The Harem Bride (17 page)

The earl’s face, already unwelcoming, grew
more saturnine.

“
I am concerned about the maid,
Blossom,” Penny said.

The earl gawked. “I beg your pardon,” he
murmured. What was the woman up to? Who the devil was Blossom?

“
Blossom Early,” his wife said, as if
he should know and recognize the name of every servant in his
employ.

“
You do not speak to me for days,” the
earl intoned, “and now you wish to make a May game of
me.”

“
I have so spoken to you,” Penny
protested indignantly.

“
There is speaking, and then there is
speaking,” Jason grumbled. “You cannot possibly claim that wishing
to speak to me about someone with the outlandish name of Blossom
Early can be anything but nonsense.”

“
Oh,” said Penny, much struck, for in
the stress of her days at Rockbourne Crest, the absurdity of
Blossom Early’s name had not occurred to her. “You are quite
right,” she conceded, “it does sound contrived, but that is the
name she gave me, truly it is. The child is but sixteen, you see,
the same age I was when—” Penny broke off, blindly crumpling a
handful of her rose silk gown in her fist. “Blossom,” she began
again, knowing she must go on or she would never forgive herself,
“Blossom is in the family way, and I fear Mrs. Wilton and I are in
grave disagreement about the solution to her problem—”

“
Disagreement?” Jason interjected. “You
are mistress here, not Mrs. Wilton.”

“
I do thank you for that,” Penny
breathed, shooting him a truly grateful glance, which he felt all
the way down to his nether regions. “But the problem is that even
if she is not thrown out of the house without a thought for her
future, as Mrs. Wilton wishes, she is still
enceinte
and unwed.”

“
And you wish me to do what?” Jason
inquired silkily. “Keep her on and raise up the brat as a stable
boy?”

“
You need not be difficult,” his wife
snapped. “Her lover is quite willing to marry her, if only his
father had not threatened to throw him off the land if he does so.
For the father, you see, wishes him to marry someone a bit above a
chambermaid.”

And now her summer sky eyes were truly fixed
on his face, glowing with entreaty. An odd emotion poured through
him. Even though the breathtaking child had become a thorny martyr,
he actually wished to please her. “I take it the father is one of
my tenants,” Jason said. At Penny’s agreement, he mused, “Then I
believe he forgets from whose land he threatens to eject his
son.”

His wife laughed aloud and clapped her hands,
a childish gesture that delighted, reminding him of the young girl
he had first known.

But her joy did not last, a frown wiping her
smile away. “Surely, if you coerce the father, Blossom and Ned
cannot be comfortable living in his household.”

Jason leaned back in his chair, stretching
out one of his long legs until it came close to touching his wife’s
toe. Ah, yes, he rather liked the sensation of being so close. “You
may leave the matter to me,” he assured his countess. “I promise
you I handle my estate affairs with greater skill than I have
handled my marriage.”

Merciful heavens . . . a concession, Penny
thought. Surely as close to an apology as she would ever hear from
her laggard husband. A crack, the veriest chink in the solid wall
built up between them. But was it a new beginning, or merely a
brief flash of rapport, as swift to fade as it had burst upon them
following a surfeit of doleful music?

It was enough, Penny decided. Enough to hint
it would not take another ten years to mend the damage of the past.
Drifting for a moment into the flights of fancy of her youth, the
Countess of Rocksley wondered what would happen if she threw
herself into her husband’s lap and put her arms about his neck?

But she would not, of course she would not.
Pride was a terrible thing. Penny stood, sank into a respectful
curtsy, and said, “My lord, I am most grateful. I am sure you will
not regret any help you may give to Blossom and her Ned.
Goodnight.”

Hastily, Jason pulled back his foot so she
would not trip on it. Stubborn chit. She had given him nothing to
go on. Not the slightest hint she was ready to declare a truce in
their silent war. Blossom and Ned, indeed. Surely the way to his
wife’s heart did not lie in the fate of two country bumpkins.

He had only one way to move in his marriage,
Jason reminded himself, and that was up, for how could things be
worse than the “reconciled” icicle he had found in his countess’s
bed?

So Blossom and Ned it was. Even if he found
the entire affair ludicrous.

For a considerable time the earl scowled at
the pianoforte where his wife persisted in playing music so
mournful it set his teeth on edge. Impossible woman! If he’d had
the slightest idea what was to come, he would have joined a caravan
to Persia the moment Cassandra Pemberton had turned to him for
help. Damn and blast the gentler sex. They were a good deal of
trouble. Grabbing up the candelabrum from a table beside him, Jason
headed for his study, where a full bottle of brandy awaited
him.

Penelope Blayne Lisbourne. His wife. Hell and
the Devil confound it!

Rockbourne Crest, built in an era when life
was still uncertain in the Marches, the sometimes rugged hill
country between England and Wales, was situated on a plateau about
a third of the way up a hill that looked like a mountain to someone
accustomed to the softly rolling terrain of Kent. Nor did the small
but sparkling lakes Penny could see from the windows of her
bedchamber bear any resemblance to the flat water marshes and
choppy seas of the county she had called home for so many years.
Feeling almost as trapped as the young girl who had once gazed
longingly from behind the lattices of the seraglio at the ships
plying the Bosphorus, Penny could scarcely wait to explore the
Shropshire countryside.

Therefore, when the sea of mud that passed
for roads finally firmed under occasional bursts of sun that
penetrated winter’s low-lying clouds, Lady Rocksley ordered up a
carriage and escaped the silent but contentious atmosphere that
permeated the seventeenth century stone fortress. Attempts to
renovate and enlarge it over the years into something more closely
resembling a nobleman’s manor house had been only partially
successful.

Penny, accustomed to the bright and airy feel
of Palladian architecture, based on classic Greco-Roman lines, or
the graceful red brick and columned facades so popular in the
previous century, found it difficult to adapt to the uncompromising
solidness of Rockbourne Crest. Shut in, as she had been by the
weather, she tended to think of it more as a prison than a home.
And of her husband as her jailer. Unfair, perhaps, but when had she
ever known freedom? As a child, her every action had been
controlled by her Aunt Cass. During the past years, when she had
had the running of the household and the care of her aunt during
her final illness, she had enjoyed a modicum of independence but,
certainly, nothing that could be called freedom. And now she was a
possession of the Earl of Rocksley, his to do with as he
pleased.

And it would seem he pleased very little.

As the carriage made its cautious descent
toward the valley below, Penny gulped a lungful of crisp air and
scolded herself for her foolishness. She was tired, tired, tired.
No one could know . . . no one could even imagine what the care of
an invalid entailed. Even with a houseful of willing servants . .
.

In time, she would recover. Life would not
seem an insurmountable obstacle dropped square in front of her by a
vengeful God who did not think her fit to be a proper English lady.
Penny slumped against the squabs, and for the next half mile felt
quite sorry for herself, until her natural stubbornness and
resiliency reasserted itself, even through an exhaustion that
seemed to penetrate all the way to her bones. She was the Countess
of Rocksley. She was about to make the acquaintance of the people
in the village below. She would carry off this excursion as she had
every other challenge in her life. If not always with triumph, she
could at least manage panache.

The village of Cranmere was a pleasant
surprise. The carriage crossed a stone bridge over a rushing stream
that tumbled over a series of granite ledges before plunging over a
fall, marked by the huge wooden wheel of a mill, and then racing
off down a slope toward a small lake, or mere, that gave the
village its name. A few of the houses were of red brick, but the
majority of the homes and shops showed the distinctive
half-timbered construction of the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. The church, however, appeared to have been built of the
same sturdy red granite as Rockbourne Crest. It was a fine edifice,
with an impressive bell tower. Penny speculated that the first Earl
of Rocksley, undoubtedly more devout than the present holder of the
title, had ordered the church built of the same materials as his
castle.

Since one of Penny’s errands was to make sure
Blossom Early and her Ned had arranged for the reading of their
banns, she went first to the church, where she admired the stained
glass windows and the intricate carving on the pulpit before she
finally discovered Mr. Adrian Stanmore in the vicarage, hard at
work on his Sunday sermon. Instead of resenting the interruption,
the vicar beamed at her and urged her to take tea with him. The
embers of Penny’s self-esteem, severely damaged by her husband’s
disgust of her, flickered, settled into a soft glow, though ready
to be snuffed out by the slightest hint of disdain.

Ah yes, Adrian Stanmore told her, his
handsome face wreathed in smiles, Blossom Early and Ned Jenks would
be wed in ten day’s time. The earl had been kind, most kind, for
Sam Jenks was a difficult man. Without Rocksley’s aid, the two
young people could not have managed.

The young vicar raised his cup of tea in
salute. “Blossom Early tells me they owe it all to you, Lady
Rocksley. Scarce three weeks at Rockbourne Crest, and already you
are a true lady of the manor.”

“
Not at all,” Penny demurred, though
the small compliment touched her injured spirit like a warm rush of
summer sunlight.

“
Pray allow me the honor of introducing
you to the village,” Mr. Stanmore offered. “I assure you they have
been all agog since they heard of the wedding.”

“
But you are working on your sermon,
sir,” Penny protested feebly, making a valiant effort not to show
how gratified she was by the vicar’s offer.

Adrian Stanmore rose, a tall blond Viking,
who had somehow managed to fit into a village where the residents
tended to be smaller, darker, and more similar to their Welsh
neighbors than to their Saxon ancestors. “My sermon, my dear lady,
will keep,” he pronounced. “After all, ’tis but Thursday. Come, let
us set the village about its ears.” He proffered his arm. “Mrs.
Hensley,” he called to his housekeeper, “Lady Rocksley’s cloak, if
you please.”

Laughing, Penny stood and allowed him to
place her fur-lined cloak about her shoulders. Indeed, it was quite
wonderful to see good humor in a man’s eyes. And admiration.

Without so much as a thought for the husband
who had been a ghost through all but her first wedding night,
Penelope Blayne Lisbourne, Countess of Rocksley, began her tour of
the village of Cranmere, happily ensconced on the arm of Mr. Adrian
Stanmore.

~ * ~

Jason leaned against the gray marble
mantel in a salon adjacent to the dining room and examined his wife
from beneath lowered lashes as she entered the room, sweeping
toward him as if she had no other care but procuring a glass of
sherry for herself. Her gown was one of her more cheerful ones, he
noted sourly, made of some shade of green that did not look as if
it were the darkest hue she could find. And she was actually
wearing a bit of jewelry, an emerald of fine cut and color dangling
from a chain of gold. For once, she looked a step above the drab
creature any member of the
ton
would dismiss as a governess, companion, or poor relation
upon first glance. In addition, her trip to the village must have
improved her temper as well as her looks, for her cheeks were pink,
her step more lively, her eyes more aglow than he had seen since .
. . since that first wedding night, which he had so disastrously
failed to re-create on the occasion of his second.

Abruptly, Jason stopped fingering his glass
of aperitif and moved to pour some sherry for his wife. “Your drive
to the village was a success, my lady?” he inquired.

“
Indeed,” she confirmed, with what
appeared to be a genuine smile, “I have met the butcher, the baker,
the candlestick maker, wives, children, and cousins. I have
encountered a formidable dame, who, I am told, is wife to the
squire, and her exceedingly meek daughter—”

“
Ah, yes, Mrs. Matthew Houghton and
Miss Mary.”

“
Poor child. On occasion, I thought
Aunt Cass domineering, but she could not hold a candle to Mrs.
Houghton. Neither Miss Mary nor I could get a word in
edgeways.”

Jason chuckled, finding himself more in
charity with his wife than he had been since the night he had
demonstrated his idiocy by fleeing his marriage bed as if he were
the veriest greenling. How could a man marry the same woman twice
and make a fool of himself on two different wedding nights? On the
first occasion, by enjoying himself too well and, on the second, by
running like the hounds of hell were on his heels, and all because
reality had been so much less than his eager anticipation?