An Infamous Marriage (5 page)

Chapter Four

The yellow bedroom at Westerby Grange was by far the finest Elizabeth had ever had. On the southwest corner of the house, it would get ample light when the sun shone, to make the yellow drapes and bed hangings all the more cheerful. While it didn’t have a separate sitting room adjoining it, it had space enough for a little table and chair, there by the window overlooking the barns and the hilly fields beyond. Once she was more settled in, Elizabeth would have suitable furniture brought up from the parlor and would sit there to read, write her letters and work on the household accounts.

It wouldn’t be a terrible life, she told herself firmly, the better to make herself believe it. Her new husband—he’d asked her to call him Jack from now on—had presented the handful of servants to her and taken her on a tour of the house. The Grange was an in-between sort of place, better than a farm cottage but not grand enough for a squire’s manor.

There was a tenant farmer and his family, the Purvises, who lived in a trim stone cottage she could just see from her window. She’d already met all of them, and Mrs. Purvis had been so very gentle and compassionate at Giles’s deathbed. Mr. Purvis could teach Elizabeth everything she needed to know about farming, Jack had promised.

She studied her reflection in her mirror. She didn’t want to consummate her marriage, not yet, but nonetheless it stung that he’d so coolly and logically dismissed the possibility before she could even raise it. He didn’t want her, and why should he? She was no beauty, while he was a handsome man—yet no more so than Giles had been. Jack was bright and vital, but his brown curls and dark eyes were commonplace compared to Giles’s angelic gold and blue, and Jack’s features were too strong, his eyebrows too heavy, his nose and jaw too emphatic.

But Giles had always made her feel beautiful even though she knew otherwise. Now, staring at her reflection, she didn’t even see passable prettiness. Even her eyes looked pale and weary. She closed them and rested her head in her hands. She missed him so. He’d had such a gift of making all her troubles, every bleak day in her past, seem as nothing. His eyes had seen beauty everywhere, and his vision had created that beauty. Without him, the world around her looked gray and lonely again.

No wonder Jack didn’t want her. She didn’t especially want herself.

Only her duty remained in all its cold comfort. Jack was coming at any moment to take her to present to his mother. Mrs. Armstrong was unlikely to ever really know her, but she wanted to become a calm and capable presence in her mother-in-law’s life nonetheless. She knew Jack had married her half to keep his promise to Giles and half to secure a constant caretaker for his mother. Well, then, she would do her best to show herself worthy of his trust.

A rap sounded at the door, and Elizabeth opened it to see Jack looking grave.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I am.”

“You mustn’t expect her to be able to welcome you as a daughter,” he said as he offered her his arm and led her down the passage. “She barely recognizes me most days.”

“I understand,” she assured him. “I met her once before with Giles.”

“I wish you could’ve known her as she used to be. She was such a formidable lady.”

They had reached Mrs. Armstrong’s door. An elderly maid answered Jack’s knock and led them into a small sitting room.

“Elizabeth, this is Metcalf. She was Mama’s dresser for forty years, and now she looks after her.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t with the others to meet you when you arrived, ma’am.”

“Naturally you couldn’t leave your charge,” Elizabeth hastened to assure her. “I hope I will be able to take some of your burdens off your shoulders henceforth.”

Metcalf inclined her head and dipped her knees a little. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Who’s there?” called a querulous voice from within the room.

“Your son Jack, Mama, bringing my new bride to greet you.”

“New bride?”

“Yes. I told you of her, remember? Elizabeth Hamilton.”

His tone was soft and gentle, but Elizabeth still wanted to shake him. Of course his mother didn’t remember, and he would only increase her confusion by trying to make her do so.

Elizabeth stepped forward and made her curtsy, just as she would have done under more ordinary circumstances. “I am happy to be here, ma’am.” Her new mother-in-law indeed looked far older than sixty-six. Though her face was relatively smooth and unlined, all her hair was white and her gray eyes had a faded, vacant quality.

Mrs. Armstrong frowned at her. “Hm. Are you sure? I’ve never seen a bride in black.”

That’s because just a week ago I was someone else’s bride,
Elizabeth wanted to say.

“Mama,” Jack said. “Elizabeth is also in mourning.”

“Mourning, hey?” Mrs. Armstrong studied her again, her eyes seeming to come briefly into proper focus. “I hope there’s more to you than there looks to be. Since the day Jack turned up on leave, looking tall and handsome like his father, I expected him to elope to Scotland with some beauty.”

“We did marry there, Mama,” Jack said before Elizabeth could think of a response.

They kept the visit mercifully short. Later, when Jack and Elizabeth sat opposite each other at dinner, Jack apologized for his mother.

“Don’t,” she said. “I had a fair notion what I was getting into.”

“Still. She should not have insulted you. Before all this her courtesy was impeccable.”

“I’m certain it was.” She stabbed at a potato with her fork. “I suppose this is what age does to many of us—makes us as children again, with no better sense of what truths must not be said.”

He didn’t meet her eyes. “Not truths.”

“Truths,” she said firmly. “I know I’m no beauty.”

He sputtered, staring at her. “That’s not—you’re—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He subsided.

“Was there someone else?” she asked. “Someone you wanted to carry to Scotland?”

“What would be the point of telling you if there was?” he snapped. “It can’t be, now.”

She sighed. None of this was his fault, but she couldn’t help envisioning some perfect, golden-haired young beauty, perhaps a general’s daughter, who had danced with Colonel Armstrong and dreamed of becoming his bride. “No. But if somewhere there is a lady who sees me as an enemy for ruining her hopes, I should like to be forewarned.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded curtly. “There was no one. No one I could marry, at least.”

Elizabeth chose not to press for more details on just what sort of women he couldn’t marry. No one expected men to be chaste before marriage. Even gentle, devout Giles hadn’t quite been a virgin.

But Jack seemed to misinterpret her silence, for he shook his head and blew out a frustrated breath. “Elizabeth,” he said gruffly, “we’ll make do. There have been worse-suited couples.”

“I hope so.” From their time together so far, she doubted it.

“Of course there have,” he said bracingly. “Why, look at the Prince of Wales.”

She smiled. The expression felt rusty from disuse. “Touché.”

“Or Henry VIII.”

Now Elizabeth couldn’t hold back a giggle. “And which wife?”

“All of them, I think. For a man who married six times, he didn’t have much of a knack for the state, did he? Though Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard had the worst of it.”

She took a sip of her wine, eying him over the glass’s brim. “I do hope you prove a better husband than Henry,” she said. “I should hate to lose my head.”

He laughed, and she with him. When their merriment had passed, he watched her with greater warmth than she had yet seen from him. Elizabeth felt a stirring of something—not desire, it was too soon for desire—but of affection, of liking. She could see now why Giles had been his friend.

Since there were only the two of them at dinner, they skipped the ceremony of her withdrawing to the parlor and leaving him to his solitary port. After a light sweet course of cheese and fruits, he suggested they seek their separate beds, since they would have a busy few days of it to show her around the estate and go over its account books before he must leave. Elizabeth gratefully agreed and took Jack’s arm as they climbed the steep staircase together.

Outside her door he bowed over her hand, just brushing her knuckles with his lips. “Good night, Elizabeth. Sleep well.”

“You too.”

They smiled at each other again, tentatively, and she slipped into her room. She had meant to stay awake for a time, perhaps to read, but the exertions of the day had exhausted her so thoroughly she was asleep on the soft feather mattress of her unfamiliar bed within half an hour.

* * *

As they worked to prepare for his departure, Elizabeth saw nothing of the playful, laughing husband of their first dinner together. Instead he was cool and practical, much as she imagined he must be when he dealt with regimental affairs. She told herself it was just as well. After he returned from Canada would be time enough to let herself like him, and perhaps even learn to love him. For now, their marriage was something of a business contract, and naturally he was using their short time together to make sure she knew enough to live up to her end of the bargain.

Still, his nearness had a strange effect on her on the first full day of their marriage, as they sat together reviewing the estate’s accounts. He had such broad, square shoulders. She wished she could lean upon them and weep out her grief and anger against the warm solidity of his body instead of keeping them carefully bottled up. But he didn’t want that, so she held herself stiffly and maintained a careful and correct distance as he pointed out how the accounting had fallen behind since his mother’s apoplexy. “This will be your first task,” he said. “I hope you’ve a good head for figures.”

“Good enough,” she said. “I kept the household accounts for my great-uncle for years.” She didn’t want to point out that she was a banker’s daughter and had inherited her father’s mathematical talent lest he wonder if she’d inherited his dishonesty, too.

He smiled a little. “I won’t worry, then. And, bad as this looks, there shouldn’t be many debts. There haven’t been any letters from creditors, nor have any of the locals appeared on my doorstep in the time I’ve been here. Purvis knows how to manage the horses as well as I do. The place should clear at least a little income each year, and you must do as you like with it while I’m gone. I’ll have my pay, and I’ve enough saved to meet my needs beyond that.”

“What about sheep?” she asked.

“Sheep?”

“I’d wondered why there aren’t sheep grazing the hills behind the western fields. They’re too steep to be plowed or to make good pasture for horses, but I believe sheep aren’t so nice in their tastes.”

“Sheep. I thought you’d ask me about new dresses, or books, or perhaps a pianoforte.”

She ducked her head and didn’t return his smile. Couldn’t he see she was trying to show him how practical she was, and reassure him she wouldn’t waste his money? “I’ll get what I need, within our income, except the pianoforte. I fear I’m sadly unmusical. But it seems that land could be put to use. Not that I’m any kind of expert on farming,” she hastened to add. “There may be good reasons why it shouldn’t be attempted.”

“No, it very well might be worth a try. I think we did have them, in my grandfather’s day. I’m not sure why it was stopped.”

No, and he wouldn’t have thought to ask. She had married a soldier, not a farmer. He felt responsible for this land because it was his home. Yet when it came to the details of its management, he took—well, he took precisely the same amount of interest that a contented, domestic farmer might take in the command of an army battalion. Elizabeth, however, had never been given the luxury of only taking interest in matters she found inherently intriguing. She had married into a farm, so a farmwife she must become.

The next day he announced he’d made a new will and showed it to her. It was two pages long, written in the dense prose favored by lawyers, but its purpose was clear: if Jack and his mother both died, Westerby Grange belonged to her.

“But what about your family?” she asked.

“What family? As I told you, Mama and I are the last of the Westerbys.”

“But there are any number of Armstrongs, aren’t there?”

“Yes, but why should Uncle Richard or one of my cousins have the Grange rather than you? They’re amply provided for, no more Westerbys by blood than you are, and haven’t been living here and caring for the land and my mother. No, if I should die, take the place and be welcome to it.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. She wanted to suggest that if he were to lie with her tonight and the next, maybe there would be another generation of Westerbys to live on the land. But he’d made it clear he didn’t want her, and she didn’t need to be told twice. “I hope you come home safe and get the chance to live on it and care for it for many years to come,” she said instead.

“So do I, but it never hurts to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She sighed, blinking back the tears she had determined to leave unshed until after Jack left. Giles and she had felt so secure in their new marriage, since he had been promised a good living as soon as its aged incumbent died. They had puzzled a little over how to make ends meet until they came into their little clerical fortune, but had never discussed what would happen if he didn’t live to claim it.

Jack reached across the table to give her hand a tentative squeeze, then just as quickly drew back. “And so we are.”

“Yes.” She swallowed and nerved herself to ask the questions that had been troubling her since the morning of the funeral. They were running out of time, and she didn’t want to leave it until he was walking out the door. “Jack?”

“What it is?”

“I don’t like to speak of this.” She bit her lip, searching for words.

“Out with it,” he said, not unkindly. “If there’s anything you must say to me, please do so before I leave. I can hardly imagine a worse way to quarrel than by letters that take months to reach their destination.”

She nodded. “It’s nothing to do with you, yourself, and after what happened to my father I’m the last person to hold a family scandal against anyone else, but...”