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Wearily, she changed into her nightrail and slipped beneath the covers of her narrow iron bed beneath the window. She could see the big round moon through a hole in the curtain that she’d intended to mend only last week when the ageing fabric had rent asunder.
Now there was no point. She’d not be living in this cottage much longer.
But did that mean she had to live with Mr Bramley as his wife? Mr Patmore had given her another option. A far more desirable option.
She shivered, not from cold, and ran her hands over her flat belly, up and over her breasts. Not long before, his hands made that same journey in a far more passionate exploration, and she had embraced every nuanced touch. She drew in a shuddering breath, and brought to mind once more the delicately featured face of the man who’d looked down at her with such feeling.
He’d asked her to marry him. Well, he would have if she’d let him, but she was so set on her course to wed Mr Bramley, and with her emotions so disordered, she’d been unable to countenance any other option.
Now she was filled with excitement as she wondered if indeed she really could hope for happiness. She drew in a shuddering breath, closing her eyes as she gently rubbed the flat of her hand over her sensitised nipples, and imagined it was Mr Patmore above her.
The idea was heavenly. Then she put Mr Bramley in his place, and her brain screamed in objection.
She sat up, gasping for air.
How could she marry Mr Bramley if she could marry Mr Patmore? Surely there must be a way she could have Mr Patmore for her husband and keep Gideon close?
Thoughts chased themselves around her brain like wild chickens. She, that most self-contained of young women, could find no order, no discipline, as she pictured in wildly disturbing images first Mr Patmore tending to her desires in bed—and then her tending to Mr Bramley’s desires.
Of course, she couldn’t sleep. She pressed her hands against the sides of her head and tried to will away the pictures that haunted her. She tried not to scream, and when she feared she may do just that, she threw back the covers, put a shawl about her shoulders, and went down to the scullery to put a pan of milk over the embers of the fire.
While waiting for it to boil, she went to the parlour and looked down upon the face of her dead aunt who’d never looked so peaceful or contented in her life. She wondered if Aunt Montrose had ever sinned. Eliza knew nothing about Aunt Montrose’s past, other than that her aunt had only lived in this village the past ten years having decamped from the other side of the county for reasons unknown.
Sometimes the cruellest and most sanctimonious of people were the greatest sinners. Eliza knew this. Success in life rested on getting away with one’s crime.
She hoped there was no one left alive who knew her own sad and sorry past.
She shivered. Perhaps, with her aunt’s death, she might now wash clear the stain of her sinning youth and forge a future as a happily married young woman with children. Hope prickled her skin. Yes, a brood of children by Mr Patmore, and somehow, with Gideon in the background, his interests assured, his future the one he should have had, had they not been abandoned by his father.
“Good night, Aunt Montrose,” she whispered, feeling no grief but only expectation. “Regardless of what you have allotted me in your will tomorrow, I will have the happiness I deserve.”
Chapter 11
Back at Quamby House, a distracted Fanny sighed and ran her hand across a porcelain milkmaid arranged on the mantelpiece. She’d thought about turning on her heel when she’d discovered the drawing room occupied by Mr Bramley, but then decided that as she was bored, it might be rather fun to needle him.
“Do you not think it strange that Mr Patmore hasn’t returned with Devil’s Run?” Fanny focused her interested eyes upon George Bramley, who was lounging upon the sofa doing absolutely nothing, but whose mottled complexion suddenly revealed the feelings he was clearly reluctant to divulge.
“If he’s not back today, I’m going down there myself.” He sat up straighter and sent Fanny something between a glare and a leer. “Lord, I hope nothing’s happened to my horse.”
“I’d be more worried that nothing has happened to Miss Montrose,” Lord Fenton said, arriving at that moment and punctuating it with such gallantry Fanny was happy to reward him with a kiss. Antoinette had secreted herself away with her clandestine beau, and Fenton had been out riding when she’d much rather have been doing with him what her sister was doing with the very disreputable actor, Ambrose Montague, who’d forsaken a role at Covent Garden to do Antoinette’s bidding. Quamby seemed much happier—Fanny agreed with Antoinette on this—as he was now at greater liberty to follow his own inclinations. Fanny rather suspected that involved several of Ambrose’s fellow libertarians of the stage.
When Fanny had finished caressing Fenton, she sent George a darkling look. “I hardly suppose George is worried about Miss Montrose personally, since his awful proposal was entirely predicated on the outcome of her aunt’s will. Goodness, George. You don’t even have the grace to blush!”
“What awful proposal?” Fenton patted his wife’s hand after he’d stayed her efforts to stand. “You make it sound like there’s more to it than the usual proposal.”
“As if you’d know what informed the usual proposal. What about the one you offered me?” She sent him an arch look then giggled. “That was hardly the kind of proposal a young lady with expectations like myself had hoped for. Much more in George’s line, though I daresay his was in fact more respectable, eh, George?” She sent a narrow look at George, who was now nursing his second Madeira on his belly and looking slightly defensive.
He raised one shoulder slightly then took a sip of his drink. “Turned out Miss Montrose was a betting gel, so it suited us both.”
“Ha! It only suited you, Cousin George, because you had a nice easy way out if she didn’t get all her aunt’s money should the old woman die before you and Miss Montrose wed.” Fanny looked at Fenton. “Did I not tell you the whole story, dearest? No? Well, there it is. I can’t believe Miss Montrose accepted you, Cousin George. Well, perhaps her aunt has died, and Miss Montrose has suddenly inherited all her money, and run off with the footman because he’s a lot more of a gentleman than you. Why on earth would she even consider marrying you if you were so brutish as to wrap up your marriage offer in terms of a wager?”
Bramley drained his glass, placed it on a side table, and raised his hands as if defending himself. “Lord, Cousin Fanny, I don’t know, but she did! We were discussing horses at the Assembly Ball the second time we met. I liked her well enough, and she’s a beauty, there ain’t no denying. I’d been told the odds were fifty-fifty she’d inherit a fortune from her cheeseparing aunt, only I pretended I didn’t know this when I said vaguely that my love of chance was such that I’d stake a good marriage on a situation where the odds might favour my intended—or not—if I had an out. That’s when she said she’d accept such a scenario as she’d be prepared to take any chance to escape the life she had with her own dreadful aunt, whom she said was likely to live another half century. So I suggested I’d marry her on those terms—a three-month betrothal, and if the aunt slipped off this mortal coil and didn’t favour Miss Montrose within that time, then the betrothal was dissolved, but that if old Aunt Montrose were still hale and hearty, we’d go ahead with the marriage. I need
a wife, and she’ll do nicely enough, and she needed to escape.” He shrugged. “I’ve heard of worse reasons to wed.”
“So there is no feeling between either of you?”
“I already said that I like her well enough. She’s very fetching in fact, and the more I see her, the more I like her.” Bramley grinned rather lasciviously. “Perhaps you’re right, though, and the aunt has died. That would be entertaining.”
