The Countess

by Catherine Coulter

  “Yes, he is quite well. He stayed in London only briefly, then he had to return to Paris.” It was none of his business that Peter hadn’t come to our wedding. I realized that I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to face it and accept it and deal with it. I pinned a dazzling smile on my mouth. “It is certainly a pleasure to meet you, John. I suppose it is a relief that we are now related, since you have quite captivated my dog. George, do have some dignity. Stop licking his fingers.”

  John laughed, which was a relief, and set George down on the floor—only George didn’t move. He just sat there at John’s feet, his tail wagging, his tongue out. He waved his paw at John.

  “George,” I called out. “That is quite enough. You will come here to me, where you belong. I am your mistress, the only one in the world you can really count on for your next meal.”

  George whined, then, after about ten indecisive seconds, came trotting back to me. At the very least, George had broken the stiff-necked scene we had walked in on. Lawrence said as I scooped George up in my arms, “Now, my dear, this is Thomas and his wife, Amelia.”

  I walked to them and stuck out my free hand., “How do you do. Your uncle has told me all about you. I am very pleased to meet you both.”

  Thomas kissed my hand, and Amelia lightly touched her fingertips to mine.

  “This is quite a surprise for us, madam,” Amelia said, a beautifully arched black eyebrow hiked up at least one incredulous inch.

  Madam? I beamed all my good will up at her. She was a good six inches taller than I was and very effectively looked down her nose at me. I said in a voice so oozing with affability that it would make even a vicar suspicious, “Do call me Andy. Even Lawrence does now. It is ever so much more friendly, don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes, I do agree.”

  “Why are you surprised?” I turned to cock my head to my husband as I spoke.

  “We didn’t know that Uncle Lawrence was getting married until a messenger arrived yesterday,” Thomas said. “That was our first surprise. I suppose we were all expecting a motherly lady, not someone so very young and beautiful.”

  “I suspect I’ll become quite motherly in the years to come, Thomas.”

  “What? Are you already breeding?” This was from John, his tone low and quite vicious. He pushed away from the mantelpiece and took two long steps toward us.

  My tongue was dead wood in my mouth.

  “No, John,” my husband said easily, taking my free hand in his, “what she means is that she’ll become quite comfortable with all of you in the years to come.”

  I said nothing, just let all my new relatives look me over to their hearts’ content. What did they see other than a girl who was on the small side with curling reddish-brown hair? I wasn’t plain, but I doubted that I could lay claim to the “beautiful” that Thomas had just used to describe me. I knew I had nice blue eyes, “all summery,” my grandfather had said, but the three of them were too far away to be able to admire them, if they so chose.

  Why hadn’t Lawrence told them he was marrying me? What was going on here?

  Lawrence said to Amelia, “My dear, has Brantley told you when we can expect dinner? Andy here has a healthy appetite. I believe her stomach began complaining some ten miles distant from Devbridge.”

  My stomach had growled, but not loudly.

  I gave him a sunny smile. “Perhaps a pheasant or two, nicely baked, mind you, would suit me just fine.”

  He lightly touched his fingers to my cheek, caressing me. I froze. I knew he felt me withdraw, even though I didn’t move or twitch or anything at all. And I knew it, too. His smile never slipped.

  “I’ll ring for Brantley and see about your pheasant.”

  “Thank you, Lawrence.” He hadn’t meant anything. He was just showing me affection. I had to accustom myself to that sort of thing from a man. From my husband. It meant nothing. He was simply fond of me. I could deal well enough with that.

  Amelia had sat down again on a lovely mahogany chair with scrolled arms from the last century and arranged her dark blue silk skirt. She was perhaps three years my senior, no more. And lovely, what with hair as dark as a sinner’s dreams, as my grandfather had said upon occasion, all done up atop her head in a knot of loose curls.

  I asked, “You don’t ride, Amelia?”

  George barked because John was walking toward us. He strained against my arms.

  “Why ever would you think that I don’t ride? John, don’t encourage that dog.”

  “You are so very white,” I said. “I can’t imagine the sun ever touching you. You look like one of the statues of the goddess Diana I saw in the British Museum. George, maintain a modicum of decorum, if you please.”

  “Too white, I tell her,” said Thomas. He was standing behind her, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. “Perhaps even dead-white in the winter, and that’s just around the corner now. I don’t like death or anything to do with it. My constitution, you know, isn’t what it should be.”

  “I don’t like freckles,” Amelia said. “The instant a single sun’s ray gets to my face, I grow freckles.” She smiled, and I was struck that the white skin on her face had flushed a bit.

  “Freckles have always reminded me of age spots,” Thomas said. “Age spots arrive just before death. No, I don’t like freckles, either. Amelia, my dearest, I prefer the dead-white skin to freckles. The more I think about it, the more I believe I like all your white flesh. Yes, I now count myself content.”

  John, who was staring at his brother, a look of bafflement on his face, said then, “Thomas, what is all this talk about death? I see nothing at all wrong with you. You are healthy as a stoat. You will outlive us all.”

  “That is nice of you to say, John, but you haven’t been around enough in recent years to see just how very precarious my health really is. Why, I coughed just this morning. It wasn’t even seven-thirty in the morning yet, and there came this cough, very deep into my chest, perhaps just a bit on the liquid side. I immediately feared a congestion of the lung. I’ll tell you that Amelia was right on it. Poured a potion right down my throat and wrapped a hot towel around my neck. Because of my careful darling, I have escaped something that could have put a period to my existence. Yes, it could have been a close thing. I say, Andy, that dog wants John very badly.”

  “Each day that God allots to Thomas is a gift to be treasured,” Lawrence said to no one in particular, no expression at all on his face. Did I scent a hint of sarcasm? Just a bit of loving contempt? I couldn’t be sure. Like John, Lawrence seemed to keep his thoughts close to his shirt pockets. “Yes, John, move away or take the wretched dog. He is creating a scene.”

  I looked beyond Thomas to John and held tightly to George. He had still not come forward, but now his eyes met his uncle’s. I began humming softly to George, one of his favorite tunes, the one about the dog catching the rabbit and chewing on its ear.

  “Well, John, I am glad to see you. You’re home to stay this time?”

  “I had believed so,” John said slowly, looking at me now, or at George, I couldn’t be sure.

  “What, you’re changing your mind again? You wish to be in peacetime Paris?”

  “No, that isn’t it at all.”

  “Dinner is served, my lord.”

  “Ah, Brantley, your timing is perfect. My dear, would you like to do something with George?”

  “Let me carry him upstairs to Milly. She will take a tray in her chamber, you know. Did she already ask you, Brantley?”

  “Yes, indeed, my lady. Mrs. Redbreast, our housekeeper, is taking fine care of your Miss Crislock. She simply told me to inform you that she would be delighted to meet everyone in the morning, when she is rested. Shall I remove the dog, my lady?”

  I looked at George. “Would you trust a man who looks like Moses to take you to Miss Crislock?”

  George leaned toward Brantley and sniffed at those long white fingers of his.

  I’ll say this about Brantley. He might look
like a Biblical figure ready to hurl tablets to the ground, but he had a sense of humor and a good deal of kindness. He slowly eased his hand in George’s little face and let George sniff for all his worth. Finally, George wuffed.

  “Excellent,” I said, and handed him over. “Thank you, Brantley.”

  “Now, my dear,” Lawrence said, “let’s see to your stomach.”

  We ate in the large formal dining room, the four of us seated around a table that could easily seat sixteen. I was gently placed in the chair at the foot of the table, or the bottom of the table, as my grandfather referred to as the lady’s place, by a footman Brantley called Jasper.

  John sat in the middle of the table, between his uncle and me. Thomas and Amelia sat on the other side opposite John. It was in that moment that I got my first really good look at Thomas. He was surrounded by candlelight.

  I think I probably gasped out loud. Oh, goodness, I tried not to stare, but it was very difficult not to. Thomas was the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. He was rather slight of build, fair—unlike his Spanish mother or his brother—and his features were so perfectly formed, going together so flawlessly, that surely Michelangelo would have been mad to sculpt him. While his older brother, John, looked dark, dangerous, hard, and meaner than a mad hound, Thomas looked like an angel. He had thick waving blond hair and summer-blue eyes, nearly the same shade as mine.

  He was simply beautiful, no other way to say it. Finally I saw something that saved him, barely. He had a very stubborn chin, but even that chin of his, tilted at just the right angle, made one want to run one’s fingers over his face and just stare at him. It was disconcerting. I happened to look over at John to see that he’d raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help it.”

  “Most ladies can’t,” John said. “Try to contain yourself.”

  “I will try.”

  Brantley returned then to direct the serving of the dinner. It was a very formal ritual, one obviously performed many times, much more formal than the one Grandfather and I had always observed. Miss Crislock would doubtless be pleased at this ruthless ceremony. She was the one who kept Grandfather and me to a reasonable dining schedule. She had always insisted that we dress for dinner, something Grandfather and I grumbled about, but did because it was important to her.

  I watched the two footmen, Jasper and Timothy, move silently about the table, making no unnecessary noise at all. They were also so well trained that they easily pretended they weren’t listening when the earl spoke easily of the weather, the state of the grass in the east lawn, or even when he slipped into a more controversial area—the damned Whigs, a never-ending misery to be endured, since they couldn’t be lined up and summarily shot.

  It wasn’t until Brantley nodded the footmen to the far side of the dining room and stood himself against the closed door, that Lawrence turned to John, who had just raised a fork with turkey and chestnut pastry on it, and said, “I had thought you planned to remain at Devbridge. Is there some chance that you will not remain here and begin to learn our estate management?”

  John frowned at his turkey and pasty, ate it, saying nothing until he’d swallowed. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and said very deliberately, “You have just married a young lady, Uncle, a very young lady. She appears immensely healthy. It seems obvious that there will be an heir in the not-too-distant future. I can now see no reason for me to learn how to manage the estates. You will raise your future son just as an heir should be raised. The lad will doubtless know all the estate management he needs to know by the time he is twelve. There will be no need for me to hang about, cluttering up the dining table.”

  Lawrence raised his wineglass to me and silently shook his head. He said to John, his voice as cold as a late winter wind howling over the Yorkshire moors, “I have said this before, and I will say it again. You, John, are my heir. You will remain my heir. Therefore, you must prepare yourself to someday take my place. There is nothing more to be said.”

  “But, Uncle Lawrence,” Thomas said, waving one slender, beautifully shaped hand toward me, “John is right. She is very young. Why else would you marry except to get yourself an heir?”

  “Man cannot live by heirs alone,” I said.

  Dead silence.

  Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut?

  Chapter Seven

  Amelia choked out the sip of wine she’d taken. John choked on a bite of baked trout, then loudly cleared his throat.

  Thomas was banging his fist against his wife’s back.

  Lawrence looked as if he would like to throw me through the dining room window, but he didn’t. Thank goodness for his restraint. Indeed, on second look, I thought perhaps he was trying not to laugh. He wasn’t angry at me, a blessed relief. But I still wanted to ask why bloody men believed that a wife’s only purpose was to produce a boy child. I suppose I was surprised that both John and Thomas viewed Lawrence’s marriage to me in that light only, and I shouldn’t have been. I was a well-bred mare whose function was to produce a boy child—nothing more.

  “Perhaps,” I said, knowing I should keep chewing my own turkey and chestnuts, instead of diving into such muddy waters, “your uncle found me quite to his liking, and that is why he married me. After all, George likes me very well, and usually he is an excellent judge of character.”

  “I don’t understand,” Amelia said, her cheeks flushed from her bout of laughter, “Uncle Lawrence isn’t a dog. What are you talking about, Andy?”

  “An attempt at a jest, no more,” I said. Of course I had known that this would have to come up and have to be dealt with. I just hadn’t realized that it would be this soon and discussed right in front of everyone, Brantley included. I sighed into my plate and kept my head down.

  “Andy has an excellent sense of humor,” my husband said, but he wasn’t smiling at all. Then he added, “We will see.” And that was all my husband of three days had to say. He returned to his own turkey. Of course, he had really said nothing at all. I looked over at John. He was staring at me, and there was something in those dark eyes of his that I didn’t understand. Then I did. It was violence. Then, just as suddenly, that something was gone.

  Face facts, I told myself. So John had wanted to meet me. Perhaps he had felt a bit of interest in me, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. I had been dressed in deep mourning. I had barely been civil. Regardless, that was three months ago. Now I was married, and separated from him as far as could be. If he felt any disappointment, which would amaze me if he had, he would simply have to get a grip on himself.

  At least Lawrence’s words had stilled the family. I wanted to tell them all that we wouldn’t be seeing anything at all, but I realized that Lawrence was protecting me. The last thing he would want to say was that ours was a marriage of mutual convenience, mutual respect, and mutual liking with nothing else cluttering it up, like a naked man humiliating a naked woman, namely me.

  I looked again at John. He appeared to be staring into his wineglass. Why, I wondered, had he wanted to meet me? Well, it didn’t matter now. Still, for a moment I didn’t look away from him.

  He was still too big and too dark in his black evening clothes. He appeared even larger now than he had the last time I’d seen him three months before. I could sense the danger in him, the cold control of an autocrat used to obedience, and he was surely too young for such control, I thought again. His face was still tanned from his years of campaigning and from his mother’s Spanish blood, and his hair, like Amelia’s, was raven-black. His eyes were so dark that they appeared black in the soft lighting, and his brows were thick and slightly arched.

  “How were you married?”

  John’s cold voice, so formal and thick with indifference, had me wanting to smack the rudeness out of him, but Lawrence said easily enough, “By Special License, of course. Bishop Costain is a friend of mine. He also knew your father, John. He was pleased to perform the ceremony.”
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br />   Of course I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I looked right at John and asked, “Did you think this was all a sham? Some sort of charade your uncle planned to entertain you?”

  John sat back in his chair, his wineglass held between his long fingers. “I have heard of men bringing their current mistresses into their homes and passing them off as their new wives. Naturally, such a pretense could never last very long.”

  “No, I can’t imagine that such a charade would long fool anyone,” Lawrence said. “I remember all the gossip about Lord Pontly, an old roué of the last century, who brought five different brides home to his beleaguered family, only to be found out very quickly each time. The sixth time he tried it, his family refused to allow the supposed wife into the house. There was a huge ruckus.”

  Lawrence smiled at each of us around the table. “Naturally, number six really was the wife, the ceremony even performed by the local vicar.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I said. “You’re not making that up, sir? A man really did that to his family? Five times? Why didn’t a member of his family just shoot him?”

  “I would think that there would be the temptation, but Lord Pontly died of just plain old age in his bed, his sixth wife, only a third his age, holding his hand when he passed, a peaceful look on his face, to the hereafter.”

  “I wonder,” Thomas said, and I thought even his voice was beautiful, so filled with unconscious charm even the blackest sinner would be tempted to repent, “if perhaps Lord Pontly was on to something, sir.”

  “What do you mean, Thomas?”

  “Well, if he died of old age, not some vile illness, then perhaps having all the sham wives kept him healthy. It must have added to his vigor, improved his outlook on his lot in life.”

  “At least a sham wife could be tossed out the window when the man tired of her,” John said. “That would certainly go a long way to improve a man’s contentment.”

  Amelia threw her buttered roll at him, which he handily ducked. “What a dreadful thing to say. You will take it back, John, right this minute, or I will think of something dreadful to do to you.”