The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (10 page)

Nothing surprised him. His father welcomed his son home with chill pomp just as if he had not left in bitterness and been gone and living independently for eight years. And—as he might have expected—his father greeted the news of his marriage without a flicker of public dismay—or enthusiasm. He met this daughter-in-law with chill courtesy. So did all the others. But the marquess
was glad of the formality. Without it, he did not know quite how he would have looked William in the eye, or Claudia, or how he would have been able to speak to them. He had seen, almost before he was properly through the door, almost before he saw his father, that they were there, side by side, husband and wife. And that Claudia was more beautiful than she had ever been.

It was enormously satisfying to him—even more so than he had expected—to present his wife. To sense the blank shock in his father’s whole being. To display to
them
that he had married from personal inclination after all, that he cared not one fig for dynastic considerations. He had not realized until this very moment that he had had more than one reason for choosing a bride as he had and for marrying her before coming home.

And then came the crowning moment. Just as she was about to be led away by the housekeeper, his wife smiled. No, she did not just smile—she lit up the hall with the warmth of her expression, and despite the terrible drabness of her clothes she looked suddenly quite startlingly lovely. And she called his grace
Father
. It was a priceless moment. No one had ever been so familiar with the Duke of Withingsby. There was nothing even remotely vulgar in either her smile or her words. They were just shockingly out of place in this household.

And so an idea was born in him and he had called her his love—a definite vulgarity in the ducal vocabulary. He knew a moment of quite exquisite triumph, far in excess even of what he had dreamed.

He followed his father into the library but did not stand just inside the door, as he had always used to do when summoned there, facing the seated duke across the wide expanse of the oak desk in a position of distinct subordination. No, he would never stand there again. He crossed the room to the window and looked out across the lake.

“How are you, sir?” he asked. His father was not languishing on his deathbed, but he was undoubtedly in poor health. And his health was the reason for this homecoming.

His grace ignored the question. “Your marriage is of recent date,” he said. It was not a question. The marquess did not doubt that his father was familiar with every move he had made during the past eight years, though not a single letter had been exchanged between them—until the one that had summoned him home.

“Yesterday,” he said. “A union that was consummated last night,” he added, glad suddenly that it could be said in all honesty. Though he would have been just as married even without the consummation.

“Who is she?” the duke asked.

“She was Miss Charity Duncan, a gentlewoman from Hampshire,” the marquess said. “She earned her living as a governess before marrying me.”

“I suppose,” his father said, “you were seduced by blue eyes and a seductive smile and bold impertinence.”

Seductive? Bold impertinence? His quiet little mouse? His lips twitched but he said nothing. His father would soon realize how far wide of the mark his initial judgment of his daughter-in-law was, though it would not hurt at all if she smiled more often. He turned from the window and looked at the duke, who was seated, as expected, behind his desk—from which vantage point he had dispensed chill justice on servants and children alike for as far back as his son could remember. And no love at all.

“I married her,” he said quietly, “because I chose to, sir. I passed the age of majority seven years ago.”

“You married her,” his grace said, “in defiance of me and in defiance of your upbringing. You have married a woman of shabby gentility and questionable manners. She was very carefully chosen, I daresay.”

“Yes, sir,” his son said, the sense of triumph building in him. “For love.”

It was something he had not intended to claim, something he had never even considered claiming, since love—in any of its manifestations—was an emotion that gave him the shudders. But the idea had occurred to him when she had so shocked his family with a single word and a dazzling smile. It was a good idea. The Dukes of Withingsby and their heirs did not marry for love—especially shabby gentlewomen. The idea that his heir had been indiscreet enough to form a love match would strike his father as the ultimate vulgarity.

“Tillden will be arriving here tomorrow with his countess and his daughter,” the duke said. “They are coming to celebrate the formalizing of a betrothal between Lady Marie Lucas and my eldest son. There is to be a betrothal ball the night after tomorrow. How will you explain yourself to them, Staunton?”

“I believe, sir,” the marquess said, “I have no explaining to do.”

“You were fully aware of the match agreed upon seventeen years ago,” his grace said. “And if you had forgotten, my letter of a couple of weeks ago would have reminded you—the letter you received even before you were acquainted with the present marchioness, I daresay. Tillden may well consider you in breach of contract.”

“If there is a contract in existence,” his son replied coolly, “it does not bear my signature, sir. If the agreement was verbal, it was not ratified by my voice. The contract is not my concern.”

“A young lady who has grown up expecting to be the Duchess of Withingsby one day,” his grace said, “is about to be severely humiliated.”

“I had no part in raising her hopes,” the marquess said. “And I believe you must agree, sir, that this conversation
is pointless. I am married. The ceremony has been performed, the register signed and witnessed, and the union consummated.”

His father stared at him coldly and quite expressionlessly. It was a moment of acute triumph for his son, who held his gaze.

“It is to be hoped,” his grace said at last, “that you know how to dress your wife, Staunton. The garments she wore for travel will disappear without trace after today, I trust? It was my distinct impression that my housekeeper mistook her for a maid.”

So that was why she had still been standing just inside the door when he had turned to present her to his father? The marquess smiled inwardly.

“My wife pleases me as she is,” he said. “I care nothing for the clothes she wears.”

“A nonsensical attitude when the appearance of your wife reflects your own position in society,” his grace said. “As she appeared on her arrival, she is hardly fit to occupy a place in the kitchen.”

“As my father and our host,” the marquess said, the stiffness and chilliness of his voice quite at variance with his secret satisfaction, “you have the right to say so, sir. I will, however, be pleased to debate the issue with anyone else who feels obliged to utter similar sentiments.”

What
did
she have in that small trunk of hers? he wondered.

“You will wish to go upstairs before coming to the drawing room for tea,” the duke said. “You will wish to escort Lady Staunton down. You will not wish to be late. And you will instruct her ladyship on how I am to be addressed, Staunton.”

His son stood looking at him for several moments before moving to the door without another word. He could remember how as a boy he had adored his father, whom he rarely saw, how he had fed off every comment about
his own likeness to the duke, how the whole of his boyhood had seemed to be shaped about the desire to please his father, to emulate him, to be a worthy heir to him. All his efforts had gone unnoticed. And yet every failure at a lesson, every episode of boyish mischief, every reported bickering with a younger sibling had brought him to this very room for an interrogation and a lecture, while he had stood before that desk, knowing that at the end of it all there would be the command to bend over the desk for the painful and never brief caning.

He could not count the number of times he had been caned by his father. Neither could he count the number of times his father had shown him affection, since there were no such numbers to count.

He might have forgiven his father’s harshness toward himself—perhaps. But the duke had shown no love to anyone—not even to his wife, who had borne him thirteen children and had miscarried four others. And his grace had expressed only impatience and irritability when his eldest son had tried to persuade him to see his youngest daughter after her birth—and after the duchess’s death.

It had been one of his reasons for leaving home.

He had come to hate his resemblance to his father—the outer resemblance and, more important, the inner resemblance. He had come to hate himself. Until he had freed himself. He was free now. He had come back when summoned, but he had come on his own terms. The Duke of Withingsby no longer had any power over him.

But devil take it, he thought as he took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time, that dome was pressing down on his shoulders again.

T
HE APARTMENTS HE
had occupied from the time he left the nursery until the time he left home had been prepared
for him again. They must have been kept for him all this time, he thought. His declaration that he was leaving, never to return, had been disregarded—and indeed, here he was, back again. He had rather expected that the apartments would have been given to William and Claudia. But apparently not. They must be in some lesser apartment.

He found his wife in the private sitting room. She was standing at the window, looking out, though she turned her head as soon as he opened the door. The room, which he had never used, looked strangely cozy and lived-in and feminine, he thought, though nothing had changed in it except for the fact that she was standing there. It was a woman’s room, he realized, or a room that needed a woman’s presence.

It seemed suddenly strange to have a woman—a wife—in these long-familiar rooms.

For the first time since he had known her she was not wearing brown. She had changed into a high-waisted dress of sprigged muslin. It looked somewhat faded from many washings. Her hair was simply styled and knotted behind. It was lighter in color than he had thought at first. She looked, he thought, like someone’s poor relation—a very poor relation. She also looked surprisingly young and pretty. She had a trim figure—a rather enticing figure, as he remembered clearly from his exploration of it the night before.

“The view is magnificent,” she said.

“Yes.” He crossed the room to stand beside her. He had always been somewhat oppressed by the house. In the outdoors he had known freedom—or the illusion of freedom. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the lake, turning it to dull gold. The woods beyond—his boyhood playground and enchanted land—were dark and inviting.

“You are very like your father.” She was looking at his profile rather than out the window.

“Yes.” His jaw tightened.

“And you hate being like him,” she said quietly. “I am sorry I stated the obvious.”

He did not like her insights, her attempts to read his character and his mind. He shared himself with no one, ever—not even his closest male friends. She must understand that she was not to be allowed a wife’s privilege of probing into every corner of his life—the very idea was nauseating. She must be reminded that theirs was purely a business arrangement.

“I married you and I brought you here, as you very well know,” he said, turning to look at her—she looked very directly back with those splendid blue eyes of hers, “to prove to his grace that I live my own life my own way. No one is allowed to direct my life for me and no one is invited to intrude on my privacy. I am the Duke of Withingsby’s heir—nothing but my death can change that. But beyond that basic fact, I am my own person. You are the proof I have brought with me that I will not do anything merely because it is expected of the heir to the dukedom.”

“You did not have the courage merely to tell him that?” she asked.

“You, my lady,” he said, “are impertinent.”

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again without saying anything. She did not look away from him, though. She stared at him with wide eyes. He had the strange feeling that if he looked deeply enough into them he would see her soul. If she kept herself that wide open, he thought in some annoyance, sooner or later life was going to hurt her very badly indeed.

“You played your part well on your arrival,” he said. “You may confidently continue as you began. You need not be embarrassed by your lack of a fashionable wardrobe.
And you need not be embarrassed by any lack of conversation—my family is not easy to converse with. We are expected in the drawing room immediately. You may stay close to me and leave the conversation to me. There is no necessity for you to impress anyone.”

She half smiled at him. “Augusta must have been very young when you went away,” she said.

“She was one week old,” he told her. “I stayed for my mother’s funeral.” He had shed no tears for his mother. He had sobbed painfully, the child in his arms, just before he left. The last tears he had shed—the last he would ever shed.

“Ah,” his wife said softly, and he could have sworn that she had slipped inside his head again and knew that he had wept over his last ever contact with love. Over his last foolishness.

He would not have her inside his head—or anywhere inside himself.

“Ours was a brief courtship,” he told her briskly. “You were governess at the home of an acquaintance of mine. I met you there, we fell in love, and we threw all caution to the winds. We married yesterday, mated last night, and are embarking upon a deeply passionate relationship today.”

She blushed and her eyes slipped from his for a few moments. But she looked back at him steadily enough.

“Then, my lord,” she said, “you must learn to smile.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“You look,” she said, her eyes roaming over his face, “like a man who has married a stranger with the sole purpose of angering and perhaps disgusting someone else. You look like a man who is wallowing in bitter and unhappy triumph.”

His eyes narrowed. He found himself wondering if one short interview two days before had been sufficient time in which to learn about her character—or what he
had thought to be lack of character. But perhaps she had a point, he had to confess.