The Marrying Season (27 page)

He extended his arm to Genevieve, and she was quick
to take it. Elora, Genevieve was pleased to note, looked decidedly petulant as they walked away from her.

The remainder of the evening passed with excruciating slowness. Afterward Genevieve could not remember anything about the play they had seen, but she managed to get through the ordeal, telling herself that it was bound to be easier after this. Myles chatted with her as they left the theater, still playing the role of devoted husband. It was, she knew, the best way to handle the gossip, but she found it hard to bear having him smile at her as he had before they came to London, his eyes warm, his smile fond. Looking at him still made her heart leap in her chest, just as it had a few days ago, but now she knew that it was all pretense.

Once they were inside the carriage, Myles’s conversation wound down, and as they drove closer and closer to their home, the atmosphere between them became more tense. When they reached the house, Genevieve expected him to take his leave of her, going to his study or even leaving the house again. But to her surprise, he remained with her, escorting her up the stairs.

Genevieve’s insides danced with tension, very aware of Myles’s presence at her elbow. She could not help but think of the way they had walked to their bedroom when they were at the manor house, the heat and anticipation building. Now she could only dread reaching her door with him beside her. It would be bad enough to enter her empty room; it would be even worse to have him come in with her, feeling as he did about her but thinking he must do his duty to produce an heir.

She opened her door and turned toward him, her hand on the doorknob and cool dismissal in her voice. She had learned this talent long ago to ward off unpleasant situations. “Thank you for accompanying me to the theater tonight. Hopefully the worst is over now.” She started to go inside.

“Genevieve . . .” Myles said quickly. “Wait. I must apologize for yesterday.”

“There is no need.” Genevieve forced herself to face him unflinchingly, as if it did not affect her to look into his clear, golden-brown eyes, as if she had not traced the tiny scar on his chin as they lay together, sated and drowsy, or felt him surge into ecstasy inside her. She would not think of that. “You have every right to feel as you do. I see no reason to speak of it again. We are both—”

“No,” he said firmly, wrapping his hand around her wrist. “I was angry. I said things I should not have said. I hurt you, and I—”

“Nonsense.” She lifted her chin. “It takes a great deal more than words to hurt me.” She jerked her arm from his grasp and slipped into the room, closing the door sharply behind her.

“Genevieve! Blast it, will you let me explain?”

She saw the doorknob turn and she whipped out her hand, turning the key in its lock with a click.

“Genevieve.” She heard the astonishment in his voice, then the annoyance crowding it out. “Open this door. I want to talk to you.”

“No. This is my room.” She sounded childish, she knew, but she didn’t care.

He let out a curse and slammed his hand hard against the door, then walked away. Genevieve turned and leaned back against the door, her heart pounding, tears pushing at her eyes. She heard Myles’s door close furiously, and her eyes flew open, remembering the connecting door between their rooms. She started toward it, but long before she reached it, she saw its lock had no key, and she stopped, waiting, torn between dread and a strange anticipation.

The doorknob turned as she watched, and Myles opened the door. He stood in its frame, his eyes stormy. “There is no need to lock your door against me. I have no intention of coming in here. You are right; it is your room and yours alone. Pray enjoy your solitude.”

He turned, slamming the door shut behind him.

S
ir Myles strode into White’s,
frowning. He had left the house early, as he had for the past two mornings, feeling as if he were sneaking out of his own home like a schoolboy escaping punishment, but he had not been able to face another breakfast sitting in lonely splendor at the opposite end of the long table from his wife, exchanging iced small talk. He had gone down to Cribb’s to work out some of his frustration in sparring, but it had barely taken off the edge. He was beginning to wonder if anything would.

“Thorwood.”

Myles turned and saw Lord Morecombe, sitting at a table by the fireplace, a newspaper in his hand. Myles started toward his friend.

“By the scowl on your face, I presume you’ve been reading
The Onlooker,
” Gabriel said, folding up the newspaper.

“What? No.” Myles dropped into the chair beside him. “That bloody Lady Looksby again? About Genevieve? What could she possibly have to say now?”

“ ‘What notorious lady is already back from her honeymoon and frolicking in London?’ ” Gabriel began to read.

“ ‘Frolicking in London’? What the devil is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds faintly immoral, doesn’t it?” Gabriel took up the story again. “ ‘The recent bride is looking a bit wan—could it be because the groom’s eye is wandering to a new prospect?’ ”

“What?” Myles half rose out of his chair, as if to launch himself at something, but sat back down and lowered his voice. “What the devil is she talking about?”

Gabriel regarded his friend over the top of the scandal sheet. “I would imagine you have more of an idea of that than I.”

“You believe that—that tripe?” Myles grabbed the sheet and crushed it in his hand.

“Calm yourself, Myles, everyone is watching.”

Myles glanced around and let go of the wadded-up paper, settling back into his chair.

“Well.” Gabriel shrugged. “I had to wonder. Thea seemed to think that the, um, bloom was off the rose, so to speak.”

“Thea thought—what does Thea know about this?” Myles frowned.

“I presume whatever Genevieve told her.” Gabriel smoothed out the paper and refolded it, keeping his eyes on his hands. “They are apparently becoming thick as thieves.”

“Genevieve went running to Thea? Bloody hell . . .”

“I take that to mean that Thea was right? You have become disenchanted with your bargain?”

“I—why is it that
I
have become disenchanted? Is all this my fault now?”

“My dear Myles, since I haven’t the slightest notion what ‘all this’ is, I cannot say. However, as a man who is married, I can assure you that whatever happened, it will be your fault.”

Myles groaned and sat forward, leaning his elbows on the table and propping his head on his hands.

“So who is the new light-o’-love toward which your eye is wandering?” Gabriel went on cheerfully.

Myles turned a baleful gaze at him. “There
is
no new woman. Trust me, Genevieve is more than I can deal with; I cannot imagine trying to juggle two of them.”

“Mm. Well, I am sure it must be a terrible matter to realize you’ve married the wrong woman.”

“I never said I’d married the wrong woman!” Myles sat up. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“Oh. I beg your pardon. My mistake; I thought you were saying you were unhappy with Genevieve.”

“No!”

“Ah.” Gabriel’s brows rose lazily. “I see. This is how you look when you are happy.”

“Oh, God. Of course not.” Myles raked his hand back through his hair. “Genevieve is the most stubborn, most maddening female that ever walked. We have not spoken the past three days except in a stilted, commonplace way. ‘How is your dinner?’ ‘I believe I’ll have that armchair upholstered.’ ‘It was quite warm today, wasn’t it?’ ”

Gabriel smothered a laugh.

“Oh, yes, very funny for you. You are not the one who has to sit there with that freezing blue gaze on you every night, trying to pierce the armor of her meticulous courtesy, and knowing that you haven’t a chance in hell of taking her to bed tonight.”

“So that is where the problem lies.” Gabriel nodded sagely. “I feared as much.”

Myles glowered at him. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”

“Well, Genevieve has never been a
warm
sort of woman. If you’ll remember, I warned you that you’d likely spend your nights alone.”

“I remember,” Myles said shortly. “You were as wrong then as you are now. Genevieve is . . .” He stopped short. “She is not cold.”

“Indeed? My mistake.”

“She is anything but cold.”

“I see. So it must be her arrogance? Her contempt for others? That waspish tongue?”

“She is not arrogant. A little proud, perhaps, but that is scarcely the worst fault. Her standards are a bit high. But she holds herself to the strictest test. She does not carp or belittle or—oh, the devil! I’ve made a muddle of it.” Myles’s face was a study in misery. “Me! After all these years, the only time it is important, and I have been the most ham-handed, bumbling, misspoken fool.”

“What did you do?”

“I’m not sure. Everything was fine; it was better than fine. We were happy. And then suddenly, it all began to
fall to pieces. I suppose Thea told you about the note Langdon sent her, purporting to be from me. How could Genevieve have thought that I would have put her in a compromising position? That I would play fast and loose with her reputation? She acted as if I was foolish to be offended by that. And then . . .” Myles’s face fell into aggrieved lines. “Then she got angry because I wanted to come back here and take care of that scoundrel.”

“She was concerned for Langdon?” Gabriel’s brows rose.

“No, of course not. She was just offended because—well, I’m not sure why. One would think she could trust me to not create a scandal. I wasn’t going to challenge him to a duel, for pity’s sake.”

“So it was the scandal that bothered her.”

“No. It was—well, she seemed furious with me because I wouldn’t take her to meet Rawdon’s runner. As if I would take a lady to some dockside tavern to meet a runner. I could scarce believe my ears. Genevieve! Who’s never stepped a foot off the path of propriety. Who has rung a peal over my head more than once for paying too little attention to the rules. I told her it would be most improper.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes. I did. I asked her what the countess would think of it.”

Gabriel let out a snort and dropped his head, his shoulders shaking.

“What are you doing?” Myles sent him a sour look. “Are you
laughing
?”

Finally Gabriel raised his head, mirth shining from his dark eyes. “Oh, Myles. I beg your pardon. I feel a great deal of sympathy for you. But I must say, for a man who has always known just what to say and how to say it, you made a dreadful shambles of it.”

“Because I wanted to protect my wife? Would you not have done the same thing?”

“Of course I would. And Thea would have scalded my ears for it.” He shrugged his shoulders. “When there was all that trouble concerning Matthew, I did my best to keep Thea out of it. But she was determined to be involved. She was not about to let anybody take Matthew away from her.”

“Yes, but that was Thea. Genevieve’s not at all like that.”

Gabriel arched an eyebrow. “Not stubborn? Not independent? Not capable?”

“Well, no, of course she’s all those, but she’s different from Thea.”

“Naturally. However, I’d guess if you thought about it, you might realize they are far more alike than you’d think. And I would also guess that Genevieve is no more biddable or self-effacing than my wife.”

“Lord, no,” Myles agreed, struck.

“I don’t think you would like it if someone had harmed you and then getting your satisfaction from him was taken out of your hands.”

“Of course not. But this is Genevieve; she doesn’t step outside the boundaries.”

“No? Then why did she go to the library when she thought you needed her?”

Myles stared at him for a long moment. “No. It’s not like that. You make it sound as if she—no. She does not have feelings for me. She married me for the sake of her reputation. She and I are both aware of that; there is no need to sugarcoat it or pretend.”

“Mm. No doubt that is why the two of you are so angry with each other.” Gabriel paused. “That night, after you proposed to her, when you came to see Thea and me, you said you were worried that Genevieve might truly be the cold woman people supposed her. That she might not be capable of feeling. Is that what you have learned about her? Does she have no heart?”

“No, I am sure Genevieve has a heart. And one that is easily bruised, moreover. What I fear is that I cannot win it.”

“You?” Gabriel looked at him skeptically. “The man who always knows what to say? And how to say it? Think, Myles. You may have made a mull of it now, but who could better find his way out of that?”

Myles looked at Gabriel for a long moment, then smiled suddenly, his eyes lighting up. “You are right. If there is one thing I can do, it is coax a woman into something she has no intention of doing.” With a nod to Gabriel, Myles stood up and strode out of the club.

When Genevieve walked into the
dining room for breakfast, she was brought up short by the sight of Sir Myles sitting at the table. She had become accustomed to his
being gone in the mornings, and she had not braced herself to see him. He looked up and smiled at her in so much the same way as he had done in the past that she was momentarily startled into smiling back.

“My dear. How lovely you look.” He stood up and pulled out the chair on his left, and for the first time Genevieve noticed that her place setting was not at the end where it was wont to be but at right angles to Myles’s place at the head of the table. “I told Bouldin to put you here beside me. It seems most absurd for us to sit shouting down the table at one another when there is no one but us.”

She could do or say nothing without looking most peculiar in front of the servants, so Genevieve took the chair he offered. Myles pushed her chair in, then turned away, his hand gliding softly across her shoulder. Her eyes flew to his, but he seemed not to notice, merely sitting down and taking a sip of his tea.

“What plans do you have in mind for today?” Myles asked pleasantly. “Perhaps shopping with your grandmother?”