‘Nothing?’ he said. Was that what their love making had been to her, then?
‘There was no harm done.’ She took a hurried sip of wine. ‘Despite my fears, there is no child imminent. While there has been a negative impact upon the business from my notoriety, I am sure, by next summer, it will be forgotten. To the next crop of holiday goers, I would have been nothing more than a merchant.’
‘That is all that matters to you, is it? Your shop?’ A normal woman would have lamented for her lost honour.
‘It is my only source of income and therefore a primary concern,’ she said, using the masculine logic upon him again.
‘That is no longer true,’ he reminded her. ‘You are married. The value of the shop pales in comparison to the rest of my holdings.’
‘The rest...’ There was an ominous pause as she considered his words. ‘Because it is yours now, of course. And what do you mean to do with this shop of yours, now you have gained it?’
It would have to close, of course. But only a fool would begin that conversation right after the wedding. ‘Now is not the appropriate time to speak of it,’ he said.
‘When, then?’ she said, looking up into his face with more interest and intensity than she had during the ceremony.
‘I will tell you when I have come to a conclusion.’ The conclusion was foregone. But it must be delivered in a way that would not lead to a screaming row in a public room.
‘And until that time, what am I to tell my employees? There are seven people who...’ She paused. ‘Six people,’ she amended. ‘After whatever you said to him the other day, Mr Pratchet has fled.’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘It was most unhelpful of you. The lack of a skilled metal worker could severely limit the business I am able to do. I am training up a clever girl who had been working the back counter and sweeping the floor. But what is the point to designing, if there is no one there to execute—’
‘You could not stand Fratchet,’ he reminded her, purposely mispronouncing the name so she would not hear him stammer.
‘That is not the point,’ she said.
‘You are b-better off without him.’ The man had been in the thick of the true conspiracy against her. And today, she took his side against Stephen.
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Jealousy does not suit you, Lord Fanworth.’
‘I am not...’ he began, and felt an annoying prickle of irritation at the thought of Pratchet’s smug and possessive attitude towards Margot.
‘You are,’ she accused. ‘It is why you are keeping me here, in the middle of a business day, when I should be working.’
‘It is our wedding,’ he pointed out, in what he thought was a reasonable way. ‘When else would we have had it but the morning?’
‘Any time we wished. You had a special licence. You were not limited to the conventional place and time. We could have married quietly, in the evening.’
‘I sought to honour you,’ he said, gritting his teeth.
‘By taking me away from my work? We are short staffed in the front of the shop. And if I am gone as well?’ She took a deep drink of her wine and set her napkin aside, pushing away from the table. ‘The clerks have no idea how to go on without some kind of instruction. Yet, here I sit, with you, nibbling cake.’
Only a few weeks ago, she had been eager to take time out of her schedule to talk with him. Why was it so different now? Perhaps it was because, when he spoke to her now, his voice sounded very like the one the Duke of Larchmont might use to put a tradeswoman in her place. ‘You have known this event was coming. You should have readied them for your absence.’
‘Do you question my ability to run a business that has been in my family for generations?’
‘I question the need for it,’ he said, even more annoyed than he had been at the mention of Pratchet. ‘You are my wife. You can do anything you wish. Yet you speak as if you mean to leave in the middle of your wedding feast to return to that shop.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘Two simple words, Lord Fanworth.’
For such a small answer, it cut like a knife. Even at his worst, she had never mocked him, before this moment. She had never smiled as he stuttered, or grown impatient as he struggled and tried to finish the sentence.
She had saved it for this moment, when it was too late to get away. She had no right to speak so to the scion of one of the noblest families in Britain. ‘You will return to my rooms as soon as the shop is closed.’
‘To celebrate our wedding night?’ She gave him another of her horribly blunt looks. ‘At no time did I agree to that.’
‘On the contrary. At the altar...’
‘I believe the agreement already in place stated that I owe you two more nights, not a lifetime.’
‘Things have changed.’
‘Not as much as you seem to think,’ she said. ‘We married because my family left me no choice in the matter. But I like you even less than I did yesterday. If you insist, I will return to your rooms this evening. It will reduce the number of nights I must spend in your bed to one. I suggest you save it for a special occasion. A birthday, perhaps. Or Christmas.’
‘Go!’ His strength had returned to him in a rush of rage so strong it turned the command into a curse. But the relief was short lived. Suddenly, she chose to obey him, as a good wife should, and quit the room.
Margot stood behind a display in de Bryun’s, tracing idle circles on the countertop with her finger. On the other side of the glass, gold wedding rings rested on satin, like so many shocked, round mouths and wide, round eyes. As if they had any right to judge her. What had just happened had definitely not been her dream of a perfect wedding day.
Of course, if she was truly honest, Margot could not remember ever dreaming of her wedding. She had not planned to get married at all. She had imagined herself, successful and alone. Not lonely, of course. Just, not married.
If someone had suggested that she might wed the son of a duke in Bath Abbey and follow it with a tasteful wedding breakfast in one of the most luxurious hotels in town, she’d have told them to stop spinning fairy tales.
Nor would she have expected to be devoid of wedding-night nerves, having dispensed with her virginity several weeks before the ceremony. In reality, this day was strangely anticlimactic.
The only real surprise was that it was possible to be even angrier with her new husband than she had been before. While he seemed fine with displaying her in a shop window at breakfast, there had been no sign of his family at either the wedding or the meal. He was ashamed of her.
To see her own ring placed on her finger, instead of some piece of family jewellery, was further proof that she was not worthy to be his marchioness. It was why, though she had sometimes dreamed of a proposal, she had not bothered to imagine a wedding. A union between them would not work.
Why did he still have that ring at all? Even after she had known him for the deceiver he’d proved to be, she’d assumed that he had bought her jewellery and requested her designs because he had some small respect for her talent. Even at the worst of times, it had done her good to think that the things he’d made adorned beautiful ladies of his acquaintance. Such a display would result in notoriety and more sales.
If he had kept the ring, what had happened to the rest of the things she had sold him?
‘Will we be closing early today?’ Jasper, the head clerk, looked hopefully at her.
‘Why?’ she said absently.
‘Because