The Plain Bride by Chasity Bowlin
CHAPTER FOUR
Whether it had been her threat to set his house to rights or something else that she could not fathom, their shared dinner went far better than their interaction in the drawing room. He stopped being intentionally goading and settled into something that might have been deemed pleasant had she not been waiting for the other shoe to drop. That was in part due to his earlier behavior and in part because it was simply how she had grown used to living.
Her father, a man of the cloth, was the least holy of men she had ever encountered. Miserly, mean spirited, belittling, and quite often simply brutish, he’d trained her to expect the worst. A smile could precede the most vicious, cutting remarks or even a slap.
How many times had she dreamed of living elsewhere? Had anything but poverty and degradation awaited her, she’d have fled his home long ago. But at least as the vicar’s spinster daughter she had respectability. Women without family connections and little to no money did not do well in the world.
Althea glanced at the man who was now her husband—the man who held all the power in their current situation. He was entitled to beat and abuse her as he chose. Yet, barring a strange and strained conversation about their future and his willingness to bestow a new name upon her rather than bothering to recall the one she possessed, he seemed to have little interest in her.
Dessert, a simple tart with berries and cream, had just been served, when there was a loud commotion. A couple burst in, the man handsome with dark hair and the woman impossibly beautiful with a wealth of jet-black hair that seemed to defy nature. They were both very fashionably dressed, with the kind of town polish that she saw only rarely. Of course, they were known to her. As the vicar’s daughter, everyone was known to her. It was Mr. Dudley Blakemore and his wife, Lady Helena Blakemore, sister to the Earl of Winburn.
“Mayville, we heard the most ridiculous rumor in town while dining with the Cardwells!” Mr. Blakemore was calling out. “They said—”
He never finished the statement, as Lady Helena Blakemore had promptly shoved her elbow directly into her husband’s gut, leaving him bent forward and gasping. “Some rumors do, in fact, have a foundation in truth, it would seem,” Lady Helena said serenely. “I take it you are Althea, Lady Mayville?”
“I am,” Althea said.
Lady Helena sailed forward, so graceful and elegant it seemed her feet dared not touch the carpet less they be soiled by it in some way. “Then, I bid you welcome to our small family. I realize not everyone is aware that my dear husband is Mayville’s nephew.”
“I wasn’t aware Lord Mayville had any siblings, at all,” Althea remarked. “No doubt, as gossip has informed you, our nuptials were somewhat expedited.”
“Expedited,” Lady Helena mused. “That is certainly a very polite description. I will make no bones about it, Lady Mayville, I fear you have been done very shabbily by your husband and by the people of this village who permitted such a thing to occur. For shame, my lord. No woman should have to marry in such a havycavy manner.”
“You did,” Mayville replied. “The pair of you hied off to Gretna Green, and I do believe you were wearing breeches.”
Lady Helena smiled. “Yes, but I am a hoyden. And your bride is a genteel woman of breeding and taste. There is a distinct difference. I adore being shocking and breaking rules simply for the sake of having done so. I daresay we are cut from very different cloths. But, alas, we were speaking of family connections. My husband’s mother was Lord Mayville’s older half-sister from their mother’s first marriage. They were not close, were you, Mayville?”
“No, we were not. But my nephew is rather stubborn—like a pox, really.”
Mr. Blakemore simply laughed. “You are terrible when your misdeeds catch up to you, uncle. But let us go to your study and have brandy and cigars while my wife entreats yours to become a reformer.”
Mayville rose reluctantly and followed the other man from the room. He paused at the door, looking back at her for a moment in question, almost as if he was reluctant to leave her to the potentially less-than-tender mercies of Lady Helena. But then he shook his head and strode purposefully through the door.
Immediately, Lady Helena settled into his vacated seat and availed herself of his freshly served dessert. “This looks delicious. The Cardwells never have good sweets. I don’t know why we continue to dine with them. Lady Cardwell is so obsessed with eating ‘healthful’ foods that it’s really quite dreadful. No rich sauces. Lots of liver and spices that one of her highland nurses insisted were wondrous for one’s fertility.”
Althea blinked. “You discuss such things with her?”
Lady Helena smiled. “Being a married woman dramatically alters the scope of one’s conversational topics, you will find. And I wouldn’t have discussed such a thing with her except that she was very kind to me when Dudley and I first married. And I have recently discovered that I am enceinte,” she confided, the last word a mere whisper.
“Oh. I see,” Althea said. But a pang of longing ignited within her. A dream she’d held for so many years and had finally let go of suddenly revived before her. All she had wanted when she was younger was a family of her own.
“Well, regardless, there are certain foods and certain spices that Lady Cardwell is eating to improve her fertility but that I must not, in my current state, consume. So, half of the menu had to be avoided tonight, and I’m positively famished. Is there more of this tart?”
Althea had no idea. But, luckily, Lady Helena felt at home enough to simply wave to a footman and request more of the decadent dessert if it was available.
“Did he really sneak into your bedchamber?” Lady Helena asked.
Struggling to follow the ever-changing topics of conversation, Althea nodded. “Yes, he did. He was quite intoxicated, I believe.”
“Well, that’s not unusual these days. But you could be good for him, I think. He needs to not rattle around all alone in this hovel he’s creating.”
“I’m rather more concerned at the moment, Lady Helena, with whether or not he will be good for me,” Althea replied.
At that Lady Helena blanched. Immediately, she sat down her fork. “Oh my goodness. I’m just prattling on here as if you ought to be happy about all this. I am sorry. Did you have hopes in another direction, then?”
What a terribly worded question that was. It cast a very stark light on both her life before and her current situation. “No, Lady Helena. I had no hopes. Not then and not now.”
“The vicar’s daughter, Uncle? Really?”
Mayville sipped his brandy and glared at his nephew, a man his junior only by a matter of days. “Would you stop calling me Uncle as if I were in my dotage? Don’t be an arse, Dudley. It doesn’t suit you.”
“You only call me Dudley when you’re annoyed,” Blakemore insisted.
“Then, you should take it as a warning.”
“What will you do? Pack her off to London with a generous allowance and instructions not to embarrass the family? Except, of course, this family and embarrassment tend to go hand in hand.”
“She will not go. Not immediately, at any rate. She’s stated that I’ve humiliated her enough without packing her off to live elsewhere.”
Blakemore nodded sagely. “She isn’t wrong. The gossip in town is not good. It paints her in a far-less-than-innocent light, you know?”
He didn’t know. How would he know? He’d spent the better part of the day sleeping off a hangover. “How on earth could anyone presume it would be her fault? I invaded her bedchamber and mistook her for a willing and easily bought tavern wench! Damn and blast.”
The room grew silent. Blakemore looked away, clearly uncomfortable.
“What is it you aren’t telling me?” Mayville demanded.
“It’s her father. Most of the gossip has been stirred by him. He’s telling anyone who will listen that she’s wicked, sly, lazy… That she planned all of this from the start. The man is an utter prig. Anyone who’s ever had to sit through one of his sermons knows him to be a hypocrite and a bore. But he still holds sway in the village. People will not be kind to her when she returns to the village because he does not wish them to be, and all they want is to curry favor.”
Mayville leaned back in his chair. His headache from earlier in the day was returning. And it had nothing, for once, to do with drink. “You think I should take her to London.”
“I think you should take her somewhere, at least till things have died down. But you can’t molder away in here forever. You certainly shouldn’t expect her to. Perhaps she’ll like London so well she will decide to stay there, even when you are ready to return home.”
“That, Blakemore, is one of the more sensible things I have ever heard you say. I shall take her to London. I shall outfit her as the most fashionable of ladies and launch her into society. She will have all the friends and social engagements she might ever want. And then I can return here to rusticate in my willful decay, as she put it.”
Blakemore grinned. “Just don’t tell Helena what you’re about. If she thinks you mean to abandon the girl, it won’t go well for you.”
“Come to think of it, why are you advocating my abandonment of her? It’s shockingly unlike you, with all those very inconvenient morals you possess.”
Blakemore shrugged. “As someone who cares for you, it’s very difficult to watch you destroy this house and yourself in equal measure and enthusiasm. I should very much hate for that innocent young woman to be charmed into feeling something for you so that she might then watch you drink and debauch your way into an early grave. I do believe, Uncle, that she deserves better than you. Given that she’s had to endure the vicar for all these years, there ought to be some reward for her.”
It stung. It was the truth, certainly. But still it stung. She did deserve better.
