Heartless (11 page)

Oh, yes, he was surprised he had never thought of it before. It would be perfect. It would make an already happy future utterly perfect. He would have to wait for it, of course, and for her. But he was used to waiting. It seemed to him that his life had been made up of waiting.

He could wait a little longer for perfection.

Dear Anna. He set his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. He wondered if she realized that he loved her, that she had become the consuming love of his life, that the focus of all his remaining days had become Anna and her happiness and prosperity. He guessed that she did not realize it. He had had to be cruel to her. He knew he had been cruel. But no longer.

By allowing her to marry her duke, he was ensuring that her ultimate happiness would be even greater than he had originally planned. Even after his own death she would be happy—she would not be lonely.

But the wait was going to be hard on him. Ah, Anna. It was going to be torture.

C
URIOUSLY
,
standing at the front of the cold, almost empty church with his bride, speaking and listening to the words that were binding them together for life, Luke did not feel sorry.

She had smiled her usual dazzling smile a few minutes ago when her brother had brought her to him before the altar, and she was still bright-eyed and flushed even though the smile had gone. She looked lovely enough to catch at his breath with her white satin open gown with the wide gold embroidered robings and cream-colored petticoat, and stomacher so heavily embroidered with gold thread that it seemed to be made of pure gold. Even her lace cap with its long lappets at the back and the three lace frills of her shift that fell from her elbows beneath the cuffs of her sleeves glittered with gold thread.

And yet it was not just her beauty or her vitality that made him almost glad he was marrying her. He had had many beautiful women and had felt no inclination to make permanent his connection with any one of them. But Lady Anna Marlowe, he had learned, was not as frivolous or as superficial in character as he had thought. She was capable of loyalty and love and self-sacrifice.

Her brother had told him everything. For years she had nursed their consumptive mother and run the home and cared for her younger brother and sisters. And after their mother's death she had continued her care of them all despite the fact that their father had collapsed with grief and had faced ruin after a series of reversals in his fortune. Anna had not thought of herself at all, Royce had explained, turning down one perfectly eligible offer of marriage at the age of one-and-twenty rather than abandon her family to their fate. By the time their father died a little over a year ago, she had been four-and-twenty.

Luke guessed, though Royce had not once stated it, that the father had been a drinker and a gambler and that the physical, mental, and financial collapse had had its roots in years of weakness and self-indulgence. Near financial ruin rarely came overnight.

But through it all, through what must have been difficult and oppressive years, Lady Anna had held the family together, allowing the younger children, the present Royce included, to grow up with a feeling of some security. In the process she had almost lost her own chances for personal fulfillment. She had rejected a chance to marry and leave all her burdens behind her.

Yes, he thought, looking at her now as the rector spoke, he might have done a great deal worse. She would doubtless do an admirable job as his duchess. And she was beautiful and desirable too. Perhaps—in the quietness of the church and the strangeness of the moment he dared to think it—perhaps sometimes life offered second chances even when for ten years one had done little, if anything, to deserve them.

Perhaps after all there would be a return of some feeling to his life. Affection, loyalty, devotion, trust—most of all trust. He realized in some surprise, but without real alarm, as he slid his ring onto Anna's finger that he had fallen a little in love with her.

And then words the rector had spoken registered on his mind. They were man and wife. She was his wife, his duchess.

He took both her hands in his, bowed over them almost reverently, and raised them one at a time to his lips. He looked into her eyes as he did so—wide, green eyes in which something flickered for a moment before she smiled. Fright? Yes, undoubtedly fright. She was five-and-twenty years old. He would soothe her fears tonight. It would be his pleasure to do so. His great pleasure.

His mother laid her cheek against his for a moment. Doris hugged him tightly and kissed his lips. Ashley shook his hand and grinned at him; perhaps he knew that all his debts had been paid, including the rather extravagant ones dealing with ladies' clothes and jewels and the renting of a house and servants that could be kept for only one obvious purpose. Theo pumped his hand and slapped him heartily on the back. Lady Sterne, claiming a mother's privilege, she said, kissed both his cheeks. Royce shook his hand warmly. Lady Agnes Marlowe looked at his chin with wide eyes and curtsied and looked distinctly frightened when he took her hand and kissed her fingers.

His wife in her turn was being hugged and kissed. She was even more flushed than before and she was laughing. She looked wonderfully happy. She deserved happiness, he thought. And he wondered if he was capable of giving it to her, if being his duchess and the mistress of his home and the mother of his children would be enough. He was not sure he had love to offer even though he had been reckless enough to fall in love with her. But she seemed to have a naturally sunny nature.

He found himself counting back the days to the night he had first seen her at Lady Diddering's ball. He could not remember the day of the week on which the ball had been held. Today was Monday. Incredibly, he thought, having performed the calculations twice in his mind, the ball must have been held on a Tuesday. Last Tuesday. A week ago today he had not even set eyes on Lady Anna Marlowe, now the Duchess of Harndon.

The fact was somewhat dizzying. What did they know about each other? Practically nothing. And yet they were man and wife.

And then he was leading her outside into daylight and sunshine, her arm resting formally along his. His carriage was waiting for them there.

There was the usual small crowd of the curious gathered in the square outside the church. Somehow word had spread that there was a society wedding being solemnized inside. Almost all the spectators were members of the lowest classes and many of them were loudly vocal in their admiration of the bride's appearance and the groom's, though some wag—male—informed Luke and an appreciative audience in a falsetto voice that he was as gorgeous as a girl. Someone else—female—made loud and ribald predictions about the coming night and someone else again—also female—added that the bride would regret tonight's fun come nine months from tonight.

Luke took little notice, and from her expression as he handed her into his carriage it seemed that neither did his wife. And yet he half noticed the one spectator who was not of the lower orders. Spectator he appeared to be, though he was partly hidden behind the trunk of an ancient oak tree in the center of the square. He wore a long dark cloak, and his tricorne hat was pulled low over his brow—a tall, rather thin, rather handsome man of middle years.

Luke only half noticed him and yet he frowned slightly as he climbed into the carriage to take his seat beside his wife. Something fleeting nudged at his memory and was gone. He did not reach for it to bring it back and recognize it. It was not important enough. The matter was forgotten even before the carriage lurched into motion on its well-oiled springs.

No one else in the wedding party who might have recognized Sir Lovatt Blaydon even glanced in the direction of the old oak.

•   •   •

Anna
had not known that the Duke of Harndon did not live at Harndon House. Even when he had escorted her there to take tea with the dowager duchess, she had not realized that he did not live there with her and with his sister and brother. She had not realized it even today when they went there for the wedding breakfast—until late in the afternoon when he had risen and suggested that he take her home.

For one foolish moment she had thought that he intended to take her back to her godmother's house. And for the same even more foolish moment her heart had leapt with gladness.

It seemed strange to her that he did not live in his own house in London but had gone to the great expense of renting another. And it was no small establishment, she saw when they arrived there. She wondered about his relationship with the rest of his family. And she realized suddenly that she knew almost nothing about him. She knew appallingly little about him, in fact. He had talked to her during their meetings, charming her and amusing her, but he had told her almost nothing at all about himself.

She had dreaded the embarrassment of being in a house with his family on her wedding day and her wedding night. And yet now, released from that embarrassment, she longed for other company. She was alone with him, with the man who was her husband, and she was so filled with dread that she scarcely knew how to draw breath.

They dined late and alone together, though she noted that he had dressed as if for another ball, changing from the royal blue and silver he had worn at their wedding to brown velvet and gold embroidery and lace. And he conversed with her with as much easy charm as usual, dispelling the atmosphere of awkwardness she had been expecting. She was, she realized with some surprise, making her own contributions, smiling at him and laughing with him and talking to him just as if she were any bride on any wedding day.

Except that most brides would be tense and nervous at such a time, she thought. But if she stopped smiling and laughing she would—oh, she would crumble altogether.

He took her to the drawing room when the meal was at an end and they talked more over their tea. He did not drink, he had told her when she had asked if he wished to be left alone in the dining room to take port. The toasts he had drunk at their wedding breakfast earlier had merely been a concession to the festive occasion. It was another unexpected fact she had learned about him. She did not know any other men who did not drink alcohol.

But he got to his feet far too soon and far too early, it seemed to her, though a glance at the clock on the mantel showed her that it was after ten. He held out a hand for hers.

“Come, madam,” he said, those keen eyes of his looking steadily at her from behind the lazy lids. “I shall escort you to your dressing room. We have a wedding night to celebrate before we sleep.”

He might as well have curled his outstretched hand into a fist and slammed it into her stomach, she thought. It could not more effectively have robbed her of breath than did his words. As she set her hand in his and rose to her feet and smiled at him, she found herself thinking foolishly and frantically of headaches and tiredness after a busy day and wrong times of the month.

“Yes, your grace,” she said. “We have.”

He left her outside the door of her dressing room after opening it for her. He would do himself the honor of visiting her in her bedchamber in half an hour's time, he said.

She smiled her assent.

•   •   •

By
the time he came to her a little more than half an hour later, she was almost screaming with hysteria because he was late, because the terrible denouement was delayed. Condemned criminals, she thought, must not savor their last moments on earth. They must eye the approaching gallows with longing, willing the slow process of the law to speed up to an indecent haste. But the unfortunate intrusion of the thought of hangings only succeeded in making her almost blind with terror. Breathing had become a conscious and a painful process.

He was wearing a pale blue satin dressing gown. She could see that without his heeled shoes he was indeed only three or four inches taller than she. Without the heaviness of his waistcoat and full-skirted coat, he looked very slender. And yet the breadth of his shoulders and chest suggested strength. His face had been washed clean of cosmetics and his hair brushed free of powder. She saw in some surprise that it was dark brown. It was tied loosely at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, but not bagged. It fell thick and wavy from the ribbon tie almost to his waist.

Anna noticed all the details of his appearance and his attractiveness without emotional response. She noted the details almost clinically, desperately trying to focus the teeming, uncontrolled workings of her mind. She wondered if she should have had her maid tie back her own hair instead of leaving it to hang loose down her back. She was not even wearing a cap.

She reached for a smile. But drawing up the corners of her mouth proved to be a physical impossibility. Her mask had eluded her. She stared mutely at him.

He had stepped up close to her and taken both her hands in his. “'Tis as I thought,” he said softly. “Two blocks of ice. And a look of blank terror. Anna? What has happened to all your smiles? Am I so fearsome? Is the marriage act with me so much to be dreaded?”

It was the first time he had used her name without any title to go along with it. She concentrated her mind on the curiously comforting sound of her name on his lips, while an uncontrolled part of her brain presented her with images of herself forced down onto a bed and her arms spread wide above her head and her wrists tied firmly to opposite bedposts.

“Silence?” he said, releasing her hands in order to raise his own to cup her face. His thumbs lightly caressed her cheeks. “Anna, I am no monster. There will be pain, I have heard, the first time—a little pain for a few moments only. I will be gentle, my dear, and try to make it nothing at all. Come, let us lie down, shall we?”

There would be no pain. Oh, dear God, there would be no pain. And it was not a little pain for a few moments only. It was sharp and searing pain and it blistered the soul for a lifetime.