A Marriage of Inconvenience (27 page)

Words of eager welcome died on her lips as she took in the anger and anguish on her husband’s face. To give herself time to gather her thoughts—and to ensure the thing wasn’t left out for the servants to find—she quietly closed the book, set it back in its drawer and turned the small key to lock it safely away. By then James had reached the desk, and she stepped around it to meet him, instinctively reaching out to clasp his hands in both of her own. Her mind raced with possibilities—bad news about a friend or relation? Some drastic political or financial setback?

“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened?”

James was fairly shaking with anger, his nostrils flaring with each breath. “I saw Lieutenant Arrington in town,” he said. “And I happened to overhear a most interesting discussion before he caught sight of me. I discovered why he married Anna.”

“Oh?” Lucy was bewildered. Hadn’t he married her because he was madly in love with her—or at least madly infatuated—with the added lure of her great fortune to stave off his own family’s impending ruin?

James took a deep breath, released her hands and paced back and forth, as if only motion could keep his outrage in check. “Rather,” he amended, “why he was in such a hurry to marry her. It turns out he was keeping a mistress, got her with child and cast her off.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open. Sebastian, with a mistress? Sebastian, the idol of her childhood, casting off his pregnant mistress? Was this why he had sought an engagement with
her?
But it made no sense. “But why would that induce him to marry in haste?”

“I was coming to that,” James said through gritted teeth, and she saw that his hands were balled so tightly into fists that his knuckles were white. “It turned out the woman in question wasn’t quite so alone and friendless as he thought. She had a brother, a man of some means, though too lowborn for Arrington to consider worthy of a marriage alliance. But he had enough money and army connections to make threats, and it seemed Arrington decided the best course was to make it impossible to marry his mistress by marrying elsewhere as quickly as possible. That Anna happened to fall in his way was simply his good fortune, and her misfortune.”

Lucy’s knees wobbled, and she leaned against the desk for support. Suddenly everything fell into place, and she spoke before thinking. “Dear God. So that’s why he wanted to marry
me.
”

Lucy clapped a hand to her mouth in horror the instant she realized what she’d said. Oh, to be able to undo it, to pick out those words like misplaced stitches in her embroidery. She’d broken her word to Sebastian—and in doing so revealed to James that she’d been breaking her promise of honesty to him since the very day she’d made it.

James stopped his pacing and spun to face her. Lucy instinctively shrank back, though he looked more bewildered than angry. “What?” he said. “When was this?”

She swallowed and tried to blink back tears. She had to tell him now. Now that the truth was in the open, there was no point in concealing its details. “He offered for me just before we left Swallowfield to come here.”

James shook his head. “But, why did you refuse him? When we first met I thought you were in love with him, or at least infatuated. It must have seemed a good match at the time, since you didn’t yet know your elder cousin’s troubles.”

Now her tears flowed freely, and she couldn’t meet James’s eyes. “I didn’t refuse him,” she said.

“What?”

Lucy quailed from the harsh, incredulous note in his voice, but she made herself explain. “Of course I accepted him. You’re right. I loved him—or thought I did—and it
was
an eligible match, better than I’d ever expected to make.”

“But you never said anything. Why?”

He was leaning over her now,
looming
over her, and she turned her face aside so she wouldn’t have to see the fury and bewilderment in his eyes. “I never wanted it to be a secret, but my aunt forbade us to announce it until Portia was safely married. I—I suppose she thought it would anger her. Portia’s temper is so difficult, you know, and perhaps Aunt Arrington didn’t want to draw Lord Almont or Lady Marpool’s attention to me or my background, and—”

“But Arrington started courting Anna almost the instant he arrived in Gloucestershire, and you didn’t so much as give a hint.”

She looked up, goaded to anger. “How could I? I’d given my word.”

“You could’ve hinted!”

“You yourself told me to ignore them.”

“I didn’t know you were engaged to him.”

“Would you have had me tell you, on the very day we met, when I’d promised to keep silent?”

He blinked and leaned back a little. “No. Not so soon as that. But when was the engagement broken?”

She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Directly after Anna accepted his offer.”

“After. Why, that—” James sputtered off, incoherent in his fury.

“I’d tried to release him a few days before, since it was obvious he preferred Anna, but he said no. I understand now. I suppose he thought it would be better to marry me than his…his mistress.”

“You said nothing, even after being so ill-used?”

“Would you have had me tell the whole world I’d been jilted? Cast aside? I would’ve been a laughingstock.”

“Of course I wouldn’t have had you tell the whole world. But why didn’t you tell
me?
”

“What purpose would it have served?”

James swung around until they were nose to nose, his arms on either side of her pinning her against the desk. “What
purpose?
Why, so I could’ve prevented him from marrying Anna, of course! How could you, knowing what he was, consign her to such a fate?”

“But—I thought they were in love. I thought it would be wrong of me to spoil their happiness.”

“Not to mention spoil the fortune that was coming into your family through the marriage.”

Lucy gasped. How could he say such a thing? Did he really think
that
was why she’d kept her secret? “No! That had nothing to do with it. I swear, it was only that I’d given my word to keep silent, and that I thought they were happy together.”

He pushed off from the desk and stepped back. Lucy should’ve felt relieved, but the look of cold disgust on his face terrified her.

“Happy!” he spat. “
My sister
could never be happy with a man so utterly lacking in honor and honesty. And now she must endure a lifetime of misery with
your cousin
because
you
lacked the integrity and courage to speak out. You promised me honesty, and yet you concealed something of this magnitude all along. How am I ever to trust you again?”

There were so many things Lucy wanted to say that she couldn’t say any of them. She wanted to defend herself. She had only been doing what she thought right and best at the time. But Anna was unhappy, and Lucy could have prevented it. That much was undeniable. Yet how could James have expected her to look into the future, and to discard all her habits of loyalty to her own family, all her old affection for Sebastian? It wasn’t her fault—and yet it was.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

Helplessly she shook her head.

He spun on his heel and began walking toward the door. “I can’t bear the sight of you now.”

“But, James! I’m sorry.”

He stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “You’re
sorry?
This is the rest of my sister’s
life.
Sorry isn’t enough.”

The door slammed behind him.

Lucy sank to her knees there on the library rug, wracked by sobs, her hands gripping the edge of the desk and her forehead pressed against its smooth wood. Every misery she had experienced in her life before paled compared to this agony. She had married James, put her trust in him, learned to delight in his company and finally offered him the absolute, abject surrender of her body. She’d loved him. She loved him still. But now he despised her, and she couldn’t blame him. She despised herself.

Pinned between the competing demands of honesty and promises, of loyalty to the family that raised her and the new family she had entered as a wife, she had done what she thought best for all parties concerned. How could she have done otherwise? And yet, James was right. An honest woman could not be happy married to a liar and a cad. Sebastian’s treatment of her had proved him to be both. But until James had spelled it out for, she had not thought of Sebastian in those terms. He had still been the golden idol of her childhood, a man who deserved whatever he wanted.

How could she live with herself, knowing that another woman, her friend, her sister-in-law, was married to a scoundrel and unhappy in her life, and that she, Lucy, was the cause? And how was she to go on
here,
married to a husband who despised her, with her love for him and her surrender to him bleeding her like knife wounds? How could she bear any of it?

James hardly knew what to do with himself and his anger once the library door had slammed behind him with a crash that had felt satisfying for perhaps five seconds. The library was his sanctuary, but Lucy was there. Rather than stand in the hall, his fury on view for every servant who passed through, he took himself to the parlor and stared gloomily up at his mother’s portrait.

So Lucy had been engaged to Arrington when James met her. He never would’ve guessed it, but it fit all he knew of Arrington. Desperate not to marry the mistress he had grown to despise—or that he’d despised all along, even as he’d bedded her—of course he’d offered for the most conveniently available eligible female, the young, unworldly cousin who lived in his mother’s own household. Just as naturally, when a better opportunity had presented itself, he had discarded her.

He could pity Lucy for the way her cousin had treated her, but it was a cold, distant sort of pity such as he might have felt for a stranger’s plight. She could have told him—
should
have told him—and if she’d had half the courage and pluck he’d credited her with, she
would
have.

If only Lord Almont had set his eyes on any young lady but Portia Arrington to serve as his broodmare. Then Anna would never have met Lieutenant Arrington, and she would still be her happy, free self, journeying home with their aunt and uncle to another carefree summer in Scotland.

But then
Lucy
would be married to Arrington. Would that be so much better? No. No woman deserved such a man. As furious as he was with his wife, he couldn’t wish her married to Arrington. He could only wish they weren’t trapped with each other for the rest of their lives.

What was to be done? He didn’t wish to shame Lucy with a formal separation, at least not immediately. But he could claim that business had called him to London and take up residence in the town house, leaving her here for the time being. Later he would find a cottage in some suitably distant county and send her there to live. She would never want for anything, and her brothers would be provided for. The marriage settlements assured that. But he could not see how they could continue to live as husband and wife now.

He wished he could ride for London that very afternoon, but he could not. He must talk to Anna first, try to separate her from her husband and see her safely on her way to Scotland. It would delay him a few days at most; Anna and Arrington were set to leave Gloucestershire in three days’ time for Portsmouth and passage to the Peninsula. In the meantime he and Lucy would simply avoid each other as best they could. Tomorrow, when they were both a little calmer, he would explain what they must do.

Suddenly he took up a china figurine from the mantel and dashed it against the hearth. Aghast, he stared at the pieces. It wasn’t an heirloom—not a treasure from India, nor a piece beloved by his mother—but he had never done such a thing before. He knew he had a temper, but he had always kept it under careful rein.

But he had never been anything like this unhappy. He couldn’t even begin to separate his helpless anger at Anna’s fate from his own pain and sense of betrayal over the loss of all he had thought he’d found in Lucy. All he knew was misery.

As soon as Lucy could dry her eyes enough to emerge from the library, she went straight to her room and stayed there the rest of the day and through the night. James did not seek her out. When Molly came to dress her for dinner, she claimed an indisposition. The worried maid insisted on bringing her a tray, but Lucy couldn’t bear the thought of food and only took a few sips of wine.

After a tearful and almost sleepless night, she arose to discover that her monthly courses had begun. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. A pregnancy might have proved a means to reunite her and James, something they would have been obliged to share. But she had no idea how long James’s bitterness against her would last—or even if he would ever forgive her—and it would be a terrible thing to be the child of parents who could not even tolerate each other.

She had no idea what to expect. She had never seen James like this before. While she still loved him, she couldn’t think of anything to say to earn his forgiveness. So she determined to wait until he was ready to speak to her and then to follow his lead.

Again she stayed in her room for breakfast, but hunger and exhaustion had made her lightheaded, so she devoured the buttered toast and steaming hot chocolate Molly brought, though it tasted strangely devoid of flavor.

Not long after she finished eating, a soft knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” she said shakily, hoping and fearing that it would be James.

Instead it was Thirkettle, the butler. His face was as correctly blank and impassive as always, but Lucy thought she detected a certain tension, an added rigidity to his correct posture. Of course the servants must realize that their master and mistress had quarreled, though she hoped they did not suspect its cause or severity.

“Good morning, my lady,” he said. “My master asks that you join him in the Little Parlor at your earliest convenience.”

Lucy swallowed. It could not be a good sign that James was still too angry and bitter against her to come to her room himself. “Thank you, Thirkettle,” she said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. “Please inform Lord Selsley that I shall be down directly.”

Lucy took a moment to examine her reflection and gather her courage before leaving her room. The face in the mirror was sallow and drained, with eyes bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. She wore one of her plainest dresses, a dark blue calico left over from her Swallowfield days. She looked dreadful, but she felt far worse.

She made her way downstairs on shaky legs. When she entered the Little Parlor, James was waiting for her, standing by the hearth. He looked pale, but his countenance was severe, not anguished like her own. She would never have imagined that his beautiful, merry blue eyes could turn so cold and distant. And no old, shabby clothes for him.
He
was impeccably groomed, clad in a black coat fitted tightly to the shoulders that she had loved to caress and pillow her head against, along with a fashionably knotted cravat, a waistcoat ornately yet subtly embroidered and buckskin breeches that showcased his muscular thighs. He looked perfect. He looked like a stranger.

With a negligent wave of his hand, he indicated a chair. “Please sit.”

Lucy obeyed, perching nervously on its very edge. James sat opposite her, some five feet away. It was the distance of a formal interview, not of the intimate conversations they had shared sitting knee to knee on the sofa in this very room.

“We cannot continue in this fashion.” His voice was distant and calm. “This is a large house, but not so much so that we can share it without seeing each other.” He paused as if respecting a response.

“No,” Lucy said. His words could be a prelude to an offering of peace and forgiveness, but Lucy doubted it.

“I have been giving some thought to what we ought to do,” he continued. “I don’t wish to put either of us through the scandal of a formal separation, but clearly we must live apart.”

She gulped and blinked. She refused to seal her humiliation with tears.

“Once Anna and Arrington have left for Portsmouth, I shall say that business has called me to London. You will remain here. I will visit on occasion for a year or two to maintain appearances, after which you will announce that your health requires you to live at some spot where you can take the waters or have recourse to regular sea-bathing.”