Chapter 15
“I should have stood my ground about the honeymoon,” Pandora groaned, hanging her head over the railing of the paddle steamer.
Gabriel removed his gloves, tucked them into a coat pocket, and gently massaged the back of her neck. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”
They had wed that morning, only a fortnight after he’d proposed.
Now they were crossing the Solent, the narrow channel between England and the Isle of Wight.
The voyage of three miles took no more than twenty-five minutes from Portsmouth to the harbor town of Ryde.
Unfortunately Pandora was prone to seasickness.
“We’re almost there,” Gabriel murmured. “If you lift your head, you can see the pier.”
Pandora risked a glance at the approaching view of Ryde, with its long line of white houses and delicate spires bristling from wooded shores and inlets. Dropping her head again, she said, “We should have stayed at Eversby Priory.”
“And spent our wedding night in your childhood bed?” Gabriel asked dubiously. “With the house full of our assembled relations?”
“You said you liked my room.”
“I found it charming, love. But it’s not the appropriate setting for the activities I have in mind.
” Gabriel smiled slightly at the recollection of her bedroom, with its quaint framed needlework samplers, the much-loved wax doll with a tangled wig and one missing glass eye, and the bookcase of well-worn novels.
“Besides, the bed is too small for me. My feet would hang over the edge.”
“I suppose you have a large bed at your terrace?”
He toyed softly with the dark wisps of hair at her nape. “We, madam,” he murmured, “have a very large bed at our terrace.”
Pandora hadn’t yet seen his house at Queen’s Gate, in the Royal Borough of Kensington. Not only would such a visit have gone against all propriety, even in the presence of chaperones, but there hadn’t been time in the mad flurry of wedding arrangements.
It had taken Gabriel nearly the entire two weeks to find a way for the word “obey” to be struck from the wedding vows.
He had been informed by the Lord Bishop of London that if a bride didn’t vow obedience to her husband during the ceremony, a marriage would be ruled unlawful by the ecclesiastical court.
Gabriel had then gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had reluctantly agreed to give him a special and highly unusual dispensation, as long as certain conditions were met.
One of them being an enormous “private fee” that amounted to bribery.
“The dispensation will render our marriage lawful and valid,” Gabriel explained to Pandora, “as long as we allow the priest to ‘set before you’ the necessity of wifely obedience.”
Pandora had frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you have to stand there and pretend to listen while the priest explains why you should obey your husband. As long as you don’t object, it will be implied that you agree with him.”
“But I won’t have to promise to obey? I won’t have to say the word?”
“No.”
She had smiled, looking both pleased and contrite. “Thank you. I’m sorry you’ve had to go to so much trouble on my account.”
Sliding his arms around her, Gabriel had viewed her with a mocking grin. “What would I do with a meek and submissive Pandora? There would be no sport in that.”
Obviously theirs had been no ordinary courtship, and the need for an expedient wedding was obvious.
But as tempting as the idea of an elopement had been, Gabriel had rejected the idea.
With all the newness and uncertainty Pandora faced, she had needed the comfort of her loved ones and familiar surroundings on her wedding day.
When Devon and Kathleen had offered the use of the chapel at their estate, Gabriel had agreed immediately.
It had made sense to have the wedding ceremony in Hampshire, and spend their honeymoon at the Isle of Wight, just off the southern coast. Often referred to as “the garden of England,” the small island was flourishing with gardens, woodlands, tidy coastal villages, and an assortment of inns and luxurious hotels.
But as they approached the island, its charms appeared to be lost on his impatient bride.
“I don’t need a honeymoon,” Pandora said, glowering at the picturesque town rising steeply from the water. “My board game has to be stocked in stores in time for the Christmas holiday.”
“Anyone else in our circumstances would honeymoon for at least a month,” Gabriel pointed out. “I’ve only asked for a week.”
“But there won’t be anything to do.”
“I’ll try to keep you entertained,” Gabriel said dryly.
He moved to stand at her back, his hands gripping the rail on either side of hers.
“Spending a few days together will help us ease into our new life. Marriage will be a considerable change, especially for you.” He lowered his mouth close to her ear.
“You’ll be living in an unfamiliar house, with an unfamiliar man—who’ll be doing very unfamiliar things to your body. ”
“Where will you be?” Pandora asked, and barely restrained a yelp as he nipped at her earlobe.
“If you change your mind midway through the honeymoon,” he told her, “we can go back to London. We’ll board a steamer bound for Portsmouth Harbour Station, ride a direct train line to Waterloo station, and reach our front doorstep in no more than three hours.”
The statement seemed to mollify her. As the steamer continued the crossing, Pandora tugged off her left glove to admire her wedding ring, as she’d already done a dozen times that day.
Gabriel had chosen a loose sapphire from the collection of Challon family jewels, and had it set in a gold and diamond ring mounting.
The Ceylon sapphire, cut and polished into a smooth dome, was a rare stone that gleamed with a twelve-ray star instead of six.
To his satisfaction, Pandora seemed inordinately pleased by the ring, and was fascinated by the way the star seemed to move across the surface of the sapphire.
The effect, called asterism , was especially noticeable in sunlight.
“What causes the star?” Pandora asked, as she tilted her hand this way and that.
Gabriel tucked a kiss behind the soft lobe of her ear. “ A few tiny imperfections,” he murmured, “that make it all the more beautiful.”
She turned and nestled against his chest.
Their wedding had been a three-day affair, attended by the Challons, Ravenels, and a limited number of close friends, including Lord and Lady Berwick.
To Gabriel’s regret, there had been no time for his younger brother Raphael to return from his business trip to America in time for the ceremony.
Raphael had sent a telegram, however, and promised to celebrate with them when he returned home later in the spring.
As Pandora had taken Gabriel on a private tour around her family’s estate, Gabriel had begun to comprehend exactly how secluded she and her sisters had been for most of their lives.
Eversby Priory was a world unto itself. The rambling Jacobean manor, set among ancient forests and remote green hills, had been largely unchanged for two centuries.
Devon had begun making much-needed improvements to the estate ever since inheriting the earldom, but it would take time to fully renovate the house.
They had installed modern plumbing only two years ago.
Before then, they had used chamber pots and outdoor privies, leading Pandora to tell Gabriel with mock gravity, “I’m barely housebroken. ”
The festivities had provided an opportunity for Gabriel to meet the two Ravenels he hadn’t yet encountered: Devon’s younger brother West, and Pandora’s older sister, Lady Helen.
Gabriel had taken an instant liking to West, a charming rogue with a sharp wit and an irreverent manner.
As the manager of Eversby Priory’s farms and tenants, West seemed to have a thorough grasp of all their issues and concerns.
Lady Helen, who had been accompanied by her husband, Mr. Rhys Winterborne, was far more reserved than the twins.
Instead of Pandora’s raw and radiant energy, or Cassandra’s effervescent charm, she possessed a quality of sweet, patient gravity.
With her silver-blonde hair and willowy slenderness, Helen seemed as ethereal as a figure from a painting by Bougereau.
Few people would have envisioned a match between such a delicate creature and a man like Rhys Winterborne, a big, black-haired Welshman whose father had been a grocer.
Now the owner of the largest department store in England, Winterborne was a man of considerable financial power, known for his forceful and decisive nature.
Since his marriage, however, Winterborne seemed to have become far more relaxed and content, smiling with an ease Gabriel hadn’t seen in him before.
Gabriel had met Winterborne several times over the past four years, at the biannual board meetings of a hydraulic equipment manufacturing company.
Winterborne had shown himself to be a pragmatic and decent man, with remarkable intuition and shrewdness in business matters.
Gabriel liked the Welshman, for all that he lacked polish, but they moved in very different social circles and had never encountered each other outside of business meetings.
Now it seemed that Gabriel and Winterborne would be seeing a great deal of each other.
Not only had they both married into an extraordinarily close-knit family, but Winterborne was a mentor to Pandora.
For the past year, he had encouraged and advised Pandora about her board game company, and had made a firm commitment to stock her game in his department store.
Pandora made no secret of her gratitude and affection for the man.
In fact, she hung on to his every word, and glowed at his attention.