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He was damned if he would slink off, simply because it didn’t suit his wife to have him here.
‘Of course I am going to stay here. In the same room as my wife, if there really is nowhere else fit,’ he snapped.
Having staked his claim on his house, and his wife, he stepped over the holland covers and stalked up the stairs.
Only to come to a halt in the doorway to the ballroom. Or the rear half of the ballroom, anyway. Mary had left one section screened off by the huge double doors, which could be moved aside entirely to double the area of the dance floor.
There was an elderly woman he would swear he’d never seen before in his life sitting at the piano, playing a country dance tune with some gusto. Mary’s cousins were skipping up and down the room with two young men he’d also never seen before in his life. A stringy little man—no doubt a dance teacher—was shouting the figures as he capered alongside them to demonstrate how it should be done.
And Mary was sitting on a sofa, by a cheerfully crackling fire, the low table in front of her almost entirely hidden under mounds of various coloured materials, notebooks and charts. Her aunt Pargetter was sitting next to her. They had their heads bent over a length of stripy stuff, running it through their fingers and murmuring to each other.
The pain of her leaving was nothing compared to what struck him now. Here she was, cheerfully getting on with her life as though she hadn’t a care in the world. She didn’t need him. She wasn’t showing even the slightest sign of missing him. On the contrary, the atmosphere in here was positively festive.
Here he’d been, tying himself in knots trying to think how he could make it up to her, and she’d gone and got over him all by herself.
He must have made some sound, or movement, or something, because her head suddenly flew up and she saw him standing in the doorway.
For a moment her face lit up. She made as if to rise.
And the pain vanished. He wanted nothing more than to go to her, sweep her into his arms and tell her he couldn’t bear being apart from her one moment longer. But the room was full of people.
And anyway, her smile had faded now. She’d sat back in the seat, and lifted her chin.
‘This is a surprise,’ she flung at him.
‘Not you, as well,’ he growled, stalking across the room, snagging a chair on the way so he could sit down beside her. ‘I’ve already had Simmons complaining about me coming here without giving him fair warning.’ He sat down and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I don’t see why I should have to give an account of my movements to all and sundry.’
‘No. You wouldn’t,’ she responded tartly.
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘Only that you don’t think about the work it takes to prepare a room, or order in extra food...’
‘You seem to have a house full of guests eating and drinking their heads off,’ he said, pointing to a table under the window that was littered with the remains of what looked like a substantial nuncheon. ‘One more isn’t going to make much difference. And as for preparing a room, what is wrong with us sharing? That won’t give the servants any extra work, will it, if that is what is bothering you?’
He’d barely coped with having her turn him away from her room at Mayfield, but he wasn’t going to let her think she could get away with coldly rebuffing him any longer. He hadn’t come all the way to London to...to...
Dammit—now he’d made her blush. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her. He’d meant to tell her he wanted to put an end to this nonsensical separation and try to find a way back to what they’d had those first few heady days of their marriage. But as usual, his temper had grabbed him by the throat and shaken out all the wrong words.
‘Girls!’ Mary’s aunt got to her feet and clapped her hands. ‘Come and pay your respects to his lordship.’
‘He’s here?’ The younger and more forward of the two whirled towards him, leaving her partner grasping for empty air after his own turn.
‘So soon?’ Lotty was making towards him as well, a huge smile on her face. ‘Why, that’s wonderful! Isn’t it, Mary?’
‘I...well, I... Yes, of course it is,’ she agreed, looking rather harassed.
His hackles rose. He’d seen girls in the throes of a conspiracy to manage their menfolk often enough to recognise something of the sort was in train.
‘What have you been plotting?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dotty with convincing indignation. At the same time as Lotty, unfortunately, admitted, ‘We were hoping you would throw a ball.’
‘And of course,’ put in the aunt smoothly, while Mary looked as if she wanted to slide under the heap of materials and vanish, ‘we could not even consider it while you were not here.’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said, wondering what they’d really been plotting. Mary couldn’t dissemble to save her life. And it was clear that this was the very first she’d heard anything about a ball.
The other girls pouted, however, and started to complain.
‘Oh, but surely you want everyone to meet your wife. Isn’t that what people do when they get married in your set? Throw parties, and such?’
‘Not until she’s made her curtsy in the Queen’s drawing room,’ he said firmly. And then inspiration struck him. She might not think she needed him, but there was one sure way he could make it seem perfectly natural for them to spend time together. Which would give him time to win her round. Somehow.
‘That’s one of the reasons I’ve come up to town,’ he said airily. ‘Need to see to Mary’s presentation. Besides, it’s not the thing for a wife to come up to town alone, you know. At least not the first time. I shall have to squire you about a bit, Mary,’ he said, turning to her fully, so that he could gauge her reaction. ‘Introduce you to the right sort of people and warn you off the wrong ’uns.’
‘I’m sure I never meant to be so much bother,’ she said in a flat, subdued little voice. ‘You don’t need to...squire me about.’
She couldn’t have made it plainer she didn’t want him here.
‘It’s no bother,’ he insisted icily. ‘It’s just one of those things I should have remembered I’d have to do when I took a wife.’
Her shoulders slumped still further.
‘Think I’ll take myself off to my club until dinner,’ he said, getting to feet that were itching to get out of here.
‘Will you be dining here?’
She had no need to look as though he’d threatened her with a visit to the dentist.
‘Of course I d—dashed well will!’ He wasn’t going to fall at the first hurdle. He’d just wait till he could get her alone, so that they could thrash things out properly. Get her to see sense.
Although, he reflected moodily as he left the ballroom, perhaps what he really needed was for her not to have so much. Sense, that is. For no sensible woman would give him what he wanted.
Not when she’d already agreed to something very different.
Chapter Fifteen
Lord Havelock came to a dead halt on the threshold of the dining room. Every stick of furniture was shrouded in holland covers.
‘Excuse me, my lord,’ said Simmons, materialising at his elbow. ‘But her ladyship has requested that all meals be served in what used to be the morning room.’
‘Of course she has,’ he replied grimly. It was that kind of day. Nothing had gone as expected. Even at his club, the gossip had all been about Chepstow’s sudden, and startling, marriage to a girl nobody had ever heard of.
No wonder the ancient Greeks had decided to represent love by a mischievous little chap, shooting arrows at innocent passers-by. A chuckling, chubby child who struck at random. Mortally wounding his victims.
Havelock absent-mindedly rubbed at his chest, where there was a dull ache. An ache that only one thing—or rather person—could assuage.
Mary was sitting on a chair by the fire. She got to her feet, as though startled, when he walked in. Then looked pointedly at the table, which was set for two.
‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting,’ he said. ‘Went to the dining room first. Stupid thing to do, really.’
She frowned at him. Or rather, the frown she’d been wearing already grew deeper. Her lips thinned and she took a breath, as though to utter some tart remark.
‘You look lovely, by the way,’ he said to forestall her. ‘New gown?’ He pulled out a chair for her and, after a brief struggle with herself, she swept across to the table and sat down on the chair.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a toss of her head. ‘That is why I came up to town. To buy clothes.’
Yes, that was the excuse she’d made. He eyed the short string of pearls at her neck.
‘Jewels, too? I should be buying you those.’
‘You are,’ she said with a lift to her chin. ‘I’m having all the bills sent to your man of business, just as you said.’
‘Touché,’ he murmured as footmen started swarming round the table.
Though the atmosphere between them remained cool, the food at least was hot. Which was a vast improvement on how things had been in his father’s day.
In fact, in the short time she’d been here, Mary had transformed Durant House from a dark, repressive display of his forebear’s wealth, into the kind of place where boys could hold tea-tray races down stairs and a man could stretch out his legs before the fire while waiting for his dinner.
She’d turned it into a home.
‘It was a good idea of yours, to have meals served in here,’ he said, as the cloth was removed and a dish of nuts set at his left hand. ‘Walnut?’
She shook her head.
‘Not hungry?’ She hadn’t done justice to the delicious meal, merely pushing the food round her plate. And she looked a touch pale. ‘Are you unwell?’
She sat up straighter and gave a strange, nervous little laugh. ‘Whatever gives you that idea?’
‘Mary...’ He sighed, setting down the nutcrackers. ‘I can’t stand this.’
‘Stand...stand what?’ She looked at him with wide, wary eyes.
‘You being in London and me being in Mayfield. I know I said I’d let you lead your own life when you’d had enough of me and I wouldn’t cut up rough, but...’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I’m exhausted. I just can’t sleep without you in bed beside me.’
‘You were the one,’ she said tartly, ‘who moved into another bedroom.’
‘In other words, I started it?’ He smiled grimly. ‘That’s what I get for trying to be noble.’
‘Noble?’
‘Yes. All that day I’d been thinking of all the promises I’d made you. Promises I’d failed to keep. And I decided that at least I could keep the one I made you about you having your own room.’
‘I...I...I didn’t realise. I thought you were just bored with me.’
‘Bored? How could you possibly think I was bored when I couldn’t keep my hands off you?’
‘You’d started managing to keep your hands off me until night-time,’ she flashed back at him. ‘When at one time you’d pounce on me anywhere in the house, at any time of day.’
‘Well, that was before the servants came back. You got so upset when Brownlow almost caught us in the drawing room that I thought I’d better rein back a bit. I was trying,’ he said grimly, ‘to spare your blushes.’
‘Spare my blushes?’ She pressed her hands to her mouth. ‘You are saying it was my fault? My stupid fault for being so—’
‘Now stop right there,’ he said sternly. ‘I knew you were shy when I married you. I don’t mind only making love to you in a bedroom, if that’s where you feel most at ease. I’m only sorry I gave you the impression I was getting tired of you. I don’t think I ever could. These past weeks, with you gone...nothing has been right.’
‘B-but surely... I mean, you have Julia home now. That was the whole purpose of marrying me, wasn’t it? To give her a secure home.’
‘Funny, that. The moment she got to Mayfield I realised it was your home just as much as hers. And I didn’t want her making you unhappy, by throwing the kind of tantrums that had reduced Lady Peverell to the state she was in. You have no idea how hard I worked to bring her round, to improve her mood, to persuade her to try to make friends with you.’
‘You...you did? That was what you were doing with your sister all day and every day? I thought...I thought...’ Her face flamed. ‘I just thought you preferred her company to mine....’
‘Prefer her company? Are you mad?’ He looked at her pinched, wary expression and realised it was past time he came clean.
‘Mary, don’t you have any idea how lovely you are? How alluring? How much I...?’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. What if he said the words and she took them as a breach of trust? What if she didn’t want anything but the cool, practical arrangement they’d agreed on? She was a cool, practical kind of woman, after all. But dammit, if he didn’t say anything at all, they’d be right back where they started.
‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, with a swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach as though he was about to jump a five-barred gate with a sheer drop on the other side, ‘it felt as though you’d cut out a part of me and taken it with you when you left.’
She looked confused. Pleased would have been his choice, but at least confused was better than affronted.
‘But you said...’ she began speaking hesitantly. ‘You said you’d only come up here because it was the right thing to do, on my first visit to London as your wife. That you’d come to arrange my Court presentation. To...’ she drew in a breath, and looked at him with huge, wounded eyes ‘...make sure I didn’t fall in with the wrong sort of people.’
‘Dash it, did it sound as bad as that?’ He got up, went round to her chair and dropped to his knees at her feet. ‘I warned you I don’t have a way with words. Whatever I mean to say always seems to come out wrong, around you. And I didn’t want to blurt out the truth with all those people there, anyway. And then I thought you were still angry with me. You didn’t seem a bit pleased to see me....’
‘I was. Very pleased. But then you looked so cross, too. And I couldn’t forget that horrid note I left. I was sure you must be mad as fire about that. And then you said all that about coming to make sure I wasn’t getting in a tangle, and I...’
‘Gave as good as you got.’ He sighed. ‘I know all about going off at half-cock, Mary. I’ve been doing it most of my life. It’s only of late that I’ve learned it’s better to count to ten or so before letting rip.’
‘I never even knew I had a temper, until I married you.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! I didn’t mean it like that....’
‘No, well...’ He shrugged and leaned back on his heels. ‘You have a lot to contend with, don’t you? You made that quite clear in that list you wrote.’
‘Please, please don’t bring that up! I put some quite dreadful things in it. Things I didn’t mean. You are kind. Nobody else has ever given me their coat to shelter me from rain. And when I think of you going round the house without your shirt to get more coal, so as not to take a single covering off me...’ She leaned forward, and placed one palm against his cheek. ‘And you did consider my opinions, too. You asked me if I wanted to stay at Mayfield or remove to the Dog and Ferret...’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have written any of those things at all, if I hadn’t made a stupid list of my own first.’ He covered her hand with his own. Enfolded it. Drew it to his chest. ‘That was my worst offence, in your eyes, wasn’t it?’
She shook her head. ‘After a while I think I understood why you might have written it. The thought of getting married was so abhorrent to you that—’
‘That’s another thing you need to understand. Why it was so abhorrent. The thing is, you see, it changes people. That was what scared me. Julia’s mother, for instance. She was quiet and withdrawn all the time she was married to my father. And then she bloomed with Geoffries. She was like a different woman. Laughing all the time and full of energy. Her third husband turned her into a shell of what she’d been. And so I decided, if I had to get married, it would be to a woman who wouldn’t have the power to change me. A woman who’d accept me just as I am and let me carry on living the way I always had.’
‘I don’t want you to change, either,’ she said, gripping his hand hard. ‘In fact—’
‘Just hear me out,’ he said firmly, cutting her off before she had a chance to deflect him from his purpose. ‘I never meant you to ever know I’d written that stupid list. It was only a means to help me get my thoughts together. And my friends, seeing how low I was at the prospect of getting married, made it all into a bit of a joke. The thing is...’ he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it ‘...it was a meaningless piece of nonsense. Whereas the one you wrote...’
Letting go of her hand, he dug into his pocket for the list she’d written.
She gasped when he unfolded it and she saw what it was, her eyes widening in horror.
‘You raised some serious points,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Which I fully intend to answer.’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t! I’ve already said I was wrong about you being unkind and inconsiderate.’
‘We’ll skip over the bit about not having any money as well then, shall we?’
Her hand flew to the pearls about her neck.
‘I know it was a bit wicked of me to buy jewels as well as the clothes you promised me...’
‘You really are the most absurd creature,’ he said with a tender smile. ‘If you wanted to punish me by squandering money on jewels—and I wouldn’t blame you if you did—you should have bought diamonds.’ He glanced down at the note. ‘I was trying to amend my behaviour, you know. I was trying to think of what you wanted, and to treat you better. I just made a mull of it.’
‘Yes, yes, I see that now....’
‘And as for the bit about family...’ he looked down at her, sorrowfully ‘...I can see how my original list made it sound as if I don’t care about family. It was another stupid, selfish thing we wrote down when we were trying to see if there was some way to make marrying anyone slightly less unpalatable....’
He cringed when he thought how crass his behaviour had been when he’d first started to match what he liked about her to the items on his list.
‘The thing with family is that you can wish them at the devil three-quarters of the time, but the minute you find one of them in real trouble, you have no choice but to help them out. And not just close family, either. Not even true family, come to that. Take Julia’s little brothers, for example. After spending the happiest school holidays in their home, with their father, I’ll never be able to turn my back when they need their school bills paying, or when they want sponsorship into their career, will I?’
‘Plenty of men could,’ she pointed out, a strange expression flitting across her face. ‘My own relatives didn’t think twice about turning me away.’
‘You’ve been on the receiving end of such shabby behaviour, you’ve come to expect nothing else. Even from me.’
‘Oh, please, please don’t take what I wrote so...seriously. I was angry when I wrote it. I didn’t mean the half of it.’
‘Yes. Well...’ He looked down at the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘I wrote mine when I was drunk. And before I met you, at that.’
His heart was beating so hard now, because what he said next, how Mary responded, was going to shape his whole future.
‘Tell you what I’d like to do,’ he said, fishing in his pocket for the list he’d written, before he’d known there could be a woman anywhere in the world like Mary. ‘I’d like to tear these lists up, scrap our original agreement altogether and make a fresh start.’
‘What do you mean? Scrap our agreement? Don’t you want,’ she said in a small, scared voice, ‘to be married to me any more?’
‘Mary. I want to be married to you more than anything. But not in the way we said. When we were both so convinced marriage couldn’t work we gave ourselves permission to walk away from it without even trying to smooth things out when we hit our first bumpy patch. Now, if you will just bear with me a minute, I have something I’d like you to consider.’
He reached into his pocket yet again.
‘I’ve written another list,’ he said, feeling his cheeks heating and his collar growing tight. ‘Setting down what I want from marriage, now that I understand a bit more what it’s really about.’
He cleared his throat.
‘“My perfect wife,”’ he said and glanced at Mary. She was sitting stock-still, her hands clasped on her knees, her dark eyes staring up at him with trepidation.
‘“My wife needs to be as tall as my shoulder. She will have straight dark hair that feels like bathing in silk at midnight.”’
He heard her gasp. Glanced up. Her hands were still clasped together, but they were at chest height now, not on her lap. And her eyes...
‘Brown eyes,’ he said, because he’d got this part off by heart. ‘That look right to the heart of me and accept me just as I am, because her own heart is so generous,’ he said, hoping it was true right now. But just in case it wasn’t, he lowered his gaze to the paper again, unwilling to say the rest in the face of any direct opposition.
‘“She won’t be afraid to work hard. She won’t be afraid of being poor. She will be a little shy and uncertain, but so responsive to my kisses that after a bit she will forget where she is and surrender to the waves of passion that break over us, drowning us both. She won’t care about my title. She would feel just the same about me if I never had one. She will judge everyone by a yardstick of kindness and generosity. She won’t care so much about her appearance that she would rebuff a child.” Oh, and one last thing,’ he finished, lowering the sheet, and making himself look her steadily in the eye, no matter what.
‘Her name must be Mary.’
A little sob escaped her throat. ‘I never knew you had it in you to be so...poetical.’
‘If I could write poetry,’ he scoffed, ‘I would have done. Setting all this down so it made any kind of sense took me hours and hours. But the thing is, you’re worth it, Mary. I want to court you. Woo you, if you like. Make this marriage one that’s full of romance, and...’ he gulped ‘...and love.’
‘Love?’
‘Yes, love. Don’t look so shocked. I don’t expect you to fall in love with me, the way I’ve fallen in love with you. Don’t suppose it’s possible. But I can stand that,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘I can bear anything, so long as you don’t forbid me to love you.’
‘Of course it’s possible,’ she cried. ‘I’ve loved you practically from the very first night I saw you!’
‘From the...’ He shook his head. ‘No. You couldn’t have. You didn’t give me the slightest bit of encouragement. I had to get your cousins twisting your arm to even get you to come out sightseeing with me.’
‘That’s because I was afraid.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Not of you. But the way you made me feel. I’d never thought of any man in...that way before. I thought those sorts of feelings made a woman weak and vulnerable. It shocked me. Scared me. So I fought it. Tried to deny it.’
‘Right up to the altar.’ He nodded.
‘And after. I didn’t admit to myself that I loved you for a while. And even then, I tried to hide it....’
‘You did that extremely well. You always kept me at arm’s length. You wouldn’t even call me by my given name.’
‘I didn’t know I was allowed to,’ she put in, a touch indignantly, he thought. ‘You never said.’
‘It never occurred to me I had to. But I want you to. It would make me feel so much closer to you.’
‘Gregory,’ she said shyly. ‘I am so sorry.’ She got to her feet and closed the distance between them. ‘Sorry that I never showed you any sign of my growing affection for you.’ She took hold of his hands.
‘But then, I had told you not to expect, or request, affection from me,’ he groaned.
‘But if you do want it to be part of our...our fresh start,’ she said hesitantly, ‘then...’
He was about to crush her to his chest and shower her face with kisses. But before he could do anything of the sort, she’d stretched up on tiptoe, put her arms round his neck and kissed him.