The Earl's Practical Marriage Read online

  And besides, the ruthless voice said, you cannot back out now—think of the scandal.

  He wished he had a friend to talk to, but they were all in Portugal. Nine years out of the country had left him with only the acquaintances of childhood and youth in England. There was Gray, of course. But he was back on the Yorkshire estates he had inherited just before peace had come and he had sold out. He could hardly write to him—this was not the sort of thing one committed to paper.

  Giles got to his feet, dusted hay stalks off his coat and put on his hat. It was done now and there was no going back. He wondered, as he walked down the hill to the back of Queen’s Parade, his feet skidding on the dry grass, what the secret service was that his ancestor had performed for the king. That had resulted in the prize of a marquessate. Had it left him feeling any more queasy about his honour than this did?

  * * *

  ‘You must allow me to give you any assistance in my power to make your move to the Dower House as smooth as possible.’ Cousin Anthony, now Earl of Palgrave, directed his gentle, rather aloof smile at his predecessor’s widow. He had arrived the evening before in response to the news that Laurel had returned to Malden Grange from Bath with a fiancé and there was a need for settlements to be discussed. ‘At your own convenience, naturally.’

  ‘You do not mind me being married from here, Cousin? I would very much appreciate it if Stepmama was to be here with me until then,’ Laurel said hastily, seeing her stepmother’s lips tighten. It did not seem that the passage of time was reconciling her to the need to move from her marital home. Laurel could hardly blame her. ‘Unless you are wanting to move in yourself before the wedding? I am sorry, I should have thought of that.’

  Laurel cast her stepmother a harried glance. She was not finding her any easier to live with—in fact, a break of a few weeks had only made it worse. But it would be the depth of ingratitude not to include her fully in the wedding preparations or to make her feel at all unwanted.

  ‘Forgive me, Laurel. I had forgotten that perhaps you are not fully aware of the provisions of your father’s will,’ Cousin Anthony said.

  ‘I was there when it was read,’ she said, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, of course, but you would have still been shocked and distressed by your father’s passing. There is a section of which you may not have realised the importance at the time—the Malden Grange house and estates are held by me in trust. The terms of that trust are set out in separate documents which your father did not see fit to make public. Did he not discuss them with you?’ He looked away as he spoke, his attention apparently fully on the papers he was shuffling on the table in front of him.

  Perhaps, Laurel thought, he was embarrassed at having to deal with a frosty widow and a young woman he hardly knew but whose marriage settlements he must negotiate. ‘I recall something about a trust being mentioned when the will was read, but I assumed it was to do with the entail—if I thought of it at all.’ Now she was completely puzzled as to why he was mentioning these provisions now. ‘Papa had said nothing to me of it, but he did die suddenly—his heart attack was not expected.’

  ‘That must have been it. You see, Cousin Laurel, the Malden estate and various monies are left to you on your marriage.’

  ‘To me? But why did no one tell me that?’

  Papa must have forgiven me after all.

  The thought made her want to smile, but that, naturally, would be most inappropriate.

  ‘I assumed you knew. You made no comment on my decision to use Palgrave Castle as my seat and not to request that you and Lady Palgrave move to the Dower House.’

  ‘I...we thought you were being very kind in not disturbing us in our old home while we were in mourning and that you preferred the Castle for the present. Stepmama—did you know of this?’

  ‘I did not.’

  She seemed even more displeased, Laurel thought. Was it resentment that her stepdaughter would take her place as lady of this house? If it was, there was nothing to be done about it other than to be as tactful as possible. But... Once she married it would no longer be her house. In fact, it never would be. It was not hers until she married and, the moment she was married, everything passed to her husband. To Giles.

  That was an unsettling notion. It had never concerned her until now, because she had believed she had only the money settled on her to provide the income for her allowance and living expenses. Now she was an heiress.

  ‘Does Lord Revesby know of this?’ she asked, sharply enough to bring the attention of the other two snapping back to her.

  ‘It would have been most inappropriate for me to discuss the terms of the trust with anyone it did not affect,’ Cousin Anthony said stiffly, his attention still apparently riveted on ordering the papers. ‘Now that you are betrothed I will, naturally, include these matters in my discussions with Lord Revesby in the course of the settlement discussions.’

  * * *

  ‘So Papa has left the entire Malden estate to me.’ Stepmama raised her head and looked across at them. She was seated at the other end of the Chinese salon, writing wedding invitations, but frequently breaking off to look at them as though, Laurel thought resentfully, she and Giles would start ripping each other’s clothes off if left alone for one moment. She moderated her voice. ‘Had you any idea?’

  ‘My father wrote to me while I was in Portugal as you know.’ Giles crossed one leg over the other and tugged a seam straight. ‘Quite early on he told me that your father had torn up the agreement they had made in anticipation of our marriage. That, you will recall, passed Malden to you on his death—to us, in effect. My father, in an equal rage, picked the scraps up and threw them on the fire and then the two of them got drunk on brandy. Papa blamed his subsequent headache on me. Your father obviously thought better of that decision as time healed his anger and disappointment and so he added those instructions.’

  ‘Is your father surprised at mine changing his mind?’ she persisted.

  ‘They had once been very close.’ Giles shrugged as though to say, Who knows? Perhaps... He took a snuff box out of his pocket, looked at it as though he had no idea where it had come from, then put it back. He kept his hand in his pocket, toying with something.

  Stepmama is embarrassing him, playing the chaperon so obviously.

  It was not like Giles to fidget like that. He had always seemed to her to have an extraordinary capacity for stillness and concentration, even as a boy.

  ‘So what do you want to do with the estate?’ he asked, taking her by surprise.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘It is yours.’

  ‘Until the wedding,’ Laurel pointed out, unable to suppress the sharpness in her tone. ‘And then it becomes yours.’

  ‘Ours,’ he said, with a smile that had an extraordinary effect on her toes, making them curl up in her slippers. ‘Shall we live here?’

  ‘Do you not want to be with your father?’

  To live here with Giles. How very strange that would feel. And yet, she was hardly unused to seeing him in this setting—he had run tame here as a boy, accepted as one of the family.

  ‘My father and I would probably brain each other with the decanters after a few weeks. Talking of relatives...’ He raised his voice a little and took his hand from his pocket as he stood up, holding it out to her. ‘Shall we take a stroll on the terrace, Laurel?’ He spoke softly again. ‘I have something to tell you that will probably have you uttering a most improper word.’

  ‘Yes, the fresh air would be pleasant,’ she said demurely, her thumb rubbing over an odd callous on his forefinger. Perhaps it was from fencing, or using a gun, it was not in the right place to be caused by reins. She forgot it, even as the question flitted through her mind, and they made their way out, ostentatiously leaving the doors from the salon wide behind them. There were no comfortable seats on the terrace, only stone benches, and there was a slight breez
e off the lake, so provided they stayed in view for most of the time they were safe from Stepmama following them out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘What is it that will have me swearing?’ Laurel asked.

  ‘The ladies who so accidentally encountered us in the Gardens—I do not think that it was coincidence they were there at all. I suspect that your aunt put Mrs Atkinson on our track and, it occurs to me now, Lady Druitt is an old friend of my father.’

  ‘You mean that Phoebe and your father conspired to have us caught in a compromising situation?’ He nodded. ‘That is outrageous!’ Laurel took a few agitated steps along the terrace, then came back. ‘On the other hand...’

  ‘On the other hand that, hard on the heels of the attack, did help you make up your mind. I thought I should mention it in case it made a difference.’ His mouth was set in a hard line. ‘I would not have you entrapped into this marriage.’

  ‘Oh, Giles, that is very sweet of you. And very scrupulous and honourable.’ Oddly, his expression did not lighten at the praise. ‘I could give them both a piece of my mind for interfering, but they meant well and I am happy that your father is so strongly in my favour.’

  ‘Thank you, it is a relief that you feel like that. And while we are on the subject of relatives—do you wish for Lady Palgrave to live with us when we are married?’ Giles asked bluntly, surprising an equally frank reply out of her.

  ‘No! Most definitely not. I am not certain that we would hit each other with the decanters like you and your father, but I fear embroidery hoops at ten paces is quite likely. Besides, it would be difficult for her to surrender control of a house where she has been mistress for years and yet continue to live there. I am sure she will be very comfortable in the Dower House where she can create her own home as she likes.’

  ‘At a safe distance from us.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Laurel agreed, straight-faced.

  ‘We have not discussed a honeymoon,’ Giles said, with another of his rapid changes of subject.

  ‘Do we need one? It seems like a great deal of work to organise something at such short notice, as well as all the wedding preparations.’ Giles made a sound suspiciously like a snort. ‘What have I said now? Oh, am I supposed to want a honeymoon? I never really understood what they are for.’

  This time it was definitely a gasp of laughter. ‘I believe—not that I have any experience, of course—that a bridal tour enables the newlyweds to meet one another’s relatives.’

  ‘We know them. All the ones we would want to, that is. I realise that it is a long time since we encountered any of them together, but they will hardly be strangers to us.’

  ‘Or the happy couple might wish to be romantically alone amidst the splendours of nature—the Lake District, Italy...’

  ‘We have agreed that this is not a love match,’ Laurel pointed out, perhaps a little tartly. She tucked her hand under his arm in a conciliatory manner, much as she might have done if they’d had a childhood falling out.

  ‘True,’ Giles agreed equably. Reminders about that did not appear to discompose him. ‘Or the real reason, I always suspect, is so that the blushing bride does not have to face familiar staff and servants in the mornings for a while.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Now I have made you blush.’ Giles stopped at the end of the terrace, out of sight of the salon windows, and turned, bringing Laurel round to stand in front of him. ‘I would apologise, but it is a very fetching effect. I had not realised you could colour up so charmingly.’

  He sounds almost as though he desires me. I suppose he does. Men are able to separate physical desire and love and, as he explained all too plainly the other day, men think about desire a great deal.

  ‘Am I offending you?’ He was watching her, probably reading her mind, betrayed by the blood ebbing and flowing under her skin. ‘Shocking you?’

  Laurel shook her head.

  ‘Only you kiss me without restraint and I had hoped that part of our marriage would not be a...difficulty for you. Would not be distasteful.’

  ‘I think that is a question, is it not? No, I do not think it will be a difficulty or distasteful. It will involve a great deal of blushing because, whatever you think of my kisses, they are not the product of much practice, I can assure you.’

  ‘Do you think we should remedy that?’ Giles’s eyes were focused on her face, heavy-lidded, their deep clear blue smoky with an emotion she did not have to be experienced to interpret.

  ‘Are you suggesting that we anticipate our wedding night?’ How very strange that she could talk to him so frankly when she ought to be scurrying back to her chaperon’s side, shocked and flustered. It was not as though she really knew Giles as a grown man, however close they had been nine years ago.

  Not that I had known all his secrets, as it turned out.

  ‘No, I am not, much as I am looking forward to it. But I thought perhaps a little familiarity with each other might make things easier.’

  ‘That is another question, disguised as a statement,’ Laurel said, crossly. ‘You always used to do that, I recall. Or you would make statements in the form of a question. Very maddening.’ When Giles grinned at her she added, ‘And of course there was that utterly infuriating male habit of answering questions absolutely literally—you were a complete master of that.’

  Was it her imagination or did his gaze shift away from her face for a split second, almost as if he felt guilty about something? It must have been a trick of the light, because his attention was certainly on her again now.

  ‘You haven’t answered my first question at all,’ he retorted. ‘I seem to recall a little summer house on the island in the lake, completely out of sight from the house and, once one has taken the rowing boat to get there, quite safe from interruption.’

  ‘But what are you suggesting?’ Laurel realised that they were walking again, diagonally away from the house, down the lawn towards the lake edge. She really must stop letting Giles distract her so. Her feet seemed to have the habit of following him, whatever her mind thought of the matter. ‘We have kissed already and you said you do not wish to anticipate things...’

  ‘There are things and things,’ Giles said mysteriously. ‘Things between kisses and wedding nights, certainly. Things that I hope you will enjoy.’

  ‘That you would enjoy also?’

  ‘My pleasure just now is in what gives you pleasure.’

  The sensual growl in his voice sent shivers racing deliciously down her spine. She knew the facts, of course, she was country-bred and reared after all, and had sought out what information she could find, as she had explained to him, but the details, and putting them into practice—now that was something else altogether.

  Stepmama had attempted an awkward pre-nuptial lecture on the subject when she had heard about the betrothal. She had emphasised the importance of submission to one’s husband’s will and how children were a recompense for this distasteful, but necessary duty, but Laurel was suspicious of the implication that physical relations were something to be endured, or at best, tolerated. If sex was so unpleasant for wives that it required a conscious act of submission, then why did some women so obviously enjoy it, to the extent of committing adultery or gaining the reputation for being fast and immoral?

  ‘Have I shocked you? You have gone very quiet, which is not at all like you.’

  Laurel looked around and found they had reached the little boathouse, no more than an open-sided structure with a pitched roof to keep the rain off the punt and the two rowing boats that had been pulled out of the lake.

  ‘I was thinking that there seems to be a conspiracy amongst married women to keep unmarried girls ignorant of the realities of marriage. If—’

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, this is Giles and I am about to be married to him! If I cannot say the words to him, how can we ever discuss things?

  �
��If sexual intercourse is not enjoyable for women, as they try to pretend, why do women commit adultery?’

  Giles had bent to pull a rowing boat clear of the shelter, but at that he looked up and laughed. ‘Perhaps those women are in search of a man whose bedroom skills are better than their husbands’.’

  That was interesting. ‘So having...sex is a skill?’ If she kept on saying the word perhaps she would learn to stop blushing.

  ‘Making love is.’ Giles had the little boat bobbing at the waterside now. ‘Anything male can have sex, provided all the parts are in working order. Making love now—’ his smile was warm and intimate and just for her ‘—that is an art.’

  And one you have no doubt practised to perfection, Laurel thought, catching the sting in the tail of that explanation.

  After all, one does not learn to play the piano or paint a picture well just by wishing to do so. Giles had told her he had been a virgin when he had left home, but he had lived nine adult years of his life in Portugal in the company of soldiers, diplomats, men of the world. And he was handsome and charming and probably most of the women of Lisbon were still patching their broken hearts back together after his departure.

  ‘Was there anyone special in Portugal?’ she asked, taking his hand and stepping into the rowing boat. It was quite a while since she had tried that, especially wearing pretty slippers and a respectable morning dress that she needed to keep clean and dry, and she made a mull of it, causing the boat to rock. That seemed to take Giles by surprise, too, and he had to step into the water to steady both it, and her, before she could sit down.

  ‘Portuguese ladies are very striking in looks,’ Giles said eventually when he had got on board himself, sat down and sorted out the oars. ‘I spent the first week trying to keep my mouth shut and managing not to stare. Their colouring is much like yours—dark hair, large brown eyes—but their skin is more olive, not your English roses and cream. Their taste in dress is more flamboyant, too, with touches of traditional costume even in highly fashionable gowns. And of course the national character in Portugal and Spain is more demonstrative than in polite circles here—’