In the Wake of the Wind (13 page)

Aiden sighed.
“Serafina,
do let us try to be friendly tonight, shall we? Come into the drawing room. Perhaps a glass of sherry would help.”

Serafina
shook her head. “I think there’s already been enough sherry consumed in this house this afternoon to sink a battleship. It certainly did so to your father and my aunt, who both went to their beds in a state of inebriation.”

“Yes, I’d heard,” Aiden said, showing her to a chair. “I’m not surprised in the least about my father, but your aunt didn’t strike me as being a boozer.”

“My aunt is not a boozer,”
Serafina
said indignantly. “She is simply enthusiastic by nature, which does her no good on the rare occasions that she does drink, for she tends to overdo it. I am sorry to say that she passed out when I delivered her to her room.”

“Since I already know that my father did the same, and since my sister removed herself to her apartment with a headache, that leaves us in a singularly advantageous position.”

“I’m not sure that ‘advantageous’ is a word you should be using around me, my lord,”
Serafina
said, her eyes flashing dangerously.

Aiden inclined his head. “Very well. Let me amend that to ‘fortunate.’ We have the evening to ourselves, and for that I can only be grateful.”

And oh, how he meant it. To have
Serafina
to himself without the interference of various family members was a stroke of good luck. “We can use the time to good account—to get to know each other better,” he added for clarification. Serafina
looked as distrustful as a hapless worm about to be descended on by a hungry robin.

“Very well,” she said primly. “If you wish to hold conversation, I cannot object.”

“Really,
Serafina,”
he said, struggling not to laugh, “how else are we to learn about each other? Especially when you leave no avenue open to me other than conversation?”

“I suggest that if you wish to hold conversation at all that you refrain from certain unpleasant subjects.”

Aiden couldn’t help himself. He burst into laughter. “Oh, very well,” he said. “We shall stick strictly to the weather, your health, and my detestable traits.”

“If we stick to your detestable traits, we might very well be here all night,”
Serafina
replied tartly. “Perhaps the weather might be the safest subject, since my health has always been unexceptional.”

“I hear that storm clouds are gathering over Rutland,” he said, his grin widening.

“Really? Rain is always good for the flowers,” she replied neutrally.

“Is it? It helps them bloom, I assume?” he said, equally neutrally, but wanting to laugh.

“Flowers generally bloom when the weather is fine, my lord, as much as they need rain to nurture them. But I doubt very much that you know much about the cultivation of flowers, given the state of your gardens.”

“Yes, the gardens,” he said, longing to span the distance between them, take her into his arms and put an end to this silly conversation. “I’m afraid they’ve been hardest hit by our reduced circumstances. The gardeners were the first to go. I hope the gardens aren’t too badly suffocated by weeds.”

“Weeds I can manage. Gardens I can also manage. What I find a little more difficult to manage is you.”

Aiden cocked his head to one side. “Ah, and now you wish to manage me. Well, I can’t say I blame you, although I doubt you’ll have much luck. I’ve never been a very manageable sort.”

“So I gathered from your father,” she said, giving him a hard look. “But Aiden, speaking of that … don’t you think you might try to be a little kinder to him? He is an old man, after all, and not—not in the best of condition.”

Aiden regarded her curiously. “What makes you think I’m unkind to him? I can’t think of a single objectionable thing I said to him all day.”

“Because he told me so. He said that you don’t respect him, that you are not careful of his feelings.”

Aiden drew one finger down his cheek and rested it on his chin. So, he thought with annoyance. His father was already at work, once again sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and making a hash of things as usual, this time with
Serafina.

“Did he happen to tell you why he thinks I ought to treat him with respect?” he asked, trying not to let his anger show.

“What a terrible thing to say,” she replied, looking shocked. “He’s your father, and you’re very lucky to have one at all. He can’t help what he is, you know, and I think you should have some sympathy for him.”

“I suppose you went to him to ask about your money, then. Did he tell you the truth?”

“My aunt told me the truth, although she wasn’t making much sense. But she did confirm that I have an inheritance—which is now yours, of course,” she added darkly. “And I can just imagine what you plan to do with it.”

Aiden thanked God that at that particular moment Plum appeared at the door to announce dinner. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said, seeing they were heading into another potentially explosive situation. “Here, give me your arm,
Serafina,
and let me take you in. We might as well try to behave like a happily married couple for the sake of the servants.”

She hesitated, then took the suggestion as he knew she would.
Serafina
might not be the least bit interested in his own sensibilities, but apparently she had a healthy respect for those of the staff.

Her fingers slipped into the crook of his arm, warm fingers, their light pressure sending an unexpected physical shock through him. He realized this was the first time
Serafina
had voluntarily touched him, and he enjoyed the sensation hugely.

“Plum,” he said when he saw that Serafina’s place had been laid at the far end of the table, “would you be so kind as to have her ladyship’s setting moved next to mine? I have no intention of making myself hoarse by shouting halfway across the room.”

“Certainly, my lord.” Plum quickly changed the arrangement as Aiden stood in the middle of the room, unwilling to so readily relinquish Serafina’s fingers.

“Thank you.” Aiden pulled out the chair on his right and deposited
Serafina
in it as Plum vanished and immediately reappeared with a tureen of carrot soup.

He brought it to Serafina’s side and she looked at him, as if she wondered what he expected her to do with it. Plum gazed pointedly at the ladle, and
Serafina
brightened, then dipped the ladle in the tureen and promptly splashed half the contents on the table.

“Oh,” she said with dismay, looking at the mess she’d made. She dabbed at it with her napkin. “I—I’m afraid I’m not accustomed to doing things this way. At home we serve the food directly onto the plates and then put them on the table.” She flushed a deep red.

“Ah,” Aiden said, seeing that
Serafina
was going to need a great deal of instruction. He’d had an inkling of that at the wedding breakfast, given the way she’d gone about things then.

He nodded at Plum, who promptly took the ladle from her and filled her bowl. Aiden then helped himself, murmured a word of instruction into Plum’s ear, and waited until Plum had poured two glasses of claret and vanished.

“I hope you don’t mind my breaking with tradition,” he said, trying to ease her embarrassment, “but I really would rather have you where I can see you.” He picked up his soup spoon. “You’re much too pretty to have your face obscured by an overstuffed epergne.”

“I know nothing about tradition,”
Serafina
started to say, and then her gaze crept up to his, her expression startled, eyes wide. “You think I’m pretty?”

He thought she was a great deal more than pretty, but he wasn’t going to go too far, lest she question his motives and treat him to that leveling look of disgust she was so good at. “I think you are exceedingly pretty,” he said, watching with fascination as a delicate flush rose from her neck and spread into her cheeks.

She bent her head, concentrating on her soup, and his gaze wandered to the soft little wisps of hair on her nape, the long sweep of white throat, the delicate curve of ear. A jolt of desire surged through him as wicked thoughts of what he’d like to do to that throat, that shell-like ear danced in his head.

“I think you say so only because you wish me to look more kindly upon you,” she mumbled, lifting her glass and half draining it.

“Not at all,” he said in surprise. “Have you never been told it before?”

She shook her head, staring down at her bowl. “I wish you wouldn’t fun with me, Aiden. I know perfectly well that I’m not pretty, and telling me I am isn’t going to further your cause.”

Aiden, taken aback by her mistaken assessment of her looks, stared at her.
“Serafina
… I don’t know what has given you the idea that you’re unattractive, but I assure you it’s not true.”
Anything but true,
he thought, wondering angrily who had put the notion into her head that she was in any way lacking and ready to take his head off.

She looked up then. “If that’s the case, why is it that you’re the first person who has ever told me so?”

“Could it be because there’s never been anyone else who’s had the opportunity?” he said. “From what you’ve told me you’ve lived a life of seclusion.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it. Tinkerby and Aunt Elspeth looked at me every day, and there was the vicar on Sundays, and the people from the village when we went to doctor them. The most anyone said was that I’d do, which is a polite way of saying that I should make do.”

“I see,” he said, his gaze traveling over her heavily fringed sea-green eyes, her dear little nose, her wide, sensual mouth all set in an enchanting heart-shaped face, and deciding the vicar, the villagers, Tinkerby, and Elspeth Beaton were all either blind or mute.
Serafina
was a woman of unearthly beauty, and he was going to put his mind not only to seeing that the rest of the world knew it, but that she realized it for herself.

Which gave him an idea, and the more he thought about it, the more he liked it.
“Serafina,”
he said, trying to sound casual, “I have to go to London tomorrow. I’m sorry, but it’s a matter of the utmost urgency. How would you like to accompany me?”

Serafina’s hand stopped halfway between her bowl and her mouth. “No!” she exclaimed, the soup spilling off the side of her spoon. “Thank you, I mean, but I think not.” She put her spoon down abruptly and took another large gulp of wine.

“Why not?” he asked, regarding her steadily. “From what I’ve observed you need a trousseau, and I have a good dressmaker in mind. You’ve never been to London, have you? Wouldn’t you like to see a whole new pan of England?”

“No,” she said, panic chasing over her face. “I’ve only just arrived here. I—I think it’s best if I settle in. And I can’t desert Aunt Elspeth—she’d never know how to go on.”

“Oh, I think your aunt would know how to go on under any circumstances. She’ll be perfectly comfortable here on her own.”

“But I still don’t think I can,”
Serafina
said miserably. ‘You don’t understand, Aiden. I’m not suited to your world. I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to behave in it.”

“But that’s my point, sweetheart. I don’t wish to do anything to unsettle you unduly, but at some point in time you’ll have to become accustomed to being my wife, and that involves having contact with my world. It’s your world too, you know. You were born into it.”

“I may have been born into it, but I haven’t experienced it ever, not really. I lived a quiet life at Bowhill and an even quieter one at Clwydd. I don’t know the social customs, not even the simplest formalities, and those I once did I’ve since forgotten from lack of practice.”

“I’ll remind you,” he said, thinking her thoroughly adorable.

“Oh, Aiden,” she said miserably, “it’s no good. I know you want me to fit in so that I don’t disgrace you, but I don’t think I can change who I am at this late date.”

“I don’t want you to change who you are,” he said, looking at her over the rim of his glass. “I only want to make it easier for you to be a countess.”

“But that’s just it,” she cried. “I never even thought as far as being a countess. Perhaps I should have done, but the only thing I cared about was being your wife.
That
was what I wanted to be good at.”

Something in Aiden’s chest twisted painfully. “And now you no longer care about that, either,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears. “I won’t lie and tell you I want to be your wife. All I wish is to live the way I’m accustomed to. This marriage is difficult enough to accept without being forced into something completely foreign to me.”

“I understand,” he said, wishing he’d never brought the subject up. “But you can’t
live
in a protected bower forever, as much as you might wish it. Sooner or later the real world will intrude. It’s already begun to, hasn’t it? Today was difficult for you—aside from the shock of having to marry me.”