Contracted as His Countess

by Louise Allen

  ‘Most dutiful,’ Lady Brondesbury said faintly. She seemed uncertain whether to be appalled or approving as she left them.

  ‘Madelyn, you really should not talk of such matters,’ Louisa whispered. ‘Privies! Fumes!’

  ‘I do not care, they think me odd anyway. Have we stayed long enough, do you think? I want to review the work the decorators have done before they start again tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, I think so. It will be assumed we are going on to another reception.’ Louisa looked as though she was glad to be able to escape, Madelyn thought, feeling more cheerful than she had in days.

  * * *

  ‘Your post, my lord.’ Eight days after the Dalesford soirée, Tanfield, his manservant, placed a small salver beside Jack’s breakfast plate. ‘More coffee, my lord?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Jack reached out and flicked over the letters. Most were addressed to Mr Jack Ransome but a few had Lord Dersington above the address. It felt very strange. Lord Dersington had been his grandfather, then his father. Not his brother, though: Roderick had held the title for such a short time that it had never seemed to be his.

  But now it was Jack’s and, after a long discussion with Charlie Truscott, and the best part of a bottle of brandy between them, he was using it and the word was spreading, along with the news that he was to marry Miss Aylmer.

  In the past week Tanfield had mentioned it to all the tradesmen and told his fellow valets and menservants in the club-like public house they patronised in the back streets of Mayfair. That would reach their masters by the first cup of coffee the next morning. Charlie had promised to gossip in all his clubs and at Tatt’s, and it had not taken long for the less stodgy newspapers to pick it up.

  Jack glanced at the Morning Post, which always ran a hotchpotch of gossip beneath its formal Court and Society items.

  A collision occurred on St James’s Street at midnight on Wednesday, when two young gentlemen of title, in a condition of elevated spirits owing to intoxication, attempted to roll in barrels down the hill towards the Palace. It is understood that three broken limbs ensued and that the casualties were removed to the nearest Watch House.

  It appears that the Earl of D—n has finally resolved to pick up the burden of the coronet that fell from the hands of his late brother after so tragically short a time and has resumed the title amid much speculation.

  Large sums were wagered and lost on Mr Percival Bromidge in a hotly contested foot race against Maurice ‘The Footpad’ Jennings over ten miles in Newmarket yesterday. The favourite...

  So, he rated more highly than a foot race, but was apparently of less interest than drunken antics in St James’s Street. After that, however, the news would most definitely be all over town.

  The post included two pages of moralising on the Duties Owed to Your Position, from his Great-Aunt Hermione, who expressed herself thankful that he had come to his senses at last, and several invitations from hostesses who had in the past either taken little interest in him, or had cut him comprehensively. Apparently his lack of lands and wealth was slightly mitigated by the title. He found their hypocrisy did little for his dark mood.

  The last letter addressed with his title was from Madelyn. It was short and to the point.

  Miss Aylmer presents her compliments to Lord Dersington and wishes to inform him that the ground floor of the St James’s Square house has been restored to its former decorative state, should His Lordship wish to view it.

  As Miss Aylmer notes that Lord Dersington is now using his title she would appreciate some intimation of His Lordship’s intentions in regard to his projected marriage and his immediate plans for the weeks following, in order to ensure that she is adequately equipped for all eventualities.

  Jack re-read the note with a grudging amusement. If His Lordship had any clear idea of what he wants to do about this wedding, let alone the weeks after it, he would be glad to inform you, Miss Aylmer.

  His immediate instinct was a special licence and a wedding in the drawing room of the town house. But deeper thought told him that the only way to deal with the interest this was going to arouse was to brazen it out with a lavish, full-scale society wedding. If anyone accepts the invitations.

  Quite what Madelyn would say to that, he could only guess, but he supposed the time had come to discuss it with her.

  He finished his coffee and strolled into the room he used as a study. He rented the first floor of a house in Ryder Street off St James’s Street and it gave him a living room, a bedchamber and dressing room, the study and a room for Tanfield. The retired valet who ran the house with his wife provided cleaning, coals and breakfast and, with notice, other meals as required. It suited Jack very well and he suspected that living in the space of the town house, let alone any of his other properties, was going to feel very strange.

  He trimmed the nib of a quill with his penknife while he thought, then dipped it in the inkwell and wrote rapidly.

  Lord Dersington presents his respectful regards to Miss Aylmer and proposes calling on her this afternoon at three of the clock to discuss those matters to which she referred in her obliging communication.

  He dusted it over with silver sand and reached for the sealing wax. He could be just as pompous as she, if provoked.

  Chapter Nine

  Madelyn sat alone in the drawing room with one eye on the clock and fought with the now-familiar flock of butterflies that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her stomach. Would Jack approve of the restoration of these rooms? Was he going to have made plans that she would hate for the wedding? Would he kiss her again?

  ‘Do I want him to?’ she said out loud as the clock struck three and there was a brisk knock on the front door. Yes, she did want Jack to kiss her. She also wanted to run away back to Kent because none of this was becoming any easier. The noise of London, the crowds, the constant need to be what she was not, to watch every word and action, rubbed on her nerves until she could scream. She was still treated as though she was some exotic and faintly dubious sideshow, a subject for curiosity rather than approval even though she was received and no one was actually unkind.

  Learning to be what her father had demanded had been so much easier. She had grown up with it, grown into it, and she loved the castle and her garden and her safe world out of time. As long as she did not displease her father all had been well and there was none of the cold disapproval or the sudden explosions of anger that she dreaded so.

  But now she had to learn to please an entirely different man, one with whom she would be living on intimate terms. She had soon realised that Jack’s position in the polite world was ambiguous at best and that whatever he did, let alone marrying her, was going to provide enormous entertainment and scandalised gossip for the ton. She was increasingly fearful that she could not face it. Yesterday she had felt so panicked when she woke that it had been a physical effort to get out of bed. Only the strange and unsettling discovery that she could become angry, that she could use that anger and direct it, stopped her packing her bags and fleeing back to Kent.

  ‘Lord Dersington, Miss Aylmer.’ Partridge opened the door with a flourish.

  ‘Thank you, Partridge, send in the tea tray, if you would. Good afternoon, Lord Dersington.’

  ‘Madelyn.’ He took the hand she had held out for him to shake, but bent to kiss her cheek. It took her by surprise and she moved, their lips brushed and she jerked back, breathless.

  ‘Jack. How good of you to call. Would you like to inspect the restoration of the rooms on this floor?’ She was braced for him to find fault and, like a visit to the dentist, would rather have it over and done with as soon as possible.

  He looked around. ‘This seems much as I recall it from the old days. Shall we look at the study?’

  He held the door for her and again when they reached the study. Madelyn held her breath and forced herself not to gabble nervously to break the
silence.

  ‘This looks familiar,’ he said slowly as he walked to the desk and took the chair behind it. ‘But there is something...’

  ‘The curtains? I tried to match them as closely as possible because the old ones were badly faded in patches.’

  Jack closed his eyes, placed his hands palm-down on the leather top of the desk. ‘The curtains seem perfect. No, it is—’

  ‘The books? I expect they are not exactly arranged as they were, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No. Not that.’ He opened his eyes and smiled and she let out the breath she had been holding. ‘The smell.’

  ‘What should it be?’ Madelyn asked as she sat down in the old armchair, knees decidedly wobbly with relief and the impact of that smile.

  ‘Lemon and beeswax polish,’ Jack said, eyes closed again as though to conjure the memory better. ‘Lavender. Pipe tobacco.’ He opened a drawer and poked among the contents. ‘Ah, yes.’ The battered round brass tin he laid on the desk was difficult to open, but it yielded at last. ‘This has been in here so long it has become dry and the scent has gone. Ah, well,’ he said as he dropped it back into the drawer. ‘Not everything lasts. Thank you for this. I apologise for my loss of temper over the changes.’

  ‘It obviously means a lot to you,’ Madelyn ventured, watching not his face, but the long fingers moving in a gentle caress over the battered desktop.

  ‘Sentimentality. Foolishness.’ Jack stood up abruptly. ‘Shall we return to the drawing room? The tea will be getting cold.’

  ‘Of course.’ Men did not show their softer emotions and were embarrassed if they did let something slip. She had noticed that, even with her very limited experience of the sex. When Jack had said foolishness he had meant weakness, she was certain.

  Madelyn was rather proud of her skill with the teapot and all the fiddling business of mote spoon and lemon slices. Presumably it was a tribute to her new-found ability that Jack did not even seem to notice. It began to dawn on her that acquiring all this new expertise was going to be a thankless task—no one would remark on it unless she made some ghastly error.

  Like cleaning the house, she thought. No one remarks upon it unless it is not done.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Jack put his cup down on the little table beside the chair. ‘You sighed.’

  ‘Did I? No, nothing is amiss.’ She made herself sit up straighter and tried to put aside the unsettling thought that she was erasing all traces of her former self and that she was the only person who would notice. Or care. ‘We were to discuss the wedding.’

  ‘I thought St George’s, Hanover Square.’

  ‘That is very fashionable, is it not? And quite large?’ She had driven past it with Louisa one day after shopping in Bond Street.

  ‘Yes, it is both. And I intend filling it with guests.’

  Madelyn dropped a slice of lemon into her teacup, creating a small tidal wave. ‘But I hardly know anyone. I mean, I have met dozens of people, but they are not friends.’

  ‘If invited, they will come out of prurient curiosity if nothing else,’ he said. The smile that twisted his lips now was hard and cynical. ‘I will invite everybody who is anybody—I am related to most of them one way or another, after all. The last thing I want is to begin this marriage giving the impression that it is something we want to hide. We make a noise, a splash. We give them enough to talk about that they will cease to make snide comments about eccentric fathers and landless noblemen.’

  Madelyn nodded. That sounded sensible, even though her instinct was simply to go to the nearest church, armed with a licence, and marry there with the sexton and the verger as witnesses. ‘And a wedding breakfast here?’

  ‘Yes, just a small affair. We can seat thirty in the dining room. How long will you need to organise your trousseau?’

  ‘Two weeks?’ Madelyn hazarded. The modistes that Louisa recommended had her measurements already and she had undergarments and accessories enough.

  ‘Excellent. I will go and make the arrangements immediately and send out invitations.’ Jack grinned so unexpectedly that she found herself smiling back at him. ‘I must engage a secretary immediately. This sudden change to conventional life is making a great deal of work. Which reminds me, the wedding gown should be from the best dressmaker—the ladies’ journals will send artists to make sketches outside the church and it will all help in our campaign to win you acceptance.’

  ‘Yes,’ Madelyn agreed. ‘The very best, of course.’ As she spoke she remembered the drawings she had made when she had dreamed of her wedding day, when she had dared to hope that she would marry a man because she loved him, not for the sake of a bloodline.

  What had she done with those sketches, those swatches of fabric and pieces of lace? Her first instinct when her father had told her that under no circumstances was she going to marry some country squire’s son—and one whose grandfather had been an iron master, just to make things worse—had been to throw them on the fire. But she had folded them away at the bottom of a chest in a small gesture of defiance.

  She had met Richard Turner in the orchard, their special place, and told him what her father had said. They would elope, he declared. But the next day he was not there, only a servant with a note. His father had received a letter from hers. If they married, she would be cut off without a penny and Squire Turner, appalled that his only son, who was expected to make a prudent marriage, should have offended the most important man for miles around, had threatened the same thing.

  Squire Turner decreed that Richard would one day marry Tabitha Arnold, whose father ran several hundred sheep on the marshes. It was a good match and a suitable one. He and his true love could go and find a cottage to starve in or they could obey their fathers.

  Madelyn had been willing to risk the hovel, but Richard was not prepared to see the woman he loved pulled down by marriage to him, he said. They must obey.

  Now she looked at her distorted reflection in the silver teapot and felt the hurt that had faded long ago flood back. Yes, she would obey the man who now controlled her future, obey in everything but this. She would have a wedding day on her own terms. She would behave as he wished, but she would look as she wanted.

  The room swam in front of her eyes.

  Nerves, she thought. But I must to be strong or I am going to vanish altogether.

  ‘And what do we do after we are married? Do we stay in London?’

  ‘I think it best to let the gossip we are about to stir up die down again. If we are away for a few weeks, then perhaps we can return as Lord and Lady Dersington, not John Lackland and Castle-Mad Aylmer’s daughter.

  ‘We will go down to Dersington Mote. I must pick up control of the estates. Your man Lansing tells me that the tenant at the Home Farm is on a short lease, so I must see about terminating or renewing that, depending on what I think of him. I understand that the house is under dust covers.’

  ‘It proved rather difficult to let,’ Madelyn admitted. ‘When I decided that I should marry I told them to stop searching for a tenant.’

  From the narrowing of Jack’s eyes, she expected him to say something about her searching for a husband instead, but all he did remark was, ‘The place is less than welcoming, as I recall. Possibly not the perfect place for a honeymoon, either, now I come to think of it. I am sorry.’

  ‘Please, do not apologise. It is hardly as though this is a love match, is it? I cannot imagine that you wish to stroll through the gardens hand in hand while we gaze into each other’s eyes.’ It came out sounding harsher than she meant, but she did not know how to soften it.

  I am going to spend the rest of my life with this man, she reminded herself. Somehow I have to learn how to compromise without becoming completely lost.

  ‘No, indeed. In that case, I imagine it will be perfect,’ Jack said pleasantly after the smallest of silences. ‘I am sure we will find plenty to occupy ourselv
es from breakfast time until dinner.’ He stood up and placed his cup on the tray. ‘I must bid you farewell and get on with organising this wedding and increasing my staff. I will let you know as soon as I have a confirmed date.’

  She stood up and he very properly kissed her cheek and smiled and let himself out into the hallway before she could ring for Partridge. All perfectly amiable, Madelyn thought as she heard the front door close.

  So why do I feel as though everything is wrong?

  * * *

  No, I do not want to stroll through the gardens hand in hand, Jack thought savagely as he walked around the square towards Piccadilly. No, I am not going to pretend we are in love and that we will spend a week or so billing and cooing and making love and telling each other the secrets of our hearts.

  Madelyn was refreshingly honest about this. Yes, that was definitely the right word—refreshing. As a bucket of ice-cold water over the head was refreshing. He had no need to pretend feelings that he did not have and he need not worry about wounding Madelyn’s feelings, either. She had made it abundantly clear that this was all about giving her the family she desired while obeying her father’s wishes.

  So why did he feel as though he had been kicked in the teeth just now? Surely he was not such a coxcomb as to believe that she would have fallen for him after half-a-dozen businesslike conversations and a few kisses, he thought, taking off his hat as he took the short cut from Jermyn Street through St James’s churchyard.

  He tossed a penny to a crossing sweeper and made his way across Piccadilly, turned left and was walking past the entrance to Albany before he stopped to wonder where he was going. What he should be doing was hailing a hackney to the Inns of Court to get a licence or calling on the vicar of St George’s. Instead, he realised, he was making for Manton’s. Jack shrugged. There was no reason why not—he had time to look at a new shotgun or culp a few wafers while trying out a pistol, he told himself. Have some fun before the shackles of matrimony closed around his wrists, and by the time the bill arrived he would be a wealthy married man.