Slightly Married (15 page)

“You are Welsh!” his aunt said as if accusing Eve of some heinous crime.

“Aunt,” Aidan said stiffly, “you owe my wife an apology.”

She answered with a bark of laughter. “Impudent puppy!” she said.

“I did not bring her here to be insulted.”

“Sit down,” his aunt ordered suddenly. “Both of you. Sit! And you too, Bewcastle—and you may lower both those eyebrows and that quizzing glass. They do not intimidate me.”

None of them moved.

“You have already kept me from my committee,” Aunt Rochester said. “And I
never
neglect my duties to those less fortunate than myself. Now,
sit,
and tell me to what I owe this
honor
. I suspect that it would not have taken both my nephews to come here this morning merely to present Lady Aidan Bedwyn.”

Eve sat again and Aidan moved around the settee to take the place beside her. Bewcastle remained standing close to the window.

“Lady Aidan must be presented at court and properly brought out,” he said. “For better or worse she is Aidan's wife. Moreover, she has been included in an invitation to the state dinner for all the visiting European dignitaries at Carlton House. You will sponsor her, aunt.”

“Will I, indeed?” she asked him haughtily. “You take much for granted, Wulfric.”

“I do,” he said. “You are a Bedwyn. Lady Aidan must be brought up to snuff. There is no one better qualified to accomplish that than you.”

Aunt Rochester regarded him through her lorgnette.

“She will have to be taken to a fashionable dressmaker,” Wulf continued. “She will need everything. In particular, she must set aside her mourning. Gray does not become her.”

“Why is she not in black?” Aunt Rochester asked. “Her brother has just died, has he not?”

“He sent word with Aidan that she was not to wear mourning for him. But even if he had not done so, I would require her to set it aside for her appearance in society,” Bewcastle said. “You will undertake this task, aunt?”

“It would appear,” Aunt Rochester said with a sigh, “that I have no choice. It will be an interesting challenge. I have never before been called upon to sponsor a Welsh coal miner's daughter.” The lorgnette was turned upon Eve, who sat quietly enough under the scrutiny, though Aidan expected that at any moment she would jump to her feet again and demand to be taken away. “At least she has a passably good figure and tolerable features. Something will have to be done about her hair, of course.”

Bewcastle and Aunt Rochester proceeded to talk about her in the third person again—and rather as if she were inanimate. Aidan might have felt some pity for her if she had not brought this entirely upon herself. As it was, it was just as well, perhaps, that she know fully this morning what yesterday's ruffled pride had led her into. And interestingly enough, he was rather curious to know where, if anywhere, that pride was going to lead her today and in the coming days. He had not really seen it in full force until yesterday—a strange reminder of how little he knew of the woman he had married. Would he be taking her back to The Green Man and Still this afternoon or tomorrow?

“If I approve of what is suggested, ma'am,” she said after a minute or two, interrupting the conversation and drawing both his aunt's and Wulf's astonished attention to herself, “then I will allow the style of my hair to be changed. As for my clothes and my behavior, I would appreciate your help and advice, ma'am, before I decide for myself what is appropriate. Perhaps I should quell your worst fears, though, by assuring you that Colonel Bedwyn did not pluck me straight out of a coal mine. I have been given the upbringing and education of a lady.”

“Bless my soul,” his aunt said, “you have married a woman with claws, Aidan.”

“Yes, aunt,” he agreed.

“She had better keep them sheathed from
me,
” she said. “And she needs to learn that the English language is designed to be spoken, not sung—except by those who are members of choirs.
Ladies
do not sing in choirs.”

“It is her Welsh accent, aunt,” he said. And damned attractive it was too, even if she
was
exaggerating it to provoke his relatives.

Bewcastle interrupted what might have developed into a quarrel. As usual, he spoke softly. “You are willing, then, Lady Aidan,” he asked, “to put yourself in the hands of Lady Rochester? You can do no better, I do assure you.”

“Thank you, your grace,” she said coolly. “I am willing. Thank you, ma'am.”

She glanced at Aidan, and he could see the stubborn set of her jaw that he had not really noticed until yesterday, though it must have been there from the start, he supposed, recalling her unwillingness to accept his assistance, desperately as she had needed it.

“If all this is going to be too much for you,” he said, “say so now and I will take you home—to Ringwood. I will not coerce you into anything. It was no part of our bargain. And I will not have you coerced.”

“I am not going anywhere,” she said, looking steadily into his eyes.

“Oh, yes, you are, my girl,” his aunt retorted, her lorgnette to her eye again. With it she was assessing Eve's appearance from head to foot. “You and I are going to pay a call on my modiste without another moment's delay. Wulfric, Aidan, you may leave. Go! Who is your dressmaker, girl? No, do not pain my ears by answering. Some rustic unknown, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Eve agreed. “My aunt and I, ma'am.”

Aidan stood and looked at Bewcastle, who preceded him from the room after bowing distantly to both ladies.

T
HE NOTION THAT
M
ISS
B
ENNING,
L
ADY
R
OCHESTER
'
S
fashionable dressmaker, would cancel all her other appointments for the next few days merely because the marchioness was bringing her nephew's new bride to be outfitted for her court appearance and for what remained of the Season, had seemed to Eve to be a preposterous boast when the marchioness had mentioned it during the carriage ride to Bond Street. She had not really believed it.

Now she did.

The Marchioness of Rochester, she soon realized beyond any doubt, was a very important personage indeed. And today she had the full weight of the authority of the Duke of Bewcastle behind her—another extremely formidable figure. And Eve was the wife of his heir. She was also that rare client all dressmakers must dream of wistfully all their working lives—the one who needed simply everything. Not a single garment of those few she had packed and brought to London with her would do for Lady Aidan Bedwyn making her debut appearance in British high society. Miss Benning took one look at the carriage dress Eve was wearing and agreed with the marchioness.

They looked through fashion plate after fashion plate, the three of them, selecting designs for morning dresses, afternoon dresses, dinner gowns, ball gowns, carriage dresses, walking dresses, riding habits, cloaks, pelisses—the list went on and on despite Eve's intense dismay. She might be in town for only three or four weeks, the marchioness pointed out when Eve voiced a protest, but she simply could not be seen in the same thing wherever she went. Such stinginess would reflect badly upon Aidan.

And then there was the all-important matter of the court dress in which she would be presented to the queen. Eve soon learned that Queen Charlotte had some quite rigid rules about what was acceptable wear for ladies in her drawing room. The high-waisted, loose-flowing gowns currently in vogue were simply not allowed there. Court dresses must be wide-skirted and hooped and worn with a stomacher and hair plumes and lappets, in the fashion of a generation ago. And there had to be a heavy train too, exactly three yards long. Eve wondered if someone at court, some lowly footman perhaps, crawled from one lady to another with a measuring tape in his hands. And what fate lay in wait for the poor lady whose train was one inch too long or too short? Banishment from court and social ostracism for the rest of her life?

There were fabrics to select and colors and trimmings to choose among. There were measurements—interminable measurements of every inch of her body—to be taken.

It was all progressively bewildering and exciting and dizzying and tedious and draining. At every turn there was a protracted discussion. Fortunately Miss Benning agreed with Eve on the question of color. Soft pastel shades would put the focus on Lady Aidan Bedwyn's delicate complexion, fine eyes, and lustrous hair, she told Lady Rochester. But she agreed with the marchioness that the court dress must be of a far richer shade, the unspoken implication perhaps being that at court the gown was of far more significance than the person inside it. In most cases Eve won her point too about fabrics. She favored light, plain materials over velvets and bold patterns. She was overruled almost entirely, though, when it came to design. Anything that hugged her figure too tightly or showed too much bosom or too much ankle frankly alarmed her—she would feel half naked! But such styles were the very height of fashion, she was told, and she came to understand that to the beau monde fashion was a sort of deity that must be obeyed without question.

There were no prices on any of the patterns or fabrics. Eve could only guess what all this was going to cost—especially when all the accessories were added. She was very wealthy indeed, but she also had many people dependent upon her wealth. And Papa, despite his great desire to move up the social scale, had never favored extravagance. Neither had she. She had lived frugally all her life. Yet there was to be all this for a mere few weeks!

Had Percy had any idea, she wondered, of the consequences of his final words to his commanding officer? But the thought of Percy reminded her of her indignation against the Duke of Bewcastle, who had so arrogantly and heartlessly dismissed any need she might feel to wear muted colors out of respect for her brother's memory even if she followed his last wish and did not wear full mourning. Even if Percy had not made his request, the duke had told the marchioness, he would have required her to put off her mourning for the next few weeks. Percy, of course, was a mere nobody as far as he was concerned. So was she. She was merely someone to be ordered about like everyone else in the duke's sphere.

“For someone who is to have a whole roomful of Miss Benning's coveted garments, you are looking decidedly blue-deviled, Lady Aidan,” the marchioness observed as she pulled on her gloves late in the afternoon. Her carriage had just returned, and a footman was jumping down from behind to come and open the shop door for her.

“I am weary, that is all, ma'am,” Eve said. “I am not accustomed to all of this.”

“You should have considered that before deciding to marry Bewcastle's heir,” Lady Rochester said, sweeping out of the shop with the footman scurrying after her to assist her into the carriage.

It was the final straw. Eve, about to follow her, hesitated and then turned back resolutely to Miss Benning.

“About my court dress,” she said.

Miss Benning was all ears.

C
HAPTER XIII

E
VE WAS SEATED AT THE SMALL ESCRITOIRE IN THE
sitting room of the gold suite they shared when Aidan went up there after dinner. She raised her head and explained that she was writing to her family at Ringwood. He assumed she included in that term the orphaned children as well as her aunt—probably the governess and her child too, and more than likely the ferocious housekeeper, the half-wit lad, and all the rest of the odd retainers with whom she had surrounded herself. He would not put it past her to be sending her affectionate regards even to that scruffy mutt.

He sat in a deep armchair and watched her while he considered and rejected the idea of going back downstairs to find a book to read. He was unaccustomed to idleness. Freyja had gone out to a dinner engagement. Eve had left him and his brothers to their port after dinner, but Alleyne had left soon after to call at White's Club to meet some of his friends before proceeding to a ball. Wulf was going out later to some unspecified destination—to visit his mistress, Aidan suspected. He could have gone out too. He could have gone to White's with Alleyne. He would doubtless have met a number of acquaintances there with whom to while away a congenial hour or two.

But he had a wife who had insisted upon remaining in London for his sake even though he did not want her here and she did not want to be here, and of course she could not go anywhere, except perhaps the theater, until she had been properly presented. Aidan drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair while she blotted and folded her letter, set it aside, crossed the room to a sofa, and took her embroidery from a bag beside her—all without looking at him.

“You make me nervous,” she said after stitching for a minute or two.

“Do I?” He stopped drumming his fingers and frowned at the top of her head. “Why?”

“You are so silent,” she said. “And you stare.”

Silent?
Just he? She had been writing a letter when he came into the room, her back to his chair. Had she expected him to chatter at her? And she had not spoken a word since finishing—until now.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

Now she was the one frowning as she looked up at him. “Do you ever smile?” she asked

What the devil? Of course he smiled. But was he to be laughing and chuckling and chortling every moment without cause?

“I have never seen you do it,” she said. “Not even once.”

“There seems to be not a great deal to smile about,” he told her.

“I am sorry about that,” she said, bending to her work again.

The devil! She would be thinking now that he was referring to their marriage and her company. But he had stayed home with her, had he not? Both last evening and this?

“I am a killer,” he said abruptly. “I kill for a living. There is nothing very amusing about that.”

She looked up at him, her needle suspended above her work. He frowned. Now why the deuce had he said that? He had not consciously thought that way for years. He had never spoken such thoughts to anyone, least of all a woman.

“Is that how you see yourself?” she asked. “As a
killer?
”

He wanted to shock her then. He wanted to shake her out of the complacence most English people seemed to share, perhaps because the realities of war were very remote to them, safe as they were on their secure island.

“It is said that every woman is in love with a uniform,” he said. “At present I believe everyone in England, man and woman alike, loves a uniform, provided it is British or Prussian or Russian. Everyone loves killers.”

“But you have been fighting tyranny,” she said. “You have been fighting to free countries and the countless people who inhabit them from the clutches of a ruthless tyrant. There has to be something noble and right about that, even if you do have to kill some enemy soldiers in the process.”

“Next year,” he said, “or the year after, it will perhaps be Russia that is the enemy, or Prussia or Austria or America—and France that is the ally. The British, of course, are always on the side of good and right. On the side of God. God speaks with a British accent—did you know that? A refined, upper-class English accent, to be precise.”

She had lowered her needle to the cloth, but she continued to gaze at him.

“I am a killer,” he said again. “The great advantage of being a soldier, of course, is that I will never be hanged for my crimes. I will be feted and adulated instead. The ladies will continue to fall in love with me, even though I am already married—and even though I do not smile.”

What the devil was he babbling on about? He was feeling vicious—and alarmingly close to tears. He wished he could jump up and dash from the room without looking like an idiot, or that she would look down and get back to work. He could not remember when he had so lowered his guard before—perhaps it had not happened since he was a boy.

“I am so sorry,” she said at last. “I had no idea. I assumed that because you look so . . . I did not understand. Is it deliberate, I wonder, that we block out the shocking reality of what happens when one army defends the freedom of a nation against another army? And that we forget that an army is made up of real men with real feelings and consciences? Did Percy feel this way too? He never said anything. But he would not, I suppose.”

“I beg your pardon.” He got to his feet and turned his back on her, staring down into the unlit coals in the fireplace. “I gave a foolish answer to the simple question of why I do not smile. I believe I do smile, ma'am. And if I do not, it is doubtless because I am a Bedwyn. Have you ever seen Bewcastle smile?”

But he used to, a long, long time ago. When they were boys, they had used to holler and shriek and laugh, the two of them, and look on the world about them as their wonderful and magical and everlasting playground. That was the time when they had been the best of friends and almost inseparable.

But she would not allow him to change the subject.

“Why did you join the military?” she asked him.

He drew a slow breath. “It is what second sons of the aristocracy do,” he said. “Did you not know that? The eldest son as the heir, the second as the military officer, the third as the clergyman.” Except that Ralf had evaded the fate of the third son.

“But you stayed all these years, feeling as you do,” she said. “Why? Why have you not sold out? Apparently you are a very wealthy man and do not need the salary.”

“There is such a thing as duty, ma'am,” he told her. “Besides, you have misunderstood. I did not say I do not enjoy killing. I merely said that my life as a killer has prevented me from being a man who smiles at every empty frivolity.”

He turned to look at her when she did not answer him. She was sewing again, though it appeared to him that her hand was not as steady as it had been before.

“Did you enjoy your fittings this afternoon?” he asked.

This time, to his relief, she allowed her mind to be diverted. “I have ordered so many things,” she said. “It will be amazing if I wear each article of clothing even once during my brief stay in town. But Lady Rochester and Miss Benning both assured me that I have chosen only the bare minimum of necessary garments. It is all quite ridiculous. I dread to think what the bill is going to amount to, especially when all the accessories are added on—shoes, plumes, fans, bonnets, reticules, handkerchiefs, and so on and so on.”

“You need not concern yourself about that,” he said. “My pockets, as you just remarked, are deep.”

Her eyebrows rose sharply. “I will be paying the bills,” she said.

“I think not, ma'am.” He addressed her with deliberate hauteur. “I will clothe you and cover all your other living expenses for as long as you are with me.”

“No, you will not.” She threaded her needle through the cloth and set it aside. There were two spots of color in her cheeks. “Absolutely not, Colonel. I am quite capable of paying my own way. I will not hear—”

“Ma'am,” he said, narrowing his gaze on her, “the matter is not open for discussion. You are my
wife
.”

“I am
not
.” She stared at him wide-eyed. “You may speak to your men like that if you wish. You will not speak to
me
thus. I will not be bullied—not by you, not by the Duke of Bewcastle, not by the Marchioness of Rochester, not by anyone. I came to London of my own free will. I remained of my own free will—and against yours. I accepted Lady Rochester as a mentor of my own free will. I came and I remain, not as an inferior who must be whipped into shape in order not to shame the illustrious name of Bedwyn, but as an equal to return a favor you performed for me a few weeks ago. I will pay for my own clothes.”

“You are
not
my wife?” He ignored everything else she had said. “There is a certain register in a certain church that would give you the lie on that, ma'am. You wear my wedding ring on your finger. You engaged in conjugal relations with me yesterday afternoon. Today our son or our daughter may be growing in your womb. Is it your claim that that child would be a bastard?”

She paled noticeably. Had she not considered the possibility of conception? Truth to tell, he had not either until assaulted with it as he had tried to fall asleep—alone—last night.

“It is very unlikely,” she said.

“But possible.” He had been a fool to give in to lust. If there were a child, they would be forever linked by something far deeper, far more compelling than the simple marriage bond. He would not allow any child of his to grow up without a relationship with its father.

She reached down to her lap for her embroidery, which of course was no longer there. She clasped her hands together instead, lacing her fingers. They turned white under his gaze.

“I ought not to have come,” she said. “I ought to have resisted the duke's persuasions. It is not really true, is it, that the
ton
would condemn you if I were not here with you?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “There are plenty of people who believe that callousness and even cruelty come naturally to the Bedwyns. Though anyone who knows anything of our history would know too that it has always been a matter of honor with Bedwyn men to treat their wives with respect and courtesy. It is why most of us marry late or not at all, I suppose.”

“Would you have remained at home last evening and this if it were not for my being here?” she asked him.

“Probably not,” he admitted.

“Undoubtedly not,” she said, getting to her feet. “I am going to bed, Colonel. I am weary. You must go out if you wish. Go and find your brothers and sister or some colleagues and friends. You need not stay at home on my account.”

“You are my wife,” he said.

She laughed softly—a sound without humor—and turned away.

“Eve,” he said.

Her head jerked back his way.

“If we are to spend a few weeks in company with each other,” he said, “I believe we must dispense with this awkward
ma'am
and
colonel
business. I am Aidan.”

She nodded.

“And perhaps,” he added before he could stop to consider the wisdom of his words, “we should live together as man and wife for these weeks. Yesterday afternoon was good. We will both have enough years in which to be celibate.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor between them as she apparently thought over what he had suggested. All day it had been gnawing at him—the fact that they were married, that for the next few weeks they would inhabit this suite together, only the width of two connecting dressing rooms separating their bedchambers, that they had had each other once but apparently were not to have each other again. His sexual appetites were healthy enough, heaven knew. He did not know how he was going to deal with that other Bedwyn tradition—that its males, once they did marry, were scrupulously faithful to their wives. But in the meanwhile there were these few weeks.

“Of course,” he felt forced to warn her, though doubtless it was the very fact she was thinking over, “your chances of conceiving would be considerably increased.”

Her eyes came up to look into his, and he felt jolted by their expression, though he could not put a name to it. Wistfulness, perhaps? “I believe I would like that to happen,” she said. “Very well, then.”

She
wanted
it to happen? She wanted a child? He had been mistaken, then, in the assumptions he had made before wedding her? She had still hoped to find a man to love and marry? She had wanted a normal married life with children? He wondered briefly about the lover or lovers from her past—it still amazed him to know there had been any—but he brushed his curiosity aside. If she had wanted to marry the man, she had had her chance. Whoever he was, he had not rushed to her rescue a few weeks ago when she had so desperately needed a husband.

“I will come to you tonight, then,” he said. “In half an hour?”

“Yes.” She nodded and turned away again.

S
HE MIGHT BE WITH CHILD.
T
HE THOUGHT THRUMMED
through her mind, like a refrain. She might be
with child
. Or if she was not now, then she very possibly would be before these weeks were over and she returned home alone to Ringwood. She had very deliberately relinquished her dream of a happily-ever-after when she had agreed to marry in haste three weeks ago instead of waiting for John to come home. Now perhaps she had found another dream to dream.