Chapter 4
Chapter Four
His question rattled her. Because the truth was, she had not considered a great many things about today. She’d thought mostly of walking down that aisle without anyone the wiser that the bride was not whom everyone expected.
She tucked her shaking hands firmly beneath the folds of her skirts, where they could betray her in privacy.
For perhaps a full minute—she counted, as she had counted her steps down the aisle, because counting was the only discipline she had left—neither of them spoke. The silence inside the carriage was a curious, weighted thing, dense as wool.
Outside, the wedding party would still be spilling onto the gravel sweep before the church, exclaiming over the bride’s pallor (nerves, they would say; poor dear, the strain of it), arranging themselves into the procession of carriages that would convey them all to the breakfast at Somerset House.
They had perhaps half an hour. Less, if the road was clear.
Half an hour alone with a man she had just defrauded at the altar of God.
She made herself look up.
He was watching her.
He had arranged himself with that same maddening composure he had displayed in the church—one long leg crossed elegantly over the other, one gloved hand resting on the silver head of a walking stick he had not, to her knowledge, been carrying when they left the altar.
His other arm lay across the back of the bench in a posture of such studied ease that it could only be deliberate.
The morning light slanted through the carriage window and fell across the strong, clean line of his jaw, and for one disorienting instant, she was reminded of the mouth that had pressed against hers not twenty minutes past, warm and unhurried and far more thorough than the occasion had required.
She felt her face heat and despised herself for it.
“Well,” Tristan said, then one of his eyebrows arched.
The single word arrived with the weight of a verdict.
His voice was perfectly pleasant. That was the worst of it. There was no shouting, no thunderous ducal outrage, no flung accusation. Only that low, civilized tone, with something cold and amused threaded carefully beneath it, like a knife wrapped in silk.
“I will say that I am not often surprised. And I had not expected,” he continued, “to be making the acquaintance of my wife on the journey home from my own wedding. It does rather rearrange one’s afternoon.”
Imogen lifted her chin. “Your Grace—”
“Tristan,” he corrected mildly. “Under the circumstances, I think we may dispense with the formalities. We are, after all, intimately acquainted now.”
The faint emphasis on the word intimately was so precisely placed that her cheeks burned anew.
“Tristan, then.” She wet her lips, found her voice, and was grateful that it emerged steadier than she felt. “I owe you an explanation.”
“You owe me a great many things.” He inclined his head, an almost courteous gesture. “An explanation will do for a beginning. Pray do not stint on the detail. We have rather a long carriage ride ahead of us, and I find I am suddenly very curious about the woman I have married.”
She drew a breath.
She had rehearsed this in the carriage on the way to the church, and again as she had stood in the vestry waiting for the music to begin, and again at every step down the aisle.
She had thought, then, that she would know precisely what to say when this moment arrived.
She had imagined herself calm and reasonable, marshaling her arguments with the same orderly logic with which her father had once explained the principles of Latin grammar.
What she had not imagined was Tristan Somerset opposite her in a confined space, watching her with eyes the color of cold weather, his entire attention bent upon her for the first time in the four years of their acquaintance.
She had imagined fury. She had not prepared for his focused attention.
“Eliza is in love with another man,” she said.
Tristan’s expression did not change. He merely tilted his head a fraction, the way a man might tilt his head to examine a curious specimen pinned to a card.
“Indeed. You say that as if it explains everything.”
“A Mr. Ashworth. He is a—” She faltered.
A clerk sounded so paltry, said aloud. “He is a man of modest means but considerable character, and Eliza has loved him these two years past. Her father refused the match. He had already accepted your offer, and—” She stopped herself.
“Forgive me. I do not mean to imply that you—”
“That I am the obstacle to true love?” He smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes. “Pray, Imogen. Do not soften it on my account. I am quite robust.”
“I only meant to explain that this wasn’t a rash decision on Eliza’s part. If one is presented with true love, then one cannot simply walk away from it. Thus Gretna Green.”
“And in the meantime, you stood in for her at the altar.”
“Yes.”
“Wearing her veil.”
“And her dress. As ill-fitting as it is.”
“Speaking her vows,” he continued.
“I—” She stopped. “I spoke the vows. I did not speak in her name.”
A flicker of something—not quite amusement, but adjacent to it—crossed his features. “Ah. A legal nicety. How very thorough of you.”
“I would not perjure her, Your Grace.”
“Tristan.”
“Tristan.” She corrected herself, and hated how her tongue stumbled over the syllables of his Christian name. “I would not have her bound to vows she did not speak. Whatever else this is, it is not that.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The carriage rocked over a rut in the road, and she felt the small jolt travel up through the velvet beneath her, through the bones of her spine, through the hollow place behind her sternum where her heart was beating much too fast.
“And you,” he said at length. “What were you spared, Imogen Harrington, by climbing into your friend’s wedding gown this morning?”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“It is a remarkable risk you took. Forgive me if I find it difficult to believe you undertook it solely from love of your friend.”
“I undertook it solely from love of my friend.”
“So, no benefit for you? I am told that most dukes are considered quite the catch. Especially one under the age of sixty with all his remaining teeth and hair. Yet for Miss Imogen Harrington, marrying the Duke of Winfield is nothing more than a sacrifice so that her dearest friend can secure her love match. How very noble of you.”
“Of course, marrying you isn’t a sacrifice for me. I have done quite well for myself. Apologies for not better placating your ego, Your Grace. You are exceedingly handsome, ecetera, ecetera.”
“But that played no role in your decision-making,” he said. “Is there nothing you want from this union for yourself?”
She considered his words. Rolled the question around in her brain and then knew the answer immediately.
“As the sixth daughter of eight, I never had much that was solely my own. Almost everything I’ve ever worn or owned belonged to someone else.
Even without struggling for funds, eight daughters, as you can imagine, come with considerable expense.
“We had a beloved family cat when I was young. Eventually, I became his favorite person in the family, but only after Honoria had ignored him one too many times in favor of her art. All the ribbons and books were handed down to me. Even when I did get new dresses, the first pick of fabrics went to my older sisters. But now, this marriage is mine. I don’t have to share it with any of my sisters.
” She looked down, feeling the blush heat her cheeks. “You are all mine, as it were.”
“Indeed, I am.” He glanced down, and adjusted the lay of one glove with infinite care, and when he looked up again the pleasant mask had thinned, and what lay beneath it was harder, and colder, and considerably less courteous.
“Then let us speak plainly, you and I, while we have the privacy to do so.”
“By all means.”
“You are my wife.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you?” He said it not as a question but as a small, contemplative observation, as though testing whether she understood the full weight of the words.
“I wonder if you are. The ceremony is a few minutes’ work, Imogen.
The marriage is rather longer. You will live in my house.
You will sit at my table. You will wear my name and bear, in the eyes of the law and the Almighty and every gossip in Mayfair, every consequence that follows from this morning’s charming improvisation.
There is no escape for you. There is no Mr. Ashworth waiting for a fallout.
You have made a bed, my dear, and you have made it in my house. ”
“I understand that.”
“I hope that you do. Because I will tell you now, plainly, what I will not tolerate.”
She braced herself.
“If,” he said, very softly, “you are carrying another man’s child—”
She sucked in a breath. “I can assure you, I am not.”
“—I will not claim it.” He continued as though she had not spoken.
“I will not raise it. I will not give it my name, nor a farthing of my fortune, nor a single hour of pretense before the world. Do you understand me, Imogen? Whatever was, was. I do not propose to inquire too closely into the past of a woman who has shown herself capable of this.” He motioned to the empty space between them.
“But I will not be made a cuckold beneath my own roof, and I will not have a stranger’s blood inheriting Winfield. ”
The words struck her like a slap.
For one breathless moment she could only stare at him, her mouth half-open on a protest she could not seem to assemble. The implication—that she was the sort—that he believed her capable—
“Your Grace,” she said, and her voice came out very quiet, very precise, the voice she had used as a girl when her brothers had teased her past bearing and she had been determined not to cry in front of them. “You insult me.”
“I am being practical.”
“You are being vile.”