His at Night (18 page)

He did not like her but he had to admire her, for it was the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen on the face of a bride. Nothing gloating or boastful to it, only a simple and shyly serene joy—as if she were marrying the man of her dreams and could not believe her sheer good fortune.

He turned his head away.

The ceremony lasted and lasted—the clergyman was the wordy sort who saw no reason to abbreviate his homilies, even though the irregular nature of the proceedings must be obvious. The rain, which began at the same time as the ceremony, had intensified to a steady shower by the time Vere and his bride emerged from the church, arm in arm.

He handed her into the waiting carriage, then climbed in himself. She was surprised when the carriage door closed behind him. Her gaze flickered to him. In the sudden tightness of her posture he sensed her understanding—deep down—of what being married meant. That she would now be alone with him, and there would be no one to chaperone them.

No one to say what he could or could not do.

She smiled at him, a very proper, blissful-new-bride smile—it was her method of exerting control over any given situation. And yet he, who should—and did—know so much better, experienced once more an unwarranted flutter of happiness.

He tried to call to mind his once-constant companion, but he could no longer form an unpolluted image of her. Her simplicity had been spoiled by Lady Vere’s complicity, her warm ease distorted by his wife’s cold calculation.

He did not smile back at the woman he’d married. It occurred to him that there was quite enough time on the drive to the hotel—only two miles, but the rain was certain to cause delays in the traffic—for him to take her.

That
would wipe the smile from her face.

Her fingers flicked away drops of rain that had landed on the glossy silk of her skirt. The material was heavy and chaste. She was swaddled, every single inch south of her chin. Even her hair was largely invisible beneath the veil. But he already knew what his sweet-faced liar looked like undressed, didn’t he?

If he lowered the window shades, he could disrobe her this moment, from the top down—or bottom up, if he were so inclined. Actions had consequences. These would be her consequences: horror, revulsion, and eventually arousal; her nakedness separated from the elements by nothing but the black leather-padded walls of a Clarence brougham; the sounds she’d make, under him, muffled by the hard drumming of the rain on the roof, the clacking and grinding of a torrent of carriages, and the continual din that was London being London.

She turned and looked out the rear window. “Ah, they are right behind us.”

As if it mattered.

He did not answer her, but turned his face toward the soggy world outside, while his bride sat still and breathed with quiet, meticulous care.

Elissande stood on the balcony of her suite at the very top of the Savoy Hotel. London was a muted, distant murmur. Light from Victoria Embankment rippled on the dark waters of the River Thames. The great spires of the city rose tall and black against the shadows of the night.

She had been married four hours.

She’d describe her marriage thus far as hushed.

She’d also describe it as long.

His silence had been nerve-wracking on the drive back to the hotel. There she’d discovered that neither Lady Kingsley nor Lord Frederick would join them for dinner: The former was in a hurry to get back to her guests, the latter, having recently accepted a commission, needed to gather the necessary matériel to begin his work. After she’d seen to Aunt Rachel’s dinner and put her to bed, she and Lord Vere had dined alone in a private room and he’d said not a word to her—
not a single word—
beyond a barely audible “Amen” at the end of grace. And now this interminable wait in their suite, which, while in terms of absolute time had yet to surpass the length of dinner, already had her in a state of head-throbbing tension.

Or perhaps that was the three glasses of champagne that she’d tossed back one after another.

Had she never read the book on matrimonial law
that had once been in her uncle’s library, perhaps she would now be tentatively rejoicing that she was both married and blessedly left alone. But with knowledge came fear: an unconsummated marriage carried severe risks.

Had her uncle returned to Highgate Court yet? Had he learned what had happened and set out in pursuit? Was he even now hunting them in London?

And where was Lord Vere? Smoking? Drinking? Gone elsewhere by himself, even though a small suitcase of his had been delivered to the suite?

What if her uncle should locate her husband, sit him down for a talk, and point out all the obvious reasons why he did not want to be married to Elissande? Once he had Lord Vere convinced, it was only a short hop to an annulment, which would leave her with no husband, no protection, and not even the right to brag of having ever been married.

The height of the hotel was suddenly dizzying. She retreated into the relative safety of the sitting room, where on the table sat a small, beautifully iced cake, with pale blush marzipan roses blooming along deep green marzipan vines—her wedding cake, compliments of the hotel. With the cake had come a cake knife, napkins, plates, a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Sauternes.

And no one to share any of it with.

She had been certain some mishap would erupt during the wedding ceremony. Lord Vere would mangle his vows. He would say the name of some other lady. Or, God forbid, he would decide at the last
moment that he could not go through with the wedding, his reputation and her ruin be damned.

Instead he’d been solemn and steady. And she’d been the one to say his name wrong—Spencer Russell Blandford Churchill Stuart was quite a mouthful—and stumble over her vows not once, but twice.

Married.

She dared not understand it fully.

The door handle rattled lightly. She leaped to her feet. She’d locked the suite door out of fear of her uncle’s sudden appearance.

“Who is it?” Her voice was wobbly. Breathless, almost.

“Is this Lady Vere’s room?”

Lord Vere’s—her husband’s voice.

She squeezed her eyes shut a second, then moved forward.

Smile
.

She had her smile in place before she opened the door. “Good evening, Lord Vere.”

“Evening, Lady Vere.”

He still wore the dark gray formal coat in which he’d been married—and which had somehow remained miraculously immaculate.

“May I come in?” he asked very politely, his hat in hand.

She realized that she had been standing in his way, staring at him. “Of course. I beg your pardon.”

Would he notice her flushed complexion? He might, if he’d look at her. But he only walked past her
into the middle of the sitting room and glanced about.

The suite had been furnished in the manner of a gentleman’s home, the wallpapers a muted blue, the furniture sturdy yet unobtrusive. In Aunt Rachel’s suite there had been Chinese vases painted in red ochre; here there were blue Delft plates displayed in a semicircle above a mahogany chiffonier.

“The cake is here,” she said for something to say, locking the door again behind her.

He turned around, not so much at her words, but at the sound of the door locking—for that was where his gaze flicked before coming to rest on her face.

He had misunderstood what she meant by locking the door. He thought she signaled that she was ready to be his wife in truth: There was a tautness to his stare, a challenge almost.

She found she couldn’t hold his gaze. Her eyes instead focused on the boutonniere on his lapel, a single blossom of blue delphinium, the color so deep and rich it was almost purple.

“The cake is here,” she repeated herself. “Would you like me to cut it?”

“It would be a pity to eat it; it’s too pretty.”

She hurried to the table and reached for the cake knife. “Even something too pretty to eat will still spoil if no one eats it.”

“How profound,” he murmured.

Was that
irony
she heard in his voice?

She glanced at him and belatedly noticed that he
clutched a bottle of whiskey by its neck in his left hand. She swallowed. Of course he was not happy. He’d been abused abominably. He knew quite well he had been entrapped.

Any idiot would know that.

She grimaced at the vocabulary of her thought, lowered her face, and attacked the cake, heaping his plate with an oversized slice. He set down the whiskey bottle, accepted the cake, and walked across the sitting room to the balcony.

She wished he’d revert to his blabbering ways. She could not have imagined that his silence would be so difficult to ignore—or to fill.

“Would you like something to drink with the cake?” she asked. “Some whiskey, perhaps?”

“Whiskey doesn’t go well with cake.” He sounded faintly impatient.

“Sauternes then?”

He shrugged.

She looked at the bottle of Sauternes. There was a cork underneath the wax seal. She believed it called for a corkscrew. And indeed, one had been supplied, between the bottles. She picked it up and turned it around in her palm. How did one use it? Uncorking bottles was the work of the servants at home.

“Should I call for assistance?” she asked timidly.

He returned to the table and set down his untouched cake. Taking the corkscrew from her, he inserted it into the cork. With a few deft turns of his wrist and one decisive pull, the cork emerged with a
clean pop. He poured a full glass and set it before her, poured a full tumbler of whiskey for himself, and returned to the balcony with only that.

The rain had abated to a near-mist when she had returned to the suite after dinner. But now a strong, cold wind whipped, and the clouds looked ready to burst again. He drank slowly but steadily from his glass. The shaded electric light of the sitting room illuminated his profile against the dark, overcast sky beyond.

He was supposed to fidget, to tap his fingers against the glass or scrape his feet back and forth across the floor. He was not supposed to cut a stark, almost ominous figure ahead of an approaching storm.

She could not look away from him.

To distract herself, she raised her own glass. She didn’t much care for wine or spirits, but the Sauternes was sweet, almost like a dessert on its own. She drank with a nervous thirst and, within a minute, stared at the bottom of her glass.

“It’s been a long day,” he said. He straddled the threshold between the balcony and the sitting room. “I think I’ll retire early.”

Was that her cue that he was taking her to bed? Her stomach felt as if someone took it by the ends and gave it a twist—though not as awful a twist as she would have expected. It must be the Sauternes and the champagne from dinner. She was only mildly panicked.

“You don’t wish for a taste of the cake?” she said,
not sure what else she could say.
Good night? I’ll join you shortly?

“No, thank you.” He set down his empty glass and ran his hand through his hair. She’d thought he had brown hair with strands of dark blond. She was quite mistaken. It was the other way around—he had mostly dark blond hair, and a few chestnut streaks here and there. “Good night, Lady Vere.”

He disappeared into the en suite bathroom. She poured herself another glass of Sauternes. A few minutes later, as she was once more looking at her empty glass, he came out of the bathroom, headed directly into one of the two bedrooms, and closed the door.

Only to come out thirty seconds later, grab the whiskey bottle from before her, and leave again with a perfunctory nod.

She was flummoxed. She did not want to go to bed with him, but given the way he’d looked at her when they were at Highgate Court—and inside the Clarence brougham this afternoon—she had not considered the possibility that he would ignore her outright on their wedding night.

Well, this would not do. She could not possibly give her uncle such an easy opening as an unconsummated marriage. He was not going to stroll through the courts with some trumped-up invalidity concerning her wedding ceremony, and then wave this non-consummation before the judges. He’d have to exert himself to prove that she was of unsound mind, at the very least.

This marriage would be consummated, and that was that.