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But, oh, she did like kissing him. And now that he’d mentioned it, and was looking at her mouth that way, she wanted him to take her in his arms again, the way he’d done yesterday. And...she blushed, and the rest.
As if he knew the direction of her thoughts, he dropped to his knees in front of her, never letting go of her hands, leaned forward and touched his lips to hers. Just lightly.
Her eyes fluttered shut. She gripped his hands tightly. And she leaned forward, too, this time pressing her lips to his.
In a heartbeat, he’d got his arms round her, she’d put her arms round him and each was kissing the other for all they were worth.
‘Mmnhh...stop,’ he mumbled, pulling away. ‘We have to stop,’ he said, staggering to his feet and backing across the room. ‘Or I won’t be able to. You...’ He drew in a great, ragged breath.
‘My God,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I would never have believed it, but do you know, I’m actually looking forward to my wedding day.’
‘Me, too,’ she admitted, stunned. ‘And I wouldn’t have believed it, either.’
‘See?’ He grinned. ‘We’re perfect for each other.’
To her amusement he then sidled round the edge of the room to the door, as though avoiding a dangerous precipice.
As though she was utterly irresistible.
Just for a moment, she almost believed it herself.
Chapter Six (#ulink_2d8b4ab0-071f-5a77-b7e5-f24cb598c5fa)
Wedding fever swept through the household. Aunt Pargetter took Mary to a street where there was a whole parade of shops where you could buy clothing ready-made. And not all of it used. And by dint of sitting up well into the night, with as many lamps as they could gather, the four women, working together, had both her gown, and the coat they’d bought to wear over it, altered to fit as though it had been made for her, then trimmings added so that the whole ensemble looked as though it had been designed from the outset instead of bought piecemeal and cobbled together.
She slept surprisingly well considering she was about to take a step she’d once vowed she would never take at all. Even though she’d only met Lord Havelock a matter of days before, the prospect of marrying him didn’t fill her with dread. Every time either Dotty or Lotty rolled over, kicking her in the shins in their sleep, it reminded her of their willingness to make room for her when they had so little of it themselves. And she got a warm glow of satisfaction, knowing that she would soon be in a position to help this family, the only ones who’d shown her any compassion when she’d been at her most desperate.
And help Lord Havelock’s sister, too.
How many men, she sighed, would make the supreme sacrifice of surrendering their bachelor freedom for the sake of a sister? Not her own brother, that was certain. He’d escaped their unhappy household as soon as he could and never looked back. Oh, he’d visited when on shore leave, but during those brief visits their father had been on his best behaviour and Kit had never once looked beneath the surface....
Not that she had begrudged him his career. Not in the light of how it ended....
She turned on to her side, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand. No point dwelling on the failings of a brother who was no more. Besides, she’d much rather dream about her husband-to-be. She smiled into the darkness as she recalled his insistence they get the business of providing an heir to his estates settled quickly, before they went off each other. Some women might have taken his attitude as an insult. She preferred to regard it as eminently practical. And a touch flattering that though he assumed his ardour would cool, he really felt some now. Quite a lot, if that last kiss in the parlour was anything to go by. And the difficulty he had in breaking it off.
Which meant that very soon she would have a baby to hold. Possibly even a couple before he went back to his... Well, a man as energetic and healthy as he was bound to have some arrangement to satisfy that form of appetite. Though even when it got to that stage in their marriage, she was not afraid he would become a cruel, or even an indifferent, parent. The lengths to which he was prepared to go for his sister assured her of that.
* * *
The next morning, when she stood before the mirror, she couldn’t help exclaim in thanks for the Pargetters’ hard work and inventiveness. She’d never looked better dressed.
Oh, if only her mother could see her now. Or her brother...though it wasn’t likely he would have been on leave to walk her down the aisle even if his ship hadn’t gone down with all hands.
For a moment, stark loneliness had tears welling in her eyes. Resolutely she dashed them away. She didn’t want to appear in church with red eyes, as though she was going to the altar like some...sacrificial lamb. Besides, she was gaining a new family today, a husband who didn’t seem as though he had the slightest inclination to browbeat and control her, a sister who would need her and eventually children of her very own to love her.
It was with a pale, but determined face that she left the room she’d shared with her cousins and made her way downstairs and to the carriage waiting to carry her, her aunt, uncle and cousins to church.
Her uncle Pargetter had taken leave from his place of work so that he could walk her down the aisle. The gesture should have made her feel less alone, but somehow the fact that she knew him as little as the man who was waiting for her at the altar merely lent the proceedings an air of unreality.
It had all happened so fast. And before she knew it, the vicar declared they were man and wife, and Lord Havelock was bundling her into a carriage, which whisked them off to the Clarendon, where Lord Havelock treated them all to a splendid breakfast.
‘You’ve landed on your feet and no mistake,’ her uncle commented as he shook her hand before leaving. ‘Very open-handed, this new husband of yours.’
‘Yes, and so handsome,’ added Aunt Pargetter, giving her a kiss on the cheek. She added a hug to the parting kiss, so that she could whisper into her ear.
‘But please, don’t think of this as a permanent parting. You must feel free to come and talk to me, or write, if you have any little problems. Getting used to the married state can be a touch tricky and I know you have no other female relative in whom you can confide.’
She didn’t know how her aunt had guessed, but she did feel rather as though she was sailing into uncharted waters without a compass. And also now she’d boarded this ship called matrimony, it wouldn’t be possible to return to the shore from which she’d embarked. Her aunt’s willingness to give her the benefit of her advice, should she reach troubled waters, made her feel not quite so alone.
She hugged her aunt back, fiercely.
‘Thank you’ was all Mary managed to say, with a voice thickened with emotion. She was going to miss them, all the Pargetters. They were good people. They didn’t have much, yet they’d been far more generous than closer relations who were far better off.
‘Our rooms are this way,’ said Lord Havelock, the moment the last of the Pargetters had exited the hotel and she’d dabbed her eyes dry with a darned handkerchief. He offered her his arm, and she laid her hand on his sleeve.
They mounted the stairs in silence, in the wake of a smartly liveried hotel porter. The man opened a door with a flourish and bowed them into what looked like some wealthy person’s best parlour.
‘I took a suite of rooms,’ said Lord Havelock once he’d dismissed the porter. ‘I hope they meet with your approval.’
‘In all honesty,’ she said, hands clasped to her bosom, ‘I have never seen such a magnificent room in all my life.’ The thickness of the carpet alone made her yearn to take off her shoes and stockings so she could sink her toes into it. A fire blazed heartily from an ornate marble fireplace and all the furniture looked as though it had been specially selected to match not only every other piece in the room, but also the wallpaper and curtains.
He had casually mentioned having both a country estate and a town house, as well as his more comfortable bachelor rooms, but it hadn’t really struck her, until this moment, what it meant. A man who could afford to buy a marriage licence and get a ceremony organised within a couple of days, splash out for a wedding breakfast in a hotel notorious for the expense of its meals and hire a whole suite of rooms like this, must be very, very wealthy indeed.
In a daze, she let him lead her across the room.
‘This is your bedchamber,’ he said, throwing open the door to the right of the fireplace. ‘I did promise that you would always have your own room, a room that nobody could enter without your permission.’
‘You did,’ she said, hovering tensely on the threshold, looking in. The room was as tastefully opulent as the sitting room. But what caught her eye, and held her rooted to the spot, was the enormous four-poster bed it contained.
He came to stand very close behind her.
‘I shall be knocking on this door later on,’ he said, his breath rushing over the back of her neck and giving her goosebumps in the most remarkable places. ‘I hope very much you will let me in, but if you really don’t want me...bothering you in that way, tonight, then of course you only have to say so.’
Well, that was very considerate of him. And perhaps she ought to feel reluctant to welcome him into that bed when she scarcely knew him. Except that the heat of his kisses would keep searing into her mind at the most unlikely moments, making her squirm and melt inside. And she wasn’t ever likely to get any less shy of him than she felt now. And they were married. Making a baby was one of the reasons he’d given for marrying her. And it was his right...
‘I won’t demand my husbandly rights, if that is what is making you blush,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Not until you are ready. Though I do want you. Badly.’ He leaned down and brushed a tantalisingly barely there kiss on her neck, just below her ear. ‘And I really do think,’ he growled, ‘it would be better to jump this hurdle before too long.’
Was she blushing? She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which did indeed feel as if they were on fire. Because she was ready right now. And rather ashamed that what he was taking for maidenly modesty was a complete inability to know what to do with her reaction to the nearness of his body. The seductive pull of his mouth on her skin...
‘Beg pardon,’ he said, stepping away just as she was on the point of turning and flinging her arms round his neck. ‘I’m being a bit too blunt for you. But, look, you may as well know that I’m not a man given to fancy speeches and wrapping things up in metaphors. I hope you will soon get used to me and learn not to take offence, because I won’t change.’
There was a touch of belligerence to his voice that made her turn to look warily up into his face. Was he angry with her? He probably thought he had a right to be, having spent so much money, only to have her appear to...shy at the first fence.
He was frowning, but before she could stammer out the confession that he’d got it all wrong, that not only did she agree that it was better to get on with the physical side of their marriage, but was actually rather looking forward to it, he’d turned away, and was striding across the room to a door on the other side of the fireplace.
‘This is my chamber,’ he said gruffly, ‘where all my things are stowed.’ He whirled round, his frown deepening.
‘Was that luggage I saw, next to your bed, all you have with you?’
She nodded. ‘It’s all I have.’
‘All you have?’ The frown altered in tone. He came to her and took her hands. ‘We really ought to be spending a few days in town putting that right, but... Look, I’m sorry, I’ve already made arrangements to travel down to Mayfield and get the place ready for Julia to come. Still, there’s bound to be a dressmaker in Corleywood—that’s the nearest sizeable town—who can fit you out with some new gear.’
‘I don’t mind about clothes,’ she said. ‘I know it is more important to ensure Julia’s safety.’
His handsome face broke into a grin. ‘I don’t know another woman who’d look at it like that.’ He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them. ‘But you must have some decent things to wear, before the local gentry all turn out to have a look at you. Once word gets out in the neighbourhood that I’ve married and brought my bride to Mayfield, they’ll all be coming to call. And you will want to be able to look ’em in the eye.’
Meaning, she wasn’t able to now? In the outfit she’d been so proud of that very morning?
‘Well, that’s another thing to add to my list.’ He gave her a rueful smile. ‘Every time I think I’ve got everything organised, something else crops up that I’ve entirely overlooked.’
‘I’m quite capable of buying my own clothes,’ she began indignantly, only to founder on the rock of her completely penniless state.
‘You just get whatever you want and have the dressmakers send the bills to me,’ he said. ‘You’ll have an allowance, too. That’s one of the things... Damn!’ He let go of her hands and thrust his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ve an appointment with my lawyers in...’ he glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf ‘...about half an hour’s time. I’ve a deal of stuff to discuss with them, documents to sign and so forth, which couldn’t be done until I’d got the marriage lines. I know it’s not the thing to leave a bride alone, so soon after the ceremony, but...’
‘I understand.’ He’d married her for necessity, not inclination. And if she took offence every time he reminded her of that fact, she was going to end up being badly hurt a dozen times a day. ‘Go. Do what you have to do. I shall be quite content here, in this beautiful room.’
In a way it would be good practice for her. She was going to have to get used to spending large amounts of time on her own while he went off doing whatever it was he spent his days doing.
‘Thank you,’ he said, his look of relief being the only indication that, up till that point, he had been concerned about her reaction.
‘I will return as soon as possible, I promise you.’ With a heartbreakingly compelling smile, he leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then he turned and left her, and she pressed one palm to her face as though to cling on to it, on to him, as long as she could.
For a few moments after the door closed behind him, Mary just stood there, in the stately isolation of the sitting room, marooned on her desert island of Axminster.
But there was no point in moping. Better to keep herself busy. She might as well use the spare time to unpack. Only...they would be setting off for his country estate the next morning, so it hardly seemed worthwhile. She’d only have to pack all over again.
She wandered over to the window, from where she had a good view over Blackheath, if she’d wanted to look at it. She shook her head reproachfully over her spurt of pique. Lord Havelock had warned her that he didn’t want them to live in each other’s pockets and she’d agreed it sounded much better than having a jealous, vengeful sort of husband who’d be breathing down her neck the whole time. She was going to have to cultivate the habit of finding things to do, when she was on her own. And not dwell on what it had made her feel like when he had been breathing on her neck, brushing that kiss on it...
She shook herself. What did married ladies do when their husbands were out on business, that was what she should be thinking about. Drank tea, probably. There. That was something she could do. She would definitely feel better for a cup.
She rang for a servant, and before much longer she had not only tea, but also a selection of cakes and sandwiches brought up. As the waiter set them out on one of the many small tables scattered about the sitting room, she had to suppress a wild urge to giggle. It was like being a little girl, play-acting at being a princess, clapping her hands only to have invisible servants magic up food and drink out of thin air.
She couldn’t look at him as he bowed himself out of the room, lest she really did burst out laughing. And so, when the door slammed, she was looking in exactly the right direction to see a sheet of paper, lodged under her husband’s bedroom door, flutter in the draught.
Even from where she was sitting she could see it was some kind of list. And the moment she registered what it was, she recalled him saying how many things he had to remember, how he’d frowningly pulled not just one, but two lists out of his coat pocket the day he’d called to discuss arrangements.
Oh, dear, she hoped this one wasn’t important. But if it was, perhaps she could summon up one of the hotel genies to whisk it to the meeting he was having. That would prove what a good and useful wife he’d married.
She bent down and pulled it out from under the door, her eyes snagging on the first item.
Compliant, it said, in an elegant copperplate script. And then next to it, in heavier, darker letters, another hand had added, A Mouse.
What kind of list was this?
Needn’t have any dowry.
Oh. Oh! She clapped one hand to her mouth as she read the next item: Won’t demand a society wedding.
This wasn’t a list of things he needed to remember at all, but a list of what he was looking for in a wife.
A Mouse, the heavier hand had scrawled next to the bit about the ceremony, and underlined it.
Not of the upper ten thousand, her shocked eyes discovered next.
Orphan.
Her stomach roiled as she recalled the look on Lord Havelock’s face when she’d told him, that fateful night at the Crimmers’, that she’d just lost her mother. She’d thought he couldn’t possibly have looked pleased to hear she was all alone in the world, that surely she must have been mistaken.
But she hadn’t been.
She tottered back to the tea table and sank on to the chair the waiter had so helpfully drawn up to it. And carried on reading.
Not completely hen-witted, the sloppier of the two writers had added. And she suddenly understood that cryptic comment he’d made about finding a wife with brains. Suggested by someone called...Ashe, that was it. How she could remember a name tossed out just the once, in such an offhand way, she could not think.
Unless it was because she felt as though the beautiful little dainties set out on their fine china plates might as well have been so many piles of ash, for all the desire she had now to put one in her mouth.
Good with children, Not selfish, the darker hand had scrawled. Then it was back to the neater hand again. It had written, Modest, Honest and Not looking for affection from matrimony. And then the untidier, what she’d come to think of as the more sarcastic, compiler of wifely qualities had written the word Mouse again, and this time underlined it twice.
But what made a small whimper of distress finally escape her lips was the last item on the list.
Need not be pretty.
Need not be pretty. Well, that was her, all right! Plain, dowdy, mouse that she was. No wonder he’d looked at her as though—what was it Aunt Pargetter had said—as though his ship had come in?
But which of the men who’d compiled that list had harped on about the need to find a mouse, that was the question that now burned in her brain like a fever. Had Havelock’s been the hand to scrawl that word, not once, but three times?
Getting to her feet, she strode to his bedroom door and flung it open. Somehow she had to find a sample of his handwriting to see if he’d been the one to...to mock her this way, before he’d even met her. And then she would... She came to an abrupt halt by his desk, across the surface of which was scattered a veritable raft of papers. What would she do? She’d already married him.
With shaking hands she began to sift through what looked like a heap of bills, some of them on the hotel’s headed notepaper. Until she came to what was unmistakably a letter. Dear Lady Peverell, it began. There was another underneath, in the same bold scrawl, which started, Dear Chepstow. She flipped to the bottom of the page. The one to Lady Peverell was signed Havelock. And she couldn’t help noticing, on her way to the end of the sheet, that he was informing her of his marriage. He hadn’t got very far with the other letter, so there was no signature, but it began in the same vein. Except...
Oh! He’d informed his friend that She meets all the requirements we fixed on, bar one.
The room seemed to swim as several facts all jostled rudely into her mind at once. This Chepstow person had taken part in compiling the wife list. Ashe was another. Were theirs the two sets of handwriting? And then there was Morgan. She’d wondered why Lord Havelock had come to such an unfashionable place as the Crimmers’, but now she understood perfectly. He had been looking for a wife who didn’t come from the upper ten thousand and Mr Morgan had made it possible to meet one, by taking him there.
So, Mr Morgan, too, must know about the infamous list.
And how many others?
She had a sickening vision of half a dozen drunken bucks sitting round a table in some crowded tavern, suggesting what Lord Havelock should look for in a wife who would be so grateful to receive a proposal at all, that she’d never dare lift her voice in complaint about any treatment he might decide to mete out.
With an expression of disgust, she dropped the list on to the rest of his papers and hurried from his room.
Which didn’t look like a palace out of a fairy tale any longer, but a gilded cage.
A cage she’d walked into with her eyes wide open.
Or so she’d thought. But that was before she’d discovered he’d made out a list of what he wanted from a wife. Just as though he was going shopping for groceries!
