Chapter 5 #2
Edward brayed a laugh. “These working class men think they can sneak in the back door, but we can always tell. There’s no way someone from the lower orders can understand the richness of the Classics.”
Duncap nodded. “Take for instance, the Twelve Labors of Herakles. The hero—”
Ellen suddenly burst into laughter. Anxiety jolted through Mark when everyone paused and turned to her.
“Oh, heavens,” she said through her giggling.
“Mark named my mother’s cat Herakles, and I’d thought it was a play on words, like hair-and-fleas.
” She turned her big brown eyes on him. “And it just occurred to me that it might have to do with his fiddling in all those old Greek poems. It is Greek, isn’t it? ”
Mark had burned with embarrassment. Conversation resumed after a tense, horrified pause, but he hadn’t been able to put it from his mind.
He’d been growing dissatisfied with her lack of ability to hold a normal conversation—or really, have any interest in the greater antiquities—and the humiliation in front of his favorite lecturer had been the last feather that broke the horse’s back.
Later, Edward consoled him by saying wives didn’t have to be intelligent, they were wives.
They were supposed to look pretty and run households so men could focus on the important things.
It was little comfort to Mark, who didn’t want a pretty wife with nothing between her ears.
He wanted someone he could talk to, learn from, exchange ideas with.
A marriage of intellectual equals. That night he tossed and turned, wondering if he’d been too hasty in his marriage.
A pretty, rich wife was good enough, but now he wanted more.
For three days Mark had tried to put the embarrassing incident aside, to forgive her.
He couldn’t. And when she’d giggled again at Herakles the cat, Mark’s attention snapped, as well as his temper.
He looked up and saw the beautiful girl he’d married and realized she couldn’t tell the difference between Greek and Latin to save her life.
He hated stupid people and giggling girls, and somehow he’d married both.
They’d wed too soon, courted too little. Married too young. He’d been a fool.
Mark hadn’t the courage to go complain to his father, who would merely scoff and tell him that he’d made his bed and needed to lie in it.
He knew complaining to his mother wouldn’t get him anywhere either, since she would probably take Ellen’s side.
For some reason, she liked Ellen, even though she was sensible and Ellen was not.
Perhaps because his mother had birthed six boys and this was the only daughter-in-law she had yet.
Matthew was traveling Europe, and most of his younger brothers were far too young to care about Mark’s marriage.
So he’d turned to Luke, the third brother, the one two years younger than him.
Luke was busy moping after one of the handsome footmen their father employed, rather than getting ready to study at Sandhurst like he should’ve been doing, but he had given this one piece of advice: “Join the military. I’ll be an officer after I finish Sandhurst. Why don’t you? ”
Mark had rejected the advice at first. “But I want to be a Classics professor one day.”
Luke had laughed, clapping his older brother on the back. “You are certainly dreary enough to be a don. Seriously, though. Join the military. Defend the Queen, see the world, and get away from anyone you can’t stand to be around.”
So, panicking over what he thought was the biggest mistake of his life, he had. Thankfully, he had a cousin in the Admiralty who helped position him as a midshipman on the HMS Black Prince for four years, and he’d set sail three days later. He hadn’t even known Ellen was pregnant yet.
Mark of today, who’d spent eight years drilling and breathing both honor and duty, couldn’t believe what an arse Mark of 1879 had been. Even if Ellen had been the worst young woman in England, he’d behaved abominably. He could see that now.
“Constance,” he murmured aloud now. “You have a terrible father.” She would’ve been seven years old now, if she’d lived.
What are seven-year-olds like? He could scarcely imagine it.
I wonder who named her. Mark had known the name Constance, both from a letter from his mother and his mother-in-law, but he hadn’t known her middle name was Persephone.
He’d assumed Ellen had named their daughter, but she hadn’t been involved with burial plans, so he couldn’t assume she’d done the naming either.
Sighing, Mark stood and walked away. It seemed he was very good at that.
For the next week Mark kept busy. He still didn't know how to both avoid causing Ellen more pain and do his duty to his family.
Maybe she will be excited about the possibility of more children.
He ran the razor over his stubble one morning.
I’ve changed, grown deeper and better over the years.
Why should I be surprised that she had, too?
Perhaps I could build a life that shall make her happy.
He snorted, recognizing that for the fantasy it was.
“Don’t get distracted, old boy,” he muttered to his reflection in the mirror.
“Domestic bliss is not on the agenda.” I owe the estate an heir.
She married into the family, she knows she owes it too, as my wife.
Keep it at that and you won’t be disappointed.
Dryden, his valet, looked up from his tasks in the closet. “Do you need assistance, sir?"
Mark eyed himself in the mirror, wiping a spot of cream by his nose with a warm, wet rag. “I have it. I shaved myself for eight years on a moving ship while sharing my quarters with other men. I can handle this now."
As he scraped the razor across his second cheek, Mark thought about everything he had to do.
Over the past week he had aired out the house, hired a cook, chambermaid, and footman.
The elderly caretakers who'd lived in the home while he served in the Navy and Ellen lived with her family had resumed their former posts of butler and housekeeper.
He had filled the study to the brim with his books already, and organizing them and purchasing enough bookshelves for them was his special project.
His father, the previous Lord Cottesloe, had purchased this townhouse as a wedding present.
It wasn’t a mansion like Glenfall House, merely fifteen rooms and the attic for the servants.
A far cry from the dreams he’d had eight years ago, of a life split between being an Oxford don and a man of prestige and status in Society.
Maybe even founding a Royal Classical Association, like those chaps in the Astronomical Society.
He couldn’t make up his mind which he wanted more at the time, which was perhaps why joining the Navy hadn’t been so hard a decision.
Once, he'd thought he'd need his wife’s dowry of fifteen hundred pounds a year to supplement his own allowance for even a semblance of a good life.
Now he wanted peace and quiet. Navy life had shown him how little he needed for a decent life, but also how much he valued a little space and silence to call his own.
As if to punctuate his thoughts, a door slammed below. Voices rumbled in the small foyer.
Mark sighed as he turned the razor to get a particularly tricky corner near his ear.
Probably Luke. Or maybe one of the twins is visiting London for the weekend.
His parents had named their two eldest Matthew and Mark after family, but when their third son, Luke, was born, they decided to favor the Gospels.
After John, there were no other Gospel books to follow, so the twins were christened Peter and Paul.
A woman's voice rose above the hubbub, urgent and clear.
So not Luke or John. Luke preferred the company of men, particularly his valet, and John so far didn't seem to prefer the company of anyone.
“I am the mistress of this household, and I can go into any room I choose.” The woman stormed down the hallway.
Dryden sighed heavily, as if already exhausted by the ordeal, and stepped out of the closet to the door.
“Wait.” Mark set the razor down on his vanity table.
The door burst open, and Ellen stood as glorious and furious as ever.
“Excuse me, the master is not fit to be seen. He is in a state of undress.” Dryden stretched out his hands, ready to fend her off. He approached cautiously, attempting to block the sight of Mark, clad only in trousers and socks, from her line of vision.
Mark, startled speechless by surprise and her fury, watched. She was beautiful again, her hair hanging over her shoulder in a loose braid, two of her jacket’s buttons mismatched, as though she'd left her home in a hurry. She was angry. She was alluring.
Since when do I find angry women attractive?
“I am his wife.” Ellen drew herself up to her full height, which was merely average, and glared at Dryden. “I can see him in any state of undress I choose.”
Mark grinned. He slung the wet cloth in his hands over his bare shoulder and faced her. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
Ellen peered over Dryden and looked him up and down. Her face turned cherry red, but she stole a second glance at his bare chest before glaring at Dryden. “This is a private matter.”
Dryden looked over his shoulder at Mark, who nodded. The manservant grunted, then strode around Ellen and out the door. In the hall the chambermaid, footman, and elderly butler stood gawking.
Mark walked past Ellen, who flushed an even brighter red, and shut the door firmly.
“Now.” He turned to survey his wife, unable to stop himself from admiring her figure.
Ellen, in his bedroom, while he performed his morning ablution, felt very intimate.
And it had been so long since he'd had a woman in his arms.
Ellen raised her chin. She did that when she was nervous, he remembered. “I have come to see about moving back in with you.”