An Infamous Marriage (6 page)

“Someone said something to you about Mother, and I’ll wager it was Selina Dryden.”

His voice was hard, and Elizabeth instinctively drew back in her chair. “Yes, it was she. Whatever it is, I swear it doesn’t matter to me. Only, I thought I should hear it from you, and not from gossip.”

“Well.” He shook his head and raked his hand through his hair. “I agree, but it’s difficult to tell such a tale of one’s own mother. Even when it’s entirely true, and you had it from her own lips. She told me of it, you see, when I was fourteen or so, and all the gossip came back when my brother wanted to marry Clara Dryden—Lady Dryden’s eldest daughter—and her family made her refuse him.”

“Oh?” Elizabeth nodded sympathy and encouragement.

“My sister, the one who died years before I was born, came into the world only four months after my parents’ wedding. Which would’ve been occasion enough for gossip even were it not for the fact Mother and Father first met only a month before their wedding.”

“Oh,” she repeated in an entirely different tone.

“Mother never told anyone who Caroline’s father was. I have my suspicions, but I can’t prove anything.”

“I doubt I need to know.” It must have been someone either already married or far above or beneath her, because otherwise her family would’ve forced him to marry her.

“I suppose my grandparents ought to have sent her away until the child was born—not that it would’ve stemmed all the gossip—but instead they arranged a marriage with my father. He was a youngest son of a younger son, you see, with no fortune or prospect of one, who’d proven himself a failure at every profession my Armstrong grandparents had tried to establish him in. So the idea of marrying him off to a girl who was sole heir to a tidy property had a certain appeal despite her pregnancy.”

“Your poor parents!” Elizabeth cried.

Jack smiled and shook his head. “Actually, they soon learned to be happy together. Father, it turned out, did have one talent—breeding and raising horses—so the Grange was perfect for him. And I don’t know what Mother told him about Caroline’s father, but he never reproached her over it.”

“But that didn’t stop the gossip.”

“Hardly. Mother and Father kept very much to themselves, and made long visits to his family’s home in Scotland, where no one knows or cares anything for Selyhaugh gossip, and they were happy despite it. But there were stupid rumors that Ned wasn’t Father’s child either, because he and Caroline had the same coloring.”

“Your mother’s coloring?” Elizabeth guessed. Mrs. Armstrong had gray eyes, and if the miniature in the parlor was correct, her hair had been blond before it turned white.

“Exactly. Anyone who troubled to look could’ve told you he was our father’s son from the shape of his nose and his eyebrows. You’ll find this,” he said, tapping his rather beaky nose, “in almost every portrait in the gallery in Blainslie Keep.”

“People are dreadful, and I’m sorry your mother had to endure all that.”

“You don’t judge her, then, for having got with child before she married?”

“Judge her, for something that happened forty years ago or more? Why? We don’t truly even know what happened, and it was all so long ago.” No matter what Mrs. Armstrong had done before her marriage, she’d been faithful to and happy with Jack’s father. If she’d been in the wrong, she’d showed her repentance in her deeds for the rest of her life.

“Still. You’re very generous.”

His eyes, so dark and intent, made her feel warm and fidgety. She shrugged, trying to dismiss both his praise and the effect it had on her. “She’s family now.”

Jack reached across the table to seize her hand in his. “Yes, and so are you.”

Elizabeth couldn’t think of anything to say, and she had to fight to keep her breathing steady while time stood still. He showed no sign of noticing her agitation, and soon he gave her hand a brisk squeeze and released it.

* * *

Elizabeth hadn’t lied to Jack. Knowing what lay in her mother-in-law’s past made no difference to her. Each day she spent an hour with Mrs. Armstrong, talking to her, encouraging her to eat more and reading to her from poetry, prayers and psalms—anything that sounded lovely and soothing without requiring her to follow a narrative or remember a story’s plot from one day to the next. She would spend more time with her once Jack had gone, but she reckoned it could only help Mrs. Armstrong to become accustomed to her before her son left and took away his somewhat familiar face.

Elizabeth and Jack ate a final breakfast together just after daylight on the morning he was to depart for London and the ship that would carry him across the Atlantic.

“You’re good with Mama,” he said.

“Thank you. I like her.” She truly did. Though in her confusion Mrs. Armstrong could be short-tempered and difficult, Elizabeth could still glimpse the humor and good sense that had helped her overcome the difficulties in her past and build a happy life.

He took a meditative sip of coffee. “I wish you could’ve known her before. She could have told you everything there was to know about this place and our family for, oh, at least a hundred years.”

“I expect she’ll still tell me,” Elizabeth said. “Only, I’ll have to consult Metcalf privately, or perhaps write to you, to know which stories are from ten years ago versus fifty.”

“Do write often,” he said. “You’ll have long waits for replies, but I want to hear how she does and how you go on.”

“I shall,” she assured him.

When they had finished eating, Jack hurried upstairs for a last visit with his mother. Elizabeth didn’t attempt to follow. He would likely be away several more years, and he must know full well this might be the last time he saw his mother in life. Elizabeth wouldn’t dream of intruding on such a moment.

Instead, she said her farewells to her new husband in the stable yard, just before he mounted the bay gelding he meant to take to Canada with him. He took her right hand in both of his. He had big hands, and she could feel their warmth and strength through his thin riding gloves.

“I leave all this in your hands,” he said. “And I believe they’re capable ones.”

“I’ll do my best,” she promised. “And I’ll pray for you for a safe journey and a safe return.”

He glanced to his left. Elizabeth followed his gaze and saw that they had an intent audience of servants. He bent to kiss her. It started as a quick brush of the lips, but then his arm slid around her waist, pulling her against him. Elizabeth’s breath escaped in a gasp, and she slid her hands up to his shoulders, square and strong under his plain gray greatcoat. He kissed her again, harder this time, and ran a gloved hand over her chilled cheek.

Her heart beat faster, and she couldn’t take her eyes off his lips as he pulled away and swung into the saddle. He had a lovely mouth, and such nice, full lips. One might enjoy more kisses from them, and one might even spend the next few years remembering this farewell and dreaming of their reunion.

Chapter Five

In the first three months after Elizabeth’s hasty second marriage, she received only one letter from Jack, a hurriedly written epistle sent from London just before he sailed. It granted her the right to draw from his funds under the care of his regimental agent there and suggested a stallion for breeding to his dapple gray mare, Penelope, closing with a simple,
Yours most affectionately, John Armstrong.
She didn’t expect anything more from him for a few months, given the distance letters from Canada must travel, but she faithfully wrote him every month, assuring him his mother was as well as could be expected, and reporting everything Farmer Purvis told her about the management of his horses and the planting of the south fields.

She enjoyed her new life more than she’d expected. Her raw grief at Giles’s loss settled into a quieter regret as spring came to Westerby Grange. Care for her mother-in-law and learning the management of the household kept her occupied. There was security, too, in knowing she had at last, for the first time in the ten years since her father’s disgrace, come to a home where no one could cast her out.

She lived quietly, since despite her new marriage she considered herself still in mourning for Giles. But with the exception of Lady Dryden, all of Selyhaugh’s small society paid her calls and spoke to her civilly each Sunday at church. She wasn’t friendless and alone as she’d feared, and she had this home, warm and sturdy and safe.

Within a week of her arrival, she had a table and a comfortable chair brought up to her bedroom. As she learned the ways of the Grange, she had more idle hours, and she spent most of them curled up with a novel or a book of travels, occasionally gazing out the window with immense satisfaction at the placidly grazing horses in the west pasture.

One afternoon when she was so occupied, a carriage rolled into the stable yard and a white-haired gentleman she didn’t recognize climbed out, leaning heavily on a cane. He wore a red coat of somewhat antique cut and spoke with familiarity to Purvis’s older son, a stout lad of nineteen who’d come to see to the horses. She frowned. Who could it possibly be? With a sigh of regret, she set her book down—
The Hungarian Brothers
was such a thrilling tale—and went to the looking glass to prepare herself to receive a caller.

By the time she’d tucked up the loose strands of her hair, which was forever falling out of its pins, the housemaid Jane was knocking on her door. “Sir Richard Armstrong is here, ma’am.”

Ah, yes. Jack had written his paternal relations in Scotland to inform them of his marriage, and Sir Richard was the military uncle, the one who’d commanded brigades during the American war, just before Elizabeth had been born. What must they think of her, this unknown, unconnected English wife? “Tell him I’ll be down directly, and have tea made ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After the maid left, Elizabeth counted to twenty to settle her nerves and made her way to the parlor. Sir Richard stood as she entered, and Elizabeth studied him. Surely this was a foretaste of how her husband would look in thirty or forty years, the thick, curly hair and strongly marked eyebrows gone entirely white, making the fierce, dark eyes stand out all the more, the nose grown even more emphatic with time and gravity.

“Good morning, Sir Richard,” she said, trying not to quail under his unabashed gaze. “I am Elizabeth Armstrong.” Three months into her marriage, the name still felt strange on her lips. “My husband often spoke of you, before he sailed.”

“Hmph. Then you have the advantage of me, madam, for all he said of
you
was, hm, how did he put it?
I have lately married Elizabeth Hamilton, the widow of my old friend Giles. She is to remain at Westerby Grange with Mother while I am in Canada, and I believe we shall be well-suited.
”

Elizabeth smiled. Jack had been generous in avoiding her scandalous maiden name and in suggesting they might suit. “I suppose there wasn’t time to say more before he sailed. Won’t you sit down, sir?”

She took a chair opposite him, and with another “hmph” he seated himself. “There wasn’t time? Are you saying this was a sudden courtship? And who was your first husband? I don’t remember any Hamiltons.”

Elizabeth considered which impertinent question to answer first. “I believe there were formerly a great many Hamiltons in Selyhaugh, but my husband—my first husband—was the last. He was a clergyman.”

“Was he, now? Where was his living?”

“He was curate here at Saint Michael’s.”

“A curate? Hmph.” His dark eyes narrowed. “When did he die?”

“At the beginning of February, sir,” Elizabeth said simply.

“Madam, you shock me! Jack’s letter informing me of his marriage was dated the fifteenth of that month.”

Elizabeth blinked hard. She would not give this horrid man the satisfaction of seeing her weep. “We could not delay any longer, or he would have missed his sailing.”

“That does not answer the question of why you married again with such indecent haste.”

“It was my late husband’s dying wish,” she said icily.

At that his eyebrows flew up. Elizabeth had seen that look of mild surprise or enlightenment on Jack’s face on several occasions. “Ah, now it all becomes clear. Jack has always been persuadable when it comes to his friends. So you gained a settled home, which I daresay you needed, for it isn’t as though a curate would’ve married a woman with a fortune or had one of his own to leave her. And Jack gained both a caretaker for his mother and a comfortable sense of his own heroism and generosity to his friend.”

It was so accurate Elizabeth wanted to smash something. Possibly the jasperware vase on the mantel, and probably over Sir Richard’s head. “I do not claim it was the most regular of marriages, but, nevertheless, here I am.”

“Yes, here you are, and as unsuitable a bride for a man like Jack as could be.”

Elizabeth stood, brushing her hands on her skirts. “I will not stay to be insulted.”

“I am not here to insult you.”

“Oh? But you are doing so very effectively.”

“Peace, ma’am, and sit down. I only came to see what sort of bride my lad had chosen for himself—and now that I’ve seen, I’d be glad to advise you on how you ought to go on.”

Elizabeth stayed on her feet. “Why should I take your advice, pray tell?”

“Simple. I am presently the head of your husband’s family. I am an army man, so I know more of his manner of life than you could. Also, I’ve known him since he was a babe in arms. You met him, what? Four months ago?”

After a long hesitation, Elizabeth sat down. Sir Richard might be a dreadful man, but he was right. Also, it wouldn’t do to alienate her husband’s family at the very beginning of this marriage of convenience, especially not if she ever hoped for it to become something more.

“Thank you,” Sir Richard said. “Now, tell me, who are your people? Not an army family, I suppose.”

“No, sir,” she said, debating on how much to tell him. “My father was a banker, but both my parents and all my near relations are dead now. I’m aware I bring no fortune or connections to this marriage.”

“Hmph. What do you bring, then, if I may ask?”

She lifted her chin and met his eyes, so like Jack’s when he was in a flinty, military humor. “Loyalty,” she said. “Honesty. And I will not fail to do my duty.”

At that her inquisitor actually smiled. “Why, you may have the makings of a soldier’s wife after all.”

Over tea, he questioned her about Mrs. Armstrong’s health and the state of the farm and the stables. Elizabeth answered as best she could, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy Sir Richard.

“You mustn’t leave the management of the place entirely in Purvis’s hands, my dear,” he said.

She supposed she must have risen in his estimation, to have gone from
madam
to
my dear
in the course of the morning. “But he knows so much more about it than I do,” she protested. “Jack tells me he’s the third generation of Purvises to work this land.”

“Of course he does, but you are the mistress of the Grange, not he. It is your son or daughter who will be master or mistress here hereafter, not his. You mustn’t think of yourself as a tenant.”

Elizabeth blinked. She didn’t think of herself of a tenant, when it came to the house. It was the land that didn’t feel real to her. She had grown up in a town and never imagined herself as mistress not only of a home, but of its lands. “I’ve been thinking of bringing back sheep,” she heard herself saying. “Purvis says they had a great flock in Jack’s grandfather’s time.”

“Not at the expense of the horses, I hope,” Sir Richard said anxiously. “Westerby Grange breeds the finest hunters in the north of England.”

Clearly the Armstrong horse madness hadn’t been limited to Jack’s father. “No, not at all. I only thought to make use of the hill fields, since we’ve neither crops nor pasturage there now.”

“Ah, now that’s well thought of, and exactly as an officer’s wife ought to do when her husband is an ocean away.”

Elizabeth decided perhaps she liked Sir Richard after all. At her invitation, he spent the night and part of the next morning. He couldn’t tarry longer, he said, because he was on the way to Bath for a long visit with an old friend from his days of active service. Over dinner, they discussed the possibility of another American war, which Sir Richard thought more likely than not, and the prospects for advancement it might offer Jack. Elizabeth forbore from pointing out the prospects for death it might offer, for she sensed that her husband’s uncle would consider such fretting unbecoming in an officer’s wife.

Instead she turned the subject to the Armstrong family and was treated to a long list of relations, including Jack’s second cousin, the baron, who lived in the family castle near Melrose. Sir Richard promised to see that she was invited there soon. The next morning as his carriage rolled away, she stood in the doorway waving and reflecting how lovely it was to have not only a husband, but a family, big and prosperous.

Over the next few months, Elizabeth took Sir Richard’s words to heart. She saved her books for late on her solitary evenings, and she added daily sessions with Purvis to the hours she spent caring for her mother-in-law. Under the farmer’s tutelage, she learned of the cultivation of barley and potatoes, and of the care of the small but thriving herd of well-bred hunters in the stables. She even learned to ride, though not on a tall, hot-blooded hunter, but on a gentle, sturdy bay Dales pony she purchased for her particular use. When she wrote to Jack of her riding lessons on Coffee, she said she hoped she hadn’t been too extravagant. After many months, his reply came, saying,
Certainly you must have a suitable mount. Buy yourself anything else you want or need—and I need not even say “within reason,” for I trust you too well to believe you could act otherwise.

As summer turned to autumn, she even began to overcome her wariness of company, her expectation that everyone was judging her in the light of her father’s crimes and finding her wanting. She began with the friendliest of her occasional callers—the Ildertons, Miss Rafferty and Mr. Elting, the apothecary—inviting them to dine at the Grange and visiting them in her turn. Gradually her circle expanded to include almost all the better sort of families in Selyhaugh and the surrounding countryside, and she even flattered herself she’d been helpful in making a match between the Ildertons’ eldest daughter and the new curate who had replaced Giles.

She never expected to become friends with Lady Dryden, though they spoke to each other with every appearance of civility when they met at church or when calling at others’ homes. Elizabeth asked how the older woman’s children were—all but the youngest daughter were married, and all but the eldest son had left Selyhaugh to do so—and Lady Dryden asked her how recently she had heard from Jack.

Jack faithfully wrote once a month—he’d even written twice while at sea, though those letters arrived the same day as the first from Canada—and she did likewise. Their conversations were necessarily disjointed by the long distance and the fact their letters regularly crossed paths somewhere in the Atlantic. She looked forward to each new letter and found herself growing fonder and fonder of her long-absent husband, though she felt her letters must be a sad bore to him, telling as they did of the same place and the same people while he roved across Upper and Lower Canada, dancing at balls in Quebec City and meeting Indian chiefs around council fires at the western edge of the settlement.

Elizabeth never regained the blissful, expectant happiness of her bridal week with Giles, but as her second marriage passed its first anniversary, she was content with her lot. She had a home, one where sheep now grazed the upland fields while horses frolicked in the pastures below. The aching fear that had haunted her since her father’s disgrace, of being abandoned and homeless, had at last begun to fade. She had friends to enliven her quiet country life. And she had a husband she prayed every day would return safely so they could make another generation to live at the Grange.