‘You expect me to bed a complete stranger, hoping that I will rise in the morning with my love renewed?’
He could see by the narrowing of his brother’s eyes that Adam was nearly out of patience. ‘Perhaps the bump on the head has truly knocked all sense out of you. You talk as if it were a hardship to lie with a beautiful woman. But I meant nothing so vulgar. You must be alone with her. Talk. Share a quiet evening or two and discover what it was that drew you to her in the first place. I predict, before the week is out, you will be announcing your complete devotion to her.’
‘Very well, then. Today I will discuss the matter with her. Tomorrow, I will take her home, and make some effort to treat her as if she were a wife by my choice. But I predict we will be having the same conversation in a week’s time. Then I will expect you to offer something more substantive than empty platitudes about love.’
So he finished his breakfast and, with his brother’s words in mind, sought out Justine. But she seemed no more eager to talk to him than he was to talk to her. The servants informed him that, directly after her walk, she’d gone out with the duchess to call on the sick and needy of the village.
* * *
Penny returned without her. It seemed she had been invited to luncheon with the vicar, to celebrate the miraculous recovery of her invalid husband. That they had neglected to invite Will to the event was an oversight on their part.
* * *
By afternoon, she had returned to the house, though Will could not manage to find her. When he went to visit his nephew in the nursery, he was told that the boy was just down for a nap. Her ladyship had sung him to sleep. The nurse assured him his wife had the voice of an angel and was naturally good with children. Apparently he had chosen the perfect mother for his future brood, should he find it in his heart to make them with her.
It was hard to accuse her of dark motives when she seemed to fill her day with virtues. It explained why his family was so taken with her. But to Will, it seemed almost as if she was deliberately avoiding him. Wherever he went in the house, her ladyship had just been and gone, after doing some kindness or proving her own excellent manners.
* * *
In the end, he did not see her until supper, after they had both dressed for it on opposite sides of the connecting door. Adam was entertaining the Coltons, claiming it as a small celebration welcoming him back to health. More likely, it was an attempt to put Will on his best behaviour. Tim and Daphne were old family friends. But that did not give him the right to bark and snap at them, as he had been doing with his own family.
At least this evening he was able to manage food and drink without subtle aid from his new wife. Though he was fatigued, a single day out of bed and a few hearty meals had worked wonders on his depleted body.
As the conversation droned on about Tim’s latest experiments in his greenhouse, Will lifted his glass and looked through it, across the table at the woman he supposedly loved. Today, her gown was white muslin shot through with gold threads, her warm gold hair falling in inviting spirals from another dull white cap. But for that, she’d have looked like one of the more risqué angels in a Botticelli painting, pure but somehow a little too worldly.
She noticed his gaze and coloured sweetly, keeping her own eyes firmly focused on the food in front of her. Perhaps it was simply that he felt better today. Perhaps it was the wine. Or maybe leaving the confines of his room changed his mood. But he wondered what it was that had made him distrust her, when there was nothing exceptional in her behaviour.
She seemed shy of him, of course. But could she be blamed for it? Since the first moment he’d opened his eyes, she had shown him nothing but kindness and patience. He had responded with suspicion and hostility. Even a real angel would grow tired of such treatment and draw away.
Almost as an experiment, he looked directly at her, long past the point where she could ignore him. Slowly her face rose, to return a nervous smile, head tilted just enough to express enquiry. Then he smiled at her and gave the slightest nod of approval.
She held his gaze for only a moment, before casting her eyes down again. But there was a flicker of a smile in response and tension he had not noticed disappeared from her back and shoulders. If possible, she became even prettier. She was more alluring, certainly. She had seemed almost too prim and virginal, perching on the edge of her chair.
But as she relaxed, her body looked touchable, as though she was aware of the pleasures it offered. If he had been married to her for even one night, he knew them himself. He would not have been able to resist. But it was an odd contrast to the woman she had been last night. As she’d sat on his bed, near enough to touch and waiting for intimacy, she’d been as stiff as a waxwork and just as cold.
After the meal, he’d been hoping for a relaxing glass of port with Adam and Sam as the ladies retired. But they took that hurriedly, wanting to join the women in the parlour and using the comfort of the chairs, and his semi-invalid status, as an excuse. At first, he thought it a trick to throw him back into the presence of his wife and force some memory from him. But it seemed that, as their bachelor days receded into the past, his brother and friend had grown used to spending their evenings in the company of their wives. They were less willing to forgo it, even after his miraculous recovery. Now that he was married, they expected him to behave the same.
Married.
It always came back to that. Once again, his feelings were in a muddle. Perhaps he was still avoiding her. He should be able to engage Justine in easy conversation as Adam and Sam did with their wives. But he could not think of a word to say to her, other than the thought that was always foremost in his mind: Who are you?
No one else wondered. They all seemed to know her well. She was settled into what was probably her usual chair beside a screened candle, chatting amiably as though she belonged here. She reached into a basket at its side to take up her needlework: a complex arrangement of threads and pins on a satin pillow. The other women smiled at her, admired her work and discussed children and households.
Adam and Sam seemed to be in the middle of a political conversation that he’d had no part in. How long would it take him, just to be aware of the news of the day? Probably less time than to discover the details of his own life. He could read The Times for a day or two and find everything he needed. But no matter how he prodded at the veil covering the last six months, it was immovable. If the present situation was to be believed, there was a trip to Bath, love, marriage and who knew what other events, waiting just on the other side.
His headache was returning.
He struggled to his feet and manoeuvred himself to a decanter of brandy that sat on the table by the window, pouring a glass and drinking deeply. That he had done it without spilling a drop deserved a reward, so he poured a second, leaning on his crutches to marshal his strength for a return to his chair. The trip across the room had brought him scant feet from Justine and he paused to watch her work.
There was a scrap of lace, pinned flat to the pillow in front of her. It took him a moment to realise that this was not some purchased trim, but a work in progress. The finished work was held in place with a maze of pins more numerous than spines on a hedgehog, the working edge trailing away into a multitude of threads and dangling ivory spools. As though she hardly thought, she passed one over the other, around back, a second and a third, this time a knot, the next a braid. Then she slipped a pin into the finished bit and moved on to another set of threads. The soft click of ivory against ivory and the dance of her white hands were like a soporific, leaving him as calm as she seemed to be. Though he was close enough to smell her perfume, he saw no sign of the shyness that was usually present when he stood beside her. There was no stiffness or hesitation in the movement of her hands. Perhaps their problems existed outside the limits of her concentration. She worked without pattern, calling the complex arrangement of threads up from memory alone. There was hardly a pause in conversation, when one or the other of the women put a question to her. If it bothered her at all, he could not tell for her dancing fingers never