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Sleep well! Jack grimaced as he walked carefully back down the steps to the waiting carriage and climbed in. I’ve given myself a sleepless night, but by God, it was worth it.
He sat down opposite Charlie and saw his friend had let the blinds up. As the coach rumbled off, light from the streets flickered in and out of the interior of the carriage, illuminating Charlie’s blandly neutral expression. The other man was doubtless quite well aware of what had just happened—in fact he was probably imagining something rather more than what had actually taken place. There was nothing to be done about that now and Charlie was no gossip. Besides, Jack was marrying the lady.
But she had been no lady when she had come apart in his arms, he thought, somehow managing to control his smile of triumphant discovery. Madelyn had been sheer, abandoned woman and any doubts he might have had about that aspect of the marriage were well and truly laid to rest. In fact—
‘Your face,’ his friend said with a grin.
‘What about it?’ Jack put up one hand and rubbed at his mouth. Madelyn had not been wearing lip stain or powder... ‘Ouch.’
‘You are going to have a fine bruise on your chin tomorrow and probably a fat lip into the bargain. If I’m not mistaken, it is swelling nicely now.’
That’s the kissing, Jack thought. ‘The other fellows will look worse,’ he said, not troubling to sound modest about it.
‘Fellows? I only saw you hit one.’
‘There was some buck who’d had a few too many as well as the man dancing with Madelyn.’
‘You can’t go around hitting every man who dances with your fiancée, Jack. She’d gone to a masquerade, presumably intending to dance, someone asks her—’
‘She knew him before.’
‘I imagine Miss Aylmer knew many gentlemen before she met you and that it was all perfectly respectable.’ Charlie seemed to hesitate, then took the plunge. ‘Forgive me, but I was under the impression that your contract with Miss Aylmer was in the nature of a mutually convenient and beneficial one, not the result of a love match.’
Jack grunted.
‘So why are you exhibiting all the symptoms of rampant jealousy?’
‘Natural possessiveness.’ Jack thought he managed that reasonably well. If he didn’t understand it himself, he was certainly not going to have Charlie speculating. ‘And concern for her reputation. Madelyn should not have been there and she knows it. I was quite reasonably annoyed.’
‘Of course you were,’ Charlie said with the suspicion of a laugh in his voice. Before Jack could suggest that he get out and walk he added, ‘This will do. Set me down here, will you?’
Jack rapped on the coach roof, more than glad to be alone to come to terms with what had just happened. ‘Goodnight.’
The door banged closed on Charlie’s cheerful farewell and the carriage creaked into motion again.
It wasn’t that he had not known that he wanted Madelyn, even if he had not been able to define exactly what it was that he found attractive about her. At first he had assumed it was the exotic setting of the castle, that magical garden, her strange, composed grace in that sweeping gown. An enchantment, he had told himself. But now he found himself wanting her even when she was gawky and ill at ease in a modern gown, warily negotiating the strange new world she found herself in.
He wanted her even when she put herself and her reputation at risk and ended up in the arms of some old flame into the bargain. What had this Richard meant when he had said that she was his first? Not her lover, not in the full sense of the word: he could recognise innocence when he encountered it. And not her official betrothed, if her father had refused to countenance the match.
So, first love. It was all in the past, a doomed boy-and-girl romance. And he had reacted so strongly out of fear for her. All perfectly normal, in fact, and not the worrying symptom of anything dangerous like...an infatuation.
Jack shook himself like a man waking up from a bad dream. Feeling any deep emotion for one’s
wife when she had none for you would be a pitiable state of affairs. He was nothing to Madelyn other than a convenience. She had picked him off a list, had him investigated as though he was a business she intended investing in, then cold-bloodedly summoned him to make a thoroughly unmaidenly proposal.
True, she seemed to desire him. Or perhaps she was simply a sensual young woman who was not actually repelled by him. He should be grateful she was not expecting more from him, because he was not at all confident he knew how marriage should work. The only happy one he had ever observed had been his grandparents’ and that just in its last years when whatever trials and storms it had gone through were softened by time and familiarity and years of mutual support.
* * *
Madelyn had floated upstairs, hampered by her trailing domino and the sensation that her knees were made of sponge. That carriage ride had been a revelation. Embarrassing in retrospect, of course—how would she be able to face Jack again after that? But wonderful all the same. Of course she was right to be marrying him. Richard and she had outgrown each other, grown apart. She would not think about him any more.
* * *
In the event she need not have worried about embarrassment. When she next saw him Jack seemed briskly practical about arrangements for the wedding, politely involving her in his plans for spending time at Dersington Mote afterwards. On days when he did not call he sent his new secretary, a painfully earnest young man named Douglas Lyminge, who was the younger son of a younger son of a connection of the Duke of Worthing and therefore forced to earn his own living in some socially unexceptional manner.
Madelyn liked him for all his awkwardness and earnest frowns. For his part he seemed so determined to prove his worth that she rather thought he would carry her down the aisle if that was what was necessary to bring the wedding to a successful conclusion, she thought, three days before the date set. Mr Lyminge had just left after delivering the final terrifying list of acceptances, and Partridge came in with his silver salver.
‘The morning post, Miss Aylmer.’
