Chapter 11
Louisa would have preferred to hunt him down the next morning and demand an answer, but she woke up to a house preparing itself for battle.
The first batch of guests for the house party was expected in the afternoon.
And had she somehow come to the belief that she needed only to stand back and let the great machinery belowstairs rumble on by itself?
How wrong she had been. This was an army, and she its general. It didn’t matter that she’d never been anywhere near a proper campaign; dozens and dozens of decisions now fell to her.
Some obviously mattered: Funds needed to be approved so that the extra help hired specifically for the occasion would have their coin at the end of each day.
Some were of passionate importance to those directly involved: Mr. Sturgess could not stop agonizing about the combination of linen and fresh flowers at the table—should it be a white tablecloth to show off the vibrancy of the ranunculus, or should it be a dark tablecloth so that the late marchioness’s blush roses could be displayed to their best advantage?
And some made her feel like both a complete bumpkin and a wonderful sage for not caring one way or the other: Should the east lawn be trimmed to the correct height for croquet and the west lawn for tennis—or vice versa?
She pretended to reflect on the difference, and then instructed the groundskeeper to seek the master of Huntington.
“Did Mr. Connelly find you?” she asked the master of Huntington when she finally saw him, an hour past luncheon, coming down the grand staircase in a light tweed suit, The Ideal Country Gentleman.
“Yes, he did.” He addressed her with an affable familiarity, as if they’d been married years and a night missing from her bedchamber were nothing for anyone to be concerned about.
“And how did you answer him?”
“The west lawn for tennis and the east lawn for croquet—that way there will always be shade, as on hotter days tennis is usually played in the morning and croquet in the afternoon.”
“A rich man’s concern,” she scoffed.
“A rich woman’s too,” he answered with a smile at her. “Don’t forget what you have become, Lady Wrenworth.”
It was only a half smile—or perhaps less, perhaps only a quarter. But all the same, it was as dazzling.
“If you will excuse me, I must go out and inspect the grouse we will soon be shooting,” he said, leaning in so that his lips brushed her cheek.
She laid a hand against his heart, the tweed warm beneath her hand. “I missed you last night.”
Maybe marriage was not a hotbed of transparency and honesty, but she had never lied when it came to her physical desire for him.
Now he no longer smiled. Now he looked at her as he had in their bridal bower, with a ferocity that bordered on vehemence.
Only for a second. Then he took her hand in his, kissed her across the knuckles, and departed the front door without a backward glance.
Leaving her unsure whether she felt better—or even worse.
* * *
Louisa’s husband stepped into her room just as Betsey pronounced her toilette finished.
He dismissed Betsey and came to stand behind Louisa, inspecting her in the mirror, his hands behind his back. She had chosen an ornately embroidered dinner gown in a pale lilac brocade, a double strand of pearls—a wedding present from Lady Balfour—about her throat.
“Very nice,” he said. “But not quite right yet.”
“I would look better if I were more satisfied in bed,” she retorted.
“Really?” He brushed one hand against her pearl necklace. “I would have said you looked quite ravishing when you’d gone twenty-four years without.”
No doubt she would have come up with a witty and biting repartee, but he did something with her necklace, his warm touches upon her nape causing a cascade of sensations in-side her.
And now he removed the necklace altogether, placing it on the vanity with a soft click.
She wanted him to keep touching her. When he did, she felt less adrift, less…cast aside.
He pulled a handful of something from his pocket, which, as he placed it around her throat, resolved itself to be a sensational diamond necklace, the gems brilliant with an icy flame. “From my mother’s jewelry collection. All the pieces are yours to keep.”
She could not care less about the necklace, or the other pieces—her attention was solely focused on his fingers. Did they linger as he worked the clasp? Did he display the slightest interest in her skin?
No, he was completely impersonal, needing no more than three seconds to fasten the necklace.
“Now you look perfect,” he said, his words just as impersonal. “Shall we go?”
* * *
It took Louisa the entire predinner chitchat and the first course after sitting down before she was able to shove herself back into the role that she’d played so often and so well during the Season.
There were adjustments to be made, of course. Now it was the ladies she must cultivate. For while her husband’s wealth and stature gave her a certain cachet, that was not, by itself, quite enough to elevate her standing to the kind of stratospheric height he enjoyed.
And for five thousand pounds a year, she owed him a wife as popular and well-thought-of as he. To that end, she made sure she appeared amiable but also sure of herself—her public persona reflecting, at least in some measure, his cool sophistication.
After dinner, the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room.
From that moment until the ladies retired, he spoke to her only once, to ask what time she had arranged for coffee and biscuits to be brought in—an inattentiveness that was exactly as it ought to be, as the duty of the host and the hostess was to see to the guests, rather than to each other.
Yet she felt herself constantly under observation, a sensation not unlike what she’d experienced the night of their first meeting.
He would be speaking to each of their sixteen guests in turn, or participating in a game of cards, or taking part in a duet, his singing voice remarkably pure and warm—and she would feel the tangible weight of his scrutiny.
No solid evidence of this observation, only her intuition. But even her intuition could not quite decipher the nature of his inspection. Did it mean anything at all, or was he merely making sure that her performance as his wife was satisfactory?
At ten o’clock coffee and biscuits were served. The ladies, herself included, retired shortly thereafter. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. That freedom of movement now allowed her to conceal herself in the darkness of the solarium, across from the billiard room.
A quarter of an hour later, the gentlemen arrived in a herd.
“A game, Wren?” asked someone. “I’ll put down twenty quid.”
“Tomorrow, maybe,” answered Louisa’s husband. “I will not be staying long enough tonight for an entire game—I am a married man now, with a married man’s duties.”
His friends chuckled. Some of them teased him good-naturedly. Louisa rubbed her finger on the heavy toile that covered the wall behind her. Did he mean it, or was he only acting the part?
Good for his word, he left the billiard room after only a few minutes. She slipped out of the solarium and followed him. At the stair landing, he stopped and turned around, his person only a silhouette. She caught up to him and together they ascended the steps.
“I am not following you around the house,” she said, a little defensively, once they were out of earshot of those still in the billiard room. “I only wish for a minute of your time.”
“And you are, of course, entitled to that,” he said politely. “Shall we go to my sitting room?”
He was making her nervous, and not in a pleasurable way. Instead, she felt like the insolvent young woman she had been until very recently, attempting to persuade a shopkeeper to extend her more credit.
She preceded him into his apartment. A moment later a light came on, then another. She blinked, looking about, not sure what she was seeing.
The decor was not English, nor exactly what she thought of as the French style. His apartment was an ecstasy of pastels—white, gold, and sky blue. She almost could not imagine how exuberant it would appear during the day, with sunlight streaming in through the windows.
The plaster medallions on the wall, the fresco paintings of pastoral idylls, a ceiling that was the brightest, cleanest sky, with birds in flight and even a hot-air balloon.
What the inside of a fairy-tale castle looked like, more or less.
“It’s beautiful. It’s…”
“Rococo is the word you are looking for, I believe.”
“Yes, I suppose.” She had no idea what the word meant, except to know that it was the last thing she’d have extrapolated from his otherwise clean, spare style.
She liked this rococo interior. It was luminous and joyful. But instead of uplifting her mood, it only made her feel more apprehensive. What else didn’t she know about him?
“I would ring for some tea, but the staff has already retired for the night,” he said, quite formally.
“Thank you, but I don’t need any tea.”
“In that case, what can I do for you?”
She bit the inside of her lower lip. “Perhaps you can explain why you are no longer my lover.”
“Am I not?”
“You haven’t touched me in two days.”
“And forty-eight hours is enough to disqualify me?”
“We are on our honeymoon. And you have given me every expectation that I may expect an attentive and frequent lover.”
“You might be recalling things I’d said when I had you in mind as a mistress, whom I might see as little as twenty days out of the year. Marriage is something else altogether.”
“Yet I am confident you said to me, on our wedding night, that you would—that you wanted to—fuck me every hour of every day.”
The inside of her mouth felt as if it were on fire. The word was incredibly vulgar, yet strangely potent and muscular.