Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3) (6 page)

Lucien’s temper began to simmer again. Windmere had done something to his girl. He did not know what, but he knew who. The scandal was already out there, enormous and growing in scale. He did not need this marriage to protect his daughter. Even tinted of disgrace, he could settle a better match on Merry than Varian Deverell. A younger man and less disreputable, who would care for Merry in a manner she deserved.  Merry was changed and the change went deep, and Lucien didn’t like it one bit. He would annul the thing, and scandal be damned. The Merricks had survived scandal before, even worse than annulling this hole-in-the-corner marriage.

“If you want this marriage annulled, it will be annulled. What do you want, Merry?”

“I don’t want my marriage annulled, Papa,” Merry said, a little too anxiously.

Lucien Merrick halted in mid-step. They were at the door to the dining parlor. “If he makes you so unhappy, my dear, why not let me end this marriage and send him on his way?” He studied her face, those shrewd blue eyes sharply searching. “Merry, what are you afraid to tell me?”

She couldn’t meet his gaze. “There is nothing. Please, I don’t want to be more of a disgrace for my family than I have already made myself. There is no reason to annul the marriage.”

She pressed a quick kiss to her father’s cheek and went ahead of him into the salon. The rest of her family was already there. Merry took in the room.  Rhea was at her place at the table, Varian at her side, and she was chattering away gaily as though her father’s dislike of this man was of no importance. Camden sat across from him, smiling, pretending to be amused. Philip and Kate talked across the chair where Merry usually sat. Uncle Andrew was quiet and remote, at his place at the left of the head of the table where Lucien would sit. It was a familiar scene, the Merricks at breakfast, beloved and ghastly at once.

Feeling her mother’s watchful gaze, Merry went to her, kissing her on the cheek. “Good morning, Mama,” she whispered quickly, not daring to look at Varian, and wanting to reach the safety of her chair at the other end of the table close to her father.

Rhea gave her an affectionate pat on the cheek. “Good morning, my dear. You have slept uncommonly late and I was worried that you would not join us. I have missed your laughter at our table, Merry. It is so good to have you home again.” Her soft brown eyes ran Merry’s form and then shifted, cheerfully glowing, to Lucien. “Home and as lovely as ever. See, Lucien. There was no need to worry about our daughter. A night’s rest after three days travel was all she needed to return the radiance of her beauty.”

Merry forced a smile. The footman had already stepped forward at her place, anticipating where she would go, but before she could get passed Varian was pulling the chair out next to him. Finally, unable to avoid it, she lifted her gaze and met the probing black eyes of her husband.

“Please excuse me, Your Grace,” Merry said on a prim voice. “It is my habit to sit with my brother. A habit I have missed for a very long time.”

Varian arched a brow. “I would not have you place yourself so far from me, Little One.  I am sure your brother will indulge me in this since I am your husband.”

She lifted her chin, wanting to move on, and searched for a sharp retort she would dare make in front of her family. “My brother might very well indulge you, Your Grace. I will not.”

Varian’s expression was a polite fiction of amusement. “Your mother is right. You look beautiful this morning. However, your night has not improved your mood as I had hoped it would.”

That sent a flush across Merry’s face.  The glow in his eyes reminded her of what they had done in his bed. Dropping her gaze from his, praying no one realized her discomposure or knew the cause of it, she sank quickly into the chair he held for her.

“This is my usual mood, Your Grace. If it is not to your liking perhaps you should return to London,” she replied dryly.

A small smile curved his lips. “Your temper, Merry, is half your charm. It brings the most delightful color to you cheeks. I have always enjoyed witnessing your temper and its afterglow on you.”

Merry felt her cheeks move from pink to burn. In a manner dismissive, she turned to a footman. The footmen came, tray by tray, heavily laden with the morning fare. Merry concentrated on food. The child made her appetite ravenous, and it had been so long since she’d seen such a wonderful selection of dishes. Every tray that passed, she took something. A pile of strawberries, rich cream covered pastries, a mutton chop, herring, and a sheep’s kidney. It was enormous by the time she was done, the china of her plate completely covered.

Merry was biting into a strawberry when she realized everyone was staring at her. Noting her plate, she tensed. It was outrageous. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Varian slide his arm along top of her chair and lean close to her ear. Softly, he whispered, “I would not eat all that, Merry. It will make you sick.”

“I will do as I please, you odious insufferable man. You will not order me.”

It seemed as though her entire family sharpened their gazes on her at once. Varian sat back and said with utter calm, “You have had a bland diet, for a very long time on my ship, Little One. I am not ordering you. I am merely trying to instruct you.  You need to reintroduce rich food slowly. You will make yourself very ill if you don’t do this wisely.”

She cut off a section of cream covered pastry, stuffed it in her mouth and then glared at him. “If I am not wise, it should be no surprise to you…” Mimicking his voice. “‘…you are quick, you are clever, but you, Little One, are not wise.’ True words. Leave me alone. I wish to eat.”

“What you are is stubborn beyond your own good,” Varian said, unruffled. “Enjoy. Do as you will. You always do, my dear, but your stubbornness has a way of working out for the best if given time.”

Shoving a strawberry into her mouth, Merry made a face then shifted her gaze. Her family was listening to every word between them and not making a polite pretense of doing otherwise.

Merry went back to her meal and vowed to ignore him. From across the table, Philip tried to draw her into conversation. She attempted to listen to his concise review of all the events of the last year, the scandals, the gossip, both in Falmouth and London, as he offered her any tidbit he thought might brighten her mood. It was impossible to be bright of mood. She was burning from head to toe.

Although Varian sat an interested listener to Rhea’s table chatter, she knew damn well he hadn’t turned his unsettling attention from her. She began to mutilate her pastry with the harsh moves of her fork, unaware she had caught the reproachful gaze of her mother. Shoving the last fork full into her mouth of what was little more than a crush of blackberry atop a flatten tart, unable to endure the burn against her flesh any longer, she slanted Varian a look, and noting his stare fixed on the slow swirl of his coffee in cup.

She swallowed her food half chewed and slammed her fork down upon the table. The angry clank of silver against china made everyone look up. Kate nearly sprang through the ceiling.

“You odious insufferable man,” she ground out. “Must you watch every move with my fork that I make?”

Varian tilted his face toward her then, lifting his glance with a slow move from his cup that with no added effort  made her seem in the least irrational and more likely quite vain. Her family had stopped all motion and conversation.

“I sailed with you for a year,” she accused, blue eyes flashing. “You are watching me every time you swirl your glass. You may pretend otherwise, but I know the meaning of that annoying habit and have for a very long time. Your black eyes carry the burn of the demon you are. If you swirl that cup again, I will throw it at you.”

What surfaced on Varian’s handsome face was expertly correct as he reached across the table to retrieve her fork from the middle where it landed after a bounce. He held it for a servant who quickly retrieved it from his hand. It was an absolutely perfect charade and infuriating in all ways.

He said, “I am watching, Merry, but not your fork. Would you like me to tell you what I am watching?”

Even Merry, who knew him well, hadn’t expected that comment, not here in front of her mother and father. It was wickedly provocative in tone, and she didn’t know what to do with it. A year ago she wouldn’t have understood the suggestiveness of Varian’s word play.

Into her silence, on a voice warmly approving, Varian remarked, “You are very beautiful when you are in a temper, my dear. It makes it extremely palatable you are so often in a temper.”

“I am only ever in a temper with you. If you don’t like my temper, go away.”

“Ah, but I like your temper. Would you like me to tell you why?”

Panic rounded her eyes. What was the point of this? Why was he doing this to her in front of her family? He was purposely rattling her and rattling her well. After the fiction they’d given her father, why would he intentionally push her to behave in way that would make it obvious it was untrue?

She arched a brow. “What I would like to do is eat, Your Grace.”

He was focused on his plate. “I would not attempt the herring. As I recall, it agreed with you not at all yesterday.”

Merry lowered her gaze to her plate. “Perhaps it was not the herring. Perhaps it was the company.”

She noticed her hands were trembling as she moved her knife. Damn him. On top of everything, he had been right. The herring was her undoing. She was starting to feel sick again, that unrelenting nausea that had plagued her for nearly two months now. Stubbornly, she took another bite and wished she hadn’t. She’d had to force it down, and her stomach turned.

She struggled against the nausea, struggled against Varian next to her, and struggled through breakfast beneath the heavy stare of her father until she could leave without making another scene. One by one her family left, until there remained only Varian, her mother, and Uncle Andrew at the table. Merry motioned for a footman, but it was her husband who came and pulled back her chair.

Softly, Varian said, “I would like to speak with you. You did not give me the opportunity to speak with you last night. Come walk out of doors with me, Merry.”

“I don’t wish to speak you. I wish I had never set eyes upon you.”

She left the salon quickly and raced up the stairs, back to her bedroom, back to safety, and unfortunately back to the washbowl where her breakfast would soon be.

Rhea and Andrew sat in the heavy silence left in the salon. Her brother-in-law came to her then, pausing at Rhea’s chair, picking up a strawberry from the ridiculous mountain Merry had left on her plate.

“I have never liked that man, Rhea. It is a tragedy that Merry is married to Windmere. Lucien would do well to end this miserable farce and rid your daughter of him quickly,” Andrew said, and then added, “And you Rhea would do well to take count of the serving girls at bedtime while Windmere is here.”

Elegantly calm, Rhea said, “That was no serving girl you heard last night, Andrew. That was my daughter. If you tell Lucien, I will never speak to you again. He is angry enough. He needs to calm so he can deal with this sensibly. Leave them alone. I don’t understand the purpose of this farce, but they fight like a married couple. Merry is angry with him. It will pass. This marriage will not be annulled, Lucien’s displeasure or not.”

~~~

Merry sat on the grass against a stone wall in a meadow. She was shoeless, stocking-less, surrounded by kittens, her brother and Kate.

A light fall breeze whispered upward from the channel redolent with the rich scents of Cornwall, brushing feather light against Merry’s cheeks and freeing wisps of dark curls from her combs. She laid her cheek against her knees, fighting her swirling web of hair as she tried to follow Kate’s rambling chatter.

The rain had come on and off all morning, the faintest of drizzle, and the sky had taken on a grayish ombré behind the low dipping clouds of swan white. The droplets had collected on the tips of the grass and in the pockets in the stone wall, giving it the appearance of silvery glass. A quilt rested beneath them, a protection against the dampness, and Merry fixed her gaze on her icy toes, pink at their tips from the cold and the dampness of Falmouth she was no longer accustom to.

She tried to work her feet into the warmth of a fold in the quilt. Beside her lay a forgotten bouquet of wild flowers, lily-of-the-valley, star grass and day flowers that Kate was enthusiastically weaving into a crown.

Across the farm the news of Merry’s marriage had spread like a wild fire. The reaction was one of curiosity and celebration.  Though the state of her marriage was uncertain at best, beyond the walls of the main house the story that was circulated was shrewdly crafted to spare all concerned added scandal since it was unavoidable the talebearers would have the account clear across Falmouth by sunset.

Whatever Lucien Merrick released would eventually collide with the gossip rushing southward from London. Merry’s sudden return and marriage to Varian Deverell was no doubt the main topic of conversation in the drawing rooms of polite society.

When Merry had stepped out of the front garden with Philip and Kate, the excited well-wishes from the workers was an indication of how expert her father was at scandal control. Her father had made an informal announcement to the house staff. That she had learned from Kate, who had told her with a reluctance you could taste, and Merry was now witnessing the artfully crafted result.

If a hint of suspicion existed that something was amiss between Merry’s new husband and the Merricks it was not evident in the blur of glowing eyes, bobbing aprons, and quickly stripped off hats.  The workers stared at her as if she returned to them bathed in stardust instead of shame.

The farm wives had surrounded her before she’d finished hoisting her hem to pick her way across the muddy ruts of the carriageway. It had taken an hour for Merry to escape their enthusiastic exclamations over how well she looked, what a fine figure His Grace was, and all their hopes and prayers for her future.

It had been an agony to endure their joy for her, these dear people she loved, but when Jane Coleman, her playmate from childhood and now wife to the under-coachman, had shyly approached her, tear in eye, bundle of freshly picked wild flowers in her arms to present to her with a proudly exclaimed ‘Your Grace,’ Merry had had enough. She had disengaged herself with more abruptness than she had wanted, ashamed to note a misty tear of understanding here and there, and had quickly charged off with Kate and Philip in tow. Varian had left her suspended in a nightmare.