“Do they?” Meggie said with a smile. It was another thing they had in common.
“Of course they do. Now here is how it is: Your Hadrian is going to have to accept Hugo as your mate and Hugo, poor boy, is going to have to accept Hadrian as your brother. Share and share alike, I always say. They will learn to tolerate each other in time, but you must allow them to come to terms without your interference.”
“But Hugo doesn’t like—“
“What Hugo likes and doesn’t like is of no interest to me. He’ll learn how things work around here soon enough.”
Meggie closed her mouth on her next protest. She could see that there was no point in arguing with Dorelia. It occurred to her that Hugo was going to have to come to territorial terms with more than Hadrian.
That was going to be interesting to watch. So far Hugo hadn’t struck her as the most flexible of men.
Humming, Dorelia pulled the brush through Meggie’s hair with another long, rhythmic stroke. Meggie sighed, so enjoying the pleasure of the contact that she forgot all about Hadrian and Hugo, abandoning herself to the luxury of being nurtured, floating off to a place of peace where she thought of nothing at all…
No time seemed to have passed when Dorelia dropped the brush and uttered an exclamation.
“Dinner!” she cried. “I completely forgot about the hour. We mustn’t keep Cookie and his feast waiting. You must dress instantly—quickly, girl, quickly! I do
not
know what I was thinking.”
Before Meggie could register what was happening, Dorelia had twisted Meggie’s hair into a loose chignon and fastened it. She produced a basin of warm water from somewhere and scrubbed Meggie’s hands and face as if she were a child, dried her off with a soft, fluffy towel, and stood her upright.
The next thing Meggie knew, Dorelia had poured the dress over her head and efficiently settled it into place.
“There,” Dorelia said triumphantly, whipping Meggie toward a long mirror and facing her forward. “That’s perfect, don’t you agree?”
Stunned, Meggie regarded herself in the mirror. She could hardly believe her eyes. The dress, a gossamer concoction of the palest green silk, looked as if it had been spun directly onto her body. Which was exactly the problem.
“Isn’t it a bit—well, a bit indecent?” Meggie said, pulling at the low neckline that revealed a great deal of her small bosom. She felt practically naked.
“Nonsense. I am sure this is all the rage. I modified the design, as I told you.”
“I—I’ve never had my neck uncovered in all my life,” Meggie stammered, wondering what Sister Agnes would say if she could see her now. Not three hours out of the sanitarium, and Meggie looked like a light-skirt. “Or my arms,” she added.
“If you object, you can always put a shawl around your shoulders, but I really do
not
see the necessity.” Dorelia scowled. “Hmm, I think I understand. It’s those nuns, isn’t it? What do they know, may I ask, all dressed up fit to suffocate? You’re about to become a married woman, and you can take my word for it, gentlemen don’t take kindly to having their wives swaddled in shapeless packages.”
Meggie couldn’t help herself. “Here I thought I was trying to please Cookie,” she said tartly.
Dorelia’s little eyes narrowed for a moment and then she chortled, clapping her hands together. “So, the nuns didn’t manage to beat all the spirit out of you after all.”
“The nuns weren’t
all
bad,” Meggie started to say, about to explain about Sister Agnes, but Dorelia cut her off with an impatient wave of the hand.
“Yes, yes, dear. Later.” She plucked a white rose from the vase on the dressing table and slipped it into Meggie’s hair. “There. Perfect. Now, since you’ve had no mother to instruct you in these matters, I will instruct you myself. You are to concentrate fully on your husband-to-be tonight, whether you know him from Adam or not.”
Meggie nearly choked at the reference. She could just see herself concentrating fully on Hugo in the context of Adam. She’d never get a bite down her throat. “Yes, Aunt Dorelia,” she said in a strangled voice.
“Smile often, agree with everything he says, and for heaven’s sake, keep your opinions to yourself. You will soon find that men are interested in nobody’s opinion but their own. A pretty face and a pleasing manner will go a long way in keeping the waters calm. Men do not like women to be clever.”
Meggie felt something inside her stomach curl up into a tight ball. Was
every
married woman expected to be a hopeless dimwit? Did all men speak to their wives in painfully short and childish sentences, as if any sort of understanding was beyond them? From what Dorelia had just said, she gathered that had to be the case.
Meggie had lived so long only in the company of women that she’d assumed that the sort of intelligent, lively conversation she shared with Sister Agnes would be the same sort of conversation she’d have with anyone with a decent brain, regardless of sex. Even her teachers in the orphanage, despite their ingrained animosity toward her, had grudgingly encouraged her to learn as much as she could and to excel at her work.
What was the use of all her fine education if from now on she was to bury it under a layer of pretended idiocy, just so she could be admired by her husband? What use was there in any woman being educated?
She’d never realized that men wanted women to be nothing more than decorative objects. Yet Hugo had clearly indicated to her on more than one occasion that this was the very thing he expected. She had been so ignorant about the standard state of affairs between men and women.
“My dear, you are very quiet. Have you been attending me?” Dorelia demanded.
“Yes,” Meggie said, her voice very low. “I have attended you well. I am to be amenable in every way to Hugo’s wishes.”
“Well, not to all his wishes,” Dorelia said, her eyes sparkling mischievously. “Some of those wishes can wait until tomorrow, and it is up to you to see that they do. Once the ring is on your finger, then it is a different matter.” She peered at Meggie. “You do understand me? The nuns didn’t keep you completely in the dark?”
Meggie lowered her gaze. “If you mean about the consecrated act of marriage,” she said, “I have no need for instruction. It is what comes after that concerns me.”
Dorelia’s expression abruptly sobered. “Oh, my dear child, I was forgetting about your own arrival in this world. Naturally you would be fearful, but with luck, what comes after is a healthy child and a healthy mother.”
“Oh…” Meggie said. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of dying in childbirth, or for that matter becoming pregnant. “Is it common for mothers to die when they have a baby?” she asked nervously.
“Not
so
very common, no, especially if the birth is handled correctly.” Her face darkened. “Like your own poor mother, Lally was not so fortunate. She and her dear baby boy expired together. There was nothing I could do for either of them, curse the idiot doctor who kept me from Lally’s side—but never mind that,” she said, her hand sweeping through the air as if to banish the memory. “He won’t be coming to this house again, I can promise you that. Any other questions?”
“Actually, what I really meant was what my duties would be. Other than producing children,” Meggie said.
“Oh, that’s easy. You manage your husband’s house and affairs, look after his tenants, and see to the general well-being of everyone under your care.”
“All of this when I am meant to be monumentally stupid, a walking epergne?” Meggie asked.
Dorelia’s wizened face split into a grin. “So you do understand me after all. Good. You will need to understand as much about men as possible, my dear girl, if you’re to keep your husband in hand. We will talk more about all of this, but there is no time now.”
She took Meggie by the shoulders and turned her toward the door, then released her. “Go now. Do as I’ve told you. You are not the only woman who has walked into marriage not knowing her husband, and you certainly will not be the last. It is up to you to make this work, Meggie Bloom. I count on you. We all count on you.”
Meggie twisted her head to ask Dorelia what she meant by that peculiar statement, but Dorelia had mysteriously vanished like a puff of smoke.
Meggie scanned the room for a hidden exit, but with no success. She’d have to look for it later. In the meantime, Dorelia was right.
She needed to focus her attention on her husband, discover what she could about his expectations.
And try to remember to behave like a moron.
H
ugo glared at Meggie’s bedroom door one last time, then down at the blasted wolf who kept him from ensuring that his four hundred thousand pounds was going to survive.
“Bloody damned cur,” he muttered blackly. “You should be shot.”
The cur turned up the comer of one lip at him and growled.
Hugo turned up the comer of his own lip in reply, then headed for the room next door that one of the two Mabey sisters had indicated was to be his.
The Mabey sisters. They were typical of his luck, he thought glumly, sitting on the bed and pulling his boots off. Not only were Lord Eliot’s leavings batty old maids, they were batty twin old maids. He’d thought for an instant that he’d lost his mind when Meggie swooned and Ottoline instantly vanished, only to reappear in duplicate. As if one garrulous old maid wasn’t enough, her sister twittered away just as ceaselessly.
Furthermore, neither seemed to care that he might be concerned about Meggie’s welfare. He’d been banished from her room the moment he laid her on the bed as if he were of absolutely no importance. He, the owner of Lyden Hall, tossed out as if he were a schoolboy.
Damn Meggie anyway for giving him such a shock—if she was suddenly going to develop ill health, she could at least have had the courtesy to wait until tomorrow afternoon when he’d had a chance to marry her.
Hugo rubbed his feet, then looked around and located the washstand in the comer of the room. Anxious to wash the dust of travel off, he felt as if he’d been on the road for a week instead of just since this morning.
At least the man who seemed to serve as groom, footman, and chambermaid had not only brought his bags upstairs but hot water as well. It was a beginning, although hardly an auspicious one.
To date there seemed to be only the man-of-all-purpose, a dark-complexioned fellow who looked suspiciously like a Gypsy, and a thief called Cookie under employment. He had no idea how the Mabey women had been coping on their own, especially given their age, but that was none of his concern.
How he was going to cope was more to the point. He was
not
accustomed to doing without Mallard, who had been with him from the time he was twelve. Mallard had stuck with Hugo through thick and thin, even during the tedious and often impoverished years of exile in Paris. He never complained and always ensured that no matter what Hugo’s condition—wounded in a duel, battered and bruised from an encounter with an irate husband, or hopelessly inebriated after a full night of carousing—at least he was always impeccably turned out.
Hugo shrugged off his coat, shirt, and mangled neckcloth and tromped over to the basin. He splashed water over his chest and face, then located clean linens and a coat and somehow managed to dress himself.
He examined his appearance in the mirror, decided it would have to do, and marched back out into the hallway, ready to renew his battle with Meggie’s mongrel and the Mabey sisters.
To his surprise, the door was open and neither Meggie, mongrel, nor Mabeys were anywhere in sight.
Which meant either Meggie was dead and had been carried away by the Mabey sisters for a swift burial, or, more likely, she was fully recovered and had gone downstairs to the drawing room.
Hugo took the steps two at a time, anxious to reassure himself that he was correct about the latter presumption. He had to stop abruptly at the bottom as he tried to remember in which direction the drawing room lay.
He located it correctly, but unfortunately no Meggie graced its interior, and he had to wonder if Meggie even knew what a drawing room was and what it was used for. He tried the library across the hall, with the same unsatisfactory result. He tried the conservatory, the morning room, the breakfast room, and finally the dining room itself.
Still no sign of Meggie, but two place settings and three lit candelabras graced the long, oval cherry table. Four more candelabras blazed from the sideboards on each side of the room, casting a warm, intimate glow over the room.
Hugo was relieved that the Mabey sisters had had the sense to leave him alone with Meggie on their first night together. He could make a beginning at showing her how he meant her to go on.
If he ever managed to locate her. For all he knew, she had wandered off and fallen into the river.
Just as that alarming thought occurred, his ear caught the unmistakable sound of Meggie’s laugh from the other side of the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
Hugo crossed the room in an instant and pushed the door open.
Sure enough, there stood Meggie, wrapped in a huge white apron, surrounded by the Mabey sisters, the swarthy Gypsy, and an extremely burly and rather intimidating specimen of masculinity, whom Hugo assumed was Cookie. They were all bent over a large pot, talking a mile a minute so that he could make out not one word.
The mongrel sat watching at their feet, eyebrows twitching as if it understood every word Hugo could not. It cast one indifferent glance at him, then turned its attention back to the pot as if Hugo was not worthy of any more of its time.
“Excuse me,” Hugo said, with no result. He cleared his throat.
“Excuse me
,” he repeated loudly, his annoyance growing by the moment. He was not accustomed to being ignored.
They all looked up.
“Hugo, dear,” one of the Mabey sister chirped. “There you are at last. Do come and look at your dinner. Clever Cookie located lobsters just this afternoon straight off a fishing boat. Oh—but you haven’t been introduced. To Cookie that is, not your dinner.” She smiled at him as graciously as if she were presenting a king. “Lord Hugo, allow me to present Cookie Crumpton, your splendid new chef.”
After the day Hugo had just had, nothing would have surprised him. A formal introduction to a man who looked more like a pugilist than a chef seemed perfectly normal. He inclined his head. “Delighted.”
Cookie grinned, showing a mouthful of brown teeth, half of which were missing. “‘Ere’s to hew, yer lordship. These lobsters, now they’ll goo down nice with a bit o’ my sherry sauce. Hope hew’ve an edge on yer appetite, since a nice tender leg o’ lamb’s to follow with a mint jelly fo’t, and—“
“Indeed,” Hugo replied, in no mood to engage in conversation with a bloody cook. He’d never done so before and he wasn’t about to start now. “Meggie, my dear, I am happy to see you are feeling better. Would you come with me, please, and be so kind as to leave your, er, dog behind?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling sweetly at him as she removed the apron she’d been wrapped in.
Hugo’s irritation instantly melted away. He could hardly be annoyed when faced with the sun itself. Here was the angel he’d first spotted from Sister Agnes’s window, only infinitely more beautiful. Her slender figure was artfully revealed beneath the sheer material of her dress. In all his imaginings, he’d never pictured such perfection.
He drank in her delicate features, her swanlike neck, her graceful arms and shoulders, and the lovely swell of her small bosom. Realizing he was staring in a most blatant fashion, he forced his gaze back to her eyes; a bad mistake, since they gazed straight back at him in that translucent, ethereal fashion that threatened to undo him.
And where the hell had she gotten that dress from? For that matter, who cared? It worked its magic well enough, erasing the image of that ghastly black garment.
He held out his arm. “Let us sit down for dinner,” he said, fighting the tightening in his groin. “Whenever it chooses to appear,” he added as a parting shot at the others.
“Hadrian, stay with Cookie, there’s a sweetheart,” Meggie said, gliding toward Hugo as if she’d been gliding toward him all her life. “He’ll feed you anything your heart desires, won’t you, Cookie?”
“Thass the truth, Miss,” Cookie said. “Owd dog and I, we be of like mind, we be. I miss me own liddle Coxswain, I called him. Went overboard in a gale, he did. Broke this owd heart, and thass saying much.” He pounded his chest and squeezed a tear out of his eye.
“Oh, how sad,” Meggie said with great sympathy. “I’m sure Coxswain was a fine little dog, full of mischief and yet always listening to you when it was important.”
“Yass he did, miss, though I dunno how hew be knowin’ it.”
“I suppose because Hadrian is just the same way,” Meggie said, slipping her fingers through Hugo’s arm. “A good, loving animal who trusts without condition doesn’t come along just every day. You have to build that trust from the very beginning, don’t you, Cookie, using patience and a firm hand to train them.”
“Aye, Miss, and hew’ve done it sure enough with owd doggie of yers here. He be a fine lad, he be.” Cookie bent down and scratched Hadrian between the ears.
The cur had the gall to close its eyes and lick its chops in satisfaction.
“Oh, look at that, Cookie. He does like you,” Meggie said, beaming at the man as if he were her new best friend.
Enough was enough. Hugo literally propelled Meggie out of the kitchen, telling himself that patience and a firm hand would also go a long way toward training her.
Meggie allowed herself to be driven along, feeling like an errant sheep. She cast a brief backward glance at Ottoline and Dorelia, who smiled in tandem, bobbing their heads up and down in encouragement.
“Here,” Hugo said on the other side of the door, leading her to her chair. “This is your proper place.”
Meggie turned her gaze on him in question. “My proper place?” she repeated, not sure if he was referring to the physical or the metaphorical.
“Yes, my dear. Where you sit at the table. With me. When we are to have dinner. You do not belong in the kitchen. That is where the hired staff spends its time.”
So, he was referring to both places. Meggie did her best to keep a straight face, keeping in mind what Dorelia had said about not contradicting him.
“Yes, Hugo,” she said obediently, eyeing the vast quantity of silverware and crystal on the table. Two glasses, two knives, two forks, two spoons—she couldn’t think why so much was needed, when it would only create more washing.
Hugo nodded. “Very good, Meggie. I only require two things of you, remember. That you keep silent, and that you do as I tell you. And I am telling you to stay out of the way of the servants. They will do their jobs far better without your presence to distract them.”
Meggie nodded in return. “I am to stay out of the way.” She put her napkin in her lap and sat up straight, shoulders back, as the nuns had drilled into her.
“Yes, that is it exactly,” Hugo said, regarding her with an odd expression.
“As you say, Hugo.” Meggie smiled again, although her heart wasn’t in it. She could already see that she was going to have to exert an enormous effort to be dimwitted and docile in all things.
Her reward would be his approval, she told herself. His approval and the gift of his love, although she wondered how much his love would mean to her since he was bestowing it on a person who didn’t really exist.
She heaved a sigh. At least there was always the prospect of the other part of their marriage—the part that happened in the bedroom. She hadn’t forgotten about that for a minute.
She surreptitiously glanced over at Hugo from under her lashes, a little frisson of anticipation running through her. Oh, he really was very appealing to look at, with his wide, strong shoulders filling out the material of his coat, and his broad chest tapering to a narrow waist.
She’d already experienced firsthand the power of his arms when they’d lifted her in the air and spun her around … And, my, how wonderful his touch had felt on her waist. She had only to wait until tomorrow night to discover how wonderful his touch would feel on other parts of her body. Just the thought of lying naked against him, her flesh pressed to his, made her go hot from head to toe.
Meggie jerked her gaze away, blushing furiously. She
must
be wanton to be having these fevered thoughts, and at the dinner table, of all places! Clearly she had inherited her mother’s carnal inclinations, but unlike her mother, at least, Meggie would be married when she went into a man’s bed.
She did hope she wasn’t supposed to be dim-witted and docile there as well.
A slight movement of the kitchen door distracted her from her disgraceful train of thought, and she looked up to see one of Dorelia’s little eyes peeking out from the crack. The eye winked, then disappeared.
Meggie, reminded of her duty, beamed again. “Do you enjoy your room, Hugo?” she asked. “I like mine so very much. It offers a view of the river. It even has a large four-poster bed.”
“As does mine,” he replied, fiddling with his knife.
“I had a pitcher of hot water in my washstand.”
“Yes. I had the same,” he said, scratching his ear.
“The rest of the furniture is lovely, too. I have never seen anything so lovely in my life. In my room at the sanitarium I had only a small iron bedstand and a bureau. Oh, and a small wardrobe, but then it didn’t need to be very large.”
“Meggie, I think it best if you do not mention the sanitarium again, even to me.” He still fiddled with his knife, not looking at her.
“Oh. I beg your pardon. May I mention the orphanage? My room there was much the same, only I shared it with three other girls. At least in the—um, the
other
place I had some privacy.”
“Enough chattering, Meggie,” Hugo said.
Meggie clasped her fingers in her lap. “I beg your pardon,” she said, trying to sound contrite.
“Not at all,” he replied, still not looking at her. “But it has been a long day and I am tired. I think I’d prefer to sit here quietly and admire you in your pretty dress.”
Oh, dear, Meggie thought. Dorelia did have the right of it. She really was supposed to be nothing more than a display piece. Still, she’d better get used to it.
“Where did your dress come from?” he asked. “I thought you said you had brought nothing else with you.”
“From Lally,” she replied, wondering what was taking Cookie so long with the lobsters. Her stomach felt as if it had grown a hole in the middle.
“From
Lally?”
he said, his eyes shooting up to meet hers. “Do you mean Lord Eliot’s deceased wife?”