The Notorious Marriage

‘Well, let us see what he can bring,’ Eleanor finished a little grimly.

Sir Charles looked affronted. ‘No, no, my love, it does not scan!’

The door opened to admit the landlord with the dinner tray. Eleanor, who considered him a most unpleasant character, was nevertheless pleased to see him, for his arrival afforded her time to think—and time when the odious Sir Charles could not press his attentions for a space, unless he was inclined to do so over the dinner plates and with an audience. Eleanor thought this entirely possible. It seemed that Sir Charles was so in love with himself and his pretty poetry that he could not envisage rejection, and probably an audience would add to his enjoyment.

While the landlord laid out the dishes, she measured the distance to the door with her eyes, then reluctantly abandoned the idea of trying to run away. They would catch her, she was in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. How had she ever got herself into this situation? Her foolish idea of taking a lover, or even two, mocked her. Here was Sir Charles, proving another of Lady Salome’s adages, which was that reality was seldom as exciting as imagination. What folly had possessed her to accept his escort on the journey from Richmond back to London, when only five minutes before, her sister-in-law, Beth Trevithick, had looked her in the eye and told her that Sir Charles was an ill-bred philanderer who would try his luck if only given the chance? Eleanor had tossed her head in the air and allowed the baronet to hand her up into his curricle, and had not even noticed as they had fallen behind the other carriages and finally become separated altogether.

But this was not helping her to effect an escape. She allowed Sir Charles to hold a chair for her, watching under her lashes as he took the seat opposite and pressed her to accept a slice of beef, for all the world as though this were some Ton dinner rather than a squalid seduction. Eleanor accepted the beef, and some potato, wondering if either would be useful as a weapon. Probably not. The beef was too floppy and the potato too wet, though she supposed she could thrust it in his face and try to blind him with it. Her first plan, to hit Sir Charles over the head with the fire irons, had been crushed when she realised that there were none. The dinner plate would be a better option but it would probably crack, leaving him undamaged.

Eleanor sighed and tried to force down a little food. Even if she were able to escape Sir Charles for a time, she still had the landlord to contend with and she was alone and benighted in the middle of the country. All the same, there was little time for finesse in her planning. She had to come up with an idea, and quickly, and in the meantime she had to lull her seducer’s suspicions by flattering his diabolical poetry.

‘I remember a poem you wrote for me but a few days ago,’ she began, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘Something to do with beauty and the night…’

‘Ah yes!’ Sir Charles beamed, waving a piece of speared beef around on the end of his fork.

‘Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright, She walks in beauty, like the night, And brightens up my lonely sight…’

‘Yes…’ Eleanor said slowly, bending her head to hide her smile as she calculated how much the poem owed to Lord Byron and William Shakespeare. ‘How many other words rhyme with bright, Sir Charles? There must be so many to inspire you!’

‘You are so right, my brightest light!’ Sir Charles proclaimed fervently. He seized her hand. ‘Lovely Lady Mostyn, your instinctive understanding of my work persuades me that we should be as one! I know that you have your scruples, virtuous lady that you are, but if you could be persuaded to smile upon me…’

Eleanor, tolerably certain that she was being spared the second verse so that Sir Charles could get down to the real business in hand, modestly cast her eyes down.

‘Alas, Sir Charles, your sentiments flatter me, but I cannot comply. You must know that I am devoted to my absent spouse…’

Sir Charles let loose a cackle of laughter. ‘So devoted that you let Probyn and Darke and Ferris dance attendance upon you! I know your devotion, Lady Mostyn! Aye, and your reputation!’

Eleanor resisted the impulse to stick her fork into the back of his hand. Despite his ridiculous habit of talking in verse and his overweening vanity, Sir Charles would not prove easy to overcome. And all this talk of love was a hollow fiction, to dress up his lust. He was filling his wineglass for a third time now and his face had flushed an unbecoming puce.

‘Eat up, my little filly! The night is becoming chilly and I need you to warm my—’

‘Sir Charles!’ Eleanor said sharply.

The inebriated baronet had come round the table to her now. His hand was resting on her shoulder in a gesture that could have been comforting and paternalistic—for all that he was only two years her senior—but it was neither of those things. His fingers edged towards the lace that lined the neck of Eleanor’s modest dress. Her temper, subdued for so long and with difficulty, triumphed over her caution. She pushed his hand away, repulsed.

‘Kindly stand further off, sir, and avoid any inclination towards intimacy! I may be marooned here with you but I have no intention of using the occasion to further our acquaintance! Now, is that clear enough for you or must I express myself in rhyming couplets?’

The angry, dark red colour came into Sir Charles’s face. He leant over Eleanor’s chair, putting a hand on either armrest to hold her in place. His breath stank of wine and meat and his person smelled of mothballs. Eleanor flinched and tried not to sneeze.

‘Very proper, Lady Mostyn!’ Sir Charles was still smiling, his teeth bared yellow in his flushed face. ‘I suppose I should expect a show of decorum at least from one who was raised a lady but has never managed to behave as such!’

He moved suddenly, grabbing Eleanor’s upper arms, and she was sure he was about to try to kiss her. It was disgusting. She pulled herself away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. She was shaking now. It was no more or less than she had expected but the reality made her realise how hopelessly out of her depth she had become.

Into this charade walked the landlord, the pudding held high on a covered dish. There were footsteps in the corridor behind him but Eleanor did not notice, for she was too intent on a plan of escape. As the landlord came in, Sir Charles straightened up with an oath and in the same moment Eleanor stood up, swept the silver cover from the dish and swung it in an arc towards his head. It clanged and bounced off, throwing the startled baronet to the floor where he lay stunned amongst the remains of the blancmange. Eleanor staggered back, almost fell over her chair, and was steadied, astoundingly, by arms that closed around her and held her tight.

There was a moment of frozen silence. Sir Charles had sat up, the blancmange dripping down his forehead, a hunted look suddenly in his eye. Eleanor freed herself and spun around. Then the world started to spin around her. She grasped a chair back to steady herself.

‘Kit?’

It was undoubtedly her husband who was standing before her, but a strangely different Kit from the one that she remembered. His height dominated the small room and his expression made her insides quail. His fair hair had darkened to tawny bronze and his face was tanned darker still, which made the sapphire blue of his eyes gleam as hard and bright as the stones themselves. There were lines about his eyes and mouth that Eleanor did not remember and he looked older, more worn somehow, as though he had been ill. Eleanor stared, bemused, disbelieving, and unable to accept that he had appeared literally out of nowhere. She swayed again. The chair back was slippery beneath her fingers and she shivered with shock and cold.

‘Kit…’ she said, trying to quell her shaking. ‘Whatever are you doing here? I had no notion…I had quite given you up for lost…’

‘So it would seem,’ Kit Mostyn said to his wife, very coolly. His hard blue gaze went from her to the lovelorn baronet, who was showing all the spine of an earthworm and was still cowering on the floor, on the assumption that a gentleman would not hit him when he was already down. A smile curled Kit’s mouth, and it was not pleasant. Sir Charles whimpered.

‘So it would seem,’ Kit repeated softly. ‘I see that you have indeed all but forgotten me, Eleanor.’

Eleanor barely heard him. Darkness was curling in from the edges of the room now, claiming her, and she gave herself up to it gladly. She heard Kit mutter an oath, then his arm was hard about her and she closed her eyes and knew no more.

‘This is all most unfortunate.’ Eleanor had not realised that she had spoken aloud until a dry voice in her ear said: ‘Indeed it is.’

Eleanor turned her head. It was resting against a broad masculine chest, which she devoutly hoped was Kit’s since for it to belong to anyone else would no doubt cause even more trouble. His arm was around her, holding her with a gentleness that belied the coldness of his tone.

‘Drink this, Eleanor—it will revive you.’

Eleanor sniffed the proffered glass and recoiled. ‘Is it brandy? I detest the stuff—’

‘Drink it!’ Kit said, this time in a tone that brooked no refusal, and Eleanor sipped a little and sat up. Kit disentangled himself from her and moved over to where Sir Charles Paulet was standing near the door, brushing the remaining blancmange from his person.

Eleanor watched, hands pressed to her mouth, as Kit grasped the baronet by the collar and positively threw him out of the door, dessert and all.

‘Get back to London, or to hell, or wherever you choose,’ Kit said coldly, ‘and do not trouble my wife again!’

The door shuddered as he slammed it closed. Then he turned to Eleanor. She shrank back before the sardonic light in his eyes.

‘My apologies for removing your…ah…admirer in so precipitate a manner, my love,’ he drawled, ‘but I fear I have the greatest dislike of another man paying such attentions to my wife! Perhaps I never told you?’

‘Perhaps you did not have the time, my lord!’ Eleanor said thinly. She put the brandy glass down with a shaking hand and swung her feet off the sofa and on to the floor. She glared at him. ‘We scarce had the chance to come to such an understanding in the few days that we spent together! You were gone before we had exchanged more than a few words and I do not believe that any of them were goodbye!’

Kit drove his hands into his pockets. ‘I realise that it must have surprised you for me to appear in this manner…’

‘No,’ Eleanor said politely, ‘it is not a surprise, my lord, rather an enormous shock! To disappear and reappear at will! Such lack of consideration in your behaviour is monstrous rude—’

‘And I can scarcely be taken aback to find my wife in flagrante as a result?’ Kit questioned, with dangerous calm. His glittering blue gaze raked her from head to toe. ‘As you say, we meet again in unfortunate circumstances, my dear.’

Eleanor’s temper soared dangerously. Matters, she thought savagely, were definitely not falling out as they should. Her errant husband, instead of demonstrating the remorse and regret suitable for their reunion, was exhibiting a misplaced arrogance that she had always suspected was part of the Mostyn character. It made her want to scream with frustration. Except that ladies did not scream like Billingsgate fishwives. They endured.

‘Surely the point at issue is your want of conduct rather than mine, my lord,’ she said sharply. ‘I am not the one who has been absent for five months without so much courtesy as a letter to explain!’

Kit sighed heavily. ‘Eleanor, I sent you a letter—several letters, in fact—’

‘Well, I did not receive them!’ Eleanor knew she was starting to sound pettish but her nerves were on edge. ‘As for finding me in flagrante, surely you cannot believe that I am in this poky little inn by choice!’

‘Then you should arrange for your lovers to find somewhere more acceptable, my dear,’ Kit observed, his tone mocking. ‘I have searched for you in hostelries from Richmond to London, and there are plenty more that could offer you greater comfort!’

Eleanor felt the tears prick the back of her eyes. This was all going horribly wrong, yet she did not understand how to stop it. The anguished questions that she had wanted to ask ever since he had left her—why did you go, where have you been—remained locked inside her head, torturing her. She had been told that ladies did not question their husbands’ actions in such an unbridled manner and since Kit had not volunteered the information of his own free will she could scarcely shake it out of him. Eleanor struggled to master her anger and misery.

‘You misunderstand the situation, my lord,’ she said coldly. ‘If there have been others who have paid me attention during your absence, that was because you were not here to discourage them—’