The Ideal Wife (18 page)

“Now?” Edna said. “With you, mum? To ’is grace’s ’ouse?”

“He is ‘my lord,’ ” Abigail said. “He is an earl, not a duke, Edna. Do you want to come?”

“Yes, Miss Gardiner,” the girl said, wide-eyed. “I mean, my lady.”

“Then go and pack up your things,” Abigail said. “Do you have much?”

“No more than a small bundle, mum,” the girl said. And she whisked herself from the room.

“If Humphrey can swing for this,” Abigail said viciously, “I want to go and watch.”

“Abby,” Laura said. “How wonderful you are. You have been very fortunate yourself, but you have not forgotten everyone else who has been less so. What will Lord Severn say?”

“Oh, dear,” Abigail said. “He will be afraid to allow me out alone. I have already added Ellen to his staff in the past few days—she was the poor seamstress I told you about. And now Edna. I should have thought first before speaking, shouldn’t I? Oh, dear.”

“Well, I am very happy for Edna,” Laura said. “And I have great faith in Lord Severn’s understanding.”

“That is the whole trouble,” Abigail said. “He is by far too understanding and too kind. And, oh, Laura, I have just thought of something he said last night after we . . . When we were in b . . . I have just remembered. I think I should go to see if Edna needs any help. Don’t worry about Boris. I just know everything is going to work out splendidly and you are going to be my sister. I can think of nothing I would like better.”

She hurried from the room and up the narrow stairs to the lesser servants’ attic. She tried not to remember his voice murmuring quietly into her ear that he loved her. She did not want it to be true.

She would be his wife, perhaps even his lover. But she did not want to be his love. She did not want him to love her. She would not be able to live with herself or her guilt if he loved her.

T
HE
E
ARL OF
S
EVERN
had warned his brother-in-law to come early with his news the following morning, since he was to accompany his wife to Mrs. Harper’s. But he had not really expected the man to walk in on them when they had scarcely sat down to breakfast. Abigail had been looking pale and distracted. She had tossed and turned and muttered in his arms through much of the night.

“Ah, breakfast,” Boris said, smiling broadly at them and rubbing his hands together. “I have come to join you.”

Abigail looked closely at him. “What is it?” she asked. “Oh, what is it?”

“Does it have to be anything?” he asked, laughing at
her. “Can I not just join my sister and brother-in-law for breakfast?”

Abigail scrambled to her feet. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me or I shall beat a tattoo on your chest.”

Boris laughed again. “Can you not control her, Miles?” he asked.

“No,” the earl said. “But then, I have felt no great urge to try to do so yet. Sit down, Boris. What will you have?”

Abigail had her hands clasped to her bosom. “It has happened, hasn’t it?” she said. “I can see by your face, Boris. It has happened, hasn’t it?”

He walked all around the table without saying a word and suddenly caught her up by the waist and swung her in a full circle.

“I could do no wrong,” he said. “It was one of those charmed nights. I was afraid that I was going to be accused of cheating, everything was going so well. It seemed too good to be real. A fortune, Abby. A veritable fortune.”

Abigail shrieked and the earl nodded to his butler to leave the room.

“Enough to pay Papa’s debts?” she asked. “Or some of the worst of them at least?”

“Better than that,” he said. “I can spend the rest of today going from creditor to creditor, Abby, paying them all off. And even then there will be some left.”

She gasped and linked her hands behind his neck.

“I have been thinking all night,” he said, “about what I will do with it. And I am quite certain in my mind now, though it was the first idea I had. I am going to buy my commission in the Guards, Abby, at the grand old age of two-and-twenty. It is something I have always dreamed of doing, and I am going to do it.”

“Boris.” Her voice was a high squeak and she bumped her head hard against his chest and hid her face there. “Ohh!”

The two gentlemen were entertained to the sound of noisy gulps and sobs. Boris winked at the earl over her head.

“May I offer my congratulations?” the earl said. “I did not think it could be done, Boris, and have been disapproving of your methods, as I told you at the picnic. You have proved me wrong, and I am glad of it. I hope, though, that you will not press your luck and return to the tables.”

Abigail’s head came up and she glared into her brother’s face. “I’ll kill you,” she said. “If I ever hear of your playing even for pennies, Boris, I’ll kill you.”

He took her face in his hands and smiled down at her. “Never again, Abby,” he said. “Not even for ha’pennies. Or farthings. I swear to you.”

She swung away from him suddenly, her face alight. “You see?” she said to her husband, wrapping her arms about his neck. “I told you so, did I not? But you would not have any faith in luck. I told you Boris would win a fortune soon.”

“And so you did, love,” he said, laughing down at her as she favored him with an exaggerated and happy wink. “I will not be a doubting Thomas any longer.”

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear as she hugged him. “You are wonderful.”

“We had better all sit down and have some breakfast,”the earl said. “Help yourself from the sideboard, Boris. So it is to be an officer’s life for you, is it?”

“At long last,” Boris said, heaping eggs and kidneys and toast onto a plate and setting it on the table. “Abby?”

She smiled brightly across at him.

“You aren’t still pushing Laura Seymour at Stapleton, are you?” he asked.

“They make a handsome couple, don’t you think?”she said.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Don’t you think she and I would be as handsome together?”

“You and Laura?” she said, her eyes widening. “She would never have you, Boris. She would never follow the drum.”

“I think she would,” he said. “I think she will. It can be no worse than being a governess in a house with those dreadful Gills, and she happens to have an affection for me. I’ll be asking her later today, anyway. Will you mind?”

“Mind?” she said. “Will I mind? I’ll show you how much I mind.”

The Earl of Severn set his coffee cup clattering back into its saucer and passed one hand across his eyes as his wife threw back her head and shrieked.

“Lord,” Boris said, popping a kidney into his mouth, whole. “I haven’t heard that for years. I take it you are pleased, Abby.”

“Pleased?” she said. “Am I pleased? I’ll show you—”

The earl’s hand covered hers on the table. “Suffice it to say, Boris,” he said, “that we are both bursting with pleasure. Aren’t we, Abby? A simple yes or no will suffice.”

“Yes,” she said. “We are.”

17

T
HEY WERE SITTING SIDE BY SIDE IN the earl’s town carriage, her hand firmly clasped in his.

“It will soon be over, Abby, all of it,” he said. “Do you want me to do the talking?”

“No,” she said. “I must do it. I would rather do it alone, Miles. Will you stay in the carriage?”

“I have forbidden you to go there alone,” he said. “I have not relented on that. Were you fond of her?”

“Always a little sorry for her,” she said. “She was headstrong and very beautiful when she first married Papa. She had done it to defy the world, her father in particular. I think she thought she could change my father and prove everyone wrong. But it could not be done, of course, and her father would not have her back when she wanted to go the first time she was badly beaten. She was expecting Beatrice at that time. Yes, I suppose I was fond of her. I tried to protect her.”

He raised her hand to his lips. “But she has chosen her own course now,” he said. “And you cannot reform the world. I will be plain with you, Abby. I do not like what she has done to you. I can understand that circumstances may have forced her into this way of life, but I do not like her ingratitude to you. I am not going to give her soft words merely because she was your stepmother and you were fond of her.”

She said nothing.

“And talking of protecting and reforming,” he asked, “did you mind my sending your little waif back to Severn Park with Parton?”

“With your steward?” she said. “No, Miles. Edna was very excited to know that she would be going into the country to work at a great house. She has never been out of London. You were not angry with me?”

“For bringing her home with you?” he said, squeezing her hand. “I would expect no less of you, Abby. Poor girl. Servants are so helpless when they find themselves in such a situation, aren’t they? I shall see to it that Humphrey Gill is properly dealt with, have no fear.”

“What if she is with child?” she asked.

He looked down at her. “Then she will have the child in the relative privacy and comfort of Severn Park,” he said. “And if she wishes it, I shall see if I can find someone willing to marry her. Shall I?”

She smiled at him. “Almost the first thing she said to me after admitting the truth,” she said, “was that she can no longer expect to find a husband. I think she would like that, Miles.”

“I shall see what I can do,” he said. “I’ll include it in my next letter to Parton. Perhaps he can recommend someone. Or perhaps Edna will prove to be a girl of spirit and find someone for herself by the time we arrive in the country. Are you looking forward to going?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Our marriage has had a strange and somewhat strained beginning, hasn’t it?” he said. “But in one hour’s time or less, the last barrier will be down and we can proceed to live happily ever after. Can we?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You are not sorry, Abby?” He squeezed her hand again. “Not sorry that you acted so impulsively and married me?”

She shook her head, watching her free hand, which she spread in her lap.

“I acted just as impulsively,” he said, “and I am not sorry at all. And that is such an understatement that it is laughable.”

She brushed an imaginary speck of lint from her lap.

“I told you something both last night and the night before after making love to you,” he said. “You did not respond on either occasion. Do you not feel the same way, Abby? Is there any chance that you will in time?”

She pulled her hand away from his and turned to look out through the window. “That is nonsense talk,” she said. “That is not why people marry. Marriage is for companionship and for comfort. And for children. The rest is nonsense. Imagination. You were being silly. There is the house. Oh, your coachman knows where to stop.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Are you ready?”

She sat back in her seat. “Yes,” she said.

She sat still while a footman put down the steps and while her husband vaulted out and turned to reach up a hand for hers.

“Are you ready, Abby?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Abby?” he said when she did not move.

Her hands were twisting in her lap.

“Abby?” He leaned into the carriage and touched her on the knee. “Shall I go in alone, love? I would prefer it anyway.”

She turned to look into his eyes, those blue eyes that had always turned her weak at the knees but that now she found it hard to look into for a different reason.

“Miles,” she whispered to him, “take me away from here. Please? Let’s go home.” She bit down hard on her upper lip.

He turned to give an order to his coachman and was back inside the carriage with her a moment later, her hand firmly clasped in his again.

She closed her eyes. Not a word was spoken on the homeward journey.

S
HE HAD ENTERED
the house on his arm without speaking a word, and when Watson had stopped him in the hallway with a note that had been delivered half an hour before, she had drawn her arm free and run up the stairs.

The note was from Miles’s mother, inviting them to dinner before the Warchester ball. He went to his study to pen a quick reply and sent the note on its way with one of the servants.

She would probably have ordered tea already, he thought as he climbed the stairs. They were going to have to talk again. There was something she had not told him, and until she did so, there could be no happiness for her and no real chance for their marriage.

But she was not in her sitting room. Or in her dressing room.

He found her in her bedchamber. She was lying facedown on the bed. He did not know if she had heard him come in. She did not move. He crossed the room slowly and laid a hand against the back of her head.

“Abby,” he said softly.

When she did not reply, he drew up a chair beside the bed and straddled it, his arms draped over the back of it.

He waited.

“I am a bastard,” she said at last in a dull voice, without moving.

He repressed the quite inappropriate urge to laugh. He decided that she meant her words literally.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“I am a bastard,” she said, her voice a little firmer. “I am not my father’s daughter. I am no relative of yours at all. I appealed for your help under entirely false pretenses.”

“You are a relative of mine,” he said. “You are my wife.”

She muttered something into the bedcovers.

“Abby,” he said, “will you turn over? Your voice is muffled.”

She turned her head to reveal a flushed, bright-eyed face framed by short curls that were considerably disheveled.

“I would not be,” she said, “if I had told you the truth. You must be wishing and wishing that it was not so. And perhaps there is a way out for you. Perhaps you will be granted a divorce when you tell them how I have deceived you and how I am nothing but a bastard.”

“It’s an ugly word, Abby,” he said. “Your mother had you with another man?”

“I don’t even know who,” she said. “She never told me, and I don’t think Papa ever knew. But it was the reason she married Papa. She told me that she would never have lowered herself so if she had not been in such a predicament. But my gallant father—my real one—had abandoned her, it seems, and Papa had been pestering her for a long time. She married him without telling him, when I was already almost four months on the way.”

He lowered his forehead to rest on his arms.

“The family she married into has turned out to be a ramshackle one, hasn’t it?” she said, her voice bright. “Though it has struck me that perhaps—just perhaps—Papa would have turned out differently if Mama had not done that to him. My mother would have to take the family prize, though, no matter what. She was always so proper, always so much the lady. She always despised Papa even after she had Boris with him. And she always favored me over Boris. I suppose she must have loved my real father. I don’t know. But those are the facts. I am a bastard. You have married a bastard, Miles.”

“Your father accepted you,” he said. “He gave you his name. He allowed you to grow up in his home with his own children even after your mother’s death. He legitimated you, Abby. That is why you loved him despite everything, I suppose.”

She pushed herself off the bed with undignified haste and crossed the room to straighten some ornaments on a dresser.

“Bad blood was drawn to bad blood,” she said. “Like found like. I don’t think I really loved him. He needed me, that is all. He was ill. I know people despise drunkards and think they can straighten out their own lives whenever they want. But they cannot. My father was ill just as surely as if he had had consumption or a cancer. He was ill and he needed me and I tended him. That is all. It was as simple as that.”

“You loved him, Abby,” he said.

“He left us all in a terrible case,” she said. “We had always been together despite everything. Yet suddenly he was gone, the children were with a great-aunt who dislikes them intensely, and Boris was burdened with debts he had done nothing to incur, and with no possible prospects for himself. And I was all alone. So very alone.” She wrapped her arms about herself.

“Come here,” he said, getting to his feet and moving the chair to one side. “You are not alone any longer.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “I thought no one else in the world knew about me,” she said, “with Mama and Papa both gone. But he had told Rachel. And she is going to come to you for the two thousand pounds after the week is over, Miles. If she does not receive the payment, then the whole world will know.”

“Abby . . .” he said, walking across the room to her.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, hugging herself more tightly. “Please don’t. I shall go away somewhere. I don’t know where. But I will think of somewhere soon. I have some money left of the six thousand. Indeed, just two weeks ago I would have thought it a fortune. I should be able to—”

“Abby,” he said harshly, and he took her none too gently by the arm and pulled her into his arms. “What nonsense are you talking? Stop it this instant.”

“I ought not to have done it,” she said. “I would not have done it if I had not been so tempted. But I was overwhelmed by temptation, Miles. You cannot imagine what it was like, coming here knowing I was quite destitute, afraid to hope too strongly for any help at all, and suddenly finding that I could be a countess and married to a man as rich as Croesus. But I didn’t know that anyone else knew about me, Miles. I swear it. I didn’t even know that Rachel was still alive. I would have fought the temptation if I had known that there was a chance of dragging you down into such a dreadful scandal. I would have. You must believe me. I know that I have done terrible things, and I am a bastard and all that, but—”

He stopped her mouth with his own.

“I may have to take drastic measures if I hear that word on your lips again,” he said. “You are in no way responsible for the circumstances of your birth, Abby, and you are not that ugly thing you keep calling yourself.”

“But I am,” she said. Her eyes were enormous with unshed tears.

“By an accident of birth,” he said, “you are not a product of the marriage of your parents, Abby. But from what I have heard, you have proved yourself your father’s daughter and your brother’s sister and your half-sisters’ sister over and over and over again. Abby—my love—forgive yourself.”

“For deceiving you?” she said.

“For that too if you like,” he said. “But I meant for being an embarrassment to your mother and a shock and a disappointment to your father—if you were. You were the only one he did not mistreat a great deal? The only one who had any influence over him? I think perhaps he realized what a gem had been brought so strangely and unexpectedly into his life, Abby. Forgive yourself.”

Two tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I cannot forgive myself for what I have done to you,” she said.

“Can’t you?” he said. “For bringing sunshine into my life and a little craziness and a whole world of love? I do love you, you know.”

She sobbed quite indelicately and lifted a hand to her mouth. “You can’t,” she said, lowering her hand. “Miles, you can’t. I am a bas—”

He kissed her hard.

“I meant it,” he said, “about the drastic measures. If you think I did not, test me. I would hate to have to prove it to you, you know.”

“If you were to beat me, I would hit you right back,” she said, and this time her sob got all mixed up with a laugh and a hiccup.

“I am sure you would,” he said. “Abby, if you can get over this dreadful guilt of yours and this terrible feeling of inadequacy, do you think you can love me, even just a little bit? Enough to build on in the future, maybe?”

“I fell in love with you as soon as I saw your eyes,” she said. “What woman could help doing so?”

“Who indeed?” he said. “So you love my eyes. That is a start, at least. Is there a chance that the feeling may spread to other parts of me?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Long ago. But, Miles, this is just foolish talk. There is still Rachel and the ruin she can bring on you through me. You must take her the money. Will you? Today, before she becomes impatient? There will be unbearable scandal for you if she tells anyone else what she knows.”