The Ideal Wife (12 page)

“You see?” he said. “You are at it again. Don’t, Abby. Severn may tolerate it now because you are new to him. But he will not enjoy having you organize his life, believe me. But yes.” He patted her hand and his expression softened. “I will try to see the girls when they come to you. Two years ago it did not seem that we would ever be together as a family again, did it?”

“Oh, Boris,” she said suddenly, her eyes widening. “Guess whom I saw at Lady Trevor’s ball last night? Rachel! I swear it. I even spoke with her.”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “You have seen her, have you?”

“You are not even surprised,” she said. “You knew she was here?”

He nodded.

“Boris,” she said, “her hair is black and her face was painted.”

“Yes,” he said. “It would be best if you forgot about her, Ab. I had better be getting back to my seat. The play must be almost ready to start again. Shall I take you to Severn?”

“No,” she said. “I shall return to our box. He will be there soon. You will come tomorrow?”

“I will,” he said. “But no more invitations without consulting Severn in private first. Promise me?”

“I promise,” she said. “If I remember, that is.” She smiled brightly at him as he clucked his tongue, opened the door to the box for her to enter, and took himself off back to the pit.

Abigail sat down quietly and watched the people milling about in the boxes opposite. Boris was quite right, she thought. She must learn to curb her tongue, or at least to know what she was about to say before she actually said it. It would not do for Miles to develop a disgust of her and think that she was thoroughly lacking in conduct.

“. . . the delectable Miss Meighan if I had a chance,” one of the gentlemen from the next box was saying.

Abigail’s eyes pricked up at the familiar name. She felt instant guilt at the setdown she had given that young lady earlier in the day. Though, of course, the girl had asked for it.

“He said he was tired of managing females and tired of beautiful females too,” another man said with a chuckle.

“He can talk,” someone else said indignantly, “when he has the beautiful Jenny to visit every day of his life, and every night too, for that matter. I wouldn’t mind being able to afford her.”

“She wouldn’t have you if you had a king’s ransom
to lavish on her,” the first voice said, and there was a loud burst of guffaws from the other occupants of the box. “Jenny may be a courtesan, but she likes her men handsome and well-formed and sweet-smelling.”

Oh, goodness, Abigail thought, they were talking about someone’s mistress. How scandalous. She considered coughing, but decided it would be better to leave the box quietly again to find her husband.

“I suppose it might have been too much to have Miss Meighan as Lady Severn and Jenny as mistress too,” the second man said. “A mite exhausting, wouldn’t you say?”

There was more laughter as Abigail froze in her seat.

“I wouldn’t mind suffering that sort of exhaustion,” someone else said. There was a moment of silence. “No. No need for alarm. They are not back yet.”

“Anyway,” the second speaker’s voice said, “you haven’t heard the best of it yet. He told Stapleton that he was quite determined to avoid the match. He vowed he would marry the very next plain and dull woman he met. Someone he could take into the country during the summer, get with child, and leave behind him. Someone to fade into the background producing an heir while he was left free for Jenny and her successors. And the very next morning he met just such a woman and kept his vow.”

“We had better lower our voices,” someone who had not spoken before said. “They are going to be back any minute.”

“He chose well,” the first voice said. “In addition to everything else, she is also a nobody and inclined to vulgarity, if my Aunt Prendergast is to be believed. Severn is going to regret giving up Miss Meighan yet, the idiot.”

Abigail got to her feet and rushed blindly for the door. She yanked it open and collided hard with her husband’s chest.

“Abby?” he said. “I did not realize you were alone. I am so very sorry, dear. Your brother has returned to his seat?”

“Yes, he has,” she said. “I was just coming to see where you were, Miles. The play is about to resume, and I was sure you would not wish to miss the beginning and perhaps lose the trend of the plot. Though probably you have seen it before and know very well what happens, do you? And Laura and Sir Gerald are not back. I thought I would call to them, for I know very well that Laura will not wish to miss a single moment. Ah, but here they are now. Are you enjoying the play, Laura? I have not had a moment to speak with you since the interval began. Was it not fortunate that we met Boris here? I have been wanting you to meet him for so long, but there has never been a chance. Tomorrow—”

“Abby.” Her husband had her by the elbow and was speaking quietly to her. “The play is starting, dear.”

She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She fixed her eyes on the stage and did not move them for the rest of the performance, though she saw not a single action and heard not a single word.

A
BIGAIL HAD SENT
A
LICE
to bed. She was not used to having a maid and had no wish to be undressed by one that night, just as if she did not have hands and fingers of her own. And she did not wish to have someone else brush out her hair. She would do it herself.

She sat before her mirror brushing and staring at her reflection. Plain. Dull. Someone to be taken into the country and left there and forgotten about. Someone to be got with child. To bear an heir. To be bred just as the cows and the sheep were bred. Someone to fade into the background. Beautiful, expensive Jenny. A nobody. Vulgar. Plain. Dull.

It was all true. All of it. She had never had any illusions about her looks or her charm. And she had known that there was something strange about the haste of his offer to her. He had admitted that he wished to be married before his mother arrived in town. He had never pretended any personal regard for her.

There was nothing hurtful in what she had heard. She had known it all before.

Except about beautiful, expensive Jenny, that was. He had told her he had no mistress.

Had she thought that her own charms could hold him? Miles, the most beautiful man she had known?

She set her brush down and picked up his pearls from the dressing table. She ran a finger lightly over a few of the smooth beads. Because her mother’s pearls were too long and too heavy to be worn with an evening gown. A gift. Something to keep his dull wife satisfied and quiet. Something to make her feel of value. Like the diamonds. A wedding present. Something to give her the illusion of beauty.

She turned suddenly and hurled the necklace with all her strength across the room. And then she scurried after it and picked it up and examined it. By some miracle, the string had not broken and none of the pearls had been damaged. She closed her hand over them.

She would wager they were real, she had said, and he had laughed. Money, of course, was something the Earl of Severn had in great abundance.

He could afford the beautiful Jenny.

She sat down heavily on the stool again, set the pearls down, and braided her hair with hasty and determined fingers.

She finished only just in time. There was a tap on her dressing-room door, and her husband came in without waiting for her answer.

“Are you coming to bed?” he asked with a smile. “I thought perhaps you had fallen asleep in here.”

“No,” she said.

“Oh, Abby,” he said, “you have braided your hair.”

“It is easier to comb in the morning,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, coming up behind her and setting his hands on her shoulders.

“Nothing,” she said.

He smiled. “When you answer in single words, Abby,” he said, “there is something very wrong. It has been a tiring day for you, hasn’t it? I called on Mama on my way home this afternoon. Some of the old tabbies gave you a rough time?”

She could no longer feel dismay that he had known all evening what she had kept from him herself. “Nothing that I did not give right back again,” she said. “Your mother has told you how vulgar I was, doubtless.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “If you spoke up for yourself,” he said, “then I am with you, Abby. May I ask one thing of you?”

She looked at him in the mirror.

“It is difficult to adjust to the married state, is it not?” he said. “It is hard to stop thinking as an individual and start thinking as a couple. I did not have anything definite in mind for tomorrow evening, though I planned to ask if you wanted to go to Mrs. Drew’s soiree. In future shall we discuss our plans together before making them public? I am sure that I will slip up too before much time has passed, and find myself arranging things before I remember to consult you. It is a difficult adjustment.”

Abigail raised her chin and stared steadily back at him in the mirror. “Yes,” she said. “I am sorry I embarrassed everyone over tomorrow’s dinner. I shall try to remember to consult you on all issues, Miles.”
I will try to fade into the background.

He lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. “I have hurt you?” he said. “Come to bed, Abby. You are tired.”

She wanted to go to her own bed. She wanted to be alone. She did not want him to touch her. But of course there was an heir to be begotten.

She hoped as she allowed him to lead her through his dressing room into his bedchamber that she would have a dozen daughters and no sons at all. She hoped she would be quite barren.

“Don’t be angry with me,” he said after he had blown the candles out and climbed into the bed beside her and taken her into his arms. “We must tell each other, Abby, if there is something about the other we do not quite like, or we will only grow apart and come to resent each other. And I am not really criticizing you. I shall look forward to our dinner party.”

“Who is Jenny?” she asked.

He went very still. “Why do you ask?” he said.

“I overheard some men at the theater saying that she is your mistress,” she said. “They said she is very beautiful and very expensive.”

He swore under his breath. “They used the wrong tense,” he said. “She
was
my mistress, Abby, and their description was quite accurate. I settled with her after deciding to marry you and before our wedding. I did not lie to you on our wedding night.”

She lay with closed eyes, inhaling deeply.

“Is that what was bothering you?” he asked. “I knew you had something on your mind. Put it from you, Abby. I will be answerable to you for the present and the future, but I cannot answer for the past. And there is nothing in the present that would dishonor you, I swear to you, and will be nothing in the future. Is that all? Do you feel better now?”

“Yes,” she said.

She swallowed and lay still. And when he lifted her nightgown and came over on top of her and entered her without any of the usual kisses and caresses, she bit down on her lower lip and stayed still.

And for the first time there was no excitement, no physical response at all to what he did to her. Just a dispassionate observing of his movements.

But no response was needed. Only her womb was needed to receive his seed, not her mind or her emotions. There was really no need at all for a wife to feel excitement or even pleasure while she was being impregnated with her husband’s heir.

She resisted the pressure of his arm, which would have drawn her onto her side and against him after he had finished with her, and turned away from him. And she pretended to be asleep when he reached a hand over her shoulder and touched one knuckle softly to her cheek.

“Good night, Abby,” he whispered.

She lay awake for a whole hour after his breathing told her that he was asleep. She lay awake until her head spun from so much thinking and every bone in her body ached from lying so still and so tense.

She turned finally and looked at him in the near-darkness, his face relaxed and handsome in sleep, one lock of dark hair fallen across his forehead and over his nose.

She inched closer until finally she gave in altogether to temptation and snuggled up against him and butted her head up under his chin until she could rest it on his shoulder.

He grunted in his sleep and adjusted his arm until it was about her, and moved his head until his cheek was more snug against the top of her head.

He was warm and comfortable, and he smelled of the cologne he always wore and of plain masculine goodness.

She would not think anymore. She was too tired to think. She burrowed one hand up between them to spread against his chest.

And finally she slept.

11

S
HALL I SEE TO INVITING MY MOTHER and Pru and Connie?” the Earl of Severn asked his wife at the breakfast table the next morning. “I’ll ask Darlington too, if you don’t mind, to even the numbers a little more. He is a friend of Connie’s.”

“Yes,” Abigail said. “Do that, Miles.”

“Would you like to ask the Beauchamps and the Chartleighs?” he asked. “It is rather short notice, but perhaps they will be free to come. And you like them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will send the invitations immediately after breakfast.”

He looked at her, but she had no more to say. After a minute of silence he set his napkin beside his plate and rose to his feet.

“Will I see you at luncheon?” he asked. “Would you like to visit the Tower this afternoon?”

“No,” she said. “I have to be busy.”

He set a hand on her shoulder as he passed. “I shall see you later this afternoon, then,” he said.

“Yes.” She balanced her knife on her forefinger and spun it. It clattered to the floor after the door had closed behind her husband.

So he did not care for her, she thought with none of the bleak despondency of the night before. She was plain and dull, and she had turned out to be unexpectedly and unpleasantly talkative. She had been married because he did not want to be bothered with a beautiful and vibrant woman in his life and because he needed an heir. She was to be impregnated during the spring and then taken to Severn Park and left there forever after.

So. Was there anything so very dreadful in all that? She had known from the start that she was being married for convenience, and heaven knew that her mirror had been telling her for twenty-four years that she was no beauty. She had married him for convenience too. She had married him to avoid destitution. It was as simple as that. It was quite irrelevant that he had compelling blue eyes and a knee-weakening dimple and all those other attributes that she would not depress herself by enumerating at the moment. She probably would have married him if he had looked like a frog.

She would enjoy being left alone at Severn Park. She would have Bea and Clara with her, and perhaps Boris would be less reluctant to come there for extended visits if he knew she was alone. It would be quite like old times, except that Papa would not be there. It would be like heaven.

And if she did her duty properly and was a nice, obedient, uncomplicated wife, then there would be a baby to bring up too—a daughter, she fervently hoped. If it were a girl, of course, he would doubtless come back to try again. But she would not think of that.

She got up resolutely from the breakfast table. There were things to be done. She was not going to sit around all day brooding. And she was no longer going to care what anyone said about her, including Miles Ripley, the Earl of Severn. He did not like her anyway, so why try to please him? It was a pleasant, liberating thought.

She knew the first thing she was going to do—after writing invitations to the Chartleighs and the Beauchamps, that was. She would be punishing herself as well as him, of course, but she was going to do it anyway.

All her plans were thrown somewhat awry when a footman in the hallway bowed to her and handed her a note that had just been delivered. She took it into the morning room, where she planned to write the invitations.

“Come for a stroll with me this afternoon,” Rachel had written. “Meet me in St. James’s Park at two o’clock. Your affectionate stepmother, R. Harper.”

Abigail folded the note and tapped it on her palm. She did not want to see Rachel again. She really did not. She had been fond of her and sorry for her unhappiness and horrified by the rough treatment she had had at Papa’s hands. She had been bewildered and upset and angry when Rachel had run away and left her daughters to the mercy of her drunken and frequently violent father. She wanted to leave it at that. She did not feel in any mood to reopen an old story or aggravate old wounds. She did not want to discover that perhaps Rachel was still a woman to be pitied.

But there were the girls and Rachel’s ominous suggestion that she would like to see them again and perhaps even have them to live with her.

She must go, she thought with a sigh. In the park? In such a very public setting? But of course, she did not care what anyone thought of her any longer. She would go.

An hour later Abigail had written and sent off the invitations, changed into a new carriage dress, which had been delivered the day before, and was on her way to Oxford Street. There were a few hairdressers to choose among. She knew none of them but picked one at random. And she emerged one hour after that with short curly hair beneath her bonnet, and knees that felt turned to jelly and a stomach that felt as if it wished to relieve itself of her breakfast.

She went home and spent the short remainder of the morning giving Victor his first reading lesson. It was not going to be easy, she discovered. It was not as simple as opening a book on his lap and pointing out to him what each word was. How did one teach a child to read? Victor knew all about A and B and C by the time she sent him back to the kitchen for his luncheon, but she was not at all sure that he realized the significance of those letters or the depressing fact that there were twenty-three others to grow familiar with.

R
ACHEL HAD CHOSEN
the time with care, Abigail discovered later. The morning walkers and riders had left long before, while most of the afternoon strollers had not yet arrived. The park was almost deserted.

“Abigail,” Mrs. Harper said, “I knew you would come.” She linked her arm through Abigail’s. “Have you cut your hair? I thought you never would. Severn wishes you to be fashionable, does he? I can understand that a woman would wish to please Severn. You did well for yourself. How did you do it?” She laughed in that low, seductive way that Abigail found unfamiliar and thoroughly unpleasant.

“Rachel,” she said, “why did you leave home? I could never quite understand.”

“Why?” The other laughed. “He probably would have ended up killing me if I stayed. He had given me bruises enough. I chose life, Abigail. Is that so incomprehensible?”

“But you left the children behind,” Abigail said. “They were little more than babies. How could you have left them to Papa?”

“It was not easy.” The other woman shrugged. “But I knew you would look after them, Abigail. You were fond of them, and you always had a way with your father. He never laid a violent hand on you, did he? And Boris was growing up. I thought he would protect them.”

“You were their mother,” Abigail said. “And you did not leave alone, Rachel.”

“John Marchmont?” Rachel laughed. “He was just my means of getting away. You cannot know how helpless I felt, a woman alone, and how good it was to have someone who appreciated me. I was still only twenty-four—your age now. Don’t judge me. Life became intolerable and I had only two alternatives—to take my own life or to run away. I ran.”

“Bea and Clara did not have those alternatives,” Abigail said. She noticed that even in the daylight her stepmother wore cosmetics. She turned her head to look away. Rachel had been a beautiful girl when she married Papa.

“Well.” The other woman’s manner became brisker. “The past can be amended yet. I have been thinking of writing to Aunt Edwina and taking the stage down to Bath. Though I daresay I could persuade Sorenson to take me down in his carriage. Do you think it would be a good idea to go, Abby? Would they like to see their mother again?”

Abigail swallowed. “What do you do in London, Rachel?” she asked. “Is it true that you run a gambling hell? Are you Lord Sorenson’s mistress?”

Mrs. Harper laughed. “I have a respectable home in a respectable district,” she said. “I like to entertain. And you know what gentlemen are. They like to play cards, and they cannot enjoy a game unless they are playing deep. And I am no one’s mistress except my own. Do you think I would allow any other man to have power over me as your father did? I learned my lesson many years ago, Abigail. One should use gentlemen for one’s pleasure and convenience and discard them without hesitation when they become possessive, as they always do. You would do well to remember that, though of course you were never one to allow yourself to be bullied. I always admired that in you.”

“I’ll take the girls,” Abigail said quietly. “I have Severn Park to offer them, Rachel, and all my time and devotion. I can offer them proper schooling and respectable marriages when they grow up. I am sure Miles will give them suitable dowries. They can be happy. They were attached to me emotionally, you know, before I was forced to send them away to your aunt’s. And I was happy with them. We will recapture that happiness.”

“And what about my happiness?” Mrs. Harper asked. “Don’t you think I deserve some, Abigail? I bore them, after all. I suffered all the discomfort for nine months with each one of them and all the pain at the end of it. For what? For nothing? I have a hankering to see them again.”

“Rachel.” Abigail stopped walking and disengaged her arm from her stepmother’s. “You do not need my permission to go down to Bath. As you say, they are your children, and I have no legal custody of them. Why have you arranged this meeting? What do you want of me?”

Mrs. Harper laughed. “That is something else I always admired about you, Abigail,” she said. “You always liked everything out in the open. Very well, then. My life is at a crossroads. I am thirty years old—a restless age. A little frightening. What do I do? Do I recover my children and settle down to a cozy domestic life with them? Or do I travel to other lands and taste all the delights that the world has to offer before I really am too old?”

Abigail said nothing. She continued to look steadily but warily at the other.

“But I fool myself to believe that there is a choice,” her stepmother said with a shrug. “There is none. How could a woman like me afford a year or so on the Continent? One does not earn enough from . . . the means I have of earning a living.”

“Is that it, then?” Abigail asked. “If I can provide you with the means to go, you will do so and leave the children to me?”

Mrs. Harper shrugged. “I did not suggest it,” she said. “Could my daughters mean that much to you, Abigail?”

“Exactly how much are we talking about?” Abigail asked.

“I suppose five thousand would be just sufficient,” Mrs. Harper said. She laughed. “It is always so delightful to dream, is it not? Shall we walk on?”

“I shall get it for you,” Abigail said recklessly. “By next week? One week from today? Will that be soon enough?”

“Abigail!” Mrs. Harper laughed again. “You cannot be serious.”

“You know I am,” Abigail said. “Give me your address, Rachel. I shall bring the money there within the week. You will promise to go as soon as you have it?”

“How could I resist?” the other said. “But how naughty of you to have me dreaming like this. Where would you come by five thousand pounds? You surely cannot have Severn so firmly wrapped about your finger, can you? But you always had a way with you. I always marveled that your father would do what you told him even when he was in one of his worst rages.”

“Give me your direction,” Abigail said.

“I don’t think Severn would be delighted to have you seen entering my house,” Mrs. Harper said.

“No one will see me,” Abigail said. “Your direction, Rachel.”

Mrs. Harper shrugged. “You really mean it, don’t you?” she said. “Very well, then, Abigail. But remember that this was all your idea.”

“Yes,” Abigail said. “I think it is a good bargain, Rachel.”

T
HE
E
ARL OF SEVERN ARRIVED
home early, though a group of his acquaintances had tried to persuade him to attend the races with them. He wanted to see Abigail and make his peace with her.

The night before had been something of a disaster, and she had still been cross with him that morning. She had said scarcely a word at breakfast.

Being married was not easy, he was discovering. Abigail was impetuous—endearingly so, but she could embarrass other people as she had the evening before, when she had decided so obviously on the spur of the moment to invite everyone for dinner.

He had tried to handle the matter tactfully. He thought he had done so, but his mild reproof had left her tight-lipped and snappy. Of course, he might have known that it would be best to allow that occasion to pass by and have his talk with her the next time. He had known perfectly well that she had had a rough afternoon.

He had not known, of course, what she had overheard about Jenny. Damnation to Philby and his crew in the next box. Could they not have kept their infernal mouths shut until they were well away from the theater? What had they said about him and Jenny, anyway, apart from the fact that she was his mistress and lovely and expensive?

He had a great deal to learn about women and marriage, it seemed. He had thought the matter at an end as soon as his explanation had been made, and had proceeded with what he had been looking forward to all evening, though he had eliminated the preliminaries, knowing that she was tired. But she had lain as still as a board beneath him and had turned away from him as soon as it was over.