An Infamous Marriage (11 page)

“Well, then. You wouldn’t want your heir born in the Ionian Islands, instead of here at the Grange, would you?”

“Supposing good attendants and a capable accoucheur could be had there, and I don’t know if that’s the case. But we could learn. And I’m certain you and the baby could have even better care than you could get here in any number of places. London, to name the most obvious, but also Edinburgh, Dublin...Paris, Vienna, Rome, Brussels, Berlin...” He warmed to the theme as he began ticking the great cities of Europe off on his fingers. He’d hardly got the chance to fight in Europe as a soldier, how would it be to travel there in peacetime simply for the pleasure of it? He decided he wanted to find out. “We could go on a Grand Tour together.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So I can travel, then, but only if we consummate the marriage.”

Part of him wanted to drive such a bargain, if only it would work. But she might call his bluff. Even if she did not, did he really want a wife who only tolerated his presence in bed? Especially
this
wife, with her unexpected loveliness and prickly, defiant soul? “If we separate,” he said patiently, “then I won’t have any say in your comings and goings. You could certainly live on the Continent, if you chose. But I hope it won’t come to that. I’d like to see Paris with you.”

She frowned at him in utter bewilderment. “Why,” she said at last, “are you being reasonable?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Would you prefer me to be unreasonable?”

“Yes—no—I don’t know!” She shook her head and glared at him. “If we separate,” she said, “you have no heir for all this.” She indicated Westerby Grange and its lands with a wave of one hand. “I expected more rage at the very possibility.”

He hid a smile. Without a conscious plan, he’d hit on the right strategy, and now he would stick with it. If he didn’t rage
back,
surely her fury—her perfectly justified fury—would spend itself more quickly. “Would it do my cause any good, given that I’ve no intention of throwing you onto that bed and asserting my rights against your will?”

Her jaw fell open, and she stared at the bed, then back at him. “No.”

“So I won’t do it.” He stood, shifting most of his weight to his good leg. “I want you. But unless you want me too, it’s no good.”

“You don’t want me. You want an heir.”

He smiled a little. “That’s what I would’ve said this morning. But now I’ve seen you. Good night, Elizabeth.”

Without waiting for a reply, he bowed to her and left her to seek his solitary bed.

* * *

By the time her husband left her, Elizabeth was exhausted from the strain of maintaining a civil façade, but she could not sleep. She opened the book he’d given her and read till her candle burned down, then climbed into bed and lay awake, staring into the darkness. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from Jack, but it wasn’t this. As for his parting words—when he claimed to want
her,
and not merely the legitimate heir she alone could give him—surely those were lies. She knew how very ordinary she was. A man of his experience could not possibly burn with desire for such as her. And yet, the way he had looked at her then, that avid hunger... No. She rolled onto her stomach and punched at the pillow. It couldn’t have been real. It must all be an act, the skill of a practiced seducer.

And how dare he suggest her troubles, her loneliness, were in any way self-inflicted wounds when he had been the instigator of them all with his careless, adulterous ways?

Yet, what if he was right, at least in part? Might she have actually endured less mockery, not more, if she had gone to London or Bath and made an effort to make a place for herself in Society? And could she truly, at last, have the sort of life she had always dreamed of until the last few years when she had decided, with bitterness, that dreams were for children and fools?

At last she fell asleep, and if she dreamed, she did not remember it. In the morning she put on the blue dress she’d meant to wear when she first confronted Jack and went down to breakfast at her usual early hour.

But Jack was there before her, looking bright-eyed, handsome and well rested, attacking with evident relish a plate laden with black pudding, bacon and hot rolls.

He stood when she stepped through the dining room’s doorway and inclined his head. “Good morning, my dear. You slept well, I hope?”

Somehow he managed to make those commonplace words sound suggestive. “Well enough,” she replied shortly. “You’re up early.” She filled her plate from the unusually abundant breakfast Mrs. Pollard had set out for her master’s homecoming, choosing her usual simple morning meal of toasted bread and hot chocolate.

He smiled. “This isn’t early. It’s after dawn.”

“Oh.” She supposed that compared to a soldier’s, her farmwife’s life at Westerby Grange was one of luxury. “I’m often up before dawn,” she said. She couldn’t claim her life had been as hard or dangerous as his had been, but she didn’t want him to think she had idled the years away. “Especially during foaling and lambing time.”

“Surely Purvis and the hands can manage all that.”

“They do most of the heavy labor,” she admitted. “But I didn’t like to leave it entirely in their hands. With you gone, the Grange was my responsibility, and I didn’t want you to—I didn’t want to fail.”

“I would never accuse you of failing,” he said earnestly. “I got your reports, after all. I knew the farm was thriving.”

“You read them?” She’d rather suspected he tossed them aside unopened.

“Of course I did. Did you read mine?”

“I did. They gave me something to say, at least for a few weeks, when people asked if I’d heard anything from you. And I did worry, after you were injured. I...I prayed for you.” Strange prayers those had been, and she hadn’t wanted to examine them too closely even as she directed them heavenward. She had prayed for his preservation at least in part because she didn’t want him to die before she got the chance to tell him what she thought of him.

“I wish I’d thought,” he said. “I know what gossip in a village can be. God knows I do, after what Mama went through, and what was said of Ned when he tried to court Clara Dryden. But I never imagined it directed against you.”

“You were angry with me,” she said shortly. “I—I’m not sure I could’ve written a different letter, on that day, but I wish...” She searched for the right words. “I wish I hadn’t known what I’d just found out, so I could’ve written what I would have even a single day earlier.”

“Well,” he said, “what’s past is past. I forgive you.” Then he spoiled the effect entirely by leaning forward, gazing at her across the table with round eyes that contrived to be both innocent and lascivious, and adding, “I hope you’ll forgive me, too.”

“It isn’t that easy!” she snapped. How like a man to think it could be!

He sighed and lowered his eyes. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”

They spoke but little during the rest of their breakfast. After Jack finished his last bite of bacon, he attempted another smile—still hopeful, but far more sincere. “It’s a fine morning,” he said. “Will you show me around the farm?”

“Of course,” she replied. It was his right, after all, to see how his lands fared—and she only meant to deny him
one
of his rights.

As they stood in the entrance, ready to venture out into the chill February morning, she donned her old scarlet cloak—she wasn’t going to wear her fine new pelisse into the stables—and Jack shrugged into a well-worn greatcoat.

As they crossed the lawn to the outbuildings, Elizabeth didn’t know what to feel. His old injury didn’t seem to slow him, but he still walked with a faint limp that put a hitch in the rhythm of his steps. “Does your leg pain you still?” she asked.

“A little, especially on cold days.”

Elizabeth glanced sidelong at her husband and noticed his jaw was clenched and his mouth set. “You’re in pain now, aren’t you? Perhaps we should go back inside.”

“No. If I rest too much it stiffens up. Besides—I’m too young to turn invalid, go on half pay for good and spend the rest of my life hobbling about the house with a cane. I’m no good in my profession if I can’t walk and ride.”

All her instincts told her she ought to nurse him, that he was pushing himself too hard on a day when he ought to rest after his long journey home. Yet surely he knew his own body’s limitations better than she did, and she didn’t quite trust her instincts where he was concerned—they were warmer than her rational mind could like. “Very well,” she said. “But you must let me know if you need to rest, or if there is anything that can be done to ease the pain.”

“Well...” His eyes crinkled with mischief.

“Well, what?”

“Never mind. I couldn’t ask it of you, not yet.”

I don’t want to know, she thought. But somehow what came out of her mouth was, “Oh? You must tell me what it is, at least.”

“If you insist. Have you never observed, that when one’s muscles ache, rubbing them eases the pain?” He ran a hand up his thigh to indicate just where his pains occurred.

She sniffed. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I wasn’t going to say it. You forced it out of me.”

“If your leg pains you, you can rub it yourself. It isn’t as though that’s a difficult place to reach.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t. But it’s more pleasant when someone else helps.”

They had reached the sheep cote. Elizabeth stood in the shed’s doorway, blocking Jack’s path. “If you truly want me ever to engage in any sort of intimate activity with you,” she said, “perhaps it would be wise of you to refrain from reminding me how often you’ve shared such activities with others in my absence.”

He colored. “Touché.” He looked at his feet, and Elizabeth thought he was honestly abashed. “Well. Show me these sheep of yours.”

“Properly speaking, they’re
your
sheep,” she pointed out.

“Our sheep, then.”

“They’re not in the cote at the moment,” Elizabeth said. “Jeremy Purvis has them out in the west field. We could ride out to see them, or he’ll be bringing them in by nightfall.”

“Isn’t it almost lambing time?”

“Not for another few weeks yet. In March and April it’s all we can do to keep up with the lambs and foals.”

His eyes brightened. “How many foals are you expecting this year?”

Elizabeth hid a smile. Jack was never going to be fascinated by sheep, and never mind that it was wool and mutton that had put a new roof on the Purvis cottage and added two new broodmares to the Grange stables. “Ten, if all goes well,” she said. “All the mares we bred caught. Shall we go to the stable now?”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind waiting to show me the sheep.”

“Not at all,” she assured him. “They’ll still be here in a few hours.”

As they entered the stable, Jack inhaled deeply and happily. “Horses smell better than sheep,” he said.

“Undeniably.”

He peered into the dim corridor lined with stalls. Several bay, chestnut and gray heads were visible. “Do you still have the horse you wrote me about the first year after we married?” he asked.

“Yes, but he’s merely a pony,” she replied, ducking her head in embarrassment. “I think I started too late to be much of a horsewoman.”

“I don’t require every horse to be a hunter or a charger,” he said mildly, and Elizabeth bit her lip. She’d been storing up her anger at Jack for so long that now she struggled to see even the most commonplace conversation as other than a matter for attack and defense.

She led the way to her gelding’s stall. At their approach, Coffee thrust his long bay head into the passage and regarded them with gentle, hopeful eyes. Elizabeth always came prepared for such pleas, so she offered the pony a lump of sugar. He ate it from her hand, delicately, then turned to Jack, ears pricked with anticipation.

Jack chuckled and stroked Coffee’s muzzle. “I’m sorry, you beggar. I have nothing for you.” He stepped back and peered into the shadowy stall. “Sturdy, and a good shoulder,” he commented. “A Dales pony, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s nimble on the hills, when I need to ride out with the sheep.”

“Surely Purvis and his sons—”

“They can’t be everywhere, and I felt I should understand every aspect of the task, having set my hand to it.”

He gave her a considering look. The thoughtful respect in his eyes unnerved her almost as much as his attempts at flirtation. “You’re strong,” he said. “I had no idea, when I married you.”

She shrugged, abashed. “We had so little time to grow to know each other, and you weren’t seeing me at my best.” Remembering the grief and confusion of those days, she turned away from this stranger who had been her husband for five years to pat Coffee again. The pony’s affection and the comfort he brought were so
simple.

“I still miss Giles,” he said softly, and she looked at him in surprise. “He was my first true friend, you know. Our mothers were friends, and he was the only boy near my age in Selyhaugh. And then when I started school, I was small for my age and didn’t know how to go on. It helped, more than I can say, to have someone like him to take my part. He had the gift of making friends.”

The last thing Elizabeth had expected from Jack was an acknowledgement of the shared grief that had bound them together, nor the admission that he had ever been a vulnerable, lonely boy in need of a friend. “Yes, he did.”

“I especially miss him, here.” Jack gestured around at the barn. “I taught him to ride on my old pony, since the Hamiltons didn’t keep a horse, and we used to play at reivers in the bastle barn. Even though this is my house, I always had to act the part of the reiver, since everyone knows the Armstrongs were notorious raiders in those days.”

Elizabeth hadn’t known any such thing, but she supposed if she’d grown up in the Border country she would have. “I don’t think you minded,” she guessed.

“No, not at all. The reiver had so many more chances to sneak and climb and shout than the defender did. I hated being still.”

He hated it to this day, as far as she could tell. “You would’ve run mad if you hadn’t regained the use of your leg, wouldn’t you? It’s not just about your profession.”