Authors: Katherine Kingsley
Adam, being Adam, betrayed not so much as a blink of an eye, behaving as if nothing was on his mind but a second cup of coffee and reading interesting bits of the newspaper to her.
“Roberts,” she said merrily, taking a step toward Adam and resting her hands on his broad chest, “offered his congratulations on our betrothal with an enthusiasm he usually saves for his plants, so I gather that you've informed the staff.” She raised her face for his kiss, but he picked up her hand instead and dropped a light kiss on its back.
“I informed Plimpton,” he said, quickly stepping away from her and bending over to examine a rosebush. “Plimpton informed the staff—except for Nigel, of course, whom I told myself.”
“Oh,” Callie said in confusion, wondering why Adam had abruptly moved away. “I hope he was pleased.”
“He was very pleased.” Adam straightened and faced her again, his face expressionless. “Everyone seems pleased, which is all to the good, although I expected a little more surprise. Anyone would think that they'd been planning this all along.”
Callie wasn't sure what to say to that. She couldn't tell if Adam himself was still pleased, for he looked surprisingly uncomfortable, given what they'd been doing last night. Or maybe he was uncomfortable because of what they'd been doing last night … Callie bit her lip, wondering if Adam now regretted making love to her, then dismissed that idea as ridiculous.
“Maybe you're right,” she said. “Jane didn't actually say anything when she came in this morning, but I think that she must have realized something had happened when she saw the state of the sheets. I made up a story about having started my cycle and she pretended to believe me, but she still looked awfully smug and said she'd take care of the linens herself rather than leaving it to the chambermaid.”
“If you're concerned, I wouldn't be. I am sure Jane has the good sense to keep her opinions to herself, if she wants to keep her job,” Adam said.
“No, you misunderstand me. I think Jane was pleased about what she saw. I don't think she is entirely innocent when it comes to the details of losing one's virginity.”
Adam no longer looked expressionless. If anything, he looked pained, for his color had heightened. He turned back to the rosebush. “Callie—I think it would be best if we don't discuss last night any further. We have other things to think about, such as preparing for our nuptials.”
Callie couldn't believe it. Adam was actually embarrassed? He hadn't looked embarrassed when he'd left her last night, but maybe ladies weren't supposed to talk about such things in the light of day. She had no idea. Thinking about it, she had very little idea of what ladies were supposed to talk about or how they were supposed to behave.
“Very well,” she said, but she couldn't help feeling hurt by his cool behavior. “I don't know what you mean by preparing, for I don't really have anything to prepare, have I?”
“I wasn't referring to sending out invitations,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “I meant that you might want to start planning what you'd like to do after we're married. Perhaps you'd like to go on a brief wedding trip, although I shouldn't take too much time away during the summer months. Or perhaps there are some changes you'd like to make inside the house—to your bedroom, for instance, for you'll be moving into the one next to mine.” He passed a hand over his brow. “Or maybe you'd like to redecorate the morning room for your personal use, or let Mrs. Simpson know how you would like to run the household—whatever you wish,” he said, waving a hand as if she knew exactly how to go about such a thing. “I should get back to my letters.”
Adam left her standing in the garden, her pruning forgotten, a deep frown of perplexity on her face.
The practical challenges of being Adam's wife were only just beginning to dawn on her, and she wasn't at all sure she was up to the task.
“I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner, but since I saw you last, life has been wonderful and awful at the same time,” Callie said over her shoulder to Nellie as she had a look at little Georgie. His red face had calmed and his constant drooling had slowed to a mere trickle. “Oh, he looks a great deal happier,” she said. “Have you tried the remedies I suggested?”
“I have indeed, and thank the good Lord for your advice, for I think I would have lost my patience if I'd had to endure any more of his crying, bless him. He's a fine little lad when his temper is in check, but he's just like his dad when he's out of sorts.”
Nellie took the kettle off the stove and poured boiling water into the teapot, steeping the leaves Callie had brought with her in her basket of food. “I'm glad you came when you could manage, for I've been gasping with curiosity to know how it's been going up at the abbey. You were saying that life's been wonderful and awful. Why is that?”
Callie picked Georgie up and gave him a cuddle, then comfortably settled him back on his rug. “I have so much to tell you and hardly know where to begin,” she said. “I suppose the most important thing is that Lord Vale and I are to be married.”
Nellie nearly dropped the teacups she'd picked up. “You and Lord Vale?” she said, her mouth hanging open. “I don't believe it!”
“It's the truth,” Callie said. “I'm surprised you haven't heard, given the way the staff has been going on, practically billing and cooing at us. You'd think no one had ever been married before, Adam least of all, although he was very much married and very happy with his wife, so I don't know what all the fuss is about.”
Setting the cups safely on the table, Nellie shook her head in bafflement. “Well, that explains why his lordship's grand carriage brought you to my humble door instead of your own two legs, but how did all this come about? The last time you were here you didn't let on a thing—right round the other way, I'd say. As I remember, you mentioned something about being nothing more than an inconvenience he had to put up with.”
Callie couldn't help laughing. “I think I still am to a degree, but everything got very complicated. We bumped into his cousin Harold Carlyle, who insisted that he and I were promised to each other, and I didn't know what to say since I couldn't remember, so I used Adam as a decoy. I, um … well, I said that I was betrothed to him, and Adam was kind enough to back me up, and the next thing I knew, Adam had decided that was the way it should be. I think he only decided that because he couldn't come up with any other way out of the predicament I'd put us both in, but I'm very happy and he doesn't seem too bothered.”
“But, Callie, does his lordship know the truth? About your bad memory, I mean? You have to have truth between you, even if there's nothing else.”
“Oh, yes. He's known almost all the way along but he never told me for fear of upsetting me. The nice thing is that in the course of meeting Harold, at least we found out my true name, which is Callista Melbourne, and that I came to England from Greece after my father died, supposedly to marry Harold. But then I fell off the boat and Adam rescued me, so Harold wasn't able to take me off, and Harold couldn't have been more angry about it.”
“You are one surprise after another,” Nellie said, shaking her head again as she brought the teapot to the table.
“I know, and as much to myself as everyone else. Nellie,” Callie said, coming to the real reason for her visit. “I was wondering if you might be able to tell me something about Adam's late wife, Caroline. I don't really know anything, since Adam finds it difficult to talk about her. Can you help me? I daren't ask anyone up at the abbey for fear of upsetting them, but I would be so grateful to know anything at all.”
“I don't know how I can help you,” Nellie replied, pouring the tea through a strainer and handing Callie a cup. “I didn't rub shoulders with the likes of her ladyship, although I saw her about from time to time. She was a fine-looking woman, always very polite, nodding her head and smiling in acknowledgement and all that if she spotted you. She was as different to you as can be.”
“But
how
, Nellie? How was she different?” Callie asked almost desperately. The question had been plaguing her for the last ten days, ever since the morning in the rose garden. In her weaker moments she felt unequal to the task of following someone who must have been such a paragon of virtue that everyone, Adam most especially, worshipped her memory to the point of respectful silence.
In Callie's better moments she wondered how she could smooth the staff's transition from one mistress to the next, never mind easing Adam's acceptance of her as his wife. Either way, she couldn't compete with a faceless ghost. For her own peace of mind she had to find out what she could, and Nellie was the only person she could possibly ask. “What did she look like, for example?”
“Well, let's see. Her hair was dark, for one, and her eyes green, and she was taller than you.” Nellie screwed up her face with concentration as she sipped at her tea. “She didn't have the common touch like you have, if you know what I mean. I mean no disrespect, but she was more of a ‘Lady Bountiful, ’ far above us lesser folk, not that she meant anything mean by it. She just had that air about her. You don't have that about you at all.” Nellie chortled. “You couldn't, could you, not remembering your past and all that.”
“No,” Callie said miserably, thinking that she knew exactly what Nellie meant. Adam had that air, as kind and thoughtful as he was to his servants, of somehow being completely removed from their world. Caroline had been born and raised to the same behavior, and it must have been as natural to her as breathing.
Callie, on the other hand, was as comfortable in the kitchen with her hands in the dough as she was sitting here at Nellie's cottage. Perhaps if she knew something more about herself and her upbringing, she might feel more confident, but she knew very little at all save that she'd recently come from an island in Greece and must have spent a lot of time in nature, for she was as comfortable with birds, beasts, and insects as she was with people—more comfortable, sometimes.
That wasn't much to commend her for the life of a future marchioness. It wasn't much, either, to commend her to Adam as his future wife.
She really couldn't think what she did have to commend her. Adam enjoyed talking to her, and he'd certainly seemed to enjoy their one physical encounter, but she was beginning to wonder about even that: She'd started to think that she hadn't conducted herself very much like a lady was supposed to in the bedroom, for Adam had avoided even the slightest physical contact with her ever since. Perhaps she'd shocked him with her enthusiasm. She couldn't be sure, but she could think of no other reason for his turning away every time she got within touching distance.
She'd lay money that Caroline had known exactly how to conduct herself in the bedroom as well.
“Where have you gone to, girl?” Nellie asked. “Oh!” she exclaimed, looking appalled and clapping both hands against her mouth. “I suppose I'd better get myself used to the idea of your being a fine lady. I can't go on behaving like we're going to be the best of friends, now can I, not with the changes you're about to make?”
“I can't see why not,” Callie said, equally appalled that Nellie would think such a silly thing. “I'm no different from the way I was when I first walked through the door.”
“But you are, Callie, and you'd better get accustomed to the idea, or people won't know their places and how they're meant to go along, will they? I'm sorry to have to point the matter out to you, but that's how it is and how it's always been—with the lord and lady in their castle and the rest of us milling around bowing and curtseying to our betters while we work for them. You have to know your place and keep it if the world's to go on as it's meant to, and there's nothing in God's green kingdom that can change it.”
Callie's eyes stung with sudden tears. “I don't want it to be that way,” she said, turning her face into her hand in complete despair. She'd never thought this far along, that she might be cut off from the fullness of humanity just by virtue of assuming a position in society, and just because she'd married Adam. She loved Adam. That was what mattered, not what people thought.
“I don't see why it has to be that way at all,” she said stubbornly.
“Then maybe you'd better think long and hard before you marry your lord, girl, for there won't be any changing your mind after the fact.”
“I'm not going to change my mind, Nellie. Adam's already lost too much in his life and I'm going to stay right where I am and try to make him happy, even if he is marrying me for convenience.”
“Aye, he deserves some happiness, the poor man. He hasn't had much of it in his life, has he? It doesn't seem right that a child's mother should die practically before he has time to draw his first breath, and then his father to follow her only nine short years later.” She shook her head.
“Ah, well,” she said, wrapping her fingers around her teacup, “I suppose the good Lord knows what He's about. Still, if what my Tom says is true about the nasty relations who raised him after that and treated him like he was nothing but dirt under their feet, then you have to wonder how much a body can take. And then his wife and little boy being killed …” She shook her head. “Never mind that now, for it's all water under the bridge. I'm happy he's found you, Callie, I am indeed.”
Callie was so shocked that she couldn't speak. She'd had no idea that Adam's mother had died in childbirth, although she'd worked out that his father must have died when he was young. Poor, poor Adam. She could hardly imagine what his young life must have been like, especially if the horrible Carlyles had been involved in his upbringing. Adam had good reason for despising them, other than the obvious.
“Why, are those tears I see in your eyes?” Nellie said with surprise. “Heavens, girl, I didn't mean to upset you.” She gave Callie a long, appraising look. “Something tells me there's more here than you've let on. I don't think you're the least bit indifferent to his lordship, are you?”
“I'm anything but indifferent,” Callie whispered. “I love him with all my heart, Nellie.”
Nellie nodded sagely. “I thought as much. That's why you were asking about his wife, isn't it? Not so that you could learn to behave like her, but to find out if he can ever love you as much.”