Lady Linden didn’t bother with the amenities. “Who
is
this lovely young thing?” she asked, her eyes gleaming with barely concealed curiosity.
“This,” he said, wishing momentarily that there were witnesses present to see the Lindens’ expressions when he imparted his shocking news, “this is my lady wife, Bridget, the Marchioness of Haverly.”
Lady Linden actually swayed and clutched at her daughter. “Wife! Lord Haverly, you say wife?”
“Indeed, I do,” he replied, smiling grimly. “My wife. And now if you’ll excuse us . . .”
“I know you!” Miss Linden shrilled, her voice calculated to draw all eyes in their direction. Her thin nose quivered ecstatically, the gossip hound hot on the scent. “I saw you at the race several days past. You’re that Durabian girl, the one whose father trains horses!”
Andrew, risking an apprehensive look at Bridget, found himself surprised and had hard work to contain his sudden laughter. His worry for her had been needless. His innocent Bridget had turned into the frostiest of ladies. “Yes, Miss . . . ?” Why did he feel she was only pretending to forget Miss Linden’s name? “You’re quite right. But I train horses also.” She glanced at Andrew. “Or I have trained them. But now I am Andrew’s wife. As he says, Lady Haverly.”
“Well, I never!” Miss Linden stared aghast, her thin mouth hanging open in a most unattractive manner.
“Really, Lord Haverly,” Lady Linden protested, her round cheeks wrinkling in dismay. “To marry such—”
“Yes, she is lovely.” He cut the mother off before she could offend Bridget further. From the look of her, his wife’s Irish temper was on the rise. And Bond Street was not the place for a scene. The
ton
would have more than enough to talk about as it was. “If you’ll excuse us,” he went on, “we’ve just finished a long day’s shopping and we’re most anxious to get home with our packages.”
Lady Linden looked about, almost wildly. No doubt she was calculating where to find the nearest ear, any ear into which to pour this choicest of
on-dits.
“Of course, Lord Haverly, of course,” she muttered, drawing the girl away with her. “Shut your mouth, Martine,” he heard her command sharply, and then they were out of earshot. He turned to Bridget. “Shall we go home?”
“Yes,” she agreed, raising an eyebrow. “And on the way perhaps you can tell me about those two—
ladies.
I never knew ladies were supposed to ask such rude questions.”
He laughed, relief flooding through him. It looked like Bridget was going to handle society much better than he’d expected. “I’ll do that,” he promised, “though I don’t think you’re going to like what you hear.”
* * * *
By the time they reached the house, Bridget had decided that Andrew was right. The Lindens sounded—and behaved—like perfectly horrible people and she wanted nothing more to do with them.
What she did want was a ride. So when Andrew directed the butler to have their purchases taken up to her room, she turned to him.
“Is Waterloo in the stable now? Can we go see him? Please, Andrew?”
Andrew chuckled. “Yes, keep your shawl on. We’ll go out to the mews directly.”
As he led her through the other rooms and out the back door of the kitchen, Bridget looked about her carefully. She’d have to learn the lay of this place—and soon. Imagine prying Miss Linden’s delight if she discovered that the new Marchioness of Haverly didn’t know her way around her own home!
Bridget admired the stables. They were nicely kept, clean and dry. The sweet smell of hay and the scent of horseflesh were perfume to her nostrils. She looked around anxiously. Where had they put the stallion? How did he like it in this strange new place?
But before she could accustom her eyes to the dimness and seek him out, Waterloo whiffled a greeting from a back stall. “There he is!” Heedless of her fine gown and flimsy satin slippers, she hurried back to him, quickly unlatching the door and throwing her arms around him. Dear Waterloo, he was safe. Laughing, she hugged his neck—she could count on him to always be her friend.
She trusted Andrew, but after all, he was a lord. And lords had peculiar ways of looking at things, peculiar ways of behaving.
Of course, Peter was a lord, too, but he was different—not so stern, not so—lordish. Laughing softly, she ran her hands over Waterloo’s smooth coat. “Oh, you beautiful, beautiful horse! I missed you so much!”
“ ‘Ere now, miss!” A stableboy came hurrying up. “Ye shouldn’t ought ta be in there with that ‘orse. ‘E’s a stallion, ‘e is. ‘E might hurt ye.”
Bridget turned. “Don’t be silly. I raised this horse myself. He wouldn’t hurt a soul.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Begging yer pardon, miss, but he threw Jerry, ‘ard, too.”
“And what was this Jerry doing trying to ride
my
horse?” she demanded crossly. At home Papa had never let anyone else touch him. “Andrew!”
Andrew, who had hung back to see how Bridget dealt with the stable hands, now stepped forward. After this afternoon he should have known better than to worry. She could handle herself anywhere. “Yes?”
“Please, Andrew, give orders that no one is to ride Waterloo. No one but me.”
He swallowed his smile. “I don’t need to give such orders,” he said. “You give them.” He turned to the gaping stableboy. “Ned, this is Lady Haverly, my new wife. You’ll obey her without question.”
When the boy stilled, his mouth hanging open, Andrew went on. “The lady knows all there is to know about horses, so you needn’t fear for her.” Better for Ned to fear for himself, Andrew thought in amusement. If the boy didn’t pay attention to Bridget, she’d no doubt blister his ears. He fastened Ned with a stern eye. “Do you understand?”
“Aye, milord,” the boy said, the merest hint of a smile on his lips. “I understands. The lady gives orders. I obeys ‘em.”
Andrew nodded, turning to see Bridget actually smiling at the lad. “Then we shall get along well,” she said. “Take good care of my stallion. I’ll be out here often to see that you do.”
* * * *
The rest of the afternoon passed in uneventful fashion. Bridget spent some of it putting away her new clothes and unpacking her boxes from home.
She managed to get her breeches and boots out from under the books and hidden in a back corner of her closet before the maid Andrew insisted on sending her arrived. Peggy was a shy young girl, only lately gone into service, but trained as a lady’s maid.
“Your other new gowns’ll be here soon,” Peggy said, hanging up the two dinner dresses they’d brought back with them from shopping and then moving to the forest green riding habit. “Ah, this, milady.” She lifted a fold of the heavy velvet to her cheek. “ ‘Tis a lovely gown, it is. And just the color for you.”
She stepped to the bed to fold the nightdresses and then put them away. “ ‘Tis grand of his Lordship to buy you so many nice things.”
“Yes,” Bridget agreed. Peggy seemed very interested in the clothes she was putting away. Did even servant girls dream of female fripperies? “I suppose it is.” She glanced around the spacious room. “He’s told me I can decorate this chamber however I please.”
The maid’s eyes widened. “Oh, milady. What great fun! Why, you can have some of them Chinese cupboards like the Regent has. All lacquered black and with them great dragons and such painted on them.”
“Dragons?” Just in time, Bridget stopped herself from asking why any sensible person should
want
dragons in her bedroom. The Regent’s Chinese taste must be the fashion just now. “I don’t know,” she said. “The room’s not so bad. Maybe I’ll just leave it as it is.”
“Oh, milady!” Peggy’s round face reddened with disappointment. Obviously she thought redecorating would be quite the thing. “But wouldn’t that be hurting his Lordship’s feelings, him being so nice to you and all?”
Bridget paused. She hadn’t thought about that. The girl might have something there. Andrew had been very kind about all this. She certainly didn’t want to offend him. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I’ll think about it. Maybe I will do it in another color.”
Peggy clapped her hands in delight. “There’s a shade of green, milady. A pretty green that’d go lovely with your reddish hair. I seen a lady wearing a gown of it just this morning when I was out on an errand. And then you could put a touch of peach color here and there—to lighten things a bit. Oh, it’ll be that beautiful, it will.” She dropped her gaze shyly. “Just like you.”
Bridget opened her mouth to reply that she was far from beautiful, but she closed it again without saying anything. Something about the girl reminded her of the country, she was so open and friendly. With a start of surprise, Bridget realized that she had never had a woman friend. Her only friends had been horses. “Thank you,” she said. “Come, help me change for dinner, will you? Which of these two new gowns do you think is best?”
Chapter Eight
Andrew didn’t go out again that afternoon, but anyway, it was too late for Bridget to slip into her riding clothes and take the stallion for a gallop through a city she barely knew. So she contented herself with thinking that the next morning her first order of business would be a good long ride. But that brought her to the question of where. Where could one really ride in this city with its thronged streets, its crowds of people all busy about their tasks?
She posed the question to Andrew at dinner where he had thoughtfully ordered their places set side by side instead of at opposite ends of the huge table. “Andrew, where do people around here go to ride?”
He paused, a forkful of roast duck halfway to his lips. “Well, we have several parks,” he said. “But Hyde Park is where the
ton
usually goes to ride. Around five in the afternoon the crush there is as great as on the street.”
She bit her lower lip in exasperation. She was liking this miserable city less and less; ho one here seemed to behave with any sense. Though that was hardly Andrew’s fault, still, a little of her irritation crept into her voice. “But if it’s so crowded at that time, why does everyone go then? Why don’t they go at some different hour?”
He looked at her thoughtfully while he finished chewing a mouthful of food. “Well, Bridget, it’s rather like this. Lords and ladies don’t ride to
ride
so much as they ride to be seen.”
These people sounded more and more ridiculous. “Seen? But why should they want to be seen?”
He gave her a strange look. “The
ton
has odd ways, Bridget, I realize that. But I cannot explain them all to you. It would take far too long. So I suggest you just let me guide you in matters that have to do with this part of our life.”
She frowned. Of course she would let him guide her in those matters. To do anything else in such a situation would be foolish. But now he was using that awful condescending tone, as though he knew everything and she knew nothing at all.
Well, she might not know much about being a lady— from the looks of it, this lady business was a silly muddle anyway—but she knew about horses. She knew more about horses than he did. She’d pit her knowledge in that area against his any day of the week—and she’d win, too.
And at least now she knew where she could go to ride. Maybe she’d take young Ned with her to the park. He looked like a bright boy. Maybe she’d put him in charge of Waterloo. The stallion would need companionship since she wouldn’t be with him as much as she had been before. And it would be good for the boy, too, give him some standing in the stable. A servant’s status depended to a great degree on the extent of his responsibilities, and being Waterloo’s groom would gain Ned the respect of the others.
* * * *
The evening passed slowly. Sitting in the library while she and Andrew read separate volumes, Bridget’s thoughts strayed more than once to the fine new nightdress that Peggy would soon be laying out for her across the great bed. Would tonight be the night that Andrew would—
She stole a look at him over the top of her book.
He
looked very handsome, very grand, and for that reason, if perhaps for no other, very distant. Could he mean for theirs to be a marriage in name only? She should have asked Peggy about that—about how married lords and ladies comported themselves. And why they felt it necessary to sleep in separate beds. That seemed a foolishness—a waste of heat and of beds.
Mama’s books had told her a lot, but there was so much she didn’t know about society. Because of the books and the woman Papa had hired to teach her to read, she’d learned to speak the right way. At least, Andrew should have no complaint about that. But the stories in Mama’s books, stories by men like Shakespeare, weren’t about happy married people, but about people suffering from terrible human emotions like jealousy, rage, and revenge. There was nothing in those stories that could help her deal with Andrew. Nothing at all.
This sitting and saying nothing was definitely getting on her nerves. She put her book aside and looked at him directly. “Thank you for having Waterloo brought into the city for me. It’s good to have him here with me. I missed him, though we were just separated for one day.”
“I know you missed him. I know you’re very fond of him.” Andrew smiled at her. “He’s your horse, of course, and he’ll always remain your horse, but I would like to ride him some time. If that’s agreeable with you.”
She hesitated, unsure whether to tell him. “Yes, Andrew,” she said, finally deciding he should know the truth, “that would be all right with me, but I feel I should warn you—Waterloo’s a woman’s horse.”
Andrew put his book down and gave her a puzzled look. “Come now, Bridget, what do you mean? There’s no such thing as a woman’s horse. A horse is a horse. And that’s all it is.”
She might have known he’d take that attitude—men could be so stubborn sometimes—but she knew what she was talking about. Hadn’t she raised the stallion herself from a tiny little foal? She sighed—that superior look on Andrew’s face told her that there was nothing to be gained by arguing with him. Not a word she said would make any difference. He’d already made up his mind.
Still, she couldn’t refrain from making one last comment. “I am only telling you what I know. He threw that Jerry, didn’t he? At least, that’s what Ned told us. You heard him.”