The Pretenders (15 page)

Of course I had done no such thing. I had not anticipated needing a wedding dress at all.

Reeve frowned. “You can get a dress and whatever else you need in Brighton. That’s where the entire
ton
goes for the summer. There are bound to be some good shops there.”

I nodded absently. Clothing was the last thing on my mind at the moment. What I was trying to figure out was why Reeve suddenly seemed to be in as much of a rush to get us married as Bernard was.

A thought suddenly struck me. “Good grief, I have not yet spoken to Mama, Reeve. She does not know anything about this new … development.”

The two of us looked at each other as we realized that my mother was still under the illusion that our engagement was only a sham.

“You had better find her, Deb,” Reeve recommended. ”This is not the sort of thing you want her finding out from someone else.”

Certainly not
! I thought as I hurried from the room. Then,
What in the name of God is Mama going to say
?

I found my mother walking with Mrs. Norton in the garden, enjoying the sunshine after the rain and talking over the ball. I joined them with a smile and after a few minutes, sensing that I wanted to talk to Mama alone, Mrs. Norton tactfully removed herself back to the house.

I would have liked to ask Mama to sit down, but the garden benches were all wet from the rain, so we continued to stroll up and down the paths that led away from the central fountain.

“I have something to tell you, Mama, that I am sure will surprise you very much,” I said.

My mother said serenely, “And what is that, Deborah?”

I said in a rush, “Reeve and I have decided to really get married, and we are going to do it in two weeks’ time.”

My mother stopped walking and looked up at me. “You and Reeve are going to be married?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She searched my face with eyes that were as blue as the rain-washed sky. “What happened, Deborah?”

I sighed and began to walk forward again. “I’m afraid things just got out of hand, Mama, and now we are in too deep to back out.”

She said in distress, “Oh, darling, I was afraid this would happen.”

One of the hedges beside the path dripped a few leftover raindrops onto my dress, and I brushed them away. “I know you were, Mama. But I truly think everything would still be all right if it weren’t for Lord Bradford.”

Once more Mama stopped walking. “What has Lord Bradford done?”

I said hotly, “He is the one who is forcing us to get married. He is so stuffy, Mama! He has this notion in his head that the Lambeths are more important than the King! Do you know what he said to us?” I imitated Lord Bradford’s deep, measured tones: “
I will not have the Lambeth name subjected to a public disgrace
.”

Mama bit her lip and said nothing.

“Is that not positively Gothic?” I demanded. ”He would rather see his nephew forced into an unhappy marriage than risk the chance that a scandal might
touch the
sacred name of Lambeth.”

“Will it
be an unhappy marriage, Deborah?” Mama asked very soberly.

I could feel color flood my face as I tried to evade her question. “Oh, I don’t suppose either Reeve or I will be unhappy, Mama. We have known each other too long and like each other too well to be actively unhappy married to each other.”

A distinct frown appeared between Mama’s delicate fair brows. “I like Reeve very much,” she said. “I have always thought him to be a fine young man. But I do not want you to marry him if you do not wish to, Deborah. Believe me, nothing but misery can result from such a union.”

The hint of suppressed passion in the way she spoke shook me out of my own anger and made me look at her sharply.

“Misery?” I said.

“Marital relations between a man and a woman are very… intimate,” she said. Faint color stained her cheeks but she continued staunchly. ’To be blunt, Deborah, when you marry a man, you must share his bed as well as his name. I do not want you to feel that you are being forced into a marriage you do not want. If you want to cry off, I will stand behind you.”

I stared at my gentle mother in astonishment.

“Lord Bradford would be furious,” I said.

“I don’t care one jot about Lord Bradford’s opinion,” Mama said. ”Lord Bradford is not the one who is marrying Reeve.”

I tugged at the tendril of hair that Susan had left loose around my ear. This was the last kind of reaction I had expected from my mother.

I said tentatively, “At least my marrying Reeve would solve our financial difficulties.”

Mama said sharply, “I hope you are not thinking that your union with Reeve will take care of me, Deborah. I have managed to live very well for all these years on the allowance allotted to me by the Lynly estate. I don’t need any more money.”

“You may be getting more money anyway,” I said. ”Richard told me last night that when his uncle comes to visit the Swales, he is going to demand an explanation for why we have been so poorly treated for all this time. I have a feeling that your stepson has intentions of making restitution for his years of neglect.”

Mama’s small hand closed around my wrist – hard. “Did you say that John Woodly is coming to visit the Swale?”

I looked down at the hand that was holding my arm so tightly. Mama’s knuckles were white with pressure.

“Yes,” I said slowly. ”That is what Richard told me last night.”

All of the color had drained from Mama’s face.

“There is no mystery as to why we were treated so poorly,” she said tightly. ”The Woodlys did not want me to marry your papa, and when he died they got rid of me. It is as simple as that.”

I looked at my mother’s face, and for the first time I wondered if her relationship with the Woodlys wasn’t, in fact, far more complicated than she had led me to believe for all these years.

Her hand on my arm relaxed, and she made a visible effort to pull herself together. “It was nice to see Richard, but I want nothing to do with the rest of the Woodlys, Deborah. If you see your brother again, I would appreciate your telling him that.”

“All right, Mama,” I said very slowly.

“And I meant what I said about your marriage to.

Reeve,” she said. ”Do not feel that you are obligated to do anything that you do not wish to do, Deborah.”

“Reeve is desperate to get control of his money, Mama,” I said. ”In truth, I think if he has to go on the way he has been going for another two years, he may not make it to his twenty-sixth birthday. He desperately needs a purpose in his life, and I know he will take his responsibilities as a landlord seriously. I can’t back out on him.”

My mother’s eyes searched my face.

“Are you sure, darling? Marriage is for life, you know.”

I took a deep breath. I looked straight into her eyes. “I’m sure,” I lied.

She nodded slowly. “Very well. It is your decision to make, Deborah. Have you and Reeve decided upon a date?”

“Lord Bradford is going to get a special license so that we can be married in two weeks.”

“No,” Mama said. ”That I will not allow.”

I stared at her in amazement. “Why not?”

“Rushing the wedding is not the way to avoid a scandal,” my mother said. ”There will be all kinds of gossip if you get married without a proper calling of the banns.”

I asked bluntly, “Do you mean that people will be counting on their fingers?”

Once more the delicate color flushed into her cheeks. “Yes, that is precisely what I mean.”

“Well, the counting won’t add up to anything,” I said.

“I am sure that it won’t,” Mama said stoutly. ”But if Lord Bradford wants to avoid gossip, this is not the way to go about it.”

“I’ll tell you what, Mama,” I said. ”Why don’t you talk to Lord Bradford about this? I am quite sure that he will listen to you better than he will listen to either Reeve or to me.”

“Very well,” my mother said. She put her delicate chin into the air. ”I will.”

T
H
E REST OF THE AFTERNOON WAS QUIET. SALLY
and Mary Ann walked in the garden, no doubt feeling a little letdown after the excitement of the ball. Lady Sophia and Mama and Mrs. Norton disappeared upstairs to take naps. Harry went out with a gun, and Lord Bradford and Robert were nowhere to be seen. I was sitting in the library, idly looking through a book about the Italian Renaissance, when Reeve came in and suggested that we go out for a drive.

I agreed. After my conversation with Mama, it seemed to me that we had a few things we ought to discuss.

Reeve went to order the horses put to, and I went upstairs to get a hat. I was waiting at the front door when Reeve pulled up, driving Lord Bradford’s curricle with a pair of his own carriage horses pulling it.

We drove eastward, along a path that went through the beech woods of the Downs, to a place called Old-timber Hill. I had not been there before, and Reeve said he wanted to show it to me. The beeches that climbed the north side of the hill provided a shady walk to the top, and Reeve halted the curricle and left the groom we had brought holding the horses at the bottom while we took the long, winding path upward through the trees.

There was a wide expanse of turf along the top of the hill, and the views were well worth the climb. I feasted my eyes on an outstanding panorama of the Channel as well as views of the surrounding valleys and large downland estates of the local gentry.

Reeve and I stood side by side in the wind that was blowing off the Channel, while he pointed out the various local landmarks to me.

“And that is Crendon Abbey, the home of Lord Swale,” he said, pointing to a great rambling stone house that lay about three miles from the place where we were standing.

I looked down at the immense building, the many outbuildings, and the sprawling park. “It looks almost as impressive as Ambersley,” I said.

“Swale is plump in the pocket, no doubt about that,” Reeve said. ”Your brother made a good catch when he landed Charlotte.”

“A lot better catch than you will have made,” I returned a little grimly.

He made an impatient noise. “I thought we had covered that ground, Deb. I don’t need a wife with money.”

I stared down at Crendon Abbey and did not look at him. “Perhaps you don’t. But I had a talk with Mama, Reeve, and she pointed out a few other things that I don’t think either of us have taken into account”

He swung around to face me. “Such as?”

I bit my lip and continued to look at Crendon Abbey while I tried to find a way to say what had to be said delicately. “You can’t deny that there was a great deal of gossip in London when you produced me as your fiancée,” I began.

I shot a glance at him out of the side of my eyes and found him looking at me speculatively. The wind at the top of the hill was blowing strongly, and I had to hold on to my fashionable little straw hat to keep it from sailing away. Reeve motioned to the path that led down the hill and said, “Let’s walk a little way until we can get out of the wind.”

“All right,” I said, and followed him back down the path. In a few minutes we had found a small grassy nook that was sheltered by the beginning of the wood.

Once we had established ourselves on the grass, he took up the conversation again. “You shouldn’t be disturbed by gossip, Deb. There is always gossip about me.” His voice took on a bitter note. “Ever since Byron wrote that damn poem, every time I hiccup someone is sure to write it up in the newspaper.”

I plucked a wild daisy and nervously began to pull out the petals one by one. “You have to admit that this gossip had some basis, Reeve. When a man as notorious as you suddenly produces a fiancée out of nowhere… well, you really can’t blame people for gossiping.”

“It’s nobody’s damn business if I choose to marry,” he said shortly.

He was reclining on the grass next to me, propped up on one elbow, his long legs stretched in front of him. The wind was much less forceful down here below the hilltop. It only stirred his hair lightly as he plucked a blade of grass and put it between his teeth.

I said, “Reeve, I am not trying to back out of our marriage, but this scheme of Lord Bradford’s to marry us so quickly is a mistake. Mama saw that immediately. I cannot understand how a man as sensitive to scandal as Lord Bradford is did not see it as well.”

I was sitting next to him, my legs folded under me, my sprigged-muslin skirt decorously spread over my feet in their light summer shoes. He looked up at me, squinting a little as the sun slanting through the trees shone into his eyes.

He said, “I suppose I’m as stupid as Bernard, but I don’t see it either, Deb.”

I gave up on delicacy, and said baldly, “People will think that you got me with child and then had to marry me.”

Silence. Nothing in his face changed.

I ticked it off on my fingers for him in case he still hadn’t understood.

“One: I am not your equal in either rank or fortune.

“Two: You unveiled me in London like a conjurer producing a rabbit out of a hat, took me to a few parties, then rushed me down here to Sussex to your cousin’s house.

“Three: We will not be in Sussex above a few weeks before you marry me.”

I leaned a little closer, anxious to make my point. “Now, you tell me, Reeve. If you had heard these things about someone else, what would
you
think?”

He was looking up into my face, the stalk of grass still between his teeth, his eyes still narrowed against the sun.

I said very firmly, “You must speak to your cousin and get him to give up this insane idea of forcing us to marry in two weeks’ time.”

Very slowly Reeve removed the blade of grass from between his teeth and threw it away. Then he reached up and put his hand on my arm. It took me a second to understand the fact that he was levering me down to the grass beside him.

Just for a moment, I resisted. Useless. He was very strong.

In another second he had me where he wanted me, lying on the grass next to him. I looked up into his face, and what I saw there caused my heart to begin to hammer loudly in my chest.

I ran my tongue around my suddenly dry lips. “Reeve?” I said.

He didn’t answer. He just removed my hat.

I tried again. “W-what are you going to do?”

His eyes were black and glittering between his narrowed lids. His face was hard. He said, “I’m going to kiss you, Deb.” And he put his hands on either side of my shoulders and lowered his mouth to mine.

It was like the other time, only even more intense. He kissed me hard, and I shuddered with the violence of my own feelings. I opened my lips and kissed him back. He had been balancing himself over me, holding most of his weight on his hands, but now he lowered himself to the ground beside me, turned me and pulled me toward him. I felt his hard body against mine, felt his warmth, inhaled the special scent that was Reeve.

The blood was pounding through my veins, and I was dizzy with desire.

His tongue explored the inside of my mouth.

This went on for quite a while. Then his hand reached into the scooped neck of my dress and found my breast.

I whimpered.

“Oh God, Deb,” he said. I scarcely recognized his voice, it was so hoarse. ”Oh God. We have to stop this.”

“Yes,” I panted. ”We do.”

He turned me on my back and inserted his leg between mine. I could feel him pressing up against me. His mouth was devouring mine. My arms were wound under his arms, clutching his back, holding him close to me. I arched upward, to get even closer.

His hand went down to my leg and began to push up my skirt.

I summoned up all the willpower I had left, and said strongly, “
Reeve
.”

He shuddered. Then, with what appeared to be a superhuman effort of his own will, he flung himself away from me, jumped to his feet, and went to stand on the far side of the clearing, his head bent, his breath ratcheting audibly in the soft summer air as he tried to get himself under control.

I was not in a much better case. I sat up and rested my forehead on my updrawn knees.

I was profoundly shaken by what had just occurred between us.

Finally he spoke to me over his shoulder. “You wanted to know why I agreed to Bernard’s wish that we be married in two weeks time. Well, that is the reason.”

I sat in silence while I digested this comment.

Finally I said, “You want to sleep with me.”

At that he turned to face me. His face was still taut, but a faint touch of humor glinted in his narrowed eyes.

“Jesus Christ, Deb,” he said fervently ”I desperately want to sleep with you.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” I said automatically.

He made an impatient gesture with his right hand.

I rubbed my forehead. “I am so confused,” I said.

His voice softened. “I understand, sweetheart. But I have a lot more experience than you have, and you can believe me when I tell you that you and I will deal very well together.”

I was not altogether happy to hear about all his previous experience. What I wanted to hear was that he loved me.

He didn’t say it.

What he said was, “Let’s go along with Bernard, shall we, and let the marriage take place within two weeks.” He unleashed on me the full power of his smile, seemingly fully recovered from the storm of passion that had overtaken him not ten minutes earlier. “I really don’t think I can wait much longer than that.”

He wanted my body, I thought. He was a young man, with a young man’s appetites, and he had probably been celibate for a longer time than he was accustomed to. I supposed I should be grateful that he was waiting for me and not looking for relief with some doxy in Chichester or Brighton.

“Mama is going to talk to Lord Bradford,” I said. “What if he changes his mind?”

“You can be certain that Bernard has already weighed all the possibilities and has come to the conclusion that it is more important to get me married than it is to have people speculating behind our backs for a few months’ time. There may be some talk when we first are wed, but when a baby doesn’t appear in an untimely fashion, he knows the gossip will die down.”

He crossed the clearing and held out his hand to help me to my feet Once I was standing in front of him, he looked down into my face. The smile had left his face, and it was grave. “Do
you
have any objections, Deb? If you do, now is the time to speak up.”

I didn’t meet his eyes but instead looked straight ahead of me, directly at his mouth.

This was not a good idea, as the stab of desire that pierced through my body indicated.

I lowered my eyes to fix on his chin, which was as beautiful as his mouth but not so explosive. “I suppose I don’t if you don’t,” I said.

“Good.” He bent down to retrieve my hat from the grass.

“It’s too bad that we can’t go directly to Ambersley after the wedding,” he said as he perched the hat back on my head. ”I am not particularly enamored of the idea of hanging around Wakefield Manor for another week, being skewered by the curious eyes of a houseful of people.”

“Well, Reeve,” I said spiritedly, ”If you had not volunteered me to organize this bloody summer fair, then we would not have to remain at Wakefield Manor at all.”

“I know, I know,” he said gloomily. ”It’s all my fault.”

“Well, it is.”

He jammed the hat more firmly on my head and bent his head to kiss my bare neck where it joined with my shoulder. “I’ll manage,” he said. “Don’t worry about that.”

I felt the fire of that kiss all the way back to Wake-field.

I went into my mother’s room when we returned and found she had arisen from her nap and was having a cup of tea. She poured me a cup also, and the two of us sat in front of the unused fireplace, with the soft wind blowing in through the open window, and I told her about my talk with Reeve.

I did not tell her about anything else that had happened on the top of Oldtimber Hill.

Mama said, “Deborah, I really do not want you subjected to unnecessary gossip.”