Chapter Two #2
It had been a silly dream, of course, one largely in her head, for he had never come back.
She could have lived with that had he not married someone else.
.. Even that she could have endured, had he not married so far beneath him.
Claudia was at least a gentleman’s daughter.
Rumour was wild as to whose daughter Lady Petteril was.
Some said she was a foreign countess, though most deemed her a kitchen maid or even a courtesan.
Why on earth had he married her?
Lady Petteril now wandered into Claudia’s line of vision, and Piers walked toward his wife, still laughing. This was the old Piers, before troubles and dying family members had taken away his smile...
She had not anticipated that he would still have this effect on her.
She had come to show him she was happy, that she would be Mrs. Joseph Hale, that someone had considered her worth leaving academia for.
And perhaps she wanted to remind him who and what he had left behind when he had chosen his ridiculously unsuitable bride.
But the casual looping of his arm around his wife’s waist, the intimacy of their few exchanged words, proved the opposite. It was Claudia who longed for the past. Piers was glad of his present.
No wonder. Claudia knew she should not have made a fuss about her bedchamber. Some imp of mischief had inspired her for there had been no real reason beyond seeing what Lady Petteril would do about it.
Nothing, of course, for her own father had taken the viscountess’s side. And if Piers even noticed the exchange, he would have seen Claudia as merely discontented, rude, and carping. Turning away from the window, her face heated with shame.
The next time they met, she would be kind to his low-born, uneducated wife, who had no idea how to run a household, and Piers would smile upon her again, see her again...
She opened the wardrobe door and decided which evening gown to wear for dinner. Lady Petteril had worn some loose, old travelling dress this afternoon. Claudia doubted she could have much taste.
But when they gathered in the drawing room before dinner, Claudia could find no fault in either the viscountess’s taste or her beauty.
She wore a simple, high-waisted gown of exquisite cut.
Made from sky-blue silk that emphasized the deep colour of her eyes, it fell from beneath her breasts in full, generous folds.
Her un-aristocratic face with its almost snub nose seemed to glow, and she easily held the attention of both Joseph, whom she sat beside, and Piers, who leaned across the back of their sofa.
Claudia’s spurt of helpless jealousy was not helped by the fact that the conversation was clearly lively and amusing and included everyone in the room but her. Her plan to make her entrance last had fallen flat, for no one noticed her.
Even more humiliating, it was the viscountess who saw her first and with perfect manners came to greet her, “I’m afraid we won’t be dining for half an hour yet, so I hope you’re not too hungry.”
A lady never admitted to hunger. But before her disdain could show, Piers was pushing a glass of sherry into her fingers.
“Just like the professor’s old sherry parties,” he said with a quick smile. “I never thought to be returning the favour. As you see, Fosterson and Hubble have arrived, too. Are you acquainted with Mrs. Hubble?”
Claudia was not, so she courteously condescended to be introduced.
Hubble, of course, was not a gentleman by birth, although Papa had always admired his brain.
“A sad loss to the college,” he had said when Hubble had left them.
Hubb had married a short, dumpy woman in frills, whose face was pretty enough but whose conversation, Claudia suspected, was vapid.
Among the women—the gutter viscountess, the merchant’s ill-educated wife, the housekeeper Meg Tilney—Claudia’s education should shine. She alone would understand the gentlemen’s classical quotes, allusions, and jests.
But it seemed the men were now catching up with each other’s lives.
“So, marriage, Hale,” Fosterson said amiably. “Congratulations and every happiness, of course, but what will you do?”
Joseph coloured slightly, almost as if he was ashamed. “I have taken holy orders and have obtained a living just north of Oxford.”
He had to face a lot of ribbing for that, of course, for he had once been the loudest advocate of free thinking.
“A man can change his mind,” he said with mock dignity and caused more good-natured laughter.
Claudia, who did not want her marriage to be turned into a joke, was very glad to hear Piers say, “Seriously, I think you’ll make a fine vicar, Hale. You always had a practical turn of mind and there’s more to the position than abstract theories of divinity.”
“He will thrive in the Church,” Claudia said proudly. “He is bound to receive quick preferment.”
“Bishop before he’s forty,” Fosterson said grinning.
“Goes without saying,” Joseph agreed. “What about you, Withy? Of all of us, I had you marked for a life of research in Oxford. I think the professor had you marked to succeed him.”
“I would have if he’d ever settled to the one subject,” Claudia’s father said affectionately. “Ill-disciplined cub! Fine brain for analysis, though—what on earth do you do with it now?”
“Oh, try to make the estates profitable,” Piers said vaguely. “Find solutions...”
“To what?” Hubble asked. “Jacobin fervour? Which steward is diddling you?”
“Oh, no, the stewards were never a problem, and the countryside is not much given to Jacobinism. But we have had a few more basic puzzles to solve.”
“Like what?” Mal Keith asked, clearly intrigued. “And who is we?”
“April and I.” Piers sounded surprised to be asked, and everyone else seemed just as startled by his answer.
“We had to find the mother of a baby abandoned on our doorstep at the beginning of the year. Another time, there was a body in my home wood. What else April? Haggs’s portrait – you remember Peter Haggard? ”
They all remembered Haggs.
“Lord Bilston’s murder,” April reminded him. “Oh, and Aunt Prudence’s missing treasures.”
“But we don’t talk about those,” Piers said. “Oh, and we tracked my cousin Bertie down when he got into a spot of trouble in Portugal.”
“You went to the Peninsula?” Mrs. Hubble exclaimed. “In war time?”
“Oh, Portugal was perfectly safe by then,” Piers said, and April nodded, a soft smile on her face that made Claudia’s stomach clench. “Actually, we were married there.” He raised his glass to Claudia and Joseph, and to the Hubbles. “To marriage, which I heartily recommend.”
There was more laughter at that, and Claudia’s smile felt fixed and frozen. Until Piers, colouring slightly, made another toast. “And to parenthood. We are expecting the happy event around September.”
At least the explosion of pain came with a leavening of relief and understanding.
So that is why he married her.