Not Quite Married (2 page)

Lawrence Weston, wealthy and powerful earl of Southwold, propped his graying head in his hands.

What had he done?

Two

IN THE SIX WEEKS since the sacking of the stablemaster, the incident had almost been forgotten. The earl had stayed at Byron Place only long enough to see another stablemaster hired and then had left for Paris, citing urgent business. Now he returned in the dead of night, alone and riding hard, and summoned her to his study first thing the next morning.

Brien dressed carefully, choosing her best blue silk with a voile bodice insert gathered to a cameo, and pristine white cuffs. Her maid took pains with her hair and produced a simple but dignified chignon. She knew her father felt she was headstrong and unwomanly, and was determined to give him no grounds for criticism.

Pausing just outside the huge double doors to take a deep breath, she smoothed the folds of her skirt, squared her shoulders, and entered. The earl sat behind his ornate teak desk, seeming immersed in a document in his hand. He looked up as the click of the door latch and the rustle of her skirts announced her presence.

“You sent for me?”

“I have a matter of some importance to discuss with you.” He waved her into a chair facing his desk.

“What matter is that, Father?” She sank onto the edge of the seat.

He had made it painfully clear on his last visit that he wanted no interference or even help from her. What could be so important now, that he would actually consult her?

“I’ve recently returned from Paris and have decided—” He halted, tossed the document onto the desktop and rose, deciding to start again. “We will have visitors a fortnight from now. Two members of the Trechaud family of Paris—” He halted again, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced away.

Guests? The thought surprised her. His French associates were paying him a visit? Did he expect her to entertain them? She glanced around at the worn comfort of the study and thought of the age and wear apparent all through the house. Surely he didn’t intend to bring them here. Then she realized that he was wrestling with something more and a knot of anxiety formed in the pit of her stomach. Anything that caused the earl of Southwold such consternation must be a difficult problem indeed.

“You will be twenty-two years old in three weeks, Brien,” he began in an emphatic tone, looking up from his boots. “It has recently come to my attention that I have been remiss in planning for your future.” He straightened, assuming his most lordly manner, and she braced instinctively. “While in Paris I called upon the marquis de Saunier, a man respected in French financial circles. He and I agreed that a marriage between our children would be most desirable.”

“Marriage?” Her chest contracted around her lungs, reducing the word to a whisper.

“Seeing you wedded and settled into such a prosperous family will set my mind at ease.” But there was little ease or pleasure in the smile he produced. “Your husband-to-be, Raoul Trechaud, will join us in a fortnight. The nuptials will take place a month after that. I have already made arrangements.” His announcement delivered, he returned to his desk and sat down as if relieved of a burden.

She was to be wedded? To a Frenchman? In little more than a month?

“But, I didn’t think I would be required to . . . you never said anything about . . .” The full impact of his edict finally broke through the shock that had immobilized her. She pushed to her feet, reeling. Was this her punishment, long delayed, for sacking Seaton? For presuming upon her father’s precious authority?

“You have promised me in marriage to a man I have never seen?

Without the slightest regard for my wishes?”

“With full regard for your
interests.
A far more important consideration.” He swept her with an appraising gaze, which caught momentarily on her waistline. “There are few families about with sons who might make a suitable match.”

A suitable match. She saw the direction of his gaze and sensed his underlying thought. Despite her wealth, a plump, bookish female who had no knowledge of society would scarcely be considered a matrimonial prize. Her outrage was abruptly undercut by a hot surge of shame.

“You’ve waited this long to demand— You might have at least given me a chance to meet some gentlemen and—”

“You were unlikely to find candidates in local society,” the earl said flatly, once again a baron of commerce, ordering and dispatching. “I have saved you the trouble of a season in London and secured a far better match than you might have managed there.” He watched color flooding her face and his tone grew firmer. “You have been too long with your books and charities.

Too much learning impedes a young woman’s sense of balance and propriety. It’s time you took your place in society and set about giving me some grandchildren.”

“But what if the man . . . what if he is not . . .”

“Agreeable?” he offered.

“Acceptable!” She found the word she searched for. “What if the man is not
acceptable
?” she repeated angrily.

“Brien—” Something caused him to rein what would have surely been a furious outburst. “I would never force my only daughter to wed a man she found distasteful. I have seen him. He will be acceptable in every way.”

Was that his opinion of the man or a command that she agree no matter what her true feelings? She bit her lip to hold back words that would only worsen her situation. A pitched battle here would only confirm his conviction that she had been allowed to run her own life too long already. In a wave of insight, she saw that his charge against her was all too true; she
had
run her life without interference for too long to bend easily to society’s expectations or to her father’s dictates.

Taking her silence for surrender, he nodded and his voice softened. “I’ve engaged a dressmaker—the best in London—who will arrive this afternoon. We have much to do and just over a month to prepare. The wedding invitations have already been sent.”

Invitations? Already sent? A London engraver had been given more notice of her wedding than she had? Choked with outrage, she headed for the door.

“Brien.” His voice halted her, but she refused to turn back. “This was sudden, I know. In time you will see that it is best.”

As the door closed behind her, she gathered up her skirts and ran through the great hall and up the stairs. Standing in the middle of her bedchamber, trembling, scalding tears searing paths down her cheeks, she felt betrayed by her own good sense as much as her father’s manipulation. She should have known there would be retribution for Seaton, should have prepared herself for it. But how could she have imagined that it would take so drastic a form? And what could she possibly have done to prevent it?

Seizing the bolsters from the bed, she flung them with all her might across the room, smashing a vase on her dressing table and sending a lacquered box crashing to the floor. The noise brought a young woman in servant gray rushing to the doorway.

“What’s happened, my lady?” the maid whispered, hurrying to her side.

“He means to marry me off. ‘It’s time you took your place in society,’ he said. What does he know of my place? He’s barely spoken to me for five years!

“I’ve seen to the tenants, the planting and harvests, and the accounts. I’ve sat with Byron Place’s people as they birthed and died and mourned and prayed . . . purchased them plows and looms and tools . . . found them work when necessary . . .

provided medicines and shoes and schooling for their children.

This is my home as it has never been his. This is my place. These are my people.”

In the silence that followed, Brien sank into the cushions of the window seat and then wilted against the window frame, wiping at a stream of tears. She stared through the window, unblinking, unseeing at first. But gradually her vision began to focus. The gardens below were alive with color and vibrant with the warmth of the new summer. And yet, from this distance, it was clear that every shoot and blossom was constrained in a symmetry ordained by unnatural standards . . . staked and culled and pruned to please the human eye. Until that moment, she had never thought of gardens as the victims of human desire.

“Everything so neatly arranged. Everything in its place. And me in m-mine.” Her voice broke.

With a familiarity beyond her servant status, the maid sank onto the edge of the window seat and put her arm around her lady’s shoulders.

“Oh, Ella, I’m just a commodity—daughter—to be dispatched to its proper place,” Brien whispered. As the energy of her anger dissipated, the sobs she had held at bay slipped through the cracks in her self-control. “I shall go from obeying my father to obeying a husband, never having known the world as myself.”

Ella pulled a dry handkerchief from her apron and shoved it into her mistress’s hands. After a few moments, the maid drew back a bit and studied her mistress.

“Well, ye didn’t think ye’d get t’ sit ’ere molderin’ away forever, did ye? Th’ surprise is, ’e ain’t thought of marryin’ ye off before now.” The maid’s dark eyes flashed and she ducked her head to engage Brien’s gaze, producing a tart little smile. “An’ as for seein’ th’ world . . . it’s a bit overrated, if ye ask me. I grew up in Cheapside and ever bloke in my family run off t’ sea an’

adventure as soon as ’e got breeched. I seen folk comin’ off ships from all over th’ world, an’ they didn’t look no ’appier than folk

’ere on Byron Place. Yer not missin’ much, my lady, I promise ye.” When Brien sat back with a deep, shuddering breath, Ella gave her a smile that very near coaxed one from Brien.

“And ’usbands can prove useful, you know. Moreso than fathers.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “They ’ave t’ ’elp ye in and out of carriages . . . keep ye company at dinner . . . deal wi’ disgustin’ old squires that poach yer woods . . . fire stablemasters what need sackin’ . . . buy ye jewels an’ pretty dresses. Oh, yeah.” She grinned. “’Usbands ’ave their uses. So, what’s this one yer gettin’ like?”

“I have no earthly idea.”

“Well, then . . . there’s room t’ ’ope. Maybe ’e’ll be a prize bedwarmer.”

“Ella.”

“If you got no choice, then ye might as well look for th’ good in what befalls ye. Who knows? ’E may turn out t’ be a regular prince!”

IF SHE WERE a commodity, Brien realized later that afternoon as she witnessed the arrival of the dressmaker, she was at least being dispatched in style. The renowned French
couturier
arrived as promised with a huge retinue of drapers, cutters, and seamstresses, and an entire shop’s worth of woven goods and ladies’ accessories.

The slight, dapper Monsieur Lamont had a rapier-sharp wit and a tongue like a lash, but from the moment Brien presented herself before him with puffy eyes, a red nose, and a declaration that he was probably undertaking the greatest dressmaking challenge of his life, he seemed to like her.

Then, late on that first day, when he caught one of his beleaguered assistants sneaking a bit of food and was about to launch into a scalding rebuke, Brien interceded.

“Monsieur, does not Holy Scripture prohibit muzzling the ox as it treads the grain?”

Lamont hooted an irreverent laugh and declared he would create for her his very finest . . . which, it soon became clear, was very fine indeed. The next morning, he began to rework and modify the designs she had chosen, to enhance what he called her

“assets.”

“My ‘assets’?” she muttered. “That shouldn’t take long.”

Embarrassment flooded her cheeks as he stared at her, then seized her by the wrist and dragged her before the large pier glass in the chamber set aside for the fittings.

“First,” he declared, untying her corset and wrenching it tighter,

“you must be willing to suffer for your beauty. See how this enhances the waist and bosom?”

She groaned. “And how it restricts breathing.”

“There will be time for breathing when you are old and withered.” He yanked her petticoat from her and she squealed.

“Really, Monsieur . . .”

“Ahhh.” He seemed pleasantly surprised. “Such lovely limbs.

And trim ankles. We must see that you have lots of dainty slippers to show them off.”

“Show off my ankles?” She was scandalized.

“Such an innocent.” The monsieur patted her forgivingly on the head. “You must take care when you go out in the world, eh?

There are wolves out there.” His eyes twinkled. “And they adore fine ankles.”

She almost said that her ankles were the only part of her that was in any way “fine,” but she sensed in his genteel exasperation a true compliment and absorbed it.

Relentlessly, he analyzed her form . . . approving the color of her hair, the clarity of her eyes, and the smoothness of her skin.

Slowly she began to see herself through his exacting but not unsympathetic eyes. Nicely tapered limbs. Strikingly light eyes.

Her deficits, she realized, were actually problems of overabundance. Too much hip and waist . . . a bosom that was too bountiful to restrain neatly in the usual straight corset . . .

By the end of the second day, Brien was filled with conflicting feelings of insecurity and stubborn self-worth, and overwhelmed by the continual scrutiny and the endless choices required of her.

It was all happening so fast. There were so many changes around her and—she forced herself to admit—within her. She was surprised by how much pleasure the prospect of new garments gave her. But it was unnerving, having every aspect of her form and movement analyzed and discussed at length . . . in her presence.

She might as well resign herself to such scrutiny, she told herself, thinking of the social ordeal yet to come. A schedule of engagements and entertainments had already been planned. She would be paraded and inspected and assessed and compared. . . .

And part of the assessing and comparing would be done by her husband-to-be. Her heart skipped a beat. What if he found her homely and rustic in manner and appallingly unsophisticated?

She refused to be daunted by the thought. After all, as the little monsieur said, she had assets. She peered at herself in the glass over her dressing table. She had no idea what her future husband’s standards might be for a desirable wife, but she always strove to be honest and dutiful . . . was charitable to a fault . . .