Joan Wolf (6 page)

“Yes. That sounds fine.”

Lady Maria beamed. “Well, then, Mark, write out the announcement for the papers and send it off. And, Laura, you must write to your parents. They will want to come up to London for the wedding.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Laura uncertainly, and Lady Maria slapped her calendar down on the desk.

“They must come. This wedding must go according to proper protocol. I don’t want any detail neglected that might lead to scandal. Remember, Laura, you
were
alone here with Mark for almost a week. We must think of your reputation, my dear.”

“Laura’s reputation is irreproachable. Aunt Maria, and you know it,” said Mark coolly. His hands were in the pockets of his riding breeches and he was regarding his aunt with some austerity. “Don’t try to intimidate her. It is
my
reputation you are concerned about.” He turned to Laura. “You must do as you please about your parents.”

Laura met his eyes for a minute and then she turned to Lady Maria. “They will come. You are right. There must be no gossip.” She smiled slightly. “For Robin’s sake.”

Lady Maria looked relieved. “Excellent. I will make arrangements about where they can stay. And after the wedding breakfast I will bring Robin back to Devon and await you here. That will give the two of you a chance to have a little honeymoon by yourselves in London.”

Laura barely repressed a shiver at her words.

* * * *

Everything went off exactly as Lady Maria suggested. Sir Charles and Lady Dalwood came over to Castle Dartmouth for a few days to meet Mark, and Sir Charles and he came to an agreement about marriage settlements. Sir Charles was very pleased with his daughter. Her first marriage had been a profitable one; this marriage was absolutely brilliant. Edward Templeton had had money; the Earl of Dartmouth had more: he had property.

Two weeks before the fatal date, Laura went up to London with Lady Maria to shop for a trousseau. She had never in her life been to London and normally she would have been thrilled by her first sight of the famous city, but apprehension destroyed all her pleasure in her new clothes and new surroundings.

Mark and Robin arrived three days before the ceremony, and Laura enjoyed herself more than she had in weeks on their expeditions to see the beasts at the Tower and the marvels of Astley's Amphitheater. Mark was more natural and approachable than she had ever known him on those occasions, and the tension inside her relaxed a little.

On the morning of her wedding it was back in full force, however. Her maid dressed her in the pale rose sarcenet morning dress she and Lady Maria had chosen. She felt as if she were a sleepwalker moving through a dream as she got into the crested carriage that was to take her to Hanover Square.

Her somnambulist sensation continued throughout the ceremony and the wedding breakfast that followed. Then Robin got sick to his stomach. Too much excitement and too much food, his father diagnosed, and made him lie down, after which he fell asleep for two hours. When he woke up he was right as rain, and Lady Maria determined to make a start on their journey back to Devon.

Laura protested, but her godmother was adamant. “There is a very good inn about twenty miles out of London we can easily make before it gets dark. You and Mark must be left to yourselves for a while.” And she packed up Robin and took him away, leaving the newly married couple alone together at Cheney House.

“Put on your riding habit,” Mark said to her as they returned to the house after waving Robin off. “We need to get some air.”

Laura was delighted by any idea that would put off the moment when she would be alone with him, and complied with his suggestion with gratifying alacrity. The January day was cold and the park almost deserted and they had a pleasant hour cantering by themselves under the barren trees. Laura’s magnolia skin was rosy with cold and exercise when he said, “It’s getting dark. Time we started back home.”

She was riding beside him in silence through the London streets when both their attentions were caught by a man’s voice crying out, “Commander Cheney! Is that you?”

Mark pulled his horse up immediately and Laura followed suit. “Yes,” Mark said. “Who is that, please?”

“It’s Evans, sir.” A man came out in the street to stand beside Mark’s horse. “Gunner, from the
Brand.
Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember you, Evans,” Mark said quietly, looking at the upturned face. “How are you these days?”

The man at his side was thin and haggard and desperate-looking. “Not well, sir. That’s my wife and child over there.” He nodded to a woman huddled on the curb holding a baby. “We’ve just been evicted from our rooms. I’ve no money, sir. Nowhere to go.”

Mark was dismounting before he had finished speaking. “How long have you been out of work?” he asked tersely.

“Four months, sir. I haven’t been able to get anything steady. Not since I was paid off two years ago.”

Mark was signaling to a hackney. “You can come home with me for the night, Evans,” he said, opening the door. “We’ll see what we can do for you in the morning.” He took the thin arm of Mrs. Evans in his hand and helped her into the cab. “Cheney House, Berkeley Square,” he said to the driver, and closed the door on the couple’s incoherent thank-yous.

He mounted his horse again and walked him over to where Laura was waiting for him. “I’m afraid I’ve just saddled you with some uninvited guests,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”

“There is nothing to be sorry about,” she returned. “Those poor people! Whatever would have happened to them if you hadn’t come along?”

He looked very bleak. “It is nothing unusual, Laura. It happens all the time. There are simply no jobs for all the demobilized soldiers and sailors who have been thrown on the economy since the war. Too many men who fought for their country are ending up like Evans: homeless, jobless, destitute. In some ways, the peace is worse than the war.”

They trotted briskly through the quickly darkening streets and arrived at Cheney House almost simultaneously with the hackney. Laura took one look at the thin, pale, frightened face of Mrs. Evans and put an arm around her comfortingly. With calm efficiency she issued orders to the servants, and in an hour’s time Mr. and Mrs. Evans and baby were fed and tucked up in a warm room with a roaring fire and a big comfortable bed.

Then Laura and Mark changed clothes and had their own dinner. It was ten o’clock by the time they finished and Laura rose to leave him to his wine. “I’ll await you in the drawing room,” she said as she stood facing him over the candlelit table.

He had stood up when she did, and now he smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t want any more wine.” He started coming around the table toward her. “Poor Laura,” he said. “What a wedding day! First a sick child and then an indigent family to feed and put to bed.”

“It has certainly been unusual,” she said a little breathlessly.

He was very close to her now and there was a smile in his eyes. “It’s time we put ourselves to bed, I think.”

In the light of the candelabrum he looked very handsome, and as she looked up at him, very big. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I suppose we should.” And she walked beside him up the stairs to their bedrooms.

Chapter Eight

Laura’s maid was brushing out her hair when the connecting door between their bedrooms opened and Mark came in wearing a silk dressing gown. After a quick glance at him, Laura remained perfectly still, looking at her reflection in the mirror. She wore a lacy white negligee that was cut low enough to show off the creamy silkiness of her shoulders.

 “Shall I plait it, my lady?” the maid asked.

 “No,” said Mark. “Leave it as it is.” The maid put the brush down, leaving Laura’s hair falling dark and shining down her back.

“Will that be all, my lady?”

“Yes,” said Laura. “That will be all, Potter.”

 As the door closed behind the maid, Mark came across the room. She did not hear his feet on the thick carpeting and started a little when he appeared behind her in the mirror. She was sitting on a quilted silk stool and he rested his hands on the nape of her neck, his fingers against her hair. “I have often wondered what it would look like down,” he said softly. “It is beautiful.”

She sat perfectly still, as if frozen into immobility.

 “Laura?” he said. She tipped her head back a little to look at him and he bent forward and kissed her throat. He was still standing behind her and his hands pulled her back against him and then covered her breasts.

She was trembling, stiff and tense under his touch, and after a minute he let her go. “What is the matter?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

“I ... nothing,” she answered, bending her head so that her hair swung forward to hide her face.

He put a hand on her shoulder and forced her to turn around. Then he sank down on his heels in front of her. “Did you have a bad experience before?” he asked patiently.

“No.” She looked into his brown eyes. “I suppose I shall have to tell you.”

“I think you had better.”

She looked away from his face down to her tensely clasped hands. “If I am nervous it is because I have never done this before.”

“Never done ... But you were married!”

“It was not a... real marriage. Edward never touched me like you just did.”

“Good God.” He stared at her, clearly stunned by her revelation. “It was
his
idea, this separation?” he said at last.

“Yes! When I married him I did not know...”

“Did not know what?” he asked gently as her voice trailed off.

“Edward was not interested in women. Not in that way, at any rate. He married me because he wanted a hostess, a chatelaine, and he wanted to better himself socially. He did not want
me
.
”

“I see.” There was a pause, and then he asked quietly, “Did he like men?”

Laura looked at him in surprise. “How did you know?”

“One sees a bit of that in the navy,” he replied a little grimly. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you tell your parents? You could have gotten an annulment.”

He could see the color slowly rising under her beautiful pale skin, staining her throat and flushing her cheeks and her forehead. “I couldn’t,” she said a little gruffly. “Edward was very generous to them, you see.”

“Yes, I do see,” he said quietly after a moment. She found the courage to look up into his face once again. There was an odd expression in his eyes. “I have the strangest wedding nights,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

She didn’t say anything, and he reached out to gently smooth her hair back from her face. “Poor Laura. Here I have been thinking all along that you knew the whole game, and you don’t even know the first move.”

“I am afraid that I don’t,” she replied in a very small voice.

“Well, we start like this,” he said, and drawing her to her feet, he took her in his arms and kissed her. His mouth was gentle, the kiss slow and tender, and after a minute Laura felt herself beginning to relax. He raised his head and laid his cheek against the top of her hair. Her head fit perfectly into the hollow of his shoulder, and she snuggled in there comfortably,
her eyes closing in contentment. She felt oddly safe and protected.

“You are so small,” he was saying. ‘It’s strange, you don’t look small at all, really, but you scarcely come up to my shoulder.”

She looked up at that, shyly smiling. “I should imagine everyone must seem small to you, my lord.”

He watched her face as she spoke, and his eyes began to glitter between his half-closed lashes. At that look she felt her own breathing alter, but not this time from fear. He slid his hands into her hair and bent to kiss her once again. This time his mouth was hard, asking, demanding a response from her. And she gave it, slipping her arms around his neck so that her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, opening her mouth for the startling but sweet invasion of his tongue. After a minute, and without letting go of her mouth, he straightened up. Her feet left the floor and he walked with her the few steps necessary to reach the bed.

 He laid her down and released her only long enough to remove his dressing gown. Then he was beside her again, and his hands began to move over her thinly clad body. When he lifted her out of her nightgown, she made no protest, conscious only of his growing urgency and a growing desire in herself to do whatever he asked because only by satisfying him would she find fulfillment for herself.

* * * *

Laura woke early the next morning as the first light was slanting grayly in through the blinds. She raised herself a little to look down at Mark sleeping beside her. In the early light his relaxed, unguarded face looked very young— as young as he really was. Not for the first time she wondered what it was that had brought that look of still remoteness to his face.

 He was still deeply asleep, his thick sun-bleached hair ruffled on the pillow like a small boy’s. But he was not a small boy, she thought, remembering last night. She lay back against her pillows and regarded the crimson canopy over her. Not a small boy at all.

“Good morning,” he said in a soft low voice that sounded to her sensitive ears like a caress. She turned and looked at him. “Good morning,” she replied. And smiled. He didn’t move from where he lay, but put a hand up to gently touch her cheek. She turned her head and kissed his fingers. They did not get up for another hour and a half.

* * * *

They stayed in London for two weeks, during which time Laura fell in love. She flattered herself that she was getting to know Mark very well. She was touched by his kindness in dealing with Evans, whom he employed to work at Castle Dartmouth as a general estate worker. From the way Evans regarded Mark, she realized that he must have been an excellent officer.

 “There were hardly ever any floggings on Commander ... Lord Dartmouth’s, I mean ... on his lordship’s ship,” Evans told her in the one conversation she had had with him on the subject. “And the provisions were the best. I mind how he once dumped a whole cargo of rotten food overboard. He was that angry! said Evans admiringly. “His men would do anything for him.”