The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (21 page)

The Duke of Fairhurst surprised Lord Francis by arriving in London two days before the event and bringing his wife with him. It was as well that they had opened the Fairhurst town house. The following day Lord Francis’s sisters both arrived from the country with their husbands.

The groom gave them no chance to express to him their opinions of his marriage. He paid them only a brief call and took Cora with him. He did not suppose afterward that she had made a particularly good impression on any of them—she sat stiff and almost mute throughout tea, ate only half a scone, and took only one sip of tea. Lord Francis realized that she could drink no more as her hand was shaking. It amused him that a woman who was so bold and fearless in almost any situation that presented itself could be reduced to shivering terror in the presence of aristocracy.

She did not make a good impression on them, perhaps, but neither did she make a bad impression. She was dressed elegantly and fortunately had left farce at home behind her for once.

Of course, his family did not approve. He did not
need private words with any of them to confirm that impression. The other three had all made excellent matches. They had expected as much of him. At the very least they had expected him to marry a lady. But they were family, when all was said and done. They were not prepared to turn him off merely because he was insisting on marrying far beneath him.

Mr. Downes had a brother and numerous nephews and nieces living in Canterbury. All of them were prosperous businessmen or married to successful men. All of them were summoned to London for the wedding and all of them came except for one niece, who was in imminent expectation of a confinement. They took up collective residence in the Pulteney Hotel. Lord Francis and Cora took a second tea with them there after leaving Fairhurst’s. This time Cora ate heartily and drank two cups of tea. She talked and joked and laughed.

And of course the Duke of Bridgwater, with his mother and his two sisters, attended the wedding. Indeed, her grace offered to have the wedding breakfast prepared at her town house, but she had two rivals. Fairhurst offered to host it. Mr. Downes did not
offer
to have it at the Pulteney—he insisted. And so a private banqueting room was reserved and a private banquet ordered.

Bridgwater had agreed to be Lord Francis’s best man. He seemed rather abjectly apologetic about the whole thing, as if it had all been his fault.

“This is the devil of a thing, Kneller,” he said. “It makes one realize how fragile a thing one’s freedom is and how unexpectedly limited one can suddenly be in one’s choices. It gives me the jitters, to be quite frank with you.” He took snuff with slow deliberation. “After this and after I have got Lizzie and Jane safely wed, I am going to retire from the world and become a recluse. No marriage is better than a forced marriage, after all. I am most terribly sorry for my part in this, old chap.”

Lord Francis felt compelled to assure his grace that this marriage
was
of his own choosing, though perhaps the timing was not. He felt compelled to declare that he was fond of Miss Downes—“damned fond,” as he put it, not to appear too lukewarm.

But his grace went away still declaring that never,
never
would he risk matrimony or the danger of matrimony himself. No more looking about him in the hope that his eye would suddenly alight on that one woman who had been created for his eternal delight. No looking about him at all from this moment on. No eye contact with any single female below the age of forty or with the mama of any single female.

The Earl of Greenwald attended the wedding with Lady Jane. Lord Francis had also invited a few of his friends as well as his young cousin, Lord Hawthorne. Lady Kellington, who still declared she would be eternally grateful to Cora for snatching her dogs from the clutches of death, more or less invited herself. Lord Francis had written to the Earl of Thornhill to announce his coming nuptials, but there would be no time for his friend to come from Yorkshire. Besides, Lady Thornhill was with child, and Gabe was strict about not allowing her to travel at such times. They had not even come for Samantha’s wedding for that reason, though Samantha was more like a sister than a cousin to Lady Thornhill.

Even in the days leading up to his wedding Lord Francis could not stop thinking of Samantha. If someone could have told him at her wedding to Carew that he himself would be marrying a mere few weeks later, he would have … Well, he did not care to think of it. It seemed disloyal to his love for Samantha to be marrying so soon after losing her. And yet it
was
disloyal to Cora to be thinking such thoughts.

Cora was blameless in this whole mess. So was he. But mess there was, and there was only one way in which to
set all to rights. At least he did not dislike the woman. Quite the contrary. And at least he did not find her unattractive. If anything, he found her too attractive. No gentleman, he thought, should have such lustful thoughts about the woman he was about to marry. Not, at least, when he did not love her. Not when he loved another woman.

He was going to have to try, at least, he decided, to grow fond of Cora. It should not be impossible. Indeed, he already was fond of her to a certain degree. And he was going to be faithful to her. Not just in body—although he had kept his fair share of mistresses, he had never approved of married men doing so. He was going to have to be faithful to Cora in mind too. That meant forgetting that his heart had been broken, forgetting that he was being forced into marrying the wrong woman.

Yet even as he made the decision, he wondered how soon it would be before Samantha heard the news from Thornhill—or from Bridgwater. And how she would feel about it. Or if she would feel anything at all.

His wedding was not at the fashionable St. George’s with half the
ton
in attendance. It was at a smaller church with his family and hers and some of their friends. Larger than might have been expected, yes, but still a far more intimate wedding than Samantha’s had been. It was very sweet and very solemn and very, very real.

Cora was dressed in spring green muslin and looked rather like an earth goddess, he thought. He was glad she had not dressed in white, as most brides did. White did not suit her. In her own way, he thought, taking her hand in his when the vicar instructed him to do so—in her own way, despite her bold features and heavy hair and overgenerous figure and unusual height, she was beautiful. Or perhaps it was because of those attributes. Cora Downes was very much her own person, in both appearance and behavior.

Cora Downes
. He repeated words after the vicar when instructed to do so, and she repeated words. He took the ring from Bridgwater and slid it onto her finger. And then strangely, mysteriously, irrevocably, she was no longer Cora Downes. She was Lady Francis Kneller.

She was his wife.

He remembered to smile at her.

And so it was done. He was a married man. The register duly signed, he led her outside into the heat and the sunshine and paused on the church steps with her so that they could be greeted by their guests before driving away in his carriage. In the course of just a very few minutes, his life had been changed into a course that was so new and so unknown that he was bewildered by the prospect of proceeding with it at all.

“Lord Francis,” she said, squeezing his arm. “You do look splendid. That is a lovely pale shade of green. It makes my dress seem almost garish.”

She had saved him from meaningless panic by bringing him laughter instead. It had been
his
place to compliment
her
on her appearance and give her that little reassuring squeeze of the arm.

“Cora,” he said, chuckling, “as usual, you render me speechless. But not garish, my dear. Glorious, vivid, like spring turning to summer. But then perhaps I mean the woman inside the dress more than just the dress itself.”

She laughed merrily. “Oh,” she said, “you are so
good
with words. You make me feel almost beautiful.”

They were the last private words they exchanged until they were alone together after the wedding breakfast, on their way to Sidley, his estate in Wiltshire.

A
LL DAY, SINCE
the moment she woke up to find the Duchess of Bridgwater’s maid drawing back the curtains
at her window, she had pretended to herself that this was the wedding day she had always dreamed of.

It had not been so very difficult. As soon as the curtains were back, she had seen that yet again the sky was cloudless. And as soon as she had set foot inside her dressing room she had seen the wedding dress spread out there that she had insisted upon even though her grace and Jane had tried gently to persuade her to choose white, since white was what most brides were now wearing. But she loved her dress. To her, green was the perfect color for a bride, suggestive as it was of life and warmth and energy—and springtime.

Then downstairs in the breakfast room and later back in her dressing room, her grace and Elizabeth and Jane had all been determinedly gay. Dressing for her wedding had been a communal exercise, involving the three of them and two maids—and involving too a great deal of chatter and laughter.

And then Papa and Edgar had arrived—Edgar had insisted on coming too rather than proceeding to the church alone—to take her to her wedding and had aroused both excitement and nervousness in her—and even tears.

Inside the church, while her papa had escorted her to the altar rail, she had noticed immediately the contrast between the sober colors worn by her male relatives—solid middle-class citizens all—and even of the other male guests, including the Duke of Bridgwater, who was the best man, and the light green worn by Lord Francis. And fixing her eyes on him as he stood waiting for her and watching her, she had felt again that rush of protectiveness for him. Let her hear or see just one suggestion of a sneer over him for the rest of this morning and she would make her feelings known and no mistake about it.

He also had copious amounts of lace at his wrists and
throat and his neckcloth was a work of art to surpass all others.

And then there had been the wedding service itself. She had listened to every word, watched every gesture, felt every nuance of atmosphere. It had been her wedding—her wonderful wedding, her dream wedding—and she had been determined to commit every detail of it to memory. Including the paleness of her groom’s face and the nervousness in his voice and the slight trembling in his hand as he put her ring on her finger and the same slight tremble in his lips when he kissed her. And his smile afterward, telling her that he did not blame her for all this, that together they would make the best of it.

In his own way, she had thought, he was very handsome, and she would take on anyone who dared to hint otherwise. Even Edgar. It would not be the first time she had gone at Edgar with her fists—she had always scorned to use her fingernails—and their battles had never been as uneven as they might have been because he never felt at liberty to come back at her with
his
fists. She would black both of his eyes if he ever so much as pursed his lips in criticism of Lord Francis.

Her husband.

Despite the close attention she had paid the wedding service, the realization had still jolted her with surprise.

He was her husband. She was Lady Francis Kneller.

And then, outside the church and at the Pulteney, she had been hugged and kissed to death—her uncle and her male cousins and even the female cousins’ husbands all seemed to be large men like Papa and Edgar. Even the Duke of Fairhurst had hugged her, and her new sisters-in-law had pecked her cheeks, though Cora suspected that none of them really liked her at all. The duchess of Bridgwater had been kind enough to shed tears over her and Jane might have crushed every bone in her body had she only been a little larger and a great deal stronger.

Oh, yes, it had not been so very difficult to imagine that this was the wedding day of her dreams. In many ways it really had been wonderful. Lord Francis had kept her at his side at the Pulteney and had refused to allow either her family to pry her away from him or his family to do the like for him. He had behaved as if they were any normal bride and groom—unwilling to be parted for a moment. It had been easy to believe that it was so.

But finally, after another round of hugs and kisses and handshakes and back slappings, they were in his carriage, alone this time—the Duke and Duchess of Bridgwater had ridden with them from the church to the Pulteney. They were on their way to Wiltshire, to Sidley, his home there. They would arrive before dark, he had assured her.

They were alone together, and she had to admit to herself finally that this was no normal marriage after all. Was it?

Her grace had had a talk with her last evening after ascertaining that her Aunt Downes from Canterbury had not already done so. She had tried her best to sound reassuring, though there really had been no need. Cora had already known or guessed most of what she had had to say, but the knowing had never frightened her, as it was perhaps supposed to do. It had only aroused her curiosity to experience it for herself. And a little more than curiosity. She had always
wanted
it and was unable to imagine how any woman could cringe from the very thought of it.

But the trouble was that she was not going to have it with this marriage. Was she? She was really not at all sure, but she rather thought not. And she would prefer not to expect it rather than be disappointed over the coming days and weeks. But if she was not to experience it in her marriage, then she was never going to experience
it at all. The thought saddened her immensely. Even apart from the loss of her half a dozen children, she was sad.

But it was not his fault. She was never going to blame him.

She turned to him. But he had turned to her at the same moment and was taking her hand and lacing his fingers with hers and smiling at her.

“Well, Cora,” he said, “the deed is done and we have survived it. Do you think we can rub along together tolerably well?”

“I think so,” she said. She squared her shoulders and found that her left shoulder was now touching his right one. Neither of them sprang away from the contact. “I daresay your home is large and splendid and has a whole army of servants, but you will find that I will not be at a loss. I have managed Mobley Abbey for a few years and have been Papa’s hostess on a number of occasions. I will not shame you before your servants and neighbors, I can assure you. And I am quite prepared to take on my responsibilities on the estate and in the parish. I will do all that is expected of any wife. I will not shame you. And I—”