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But when she closed her eyes, the better to think, all she could see was the image of Jack’s face, the way the corners of his eyes had crinkled with amusement, the heat in his gaze, the anger...
It would be a hard woman to please who did not find Jack Ransome attractive, however sheltered she was.
But I am going to have to sleep with him and I do not know him in the slightest.
It was no use reminding herself about all the medieval heiresses who were married off as mere children, expected to bed with virtual strangers the moment they reached womanhood. However she had been brought up to behave, she did not live in the Middle Ages.
The invigorating anger drained away, leaving her feeling slightly sick, just as she always felt when her father had been in one of his rages. Perhaps letting her feelings out was not such a good idea after all.
‘The soap, Miss Aylmer.’
‘Thank you.’ Madelyn opened her eyes and began to wash. She had seriously miscalculated, she saw that now. She had imagined her dealings with Jack Ransome would be a simple matter of commerce—his lands in return for her marriage—and she had not considered the human aspects of the bargain at all.
He had yielded as far as accepting the arrangement—and that was all. If she had thought that she could manage the man in any way, she had made a major error and she had gone from being under the control of one man, her father, to that of her husband. Those few months of freedom she had experienced when the castle had been all hers suddenly seemed very precious indeed.
But now she knew she did not have to meekly obey. She could argue back—she could even become angry and hold her own with him. If she had the courage. Now she was feeling queasy with reaction again. How could she have forgotten herself like that? What if he said he would not marry her after all? No, she decided after an inward struggle with her imagination. No, Jack Ransome wanted those lands, this house and all the rest of his lost inheritance too much to be put off by one flare of temper from her. And men found it so easy to deal with difficult women. They simply shouted them down or completely ignored them.
‘Are you cold, Miss Aylmer? I have laid out the simplest of the evening gowns, ma’am, seeing as you’ll be dining alone, but I saw you shiver. The Kashmir shawl would go well with it and it is very warm and light,’ Harper said. ‘Which jewels do you wish to wear?’
‘What would be suitable?’ Changing for dinner, when it was a meal she would be eating all alone, was a new concept. And jewels? Harper had guarded the dressing case containing her little hoard of gems fiercely on the journey, but she had been unable to hide her dismay at what it contained.
‘I... I confess I am not certain, ma’am. They are all of such an old-fashioned design except that diamond set and most need cleaning.’
‘Then I will wear none of them.’ And if Partridge was scandalised by such lax standards, at least it was less shocking than being surprised kissing a man on the carpet.
Chapter Six
The drawing-room door closed firmly in his face. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Where had that gone so wrong, so fast? Jack resisted the temptation to storm after Madelyn—being caught by the butler kissing his intended was one thing; having a full-scale argument in front of the servants was quite another. He counted to ten, then let himself out into the hall. This needed thought and he was not going to brood under the eye of a collection of gilded crocodiles.
Partridge appeared, expression perfectly bland, and produced his hat, gloves and stick. ‘Good day, sir.’
Jack strode down King Street, giving Almack’s a glance as he passed by. Somehow he was going to have to get Madelyn through those hallowed doors despite the fact that he was not on terms with any of the notoriously difficult Patronesses. He turned up St James’s Street, dodged the traffic as he crossed it and exchanged nods with two acquaintances, all without stopping. He was in no mood for conversation, which meant only one place was safe—his club, where a gentleman could brood in isolation without any fear of interruption.
The porter at Brooks’s expressed himself pleased to see Mr Ransome twice in one day, relieved him of his hat and confirmed that, yes, the small library was likely to be quite deserted at that time of day.
Jack settled himself in the deepest armchair, rang for a glass of brandy and a selection of the morning’s newspapers and barricaded himself behind The Times.
Where had he gone wrong in his assessment of Miss Madelyn Aylmer? He would have thought his judgement of her character sound—he had, after all, spent some time in a career where assessing character was essential, but it seemed he had misjudged the woman he was committed to marry.
If he had been asked to describe her he would have said sheltered to the point of ignorance of the modern world, virtuous but with a natural sensuality that promised passion once she had overcome her shyness, i
ntelligent if uneducated and determined to carry out her father’s wishes for her marriage. She wanted children and she had appeared to wish to be married. She said that she had accepted that she must learn to live in the nineteenth century, not the fifteenth, and he recalled some uneasiness that her father had dominated her to the point where she was completely subservient to male will.
Jack did not want a wife who was a meek little shadow with no character, no opinions, and he had been wondering how to draw out some independent spirit from Madelyn. He turned over the page of foreign reports, which he had been staring at blankly for ten minutes, and failed to focus on the Court Circular. It seemed he need not have worried. Yes, she was still meek and pliant when it came to interior decoration, but displease her and she turned into an icy fury. And looking back, she had been quite remarkably determined on the subject of their marriage.
Clearly her experience with managing staff was different from his. As far as Jack was concerned your staff knew more about you than you did yourself, however discreet you were, and to expect anything else led to sad disillusionment. Or perhaps it was that she had imagined that all lovemaking would be confined to the bedroom with a locked door between them and the rest of the world. If that was the case, then she most definitely had no understanding of men in their twenties with healthy appetites and a new wife.
That was probably the problem. She was shy, she was inexperienced and he had shocked her when what had started as a simple kiss had turned into something that she thought must look like a disgraceful romp to Partridge.
Control was important to her—somehow he had overlooked that. Loss of control made her unsettled, nervous, and so she had hit out at him. Jack folded the newspaper and picked up the brandy, sipping it more for the aroma than any desire for alcohol at that time of day.
So... He would give Lady Fairfield time to school her pupil in the mysteries of London society and he would allow Madelyn space. He would control any inclination to kiss her, let alone make love to her and then, when they were married, she would have found her feet, be more confident and all would be well.
Patience, Jack told himself. He had not asked for this marriage, but it would deliver him something he had not understood that he had fiercely desired, and common decency alone must make him treat Madelyn with consideration. Common decency—and the fact that he was aware of a definite, surprising desire for her.
She was not at all in the usual style of women who attracted him, he brooded. The ladies who he admired tended to be small, dark and vivacious with a sense of fun and, importantly, a certain sophistication. Madelyn was too tall, too blonde, too serious and utterly without any social experience. She was not pretty, she moved with none of the grace that he thought he had remembered from the castle. And he could not make up his mind whether she was intolerably managing, worryingly pliable or a potential termagant. None of which added up to a woman to stir his blood. And yet...
‘Confound it.’
