Edwards earlier. Louisa coughed up a line of congratulations.
“My aunt lives not very far from Huntington,” Mr. Harlow said. “In fact, we were in the area recently, visiting her. Beautiful place, but alas, the rain never let up the entire time we were there.”
While he spoke, Miss Edwards gazed upon him with what could only be termed rapture—a sight that made Louisa queasy.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Edwards said with a broad smile after her fiancé retreated. “I must look so idiotic. I have been in love with Mr. Harlow since we were both toddlers. But it has taken him a while to realize I’m the right girl for him. We became engaged only last month.”
Louisa tried to remember the loverlike gestures on Miss Edwards’s part that had sealed her belief that the woman was indeed her brother’s mistress. Had there not been lips-to-ear whispers and other touches that had indicated a far greater intimacy than was normal between siblings?
To her horror, she realized that she had never actually seen Miss Edwards’s lips touch her brother’s ear: Miss Edwards had whispered to Lord Firth behind her fan, and Louisa, fresh from Felix’s shocking revelation, had convinced herself that there must be unseemly physical contact behind those ostrich plumes.
And as for Miss Edwards standing wi
th her breasts pressed into Lord Firth’s arm—to Louisa yet another piece of evidence—dear God, but hadn’t there been a large party moving through the crush that was the Fielding ball? It had been the crowd squashing Miss Edwards’s chest into her brother’s person, not a gesture on Miss Edwards’s part to exhibit ownership over the latter.
Louisa began to hurt between the eyes, a severe pain that radiated across her forehead and spiked deep into her cerebrum. She tried not to think, but the inevitable conclusions tumbled into place one after another, like a chain of dominoes.
If Miss Edwards was telling the truth . . . if Miss Edwards had been in love with Mr. Harlow her whole life . . . and she thought that her brother was the best man there was . . . and Lord Firth thoroughly regretted not having made Louisa his wife . . .
Many, many times she had told Felix she did not trust him. But never had she suspected him of such an egregious, utterly immoral fabrication that could have ruined the reputation of two innocent people, had Louisa been any kind of a tattletale.
And he had lied again the day they had seen Miss Edwards and Mr. Harlow together. He had once again slandered Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s good names—and she had believed him, because he had looked her in the eye while he lied.
She stared at Miss Edwards’s happy countenance, barely able to concentrate on her moving lips as the latter enthusiastically furnished Mr. Harlow’s myriad virtues and accomplishments.
So that was why Felix had ushered her away from Huntington. How stupid of her not to understand it for the manipulation it had been. How stupid of her to even think of doing away with her defenses. And how stupid of her—even in her state of numbness she felt the pinch in her chest—to have begun to look forward to a future in which she never needed to doubt him again.
And there he was, being shown into the parlor, searching for her. He even smiled. The moment he realized to whom she was speaking, however, his expression turned into a rigid mask, as if he were a defendant facing an adverse verdict. Or a patient awaiting a fatal diagnosis.
He knew. And he was as guilty as the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
• • •
Everything outside was shrouded in fog, indistinct, chimerical forms. The only reality existed within the confines of the town coach, within its velvet-upholstered seats, mahogany panels, and suffocating silence.
Louisa sat opposite Felix, her face turned toward the window, her hands hidden in the folds of her short mantle; the opalescent beads that trimmed her skirts shimmered and shuddered with each sway and jostle of the vehicle.
“You told me they were an incestuous pair, Lord Firth and Miss Edwards,” she spoke at last, her jaw clenched. “Did you lie?”
“I did,” said Felix. His voice sounded as hollow as he felt.
He wanted to add, I’m sorry, but somehow he couldn’t. I’m sorry was what one said when one accidentally bumped into someone, or ran out of a guest’s favorite vintage. Before a disaster of this magnitude, I’m sorry was about as useful as a spoonful of water poured on a burning house.
“Care to give your reason? I can’t wait to hear it.”
He wished she’d screamed, or clawed at his face. Her coldness made him quake inside. “There was nothing wrong with Lord Firth,” he said, keeping his voice free of inflection. “Mr. Pitt disobeyed his parents by paying court to you, but Lord Firth was his own man. His finances were sound and his character was sterling. There was no chance of your becoming my mistress as long as Lord Firth remained a viable candidate for your hand.”
He never thought it would sound good, this explanation. But still, its egregiousness stunned him. He had never been uglier.
Her expression only turned tighter. “Did you not think of the possible consequences for them? I could have passed on this falsity. It could have spread beyond my immediate circle. In time it might have taken on a life of its own and made pariahs of Lord Firth and Miss Edwards.”
What could he say? There was no defense for his lies. “I calculated that there was no one in whom you could confide, and not necessarily because of the salaciousness of the charge, but the source of it. You knew that no one would believe it of you were you to say that The Ideal Gentleman had told you such a thing—it was for the same reason I dared to propose that you become my mistress.”
His name and his persona carried power. She had been a nobody, and her sponsor only the wife of a baronet. Society would have chosen to question her sanity, rather than his character.
“How exceedingly clever you are. And how frightfully accurate your reasoning,” she said, her voice as flat as his. “I should be flattered that you would resort to such extraordinary tactics just to sleep with me. I wonder why I am not.”
“It was wrong of me.”
“Wrong of you? It was wrong of me the time I slapped Julia hard enough to loosen one of her teeth when I caught her deliberately trying to trigger a seizure on Matilda’s part. She was only six, with no real understanding of what she was doing. I should have explained, rather than hit her.
“What you did was hideous. Even if I were to accept that you were able to predict with perfect exactitude my silence concerning the matter, and that Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s reputations were never in any danger of besmirchment, do you think I can overlook what you did to me?”
How stupid he had been to think that he would prefer her openly furious. Her anger burned him like live coals shoved into his lungs.
“As much as it scandalized me, I did not scorn you for trying to make me your mistress. It was immoral and opportunistic, but I thought at least you were honest about what you wanted. I thought you meant to compete on an even playing field. And now I find out that the whole thing was rigged and The Ideal Gentleman had all the scruples of a common cardsharp.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I could live with a scoundrel, but I cannot stand a cheater.”
• • •
When they arrived at their town house, he followed her into her room.
She turned around sharply. “What do you want, Lord Wrenworth?”
The formality of her address—the depth of the chasm that separated them—made him dizzy.
“Louisa—”
“There is a time and place for that name—and the time is now behind us,” she said, chilling him to the bone.
“Don’t say that. We have taken vows before God. We have committed to a lifetime together. And I know it does not mitigate everything, but part of the reason I offered you marriage in the end is that I did not wish your life diminished by the lies I told.”
“So if I had become your mistress instead, disqualifying myself to ever become another man’s properly wed wife, you would not have considered my life diminished?”
“I . . .” He felt like a man who had been pushed off the edge of a cliff, arms flailing to catch anything that might stop his free fall. “Louisa, please listen to me. What I’ve done, I’ve done—I cannot go back in time to make changes. But I’m not the same man I was.”
“How have you changed? And if you have changed, why did you not come and tell me yourself what you had done? Instead, you made up fresh nonsense concerning Lord Firth fastening his trousers as he came out of his sister’s room in the middle of the night. Then whisked me away from Huntington to avoid discovery. And that’s why you have been so nice and sunny to me since, to distract me from all the clues to which I should have paid better attention.”
“I didn’t want you to think ill of me. I . . .” He almost could not bring himself to say it. A lifetime of worshiping at the altar of strength and he was very nearly too weak to move the words past his lips. “I love you.”
She stared at him. For a moment hope spread unchecked in his heart that perhaps those very words, those sentiments that had been so difficult for him to express, would make her understand how important she was to him, how he could not possibly have brought himself to
admit to his misdoings for precisely the fear of this rupture between them.
“I am not particularly altruistic,” she said quietly. “But between the time I turned sixteen and the time I became your fiancée, I did not spend one penny of my allowance. That and whatever I could strip from the household budget went to the emergency fund I’d set aside for Matilda. And when I went to London, I was fully prepared to marry a man I did not love, so that I could care for her as long as she lives.
“I daresay romantic love isn’t the same thing as sisterly love, but all love should meet a minimum standard. A lover should take my wishes into consideration and have a care for my well-being. When have you ever thought about me, except so that you may better gratify yourself—either to make you feel more powerful or to make you feel less out of control?”
He could say nothing, could feel nothing except an ever-rising panic.
“I’m weary,” she said. “Please grant me some privacy.”
He did not want to be banished. Even if he didn’t know how to plead his case, even if—
He closed the distance between them, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her on her cheek, her jaw, her lips.
She struggled. “What are you doing?”
But he was much stronger than she. He maneuvered her backward until she was pinned between his body and a longcase clock. He would not let her dig a moat around herself and keep him out. He would not accept that she no longer wanted him to touch her. And he would not—
A resounding thwack. A burning sensation on his cheek.
He stared at her in incomprehension.
“Get out!” she shouted.
“I don’t want you to be angry,” he said dumbly. “You said that when we are in direct physical contact, you cannot remain angry at me.”
“I don’t care what you want,” she answered, her teeth gritted. “I deserve to be angry and you do not deserve anything. Now get out.”
• • •
Louisa did not go down for dinner that evening. When her supper was delivered, along with it came a vase of golden tulips, which in the language of flowers meant, I am hopelessly in love with you.
The Luckiest Lady in London Page 21