The Marriage Mart (18 page)

The silence hung between them, uncomfortable and awkward.

Not quite able to keep from shaking, John almost screamed at Bretwyn, horrified by his obliviousness.
Mary, passionless? Filled with rectitude? Which Mary was this? It cannot be my Mary!
Not the woman who had kissed John back, had made him smile like a fool that he might not reach into her carriage and snatch her back into his embrace and return her kiss even more deeply.

What kind of Mary did the man think he was to take to wife? Could Bretwyn then so easily take and mold her into the very model of every other man’s wife? Was that in fact what Bretwyn really wanted, especially of Mary? And could
he,
John, bear it? To have Mary lose that which made her separate, different, special, wonderful? And to think he had helped her to achieve this point and place in time! It was a travesty, an injustice, to each and every one of them.

Yet, worst of all, by what right was he to say such a life was not for her?

Finally Bretwyn pushed back his shoulders, and lifted his chin. He said a trifle gruffly, “There is something specific I wished to say, Rothayne. ‘Tis why I came to search you out, for a moment alone together.”

John waited, his eyes now straightly meeting those of his friend, only the faint drawing together of his brows reflecting John’s inner turmoil.

“I would ask of you a particular favor.”

“Yes?” John said sharply. He leaned just as nonchalantly as ever against the doorframe, but his hands at his sides were balled into tight fists.

“I would ask that you no longer refer to Mary as ‘my pet’, or ‘my love’, or “my own’. You understand, I’m sure?”

John felt a bolt of lightning whip through his body, and for a moment he wondered if the fellow would also deny him food, water, breath, and life entirely, but with a great effort he managed a nod. “Of course,” he croaked out.

“Do you leave our little party now, my lord?” Bretwyn said, the broadest of all possible hints, and again John could not fault the man. It should, after all, be a day of only pleasure and gaiety for him.

John repeated, his voice barely a whisper, “Of course. Yes.”

“Then I will meet you at the church tomorrow,” Bretwyn stated. He turned crisply and, candle in hand, made his exit, leaving the room filled with a darkness much deeper than the mere lack of light.

John sagged against the doorjamb, the night breeze that caressed his face now feeling as cool as a specter’s touch against his overheated cheeks. “Mary!” he whispered into the night.

He did not know how long he stood there thusly, but in time he sensed that once again he was not alone. He lifted his head slowly, becoming aware the observer must have been standing there a while, watching him as still and silently as he now observed her. It was a full three beats before he again whispered the name, “Mary!”

***

She glided into the room, her eyes already adjusted to the darkness so that she bypassed the furnishings without difficulty. He stretched out his hands, and she slid hers into his as he came away from the open doors. They stood, their hands joined between them, their eyes picking out the occasional luminescence of skin and eye the moon-glow afforded them.

“I thought perhaps you had left,” she said, her voice low and quiet, but never scolding.

“I am about to.”

“It has been a long evening. I think perhaps it was a mistake to make this party the night before the wedding.” He heard the note of weariness in her voice.

“Yes,” he said simply. “But you will be a beautiful, glowing bride come the morn, I know it.”

“They say all brides are beautiful, but I think not I,” she sighed. The darkness allowed her to be bold, letting her speak her thoughts aloud. Or perhaps it was more than just the darkness. For John had become her dearest friend, a truth brought home by the very warmth that had come back into her limbs the moment he had called her name and beckoned her into the circle of his presence. The party had been chilling and nearly unendurable, when it should have been all gaiety and merriment. And yet it had taken only these precious, stolen moments alone with him to prove they indeed shared a sincere connection.

“Mary, if you have never been told it, I tell you now: when all the ‘pretties’ have faded into frumpish old women, your face will still be graced by handsome lines and flattering color. Your fine bones ought be more apparent in later life.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, clasping his hands even more tightly, for she knew he spoke only what was his truth. Tears came to her eyes, but they were not entirely unhappy tears.

“And now I have made you cry,” he sighed, his hand coming away from hers to reach up and place a finger along the glistening trail that spilled over the lashes of one eye. With a kind of groan, he then pulled her gently into his arms, holding her to his chest and rocking slightly from side to side, as one might with a child. “Your dream, at last it is yours. Bretwyn is a very lucky man.”

“And soon you are to be lucky as well. Have you offered for Miss Yardley yet?” Ah, the dark was a boon, that she might ask such a question, more than half-hidden from his clear eyes.

“I have not, nor shall I. She is a dear child, but nothing more to me. No, I’ll not be walking the matrimonial path, not anytime soon.”

“Oh, John, I am so sorry--”

“Do not be. I am only glad to know it is not to be, even though it was what I thought I wanted.” He spoke to the top of her head, not letting her go, for they did not need to see one another’s faces to communicate, not tonight.

He held her for a very long time, as realizations struck her as though they were blows.This was the last moment for such closeness. After tomorrow they could never again have the right to be so free with one another. He would have to watch his tongue such as he had never done with her before. He could never hold her with such unmeasured physical closeness. She would never again feel the warmth of his breath as it skittered across her neck or ear, never find herself in so close and silent an embrace that she could feel and hear his heartbeat as though it were her own.

***

John did not know how closely Mary’s thoughts echoed his own. Even as he held her, he was losing her. It was terrible enough to think of her in another’s arms, but--most frightening and overwhelming of all--he doubted he would ever again hold a woman who meant so much to him that the ache in his soul far outstretched the aching of his body for her. A physical passion was there, oh yes, but it was a kind of quiet peeping he heard beneath the roar of the anguish and longing for her, her essence, her deepest being. The admiration for her filled his brain, so that he began to wonder if he could ever be strong enough to open his arms and let her walk out of them.

A voice was heard, calling from down the hall, first his name and then hers.

“Hortense,” John identified the voice with some astonishment, like a man waking from a dream.

Mary turned up her face in the darkness, her arms staying as they were, not moving to disentangle themselves from him. It was only the sound of the searcher coming nearer that served to stir her. “Will you not be the first to kiss the bride?” she asked in the merest whisper.

He could not resist such an invitation, nor did he try. His mouth came down on hers, and there was only openness and responsiveness, and an eagerness to touch his mouth in return with hers. Her hands went at once to the nape of his neck, as though to hold him there with her forever, as though to say that she, too, could not bear to end what they both knew was in truth a kind of final parting. She pressed into him, allowing him to know even more that the kiss was not given as to a friend, but as to a lover.

Just as he thought to pull away, to say something, to try to comprehend what was happening, she gave a pain-filled sob and was gone from him, flown from the room before he could even put out a hand to stop her.

He stood, a trembling coming over him so that his teeth actually chattered. He turned to the open doorway once more, his shaking hands reaching to hold the solid wood, that his strengthless legs might not give out beneath him. He pressed his forehead to the unbending wood, closed his eyes and willed some bit of sanity to return to his fevered brain.

And then he found himself chortling, a curious sound, a cross between mirthlessness and a fledgling, rising hope--for Mary had betrayed Bretwyn with that kiss. That passion-filled kiss. His Mary, the one whom he had known to be better than all others, had betrayed the man she was to marry.

Her inconstancy could only make him think of Melinda and Sandra. Only this time, it was
he
who helped her to the betrayal, and it was Bretwyn who must play the part of cuckold. But the strangest thing of all: he could not mind. The laughter died on his lips in realization; he could not be disappointed by her disloyalty to his friend--for she was nothing at all like the others. Melinda and Sandra had been trying to better their positions in life by what they did, whereas Mary was…Mary was…what? Why were the kisses she gave Bretwyn, as the man had claimed, “chaste and circumspect”, and yet this one she had given him all that could blister a man inside and out with its radiance? Was Mary, then, actually capable of such deceit and cunning that she was making an attempt to persuade him his stand against marriage must not include herself? No, no, a thousand times no, he would swear it. Hadn’t he held the truth in his arms tonight? They had had that moment of such closeness; he would have known had she been lying to him, or pretending. No, that was not the way of his Mary.

He sighed deeply and shivered in the garden breeze, too overwhelmed to move by the thought that Mary had merely, and simply, wanted his kiss.

***

Mary was discovered by Hortense in a moment’s time. That lady looked at Mary’s flushed face, and inquired, “Are you well, Mary?”

“Fine. Most fine,” Mary said with eyes that were too bright. “I took some air, and now I am quite well.”

She let Hortense lead her back to the party. She found herself smiling, laughing at the smallest thing, for she could not keep the near hysteria that filled her lungs from escaping, and better it be done in laughter than in screams. And, too, the rather wild-eyed amusement she showed might account for the flighty, trembling nature of her hands, and the way her whole body shook from time to time.

Hortense saw the raised color, the overly bright eyes, the giddy attitude, and frowned at it. She looked up then and caught the eye of the companion, Mrs. Pennett. That face was grave, saddened, filled with hurt for her dear charge.

Suddenly Hortense knew Mary had not been alone in the back room of the house. She knew it for a certainty. Abruptly she left Mary’s side, but the bride-to-be was too far lost to the effort of forced gaiety to notice.

***

“John,” a hushed voice penetrated his frozen solitude, but still he did not move, half hoping she would not know he was there. He was out of luck, though, for Hortense came into the room. “You’re here?” she asked, but just as soon as she asked, she spotted him, and crossed to his side. “Why, John, you are shaking!” she cried as her hand touched his arm. “Let me close these doors--”

“No, leave them. It...it is not the breeze which chills me.”

“What then?” she asked, but John was not fooled into thinking she did not guess.

“I...it is this marriage. I am not certain Mary should wed Lord Bretwyn. I am not sure they are suited.”

“Well then, tell me why not.” It wasn’t a question. She tried to pull him toward the inner room, perhaps hoping to have him take a chair, to light a lamp, but he would not part from the shadows to move with her.

“She…I kissed her, just now--”

Hortense did not gasp, but she went still.

“--And it was not the way... It just seems to me a woman ought not to kiss one man the night before she marries another.”

“Oh, John, when will you ever let us women get down off our pedestals?” she cried in exasperation. “Mary is one of the finest creatures I have ever met. That she kissed you…well, what of it? We women are just as you men--capable of mistakes, and of correcting them, too. She’s excited. She’s overwrought. She’s also imperfect, just like the rest of us.”

He just shook his head. “You misunderstand me.” It had probably sounded as though he blamed Mary for that kiss--but he didn’t. Not in any manner.

“John,” Hortense cried, apparently temperance and sympathy at an end. “Why are you letting her marry Bretwyn? You love her, don’t you?”

Dazzlement and dreams gave way to reality.
You love her, don’t you?
He put his hands to his face, shuddered, and did not answer.

“Why don’t you ask her to marry
you?
I’ll tell you why,” Hortense cried when still he did not answer. “You’ll never take a wife. You’ll never be happy, because you’ll never find the perfect woman.”

“You’re wrong,” he said gruffly, his hands dropping as he turned to her with a sharp gesture. “I’ve never wanted a perfect woman.”

She grabbed both his arms, so that his shadowed face was near hers. “The truth now, brother. You want a good woman, and yet one who can enjoy your wicked wit. You want a paragon, but one who accepts you even though you find yourself far from perfect. You’ve found that in Mary. What is truly disturbing you is that it’s Bretwyn who shall have her fine mind, her welcoming arms, and not yourself. You fool! Why can you not just ask her if she’ll have you instead of him?”