The Ideal Wife (4 page)

Oh, dear good Lord! Conscience was a dreadful thing.

Abigail swallowed. And a crumb went plummeting in the wrong direction. Other customers looked around as her napkin came up over her face and she wheezed and gasped and coughed until she thought she would vomit. The Earl of Severn, she realized as she willed herself not to disgrace herself, was standing over her, patting her back.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked as the coughing began to subside.

How mortifying. How positively and totally humiliating!If someone would be kind enough to kick a hole in the floor, she would gratefully drop through it.

“How mortifying!” she said weakly, lowering her napkin, knowing that her face must be scarlet if not purple with embarrassment and the exertions of dislodging the crumb and sending it off to a more legitimate resting place.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said kindly. “Would you be more comfortable if we left? Come, we will stroll along the street until you have regained your composure.”

He tucked her hand through his arm as they walked, and Abigail, feeling firm muscles beneath the sleeve of his coat and smelling the same cologne he had worn the day before, was glad that they were walking side by side so that he was not looking constantly into her face.

She doubted that she had ever felt so humiliated in her life.

And the man was to be her husband the next day. The very next day! That meant that she was to have one more night in her bed at Mr. Gill’s, and then a wedding night—with the man who walked beside her, drawing female glances with every step he took.

And he was marrying her because she was quiet and sensible and good-natured and because he wanted to be free of managing females.

She was very tempted to turn to him without further ado and tell him the truth. All of it, down to the last sordid little detail. Even that one detail that no one else on earth knew except her—not even Boris. She should do so. After all, she would not be able to hide everything for the rest of a lifetime, certainly not the truth about her character.

But she thought of the long journey into Sussex and a disapproving Vicar Grimes at the end of the journey. And she thought of Bea and Clara and their unhappiness with their Great-Aunt Edwina and the dreary prospects that awaited them when they grew up. And she thought of all the clothes being made up in Madame Savard’s shop and of all the parcels and bandboxes lying in the earl’s carriage at that very moment. And of being a countess and comfortable and secure for life.

She held her peace.

It was already well into the afternoon. His lordship had a pressing appointment, he explained, and must return her to Mr. Gill’s. He was to be busy for the rest of the day. He would take her up the following morning and they would go to the church together. The gown from the modiste’s should be delivered in plenty of time.

“Is there anyone you would like to accompany you tomorrow?” he asked as he was handing her out of his carriage. “To witness your marriage?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have a friend here, the children’s governess. Miss Seymour.”

“Then I shall take you and Miss Seymour up tomorrow morning,” he said, smiling at her. “You will feel more comfortable to have a friend with you.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

And she watched in fascination as he took her gloved hand in his and raised it to his lips. No man had ever kissed her hand before. She wondered if it was normal to feel the kiss all along her arm and right down her body and both legs to all ten toes. She found herself thinking of wedding nights again, and turned hastily to enter the house.

Gracious, she thought as Edna, the Gills’ maid, opened the door for her and she saw as she stepped into the hallway both Mr. and Mrs. Gill waiting there for her, their faces wearing welcoming and identical smiles. Goodness gracious. She did not know his name. She was to marry him the next morning, and she knew him only as the Earl of Severn.

She smiled in some amusement, and the smiles on the faces of the Gills grew broader. Mrs. Gill came toward her, both hands outstretched.

T
HE
E
ARL OF
S
EVERN
really did have pressing business, business that he thought might well keep him busy for the rest of the day and part of the night too. He had to settle with Jenny and take his leave of her.

He would spend a few hours with her before breaking the news, he thought. He might as well enjoy her favors one more time before his wedding the next day.

She came hurrying across the room to him when the manservant he had hired for her showed him into her parlor. She wrapped bare arms about his neck and raised her face for his kiss. Her eyes were dreamy. Jenny could always give the impression that the money she earned as his mistress was of quite secondary consideration—that making love with him was the pinnacle of joy for her.

But then, she had been recommended to him for just that quality.

“No,” he said, smiling at her and laying three fingers lightly over her lips. “I have come here to talk, Jenny.”

“To talk?” Jenny was not strong on conversation. She communicated with her body.

“This has to be my last visit, I’m afraid,” he told her. “I am getting married tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she said. “So soon?”

“Yes,” he said, removing his fingers and kissing her briefly.

She sighed. “When will I see you again?” she asked.

“You won’t,” he said. “This is the last time, Jenny.”

“But why?” She looked at him blankly. “You are taking your wife out of town?”

Jenny obviously could not conceive of the idea that a man might give up his mistress once he took a wife.

“No,” he said. “I will have the house made over to your name, Jenny, and all its contents. I shall pay the servants their salaries for one year, and you too. And I have bought you an emerald necklace to wear with your favorite gown—a farewell gift.” He smiled at her. “Is that fair treatment?”

She removed her arms from about his neck. “Where is it?” she asked.

She spoke again while he clasped the jewels about her neck. “Lord Northcote wants me,” she said. “He offered me more than you pay, and I think he will go even higher. He wants me badly. Perhaps I will take him, though he is not near as handsome as you. This is pretty.” She touched the emeralds.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said.

She turned and raised her arms about his neck again. “Shall I say thank you?” she asked.

“If you wish,” he said, smiling.

She took him by the hand and led him into the bedchamber that adjoined the parlor. He had expected her to thank him in words, he thought, kissing her and sliding her dress off her shoulders. But he could not insult her by spurning her way of thanking him.

It even surprised him that he was reluctant. He had come there with the intention of spending many hours with her.

He kissed her throat as she began to undress him with expert hands.

“I am going to miss you, Jen,” he said.

But strangely, he thought a long time later as she lay sleeping, her head in the crook of his arm, and he lay gazing up at the mirror over the bed, which had always made him feel a little uncomfortable, he was not feeling nearly as sad as he had expected to feel.

The arrangement with Jenny was all business to her, all sexual dalliance to him. There was no relationship, no emotional tie whatsoever.

He was about to enter into an arrangement in which there would be a relationship, a commitment, some emotional tie. And he was not feeling nearly as sick or as reluctant about it as he had earlier that morning.

He did not yet know Abigail Gardiner. But during the hours he had spent with her that day he had felt a strange and totally unexpected tenderness for her—almost as if she were a child who had been put into his keeping.

He thought of her as she had been at Madame Savard’s—quiet, bewildered, acquiescing in the decisions he and the dressmaker had made between them. And he thought of her as she had been at the confectioner’s—anxious, shy, wondering why he had chosen to marry her rather than give the letter of recommendation she had asked for. He thought of her terrible embarrassment when she had almost choked on her cake. He thought of her flush and look of surprise when he had kissed her hand. And he thought of her drab clothes and the cit’s home in which she lived.

She was not pretty. And yet when she had removed her cloak at the modiste’s, it had been to reveal a trim and pleasing figure. And when she had taken off her bonnet, he had seen that her hair was in a heavy coiled braid at the back of her head. It looked as if it must be very long. He liked long hair on women. And of course her eyes saved her face from being quite plain.

He was rather looking forward to his marriage, he was surprised to find. He believed that he and Abigail Gardiner might deal well together. Despite Gerald’s warnings, despite what his mother and the girls were bound to say when they arrived, he was not going to feel despondent. He was going to make the best of this marriage he had proposed in such haste.

He had his eyes closed. But he opened them when he felt Jenny’s light and practiced hand moving over him again.

“No, Jen,” he said, removing her hand from his body and kissing her lightly on the nose. “I have to go.”

She pouted and looked for all the world as if she were sorry.

But he wanted to be out in the fresh air. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be in a bathtub full of hot suds, scrubbing her perfume from his skin.

He wanted to be well-rested for his wedding day—and for his wedding night.

4

O
H.” FOR ONCE ABIGAIL APPEARED TO have been rendered speechless. She stared at Laura Seymour, who was standing at the opposite side of her room beside the window. “Yes. Thank you, Edna.”

Mrs. Gill’s maid stared at her wide-eyed from the doorway, from which she had just announced the arrival of the bridegroom. “Ooh,” she said, “you do look fine, Miss Gardiner.”

Abigail looked speakingly at the girl and turned back to Laura. “I don’t believe my feet will move,” she said.

“Then we will have to persuade them to do so,” her friend said, coming across the room toward her. “We can keep his lordship waiting for five minutes, Abby, because it is your wedding day and brides are allowed to be a little late. But not indefinitely, until your feet decide to unroot themselves from the floor.”

“What if he has changed his mind?” Abigail said. “What if he is having regrets? What if he does not like me, even when I am dressed in all my finery?”

Laura looked at her friend’s pale blue muslin dress with its high waistline and short puffed sleeves and flounced hem. And she looked at Abigail’s hair, which Mrs. Gill’s personal maid—lent for the grandeur of the occasion—had dressed smoothly down over her ears and coiled intricately at the back of her head.

“You look extremely pretty, Abby,” she said. “No man could possibly look at you and dislike you.”

“He thinks I am quiet and sensible and good-natured,” Abigail said, her voice almost a wail.

“Well, on such short acquaintance,” Laura said, “he is fortunate to be accurate about one of the three. He will get used to the fact that you are almost never quiet and not always sensible.”

Abigail giggled nervously.

“But we agreed last night and again this morning that you would not think of such things,” Laura said. “Abby, we have kept him waiting for almost ten minutes already.”

“I don’t think I will be able to speak one word all day,” Abigail said. “How does one get one’s stomach to turn the right way up when it insists on standing on its head?”

Her friend clucked her tongue and took Abigail firmly by the hand. “It is time to go,” she said.

Abigail took a deep and ragged breath and allowed herself to be led from the room. Her new blue slippers must have been manufactured with lead weights in the soles, she was convinced.

The Earl of Severn was standing in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, talking with Mr. and Mrs. Gill. He had a stranger with him, a fair-haired young man of medium height and pleasing, amiable expression.

Abigail focused her attention on the stranger, though she was aware only of the earl, dressed quite gorgeously in pale blue knee breeches, a dark blue waistcoat embroidered with silver thread, and a lighter blue coat. His stockings, his elaborately tied neckcloth, and the lace that half-covered his hands were snowy white.

Prince Charming would have looked like a bulldog beside him, she thought as he took her hand and raised it to his lips and she was forced to meet his blue eyes.

The stranger was Sir Gerald Stapleton. Abigail smiled at him and curtsied and found herself wishing that he were the Earl of Severn. He looked very much less threatening than the man who was to be her husband. She presented Laura to both gentlemen, accepted Mrs. Gill’s kiss on the cheek and Mr. Gill’s bow, and before she had quite digested the fact that the moment of her doom had finally come, she was being led down the steps to the pavement with the earl’s hand at her elbow and helped into his carriage.

Laura sat beside her, the two gentlemen opposite them, their backs to the horses. And Abigail, trying to decide whether to stay quiet or to burst into animated conversation, found herself having to concentrate on not giving in to a quite inappropriate urge to giggle.

Except, she thought, thoroughly alarmed by the possibility that she might give in to that urge, that there was nothing even remotely funny about the situation. She was a bride on her way to church to be married. Her bridegroom—a total stranger—was sitting across from her, his silk-clad knees almost touching her own.

She turned her head from its awkward sideways position and looked full at him. He was looking steadily back at her and smiled as Sir Gerald was addressing a remark about the weather to Laura. It was a smile that began with his eyes and caused those creases that would be wrinkles when he was older, and ended with his mouth, dimpling his cheek on its way.

It was the same kind, gentle look he had given her the day before, as if she were a timid child who needed reassurance.

And indeed, Abigail thought, she felt timid and tongue-tied and breathless and weak at the knees—all completely unfamiliar sensations. She wondered when she would return to normal.

She tried to smile back and found that her mouth was trembling quite out of her control. She looked away in mortification.

“What a beautiful day it is,” she said brightly before raising her eyes to note the heavy dark clouds overhead.

All three of her companions appeared to find her words irresistibly witty. They all laughed.

“It must be your wedding day, ma’am,” Sir Gerald said. “Miss Seymour and I have just been agreeing that it is quite the most miserable day of the spring so far.”

“My vote has to go to the beauty of the day,” the Earl of Severn said. “But here we are, without any more time to argue the matter.”

H
IS COUNTESS WAS NOT
so very plain after all, the earl thought later in the evening. She was standing beside the fireplace bidding her friend good night, while he and Gerald had moved to the door already. Gerald was to escort Miss Seymour home in his carriage.

His bride had looked rather lovely—and very shy—that morning when he had first seen her descending the stairs at Mr. Gill’s house. It was amazing what a pretty, colorful dress and a more becoming coiffure had done for her appearance. And of course she had been bright-eyed and blushing.

But in the course of the day he had discovered a charm in her that he had not expected. She was talking to her friend now with a flushed and animated face. And she had conversed with Gerald with some ease all day. With him she had been shy, but that was understandable under the circumstances.

“I would have to say,” Sir Gerald said now, holding out a hand to him, “that either you are blind or your bride is a changeling, Miles. She is not at all as you described her. I pictured a drab and mute creature. I hope for your sake that she does not turn out to be quite, quite different from what you expect.”

“You hope no such thing, Ger,” Lord Severn said. “You can scarcely wait for the moment when you can crow ‘I told you so.’ I think you may have to wait a long, long time.”

No, she was not mute or uninteresting, the earl decided, turning his eyes on Abigail again. One event of the day more than any other had taken him by surprise and charmed him utterly.

When they had returned to Grosvenor Square after their wedding, his housekeeper had had all the servants lined up in the hall to meet his new countess. He had been vexed. He had expected her to be thoroughly frightened by the formality of the reception.

“If you smile and incline your head,” he had murmured to her, “they will be quite satisfied. I will have you in the privacy of the drawing room in no time at all.”

But she had smiled almost absently at him, released her hold of his arm, and walked along the line of servants, Mrs. Williams at her side making the introductions, talking with each of the servants in turn, even laughing merrily with some of them. And she had stooped down to talk with Victor, the bastard son of a former maid, who had run away with a neighboring groom and a box of silver forks when the child was barely a year old. The earl had had the story from his valet shortly after his arrival in town.

But then, the earl had remembered, she had been a servant herself until a mere hour before. She must feel as comfortable with them as she did with her own class. Of course, many women in her position would be in some haste to put their past behind them and to assume the airs suitable to the newly acquired title of countess. Abigail appeared to be an exception.

He had directed Gerald to escort Miss Seymour to the drawing room while he had waited for his bride to finish listening to an account of the scullery maid’s brother’s new post as tiger to Mr. Walworth.

“They will all love you forever,” he had told his wife as they ascended the stairs to the drawing room.

“It is doubtful,” she had said, flashing him a smile. “I kept them standing for half an hour and have made them late in completing their day’s work. They doubtless wished me in Hades.”

He had laughed. “Your friend calls you Abby,” he had said. “May I have the same privilege?”

She had grimaced. “I think my parents must have had a grudge against me when they called me Abigail,” she had said. “It is a quite dreadful name, is it not?”

“I like Abby,” he had said.

“You are a skilled diplomat,” she had said, laughing and turning to look at him, and sobering again.

She had spoken to him since only when she could not avoid doing so.

“Good night, my lord,” Miss Seymour was saying now, curtsying low in front of him. “Thank you for inviting me to spend the day with Abby.”

“It has been my pleasure, ma’am,” he said, bowing and extending a hand for hers. “And I know that you have made the day very pleasurable for my wife.”

My wife.
He had scarcely had a chance to comprehend the reality of their new relationship. Just three days before, he had not known that Abigail existed. Now she was his wife.

And how was he to explain to his mother and the girls when they arrived within the next few days that he had met her two days before and married her today, knowing very well that they were to arrive within the week?

A violent case of love at first sight?

He would think of his explanation when the time came.

He took Abigail on his arm to accompany their friends to the top of the staircase, and they watched them descend, raising their hands in farewell when the pair turned at the bottom before leaving the house.

The landing suddenly seemed very quiet indeed.

“I have not told you,” he said, turning to her and taking both her hands in his, “how very lovely you look today, my dear. But I have thought it all day long.”

“Why, what a bouncer,” she said briskly. “Lovely I am not, my lord. But this dress you bought for me is very splendid.”

“My name is Miles,” he said. “You are not going to ‘my lord’ me for the next forty or fifty years, are you?”

“No,” she said, flushing. “I did not even know what your name was until we were at the church this morning. I kept waking up last night with possible names running through my head.”

“Did you?” he said. “I hope you approve. Unlike yours, my name cannot be shortened to a more attractive form, can it?”

She was trying to withdraw her hands from his without actually pulling at them, he could feel. Her eyes were on his neckcloth. She was clearly quite as aware as he that it was bedtime. The thought rather excited him.

“Mrs. Williams showed you your rooms earlier,” he said, “and introduced you to the maid she has chosen for you. Alice, is it? She is doubtless waiting for you. Did Mrs. Williams explain that my dressing room adjoins yours? Go on up. I shall come to you in a short while. Will half an hour be long enough?”

“Yes, my lord,” she told his neckcloth, and she turned and walked sedately halfway up the stairs to the upper floor before breaking into a run up the remainder of the flight.

The earl watched her go and wished there were some way to save a shy young bride from the terror of an approaching wedding night.

A
BIGAIL EYED THE BED
, which Alice had turned down for the night before leaving, and continued to stand at the foot, holding to one of the carved posts.

She could have been in bed and fast asleep long before—she was tired enough after two disturbed nights and a day of nervous emotion. And a great deal longer than half an hour must have passed. Though perhaps not. Time had a strange tendency to expand or contract at whim.

One thing she knew, at least. She would stand there all night rather than lie down on the bed to be caught there by him. There would be something quite demeaning and definitely terrifying about watching him come through that door from a supine position on her bed. Better to face him on her feet.

She felt rather like vomiting, if the truth were known. It was foolish, really, when she had never felt fear in her life, or never admitted to such a feeling, at least—even when Papa was at his worst. But then, she had had very little to do with men outside her own family.

Until her father’s death a little more than two years before, she had had the full care of him—he had been an invalid after years of uncontrolled drinking and rioting—and of the younger children. Boris was only two years her junior, but men were such little boys. Some of them—most of them—never really grew up at all. Bea and Clara were years younger, products of their father’s second marriage and left behind when his second wife ran off and left him.

Abigail had had no time for courting and no patience with the few local gentlemen who had been foolish enough to stammer out the beginnings of an admiration for her. How could she have contemplated marriage when she had lived with such a poor example of the institution? And how could she have married and left the children helpless?