The Countess (7 page)

I think I probably gasped out loud. Oh, goodness, I tried not to stare, but it was very difficult not to. Thomas was the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. He was rather slight of build, fair—unlike his Spanish mother or his brother—and his features were so perfectly formed, going together so flawlessly, that surely Michelangelo would have been mad to sculpt him. While his older brother, John, looked dark, dangerous, hard, and meaner than a mad hound, Thomas looked like an angel. He had thick waving blond hair and summer-blue eyes, nearly the same shade as mine.

He was simply beautiful, no other way to say it. Finally I saw something that saved him, barely. He had a very stubborn chin, but even that chin of his, tilted at just the right angle, made one want to run one's fingers over his face and just stare at him. It was disconcerting. I happened to look over at John to see that he'd raised an eyebrow at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can't help it.”

“Most ladies can't,” John said. “Try to contain yourself.”

“I will try.”

Brantley returned then to direct the serving of the dinner. It was a very formal ritual, one obviously
performed many times, much more formal than the one Grandfather and I had always observed. Miss Crislock would doubtless be pleased at this ruthless ceremony. She was the one who kept Grandfather and me to a reasonable dining schedule. She had always insisted that we dress for dinner, something Grandfather and I grumbled about, but did because it was important to her.

I watched the two footmen, Jasper and Timothy, move silently about the table, making no unnecessary noise at all. They were also so well trained that they easily pretended they weren't listening when the earl spoke easily of the weather, the state of the grass in the east lawn, or even when he slipped into a more controversial area—the damned Whigs, a never-ending misery to be endured, since they couldn't be lined up and summarily shot.

It wasn't until Brantley nodded the footmen to the far side of the dining room and stood himself against the closed door, that Lawrence turned to John, who had just raised a fork with turkey and chestnut pastry on it, and said, “I had thought you planned to remain at Devbridge. Is there some chance that you will not remain here and begin to learn our estate management?”

John frowned at his turkey and pasty, ate it, saying nothing until he'd swallowed. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and said very deliberately, “You have just married a young lady, Uncle, a very young lady. She appears immensely healthy. It seems obvious that there will be an heir in the not-too-distant future. I can now see no reason for me to learn how to manage the estates. You will raise your future son just as an heir should be raised.
The lad will doubtless know all the estate management he needs to know by the time he is twelve. There will be no need for me to hang about, cluttering up the dining table.”

Lawrence raised his wineglass to me and silently shook his head. He said to John, his voice as cold as a late winter wind howling over the Yorkshire moors, “I have said this before, and I will say it again. You, John, are my heir. You will remain my heir. Therefore, you must prepare yourself to someday take my place. There is nothing more to be said.”

“But, Uncle Lawrence,” Thomas said, waving one slender, beautifully shaped hand toward me, “John is right. She is very young. Why else would you marry except to get yourself an heir?”

“Man cannot live by heirs alone,” I said.

Dead silence.

Why hadn't I kept my mouth shut?

A
melia choked out the sip of wine she'd taken. John choked on a bite of baked trout, then loudly cleared his throat.

Thomas was banging his fist against his wife's back.

Lawrence looked as if he would like to throw me through the dining room window, but he didn't. Thank goodness for his restraint. Indeed, on second look, I thought perhaps he was trying not to laugh. He wasn't angry at me, a blessed relief. But I still wanted to ask why bloody men believed that a wife's only purpose was to produce a boy child. I suppose I was surprised that both John and Thomas viewed Lawrence's marriage to me in that light only, and I shouldn't have been. I was a well-bred mare whose function was to produce a boy child—nothing more.

“Perhaps,” I said, knowing I should keep chewing my own turkey and chestnuts, instead of diving into such muddy waters, “your uncle found me quite to his liking, and that is why he married me. After all,
George likes me very well, and usually he is an excellent judge of character.”

“I don't understand,” Amelia said, her cheeks flushed from her bout of laughter, “Uncle Lawrence isn't a dog. What are you talking about, Andy?”

“An attempt at a jest, no more,” I said. Of course I had known that this would have to come up and have to be dealt with. I just hadn't realized that it would be this soon and discussed right in front of everyone, Brantley included. I sighed into my plate and kept my head down.

“Andy has an excellent sense of humor,” my husband said, but he wasn't smiling at all. Then he added, “We will see.” And that was all my husband of three days had to say. He returned to his own turkey. Of course, he had really said nothing at all. I looked over at John. He was staring at me, and there was something in those dark eyes of his that I didn't understand. Then I did. It was violence. Then, just as suddenly, that something was gone.

Face facts, I told myself. So John had wanted to meet me. Perhaps he had felt a bit of interest in me, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. I had been dressed in deep mourning. I had barely been civil. Regardless, that was three months ago. Now I was married, and separated from him as far as could be. If he felt any disappointment, which would amaze me if he had, he would simply have to get a grip on himself.

At least Lawrence's words had stilled the family. I wanted to tell them all that we wouldn't be seeing anything at all, but I realized that Lawrence was protecting me. The last thing he would want to say was that ours was a marriage of mutual convenience,
mutual respect, and mutual liking with nothing else cluttering it up, like a naked man humiliating a naked woman, namely me.

I looked again at John. He appeared to be staring into his wineglass. Why, I wondered, had he wanted to meet me? Well, it didn't matter now. Still, for a moment I didn't look away from him.

He was still too big and too dark in his black evening clothes. He appeared even larger now than he had the last time I'd seen him three months before. I could sense the danger in him, the cold control of an autocrat used to obedience, and he was surely too young for such control, I thought again. His face was still tanned from his years of campaigning and from his mother's Spanish blood, and his hair, like Amelia's, was raven-black. His eyes were so dark that they appeared black in the soft lighting, and his brows were thick and slightly arched.

“How were you married?”

John's cold voice, so formal and thick with indifference, had me wanting to smack the rudeness out of him, but Lawrence said easily enough, “By Special License, of course. Bishop Costain is a friend of mine. He also knew your father, John. He was pleased to perform the ceremony.”

Of course I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I looked right at John and asked, “Did you think this was all a sham? Some sort of charade your uncle planned to entertain you?”

John sat back in his chair, his wineglass held between his long fingers. “I have heard of men bringing their current mistresses into their homes and passing them off as their new wives. Naturally, such a pretense could never last very long.”

“No, I can't imagine that such a charade would long fool anyone,” Lawrence said. “I remember all the gossip about Lord Pontly, an old roué of the last century, who brought five different brides home to his beleaguered family, only to be found out very quickly each time. The sixth time he tried it, his family refused to allow the supposed wife into the house. There was a huge ruckus.”

Lawrence smiled at each of us around the table. “Naturally, number six really was the wife, the ceremony even performed by the local vicar.”

“I've never heard of such a thing,” I said. “You're not making that up, sir? A man really did that to his family? Five times? Why didn't a member of his family just shoot him?”

“I would think that there would be the temptation, but Lord Pontly died of just plain old age in his bed, his sixth wife, only a third his age, holding his hand when he passed, a peaceful look on his face, to the hereafter.”

“I wonder,” Thomas said, and I thought even his voice was beautiful, so filled with unconscious charm even the blackest sinner would be tempted to repent, “if perhaps Lord Pontly was on to something, sir.”

“What do you mean, Thomas?”

“Well, if he died of old age, not some vile illness, then perhaps having all the sham wives kept him healthy. It must have added to his vigor, improved his outlook on his lot in life.”

“At least a sham wife could be tossed out the window when the man tired of her,” John said. “That would certainly go a long way to improve a man's contentment.”

Amelia threw her buttered roll at him, which he
handily ducked. “What a dreadful thing to say. You will take it back, John, right this minute, or I will think of something dreadful to do to you.”

John raised his hands, splaying his fingers. “Acquit me, Amelia. Consider it unsaid. I apologize if you mistook my words.”

“There was nothing at all to be mistook,” I said. “If I had a roll I would be tempted to throw it at you, except that if I had one, I probably would eat it.”

Thomas laughed, a delightful tolling of human bells, utterly charming to the ear. Did nothing the man do grate on one's nerves?

John said, “You must admit, Amelia, that occasionally women are fickle. Maybe more than occasionally.”

I looked down to see that a roll had appeared on the edge of my plate. I looked to see Brantley removing himself once again to the dining room door. I picked up the roll and waved it at him, grinning. He had no expression whatsoever on his face. What was he thinking about all of us? Had he given me a roll so that I could throw it at John? Was he amused?

“I have never met a fickle woman in my life,” Amelia said. “And your apology, John, rang as false as a sinner's third promise to reform. No, I believe it is you men who are the fickle ones.”

“The reason Lord Pontly lived so long,” Lawrence said easily before Amelia could throw another roll at John, “is because he was such a dreadful man the devil didn't want him. Finally, though, so many years had passed that even the devil had no choice but to fetch him home to bask at the devil's own hearth.”

“That was quite clever,” I said, and lifted my wineglass to toast my husband. He just shook his head at
me, as if to say,
Young men, what is one to do with them?

I knew the answer to that. One shot them.

Thomas said, “Amelia, my dearest, you were fickle. Think back, and you will have to admit it.” He turned to say to me, “She was charmingly fickle, however. I saw it as a challenge and worked to overcome her adorable capriciousness, although it did take me the better part of six months. I wrote poems to her, my very best titled ‘Without You I Am Done For.' I believe it was that poem that made her place her hand in mine.”

Amelia patted her husband's arm. “No, Thomas, it wasn't that poem, although it evoked startling images in my mind, it was the song you sang beneath my bedchamber window that quite won me over.” She looked over at me. “Perhaps, if his lungs are properly pumped up and healthy, Thomas will consent to sing his song at your window, Andrea.”

“It's Andy,” I said. “I would like that, Thomas. Perhaps you can tell me the theme of your song?”

He frowned a moment over a spoonful of peas. “It was one of my better efforts,” he said finally, a slight flush on his lean cheeks. Then he opened his beautiful mouth and sang in a lovely tenor voice:

 

Wring my withers

You saucy wench.

 

Whisper you love me

But not in French.

 

Tell me you'll wed me and make it soon

Else I'll grow feathers and fly to the stars.

 

I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. My eyes teared. My husband rose, quickly walked to my end of the table, and slapped his palm between my shoulder blades.

“I will have to have Brantley take the leaves out of this table,” he said. “I cannot be expected to rise every few minutes to thump your back.”

“That is an excellent idea,” I said when I caught my breath. “Then we can thump each other's backs.”

I saw that John had utterly lost control as well. He was gulping down water and choking. To my astonishment, I looked over to see Brantley with his fist stuffed in his mouth.

“It did wring her withers,” Thomas said gravely seemingly oblivious of the collapse he had caused. He leaned over and lightly kissed his wife's cheek.

“I was won over picturing him glued over with white feathers,” Amelia said. “He drew me in with those feathers, even though I was forced to critique his effort, just a bit, you understand. I tried to tell him that
stars
didn't rhyme with
soon,
that one expected to hear
Else I'll grow feathers and fly to the moon,
but he just gave me that archangel's smile of his and told me, no, he never wanted to do the expected. that was boring. No perfect rhymes for him. He never wanted to bore me. And, of course, he hasn't.”

Lawrence was just shaking his head. As for Brantley, he stood stiff as a fireplace poker now, all contained again. I looked at the two footmen, who were not, obviously, as well trained as Moses. Both their heads were averted. I could only see their profiles.

“Sir,” Amelia said to Lawrence, “I hate to bring this delightful dinner to a close, but I have to be
honest here. I believe your poor wife is nearly ready to fall asleep in her gooseberry foole.”

I was tired, but how could she tell? I had laughed as hard as everyone else. But it was true. I was flying at only half-mast.

“You're right, Amelia,” Lawrence said to me, that deep kind voice of his all filled with warm concern. “My dear, the gentlemen will be along shortly. I, myself, am ready for some relaxation. We will come into the drawing room with you and Amelia for a little while, then it's off to bed with you.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, and then had to catch myself on a yawn. “If you wish. It has been a long day. Besides, I'll need to walk George, and I never know how long he will wish to sniff around.” I leaned over toward Thomas. “Would you really come to my bedchamber window and sing me a marvelous song like the one you wrote for Amelia?”

“I shall have to think of something like ‘Ode to a Laughing Girl.' Hmmm. I shall work on this, Andy.”

Amelia motioned to one of the footmen. He reached her side in but a moment to assist her out of her chair. She stopped, still halfway standing. “Oh, goodness, it isn't up to me now, Andy, you're the new mistress. When you wish us to leave the table, you must give the signal and do the rising.”

I put my fingers in my mouth and let out a light whistle. “There, the signal is given,” I said, and pushed back my own chair. Brantley was beside me in an instant. “My lady,” he said, and that level, very formal tone of voice chastened me immediately.

My husband wasn't pleased, either, but I refused to leave the dining table like a ponderous matron wearing a purple turban on her head.

“I see that you and Brantley will have to perfect a signal,” Lawrence said. “Whistling will do to call a horse but not to call the other ladies to attention.”