The Wedding of the Century & Other Stories (7 page)

Only then did she notice that the rooms were much warmer than she should have expected. “Thank you, Justin. I think you must be the most considerate husband on earth.” She crossed the room to her husband's side and gave him a swift kiss.

It was the first time she had ever done such a thing, and she wondered belatedly if he would think her too forward. But he didn't seem to mind. His lips moved slowly under hers, and he raised his hand and massaged the back of her neck. He had a tangy masculine scent that was distinctly his own. Succumbing to temptation, she let her fingers brush his bare chest as if by accident. The hair was softer
than she had expected, but she felt unnerved when his warm flesh tensed at her touch. Hastily she lowered her hand.

But the kiss continued, and she found that she was in no hurry to end it. Very gently, his tongue stroked her lips. It was a new sensation, but pleasant. Very pleasant…

The clamor of a bell reverberated brassily through the corridors. Both of them jumped as if they had been caught stealing from the church poor box.

After he had caught his breath, Justin said, “The pre-dinner bell. We must be downstairs in ten minutes.”

“I barely have time to dress.” Embarrassed at how she had lost track of time, Sunny bolted to her own room. As soon as the connecting door was closed, Antoinette started unfastening her traveling dress so that the duchesse satin could be donned.

Yet as her maid swiftly transformed her, Sunny's mind kept returning to the kiss, and her fingertips tingled with the memory of the feel of her husband's bare body.

 

D
INNER WAS ANOTHER STRAIN.
Sunny sat at the opposite end of the table from her husband, so far away that she could barely see him. Before the first course had been removed, it was obvious that the dowager duchess was a tyrant, with all the tact of a charging bull. She made a string of remarks extolling Gavin's noble spirit and aristocratic style, interspersed with edged comments about the deficiencies of “poor, dear Justin.”

Charlotte tried to divert the conversation with a cheerful promise to send Sunny a copy of the table of precedence so that she would never commit the cardinal crime of seating people in the wrong order. That inspired the dowager to say, “There are about two hundred families whose history and relationships you must understand,
Sarah. Has Justin properly explained all the branches of the Aubreys and of my own family, the Sturfords?”

“Not yet, Duchess,” Sunny said politely.

“Very remiss of him. Since he wasn't raised to be a duke, he hasn't a proper sense of what is due his station.” The dowager sniffed. “So sad to see poor, dear Justin in his brother's place—such a comedown for the family. You must be quick about having a child, Sarah, and make sure it's a boy.”

Sunny was tempted to sling the nearest platter of veal collops at her mother-in-law, but it seemed too soon to get into a pitched battle. A quick glance at her husband showed that he had either not heard his mother, or he chose to ignore her. Clearly Alexandra had heard, for she was staring at her plate.

Carefully Sunny said, “The eighth duke's death was a great tragedy. You all have my sympathies on your loss.”

The dowager sighed. “Gavin should have betrothed himself to you, not that Russell woman. If he had, he might be alive now, in his proper place.”

Sunny had heard enough gossip to know that the fatal problem had not been Gavin's fiancée, but his inability to keep his hands off other women, even when on the way to his own wedding. Hoping to end this line of discussion, she said piously, “It is not for us to question the ways of heaven.”

“A very proper sentiment,” the dowager said. “You have pretty manners. One would scarcely know you for an American.”

Did the woman suppose that she was giving a compliment? Once more Sunny bit her tongue.

Yet in spite of her good intentions, she was not to get through the evening peacefully. The gauntlet was thrown down at the end of the lengthy meal, when it was time
for the ladies to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their port. Sunny was about to give the signal when the dowager grandly rose to her feet and beat Sunny to it.

As three women followed the dowager's lead, Sunny's blood went cold. This was a direct challenge to her authority as the new mistress of the household. If she didn't assert herself immediately, her mother-in-law would walk all over her.

The other guests hesitated, glancing between the new duchess and the old. Sunny wanted to whimper that she was too
tired
for this, but she supposed that crises never happened at convenient times. Though her hands clenched below the table, her voice was even when she asked, “Are you feeling unwell, Duchess?”

“I am in splendid health,” her mother-in-law said haughtily. “Where did you get the foolish idea that I might be ailing?”

“I can think of no other reason for you leaving prematurely,” Sunny said with the note of gentle implacability that she had often heard in her mother's voice.

For a moment the issue wavered in the balance. Then, one by one, the female guests who had gotten to their feet sank back into their seats with apologetic glances at Sunny. Knowing that she had lost, the dowager returned to the table, her expression stiff with mortification.

As she waited for a decent interval to pass before leading the ladies from the table, Sunny drew in a shaky breath. She had won the first battle—but there would be others.

 

T
HE EVENING ENDED WHEN
the first clock struck eleven. Accompanied by the bonging of numerous other clocks, Justin escorted his wife upstairs. When they reached the door of her room, he said, “I'm sorry that it's been such a long day, but everyone was anxious to meet you.”

She smiled wearily. “I'll be fine after a night's sleep.”

“You were a great success with everyone.” After a moment of hesitation, he added, “I'm sorry my mother was so…abrupt. Gavin was her favorite, and she took his death very badly.”

“You miss him, too, but it hasn't made you rude.” She bit her lip. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound impertinent.”

“My mother is a forceful woman, and I don't expect that you'll always agree. Blanche and Charlotte used to have terrible battles with her. Just remember that you are my wife, and the mistress of Swindon.”

“I shall attempt to be tactful while establishing myself.” She made a rueful face. “But I warn you, I have trouble countenancing unkind remarks about other people.”

That sensitivity to others was one of the things he liked best about her. A volatile mix of tenderness and desire moved through him, and he struggled against his yearning to draw her into his arms and soothe her fatigue away.

He might have done so if he hadn't been aware that the desire to comfort would be followed by an even more overwhelming desire to remove her clothing, garment by garment, and make slow, passionate love to her. With the lamps lit, not in the dark.

Innocently she turned her back to him and said, “Could you unfasten my dog collar? It's miserably uncomfortable.”

The heavy collar had at least fifteen rows of pearls. As he undid the catch and lifted the necklace away, he saw that the diamond clasp had rubbed her tender skin raw. He frowned. “I don't like seeing you wearing something that hurts you.”

She sighed. “Virtually every item a fashionable woman wears is designed to hurt.”

He leaned forward and very gently kissed the raw spot on her nape. “Perhaps you should be less stylish.”

She tensed, as she did whenever he touched her in a sensual way. “A duchess is supposed to be fashionable. I would be much criticized if I didn't do you credit.” Eyes downcast, she turned and took the jeweled collar, then slipped into her room.

He felt the familiar ache as he watched her disappear. Who was it who said that if a man wanted to be truly lonely, he should take a wife? It was true, for he didn't recall feeling lonely before he married.

But now that he had a wife, his life echoed with loneliness. The simple fact was that he wanted more of her. He wanted to hold her in his arms all night while they slept. He wanted her to sigh with pleasure when he made love to her. He wanted to be with her day and night.

He drew a deep breath, then entered his room and began undressing. He had hoped that with time she might come to enjoy intimacy more, but every time he came to her bed, she became rigid. Though she never complained, or spoke at all, for that matter—it was clear that she could scarcely endure his embraces.

Yet she didn't seem to dislike him in other ways. She talked easily and was willing to share her opinions. And she had given him that shy kiss earlier. In her innocence, she had not understood that she set the blood burning through his veins. But even going to her bed would not have quenched the fire, for he had found that quick, furtive coupling was more frustrating than if he had never touched her.

As he slid into his bed, he realized how foolish it was of him to object to a necklace that chafed her neck when his conjugal demands disturbed her far more. He despised himself for taking that which was not willingly given—yet he was not strong enough to prevent himself from
going to her again and again. His twice weekly visits were his compromise between guilt and lust.

He stared blindly into the darkness, wondering if he would be able to sleep.

If you would be lonely, take a wife.

Swindon
February 1886

S
UNNY ABANDONED HER LETTER
writing and went to stand at her sitting-room window, staring out at the gray landscape. In the distance was a pond where long ago a footman had drowned himself in a fit of melancholy. As the dreary winter months dragged by, she had come to feel a great deal of sympathy for the poor fellow.

The loudest sound was the ticking of the mantel clock. Swindon was full of clocks, all of them counting out the endless hours. She glanced at the dog curled in one of the velvet-covered chairs. “Daisy, how many of the women who envied my glamorous marriage would believe how tedious it is to winter on an English country estate?”

Daisy's floppy-eared head popped up and she gave a sympathetic whimper. Unlike the beautiful but brainless wolfhounds, Daisy, a small black-and-tan dog of indeterminate parentage, was smart as a whip. Sunny liked to think that the dog understood human speech. Certainly she was a good listener.

Sunny's gaze went back to the dismal afternoon. Custom decreed that a bride should live quietly for a time after her wedding, and at Swindon, that was very quietly indeed. Apart from the newlyweds, Alexandra and the dowager were the only inhabitants of the vast palace.
There were servants, of course, but the line between upstairs and downstairs was never crossed.

The best part of the daily routine was a morning ride with Justin. Sunny never missed a day, no matter how vile the weather, for she enjoyed spending time with her husband, though she couldn't define the reason. He was simply…comfortable. She only wished that she understood him better. He was like an iceberg, with most of his personality hidden from view.

After their ride, she usually didn't see him again until dinner, for estate work kept him busy. Occasionally he went to London for several days to attend to business. He was gone now, which made the hours seem even longer.

The high point of country social life was making brief calls on neighbors, then receiving calls in turn. Though most of the people Sunny met were pleasant, they lived lives as narrow and caste-ridden as Hindus. Luckily even the most conventional families usually harbored one or two splendid eccentrics in the great British tradition. There was the Trask uncle who wore only purple clothing, for example, and the Howard maiden aunt who had taught her parrot all the basic social responses so that the bird could speak for her. Such characters figured prominently in Sunny's letters home, since little else in her life was amusing.

A knock sounded at the door. After Sunny called permission to enter, her sister-in-law came into the sitting room. “A telegram arrived for you, Sunny, so I said I'd bring it up.” Alexandra handed it over, then bent to scratch Daisy's ears.

Sunny opened the envelope and scanned the message. “Justin finished his business early and will be home for dinner tonight.”

“That's nice. It's so quiet when he's away.”

“Two months from now, after you've been presented to
society and are attending ten parties a day, you'll yearn for the quiet of the country.”

Alexandra made a face. “I can't say that I'm looking forward to being a wallflower at ten different places a day.”

“You're going to be a great success,” Sunny said firmly. “It's remarkable what good clothing can do for one's confidence. After Worth has outfitted you, you won't recognize yourself.”

Unconvinced, Alexandra returned to petting Daisy. Though young in many ways, the girl was surprisingly mature in others. She was also well-read and eager to learn about the world. The two young women had become good friends.

Deciding that she needed some fresh air, Sunny said, “I think I'll take a walk before I bathe and change. Would you like to join me?”

“Not today, thank you. I have a book I want to finish.” Alexandra grinned, for at the word
walk,
Daisy jumped to the floor and began skipping hopefully around her mistress. “But someone else wants to go. I'll see you at dinner.”

After Alexandra left, Sunny donned a coat—not the sables, but a practical mackintosh—and a pair of boots, then went down and out into the damp afternoon, Daisy frisking beside her. Once they were away from the house, Sunny asked, “Would you like to play fetch?” Foolish question; Daisy was already racing forward looking for a stick.

Sunny had found Daisy on a morning ride not long after her arrival at Swindon. The half-grown mongrel had been desperately trying to stay afloat in the overflowing stream where someone had probably pitched her to drown. Driven frantic by the agonized yelps, Sunny had been on the verge of plunging into the water when Justin
had snapped an order for her to stay on the bank. Before she could argue, he dismounted and went in himself.

When Sunny saw her husband fighting the force of the current, she realized that he was risking his life for her whim. There had been one ghastly moment when it seemed that the water would sweep him away. As her heart stood still, Justin managed to gain his footing, then catch hold of the struggling dog. After sloshing out of the stream, he had handed her the shivering scrap of canine with the straight-faced remark that it was quite an appealing creature as long as one didn't have any snobbish preconceptions about lineage.

The sodden pup had won Sunny's heart with one lap of a rough tongue. Sunny had almost wept with gratitude, for here was a creature who loved her and whom she could love in return.

Naturally the dowager duchess had disliked having such an ill-bred beast at Swindon, but she couldn't order the dog out of the house when Justin approved. The dowager had resorted to mumbled comments that it was natural for Sunny to want a mongrel, since Americans were a mongrel race. Sunny ignored such remarks; she had gotten very good at that.

As always, Daisy's desire to play fetch exceeded Sunny's stamina. Abandoning the game, they strolled to the little Greek temple, then wandered toward the house while Sunny thought of changes she would make in the grounds. A pity that nothing could be done at this time of year, for gardening would cheer her up.

In an attempt to stave off self-pity, she said, “I'm really very fortunate, Daisy. Most of Katie Westron's dire warnings haven't come true. Justin is the most considerate of husbands, and he is making the house very comfortable.” She glanced toward the palace, where men were laboring
on the vast roof, in spite of the weather. “My ceiling hasn't leaked since before Christmas.”

She made a wry face. “Of course, it might be considered a bit strange that I talk more to a dog than to my husband.”

One of Katie's warnings haunted her—the possibility that Justin might have a mistress. Could that be the real reason for his business trips? She loathed the thought that her husband might be doing those intimate, dark-of-the-night things to another woman. She tried not to think of it.

The dull afternoon had darkened to twilight, so she summoned Daisy and headed toward the house. If the best part of the day was riding with Justin, the worst was dining with the dowager duchess. Familiarity had not improved her opinion of her mother-in-law. Most of the dowager's cutting remarks were directed at Justin, but she also made edged comments about Alexandra's lack of looks and dim marital prospects. She usually spared Sunny, rightly suspecting that her daughter-in-law might strike back.

Sunny wondered how long it would be before she disgraced herself by losing her temper. Every meal brought the breaking point closer. She wished that Justin would tell his mother to hold her tongue, but he was too courteous—or too detached—to take action.

When she got to the house, she found that her husband was in the entry hall taking off his wet coat. She thought his expression lightened when he saw her, but she wasn't sure; it was always hard to tell with Justin.

“Hello.” She smiled as she took off her mackintosh. “Did you have a good trip to London?”

As the butler took away the coats, Justin gave Sunny a light kiss on the cheek, then rumpled Daisy's ears. He
was rather more affectionate with the dog. “Yes, but I'm glad to be home.”

He fell into step beside her and they started up the main stairs. The thought of a possible mistress passed through Sunny's mind again. Though she knew that it was better not to probe, she found herself saying, “What are all these trips about, or wouldn't I be able to understand the answer?”

“The Thornborough income has traditionally come from the land, but agriculture is a chancy business,” he explained as they reached the top of the stairs. “I'm making more diverse investments so that future dukes won't have to marry for money.”

She stopped in midstride, feeling as if he had slapped her. When she caught her breath, she said icily, “God forbid that another Aubrey should have to stoop to marrying a mongrel American heiress.”

He spun around, his expression startled and distressed. “I'm sorry, Sunny—I didn't mean that the way it sounded.”

Her brows arched. “Oh? I can't imagine any meaning other than the obvious one.”

When she turned and headed toward the door of her suite, he caught her arm and said intensely, “You would have been my choice even if you weren't an heiress.”

Her mouth twisted. “Prettily said, but you needn't perjure yourself, Justin. We both know this marriage wouldn't have been made without my money and your title. If you invest my money wisely, perhaps our son, if we have one, will be able to marry where he chooses. I certainly hope so.”

Justin's hand fell away and Sunny escaped into her sitting room, Daisy at her heels. When she was alone, she sank wretchedly into a chair. She had been better off not knowing what Justin really felt. Before she had wondered
if he had a mistress; now, sickeningly, she wondered if he had a woman who was not only his mistress, but his beloved. There had been a raw emotion in his voice that made her think, for the first time, that he was capable of loving deeply. Had he been forced to forsake the woman he loved so that he could maintain Swindon?

Sensing distress, Daisy whimpered and pushed her cool nose into Sunny's hand. Mechanically she stroked the dog's silky ears. What a wretched world they lived in. Yet even if Justin loved another woman, he was her husband and she must make the best of this marriage. Someday, if she was a very good wife, perhaps he would love her, at least a little.

She desperately hoped so, for there was a hole in the center of her life that the frivolity of the season would never fill.

 

S
UNNY'S DEPRESSION WAS
not improved by the discovery that the dowager duchess was in an unusually caustic mood. Throughout an interminable dinner, she made acid remarks about the neighbors, the government and most of all her son. As fruit and cheese were served, she said, “A pity that Justin hasn't the Aubrey height and coloring. Gavin was a much more handsome man, just as Blanche and Charlotte are far prettier than Alexandra.”

Sunny retorted, “I've studied the portraits, and the first duke, John Aubrey, was dark and of medium build. Justin and Alexandra resemble him much more than your other children do.”

The dowager sniffed. “The first duke was a notable general, but though it pains me to admit it, he was a very low sort of man in other ways. A pity that the peasant strain hasn't yet been bred out of the family.” She gave an elaborate sigh. “Such a tragedy that Justin did not die instead of Gavin.”

Sunny gasped. How
dare
that woman say she wished Justin had died in his brother's place! Justin was worth a dozen charming, worthless wastrels like Gavin. She glanced at her husband and saw that he was carefully peeling an apple, as if his mother hadn't spoken, but there was a painful bleakness in his eyes.

If he wouldn't speak, she would. Laying her fork beside her plate, she said, “You must not speak so about Justin, Duchess.”

“You forget who I am, madame.” The dowager's eyes gleamed with pleasure at the prospect of a battle. “As the mother who suffered agonies to bear him, I can say what I wish.”

“And you forget who
I
am,” Sunny said with deadly precision. “The mistress of Swindon Palace. And I will no longer tolerate such vile, ill-natured remarks.”

The dowager gasped, her jaw dropping open. “How dare you!”

Not backing down an inch, Sunny retorted, “I dare because it is a hostess's duty to maintain decorum at her table, and there has been a sad lack of that at Swindon.”

The dowager swept furiously to her feet. “I will not stay here to be insulted by an impertinent American.”

Deliberately misinterpreting her mother-in-law's words, Sunny said, “As you wish, Duchess. I can certainly understand why you prefer to have your own establishment. If I were to be widowed, I would feel the same way. And the Dower House is a very charming residence, isn't it?”

The dowager's jaw went slack as she realized that a simple flounce from the table had been transformed into total eviction. Closing her mouth with a snap, she turned to glare at Justin. “Are you going to allow an insolent American hussy to drive me from my own home?”

Justin looked from his mother to his wife, acute discomfort on his face. Silently Sunny pleaded with him
to support her. He had said that she was the mistress of Swindon. If he didn't back her now, her position would become intolerable.

“You've been complaining that the new central heating gives you headaches, Mother,” Justin said expressionlessly. “I think it an excellent idea for you to move to the Dower House so that you will be more comfortable. We shall miss you, of course, but fortunately you won't be far away.”

Sunny shut her eyes for an instant, almost undone by relief. When she opened them again, the dowager's venomous gaze had gone to her daughter. “The Dower House isn't large enough for me to have Alexandra underfoot,” she said waspishly. “She shall have to stay in the palace.”