A Ring From a Marquess

by Christine Merrill

  At the end of it, she gave the same dramatic pause that he had done, while fumbling for his words. Then, very deliberately, she said, ‘I do.’

  The next few minutes were a nightmare. He staggered through the few sentences of his next speech, omitting some words, slurring others and making bizarre substitutions that turned sacred vows into nonsense.

  The bishop watched in shocked silence. His soon-to-be wife stood frozen at his side. The back of his neck burned with the heat of Felkirk’s angry gaze. There was no way to turn back the day like a clock and start it over again. So Stephen glared back at them all, daring them to challenge him out loud.

  With one more slight hesitation, the bishop moved on to Margot’s vows.

  After a single, resigned sigh, she spoke them perfectly.

  Now it was time for the rings. This would go better, he was sure. It sometimes helped when he could connect his statements to some solid object. He reached into his pocket and clutched the ring tightly in his palm, imagining the delicate ridges along the silver band and the amethyst set artfully between them.

  She had designed it herself, at his request. He had asked her for a ring for the most beautiful lady in England. Then he had suggested that she use her personal taste as a guide, hoping she would understand his meaning.

  When she had presented him with the finished project, she’d admitted that she was quite proud of it. Then she had assured him that there was not a female alive who wouldn’t fall at his feet should he offer it. When he presented it to her, here, on this most important of days, she would understand that this marriage was no mistake. It had been his intention all along.

  And then, she would forgive him for the mess he’d made of things. Most importantly, she would not notice if he worshipped with self and not body, and endowed her with things and not goods. ’Til death was the most important bit. He barked the words, almost like a curse. But he got it out, once and clearly, sending the ‘us do part’ rushing after it.

  There. Finished.

  He had been too busy to notice her reaction. Apparently, she had lied when she had extolled the virtues of her work. There was at least one woman breathing who was totally unimpressed by the ring. The woman who had made it was staring down at it with disbelief.

  For a moment, he still hoped that her expression would change to the surprised smile he’d been expecting. Instead, he saw disappointment, disgust and anger. He could feel the faint pull as her hand tried to escape his grasp, twisting as though trying to gain release from something particularly unpleasant.

  He held even tighter, until the struggling stopped. It was an instinctive response and it embarrassed him. He should not be holding the woman he had just promised to love and cherish like she was a prisoner on the way to the gallows.

  But she had just promised to love him as well. It should not be necessary to detain her. None of this was as it should be. Nor was the cheek she offered him to kiss, before they turned to leave the silent sanctuary. They were married, just as he’d hoped it would be—yet it was all wrong.

  Perhaps the worst was over. He had done his best to see that, despite the lack of guests, their marriage would be a festive occasion. For the wedding breakfast, he’d reserved the front parlour of the most fashionable hotel in Bath. The food was excellent. The fish melted on the tongue like butter. The ham was so thinly sliced as to be near transparent, but smoky and wonderful. The fruit bowls were heaped high with grapes, strawberries and oranges straight from Seville. He had chosen the wines himself, the most exclusive vintages from his own cellars. Even though the party was small, the cake towered above them, draped in real ivy and sugar roses.

  Despite all this, Margot glanced impatiently about her and ate as if the food had no flavour at all.

  ‘Is there somewhere else you wished to be?’ he drawled, taking a sip of his wine. These words were clear and unhalting. Why was sarcasm was so much easier than normal speech?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not bothering to elaborate.

  Anywhere but here, he supposed.

  ‘It is not as if there is any real reason for celebration,’ she said. ‘You are as trapped in this marriage as I.’

  ‘For the sake of the others, we must smile and…’ be polite…gracious… He gave up and shrugged, glancing in the direction of her sister.

  ‘I do not see why,’ she said, with almost masculine bluntness. ‘They know the circumstances as well as we do.’

  ‘Then for the strangers walking by on the street,’ he said, with an expansive gesture that almost knocked over his wine glass.

  ‘Because you had us seated near a front window on the most travelled street in town,’ she said, obviously disgusted by his choice.

  Because he was proud of his new wife and wanted to make it clear that their affair had been no casual flirtation with a woman of a lower class. He had fallen in love with Margot de Bryun and did not care who saw it. He shrugged again. ‘Everyone loves a wedding.’

  ‘Everyone,’ she said. It was both a statement and a question.

  ‘At least those who have never married,’ he said, thinking of his own parents.

  ‘But no one in your family, apparently,’ she said. So she was thinking of them as well.

  ‘This event is no concern of theirs.’ At the last minute, he’d almost changed his mind on inviting Arthur. His brother owed Margot an apology. And the little sod deserved to see that his scheme, in the end, had come to nothing. If from spite alone, Stephen had forced circumstances around to the way he’d planned them to be.

  It had been like trying to turn a barge with a birch twig. But, by God, it had been done.

  ‘If we’d made our plans according to whom and whom did not have a legitimate stake in this union, we need not have done it at all,’ she said. ‘You had but to release me from my bargain with you and I could have returned to my shop as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘Nothing?’ he said. Was that what their love making had been to her, then?

  ‘There was no harm done.’ She took a hurried sip of wine. ‘Despite my fears, there is no child imminent. While there has been a negative impact upon the business from my notoriety, I am sure, by next summer, it will be forgotten. To the next crop of holiday goers, I would have been nothing more than a merchant.’

  ‘That is all that matters to you, is it? Your shop?’ A normal woman would have lamented for her lost honour.

  ‘It is my only source of income and therefore a primary concern,’ she said, using the masculine logic upon him again.

  ‘That is no longer true,’ he reminded her. ‘You are married. The value of the shop pales in comparison to the rest of my holdings.’

  ‘The rest…’ There was an ominous pause as she considered his words. ‘Because it is yours now, of course. And what do you mean to do with this shop of yours, now you have gained it?’

  It would have to close, of course. But only a fool would begin that conversation right after the wedding. ‘Now is not the appropriate time to speak of it,’ he said.

  ‘When, then?’ she said, looking up into his face with more interest and intensity than she had during the ceremony.

  ‘I will tell you when I have come to a conclusion.’ The conclusion was foregone. But it must be delivered in a way that would not lead to a screaming row in a public room.

  ‘And until that time, what am I to tell my employees? There are seven people who…’ She paused. ‘Six people,’ she amended. ‘After whatever you said to him the other day, Mr Pratchet has fled.’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘It was most unhelpful of you. The lack of a skilled metal worker could severely limit the business I am able to do. I am training up a clever girl who had been working the back counter and sweeping the floor. But what is the point to designing, if there is no one there to execute—’

  ‘You could not stand Fratchet,’ he reminded her, purposely mispronouncing the name so she would not hear him stammer.

  ‘That is not the point,’ she said.

  ‘You are
b-better off without him.’ The man had been in the thick of the true conspiracy against her. And today, she took his side against Stephen.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘Jealousy does not suit you, Lord Fanworth.’

  ‘I am not…’ he began, and felt an annoying prickle of irritation at the thought of Pratchet’s smug and possessive attitude towards Margot.

  ‘You are,’ she accused. ‘It is why you are keeping me here, in the middle of a business day, when I should be working.’

  ‘It is our wedding,’ he pointed out, in what he thought was a reasonable way. ‘When else would we have had it but the morning?’

  ‘Any time we wished. You had a special licence. You were not limited to the conventional place and time. We could have married quietly, in the evening.’

  ‘I sought to honour you,’ he said, gritting his teeth.

  ‘By taking me away from my work? We are short staffed in the front of the shop. And if I am gone as well?’ She took a deep drink of her wine and set her napkin aside, pushing away from the table. ‘The clerks have no idea how to go on without some kind of instruction. Yet, here I sit, with you, nibbling cake.’

  Only a few weeks ago, she had been eager to take time out of her schedule to talk with him. Why was it so different now? Perhaps it was because, when he spoke to her now, his voice sounded very like the one the Duke of Larchmont might use to put a tradeswoman in her place. ‘You have known this event was coming. You should have readied them for your absence.’

  ‘Do you question my ability to run a business that has been in my family for generations?’

  ‘I question the need for it,’ he said, even more annoyed than he had been at the mention of Pratchet. ‘You are my wife. You can do anything you wish. Yet you speak as if you mean to leave in the middle of your wedding feast to return to that shop.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Two simple words, Lord Fanworth.’

  For such a small answer, it cut like a knife. Even at his worst, she had never mocked him, before this moment. She had never smiled as he stuttered, or grown impatient as he struggled and tried to finish the sentence.

  She had saved it for this moment, when it was too late to get away. She had no right to speak so to the scion of one of the noblest families in Britain. ‘You will return to my rooms as soon as the shop is closed.’

  ‘To celebrate our wedding night?’ She gave him another of her horribly blunt looks. ‘At no time did I agree to that.’

  ‘On the contrary. At the altar…’

  ‘I believe the agreement already in place stated that I owe you two more nights, not a lifetime.’

  ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘Not as much as you seem to think,’ she said. ‘We married because my family left me no choice in the matter. But I like you even less than I did yesterday. If you insist, I will return to your rooms this evening. It will reduce the number of nights I must spend in your bed to one. I suggest you save it for a special occasion. A birthday, perhaps. Or Christmas.’

  ‘Go!’ His strength had returned to him in a rush of rage so strong it turned the command into a curse. But the relief was short lived. Suddenly, she chose to obey him, as a good wife should, and quit the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Margot stood behind a display in de Bryun’s, tracing idle circles on the countertop with her finger. On the other side of the glass, gold wedding rings rested on satin, like so many shocked, round mouths and wide, round eyes. As if they had any right to judge her. What had just happened had definitely not been her dream of a perfect wedding day.

  Of course, if she was truly honest, Margot could not remember ever dreaming of her wedding. She had not planned to get married at all. She had imagined herself, successful and alone. Not lonely, of course. Just, not married.

  If someone had suggested that she might wed the son of a duke in Bath Abbey and follow it with a tasteful wedding breakfast in one of the most luxurious hotels in town, she’d have told them to stop spinning fairy tales.

  Nor would she have expected to be devoid of wedding-night nerves, having dispensed with her virginity several weeks before the ceremony. In reality, this day was strangely anticlimactic.

  The only real surprise was that it was possible to be even angrier with her new husband than she had been before. While he seemed fine with displaying her in a shop window at breakfast, there had been no sign of his family at either the wedding or the meal. He was ashamed of her.

  To see her own ring placed on her finger, instead of some piece of family jewellery, was further proof that she was not worthy to be his marchioness. It was why, though she had sometimes dreamed of a proposal, she had not bothered to imagine a wedding. A union between them would not work.

  Why did he still have that ring at all? Even after she had known him for the deceiver he’d proved to be, she’d assumed that he had bought her jewellery and requested her designs because he had some small respect for her talent. Even at the worst of times, it had done her good to think that the things he’d made adorned beautiful ladies of his acquaintance. Such a display would result in notoriety and more sales.

  If he had kept the ring, what had happened to the rest of the things she had sold him?

  ‘Will we be closing early today?’ Jasper, the head clerk, looked hopefully at her.

  ‘Why?’ she said absently.

  ‘Because of the wedding, your ladyship.’

  She winced. ‘Please, do not call me that.’

  Now, the poor boy was utterly befuddled. ‘I assumed, since it is proper… And you are not Miss de Bryun any more.’

  Damn it all, he was right. She was no longer Miss de Bryun. But if she was not, then who was she and what name belonged on the shop window? She could not be Mrs Standish. When Fanworth had used his surname, it had seemed little better than a joke. But to become, without warning, a ‘her ladyship’ was too much to grasp on an already perplexing day.

  She sighed. ‘For now, perhaps it is better if you do not call me anything at all. Simply state your business and I will do my best to answer you.’

  ‘I asked about closing,’ he reminded her.

  There was really no reason to stay open, when the shop was as desperately empty as it had been lately. This afternoon, the only potential customers had done nothing more than to peer in the window, whisper to each other and hurry away. ‘I suppose there is no reason to stay here doing nothing. You can all go home, at least. Since I was gone the better part of the morning, I should be the one to stay to close up.’

  Jasper paused for a moment, then said, ‘If I may be so bold, miss, uh, ma’am. There is no reason that you should have to make up lost time in your own shop. Why do you employ us, if not to make your labours lighter?’ And then, to prove that matters were well in hand, he presented the ledger with the day’s only transaction neatly recorded, so she might total it with the cash in the drawer.

  He was right, she supposed. While she had informed Fanworth that the place was in chaos without her, it had seemed to run quite well. ‘Very good,’ Margot said, not sure how she felt about the success. ‘And now,’ she called out, to the room in general, ‘you are all released for the day. I will see you tomorrow, of course.’

  But for how long? At least, for a while, it was still hers. Once Fanworth asserted himself, there was no telling what would happen to it.

  If she was lucky, he would forget all about it. Now that they no longer shared pleasant conversations in the back room and she had persuaded him to stop walking by the window, he might have no reason to visit the place. If she was smart, she would give him what he wanted in bed and try not to goad him as she had today at breakfast. If she did not call attention to them, he might not care about her activities during the day. For all she knew, he might be planning that they lead separate lives.

  She could keep her business. And he could chat up women on the street, laughing and talking with them, just as he used to with her. She had no clue as to the identity of the stranger she ha
d seen with him through the window of the dress shop. But it seemed, now that he’d trapped her, Fanworth was cultivating a new favourite. Her cheeks had burned with shame and jealousy, as she had come into the church today. Did that woman call him Mr Standish? Or was he simply ‘Stephen’ to her? Or perhaps an affectionate ‘Fanworth’ as she touched his arm and stared up at him?

  Why couldn’t he simply have been a rake? If he had seduced her, and left her, she’d have been broken-hearted. It would have been awful, of course. But it would have been tidy. She could have put her finger on a day in the calendar when he stopped visiting. And perhaps some time later there would be a day where she stopped caring about it.

  But, no. He had been a gentleman about it. He had pretended to love her. Then he had pretended that her honour mattered enough to marry her. And then he had gone looking for another woman, leaving Margot as a loose end, an unfinished job, a knot that would never be tied.

  The bell on the door jingled and startled her from the unpleasantness. But it was not a customer, it was Justine. It was just as well. Margot did not feel like smiling or being polite or helpful. She felt like stomping her foot and throwing things.

  Was it obvious from her expression? Without another word, Justine stepped behind the counter and enveloped her in a sisterly embrace.

  ‘Such a greeting,’ she said, trying not to sound as vexed as she felt. ‘We have only just seen each other, you know. The way you are hugging me, it might have been years.’

  ‘It seems that way,’ Justine admitted. ‘For I have only just left the company of your husband. After you were gone, he did not say another word. Only drank his wine and stared at us.’

  Margot laughed. ‘However did you escape?’

  ‘Eventually, Will threw his napkin to the floor and made a very rude apology. Then Fanworth stood and we left.’ She reached out and offered another hug. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Whatever for? You were the one who suffered his bad temper, I was the one who abandoned you to it.’

  ‘I knew he was bad,’ Justine admitted. ‘But when Will spoke to him, he came away thinking that perhaps a marriage between you would work out well. I had no idea he would drink so, on his own wedding day.’