Vows to Save Her Reputation

by Christine Merrill

  ‘Hercules,’ she said, staring back into the pasture.

  ‘It was the name he had been given, when I bought him,’ Sir Robert replied, staring back in the direction of the bull. ‘I have called him many things since, some not nearly so polite.’

  ‘And if you do not like him why, exactly, did you buy him?’ she said.

  He was giving her a look that said the answer to this question should be obvious. She blushed as he explained.

  ‘There are many farms in the area that have at least one cow on them. But if milk is wanted, or veal, the assistance of the male of the species is required at some point.’ He gave her another pointed look, to make sure she required no further details.

  Her blush deepened.

  ‘My goal was to hire his services to the local farmers. But, due to the luck of the Gascoynes, a plan that should be as simple as letting nature take its course failed utterly.’

  ‘In what way?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘When presented with his sole purpose in life, Hercules was...uninterested.’

  ‘He did not...?’

  ‘Did not and would not,’ Sir Robert said, shaking his head.

  ‘Then why do you keep him?’ she asked, staring at the bull in astonishment.

  ‘Knowing what I do, I cannot sell him,’ he replied. ‘Who would want a bull that refuses to perform his only duty? And, while you might think it sensible to turn him into table fare, I could not bring myself to eat him. Especially knowing the price I paid for the roast.’

  ‘How very strange,’ she said.

  ‘He is still as bad-tempered as others of his ilk, though, and I recommend you give him a wide birth. If you take Theo out, walk him on a lead. If you do not, do not bother to chase him, should he bolt. I have taught him a number of tricks, but the one that eludes him is answering to his name when called.’ Then he shrugged and said, ‘Do not worry about him. He never comes to harm and will return home when he is ready.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Robert,’ she said, resisting the urge to curtsy. Between the shock of confronting the bull and the admiring look on her husband’s face, it was not her ankles that were feeling weak, it was her knees.

  ‘Robert is sufficient, Emma,’ he said, his smile returning. ‘There is no reason to be so formal, when we are at home together.’

  His voice was gentle, as it had been in the church when he’d said his vows, and she could not help staring up at his face, rendered as speechless as she had been the first time she’d seen him. She had forgotten how very green his eyes were. But a warm green, if that was even possible, as if there was a flame burning somewhere in the depths that had not been there before. Was it because of her? For his expression seemed to say that, though he might have looked at her before this moment, he had never really seen her as he was seeing her now.

  She looked down at her feet, not wanting to notice the moment when the light in his eyes dimmed and everything returned to normal. ‘Very well, Robert,’ she replied and felt her cheeks grow pink as she repeated his name.

  He held out his arm to her, nudging her elbow to regain her attention. ‘And now, perhaps I can escort you back to the safety of the house.’

  It was probably no more than a courteous gesture. But a sidelong glance at his face revealed a smile that was like a shared secret between them and she accepted both it and his proffered arm. ‘Thank you, Robert. I would like that very much.’

  Chapter Eight

  The woman sitting across the table from him at dinner that night showed no signs of the misadventure of the afternoon. She was not precisely poised, for she still had the uneasy look of one unaccustomed to her new position. But there was nothing about the smooth hair or satin gown to remind him that she had been running for her life only a few hours ago.

  Yet he could not get the image of it from his mind.

  When he had looked from the window of his study and seen her chasing butterflies with the dog, there had been a childlike innocence to her that he had not noticed in other women of his set. It had certainly been absent in his late wife Elizabeth, who was not given to flights of fancy, day or night.

  It had occurred to him that he could leave his work, which was nothing more than another letter enquiring after his defunct mine, to join her in an afternoon of idleness. He had shown her the house on the previous day, but there was much about the grounds that she did not yet know.

  As he had walked through the house to the door, he’d lost sight of her for a few minutes and wandered the grounds himself, unsure of which direction she might have taken. It was then that he’d remembered her companion and begun to worry. Theo the dog, when left to his own choices, always ended up in the one place on the property that was unsafe for the new mistress.

  For a moment he could picture in his mind what would happen next, the fulfilment of the death curse not at some distant, preventable date, but right here and now, before his eyes. He was to be punished for the audacity of his plan by seeing an innocent woman bloody and broken, worse than she had been on the first day of their meeting. This time she would be unmendable.

  As he had run towards her, it had seemed as if the distance stretched ahead of him to miles. His breath laboured and his vision clouded at the edges, leaving a narrow tunnel showing only her, unreachable and far too close to disaster.

  Then, she had recognised the danger before he could even bring himself to call out to her and lifted her skirts to bolt. When presented with the obstacle of a fence, she had leapt over it like a doe, not even breaking stride as she had come down on the other side. The sight of it had shocked him back to himself and he was able to release his held breath in a laugh of joy.

  As he had run the rest of the way to meet her, he noted several things. First, his wife might be careless in ignorance, but she was no coward. Secondly, she could run like no one he had ever seen before. He could remember jumping fences with his friends as a schoolboy and the pathetic hurdles that some of them had managed, trying to outdo the prowess of their peers. But she had been magnificent, as graceful as a dancer.

  Most interesting of all, his wife had fine legs and he had seen all of them. She had hoisted her skirts well past the point of decency, above where they’d hidden her garters. And she’d revealed thin ankles, well-turned calves and firm, long thighs. And had it been his imagination, or had he got a brief glimpse of...?

  He took a long drink of wine, trying to unimagine what he was quite sure he had seen. It was even harder to do with her sitting in front of him in another dangerously low-cut gown, piling temptation upon temptation.

  Noting his empty glass, she pushed the carafe in his direction and it tipped dangerously, spilling a few drops on the cloth before the footman could grab for it.

  As the servant refilled his glass, she whispered an apology for her mistake and stared, embarrassed, down at her plate. It seemed that their talk of the previous evening had not fully freed her from the feeling that minor mistakes were unforgivable sins. It made him wonder just how difficult it had been to live in her parents’ house, under continuous scrutiny.

  But beyond her muttered apologies, and his insistence that they were not necessary, it seemed they had little to say to each other. Of all the things he had considered, when he had agreed to marriage, he had not expected to be bothered by quiet. Since he lived alone and was not in the habit of talking to himself, silence had been his old friend for some time now. But another person in the room seemed to create a void that had to be filled.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ she blurted. The words seemed unusually loud in the space between them.

  The sound of her voice was enough to startle him. But of all the topics she had to choose, why must it be that one? He set down his fork and gave her a pointed look that said some things were not appropriate for the dining room.

  She ignored it and continued. ‘Since they are my family now, it only makes
sense that you tell me about them. I should hate to run into someone on the street who claims an acquaintance, only to embarrass myself with ignorance.’ She was giving him what she probably hoped was an encouraging smile.

  He did his best not to be moved by it and failed. At last, he surrendered and said, ‘If you have heard of Major John Gascoyne, you know the extent of my family.’

  ‘He is your brother,’ she supplied, waiting for more information.

  ‘My half-brother,’ Robert said grudgingly. ‘And only living relative. As I explained to you before, women do not survive in this family. Jack is the son of my father’s second wife.’

  ‘Jack,’ she said, noting the familiarity. ‘And I suppose the two of you were close, growing up.’

  There had been a time they were, but that was before their grandfather had intervened and it was so long ago he could hardly remember it. He gave her another quelling look. When it was clear that she was not impressed by it, he said, ‘No. Jack was deemed frai, and brought to live here. I was sent away to school and lived predominantly in London until Grandfather died and I inherited this house.’

  ‘Clearly your brother has recovered from any infirmity,’ she remarked. ‘I hear his service at Waterloo was most impressive.’

  At this, Robert grunted. He still remembered the sleepless nights he had spent while Jack was risking his life in service of the Crown and the nightmares of carnage that had left him shaking in puddles of cold sweat. ‘He is lucky to be alive. He has always taken unnecessary risks and scraped through by the skin of his teeth. The military was just the sort of career that would attract him.’

  Yet, when he had returned, there was no sign that it had made him a happy man. In their brief interactions since his service, the foolishly optimistic young man who had enlisted had returned as cold and brittle as Robert sometimes felt.

  ‘Since he is alive and well, you admit that the supposed curse does not extend to all members of the family,’ his wife prodded.

  ‘The further he stays away from me, the safer he has been.’ And the harder it had been for Robert to function.

  ‘You deemed him safer in Belgium than in your own house. A very convenient curse, that has such conditions on it,’ she said, her gaze unwavering as it met his.

  But somehow it seemed to be true. He thought of their childhood together and how miserable it had been. Since that time, Jack had seemed to flourish, just as he had failed. Was there only enough happiness for one of them? Or had he kept his brother safe by suffering enough fear for both of them while waiting for Jack’s return? ‘It is what it is,’ he said with a shrug and looked away, putting those feelings behind him.

  ‘That is no answer,’ she replied.

  And now this stranger he had married insisted on probing at things he did not want to discuss. ‘It is the only one I can give you,’ he said, daring her to argue.

  ‘Then you cannot expect me to put any faith in the accuracy of your beliefs,’ she said, poking holes in his vague explanation, just as she poked the fish on her plate with her fork.

  ‘That is because you have not had to live through the results of this curse, or whatever it is,’ he replied.

  ‘There is no evidence that I will, even now that I am here,’ she said. ‘I have always been in good health. As far as I know, my father continues to be successful despite his association with you. In fact, you have done him good by taking his unmarriageable daughter off his hands.’

  ‘You were not beyond marriage when I met you,’ he reminded her. ‘You were still young enough to make a better match.’

  ‘And yet I had not. Thus far, you were my only prospect.’ She stared down into her wine. ‘And even that has not been quite as I expected marriage would be.’ She gave him another direct look, to remind him of her dissatisfaction with the direction her life had taken.

  ‘You agreed to my main condition before we married,’ he said. ‘Do not complain now that it is too late to change your mind.’

  She blinked in surprise. ‘On the contrary, I have been told that an unconsummated marriage is reason for an annulment.’

  ‘You are incorrect,’ he snapped. ‘And I will not be seeking an annulment, no matter what happens between us, nor should you. I gave my word in church that we would be together and I will not go back on it.’

  ‘You also gave your word that you would love me,’ she reminded him.

  ‘And you assured me you were not expecting a love match,’ he replied.

  ‘I did not expect it of you. But it shows me what your word is worth that you could make the vow so lightly, knowing what your plans were.’

  Love. He had said the word, of course. But she could hardly fault him for his interpretation of that line of the vows. Since marriages were arranged to secure property, wealth and honour, no one of his set took that particular part of the ceremony seriously. He had certainly never discussed emotion with his late wife, before or during their marriage. Yet he had missed her sorely when she was gone.

  ‘I mean to care for you to the best of my abilities,’ he said, at last. ‘But I cannot do more than that. In the end, you may decide if it constitutes love or some inferior emotion. But do not think that you can argue me into doing more or take back the actions of yesterday and be free again. We are bound to each other permanently, no matter what you do or do not do.’

  At the rebuke, her eyes went wide with surprise. Then she looked down hurriedly at her plate and muttered, ‘I am so sorry. I had not intended...’ The words trailed away to nothing as she returned to her meal.

  He had won her obedience. But strangely, it left him feeling worse than her defiance had done. They ate the rest of the meal in a silence that had lost all comfort for him.

  * * *

  She should not have challenged him.

  She had meant to make polite conversation and learn a bit about his brother, who lived only a few miles away and yet had not attended their wedding. Instead, she had quizzed him until the conversation devolved into an argument.

  Just yesterday, she had vowed to obey him and planned, despite his indifference towards her, to be his helpmeet. Instead, she had questioned the odd parameters of his curse and hinted that she wanted to escape their marriage after only a day. She had regretted the words, even as she’d spoken them. They sounded as if she’d given up before she’d even tried to make things work between them.

  It was some consolation that he had refused her. In any other man, Emma might have been pleased with firm commitment to a lifelong marriage. But from Robert, it was nothing more than confusing. This afternoon, he’d looked at her as if he might be developing some feelings for her. But tonight, he seemed to think that the bond of matrimony could exist outside of both love and carnality, rather like a business contract.

  Her father might have approved this sort of level-headed sense in his daughter’s spouse. But when it came to his own marriage, he worshiped the ground that her mother trod upon and she was equally in love with him. After seeing a union such as theirs, Emma had found her own to be disappointing in the extreme.

  But she should not have mentioned annulment.

  She vowed to cause no more trouble for the rest of the evening, even if it meant that she did not speak at all. When Robert suggested that they retire to the sitting room for the rest of the night, she followed meekly, ready to pass the time quietly, doing nothing that might offend.

  The room was arranged with seating around the fire and it was clear from the way he dropped into the wing chair on the left that it was Robert’s habitual resting place to spend the time between dinner and bed. But as he picked up the book that lay waiting on the table beside it, he gave no indication as to where she was to sit. Apparently, she was to be left to make her own decision on the matter.

  On the other side of the fire, there was a dainty sofa that seemed perfect for a lady, or, more accurately, the lady of th
e house. It was as if the room itself had made the choice for her. She belonged sitting opposite him, as the second half of a pair.

  But she could not sit empty-handed for hours and do nothing. There were likely some interesting books in the library, but she had not bothered to choose any of them and did not want to call attention to herself by leaving the room so soon.

  If she could find a bit of string, she might amuse herself with a solo game of cat’s cradle, since she doubted her serious husband would be interested in children’s games. But as of yet, her mending basket was totally empty. It was just as well, for she might have felt obligated to do handwork and she had no desire for that.

  A brief circuit of the room revealed a handsomely carved chess set. Since Robert was still sitting in stony silence, there was no indication that he would want to play with her. But there was also a deck of cards, suitable for patience, a game that more accurately described what her life might be like from this time forward.

  She settled herself carefully into the ladylike chair again, feeling just as uncomfortable as she had on the previous evening when she had retired alone. At least then her bed had been large enough to hold her. The dainty bench she was currently occupying was too shallow to do more than perch on the edge while waiting for the hours to pass.

  She pulled the side table forward to lay out her game of cards and the unavoidable screech of the legs on the wood floor made her husband look up from his book in surprise.

  She gave a nod of apology and pushed it back with an equally loud shriek. Then, she turned to the side and leaned forward, over the arm of the chair, shuffling the cards to lay out a tableau.

  The seat gave an unsteady rock with her movement. Perhaps patience was too violent an activity for this side of the room. She stared into the fire for a moment, listening to the creak of the chair beneath her and trying to choose a more sedate activity.

  A house of cards, perhaps. The movements involved would be slow and deliberate, and not the least bit upsetting to husband or furniture. She began her tower carefully, settling into a rhythm of balancing cards, hardly daring to breathe for fear of upsetting something or someone. It was going well. She had built three levels tall and was just placing the last card before starting a fourth when the house collapsed, the sound barely audible in the silent room.