AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘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.
