Martha Schroeder (21 page)

He was not sure he could get the words out—even if they found five minutes to spend alone. But, of course, there was always the night. Perhaps in the darkness and warmth and happiness that almost overwhelmed him when they made love, he could tell her.

He spurred his horse. Right now he had best tell her that they were having guests for tea.

Chapter Twenty

Lady Mattingly’s plaintive voice greeted James scarcely an hour and a half later, as he came downstairs into the entrance hail. “Gerald, I wish you would tell me exactly what we are doing. I scarcely had time to clap my bonnet on my head before you were pulling me out the door! What in the world has gotten into you?”

“Love, Mama. That is what has done it.” Gerald’s voice mingled laughter and hope. “I have fallen in love.”

“Well, if this is the result, I wish you would climb out of love as quickly as you can,” his mother replied.

James followed the sound of the voices and entered the drawing room just as Lady Mattingly was plumping herself down onto the settee, her face revealing unaccustomed ill humor.

“Captain Sheridan,” she said when she caught sight of him. “How nice to see you. I am very much afraid we have inflicted ourselves upon your household in a most harum-scarum manner.” The familiar kindly smile she had shown when she first saw him was replaced by a peevish frown.

“Not at all, Lady Mattingly. I issued the invitation not much more than an hour ago. You are most welcome. It is a pleasure to be able to offer you our hospitality after all you have done for me.”

In for a penny, in for a pound,
James told himself, and continued. “You stood by me, even after you learned how shockingly ineligible I was. That took courage, Lady Mattingly, the kind a naval officer can appreciate.” He paused for a moment, letting his words sink in. “Even though Meg was your neighbor and friend—almost like a niece or even a daughter to you—you understood that there are things more important than social standing.”

James looked over at Gerald. He was stock still, looking at James as if he’d sprouted a second head.

“I do not believe I have ever heard you speak with such— eloquence,” Gerald said.

James was quite sure he had never said anything remotely like this in his life before. To refer to his birth, to thank someone for disregarding it! The tight-lipped taciturnity or silent rage with which he had reacted to any reference to his parents—how had he managed to set them aside? He had no idea, but he valued Gerald’s friendship. It was Gerald who had introduced him to Meg, and for that he had earned James’s gratitude. And Annis was dear to Meg’s heart. James still did not know what Meg thought she had done to put a spoke in the wheels of Annis’s romance, but he knew there was something, and he was going to fix it if he possibly could.

Just as he was about to make some comment on Meg’s lateness, she entered the room. “Lady Mattingly,” she said, her smile a little forced. “What an unexpected pleasure.” Her voice was what she would have used to welcome Mrs. Headley under similar circumstances, full of false cheer.

Lady Mattingly’s usual smiling effusiveness was nowhere in evidence. She regarded Meg uneasily. “My dear,” she said, “I do not know what is happening. Gerald assured me we had been invited. I am very sorry—” She stopped her disjointed apology abruptly.

Annis had come into the room. Her face was pale, and she faltered for a step when she saw Lady Mattingly, but her dignity never wavered, “Good afternoon, Lady Mattingly,” she said with a curtsy. “And Sir Gerald.”

Everyone stood silent, paralyzed by the weight of all the things they were not saying. Polite society did not condone emotional scenes at teatime. James observed the others with a slight, ironic smile. There was discipline and protocol to spare in the navy but nothing to compare to this quartet, engaged in an intricate social gavotte. He waited for someone to broach the subject that was uppermost in all their minds, and he continued to wait as Meadows brought the tea tray and everyone was served, commenting on the deliciousness of the watercress sandwiches and sipping their tea.

He had just about reached the end of his tether when Gerald fired the opening salvo. “Mama, Annis, I know you both think you are too different to ever share the same family, but in truth you both are victims of the same idiotic idea.” He looked at them with exasperated affection. “For some reason, you have both decided I am too naive and stupid to select my own wife, and I, therefore, need you to make that decision for me. And you have both come to the conclusion that Annis Fairchild is not the wife for me. Why is that? Meg is delighted with the match, I am sure, and James approves as well. Why do you disagree? Mama? Annis? Which one of you will state your objections first?”

The two ladies looked at him, speechless with embarrassment. “Very well. I will tell you what you think and why you are idiotic to think it. Annis, you believe that m’mother does not approve of you because of your lack of fortune and social standing.”

Annis’s pale face flushed with angry color. “I am not ashamed of the fact that my father has been too busy helping others to make his own way in the world. And I am not sorry that my mother never asked her sisters to assist us to have a Season. Firing off her daughters so they could snare wealthy husbands was not what she approved of.” Her pale blue eyes flashed fire as her gaze locked on Gerald’s. “I can quite understand if you and your mother do not share these views. They are not ideas the world of the
ton
looks upon with favor. But I am proud to come from parents who believe in such things, and proud to share that belief!”

There was silence for a moment after Annis finished speaking, and she stood erect and shining with purpose. Then Meg jumped to her feet and held out her arms. “Oh, Annis, that was wonderful! I am so proud of you!”

But Annis wasn’t quite finished. “Sir Gerald, I am sensible of the honor you have done me in offering me your hand.”

“And my heart, dearest, do not forget that. It
is the most important part.” Gerald stood and took a step toward her, but she gestured for him to stay where he was.

“However,” Annis continued, “I cannot marry into a family that views my proudest claims as detriments. I know that Lady Mattingly does not approve of your marrying me. And I must bow to that view. It would be very difficult for you to be caught between two women, Gerald, and I cannot make your life a misery to you.”

Gerald smiled. “You could not do that. And I do believe that perhaps you have misjudged m’mother just a bit.” He looked down at his mother. “Has she not, Mama?” There was a hint of steel in his voice.

Lady Mattingly looked around her, at a world she hardly recognized. Where was her devoted son? Could he be the stern-looking man whose eyes challenged her? And her good friend Lady Meg—surely the young woman who looked at her with sorrow and disappointment couldn’t be she? Lady Mattingly looked at Annis Fairchild, the young women she had once viewed as the perfect paid companion and then as a scheming gold digger. Now she saw a young woman of strength and principle.

“I only wanted what was best for you, Gerald,” she said, her face suffused with an expression of puzzled shame. “I suppose mothers are not always the best judges of that. Especially when it comes to marriage.” She began to raise herself slowly out of her chair. Instantly both Gerald and Annis moved to her side.

“I did not say what I did to distress you, Lady Mattingly,” Annis said, her soft voice carrying regret but no hint of apology. “I will not marry Gerald, but I did not want you to think that it was because I shared your sense of my unworthiness.”

“My dear, I do not know how to begin to tell you how wrong I have been,” Lady Mattingly said. “When you spoke just now, I understood my folly. You are just the wife for Gerald. I hardly know how to—”

“Please, sit down and let me get you some fresh tea,” Annis said.

“Then I take it, Mama,” Gerald said, determined to stick to the point, “that you have withdrawn your objections, and will be happy to travel with me to Surrey for my nuptials?”

Lady Mattingly had already rallied. “As I recall, my dear, you have yet to receive a favorable answer from your chosen bride.” She gave Annis a mischievous smile. “I would keep him dangling for at least another day, Miss Fairchild. He’s already thinking himself much too clever. I should depress his pretensions were I you. He can be annoyingly sure of himself.”

“Mama!” Gerald said. “I must protest. First I am too wonderful for any woman in the kingdom, and now you are conspiring to have me live under the cat’s foot.”

“You would do better to speak to Miss Fairchild. She holds your fate in her hands, not I.” There was a tinge of regret in Lady Mattingly’s words.

“Yes, so I should.” Gerald held out his arm. “Miss Fairchild, if you would do me the honor of taking the air with me on the Sheridans’ very lovely veranda?”

Smiling, Annis laid her hand on Gerald’s arm, and no one in the room doubted that the couple would return after a suitable interval, duly affianced and ready to accept the congratulations of their friends and family.

* * * *

Annis went off to Mattingly Place to have dinner, and James decided it must be an omen. He should woo his lady tonight, as Gerald had done. But a simple sailor could not possibly speak aloud of his feelings. James could feel his cravat shrink around his neck and his brain congeal at the idea. He would wait until later. When he was in bed with Meg, in the languorous afterglow of their lovemaking, men perhaps he could find the words he needed. In the meantime, he could enjoy sitting near her at dinner and watching the candlelight catch the gleam of gold and bronze in her hair.

“You have not uttered a word in five minutes, James,” Meg said. “And you are looking most peculiar.”

“Peculiar, my dear?” James tried to exert himself to think of something to say, something that would convince her that he was intelligent and witty. “What do you mean?”

“I do not know. Peculiar. As if something were paining you.”

Here he was, sunk in love, dying with it like a callow youth, and the object of his desire, his love, his adoration told him he looked as if he had indigestion! He couldn’t help it. He had to laugh. It was so quintessentially Meg-like to have brought his romantic fancies crashing to earth with a laugh.

Meg looked at him impatiently, like a mother at a recalcitrant two-year-old. And that was what finally pushed him outside the barriers he had stayed safely behind for so long.

“Oh, Meg,” he said almost without thinking, still laughing, “I do love you!”

Meg’s fork crashed to her plate as she stared, dumbfounded, at her husband, James, laughing, saying something so stupendous as if it were the easiest thing in the world. /
do like this pudding, Meg. I do hope Gerald and Annis will be happy, Meg. I do love you, Meg.

“How dare you say it like that!” she raged, suddenly furious.

“I am sorry,” James said, still smiling, clearly not one bit sorry. “It just popped out, like the cork out of a champagne bottle.” And he began to laugh again.

Meg narrowed her eyes and strove to count to ten. At least he had said it. He must mean it, mustn’t he? Even though he was laughing like a fool? A small sense of resentment crept through her. Why couldn’t James ever be romantic? He was so handsome, he had only to smile at her in that special, intimate way to make her knees buckle. She loved how he made her feel when they made love—cherished and magical, as if she gave him something so incredibly wonderful that he couldn’t speak of it.

All she had wanted, she told herself, was that he say he loved her. Then her happiness would be complete. Even if he never learned to tell the difference between corn and barley, and alphabetized everything in the house, she would be happy. If only he would say it.

And now he had and she got no satisfaction out of it at all!

Even if he meant it, it was obviously an everyday, laughable kind of love, not the fairy-tale variety she longed for. Right this minute, Gerald was probably filling Annis’s ears with all kinds of poetic nonsense about her hair and her eyes and his passionate love of both. But James was sitting at the table, laughing.

“Just what is so funny about love?” she said, challenge in every syllable.

“Nothing, of course. I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that you are so—so—” He couldn’t think of a term she would not object to,
Delightfully down-to-earth?
Even he realized that was not romantic in the least.
Wonderfully fanny?
He’d already seen how unpopular that thought was.

“I am so—so what, James?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, daring him to laugh at her again.

“So delightfully wonderful, my dear,” he said, hoping he’d found the right words at last.

It seemed he had. Meg smiled at him. “Oh, James,” she said.

That night, as he lay buried in his wife’s warm, welcoming body, James thought he had never in his life been as absolutely happy as he was at that moment. He not only thought so, he managed to tell Meg as well. And then he waited for her to respond.

Meg heard the words and they filled her heart with a joy she had never known. She understood how much it had cost him to trust her enough to speak of his love. And she longed to return his words tenfold, to tell him how much she loved him, how happy he made her. Yet she could not. Guilt ate at her and kept her silent.

James not only loved her, he trusted her, believed in her loyalty and honesty—values she had assured him she held sacred. But she had lied to him, at least by omission. She had written his sister without his knowledge, much less his consent. Her silence was due entirely to the fact that she knew full well he would never have agreed to establish contact with Claire. She had manipulated him in the way those women she despised did—cooing to their husbands and laughing with their female friends at how easily duped the foolish men were.

Meg squirmed and James immediately left her and rolled to his side. “I’m too heavy for you, but you feel so good,” he murmured. “Good night, my dear. I do love you, my dear.”