Indiscreet (14 page)

She came immediately, the dog trotting happily at her heels, and looked questioningly from him to Catherine.

“Daphne,” he said, “I would ask for your congratulations. This lady has just now done me the honor of betrothing herself to me. You will wish to make her acquaintance. Meet Miss Catherine Winsmore.”

She gave him a look as if he had two heads and then turned to look at Catherine. “Winsmore?” she said. “Catherine
Winsmore
?”

Catherine was flushed again. And still wary. “Yes,” she said.

Daphne darted him a strange look before returning her gaze to his betrothed. “Oh,” she said. And then she appeared to give herself a mental shake and smiled brightly. “Well, it took the two of you long enough to come to that satisfactory conclusion. I am very pleased. Catherine—may I call you Catherine?—I am delighted. We are going to be sisters.”

She crossed the room with light steps and hugged Catherine, who looked at him over his sister's shoulder and bit her lip.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You must call me Daphne,” his sister said, and then she turned to him and hugged him tightly too. “Rex, I am delighted for you. You are going to be happy. I know. The wedding will be
tomorrow? We are going to have to be frantically busy for the rest of the day.”

“Not tomorrow,” he said dryly. “I have to return to London. The name I have on the license is the wrong one.”

Daphne looked at him closely. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “How awkward. How will we explain yet another journey to London?”

“My eager and tyrannical sister and brother and their spouses insist on elaborate preparations,” he said briskly, watching Catherine's face. “The impatient bridegroom cannot endure the unexpected wait for his wedding and his bride and has therefore been banished to the home of friends for a week.”

“It will do,” Daphne said thoughtfully. She smiled. “Catherine, we are going to have enormous fun for the coming week. We have a wedding to prepare. I have it, of course!” She clapped her hands. “You must move to Bodley House for the week. That is why poor Rex must leave. You can return here for the night before your wedding, after his return.”

“Well, Catherine?” he said. She had been very quiet.

“It will be as you wish,” she said.

The submissive bride. He hoped she was not going to play the part of submissive wife when they were married. He would be bored within a week.

“Well.” He went toward her. “I shall leave early in the morning and see you on my return.” With Daphne watching, he did not know quite how to take his leave of her. But she played her part. She smiled at him.

“Have a safe journey,” she said.

He did not know if she lifted her face for his kiss or merely so that she could look into his face. But he kissed her, lightly and briefly, on the lips before turning away.

“Come, Daphne,” he said.

They had come in his carriage—so that no one in the village could possibly miss his visit or misunderstand its purpose. He handed his sister inside, climbed in after her, and closed the door. The door of the cottage, he noticed when he turned his head, was already shut.

“There,” he said, putting his head back and closing his eyes. “That is done.”

“Rex—” Daphne said.

“I would rather we did not talk, if you please, Daphne,” he said.

They sat silently side by side as the carriage conveyed them back to Bodley House.

•   •   •

“HOW
many Catherine Winsmores can there be?” Lady Baird asked her husband. She was curled into the crook of his arm on a small love seat in her bedchamber later the same night. “Of course it is she, Clay.”

“Yes, I suppose you are right,” he said with a sigh. “Poor lady.”

“I always felt that way too,” she said. “I do not know why it is always the women who bear the brunt of everyone's censure and the men who get off scot-free. Usually it is the men who are most to blame—this man in particular.”

“It is the way of the world, love,” he said.

“Yes.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “You really think we should say nothing, then?”

“Her name meant nothing to Claude or Clarissa,” he said. “They do not spend a great deal of their time in town, of course. And if it meant anything to Rex, he is keeping the knowledge to himself. One never knows with your elder brother, Daph. He is something of a cold fish, if you will pardon me for saying so.”

“It was in his upbringing as the heir to keep things to himself and bear his burdens alone,” she said sadly. “In a strange way I have always thought him even more sensitive than Claude.”

“If the circumstances were different,” Sir Clayton continued, “perhaps we would be honor bound to tell what we know. But she was badly compromised and almost without a doubt Rex was more to blame than she. He must marry her whether he knows the truth or not. Or rather, perhaps I should say that he
would
marry her whether he knew or not. We must stay out of it, Daph. Let them work out their own destiny.”

“I so wanted them to be happy, Clay,” she said. “Rex and Claude, I mean. I love them so much. And now this forced marriage for Rex, and Claude being coldly civil to Clarissa.”

“If she had been my wife,” he said, “she would have had a good walloping, Daph.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she said fondly. “You could not beat a carpet, let alone a wife.”

He chuckled. “Life goes on,” he said. “Somehow they will all work things out.”

“The eternal optimist,” she said. “Talking of which, it has
been
eight
days now. After two years of marriage. Are you holding your breath as much as I am?”

“That is rather a suicidal thing to do, love,” he said, “especially if you are breathing for two. We agreed a year ago to let life take its course, did we not? And to be happy together even if we must remain a family of two for the rest of our lives?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, then.” He chuckled again after a few moments. “But I
am
holding my breath.”

•   •   •

LIFE
took on rather the aspect of a bizarre dream. Not quite a nightmare, perhaps, but close.

Viscount Rawleigh's carriage passed Catherine's cottage without stopping early on the morning following her betrothal. She was already up and saw it go. Two hours later Mr. Adams's carriage arrived to take her and Toby to Bodley House. She did not want to go there. But she did not argue. She went.

She had decided the day before that from now on—or for a while anyway—she would simply let life happen to her. She was tired of trying to shape her own life only to make a mess of it.

She did not want to marry. She
could
not marry. It was one of the conditions. But she would not need support any longer once
she was married to Viscount Rawleigh. She believed that he was very wealthy.

She did not want to marry
him
. Perhaps if she did not find him attractive, if she did not want him physically, she might feel better about marrying him. But she disliked him for his insensitivity and she despised him for his arrogance. He had made it so very clear to her that he wanted only her body for his enjoyment and that he did not want her at all in marriage—as she did not want him.

She would not think about it or about him. Her course had been set now. She had finally let it happen—though she had never actually said yes to his proposal—simply because there was no alternative. She had thought that perhaps he would change his mind once she told him the only part of the truth she was prepared to tell him. Then she would have had to find an alternative. But he had not withdrawn his offer.

She had thought perhaps he would recognize her name.
Then
he would have changed his mind. But he had not done so. And she felt no obligation to enlighten him. He was forcing her into this marriage. He knew there was more to her story than what she had told. He had decided to go ahead with the marriage anyway.

She went to Bodley House, where she was received with warm kindness by Mr. Adams, with cool courtesy—and a stiff, formal apology—by Mrs. Adams, with bright affection by Lady Baird, and with gentle amusement by Sir Clayton Baird. Everyone else who had made up the house party, including Ellen Hudson, had returned to their own homes. The children thought it great fun to have her at the house all the time, though William was wary
at first that her presence was going to mean a music lesson every day.

Lady Baird's maid and Mrs. Adams's were set to work making a wedding dress out of the available materials and patterns. Mr. Adams's cook was given the task of preparing a wedding breakfast for as many guests as could be invited from the gentry within ten miles or so of Bodley—many of the same people who had attended the ball. Decorations were made for the dining room, the bridal carriage—Mr. Adams's, of course—and the church. The floral decorations for the church were to be entirely daffodils and other spring flowers growing wild in the park and woods. The few greenhouse flowers that had survived the ball were to be used in the house and in Catherine's bouquet.

Everyone who was anyone at all was visited by the three ladies and invited to visit. Flanked by a smiling and talkative Lady Baird on one side and a regal and dignified Mrs. Adams on the other, Catherine found that no one had the courage to cut her acquaintance. She had no wish to be accepted on such false terms, but she said nothing. She went through the motions of being sociable.

Everyone, of course, was charmed by the story of romance and impetuosity and impatience that Lady Baird told over and over with great enthusiasm and wit. Or pretended to be charmed. Catherine no longer knew what was genuine and what was feigned in people's behavior.

“Would you believe,” Lady Baird—Daphne—always confided at the culmination of her story, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dancing with merriment, “that my brother actually thought that he could rush back to Bodley a mere week after hastening away in
pursuit of a special license and whisk dear Catherine off to church the very next day? He has no idea, wretched man! Well, I can assure you, Clarissa and I had a thing or two to say to that, did we not, Clarissa?”

To which speech, Mrs. Adams always inclined her head in gracious agreement. “We did indeed, Daphne,” she said.

“We came to dear Catherine's rescue,” Daphne always said triumphantly, beaming at her future sister-in-law. “We sent Rex off to stay with friends and kick his heels for another week.”

She was extremely kind, Catherine always thought, considering the fact that she
knew
. Catherine was not sure how she knew this herself, but she did. Both Daphne and Clayton knew. But neither had said a word to her.

The Reverend Lovering, echoed by Mrs. Lovering, had assured everyone who would listen that the honor of marrying Viscount Rawleigh to their own dear Miss Winsmore—no one had commented publicly on her mysterious change of name and marital status—might well be the pinnacle of his life's achievements. He was speechless with gratification, though he prayed on his knees daily to be saved from the sin of pride.

Miss Downes was the only person Catherine invited herself. Miss Downes hugged her, tears in her eyes, when Catherine made her visit with her two future sisters-in-law. Mrs. Downes took one of Catherine's hands in both hers and smiled at her.

He was away for one week. When the three ladies returned from visiting one afternoon, he was in the drawing room with Mr. Adams and Clayton. He stood and bowed to Catherine, as
he did to the other ladies too, and told her she was looking well. He told her their wedding would take place the following morning. And he told her he would do himself the honor of escorting her back to her cottage.

At which Daphne threw up her hands and told him he had no idea at all how to go on, that
she
would ride in the carriage back to the cottage with Catherine and dear Toby, whom the children had tried to adopt only to find that he would not stay in the nursery but kept escaping to search for Catherine.

And then she was on her way back home, Toby curled on her lap, Daphne telling her that she would come in the morning to help her dress before Claude's carriage arrived to take them both to church. And Clayton, who had agreed to give Catherine away, would come with the carriage, of course.

Catherine let it all happen. All the plans had gone on about her all week without her active assistance. It did not matter. She was happy to be totally passive.

Finally she was home again and alone again with Toby.

Until tomorrow.

“Toby.” She knelt down on the kitchen floor and set her arms about her dog, who was wagging his tail in an ecstasy of happiness at being back in familiar surroundings. “Toby. Oh, Toby.”

She wept against his warm neck and felt his wet tongue licking her ear.

H
E
looked as if he was ready for a reception at Carlton House, Clarissa told him when she saw him. His blue coat was Weston's finest. He wore gray knee breeches, a silver waistcoat, white linen with lace at his cuffs. Claude's valet—he had left his own at Stratton—had made something admirably frothy of his neckcloth.

He looked like a bridegroom, Claude said, slapping him on the back and grinning at him. Any minute now they would be hearing about his cravat being too tight and the room being too warm.

He felt exhausted. It seemed that he had been on the road forever. And at the end of it there had been no relaxation but a wedding to prepare for and the necessity of looking cheerful.

She
certainly had looked better—and worse. The shadows had
gone from beneath her eyes. She had looked less gaunt, less haunted. And yet there had been something about her—something about her eyes. They had looked—empty. It was the only word he could find to describe what he had seen in her eyes.

There was a surprisingly large gathering at the church.

But then Daphne had told him how busy they had all been during the week of his absence, Claude and Clayton constantly calling on neighbors, she and Clarissa taking Catherine about with them to call on all the ladies and drink enough tea to sink a ship.

He waited at the front of the church with his brother. She was not late—he was early. He wished he could leave, just leap on a horse's back and ride until he could ride no farther. He would go down to Dunbarton to see Ken and the others. It would be like old times.

She wanted nothing to do with him. Although she had felt a physical attraction for him, she had never wanted him. She had refused to lie with him, to be his mistress, to be his wife—it seemed incredible to him now that he had actually offered her marriage at one time just because he wanted her so desperately in bed. She had said no.

And yet now, because he had been incautious enough in his anger and disappointment to leave her cottage without checking first to see that the road was clear, she was being forced to marry him after all.

Oh, yes, he wished himself a thousand miles away.

There was a sudden stirring at the back of the church and there she was with Clayton, Daphne behind her, smiling and
doing something with the back of her dress. Then they were moving toward him.

God, but she was beautiful. He was struck by her beauty as he had been that first day, when she had been standing at her gate, nodding a greeting to Clarissa in one of the carriages, and then turning to curtsy and smile at him.

She was dressed in white satin. The gown was fashionably cut, high-waisted, modestly low at the bosom, the sleeves short and puffed. The two flounces at the hem and the smaller ones on the sleeves were trimmed with embroidered golden rosebuds to match the posy of real rosebuds that she carried.

She looked like a bride, he thought foolishly.

She
was
a bride.

His bride.

Her cheeks were flushed with color, he could see when she came closer. Her eyes were bright—yesterday's emptiness had gone from them. They looked directly back into his.

Later, when he thought back on his wedding, he found that he could not remember who had sat in the congregation. He could not remember even Clayton giving Catherine away in the absence of any male relative of hers, or Claude handing him her wedding ring. He could not even remember the rector or the service.

He could remember only her, standing slim and lovely and quiet at his side; her eyes, sometimes lowered—he noticed the long lashes, darker than her hair—but more often raised to his; her hand cool in his. She had long, slim fingers, a pianist's fingers, with short, well-manicured nails. He remembered wondering irrelevantly how she kept her hands so soft and beautiful when
she had no servants to do the menial household tasks for her. His ring looked startlingly bright and golden on her finger.

He could remember only her, saying “I do” quietly but firmly when asked if she would take him as her husband, looking into his eyes as she said it. He remembered her promising in the same calm voice to love and honor and obey him.

And looking back, he could remember as an interesting fact that the wedding service and the words and vows they had exchanged had not at the time seemed to be either a farce or a sacrilege. They had promised before man and God to love each other.

Her lips were soft and cool when he kissed them.

She was his wife. This woman, whose beauty had drawn his eyes from the start, this woman whom he had desired from the start was his. For the rest of their lives.

Afterward he remembered that there had been no panic in the thought. Only a wondering sort of exultation. It had happened so fast. Could it really be so? But it was. She was his.

She was his wife.

•   •   •

SHE
had always thought him extraordinarily handsome, just as she had always thought it of Mr. Adams—Claude. She must think of him by that name now. He was her brother-in-law.

She had always thought her husband handsome. But today his beauty had made the breath catch in her throat. Like a love-struck girl she had been unable to take her eyes off him in church from the moment Daphne had straightened her hem and she had
looked toward the altar and seen him. Yet it was not love she felt for him, but its antithesis.

He was dressed like a courtier or a bridegroom, she had thought foolishly. He had dressed carefully and splendidly for their wedding. She had half expected that the wedding itself would be unimportant to him, that he might even come to it dressed in his riding clothes.

The wedding was unexpectedly important to her. She remembered how as a girl she had longed for marriage with a handsome and loving husband—the dream of all young girls for a happily-ever-after. She remembered her severe disappointment when her come-out had been delayed until she was nineteen, practically on the shelf. And how so soon after the come-out, all her dreams, all her hopes, all her future came crashing about her ears. And the final cruel blow in the death of her baby just eight months later. For five years she had lived without dreams, without hope. For five years she had lived only for peace.

And now she was marrying after all. A handsome and wealthy man, a viscount. She knew that he desired her even though he neither wanted nor loved her. She was to have a husband after all, a man in her bed, at least until he tired of her or until she bore him a son.

Perhaps she would have a child again. A child who would wait the full nine months to be born. A child who would live.

She did not love this man she was marrying. She did not even like him. She did not want to be marrying him. But she
was
marrying him. And unexpectedly and rather painfully, hope was
reborn in her. The hope of some sort of future that was not merely a dull peace.

Perhaps he would give her a child.

They stood outside on the church steps for a long time, shaking hands with guests, being kissed by some of them, smiling, laughing with everyone. She realized afterward that he had kept her there deliberately although they might have driven away immediately and greeted the guests at the house. He had kept her there so that they would be seen by the villagers, many of whom had gathered outside the church gates at the end of the path, and some of whom were standing out in the street at a greater distance, looking toward the church.

They traveled back to Bodley House in the decorated wedding carriage, alone together for the first time. But they rode in silence, her hand on his sleeve, held there by his free hand. She could think of nothing to say. He seemed uninterested in even trying to converse. He looked out through the window. For the first time she realized that it was a beautiful day with blue sky and sunshine. For the first time she realized that she was not cold even though she wore no cloak or even shawl.

And then at the breakfast again and afterward he kept her close to him, smiled, looked at her with warm and appreciative eyes, took her about so that they conversed with everyone who had come—and everyone who had been invited had come, of course, curious to see this couple whose marriage had only narrowly averted lasting scandal. A few times when they were talking with others, he addressed her as “my love.”

It was a farce he played out with meticulous care so that her
good name would be restored, so that scandal would be dead and so that gossip would not spread beyond the confines of Bodley and its neighborhood.

He was being the scrupulously honorable gentleman, she realized, protecting her name, taking the consequences of his own indiscretion. She understood all that and was grateful for it. And resentful of it. How helpless women were. The pawns of men. To be tripped up and pitched headlong into the dirt by men, and then to be picked up by them and dusted off and restored to uprightness.

But that was the way of the world.

Everyone stayed until evening. There was the garden outside to be strolled in on such a beautiful day, and there was the drawing room to sit in for conversation and tea. There was even some impromptu dancing in the ballroom to the music of the pianoforte, though the room had not been decorated for the occasion.

When darkness began to fall, it was time to leave. Time for bride and groom to leave. They were to spend their wedding night at her cottage and leave for Stratton tomorrow.

Claude's carriage, still decorated, waited outside the main doors to take them away.

Daphne was crying and laughing as she hugged them both very tightly. Claude hugged his brother wordlessly for long moments before turning to Catherine and smiling kindly and kissing both her cheeks.

“Take care of him, Catherine, my dear,” he said quietly. “He is very precious to me and not entirely a blackguard, you know.” His eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

She wished absurdly that it were possible to marry a family rather than an individual. She loved Claude and Daphne.

Clayton and Clarissa kissed her too, the former with a wink, the latter with smiling tenseness.

Other people smiled and nodded—there seemed to be dozens out on the terrace.

And then Lord Rawleigh was handing her into the carriage and jumping in beside her. Someone on the outside closed the door and suddenly they were enclosed in near darkness and in quietness. The carriage jerked into motion.

Lord Rawleigh! She could already think of her in-laws by their given names. She could think of this man only by his title. Rex. She was not sure she would ever be able to say his name aloud. Her husband. Despite the late-morning wedding and the afternoon and evening of celebrations, it suddenly seemed unreal again. Her husband. He was leaning back against the squabs, his eyes closed.

“Well, Catherine,” he said after a while, “restitution has been made. You are respectable again.”

She sat very still. If she had moved, she would have smacked him. Hard.

“Catherine Adams, Viscountess Rawleigh,” he said. “Now the question of whether it was Winters or Winsmore is of no consequence.”

And so the vestiges of her identity disappeared. She had none apart from him. She had his name and was his property. His possession. One he did not want. Except perhaps in his bed for his pleasure and for breeding. She breathed slowly and evenly,
trying not to allow herself to be entirely engulfed by bitterness. In bitterness lay only self-destruction, as she knew from experience.

When the carriage turned at the bottom of the driveway to pass through the village, he spoke again. He still had his eyes closed.

“Tell me, Catherine,” he said, “do I have a virgin bride?”

She had expected that he had drawn his own conclusion from the facts that she had been living alone and incognito. It was something she would have expected him to ask before marrying her if he was not sure. His sense of honor, it seemed, knew no bounds. But then, for years he had been an officer in the cavalry. Of course honor would mean more than life to him.

“No,” she said, so determined not to whisper and seem ashamed that the word blurted like a defiance into the closed confines of the carriage.

“As I thought,” he said softly.

•   •   •

HER
dog had been inside alone for most of the day, though Miss Downes apparently had come to let him out for five minutes during the afternoon. He greeted them with barking enthusiasm, almost demented with joy, jumping up against Catherine and licking her face when she bent to hug him.

“He needs to go outside,” she murmured, and the terrier raced ahead of her to the back door, woofing with excitement. She did not only let him out. She went outside with him and was gone for all of ten minutes.

He lit a couple of candles in the kitchen. He did not bother to light the fire. It was really not a cold night and they would not be remaining downstairs.

He was feeling annoyed. Not so much over the fact that she was not virgin. He had suspected as much. He would have been surprised if she had answered his question in the affirmative. Indeed, there was some relief in knowing that he would not have pain and tightness and blood and skittishness to cope with tonight.