The Plain Bride by Chasity Bowlin
CHAPTER FIVE
After years of dreaming of it, she was finally on her way to London. Of course, in her dreams, she’d been going off to London to have a season, to wear beautiful dresses and dance in the arms of gallant and handsome men. One of those men would have fallen madly in love with her and become her husband. Well, she had a husband. He was handsome. He was hardly gallant, however, and he most assuredly was not in love with her.
Mayville, as everyone called him, was slumbering peacefully on the carriage seat opposite her. It gave her an opportunity to study him far more closely than she ever had in the past. He’d always been impossibly handsome. She could recall a dozen fantasies of what he might be like, but they bore little similarity to the man who was actually her husband. Snide, sometimes rude, often flippant and dismissive, he seemed to think his behavior impacted no one—and no one, conversely, was permitted to impact his behavior.
They had been married for four days. For four nights, she had slept alone. He’d never come to her bed. He’d never kissed her or even touched her beyond escorting her to dinner, and even then he sometimes simply walked at her side. It should not have stung her pride. She was used to being considered plain, after all. Her entire life she’d had that drilled into her head repeatedly. She was too plain to attract a husband and too poor to get one either. There was no need to spend money on dresses that would flatter her, as it would be trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
As always, thoughts of her father’s cruelty and disapproval darkened her already bitter mood. With a sigh, she turned her attention back to her husband’s face. Yes, he was handsome. But the lifestyle he’d chosen for himself was beginning to take a toll. There were fine lines at the corners of his eyes and deeper grooves still at the corners of his mouth. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and she knew that he slept very little.
“What was it you said?” he asked softly. “Ah, yes. ‘I am not a specimen to be examined.’”
“Touché.”
His eyes opened then, slightly bleary but still a startling shade of icy blue that she’d never seen on anyone else. “Do I have something on my face? Did I miss a spot of shaving soap, perhaps?”
“You haven’t shaved,” she replied.
“Then, it would be doubly miraculous for it to have survived intact for so many hours. How very tenacious of it. To what, Lady Mayville, do I owe your remarkable curiosity about my face?” he asked drolly.
“It isn’t about your face. It’s about you as a whole, I suppose. You are something of a mystery, my lord,” she mused. “Why is it that you love all the vices that can be found so freely in London, and yet you choose to avoid London altogether? Until now, of course, which only begs another question: Why now? Why go to London now? Do you mean to break your word and seek an annulment? Or simply abandon me there to fend for myself?”
“I’ve never given my word that I would not seek an annulment,” he answered. “As for my distaste for London, I think it has far more to do with the company I would be forced to keep there. As to why now, I shall not lie to you about it. Your father was not content to see you ruined at my hands; now he would have your reputation shredded beyond repair at his own hands. He’s telling all who will listen in Boston Spa that you are an adventuress who set out to ensnare me. And, so, removing us to London for the time being seemed prudent.”
Althea blinked at that. She hadn’t conversed with anyone in town. The only people she had spoken with were Mayville, his servants, and the Blakemores. It didn’t surprise her, of course. Her father was a man who lived for misery. He loved to see it in others and revel in his own superiority.
“Well, that does make sense. Save for your decision to act with prudence. I daresay that was quite unusual.”
He smirked at that, a quirking of his lips as one brow lifted ever so slightly. “I think that you really ought to like me more, or at least pretend to, if you wish for us to remain married.”
“Then, I suppose you ought to give me something to like. I have heard others say you are charming, but I have yet to see evidence of it,” she remarked.
“Charming was a very long time ago. Now I am dissolute, debauched, drunken, and very often disorderly, hence our hasty marriage.” He sat up then, folding his body forward in a graceful gesture until his elbows rested on his knees and the distance between them was significantly less. “But we shall not have an annulment. I have dealt very poorly with you. You are entirely innocent in all of this, and between my carelessness and your own father’s viciousness, you are essentially ruined. To seek an annulment would leave you a pariah among any sort of genteel or noble society. So, we shall remain husband and wife…though I cannot say we shall always reside under one roof. In truth, I cannot attest to how much longer the roof will last at Rosedale. Perhaps it will collapse upon its careless overseer and leave you a young and wealthy widow.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Do not speak so casually of your death. That is not something that should be considered even in jest, my lord.”
“I was not jesting. But I will not speak of it again, as it clearly troubles you so. Tell me, Thea, what would you enjoy in London? Balls? The theatre? Art and museums? Perhaps garden parties or intellectual salons?”
“I don’t really want any of those things,” she said. “I thought I did when I was younger, but now, at my age, I wouldn’t even know how to begin adjusting to such social demands.”
He frowned at that, considering her response. “Then, what is it that you do want?”
The pang of longing she’d felt at Lady Helena’s confession several nights earlier returned to her then as it had done so many times since then. “I want a child.”
If she had askedfor the moon, he would not have been more surprised. Trying not to allow his shock to be too apparent, he asked with aplomb, “I presume you are not entirely ignorant of how such a thing would be achieved.”
Her blush was answer enough, but despite her discomfort, she did not look away. “I am aware. I realize that all you want is to be rid of me. It is not uncommon in society marriages for a couple to live separate lives once they have children—”
“Not children, Thea. Sons. Heirs. Of which I never intended to have any.”
“But your title…”
He shrugged. “The title can hang. While I do not have the same animosity towards it as I do the family seat, it’s not very important to me either. But that is all you require for us to lead our separate lives?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I would happily live in London or Bath. Far from you. Far from my father. I presume that you would provide at least a respectable living for myself and the child we might have.”
“You might have. The child would be entirely your responsibility. I’d be little more than a sire, after all. And the child would probably be better for it,” he answered.
She clenched her hands in her lap. It was the only outward sign of just how affected she was by their very strange conversation. “You are in agreement?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m willing to consider it. We’ll discuss it more once we’ve settled in London for a time.”
She only nodded in response and then lapsed into complete silence as she stared out the window at the passing scenery.
Mayville studied her, feeling that it was his due. She was an enigma, his wife. Cold and reserved at times, angry and snappish at others, with no desire to move about in society, and her fondest wish was to be a mother. She was one contradiction after another. Though he had hardly given her reason to be anything less. He had not made an effort to know her, preferring to think of their situation as only temporary. Of course, it wasn’t. Their living arrangements might be, but she’d be his wife until one of them shuffled off the mortal coil.
“Did he strike you?” he asked.
“My father?” she countered.
“Yes. I would hardly ask about anyone else. I never liked him, but I rarely like any member of the clergy,” he commented.
“I daresay many of them hold you in a high degree of contempt as well,” she mused. “You’d confound them endlessly with your penchant for self destruction and your complete antipathy of salvation of any sort.”
It was a truth he could not and would not deny. But it was also an effort on her part to avoid the question. “Answer the question, Thea.”
“Yes. On occasion…when he felt it was warranted.”
“And when was that? Daily?”
“Weekly, I suppose. Sometimes more and sometimes less. I should have been content to scrub the floors and prepare his meals while he rattled on endlessly about original sin and the inherent wickedness of all females. He never knew what to make of me and my love of books and literature. It was something he felt most women should avoid. Taxing our brains would lead us into fits of hysteria.”
Rebellion, more like. Not that he had a problem with rebellious women. They were generally the most entertaining sort. “He was very cruel to you, wasn’t he?”
“He said very cruel things. I would far rather tolerate a slap or a shove than the sharp sting of his cutting tongue,” she admitted. “But if I’m to tell you all of my dark and bitter secrets, I will ask for yours in return. Are you prepared for that sort of reciprocity, my lord?”
“I’ll tell you almost anything that you ask,” he agreed. “But only if you stop ‘my-lording’ me all the time. My name is Mayville. Or even Sinclair if you so choose.”
“Very well, Sinclair. Why do you wish to see your ancestral home crumble to ruin before your eyes?”
Mayville blinked at that. She had certainly gone for the jugular. “The precision of a surgeon in conversation, wife. I discovered, upon my inheritance of it, that it was a house that had been bought and paid for with the blood of innocents. The men of my family had violated every code of honor imaginable to fund their lavish lifestyles. And I see nothing noble in preserving it. That is all I mean to say on the subject.”
“Then, let us enjoy the silence. It is a pretty afternoon, and I have seen little of the countryside outside of Boston Spa. I should like to know what more than one tiny corner of England looks like.”
