The Arrangement (22 page)

But she, who was a gentlewoman by birth, felt suffocated by the grandeur of her wedding guests, her husband’s friends.

Her husband!

As yet it was only a word—and a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Strangely, foolishly, it was only while the wedding service was proceeding that she had fully understood that she was getting
married,
that she was consenting to become a man’s possession for the rest of her life. She did not want to think of her marriage that way. Lord Darleigh was not
like
that. But church law was. And state law was. She was his possession, to do with as he would, whether he ever exercised that power or not.

She wanted to feel joyful. For a few fleeting moments during the day she had done—when she had walked along the nave of the church this morning while the organ played and she saw Viscount Darleigh waiting for her, a warm smile on his face; when they had stepped out of the church to sunshine and a group of cheering onlookers and a shower of rose petals; when she had first heard the pots and pans clattering and clanging behind the barouche; when Lord Darleigh kissed her; when an elderly gentleman stopped on the pavement to watch the barouche go by and raised his hat to her and winked.

But the wedding breakfast was nothing short of an ordeal. Try as she would, she could not force herself to participate in the conversation and replied in monosyllables whenever a question was directed specifically at her. She was not giving a good impression, she knew. How could she expect to be liked?

She ate scarcely anything. She tasted nothing.

Lord Trentham rose to propose a toast to the bride, and Sophia forced a smile to her face and forced herself to look about the table and nod her thanks to everyone. Viscount Ponsonby rose and toasted her husband and elicited a great deal of warm laughter. Sophia forced herself to join in. Lord Darleigh rose and thanked everyone for making their day a memorable and happy one, and he reached out a hand for hers and bent over it and kissed it to a few murmurings from the ladies and applause from all.

Sophia relaxed a little more when they all withdrew to the drawing room, for Constance Emes came to sit beside her.

“It
is
awe-inspiring, is it not?” she said, speaking low for their ears only. “All these titles? All this gentility? Hugo has taken me to several
ton
balls and parties this year, at my request. I was frightened out of my wits the first time or two, and then I came to see that they are all just people. And some of them, though not the ones here, are really quite uninteresting because they have nothing to do but be rich and try to amuse themselves for a lifetime. I have a beau, you know—well, a sort of beau. He insists I am too young for a formal courtship, and he thinks I ought to aim higher, but he will come around in time. I love him to distraction, and I know he loves me. He owns the ironmonger’s shop next to my grandparents’ grocery shop, and I am never so happy as when I am there, in one shop or the other. We have to find what will bring us happiness, do we not? I think Lord Darleigh is one of the sweetest gentlemen I have ever met. And he is gloriously handsome. And he likes you.”

“Tell me about your ironmonger,” Sophia said, feeling herself relax.

She smiled and then laughed as she listened—and caught the steady, considering gaze of Lady Barclay on her. The lady nodded slightly before turning away to reply to something the Earl of Kilbourne had said to her.

And then, after tea had been served, it was time to leave. The butler had just murmured in Lady Trentham’s ear that the barouche was waiting at the door. Sophia’s wedding night was to be spent at Stanbrook House, one of the grand mansions on Grosvenor Square. Fortunately, the duke himself was not to be there. Neither was his guest, Lady Barclay. Sophia’s new clothes had been packed up by Lady Trentham’s maid this morning after they left for the church and sent to Stanbrook House. Directions had been given for the other new clothes still to be delivered today to be sent directly there.

Sophia counted back days in her head. Yesterday was the shopping day. The day before was the second day of the journey, the day before that the first. Then there was the day of the proposal, then the day of the assembly, then the day when she had walked out just before dawn and watched Lord Darleigh’s arrival at Covington House.

Six days.

Less than a week.

She had still been the mouse a week ago. Still the scarecrow, with her chopped hair and ill-fitting second-hand clothes.

Less than a week.

Now she was a bride. A wife. Her life had changed, suddenly and drastically. And she was behaving like a bewildered mouse.

Sometimes one had to make a determined effort if one was not to drift on in life unchanging. Change had come to her life, and she had the chance to change with it—or not.

She got to her feet.

“Lady Trentham, Lord Trentham, Mrs. Emes, Miss Emes,” she said, looking from one to the other of them, “I do thank you with all my heart for opening your home to me, for being so kind, for arranging this wonderful wedding breakfast. And Mr. Germane, Lord and Lady Kilbourne, Lady Barclay, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Berwick, Your Grace, thank you for coming to our wedding, for coming here. We expected a quiet wedding day. It has been anything but that, and I will always remember it with pleasure. Your Grace, thank you for letting us use your home until tomorrow.”

All conversations had stopped abruptly. Everyone was looking at her—in surprise, she thought, and she wondered if her heart would stop hammering or if it would simply stop. She was even smiling.

Viscount Darleigh was on his feet too.

“You have taken the words out of my mouth, Sophie,” he said, “and there is nothing left for me to say.”

“You said enough at the breakfast table, Vince,” Lord Ponsonby told him. “It is your wife’s turn. P-personally, I hope you are the last Survivor to wed for at least a week or two. My v-valet will be running out of dry handkerchiefs to hand me.”

“It is my pleasure, Lady Darleigh,” the Duke of Stanbrook said, giving her a look that was both penetrating and … approving?

And then they were all on their feet, and Sophia found herself being hugged by the ladies—even Lady Barclay—and having her hand kissed again by the gentlemen. Everyone was talking and laughing, and she and Vincent were somehow swept out to the street and into the barouche.

“Are the pots and pans gone?” Lord Darleigh asked.

“Yes,” she told him.

“And everything else?” he asked. “There were ribbons and bows, I suppose? And flowers? No,
they
are not gone. I can smell them.”

“They all remain,” she said.

“You are a bridegroom only once, Vince,” Lord Trentham reminded him. “And Lady Darleigh is a bride only once. Enjoy having the whole world know it.”

And amid much laughter and cheering and good wishes, they were on their way.

“Thank you,” Lord Darleigh said, taking her hand in his. “Thank you for what you said, Sophie. It was lovely. I know you found the whole thing an ordeal.”

“I did,” she agreed. “But I realized suddenly that I was seeing it all through the eyes of the mouse I have been most of my life. Timidity is not appealing, is it?”

“The mouse is to be banished forever, then?” he asked her.

“To reappear only in the corner of some of my sketches,” she said. “But that mouse is usually a saucy little thing, winking or leering or looking frankly nasty or self-satisfied.”

He laughed.

“Have you seen anything satirical today?” he asked her.

“Oh, no, my lord,” she assured him. “No. There was nothing to ridicule or laugh at today.”

There was a short silence.

“There was not,” he agreed. “But am I to remain
my lord,
Sophie? You are my wife. We are traveling toward our wedding night.”

She felt a strange, sharp stabbing of sensation to the lower part of her body and found herself clenching inner muscles and fighting breathlessness.

“Vincent.”

“You find it difficult to say?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Even though your grandfather was a baronet, your uncle
is
a baronet, and your father was a gentleman?”

“Yes.”

She wondered what Sir Terrence Fry would say if he knew she had married Viscount Darleigh today. Would he ever know? A notice had, apparently, been sent to the morning papers. Was he even in the country? And would he care if he saw the notice? Would Sebastian see it? What would
he
think? Would he let his stepfather know?

Vincent lifted her gloved hand and held it against his lips. Passers-by were smiling at the barouche and pointing it out to one another with smiles and even a few waves, she could see.

“Think of me as that naughty boy Vincent Hunt, who used to sneak out of Covington House at night through a cellar window in order to swim naked in the river,” he said. “Or, if that is too shocking an image, think of me as that very annoying Vincent Hunt who used to hide in the branches of trees when he was seven years old, stifling giggles and raining twigs and leaves and acorns down upon the unsuspecting heads of villagers as they passed beneath.”

She laughed.

“That is better,” he said. “Say it again.”

“Vincent.”

“Thank you.” He kissed her hand. “I have no idea what time it is. Is there still daylight? Is it afternoon or evening?”

“Somewhere between the two,” she told him. “It is still full daylight.”

“It ought not to be,” he said. “It ought to be dark. It ought to be time when we arrive at Stanbrook House to take my bride to bed.”

She said nothing. What was there to say?

“Does it worry you?” he asked her. “The wedding night?”

She bit her lower lip and felt that unfamiliar raw feeling low down again.

“A little,” she admitted.

“You do not want it?”

“I do,” she told him. And of course she spoke the truth. “Yes, I do.”

“Good,” he said. “I look forward to getting to know you better. In all ways, of course, but at the moment I mean specifically in the physical sense. I want to touch you. All over. I want to make love to you.”

He would be bitterly disappointed, she could not help thinking.

“Have I shocked you?” he asked her.

“No.”

He kissed her hand again and held it on his thigh.

T
hey had changed their clothes and partaken of a light dinner. They sat together in the drawing room afterward, talking about the day. She described the clothes some of their guests had worn; he described the smells inside the church. She described the way the barouche had been decorated; he described the sounds on the streets—what he had been able to hear of them above the din of the hardware they were dragging behind them, that was—and the smell of the flowers. She told him about Constance Emes’s young man and Mrs. Emes’s budding romance with Mr. Germane. He told her about Lord Trentham’s first meeting with the then Lady Muir down on the beach at Penderris. They both agreed that it had been a memorable day.

“Is it dark outside yet?” he asked at last.

“No.”

It was early summer, of course. It did not get dark until well into the evening.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just coming up to eight o’clock.”

Only
eight o’clock?

She had taken his arm to come into the house and to go in to the dining room and to return to the drawing room afterward. Apart from that, they had not touched each other. Yet it was their wedding day.

“Is there a time,” he asked her, “before which one is not allowed to retire to bed?”

“If there is a law,” she said, “I have not heard of it.”

He was humming with the desire to consummate his marriage, and although she had admitted that she was a little worried, she had also assured him that she wanted it too. The longer they sat here, the more worried and nervous she was likely to become.

Why had he felt obliged to sit out the rest of the day until a decent bedtime? A certain nervousness of his own, perhaps? He had never been with a virgin. And this was not just an experiment that need not be repeated if it was not to his liking—or hers. It was important that he get it just right. Not too much this first time—he did not want to frighten her or disgust her or hurt her. But not too little either. He did not want to disappoint her, or himself.

It was important to get it right.

“Shall we go to bed?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She had said in the barouche on the way here that she must cast off the mouse, her alter ego. It was not going to be easy for her, he realized. And he half smiled at the memory of the determined little speech she had delivered just before they left Hugo’s. It had been gracious and pretty, and the attentive surprise of his friends and the other guests had been almost tangible.

“Take my arm, then,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Yes.” She took it.

And then she surprised him again when they had passed out of the drawing room and ascended two of the stairs to the floor above. She stopped and spoke to someone else—presumably a servant.

“Send Mr. Fisk up to Lord Darleigh’s dressing room, if you please,” she said, “and Ella to mine.”

Ella must be the maid George had assigned to her for tonight.

“Yes, my lady,” a man’s voice murmured respectfully.

“My lady,”
she said softly.

“I still find myself wanting to look over my shoulder when people address me as
my lord,
” he told her. “I probably would if I could.”

He knew the way to his room,
their
room for tonight. He always memorized directions and distances quickly when he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He did not like the feeling of being lost, of being dependent upon others to take him wherever he needed to go.

He paused when he judged he was outside his dressing room. The door of the bedchamber came next and then her dressing room, which had not been needed until today.

“I can go the rest of the way alone,” she told him.

“Let us compromise,” he said. “I will stand here until I hear your door open and close. And I will see you in the bedchamber in half an hour’s time? Less?”