Only Enchanting (23 page)

“Even if I am not invited,” Dora promised, pulling back. “You will wake up one morning to find me camped on your doorstep, and you will take me in out of pity. And then I will refuse to go away again.”

She was laughing.

But
where
would she invite Dora? Agnes almost panicked again. She did not even know where her home was going to be. She knew
nothing
—except that her last name was Arnott. She was Agnes Arnott, Viscountess Ponsonby. She sounded like a stranger to herself.

And then everyone was gone. The vicar’s gig was already clopping along the terrace and turning to skirt about the formal parterres. The Duke of Stanbrook was handing Dora into Mr. Harrison’s carriage, and it too moved off as soon as Mr. Harrison had climbed in after her and shut the door.

Dora was gone home to a cottage that was no longer Agnes’s. Her trunk and bags were already packed—she had spent a few hours of last night getting them ready, as well as a bag of things she would need tonight and tomorrow morning. Her possessions would be picked up tomorrow, and then she would no longer belong in Inglebrook. She did not know when she would see Dora again.

Flavian had drawn her arm through his and was peering into her face, a large white handkerchief in his free hand.

“I will see to it that you are never s-sorry,” he said, his voice low. “I p-promise, Agnes.”

The tears that had been brimming in her eyes spilled over then, and she took the handkerchief from him to mop them up.

“I am not sorry,” she said. “I am only sad about saying good-bye to Dora. It is not easy to leave one’s home, even though it has been my home for less than a year. And I do not even know where my new home is to be. I did not even know what my
name
was to be when I arrived at the church this morning.”

“Arnott?” he said. “I kept it from you. I thought it m-might tip the scale against me last night. I thought you might not like the s-sound of Agnes Arnott.”

She folded the handkerchief and allowed him to take it from her.

“You are sometimes quite absurd,” she said.

He smiled. It was a new expression, one she had not seen before. It crinkled his eyes at the corners and contained not a discernible trace of mockery. She thought he was going to say something else, but he appeared to change his mind. He merely patted her hand on his arm and turned back into the house with her.

Oh, dear heavens, he was her
husband
.

13

T
he guest suite was above the state drawing rooms—both of them. It was large, to say the least. Two people could, Flavian concluded, hide quite effectively from each other if they wished. There were two bedchambers, with two side-by-side dressing rooms between, each large enough to hold a prince or princess with all their attendant ladies- or gentlemen-in-waiting, with space to spare for them to breathe. And there was a grand sitting room, spacious enough to accommodate all the aforementioned court of persons, plus a generous allotment of guests.

The whole of the apartment had been cleaned to a shine. The top of one sideboard was more than half-covered with wines and liquors and glasses. There were silver and crystal dishes of fruit and nuts and bonbons on various tabletops. There were covered plates of cakes and sweet biscuits on another sideboard, with a tray of both tea and coffee, which had been delivered only moments after the bride and groom had arrived. And supper would be brought at nine o’clock, the liveried servant informed them with a bow—in two hours’ time, in other words.

“But you surely wish to be with your friends tonight,” Agnes informed Flavian after she had finished sinking
into one of four cushioned seats on a magnificent and obviously extremely comfortable sofa with gilded feet and arms and back. “It is your last night together.”

“And by coincidence,” he said, taking up his stand before her, his hands clasped at his back, his feet slightly apart, “it is my
first
night with my b-bride. Those friends might well beat me about the h-head with one of Ben’s c-canes if I were to choose them over you.”

She was still wearing her green dress. She was still looking like a prim and pretty governess. He had almost told her so out on the terrace when she had said he was sometimes quite absurd. But she might have been offended to be called prim, and not even have noticed the
pretty
. Women could be like that.

“And
y-you
might well beat me about the head with your b-bare hand if I chose them,” he added. “You would all have to draw lots.”

“I would n—” she began.

“And
I
would beat
myself
about the head if I was t-tempted for even a moment to be such a d-dolt as to leave you here and d-dash off to them,” he said. “We would
all
have to draw lots. I believe I and my head will be safe, however. Conversation with one’s f-friends on the one hand and sex with one’s new w-wife on the other is not even a fair competition.”

As he had expected, her cheeks, and even her neck and the small amount of bosom that had been allowed to show above the neckline of her dress, were suddenly suffused with color. Her lips did something that made her look even more like a governess. But she held his eyes.

“I wish you would not loom over me like that,” she said, “trying to look sleepy when I know very well you are not.”

He smiled slowly at her. “I am
definitely
not s-sleepy,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”

He sat on the cushion beside hers and found himself at least two feet away from her. Where the deuce had a former Viscount Darleigh found such a monstrous piece of furniture? It probably weighed a ton and a half, and it would surely accommodate twenty persons seated side by side, provided they were slender and did not mind cozying up to one another. Yet it did not come even close to dwarfing the room.

He took her hand in one of his and curled his fingers about it.

“What shall we do between now and nine o’clock?” he asked her. “Sit here and c-converse like polite s-strangers, or go to bed?”

She drew a breath through her nose and released it through her mouth. “It is not even quite dark.”

Which remark spoke volumes. Sex in her first marriage had been conducted under cover of decent darkness, then, had it? But he did
not
want to think about the dull William.

“Where is home?” she asked him.

She had opted for the conversation between strangers, it seemed.

“Candlebury Abbey in Sussex,” he said. “The old part r-really was an abbey once, though you will not be expected to move from room to room along d-draughty cloisters or sleep in a b-bare stone cell. I do not spend much time in the country—or any at all, in fact. There is also Arnott House in L-London.”

“Why?” The inevitable question. “Why do you never go to Candlebury Abbey?”

He shrugged and opened his mouth to tell her it was too large a place for one man to rattle around in alone. But she was his wife. She probably ought to know a few simple facts about the man she had married.

“I still think of it as David’s,” he said. “My elder
brother’s. He loved every inch of it, and he knew the history of it. He had r-read and reread everything about it he could get his hands on. He knew every b-brushstroke on every p-painting. He knew every stone and flagstone in the old abbey. He knew the p-peace of it all, the h-holiness. He always wished he could conjure spirits or ghosts, but the only spirit there is h-his. Or so I imagine. He died there at the age of twenty-five. There were four years between us. He was the viscount before I was, though it was becoming increasingly clear even before our father died when David was eighteen that he was not going to live a full lifespan. He had always been of delicate health—I was more than half a f-foot taller than he by the time I was thirteen, and a good deal heavier even though I was a g-gangly youth and all elbows and knees. We all understood he had c-consumption, though it was never spoken aloud in my hearing. I
was
, though, being f-firmly prepared to take over the position of v-viscount myself by the two of our six hundred uncles who had been named our guardians. No b-bones were made about it either. No attempt was made to be t-tactful or subtle. David was aware of it—how could he not have been? But he allowed it to h-happen without comment. I was his heir, after all. Even if he had been robust and healthy, I would have been his heir until he m-married and fathered a son. Finally I could s-stand no more of it. I r-refused to go to university when I was eighteen, as they had planned for me. I insisted on a m-military career instead, and David purchased my commission. He was of age by that time and my official guardian.”

There. That was a few simple facts, slightly distorted. He had not given the real reason he had wanted that commission and David’s real reason for obliging him.

But she had asked him why he never went to Candlebury. He had not really answered her.

“He lingered longer than anyone expected,” he continued. “But three years after I left, he was clearly dying, and I came home on leave from the Peninsula. Everyone assumed I was home to stay. I even assumed it myself. I was facing new responsibilities. But meanwhile he was d-dying, and nothing else mattered. He was my b-brother.”

He paused to swallow. She made no attempt to say anything.

“And then I left him,” he said. “I was d-due to return to the Peninsula, and I decided to go even though he was close to death. Indeed, I left home four days before I needed to and went to London to enjoy myself at a g-grand ball. He died the day after I sailed. I got the news two weeks later, but I did not go back home. What would have b-been the point? He was gone, and I had not been with him when it m-mattered, and I did not w-want the title that had been his or everything else that was now mine. I d-did not w-want Candlebury. So I stayed until a bullet through the head and a fall from my horse did what his death had not accomplished. I came home, or, rather, I was b-brought home—to London, though, not Candlebury, thank God.”

He waited for the recriminations. Why had he left his brother? Just to go to a
ball
? Why had he returned to the Peninsula? Why had he not sold out and come home after the news reached him? He would be able to reply, though the answers made little sense to him. Even allowing his mind to touch upon the questions brought the threat of a crashing headache and of blind panic. It brought the danger of clenched fists and a lashing-out at inanimate objects, as if reducing them to firewood would clear all the fog from his mind and make sense of his past and excuse every dastardly deed he had ever committed.

But she did not ask any of the questions. She did not
even ask her usual why. Instead she was holding both his hands in hers.

“I
am
sorry,” she said. “Oh, poor Flavian. How wretched for you. I can only imagine having to face such a thing with Dora. No, I do not
want
to imagine. But I think I too might have run away and tried to forget it all by enjoying myself at a crowded and glittering party. I do not suppose it helped, but I can understand why you did it. And why you could not stay. But you have not been able to let him go, have you, because you were not there. And you have not forgiven yourself either.”

She drew her hands free of his and got to her feet.

“Let me pour you some tea or coffee while they are probably still hot. Or would you prefer something from the sideboard?”

“Tea,” he said. “Please.”

He watched her as she engaged in the quiet domestic task of pouring his tea and placing a couple of biscuits on the saucer. This was destined to become a familiar scene to him, he thought, just such a simple activity as this—taking tea with his wife. Perhaps there was peace to be had after all.

And absolution. She did not have the power to give it, but she had comforted him anyway. He had left out whole chunks of information, though. It was all much worse even than he had made it sound.

“Tell me about the rest of your family,” she said as she seated herself beside him, her own cup and saucer in hand. She smiled. “Six
hundred
uncles?”

“There is my mother,” he said, “and one sister, Marianne, Lady Shields. Oswald, Lord Shields, her husband. Two nephews and a niece. Six
thousand
aunts, uncles, and c-cousins at the last count—did I say six hundred? We will go to L-London first when we leave here, and you can meet some of them. There are other things to be done
there too. Maybe we will go to C-Candlebury for Easter. My mother is there and my s-sister and her family. I will write to my mother and w-warn her to expect us.”

He ought to take Agnes straight to Candlebury, he supposed. She needed to do a mountain of shopping, but it could possibly be delayed until after Easter, when they moved to London for the Season with the rest of the fashionable world. And she
ought
to be there for the Season, perish the thought. As his viscountess she would need to be introduced to the
ton
, perhaps even presented at court. Sometimes one could wish that reality in the form of the proprieties did not have to intrude quite so soon or so often upon one’s life.

He had ignored reality when he had dashed off for the license and dashed back again to marry her.

She lifted her teacup to her lips. There was a very slight tremor in her hand, he thought.

“Your mother and sister will be upset with you,” she said. “And with me. I am not a very eligible bride for Viscount Ponsonby.”

They would be more upset than she realized. They would be predisposed to dislike her no matter who she was, simply because she was not Velma. He ought to have been more forthcoming with her, but it was too late now—too late for her to change her mind about marrying him, anyway. He must explain a few things before they went to Candlebury, though. It would not be fair to allow her to walk blind into that potentially explosive situation.

But he would do that later. Enough about him.

“Nonsense,” he said. “And what about your father? Will he be upset that I did not apply to him for your hand but rushed you into m-marriage even before he knew about me? I must write to him too.”