Any Other Name (7 page)

“I asked your family’s cook what your favourite foods are,” he said, moving a chair out for her. She pulled out her own and sat down. He sighed and sat in the one he’d chosen for her.

“That’s very thoughtful,” she said. “But miniature custard tarts?”

“Oh, that’s one of mine.” He smiled.

“Do you think that if you’re sweet enough to me, I’ll be easier to manage?”

He offered her the pâté, and when she refused he spread some on a slice of toast. “I’m hoping that if you see that I’m actually not a horrifically awful chap, you might let me get to know you. And that, horror of horrors, you may also want to make a go of this.”

“You don’t want to get to know me. You want me to be pliable and bear your children.”

“You won’t give up either, will you?” He laid the knife down, took a bite. Perfection. “I think you’re afraid you might like me.”

“Oh please, stop, I might be sick.”

“No, hear me out. If you actually started to like your husband, what would you have to push against? If you liked me you might actually start to like this life and you might have to accept all the parts you don’t like about it, instead of rejecting it all in one convenient bundle.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She stabbed a fork into a slice of ham and let it slap onto her plate.

She was pouting like his younger sister Sophia as she shovelled a spoonful of potato salad onto the ham, trying to ignore him. “Oh, Catherine, I know this isn’t really you. Lucy told me.”

“Told you what?” There was genuine fear in her eyes. Interesting.

“That you’re a funny, bright and quite remarkable woman. That I should be patient with you.”

“She said that?”

He nodded. “She took me to one side whilst I was waiting for you to finish with Mother.” He regretted reminding her of that.

“About the Charm, William, can you lift it?”

“Why?”

“You said yourself it’s harsh. I think it’s barbaric.”

“It can’t be lifted. I’m sorry. And before you ask, I did check. I knew you would hate it. Only Lord Iris can undo the Charm in the wedding ring and, believe me, you do not want to make that case to him.”

“Bastards, the lot of them,” she muttered.

He chose to ignore that. He watched her push the food around her plate, locked inside her own furious thoughts. She took herself too seriously to be prodded into shifting her outlook. He munched on the toast as he considered his next move.

“I had an unpleasant surprise this morning, before the wedding,” he said. “Father called me into his study and informed me that we’re to move to Londinium and I’m to take the Dukedom.”

“What?”

“That’s what I said.” He smiled. “The house is being prepared for us now. It will be ready by the end of the honeymoon. Do you mind missing the rest of the season in Aquae Sulis?”

She looked delighted. “Not at all!”

“It doesn’t mean we won’t have events to attend here, in fact, I anticipate we’ll be very busy indeed. With all the upheaval of losing the Rosas, I imagine the Londinium notables in Aquae Sulis will abandon the season to consolidate their interests here.”

“Hang on a minute,” she said with a frown. “The Dukedom? They want you to be in charge of the Court?”

He nodded. “I’m under a huge amount of pressure, Catherine. After what happened with the Master of Ceremonies, they’re expecting great things from me.”

“Regret taking all the credit now?”

He smirked. “Not at all. You didn’t seem to appreciate it.”

“I didn’t think you needed anything else to inflate your ego.”

“I didn’t neglect to mention your involvement with the Arbiter and the Sorcerer because I wanted all of the acclaim. I did it to save you the trouble of difficult questions and–”

“There you go again, saving me when I don’t need it.”

“Not just you, the Censor also. She was the one who sent you to help the Sorcerer, after all. I’m sure she wouldn’t have appreciated that being revealed to your family, or the rest of Aquae Sulis for that matter. It isn’t all about you, Catherine.”

She tapped the potato salad with the back of her spoon and was quiet for a few moments. “Hang on. If you become Duke, then I would be Duchess. You don’t have to go for the throne, do you?”

“Catherine, I’m not doing this because I feel like it. Lord Iris wants our family to take Londinium.”

“Aren’t you sick of everyone telling you what to do?”

He took another bite of toast and mulled the question over. “It seems to me that the higher up the ladder you climb, the fewer people can do that. Ultimately, we’ll never stop being… guided by our patrons, but look at the benefits we have in return. If I become Duke, we’ll have more freedom than ever. Wealth independent of the family for one thing, that’s significant. And control over property in a way that’s impossible in Aquae Sulis. They do things very differently here.”

“But do you actually
want
to be Duke?”

The question made him pause. He hadn’t even thought of it that way; all he’d considered was the difficulty of the task. “That’s irrelevant,” he said and her eyes widened.

“Holy crap, they’ve totally brainwashed you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You haven’t even thought about it that way, have you? They say jump and you say, ‘How high?’” She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard that song.” She dumped the spoon and leaned forwards. “What I don’t understand is how you could travel all around the world, meet people – mundane people – and see the most amazing things, then just come back and forget about it all!”

“I’ll never forget my Grand Tour, it was the best time I’ve ever had.” He didn’t want to admit how much he missed the Sicilian coast. He didn’t want to think about that woman, her laugh, and kissing away the tiny white circles of salt dried on her legs as the sun set.

“But didn’t it make you realise how much you’re missing now?”

He pulled his mind back to her and realised how strange a question it was. “That’s an odd way to see a Grand Tour. It isn’t a chance to see all the things denied us. It’s a chance to broaden our minds.”

“Oh, yes, but for men only, because women don’t have minds to broaden.”

“Ladies choose not to lose the first bloom of youth.”

“We don’t choose anything. Trust me.”

He sat back, aware that he was underprepared for her attitude. During their brief engagement she’d made it very clear she was unhappy about the match, but he hadn’t discovered the root of her dissatisfaction. She’d apologised for her bad manners, and then repeatedly destroyed every attempt to have a civil conversation. The only time they’d actually agreed on anything was when he had to distract the staff at the Rosas’ failed housewarming party so the Arbiter could enter the house unseen.

Memories of Horatio Gallica-Rosa’s accusations returned with renewed clarity. He’d said she’d been living in Mundanus instead of being polished up at a finishing school abroad. The evidence supporting Horatio’s claims certainly outweighed any of lessons in deportment.

“Didn’t your mother prepare you for this life in any way at all?” he finally asked.

“All she did was demonstrate how–” She cut herself off and sucked in a deep breath. “They did all they could, in their own way. It just didn’t… I just… I’m just…” She closed her eyes, looking very pale all of a sudden. “You’ll want me to impress people if you try for the Dukedom. I can’t do that. I’m no good at that kind of thing.”

He reached across to cover her hand with his. “I’ll do everything I can to help. We’ll bring in tutors, we’ll practice our dancing, I’ll coach you on how to deal with these soirées.”

She looked at him. “It won’t do any good. Look, we need to figure out a way to make your family accept that this is a poor match and… I don’t know, nullify the marriage or something.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, I’m serious, it’s the best solution for both of us. You can marry someone more suited to you and I can go and do what I want to do.”

“And what exactly is that?”

She stared at him and he could see she was weighing whether to tell him or not. “It’s not playing political games and pretending to be someone I’m not.”

Evidently she needed to trust him more than she did. He pulled his hand away. “You need to stop thinking like that. You don’t believe I can help you because you’ve never been helped.”

“I don’t want to be.”

He gritted his teeth. How was he supposed to take the Londinium throne with a petulant child of a wife? The way Lucy had talked about her made him think she’d actually been referring to another Catherine. He had to make the marriage work. If it failed it would cause a rift between their families in Aquae Sulis and make his chances of taking the throne even more remote. The residents of Londinium would never respect a man who couldn’t keep his wife.

“We just need to find a way to make life in the Nether more bearable for you,” he said, trying to sound as light as he could. “It doesn’t have to be as bad as it was with your family. In fact, I’ll make a promise to you now that it won’t be.”

She just stared at the food.

“And I’d like you to promise me that if there’s something about our life in the Nether that you find unbearable, you must tell me. Then we can improve it instead of letting it fester.”

“What if it’s everything about life in the Nether?”

“Well… then we’ll address each concern one at a time until you’re happy. We have time, after all. Which reminds me…”

He plucked out the pocket watch. Two minutes to go. He stood up and gently pulled her to her feet. “I arranged a surprise for you.”

He guided her to the balcony. There was a blast of cold air as he opened the French doors. The Thames was a black ribbon glimpsed between buildings, the night-time city ablaze with electric lights and the thrum of urban life. He took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, then closed the doors behind them so it would be warm inside afterwards.

“It’s an amazing view,” she said.

“That’s not what I arranged,” he said, as the first rocket shot up into the sky and exploded into a ball of blue light.

“Fireworks!” Enraptured, Catherine was quite transformed and he realised how tense and defensive she usually was. Her thrilled exuberance actually made her quite attractive. Then he was caught up in the display, having only seen a handful on his Grand Tour.

“That was so brilliant!” she cheered at the end of the grand finale.

“Wasn’t it?” He turned her face towards him and kissed her.

She moved away so fast she banged the back of her head on the glass of the French doors. “What did you do that for?”

“I can kiss my own wife, can’t I?”

“Don’t do that again.” She scrabbled for the door handle and then dived back inside the flat.

Will’s euphoric mood collapsed. Catherine pulled at the clips holding the veil in place as she stamped away from the doors, his jacket falling from her shoulders.

When he stepped back inside, the air felt oppressively warm. “Catherine,” he called as she headed for the door. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you like the fireworks?”

She was scrunching the veil in her hands nervously. “They were wonderful. Why did you have to spoil it?”

“How can kissing you be called spoiling it? I wanted to because you looked beautiful and the moment was perfect. Do I have to explain?”

“Did you think I’d be so dazzled by the fireworks that I’d just melt in your arms?”

“I didn’t–”

“Because I’m not going to do that. I may as well tell you now I’m not going to let you sleep with me.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I know you’re expecting it, but I think that would be wrong.”

“How can it be wrong for a marriage to be consummated on the conjugal night?”

She threw the veil over the back of a nearby chair. “Look, I know this might be hard for you to grasp, but having sex with someone I barely know – and didn’t want to marry – is not something I want to experience.”

“But it’s–”

“In fact, I think it’s shocking that they put a Fidelity Charm on me to stop me running off and shagging the first man I meet, yet expect me to leap into bed with a man I barely know just because we said some words in front of a tree.”

“You swore an oath to have my children. That will be very difficult if we don’t share a bed.”

“I swore that under duress. It doesn’t count. And if you try to force me–”

He held up a hand. “I don’t think you realise how lucky you are. Most men wouldn’t listen to your feelings on the matter, and certainly wouldn’t entertain a conversation with you on the subject.”

“I’m not going to thank you for not raping me yet.”

His fingernails dug into his palms as he struggled to contain his anger. “It wouldn’t be rape. This is one of the most fundamental duties you have as my wife.”

“What I choose to do with my body is up to me. I don’t want to have sex with you, therefore if you try to force me it’s rape, regardless of whether you’re my husband. It’s against the law for you to–”

“What law?” he demanded.

“In Mundanus it’s–”

“Their laws don’t apply to us!”

“I’m not just going to lie back and think of Albion!” she yelled, moving to put the table between them.

“How dare you force me into being monstrous just to take what is my right to have!” Will gripped the back of the chair in front of him, seething. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, not how he planned it at all. He must have been the first man in Society to be faced with such an unbearably difficult wife. “It’s my duty as much as yours,” he said, trying to sound calm again. “The first child is a critical milestone. They’ll want to see you pregnant as soon as possible. If you refuse, you place me in an impossible position.”

“Sorry.” She folded her arms. “You’ll just have to deal with it.”