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If someone had said out loud, ‘So that’s why he married her!’ Madelyn would not have been surprised. In a way the heavily tactful silence was worse. Jack had been right to want to leave London, she realised. They would be out of town while that was talked about and digested and he would not have to lose his temper and hit anyone, or even call them out. By the time they got back, surely a viscount’s wife would have run off with her footman or the Prince Regent would have done something outstandingly stupid and extravagant and she and Jack would no longer be of much interest.
When they were finally alone she left her husband in the drawing room while she sought out Partridge and the staff to thank them for their efforts and then went upstairs to her bedchamber. It was not running away, she told herself, resisting the temptation to lock the door.
With the reinstatement of the ground-floor rooms the upper floors had been cleared of surplus furniture and had been renovated. Only the servants’ rooms and the kitchen remained, but Partridge assured her that he had those in hand and that everyone was comfortably accommodated.
Now she sat at her dressing table and stared at the connecting door through into Jack’s room. Behind was a room of pale cream walls above oak panelling with dark blue curtains and fine old furniture that now gleamed with polish—lemon polish, she had instructed the staff. There were Chinese bowls full of dried lavender on the table tops, the scent of Jack’s childhood memories as best as she could recreate them. And against the wall facing the window was the bed.
Madelyn had skirted around it, not looking at it directly, on all the occasions she had been in the room ever since she had realised that this house was where she would be spending her wedding night. Dersington Mote was over eighty miles away, deep in the Suffolk countryside, a full day’s drive with an early start. They would leave tomorrow morning and arrive in the evening, but tonight there was an entire evening to get through, alone with her husband. Her very angry husband.
Now she wondered whether perhaps she was supposed to wait for her bridegroom in her own bed. The only wedding customs she knew about were hundreds of years out of date, from a time where the bride and groom were led to the bridal bed by their cheering guests, some of whom stayed to witness the consummation if the couple were of high rank. Madelyn shivered. It was going to be bad enough without a bishop to observe proceedings.
Who could she ask? Louisa had left, returned to her own home. Harper was unmarried and therefore, even if she did know, it was inappropriate to ask her. She supposed she would have to ask Jack.
But even with the worry about which bed to choose, she felt more apprehensive about the evening than the night. Once they were together, surely the desire that had gripped them in the carriage returning from the masquerade would sweep them up, take them past recrimination and mistrust. But now she was faced with hours alone with a man whose pride had taken some hard knocks that day and who had been confronted with a bride who must have seemed to be flaunting every desire he had ever expressed about her behaviour.
‘I will bathe and change, Harper. The half-dress evening gown, I think. And my hair in some simple style, perhaps just in one long plait.’ She had worn the gown she had always dreamed of for her wedding, she had made her point that this was her style, who she was. She could afford to be less provocative now.
* * *
When she emerged from her bath somewhat less tense, Harper was laying out her fresh clothes. The new gown was less dramatic, although the fabric, as befitted an evening dress, was a damask silk in deep emerald green. The sleeves were tight to the wrist, the pleating far simpler than on the wedding gown, but it still brushed the floor when she walked and was cut so that it supported her breasts without the severity of the stays.
She fastened the sixteenth-century gold and freshwater pearl necklace around her neck and added pearl ear drops. ‘What time is it?’
‘Six, my lady.’
I am ‘my lady’. Lord Dersington is my husband.
How long was it going to take to become used to that? Madelyn descended the stairs and could not help smiling at how much better she felt in the heavy, sweeping skirts and with the familiar weight of braided hair. No silly little curls to tickle her cheeks, no flimsy fabrics to flutter around her ankles and no corset to make breathing an effort.
The smile stayed on her lips when she found she had the drawing room to herself. Lord Dersington was bathing, Partridge informed her. The light supper she had ordered would be served at eight. Might he pour Her Ladyship a glass of sherry?
Madelyn had never drunk sherry and she had already learned to be wary of the bubbles and dry, deceptively light taste of champagne, but if sherry was what countesses drank in the evenings, then she would learn to like it. ‘Thank you, Partridge.’
It was sweeter than she had expected and the taste was almost nutty, with fruity overtones that made her think of plum pudding. It tasted quite innocuous, in fact, and it slipped down with no difficulty at all, warm and soothing. She felt herself relaxing with the first sip. ‘You may leave the decanter there, Partridge.’
Should she ring for the footman to fetch her embroidery frame? Perhaps that was rather too prosaic for a wedding night and, besides, Jack might see the designs as medieval, a provocation. On the other hand, she would never be able to concentrate on a book and Louisa had said that embroidery was a perfectly acceptable occupation for a lady. Charles, the junior footman, came when she tugged the bell and set the frame in its stand beside her, fetched the basket of wools and refilled her sherry glass. Perhaps the
rhythm of setting the stitches would calm her enough to cope with Jack’s reproaches with, at least, some dignity. She took another reviving sip of sherry.
* * *
How the devil was one supposed to fill the hours before bedtime under these circumstances? Tanfield, relieved of all the other duties he used to perform for Jack and now solely his valet, had produced a freshly sharpened razor, clearly expecting his master to go to his marital bed with a perfectly smooth chin, so Jack had submitted to the second shave of the day. Then he had lingered over dressing again, finally changing shirt and neckcloth and resuming the elegant suit he had worn for the wedding.
Scooping up one’s bride and carrying her off to bed at seven o’clock was hardly civilised behaviour. It might be excusable for a couple wildly in love, but not as a tactic to avoid making conversation. Nor, however angry he was, could he spend their first evening as man and wife haranguing Madelyn on the subject of inappropriate wedding gowns. The wedding breakfast had not been quite the nightmare he had been braced for. Madelyn seemed to be the subject of more curiosity than outright condemnation and a marriage to reclaim his family estates had found approval from the Duke. Had he overreacted in the church? He found himself walking slowly downstairs rehearsing topics of conversation in his head as though for a difficult dinner party.
Ridiculous. Jack stopped on the half landing and absently stirred his fingers through the bowl of dried lavender on the small chest that stood there. Lavender and lemon and beeswax polish. Madelyn had listened when he was reminiscing in that maudlin way in the study. Listened and acted. His bedchamber and the dressing room had been comfortable and elegant, masculine yet light. Those rooms had been his grandfather’s and his memory of them was of gloom and clutter and faded textiles. Madelyn’s hand had transformed them without, he realised, losing their essential nature.
He felt the simmering anger that had heated his blood ever since he had turned to look down the aisle begin to fade, to turn to something uncomfortably like shame when he recalled the harsh words he had flung at her over her first attempts to decorate the house. No taste had been the least of it. Left to follow her own instincts she had great discrimination—he should have remembered her garden.
‘My lord?’ Partridge was standing at the foot of the stairs looking up, far too well trained to express surprise at his employer’s odd behaviour, standing stock-still with dried lavender trickling between his fingers. ‘Her Ladyship is in the drawing room.’
‘Thank you, Partridge.’ Jack walked down the final flight of stairs. His stairs, he realised. He owned this house now, owned all the estates his family had accumulated over the centuries. Lyminge would be joining them at the Mote in a day or so, accompanied by the accountant he had employed to help organise all the management across the various properties.
The thought carried him across the hall and into the drawing room with all his carefully prepared topics of conversation quite forgotten.
‘Good evening, my lord.’ Madelyn sat on a high-backed armless chair, an embroidery frame in front of her. As she spoke she pulled the needle through the canvas, trailing a strand of vivid red wool behind it.
Jack became aware that his mouth was open, closed it so sharply he caught the end of his tongue and stared at his wife through the haze of tears that the sharp pain produced. Madelyn looked as though she had stepped down from an antique tapestry and settled herself with her embroidery at his hearth. The deep green gown pooled around her feet, the heavy weight of her plait lay down her back like a golden rope and she swayed gracefully as she reached to set another stitch.
