Married to a Perfect Stranger (11 page)

Upstairs, John gazed at his reflection in the black glass of the window. But the feeling of being watched had gone. And it was high time he dispensed with the illusion that someone was looking over his shoulder and criticizing his work, a lingering relic of his school days. It was ridiculous. There was never anyone there. He turned back to his report, trying to concentrate through his fatigue.

Footsteps on the stair signaled that Mary was going up to her room, although it was rather early. It was a melancholy sound, John thought, and then he was surprised at himself. Perhaps he ought to get up and… The footsteps stopped outside the study door, followed by a knock. “Yes?”

Mary came in and stood before his desk, hands clasped before her. “This is unacceptable.”

“What?”

“You up here so many evenings, leaving me alone downstairs during the only time we have together.”

“I've explained to you that I have work…”

“And I know your work is important, but I don't see that it needs to separate us so.”

There was a slight tremor in her voice. Moved by her wistful expression, John rose and walked around the desk to take his wife's hand. “I know it's been difficult, moving far from your family. Once you have some friends of your own…”

“Is that what you wish?” Mary interrupted. “That I find my own friends apart from you? Perhaps you would like me to go out with others in the evenings and let you be?”

Sharp denial spiked in John's chest at this picture and called up a quick shake of his head.

“What then? I won't be pushed aside as if I were stupid or…simply negligible. I'm not going to sit back and let that happen again.”

“Again?”

Mary pulled her hand free and paced the room—once, twice. The folds of her skirt rustled with the sharp movement. Her hands moved as if to grasp something floating just out of reach. Then she stopped and faced him, her expression now fiercely resolute. “It is just that I do things in my own way. I'm perfectly capable of helping you.”

“Helping? With what?”

“Wasn't our dinner for William Conolly a success?” She waited for his nod. “You're trying to make our country just and fair as well as great. I want to…”

“You give me too much credit,” John had to say, though he hardly minded the admiration in her dark eyes, in the lines of that eminently kissable mouth.

Mary shook her head. “I saw how Conolly respected your opinions. There must be more I can do.”

The resolute set of her chin was charming. Her resolute gestures, all of her was so distracting, so…arousing. He took a step closer. In this mood, she was really irresistible.

“I want to be part of it all,” Mary said, spreading her hands.

John took another step and yielded to the overwhelming impulse to pull her into his arms. She looked up at him with wide startled eyes. She felt slight and soft and thrillingly pliable under his hands. He bent and took those enchanting lips for his own.

There was a haunting familiarity in the taste of her. But the memories of their brief month together were rapidly submerged in new sensations. He was a different man, kissing a different wife, in an altered world. His heart raced as she melted into him.

Mary had never been kissed like this in her life. It surpassed any fantasies she'd indulged in. John held her with an authority and demand that took her breath away. She'd felt his body along the length of her own before; she'd kissed these lips. But not like this. Her knees went weak. Her hands closed on his shoulders and clung. She nearly whimpered when he drew back. But then he pulled her closer and kissed her even more thoroughly. The second time he raised his head, they were both breathing hard.

John found that he'd pushed his wife right up against the desk. She was bent a little backward above it, and one of his knees had slid between hers. His pulse thundered in his ears. An errant thought made him picture the papers shoved to the floor, Mary on the desktop unclothed. She gazed up at him, her eyes huge and nearly black, her lips slightly parted. One shoulder of her gown had slipped, and he was ready to tear the rest away.

“Oh my,” she breathed. “That was so much…better than before.”

“Before?”

“At the seaside, when we first… I wasn't sure I would ever like it then. I didn't realize it could be like this.”

John felt as if she had thrown some of that cold seaside water in his face. “I didn't realize it had been so bad,” he said.

“Not bad. I didn't mean… Just…awkward. You know. And a bit, um, uncomfortable.”

John moved a little away from her. Of all things, he did not want to think about this now.

“It was just…we seemed to be always bumping elbows and…”

She trailed off, looking worried. John remembered one of the fellows on the China ship saying that there was nothing worse than a woman who chattered during intimacies. He hadn't much cared for that man. He'd found his conversation coarse and disrespectful. But right now he felt a certain sympathy with this remark. Had Mary really needed to point out his previous inadequacies? Right at this moment? John stepped back. That awkwardness of two years ago almost seemed to enter the room.

“John, I didn't mean… I
said
it was better. Much, much better. Wonderful!”

She reached out to him. But the instinctive certainty of moments ago had evaporated. He didn't want to do anything that would evoke past clumsiness. His gaze brushed the pages on the desk. Firmly, familiarly, anchored on the desk. “I must get back to work.”

“Now?”

The incredulous reproach in her tone stung.
He
hadn't been the one who brought up old grievances. “Yes.” He returned to his chair, picked up a page, and pretended to be able to read it.

The door to the study opened and closed with an angry snap. John put down the report and bent his head. His breath came out in a long sigh. He felt as if he'd been thrown from a cantering horse—from headlong to a slamming stop all in an instant. Knowing it was irrational and unwarranted, he wanted to hit something.

Alone on the stairway, Mary put her hands to her forehead. Why must he be so difficult? All right, she'd said the wrong thing. Yet again, unconsidered words had gotten her into trouble. But hadn't she
told
him how much better those kisses had been than the half-forgotten ones from the past? All she'd wanted was another, and more, far more than that.

She would go back in right now and tell him. Or shake him until he admitted he was being an ass.

Mary reached for the doorknob, started to turn it, and balked. It had felt so dreadful to be pushed away—like a blow to the heart. She saw her hand tremble and drew it back. She listened for some sound from within. All was quiet. Had John actually gone back to work, as if the kisses had never happened? As if she didn't matter?

She stood on the landing for long minutes, her stomach churning. She couldn't make herself go in. She couldn't bear another rejection just now. Blinking back tears, she crept silently up the stairs to her room.

When Mary came downstairs the next morning, John had already left the house. No one remarked on this, since it was his established habit. Mary ate her breakfast, conferred with her staff about the day's tasks, and went about her own—all as usual. But through the routine her mind seethed with determination to make a change.

At eleven, she walked into her parlor studio and set up her watercolors. She would rely on her own unique abilities to find her way through the thicket of emotion where she floundered. She sat before her small easel, cleared her mind, and, instead of waiting for a subject to arise on its own, called up a memory of William Conolly's face. This was a new thing for her, and she worried a little that insisting on a particular image might not work. But Conolly was the only person she knew from John's work life, her only avenue into this crucial part of his world. She didn't know how else to enter it.

Her fears proved groundless. Her pencil began to move over the paper in response to the visualized image. Conolly's face started to form, and Mary was soon lost in the process of creation. After a while, she abandoned the pencil for a watercolor brush and began adding color and highlights. The man's crisp black hair, bright hazel eyes, narrow face, and mobile features emerged. She worked quickly, surely, happily, immersed in her natural element. Time became irrelevant. Detail accumulated, bit by bit forming a greater whole. Mary reveled in the sense of rightness and harmony that came when she drew.

Finally, with a long breath, she sat back and considered the portrait she'd produced. She'd clearly captured Conolly's jaunty presence. The man looked out at her much as he had over their dinner table. She could almost hear a quip drop from those smiling lips. But what else was there to see, if she looked deeper?

Trustworthy—that word came to her. She was already aware of his intelligence. And he had demonstrated ample good humor during their evening together. Under all that, though—a spark of rebellion and…anxiety? Tension? Resentment? It seemed like a mixture of all three of those. Like every person Mary had ever drawn, he wasn't one simple thing.

So did this portrait help her? Mary stared at it and willed it to tell her what steps to take about John. This was his friend. They had formed a connection working together. Out of all those employed in the Foreign Office, John had singled out this one man. What did that say about him? She stared and pondered and racked her brain. But she hadn't found an answer to these questions when the time came around to walk across the square to Eleanor Lanford's for tea.

The inside of her neighbor's house matched Mary's expectations. Like its owner, it was quietly elegant and rich without undue opulence. The old woman awaited her in a chintz-hung parlor at the front overlooking the sodden garden. Roses in the wallpaper countered the dismal weather. A lovely young woman with golden hair and bright green eyes stood beside her. “Mary Bexley, this is my granddaughter Caroline.”

The young woman looked surprised.

Eleanor cocked an eyebrow at her. “Did you wish me to say Lady Caroline Lanford, eldest daughter of the Earl of St. Clair?” she inquired.

“People usually do,” the other remarked.

“I am not ‘usually.'”

“I know, Grandmamma. That is why I'm so delighted to be here.” Caroline dropped a tiny curtsy. “Pleased to meet you, Mary Bexley. And since I am introduced as Caroline I hope you will use my name.” She opened her arms in an expansive gesture. “Let us throw formality to the four winds.”

Mary returned the curtsy. She could trace some resemblance to Eleanor in Caroline's oval face and sublimely regular features. The twinkle in the old woman's eyes escalated into mischief in her young relative's gaze, however. They sat down, and Eleanor poured tea and offered tidbits.

“I suppose Grandmamma has told you that I am in disgrace,” Caroline continued blithely.

“Disgrace?”

“You didn't tell?” Caroline gave her grandmother a roguish look.

“My dear, I am not a gossip.”

“Or perhaps you wished to keep my transgressions a secret from your friends?” Caroline's eyes sparkled, and Mary wondered what sort of disgrace could make her so lively.

Eleanor did not rise to her bait. She merely waved a hand as if to say, do as you like.

“My family thinks I am being subjected to quite a dire punishment,” Caroline went on, “to be sent here so ‘out of the world' for the whole hunting season. If I'd known that was the penalty, I'd have misbehaved far sooner.”

“You did,” commented Eleanor dryly. “Just not quite so outrageously.”

Caroline grinned. She had dimples. “I must tell her. It was such a coup.”

Despite her confident manner, Caroline clearly waited for her grandmother's permission to speak, which came in a nod.

The younger woman turned to Mary again. “I trained one of the ratter's ferrets to drop acorns on Papa's stuffy guests at the dinner table.” Smiling, she waited for a reaction.

Mary tried to picture it. “Acorns? Ferrets?”

Caroline leaned a little forward. “Ferrets are quite clever, you know. They love games. Some of them, anyway. So I taught the smartest one to bring acorns from the big oak outside the dining room window along the picture rail near the ceiling and toss them onto the table.” She paused as if waiting for applause. “One landed in the Duke of Portland's soup with such a splash that his shirtfront was soaked. He was livid.”

“He has a limited sense of humor, as I recall,” put in Eleanor.

Caroline giggled. “Another one dropped down the front of Lady Serence's gown. She has quite the embonpoint, as you know, Grandmamma. I thought Lord Ferring was going to dive in after it, but he stopped himself just in time. Felix laughed so hard he snorted soup out his nose.” She glanced at Mary. “My brother,” she explained.

“Your father didn't find it so amusing,” said Eleanor.

“Well, he couldn't admit it, nor could Mama.”

Mary was picturing the scene. A grand dinner party with flowers and silver and a fleet of servants; a small animal running along the picture rail tossing acorns. The resulting mayhem. How had she ever thought up such a scheme?

“It is astonishing how hard you will work to set up a prank and how little effort you expend on anything else,” Eleanor told her granddaughter.

Caroline showed her dimples again. “Now everyone's terrified I'll kick up some sort of scandal in my second season,” she said to Mary. “So they've sent me here to contemplate my sins and repent. And for Grandmamma to talk some sense into me, of course. As if she would.”

“Oh, I shall,” responded Eleanor.

Caroline looked briefly dismayed.

“My kind of sense.”

Mary realized that she would very much like to hear this. She said so.

“That I should do as I please,” suggested Caroline. “Isn't that what you've done, coming to live ‘way out' here?”

“After a lifetime of doing my duty, I came here, yes,” said Eleanor.

Caroline's face fell. “You aren't really going to tell me to get hold of myself and do my duty to the family, are you?”

Eleanor looked out the window, her face remote. “I'm going to tell you something much more difficult. Discover your passion and embrace it, Caroline.”

“But I have…”

“Pranks are not a passion. They are a diversion.” Her tone was so definitive that her granddaughter was silenced. “If you allow yourself to be diverted—by what others see as your duty or anything else—you will end up filled with regret.”

“As you are?” Caroline wondered.

“By no means!” The snap in Eleanor's voice set both young women back. “Children were my passion. I longed to be a mother from my earliest years. An admirable mother, who gave her offspring what they needed in all ways. The choices I made were guided by that desire.”

“And you had Papa and my uncle and aunts,” said Caroline.

The old woman nodded. “Fine people whom I love dearly.”

Mary noticed that she didn't mention her husband. Had she loved him dearly, too?

“I have regrets, of course. No one goes through life without some regrets. But I am
not
filled with them.” Eleanor's expression softened. “And once I'd launched my children successfully—happily—into the world, I did as I pleased.” She gestured around the cozy room in this “remote” neighborhood. “Who stops me?”

“Nobody,” acknowledged her granddaughter with feeling.

Eleanor nodded. “Look at Mary,” she continued. “She has great artistic talent, and she has cultivated it.”

Mary wasn't entirely comfortable being held up as an example. “I draw a bit…”

“We both know it is far more than that,” said Eleanor.

Mary met her penetrating gaze and bowed her head in acknowledgment. She was surprised by the flood of gratitude that followed. Drawing was her passion, she acknowledged. But what exactly did it mean—to embrace it?

Caroline was too involved in her own thoughts to notice this silent exchange. “That's all very well if you have a talent,” she said. “I haven't. Or…my talent is for pranks. For shaking people up.” She brightened. “Isn't that a good thing? Society is so staid and dull.”

Eleanor raised skeptical eyebrows.

“Well, parts of it,” amended her granddaughter defensively.

Caroline could see high society that way because she'd been born into the midst of it, Mary thought. Perhaps you had to be a secure part of something in order to mock it.

“What shall my passion be?” Caroline mused, her attention firmly on herself.

“You don't choose it like a new bonnet,” replied her grandmother. “It finds you.”

The girl bit her lower lip, frowning. “That's all very well to say, Grandmamma. But I know scores of people who clearly have none. You may have always known what you wanted, but you are quite…special. Perhaps I'm not.”

“You are my granddaughter,” declared Eleanor imperiously.

Caroline laughed. “And thus obliged to be special?”

“You are intelligent, courageous. You have enough spirit for three girls. You will find your way, my dear.”

Her granddaughter jumped up and kissed her cheek. “How I love you, Grandmamma!”

Mary observed the obvious bond between the two women with a pang of envy.

* * *

When John arrived home that evening, the parlor off the entryway was empty. A small fire burned in the grate, but there was no Mary sitting before it, her hands busy with some sewing project. He was startled at how much he missed that sight; he'd become accustomed to her greeting as he came in, to the air of tranquil domesticity she created, antidote to any upheavals he'd endured at his work. Searching, he went upstairs and found her in the room she'd chosen for her own use. She stood before a table scattered with painting materials, lost in thought. “There you are.”

“Oh, John. I lost track of the time.” She turned as he stepped farther into the room. He hadn't really been in here since she'd arrived in London, and he saw now that she'd made the space truly her own. There were colorful hangings, a comfortable armchair by the fireplace, and interesting little objects scattered from mantelpiece to windowsill. The long table under the front window was crowded with sketchbooks, watercolor paints, one jar of brushes and another of pencils, a pretty pottery bowl for water, and a small wooden case for transporting these items. Though the surface was crammed full, it seemed quite an organized clutter. The room felt at once cozy and sharply individual. It seemed to John like a glimpse inside his wife's personality.

He took another step and saw around Mary to a portrait resting on a tabletop easel—William Conolly to the life. The face was so familiar and so well done that it pulled him closer. “That's very good, Mary.” The painting caught his colleague's quirk of a smile and alert intelligence. “I'd forgotten that you like to draw. You did me on our wedding trip, I remember.”

Mary blinked and looked self-conscious. Recalling the last time their honeymoon had been mentioned, John half-turned away. Wanting some occupation for his hands, he picked up a sketchbook from the table. Mary's hand twitched, then fell back to her side. Opening it at random, John came upon a drawing of an older woman, a stranger.

“That's our neighbor,” Mary said. “The one Mr. Conolly knew, the dowager countess. She's very kind. She invited me to tea today. I met her granddaughter. Caroline. Lady Caroline Lanford, I should say. She's quite a lively person. Caroline. Not Eleanor. She insists I call her Eleanor, although I know it is not…”

She was babbling. “Is something wrong?” John asked. Belatedly he wondered if he was intruding in her private sanctuary. Did she expect he would ask permission to enter a room in his own house?

Mary took a breath. “I…I'm not accustomed to showing my drawings.”

John gazed at the image of Conolly. “But they're quite lifelike.” He tried to be encouraging. “No need to be shy.”

“My mother always thought I wasted far too much time with my paints.”

Her voice was hurried, breathless. John didn't understand it. “Well, but young ladies are meant to have accomplishments, are they not?” he said heartily.

“Accomplishments.”

She said the word as if it was some sort of insult, which made no sense; he'd praised her blasted painting.

“Like playing the pianoforte or the harp,” Mary added. “But not seriously, of course.”

He had no idea what she was getting at. The decorative pursuits of young ladies weren't serious. Wasn't that the whole point? They were designed to make life more gracious and…pretty. His wife moved a step closer, and he caught a hint of the sweet scent she always wore—violets. Thoughts of art and accomplishments fizzled and scattered and disappeared from his brain.