The Ideal Wife (10 page)

“It is because I am embarrassed,” she said. “Yes, I did mean it. Is it what you want too?”

“What a strange combination of shyness and boldness you are, Abby,” he said. “Have you worked up an appetite for that bear yet?”

She nodded and smiled at him.

9

T
HE EARL OF SEVERN SMILED AT HIS wife, folded his newspaper, and set it beside his plate. He might have known that she would be up for breakfast despite the fact that they had not arrived home until the early hours of the morning and even then he had kept her awake for another half-hour, making love to her. He got to his feet and handed her to her place at the table.

“Good morning, Abby,” he said. “Aren’t you tired?”

“I must be,” she said. “I did not hear you get up. Was it long ago?”

She had indeed been very fast asleep, curled into his body like a kitten, one hand beneath her cheek. He had lain awake for all of ten minutes before getting up, wondering how severely it would distress her to be made love to by daylight. He had decided finally not to put the matter to the test quite so early in their marriage.

“Not long,” he said. “I am still at breakfast. I have an appointment with my tailor this morning and would like to go to Jackson’s again afterward to see if I can find someone to punch the cobwebs off me. Will you mind a morning alone? I thought we might drive out to Richmond this afternoon.”

“You have forgotten,” she said, “that I promised your mother and Constance last night that I would go visiting with them this afternoon. I had better go.”

He grimaced. “Yes,” he said. “The theater tonight? Do you like watching plays?”

“I have never been,” she said, her eyes glowing at him, “but wild horses would not keep me away. Do you have a box?”

“Large enough for guests too,” he said. “Should we invite my mother and Connie, do you think?”

“How about Laura?” she asked, brightening. “And Sir Gerald? We can have them to dinner first, Miles, and then go together to the theater. I know Laura would be as excited as I. And if we throw them together a few times here in town, they will be more ready for a romance to flourish when we move into the country, won’t they? Why are you grinning like that? Have I said something funny?”

He laughed outright. “We will invite them, by all means,” he said. “But don’t be disappointed when you have no success with your scheme, Abby. Gerald is a confirmed bachelor. What are you planning for this morning?”

“I am going to spend it with Mrs. Williams,” she said. “I want to find out all about the workings of the house. Until two years ago, you know, I was used to running a house almost single-handedly.”

“No, I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “You have told me remarkably little about your home and your life there, Abby. We will sit down sometime and you can tell me about it.”

“Yes,” she said, and looked over her shoulder. “May I have more coffee, please, Mr. Watson?”

Her cup was still three-quarters full, her husband noticed. He got to his feet, squeezed her shoulder, and took his leave of her, promising to see her before dinner.

“I will speak with Gerald,” he said. “You will see to inviting Miss Seymour?”

“Yes,” she said.

For someone who clearly liked to talk, he thought as he left the house and took himself first to his friend’s rooms to issue the invitation for that evening, his wife really had said remarkably little about her home life before the death of her father.

She had run the household almost single-handedly, she had told him just that morning. Had there been no servants, then, or very few? Her stepsisters were almost like her own children, although she must have been only twenty-two when her father died. How long before that had the stepmother died? And her father had been very ill for a long time before his death. Had Abigail nursed him too? Her brother was younger than she.

Somehow the father had got into debt, so deeply in fact that they had lost everything after his death. And now the brother was living by his wits in London. Abigail was clearly very fond of him if her reaction after his visit the morning before was anything to judge by.

And she herself had been forced to send her sisters away to a great-aunt while she went into service.

She had had a hard life, it seemed. He looked forward to making it all up to her.

Though that might not be so easy, he discovered when he arrived at Sir Gerald Stapleton’s rooms to find his friend looking pale and disheveled.

“I just got home half an hour ago,” he said with a groan, one hand going to his head. “Do me a favor, Miles? Drive out to the coast and see if I really did drink the sea dry last night. I think I must have.”

The earl clucked his tongue. “And this is the idyllic bachelor life you cling to so tenaciously?” he said.

Sir Gerald lowered himself gingerly into a chair and ran a hand over the bristles on his chin. “Priss has gone home to her swain,” he said. “Cried all over me yesterday afternoon, wouldn’t let me touch her beyond allowing her to cry all over me, that is, and left. What else was there to do last night after the ball but drown myself?”

“What you need is a wife,” Lord Severn said. “I am beginning to agree with Abby after all. You have grown fond of Prissy, haven’t you?”

“Habit,” Sir Gerald said. “Sheer habit. Lady Severn hasn’t turned her attention to my eternal happiness, has she? Confound it, Miles, can’t you control her? Isn’t it enough that she has you wrapped about her little finger?”

“Careful,” the earl said. “I have all due respect for the state of your head, Ger, but you are likely to find your nose on a collision course with my fist if you say anything disrespectful about my wife.”

Sir Gerald clutched his head with both hands. “See what I mean?” he said. “You are a lost cause already. I had something to tell you. Something to do with Lady Severn. Confound it, couldn’t Priss have waited until the summer, when I would have been leaving town anyway?”

“What about Abby?” the earl asked.

Sir Gerald frowned. “Something to do with Galloway,” he said. “Ah, got it! Can’t imagine how I could have forgotten. Did you know that he and his good lady were putting it about last night that Lady Severn was in service with a cit and was dismissed for dallying with the son?”

The earl frowned. “Well, it is true,” he said, “except that the charge was false, of course. I haven’t been trying to hide the fact, Ger.”

“You left early,” Sir Gerald said, “with the Chartleighs and the Beauchamps. Lady Trevor’s was buzzing with the information before the evening was out, Miles, and the conjecture that you had taken your lady away early because you were ashamed of her.”

The earl clucked his tongue again. “What utter nonsense!”he said. “I don’t even want to listen to such rubbish, Ger. Why would I have taken her in the first place if I was ashamed of her?”

“You had hoped to hush it all up,” Sir Gerald said. “If you must cluck, Miles, do you think you could do it a little more quietly, old chap?”

“I shall take myself off and cluck all the way along the street,” Lord Severn said. “I am already late for my tailor’s. I would lie down for an hour if I were you, Ger. Did I tell you that you are to come for dinner tonight and then to the theater?”

“Who is the fourth?” Sir Gerald asked. “No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. The auburn-haired governess. Am I right? Lady Severn is going to get the two of us leg-shackled. Have you warned her that she is doomed to failure?”

The earl grinned. “Yes,” he said, “but Abby is undaunted.”

His friend groaned. “Priss had a way with headaches,”he said. “I don’t suppose you would care to take my head in your lap and stroke my temples, would you, Miles? Ooh, I wish I had not said that,” he added, as both men bellowed with laughter.

The Earl of Severn did not carry his laughter beyond his friend’s room. The Galloways were having their revenge, it seemed, and would make life uncomfortable for Abby if they could.

Over his dead body, damn their eyes!

A
BIGAIL SPENT
a thoroughly pleasant morning, first of all with Mrs. Williams and then in the kitchen.

Mrs. Williams, she felt, was somewhat disappointed with their lengthy talk and tour of the house. The old earl had been a bachelor, and so had Miles until three days before. The housekeeper had hoped for an ally in his new countess, someone who would approve her schemes for making the house a more feminine place.

But Abigail liked the house as it was, especially the library, her husband’s favorite room, with its old leather and wood furniture, the old paintings, and the heavy velvet draperies. She did not like the sound of the colorful chintzes and the cushions and frills with which Mrs. Williams wished to brighten and add comfort to the room.

“I want my husband to be comfortable here,” Abigail said. “I do not want him to feel that his home has been invaded by women and that he must search out comfort in his clubs.”

And besides, she thought more selfishly, she was comfortable there. She felt more at home after three days in Grosvenor Square than she had in almost two years at the Gills’, despite all the splendors of the nouveaux riches that that house boasted.

The cook was thrown into consternation at first when Abigail arrived unannounced in the kitchen to discuss the menu for dinner that night. However, she was soon set at her ease and began telling her new mistress about the French chef next door who cooked foods so fancy that everyone was too awed to eat them.

“The cats are getting fat on them, my lady,” she said, and proceeded by some strange progression of thought to describe the veins in her legs and the difficulties she sometimes had standing on her feet for any length of time.

“Then you must take more time to sit down and put your feet up,” Abigail said. “You must delegate more of your tasks. I know how difficult that is to do sometimes. It is easier just to do everything oneself, is it not?”

She picked an apple out of the barrel by the door, bit into it, smiled at Victor and tossed one to him too, and sat down on a kitchen chair to have a comfortable coze with the cook. She set an arm about the child’s waist as they ate their apples.

“Do you go out much, Victor?” she asked when there was a lull in the conversation.

“To market with Sally, m’lady,” he said.

“Do you enjoy it?” Abigail asked. “You may come shopping with me too when I go, if you wish. You may carry some of my parcels and get some fresh air. Would you like that?”

The child nodded.

“Do you know your letters or your numbers?” she asked him. “Does anyone teach you?”

He shook his head.

“He is just a poor little waif, my lady,” the cook said fondly. “He is fortunate to have a home.”

“He is also a child,” Abigail said. “I shall teach you some things, Victor, when I have time. You shall learn to read books. Will you like that?”

The child stared at her with open mouth.

She would ask Miles if she might take the child into the country for the summer, Abigail decided later when she was upstairs getting ready to drive to her mother-in-law’s house. He was too pale and thin for a child. He needed country air and country food and some small tasks, perhaps in the stables rather than in the kitchen. And she would let him learn some lessons with Bea and Clara.

In the meantime she had an afternoon of visiting to prepare herself for. She did not much relish the thought. She had spent almost two years as companion to a woman who did almost nothing else in the afternoon but visit or be visited—and gossip endlessly. But at least it would be easy. She had already faced the ordeals of her first meeting with Lady Ripley and Constance and her first drive in the park and her first ball. Now she could relax.

It was not to be as easy as she had anticipated, however. Her mother-in-law offered a cheek for her kiss when Abigail arrived, and both she and Constance were clearly ready to go out. But neither smiled.

“We are going to call on Lady Mulligan, Mrs. Reese, and Lady Galloway,” Lady Ripley said. “If we can carry off those visits, Abigail, then all may be well after all. It will be best if we are quite frank about your circumstances before you married Miles. Constance and I, of course, will express our delight at welcoming you as a daughter- and sister-in-law.”

Abigail raised her eyebrows and looked at Constance.

“The story is out,” Constance said. “It was, even before you and Miles left last evening, Abigail, but it was unfortunate that you left early. It was the main topic of conversation after you left.”

“The Earl and Countess of Chartleigh invited us to their home for an hour,” Abigail said, “since the countess had not finished telling me all about their son during supper and Lady Beauchamp was feeling too fatigued to continue dancing. And what story is out?”She grew cold as she remembered Rachel’s presence at the ball. She should have told Miles herself, she thought, not let him find out this way, the whole
ton
knowing before he did.

“That you have been in service with a man who is not even a gentleman,” her mother-in-law said. “And that you were dismissed for dallying with his son.”

“Oh, is that all?” Abigail said, laughing with relief. “But I had no wish to hide those facts, ma’am. And anyone who had seen Humphrey Gill would realize how absurd that charge was. He is nineteen years old and has pimples.”

Constance smiled fleetingly but grew serious again. “Even so, Abigail,” she said, “the
ton
does not take kindly to welcoming into its numbers someone whose past has been sullied in any way. Miles, of course, has great influence, but we must be careful. Mama and I will do our best for you this afternoon.”