The Marquess Tames His Bride

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The look he gave her could have curdled milk. ‘Efficient, rather. Since you will have already booked the church, the minister and ordered the wedding breakfast. And the guests at both events would have been more or less the same. It will save me, and my own bride, no end of bother.’

‘Oh,’ cried Lady Harriet again as he left the room, closing the door behind him. Only this time she didn’t look at all pleased. ‘What a beast! Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ she said, looking contrite. ‘I know you are going to marry him, but—’

‘No need to apologise,’ said Clare. ‘That was a beastly thing for him to say.’ And just typical of him.

‘Yes, but,’ said Lady Harriet, coming over to the chair where she sat, ‘it will be rather lovely having a double wedding. What with Jack and Zeus being so close.’

‘Zeus?’

‘I mean to say Lord Rawcliffe, of course. Only I have got used to calling him that because that is how Jack always refers to him. It started when they were at school together. Since he acted as though he was above most mere mortals.’

‘Oh, I see.’ And she did. Especially after this little scene. She could just see him looking down his nose at the other boys, setting them all at a distance, to disguise his hurt and bewilderment at his banishment. His father had put the word out that he’d sent him to school to learn how ordinary people thought and behaved, so that he would be a better judge of men when he came into the title. Though local gossip had it that he’d really done it to get him away from his mother’s influence. Anyway, whichever it had been, he would have hated all the speculation about his sudden banishment. Was that when he’d started erecting defences behind which to hide? Because that was what he did, she perceived. He’d just done it before her very eyes. Pulled a cold, aloof demeanour round him like some kind of armour.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t understood it sooner. Because he hadn’t been icy or aloof before he’d gone away to school. He’d even played with her brothers, occasionally. The vicar’s sons and the young viscount, who was one day going to be a marquess, had fought King John’s men with toy bows and arrows through the woods, swum together in the lake in Kelsham Park, flicked paper pellets across the aisle at each other in church and traded jokes in basic Latin and Greek.

While she had watched them wistfully, wishing they’d let her join in. Until her mother had died and she no longer had the leisure to trail after them. After that, she’d pretended she didn’t care that she was stuck indoors, running the house while they carried on exactly as they’d always done. Acted as though she was too high-minded to even wish to descend to their level.

No wonder Lord Rawcliffe had started to tease her about her puritanical attitude. She taken on the airs of an early Christian martyr.

While he...he’d hidden his own hurts and resentments behind a shield of icy sarcasm.