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Chapter Seventeen
Madelyn stared ahead at the bobbing backs of the postilions as they guided the team through the heavy City traffic. She felt slightly sick and her headache had returned like a vengeful elf with a hammer. How could people be so unkind? She and Jack were not their parents—they were two quite different people starting married life together. If she had listened to Jack, accepted that modern fashions did not suit her and learned to live with it, would they have still attacked them?
‘Stop fretting, Madelyn,’ Jack said sharply. ‘This is not your fault. You tried hard to adapt to London society, and you were right and I was wrong about your clothes. We are aristocracy, seen as privileged, and they would have attacked us if you had been dressed by the Queen’s ladies-in waiting themselves. No one who is of the slightest importance will take any notice of that rag.’ When she swallowed, but said nothing, he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. ‘It will all have blown over by the time we come back and, when we do, it will be clear that you are a perfectly rational person and that I am not bankrupting us in Pickering Place hells or houses of ill repute.’
His arm around her felt good. More than good, if she was honest. Jack was solid and reassuring to lean against, and she snuggled closer for reassurance. ‘I would become exceptionally irrational if you were to do such things,’ she said, hoping to lighten the mood.
Jack gave a snort of amusement. ‘How is your headache?’
‘Ghastly.’
‘Close your eyes and try to sleep.’
‘No, I will watch where we are going and ask you irritating questions about things I should know perfectly well by now.’ It was far too tempting to clutch hold of Jack and that would be dangerous. She was still none too certain of his changing moods and she was conscious of beginning to feel far too attached to him for safety. She had to remember why he had married her, however kind he was being now. ‘Where are we?’ She sat up straight and, after a moment, he removed his arm.
‘Driving out of Whitechapel and into Mile End Old Town. This area keeps growing. Every time I pass through it there are more and more houses and the old market gardens will soon be swallowed up. Mile End will be joined to Stratford-le-Bow in a few years and London will reach to the Essex border, if you can imagine such a thing.’
Jack pulled a road book with maps out of one door pocket of the chaise and traced their route for her. ‘Have you travelled much outside Kent before?’
‘Never. I had never been beyond Maidstone,’ Madelyn admitted. They were out into open countryside now, with neat fields of vegetables and nursery-garden plots. ‘These crops all go into London?’
‘Every last cabbage. See the carts? I will take you to Covent Garden early one morning and you will see. It is quite a sight. Here is Stratford-le-Bow and we will soon cross the River Lea and be in Essex.’
* * *
Jack turned his head slightly on the cushioned seat back and watched Madelyn absorbing the passing scene. Everything seemed to interest her—a dog pulling a cart, a gaggle of geese being herded by a small girl with a stick bigger than she was or a recruiting sergeant with a drummer and a corporal at his
side hammering up posters.
He had expected to be impatient with her ignorance, but her interest in everything was refreshing and it made him look with a fresh eye at things he would have ignored before. Why were so many inn signs of lions—red, black, gold or white? Were donkeys better than mules as beasts of burden for poor people? What was that crop growing in that field?
Then the chaise swerved as a pair of curricles being raced by two young men at high speed dashed past them, making the leaders shy and the postilions shake their fists as they hurtled towards a narrow bridge.
Madelyn gasped and clutched at his sleeve. ‘They are going to crash, surely! Oh, no, one has given way. Goodness, what a speed they were travelling at.’
‘Fools.’ Jack, braced to throw himself over Madelyn if it came to a collision, relaxed. ‘One is a bad driver and the other is not much better.’
‘Do you drive? I wondered, as you came down to Kent to see me on horseback.’
‘If I could have afforded a curricle I would have bought one. I used to drive, before my father died.’
‘You can buy one now,’ she said cheerfully as the curricles vanished in a cloud of dust. ‘We have a carriage at the castle, but that is a ponderous old travelling coach. What else will we need? A town coach and a travelling carriage of our own, of course, as this one is hired. How many horses, I wonder?’
Madelyn talked on, calculating what they needed.
What I can buy now I have her money, Jack thought, his mood darkening even as he told himself to get down off his high horse. Men married every day for financial advantage and he should be grateful that he was not only marrying a rich woman, but one who was bringing his lands with her.
One of the first things he must do when they arrived at Dersington Mote was to go through all the financial records and the details of exactly what he was now master of. His own lawyers had reported that it was all remarkably straightforward and that nothing other than Castle Beaupierre and its small estate was held back in trusts or complicated by inheritance through Madelyn’s mother. Essentially, everything that Peregrine Aylmer had died in possession of went to his daughter.’
‘Really, there was very little to do, other than to record the marriage,’ Mr Torridge, the senior partner, had informed him. ‘Miss Aylmer’s man tells me that she ordered all outstanding debts to be cleared before the wedding and, by the very act of marriage, all that she owned passes into your control.’
Douglas Lyminge had suggested hiring an accountant to help them get the Dersingham Mote finances straight and then he could decide which of his properties required their own resident steward. He was not even certain how many Dersington family holdings there were, let alone whether there were other properties that Aylmer had acquired in his search for the perfect son-in-law. He hadn’t cared to dig too deeply—it made him feel like a fortune hunter, gloating over his new-found wealth.
He told himself not to be so squeamish. Madelyn’s assets would have passed to her husband whomever she married. And it was not as though he wanted to be a rich man, he just wanted to restore his family lands to a flourishing state, to live in a manner befitting his rank and to provide well for the next generation.
The thought of creating that next generation made him smile. He was married to an intelligent, if unconventional, woman. She was unusual, certainly, but he was finding Madelyn increasingly attractive now he had learned not to expect the pattern-book simpering little miss that society dictated would be the ideal bride for an earl. She was leaning forward a little now, he saw as he turned to watch her. Her face was alight with interest and curiosity and one lock of that glorious hair was escaping. She laughed as a pig ran across the village street with three people in hot pursuit and that made her lush bosom move enticingly.
‘What is it?’ She had caught him looking at her. ‘Is something wrong?’
