Mistress by Midnight (20 page)

“I have brothers,” Garrick said. He smiled at last. “I may not speak to them but I can count on them to continue the Farne line.”

It seemed a cold world to Merryn, who had only that morning come to value the extent of her sisters’ love.

Garrick was watching her with those dark, dark eyes. “Do we have an agreement, then?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” Merryn whispered. The word was out, no going back.

She saw him smile with relief and triumph and possession. He kissed her again and she felt her head spin and her knees weaken as the pleasure rocked through her like a sweet, hot tide.

He released her. “Thank you,” he said. “I will call on you later.”

He bowed to her and went out and Merryn crossed to the window and sank down onto the seat, remembering the pressure of Garrick’s mouth on hers and feeling the heat still thrum through her body. Her lips felt impossibly soft and sensitive, swollen from Garrick’s kisses. Her belly was aching with a tight, hot sensation. She knew how that might be eased now. She knew what she wanted.

With a groan she covered her face with her hands.

How could she marry this man and live with him as his wife when she hated what he had done?

Garrick Farne. Her husband. She felt impossibly torn.

J
OANNA HAD DECREED
that the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy was the event at which Merryn and Garrick would make their debut in society as a betrothed couple. The wedding was two days away.

“You cannot hide away forever,” Joanna snapped, when Merryn objected. “Yes, there will be gossip but better to tackle it head-on. Trust me—I know a little about facing society’s censure.”

“I did not enjoy social occasions before,” Merryn argued. “Why should it be different now?”

“It won’t be,” Tess put in. “It will be worse.” She and Joanna were wrestling their sister into a brand-new yellow gown. Merryn felt like a tailor’s dummy, pummeled and pushed between them. “But you have to do it, Merryn,” Tess continued, “otherwise you will become even more of a hermit than you already are. They will call you the Reclusive Duchess, or something else snide and more alliterative than I can think.”

“The Desolate Duchess?” Joanna suggested.

“The Dismal Duchess,” Merryn said.

“Oh, yes,” Tess said, smiling, “I like that one.”

The sisters stood back, spun Merryn around and presented her to the mirror. “There. You look lovely.”

Merryn thought that she looked like a very reluctant Cinderella with two beautiful fairy godmothers smiling behind her. Her hair had been curled and teased into precisely the sort of upswept arrangement she hated and could never maintain, even though the prettiest yellow bonnet secured it. The gown was… Well, it simply was not her style. But then she did not have a style. Shabby bluestocking was scarcely the mode and certainly would not do for the Royal Academy.

She was about to dismiss her reflection, thank her sisters politely and make the best of a bad job when she looked again and felt a small frisson of excitement. She had never previously paid the slightest attention to her appearance, never had any interest in it and yet now, suddenly, she could hear Garrick’s words.

I do not even notice your sisters when you are close by…

A little shiver shook her. She looked again. Her hair, so glossy and golden, framed a face that had regained its color and gained also something of sensual knowledge and experience. Her eyes glowed deep blue. Her lips were parted on the edge of a smile. The gown skimmed her shoulders and fell like a golden waterfall from below her breast to spill about her feet. She was aware of the caress of the silk and the way it swathed her body with a soft cocoon like a lover’s embrace.

She reached out one gloved hand and touched her reflection, trying to pin down the difference in her, the difference in how she felt. She thought of Garrick and the way that he watched her. She pressed her fingers to her lips in an unconscious echo of his touch. She felt alive.

“I think Merryn has woken up,” Joanna said, a little dryly, from behind her.

Merryn spun around. Just for a moment, lost in a world of new and sensual discovery, she had forgotten her sisters. They were both laughing at her. They were also both looking frightfully proud of her and a little bit anxious. She felt a pang of love and gratitude and caught their hands.

“Thank you,” she said. “I won’t hug you because it would crush the silk.”

“Gracious,” Joanna said, squeezing her hand, her eyes like stars, “we will make a fashionable lady of you yet, Merryn!”

“Pray do not set your sights too high,” Merryn said, laughing, and then they were all hugging each other anyway and she clung to Joanna and to Tess because everything had changed, she had changed and she was a little bit afraid, and because she had only just realized how much she loved them.

“At least you will not have to run the gamut of Garrick’s family,” Tess said as she disentangled herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hear that they do not speak.”

“Poor Garrick,” Joanna said. “That must be unconscionably lonely. I wonder why they are estranged?”

“Well,” Tess said, “it could be because all his siblings are the most unconscionable snobs. Ghastly, you know. He is better off without them.”

It felt odd to hear Joanna and Tess speak sympathetically of Garrick, Merryn thought, and yet on a purely human basis she had to agree with them. Garrick had always struck her as the most solitary of men and in some bitter way this marriage, borne out of necessity not love, might make him more solitary still. She had always deplored the cold business arrangements of aristocratic marriages yet at least in an arranged marriage there was usually companionship if not love, mutual support and sometimes respect. Garrick had offered her his name to save her reputation. She offered him nothing. It felt wrong to enter marriage on such a basis. She gave a violent shiver. She felt small and lonely, smothered by convention. For one terrifying moment she could see her life spinning out before her in a series of images of great country houses with huge, empty rooms, spaces where she would always walk alone.

“Here…” Tess handed her the yellow coat that matched the silk gown. “You are cold.”

“I am frightened,” Merryn said frankly.

Joanna and Tess exchanged a look. “We will be with you,” Joanna said encouragingly, “and Alex, too, although he says he is too much of a philistine to appreciate art. But I have always thought Mr. Turner’s pictures most fine. I adored his painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

Merryn bit back the retort that would previously have sprung to her lips, a blistering comment on Joanna’s appreciation of any picture that was fashionable and approved by society. Besides, that was not really fair to her sister who as well as being generous to a fault had a very fine eye for style that was all her own.

I have been very unkind in the past,
Merryn thought.
I must try to do better.

It was odd; she had thought she was happy before, keeping secrets, doing her work for Tom, harboring her hatred of Garrick Farne. Only now, with her past life in tatters and an uncertain future before her as Duchess of Farne, could she see that perhaps what she had thought was happiness had been something different, a partial life bringing interest and challenge through her work and her studies perhaps, but also devoid of love.

Shrugging off the disturbing thought, she grabbed the fur muff that matched the trim on the bonnet.

“Well,” she said, smiling at Joanna and Tess, “let us go and make them talk!”

Despite her bravado, the journey to the Royal Academy in the Strand was accomplished in tense silence. The fact that the exhibition rooms were crowded with people also did nothing to soothe Merryn’s nerves. Alex offered her his arm and Joanna and Tess walked ahead, arms linked, terrifyingly
à la mode,
challenging anyone, Merryn thought, who dared to look askance at them. Even so there was absolute silence for a moment as they swept into the main exhibition room before a positive barrage of chatter broke out around them. Merryn unconsciously raised her chin in exact parody of her sisters’ nonchalant disdain but she was horribly aware of all the flutter of speculation and gossip, the whispers, the sideways glances. She could imagine all the unpleasant things they were saying, the comments about her fall from grace, her scrambled betrothal to save face, the delicious
on dit
of her being found naked in a bordello, a piece of scandal that surely could never be surpassed. Her face burned and the tears pricked her eyes but she was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how she felt. She had always hated to be the center of attention; this was hideous, her worst nightmare, as the fans flicked and the eyes followed her and someone tittered, a laugh full of lewd suggestiveness.

“I wish Garrick had escorted me,” Merryn whispered impulsively to Alex. Although she appreciated her brother-in-law’s support a very great deal she felt bereft without Garrick at her side, an odd but undeniable sensation that she had not expected.

“He is here now,” Alex whispered back, smiling.

Merryn turned slowly, her heart in her mouth. Garrick had come through the main entrance doors and was walking toward them flanked on one side by a man Merryn recognized as Captain Owen Purchase. Purchase seemed to be looking at Tess with the expression of a man struck dumb with admiration.

“Another good man goes down under the onslaught of the Fenner sisters,” Alex was saying ruefully.

Merryn was not paying attention, however, for on Garrick’s arm was a tiny elderly lady, very stiff and upright in rustling black silk, not a white hair out of place and a truly astonishing diamond necklace glittering about her neck. They approached very slowly and by the time they were within a few paces every single person in the room was watching and once again the gossip had died to a murmur and then faded altogether.

“Is that not… Surely it is… I… Oh, dear…” Merryn was suddenly terrified.

“Lady Merryn.” Garrick had stopped before her and executed the most immaculately perfect bow. He raised his voice a little so that everyone nearby could hear him. “It is my very great honor and pleasure,” he said, “to introduce you to my aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Steyne. Aunt Elizabeth, my fiancée, Lady Merryn Fenner.”

The Dowager’s keen black gaze swept Merryn up and down as she made her curtsy and Merryn felt as though she was taking in every aspect of her appearance while leaving the verdict undeclared. The Duchess’s bearing was regal, her expression haughty. Around them the crowd bobbed and fluttered, waiting. The Dowager Duchess of Steyne was a high stickler, a relic from a previous age. She was a friend of the Queen, rarely seen in public these days but still wielding the most enormous social power. It was unthinkable that Garrick Farne would have introduced his father’s sister to a woman who had been his mistress, engaged in some shoddy
affaire.
All the same, the crowds waited in case the Dowager titillated their taste for gossip with the cut direct.

Merryn held the Dowager Duchess’s unreadable dark gaze until she felt her nerves were at screaming point. Then something that might have passed for a wintry smile flickered across the Dowager’s lips and she said, “It pleases me greatly that the breach between the Fenner and the Farne families is soon to be healed by your marriage to my nephew, Lady Merryn.”

There was a whooshing sound as everyone released their breath at the same moment, turned away and pretended that they had not really been listening at all. Merryn felt herself go limp with relief. She dropped another slight curtsy.

“Thank you, your grace.”

The Dowager Duchess nodded. “Charming,” she said, and turned to acknowledge Joanna.

“Lady Grant,” she said. “I congratulate you on the most beautiful design you created for Lady Drummond’s drawing room. Exquisite taste.” Her gaze moved on to Tess. “And Lady Darent…I congratulate
you
on once again being a rich widow.” She turned to Alex. “Now, Lord Grant. I have long wanted to make your acquaintance.”

Garrick drew Merryn slightly to one side. His broad shoulders blocked out the inquisitive crowd.

“Well,” Garrick said, raising his brows, “you seem to have made quite an impression. Aunt Elizabeth is not normally so fulsome in her praise.”

“That was praise?” Merryn tried for a light tone. She put a hand on his sleeve. “Thank you for what you did,” she whispered.

Garrick looked down at her, a smile lightening his dark eyes again, and Merryn felt a rush of feeling that left her light-headed and a little dizzy. “It was a risk,” he admitted, “but after I had explained everything to Aunt Elizabeth I trusted her to support us.”

“Everything?” Merryn said faintly.

“Almost everything,” Garrick amended. His gaze met hers, sliding over her, bringing heat in its wake. His smile was intimate, tender, for her alone, and it made her heart ache.

“You look very beautiful tonight, Merryn,” he said.

The Dowager had turned back to them. “Lady Merryn,” she said, her sharp black gaze traveling from her to Garrick and making Merryn feel as though her emotions were naked, “I have a fancy to see the Collins exhibition. You will accompany me.”

Merryn shot Garrick an anguished look. He laughed.

“I will come and find you shortly,” he said, a smile and a promise in his eyes. He leaned closer. “Remember she does not bite,” he whispered.

“Pray do not interrupt us too soon,” the Dowager snapped.

Merryn followed the Dowager’s ramrod-straight figure through the archway into the next, smaller exhibition room. There were fewer people here and those that were present took one look at the Dowager’s fierce expression and melted away, leaving the room empty. The Duchess stopped before a small portrait in the corner. It was a picture of a seated woman and might have been painted some fifteen years before. The subject was young, a girl of about eighteen or nineteen, exquisitely pretty, curvaceous, with dark hair curling softly about her face, limpid black eyes and a little smile just starting to dimple the corners of her mouth. A small dog sat a few feet away, gazing adoringly at the woman who looked as though she took such adoration for granted from animals and people alike.