A Matter of Choice (14 page)

“Is Lady Allison nearly ready?” Tiny pinpricks of unease stabbed at Joshua and refused to leave. The troubled glance Lady Fortiner cast at each of her sisters stung him anew.

“Yes. Nearly.”

“She just needs a little time before she joins us,” Lady Hanbury added. The hesitancy in her voice was obvious. She moved close to her husband, Viscount Hanbury, who seemed equally as perplexed by his wife’s attention as Fortiner.

Joshua experienced an emotion that bordered on alarm. What if she’d changed her mind? What if she refused to marry him? Graystone Manor would be lost to him forever. Bloody hell. What more did she want from him? He’d already agreed to everything she’d demanded. “I would like a word with her before the ceremony,” he said.

The three sisters looked nervously from one to the other. Finally, Lady Fortiner nodded. “I’m sure her maid, Emma, can take you to her.”

Lady Hartley called for the maid and Joshua followed her up the stairs to a room at the end of the hall. He nodded his dismissal and slowly turned the knob on the door.

No candles lit the room. For a few seconds, he thought the maid must have been mistaken. He didn’t think Allison was here. Then he saw her—seated in a chair by the window, her back ramrod straight, her hands clasped in her lap. A look of regret on her face.

“This is hardly the place for a bride, my lady. You should be standing in the bright sunshine so the light can reflect off your beauty.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned to face him. Her gaze contained a frightened look, as if she were about to go to the gallows instead of her wedding.

“Do you wish to change your mind?” she said. “It is not too late.”

Her question startled him. There was no softness in her voice, no trepidation. Not even the hint of meekness. She’d asked the question as matter-of-factly as she’d ask the milliner if there’d been a mistake in her bill. It was not a plea, but an ultimatum. A last-minute demand for him to tell her if he had changed his mind. An opportunity for him to back out now if he intended to, if he couldn’t meet the terms of their agreement.

“I would not be here if I had, Allison. There has never been a pistol pointed at my head.”

“Hasn’t there?”

He smiled. “Perhaps, but you weren’t the one holding the gun.”

She turned her head and stared ahead. He wondered what she saw. There was nothing there except an empty wall without even a picture to break its bareness.

After what seemed an eternity, her shoulders lifted.

He took the steps necessary to reach her and stood before her, his feet planted wide. She had no choice but to lift her head and look at him.

“Are you waiting for me to give you the same option?”

“Would you give it?”

Her voice lacked any sign of hopeful expectancy. He was glad.

“No. We are both here because we have no choice.”

More silence stretched between them. Finally, he heard her sigh of resolve.

He did not move, but stayed so close it was impossible for her to rise from her chair. “I have already given my word that yours will be the only bed I share. In a few minutes I will swear before God and man to plight you my troth. I can’t do more than that, Allison.”

“Is that all there will be to our marriage?”

“Only time can answer that.”

Their gazes locked and held. With far more confidence than he felt, he held out his hand and waited for her to take it. She did.

Her touch was warm. Her small hand a perfect fit in his larger one. As if it belonged there.

As if she belonged there.

+++

“Joshua Camden, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will.”

Allison listened to the minister’s words as if they echoed in a tunnel. Her soon-to-be husband answered with confidence, his voice strong and forceful, his demeanor filled with assurance. He wanted this marriage—because he wanted her dowry.

“Don’t you know, they’ll promise you anything. Until they get your money.”

“Allison Townsend, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

She hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could do it. Not step into the same shoes as her sisters. Not live a life of shame and embarrassment like they did and not know how to stop it.

“None of our husbands had half the reputation as a rake and womanizer as the man you are marrying.”

Yet, what choice did she have? She only had a few days until her twenty-fifth birthday.

Lynette’s words came back to haunt her, her plea for Allison to take a husband. If she didn’t marry, she’d lose it all. She’d be forever dependent on her sisters and brother for everything. She’d even be without a home of her own.

“My lady?”

She lifted her head. She knew he saw her hesitancy, her doubts and fears and uncertainty.

Without a word, he reached for her hand and held it in his own. He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, as if trying to reassure her the only way he knew how.

The minister subtly cleared his throat and Allison turned to face him. What choice was left to her?

“I will.”

Her heart gave a lurch, her breath caught in her throat. The choice had been hers to make and she would live with the consequences of her decision.

“Join your right hands and repeat after me,” the minister instructed, and Montfort took her hand.

Allison heard the minister’s soft, gentle voice say the words and heard Montfort’s deep, confident voice repeat them. “I, Joshua Camden, ninth Marquess of Montfort,…take thee, Allison Townsend, to my wedded wife,… to have and to hold from this day forward…for better for worse…for richer for poorer,…in sickness and in health…to love and to cherish till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance—”

There was a pause, a pause long enough to make her lift her gaze. The look on his face was as serious as she’d ever seen.

“My lady,” he said, lifting her hand and clutching it to his chest, atop where his heart beat. “And thereto I plight thee my troth.”

Her eyes filled with tears, her heart hurt with an ache that threatened to bring her to her knees. Tess’s words came back to haunt her.
“If you’re smart, you won’t let yourself fall in love. You won’t let yourself care.”

Allison repeated the minister’s words, promising to have and hold from this day forward a man who might destroy her in the end. Promising to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.

Knowing it was already too late to heed her sister’s words. She perhaps did not love him, not yet.

But she more than cared for him.

Much more.

It was over.

She sat on the window seat in the bedroom she would share with her husband, and stared out the window. She rested her chin on her bent knees and hugged her arms around her legs while she waited for him to come to her.

For nearly ten whole hours now she had been the Marchioness of Montfort, married to the Marquess of Montfort, one of the most renowned rakes in all of London. She should be terrified, filled with fear and regret and misapprehension. She thought she would be. But she was not. Instead, she felt a strange sense of…completeness.

A flurry of excitement swirled inside her, the elation and anticipation soaring with the same wild abandon as the tiny bubbles in the glasses of champagne David served following the ceremony.

She couldn’t explain the sense of fulfillment she’d experienced the minute the minister had pronounced them man and wife. Just as she couldn’t explain the happiness that erupted in a fiery explosion when he kissed her. For just a second it was as if a door opened and she knew her choice to marry had been right. She prayed she would remember that contentment forever.

She closed her eyes and relived every second of the day, from the time he’d entered the room where she’d gone to be by herself to the minute he’d brought her here, to his townhouse, as his wife. The day she’d dreaded her whole life had been—wonderful. Filled with special memories she would always cherish.

She wondered if it had been the same for him. She couldn’t tell. He remained as unreadable as a Greek scroll.

It wasn’t that he’d been hostile or antagonistic, or even distant and aloof. He hadn’t been. He’d been stunningly perfect. He’d smiled when David had toasted their happy union, and talked when he’d been spoken to. He’d laughed easily and often. But she couldn’t help but feel that at least part of it had been an act. That his every smile or laugh or gesture was a brilliant performance. That he conducted himself as was expected of him.

The ring he’d placed on her finger had been perfect. It was not large and ornate like she was afraid it would be. But small and delicate, a beautiful opal with tiny diamonds surrounding it.

When the ceremony finished and the guests toasted the happy couple, he’d pinned to her gown a delicate filigreed butterfly brooch made of the finest spun gold imaginable. The moment was heartwarming. Even now her eyes blurred with unshed tears.

He’d smiled at her, then cupped her cheek in his hand and explained that the ring was an heirloom passed down from his mother and from her mother before her. But the butterfly was a gift from a husband to his bride. He wanted her to have something made just for her, something special she would know he had picked out to give her on their wedding day.

Was that only an act?

Tears choked her throat again and she got up from the window seat and walked to where Emma had placed the brooch on the mirrored table. Even though the room was shadowed in darkness, she’d become accustomed enough to the dark that she could trace her fingers across the delicate strands.

Giving her something so special had been a beautiful thing to do. Almost too perfect. As if he’d followed a treatise outlining the perfect way to win her over, the perfect gift to endear her to him, the perfect words to say, the perfect smile, touch, gesture.

How much of what he’d done had been sincere?

Before they’d left, Lynette had served a wedding breakfast in celebration of their marriage. Montfort had joked and conversed and bantered with her family as if he’d known them his whole life. He’d especially included her in the conversation and often during the meal he’d reached over to give her fingers a gentle squeeze. As if he wanted to reassure her that she’d made the right choice in marrying him. As if he wanted to reassure her that he had, too.

How much of it had been an act?

When they finished eating, it was as if he knew she could not survive sitting through an hour of idle conversation. As if he knew she needed to escape the flushed cheeks and embarrassed looks each of her sisters wore because they knew what awaited her yet this evening. Or that she didn’t enjoy the sly looks she caught her brothers-in-law giving her husband because they knew, too. Whatever those looks were about, it would happen in this room. It would happen in that bed.

Allison turned and slowly scanned the room. The decor was his, all bold and masculine. There was no feminine softness to the furniture, no delicate touch in the knickknacks sitting around, and not a domestic scene in any of the pictures on the wall. Yet she felt perfectly at home here. Perfectly at ease and comfortable surrounded by everything that was his.

It couldn’t have been an act. It couldn’t have.

She made her way to the other side of the room and clasped her hand around one of the end posters on his bed. She stared at the maroon counterpane, then at the covers Emma had thrown back after she’d helped her ready for bed.

A mighty whirlpool swirled deep in her stomach, a warm heat that turned hotter by the second. She tried not to think what would happen in that bed tonight. Tried to remember the instructions her sisters had given her.

Her cheeks burned hot as the raging heat raced from her face to low in her stomach. Had she ever heard of anyone who had not survived their wedding night? No, she didn’t think so. But it didn’t matter. Even if it was something ‘terribly embarrassing’ like Mary had said, she would not let him know she found it repulsive. She would suffer in silence. She would never do anything to drive him from her bed. That had been part of their agreement. She cupped her hands to her cheeks and leaned her forehead against the poster.

“Have I given you enough time, my lady?” he said from the doorway.

She couldn’t stop the tiny cry of surprise as she spun around to face him. “Perhaps too much,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. But he’d heard her.

A smile crossed his face before he stepped into the room.

His broad shoulders filled the doorway, the light from the hallway outlining his tall frame. He’d removed the black jacket, silver brocade waistcoat, and satin cravat that he’d worn for his wedding, and now wore only a burgundy night robe that tied at the waist.

His dark hair was slightly mussed and she fought the urge to brush an errant strand from his forehead. He was the most roguishly handsome man she had ever seen. He looked at her as if he could read her thoughts, and smiled. There were at least a thousand butterflies nestled in her stomach and they all took flight at once.

He took another step into the room and closed the door. They were in near darkness.

“Would you prefer to have a candle lit?” he asked, coming closer.

“No. It’s supposed to be dark.”

“It is?”

She nodded.

“Who told you that?”

“My sister. Tess.”

“Lady Hanbury?”

She nodded again.