The Notorious Marriage

‘Must we speak now, my lord?’ she asked, just managing to achieve the bored tone she strove for. ‘I am unconscionably tired and want nothing more than some hot water and a luncheon tray. Then I think I shall sleep. I fear that I had very little rest last night.’

Kit strolled forward into the room, swinging the door carelessly closed behind him.

‘It will not take long, my dear,’ he said, effortlessly matching her sang-froid. ‘I simply wanted to mention that I understand there is to be a ball at Trevithick House in a couple of days and we shall attend.’ His smile deepened. ‘It will be the perfect occasion to demonstrate our reconciliation!’

Eleanor grimaced. The Trevithick ball had been planned for some months but now it threatened to turn into more of an ordeal than ever.

‘I am not sure that I wish to attend…’

Kit wandered over to the window. ‘If you are as intent on presenting a good face to the Ton as you implied last night, you will have to be there.’ His tone was sardonic. ‘People will talk otherwise. Moreover, we shall have to be seen to pay at least a little attention to each other!’

Eleanor sighed. ‘This is all very difficult…’

‘It is indeed.’ Kit’s voice betrayed his tension. ‘But I am tolerably certain that we shall pull through—provided that we do not ask each other any difficult questions, of course!’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Do you think that is sufficient understanding between us?’

Eleanor clutched her reticule to her as though it was a lifeline. Her heart was beating fast and she felt panic course through her.

‘Lud, my lord, we do not need an understanding!’ she said, in a brittle tone. ‘We are married, after all! That should be understanding enough.’

Kit’s expression closed. ‘Very well. In that case I will just add that I do not expect to have to fight my way past every rake in the Ton in order to claim a dance with my wife! It may be unfashionable in me to expect it, but you will behave with circumspection, my dear. Is that understood?’

Eleanor narrowed her eyes. ‘I shall behave precisely as well as you do, my lord.’

Their gazes, dark blue and dark brown, met and locked, then Kit inclined his head. ‘Capital! Then we may preserve that excellent pretence that you alluded to so charmingly last night. Neither too warm, nor too cold! Delightfully mediocre, in fact.’

Just for a moment Eleanor thought that she had detected something else in his voice other than a bland lack of concern, a hint of bitterness, perhaps, which was gone so swiftly that she decided she must have been mistaken. She looked at him uncertainly. He was still looking at her, with a mixture of speculation and amusement.

‘Was there anything else, my lord?’

‘Just one more thing,’ Kit murmured. His gaze drifted from her face, which was becoming pinker all the while under his prolonged scrutiny, down her slender figure and back again. His eyes lingered, disturbingly, on her mouth. Eleanor stiffened.

‘I wished to disabuse you of any notion you might have of a marriage of convenience,’ Kit said slowly. ‘All this talk of going your own way and I going mine might lead you to imagine…erroneously…that ours would be a marriage in name only.’

Eleanor stared at him. Her face, so flushed a moment previously, was now drained of colour. Her heart fluttered and she felt a little faint.

‘But I…You…We cannot…’

‘No?’ Kit had come closer to her, unsettlingly close. ‘It would not be the first time.’

‘No,’ Eleanor snapped, moving away abruptly in order to conceal her nervousness, ‘only the third! It is out of the question, my lord! You may disabuse yourself that there is any likelihood of our marriage becoming a true one! I married you for your name and your protection, and just because I made a bad bargain I need not pay any more for it!’

Kit nodded thoughtfully. Eleanor was disconcerted to see that he did not look remotely convinced.

‘It is a point of view, certainly. But not one that I can share. Maybe it is old-fashioned in me to wish for a true marriage—and a family. However, that is how I feel.’

A family! Eleanor shivered convulsively. She walked across the room to her pretty little dressing-table, simply to put some distance between them. Kit’s proximity was too disturbing and his words even more so. She started to fiddle with some of the pots on the tabletop and kept her face averted.

‘I believe we are at an impasse, my lord,’ she said. ‘I cannot agree with you.’

Kit smiled a little mockingly. ‘I dare say it will take you a little time to grow used to the idea, Eleanor. And since I have no wish to force my attentions on an unwilling woman, you are quite safe—for the time being.’

Eleanor doubted it—not the truth of his words but the strength of her own determination. Already he had come dangerously close to undermining her resolve, or rather, she had been in danger from herself. It seemed that she could dislike Kit intensely—hate him for the way he had behaved to her, she told herself fiercely—and yet feel a confusing mixture of emotions that owed nothing to hatred. She shivered.

Kit raised her hand to his lips and she snatched it away, but not before his touch had sent a curious shiver along her nerve endings. Eleanor flushed with annoyance. She did not intend to give him the impression that he still had any power over her feelings.

‘I will send your maid to you, my dear,’ he said, and sauntered out of the room leaving Eleanor to let her breath out on a long sigh.

She heard his voice in the corridor, speaking to Carrick, then his footsteps died away and she was alone.

Two minutes later she was sitting on the end of the bed, staring into space, when the door opened and Lucy, her maid from Trevithick House, came in with an ewer of water. Eleanor thought that the girl looked excited. Goodness only knew the stories that were circulating in the servants’ quarters.

‘Oh milady! Is this not grand! The master returned and the two of you together again…’

Eleanor sighed. So that was the story—some highly coloured romance, no doubt encouraged by Kit to give the impression of a happy reunion! She knew that she should be grateful, appearance mattering above all, but it felt hollow and a sham.

Lucy was still chattering as she emptied the water into the bowl for Eleanor to wash her face.

‘They say that his lordship has been abroad for a space, ma’am…’

Eleanor nodded listlessly, not troubling to reply. What could she add? He was on the Continent with his opera singers. She started to unfasten her spencer.

‘In Ireland, ma’am…’

Eleanor frowned, her fingers stilling on the buttons.

‘On government business, I understand…’ Lucy nodded importantly. ‘Bromidge the first footman said that his lordship has done such work before, in France, for the War, ma’am…’

‘Nonsense!’ Eleanor said sharply, slipping the damp spencer from her shoulders and sighing with relief. She started to unpin her hair and Lucy came to help her. ‘I am sure that Lord Mostyn has been doing no such thing, and if he had it would be a secret…’

In the mirror her eyes met those of the maid. Lucy’s eyes were as round as saucers. She gave a little conspiratorial nod.

‘Oh no, of course he hasn’t been abroad or…or doing any such thing, ma’am!’

Eleanor sighed again. So now they were both involved in some imaginary conspiracy of silence to do with Kit’s absence. This was getting foolish. She really must tell him not to spin such tales to the servants.

To distract Lucy’s attention, she pointed to a door at the opposite end of the bedroom. ‘This is really a very pleasant house, but what is through that door, Lucy?’

‘That’s his lordship’s dressing-room, ma’am,’ the maid said, picking up the hairbrush again. ‘His suite of rooms is next door, and then the guest suite. It’s ever so pretty, ma’am, furnished in blue and gold…’

Eleanor was not listening. She had hurried across to the connecting door, only just managing to stop herself opening it through a sudden, belated realisation that she was now in her shift and Kit might well be on the other side.

‘His lordship’s dressing-room! But I had no idea he was so close…’

The maid smiled. Indeed it looked to Eleanor as though she almost winked, but thought better of it at the last moment.

‘Oh yes, ma’am! This is a most convenient house, if you take my meaning! Well-situated rooms—’ She broke off as she caught Eleanor’s quelling look. ‘Yes, ma’am, and may I fetch you anything else?’

‘Just a carpenter to fix a large bolt upon the door!’ Eleanor said brightly, happy to see that she had wiped the complacent smile from the girl’s face at last. ‘And if you cannot find one, Lucy, bring me a hammer and nails! I will do the job myself!’