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‘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.
* * *
Two of his acquaintances were lounging in front of the counters when he reached the gunsmith’s shop in Dover Street. Viscount Carston greeted him absently while squinting along the sights of a duelling pistol the assistant was showing him. His companion, George Cary, grinned maliciously at the sight of Jack.
‘What’s this I hear—using the title and marrying an heiress? My dear chap, whatever has come over you?’
‘Respectability and the onset of middle age,’ Jack said. ‘I swear I found a grey hair the other day.’
Carston snorted and handed the pistol back to the man behind the counter. ‘I’ll take them. Have them sent round, will you? You’re younger than me, Ransome, and I don’t feel the urge to hurl myself into parson’s mousetrap, even for an heiress.’
‘You’ve got three brothers,’ Jack pointed out. He realised that no one knew Madelyn’s dowry included his lost lands. Was that going to make matters better or worse? Better, he supposed—at least he would be seen to have a very personal and understandable reason other than her wealth for marrying the eccentric Peregrine Aylmer’s daughter.
‘Come and have a cup of coffee in Franklin’s.’ Cary nodded towards the coffeehouse opposite. That was unusually friendly for him, but then, Jack reflected, Cary did like to be abreast of all news, the more scandalous the better. ‘Tell us all about it—are we invited?’
‘But of course.’ It occurred to him that these two might be useful, because he had been wondering how to deal with the fact that Madelyn had approached him, had suggested the marriage. It was well known that she had been secluded in her castle, which meant it was highly unlikely they would have met. For her sake he wanted it to appear that he had proposed, not that Miss Aylmer was desperate for a husband.
* * *
They settled into a booth, ordered two pots of coffee and one of chocolate to satisfy Cary’s sweet tooth. ‘I’d been thinking about buying back some of the family land,’ Jack said. No point being coy about it, they knew perfectly well that his father and brother had lost the lot. ‘Turns out that Aylmer had bought everything up, so I went down to Kent, met Miss Aylmer and was decidedly intrigued.’ That mangled the truth and the order of events somewhat, but it was close enough. ‘She accepted my suit and here we are.’
‘Interesting lady,’ Carston said carefully, not meeting Jack’s gaze as he stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘Met her at the view at that new gallery in Spring Gardens the other day. Finding London a novelty, I gather.’ It wasn’t quite a question.
‘I believe so. Very loyal to her father, kept house for him, but the man was somewhat demanding and kept her close to home,’ Jack said easily.
‘So she is not an antiquarian like him, then?’
‘Good lord, no. Can you imagine me marrying a bluestocking?’
‘No,’ Carston said drily. ‘I can’t.’
Jack returned the smile. It did not matter that everyone knew he was marrying Madelyn purely for her spectacular dowry, just as long as no one realised that she had proposed to him—that would complete the picture of the eccentric bluestocking he was trying so hard to avoid. And it would hurt her pride, he knew that. For all her calm, businesslike approach, she had not found it easy to do what she had, he was coming to realise.
It was confusing to discover that he cared as much as he did for her feelings—she had made it clear enough that, as far as she was concerned, emotions did not enter into their marriage. Jack gave a mental shrug—doubtless it was basic gentlemanly instincts, nothing more. He hoped not: the thought of finding himself developing a tendre for the prickly, awkward female was distinctly unnerving.
He shifted on the thinly padded bench and gave his smile more of an edge. ‘I know I can rely on my friends to make Madelyn feel at home in London.’ And if they made her feel unwelcome, the smile promised, no doubt they all, like Carston, owned serviceable duelling pistols.
But this encounter only served to emphasise the fact that everyone was going to be looking out for unconventional behaviour from Castle-Mad Aylmer’s daughter and, for the sake of her future, and of the children, come to that, he needed to make certain that no one found anything peculiar about her. Vouchers for Almack’s, presentation at Court, the hope of finding suitable female friends—all hung in the balance.
Then he had a nightmare premonition of whispers eighteen years in the future: charming girls, but their mother is most singular...
‘You all right, dear boy? You’ve gone quite pale,’ Cary said.
