walks through the shrubbery.
His hand hurt like the devil. She had slashed out with the edge of hers and caught him on the side of the palm. He stood rubbing it while he watched the laurel branches sway and then settle in her wake. Innocent girl, barely eighteen. Bereft, alone, frightened. Pregnant. The wave of guilt swept through him, leaving the taste of bile in his mouth as it had so often in the months after Piers’s death. What had I done? Was I wrong? Should I have listened, helped?
Too late now and, however hurt and frightened she had been, surely no woman who was truly in love could have written those cruel words to a lover facing battle?
Avery turned from the shrubbery and went towards the house. He needed a glass of brandy and straightforward male company with its certainties and its emotional directness.
* * *
‘You may kiss the bride.’
The church swam into focus as Avery lifted the veil and folded it back over the wreath of myrtle and orange blossom that crowned her hair. Laura closed her eyes as he bent and touched his mouth to hers and a sigh went round the sophisticated, fashionable congregation. An excellent marriage of equal status and a great deal of land and money. How very satisfactory.
She clung to the cynical thought as Avery’s lips moved over hers, warm and possessive. Her hands were on his lapels and she had no recollection of placing them there, but it was a good gesture, one that confirmed her affection and her submission to him in front of witnesses.
They went arm in arm to the vestry and she signed her new name carefully, as she had rehearsed. Laura Caroline Emilia Jordan Falconer, Countess of Wykeham. Beside her, Avery made a sound, quickly bitten back, presumably as he realised she had not lied about her name at least, those days in Hertfordshire.
Then they were in the chancel again, surrounded by faces in the pews and peering down from the wide, dark-panelled gallery. Her hand felt heavy with the broad gold band as she lifted her skirts to negotiate the steps to the nave and the great organ over the west door thundered into life, making her jump. All her senses seemed to be alert, raw. But not her feelings—those were numb.
On the steps she smiled and threw her flowers and waved as she sat in the open carriage and was driven away into New Bond Street and no one seemed to notice it was all an act.
‘You look beautiful, Lady Wykeham.’ Avery resumed his tall hat and sat back beside her.
‘Thank you.’ He looked exceedingly handsome, barbered and groomed to perfection, dressed with elegant formality, his patrician features suited to the grave solemnity he had projected all through the service. ‘Alice behaved very well.’
‘She was feeling so grown up in her miniature version of your gown that I think she was afraid to move.’ Avery’s face relaxed as he smiled. ‘Do you mind not having a proper honeymoon?’
For a moment she could not follow his train of thought. ‘Oh, you mean taking her with us tomorrow when we go to Westerwood? No, of course not.’ Conscious of the groom clinging on behind she lowered her voice. ‘After all, it is hardly as if we would wish to be alone together, is it?’
Avery was silent, occupied for several minutes with pulling off his gloves and smoothing them flat over his knee. ‘We did not get off to a very good beginning with our relationship,’ he said eventually, equally low-voiced.
Was this a flag of truce? Or a trick? ‘No,’ Laura agreed. ‘We did not. However, I keep my word. You may be certain that I will do my utmost to be a good wife and you know I will do everything in my power for Alice.’ He sighed, just on the edge of her hearing. ‘What more do you want?’ she demanded sharply, then caught herself before the groom could hear. Avery did not answer.
* * *
The wedding breakfast went exceptionally well. Laura knew everyone and, with the confidence of maturity, knew how to make a social event a success, even when her brain seemed numb and the house, her new London home, was unfamiliar. The guests retired to the vast drawing room after the meal, champagne continued to flow, the noise level soared. It was, people were saying on all sides, the wedding of the Season. And, of course, it was spiced by the speculation about how Avery Falconer would tame Scandal’s Virgin.
At six o’clock Laura went searching for Alice and found her curled up asleep on a sofa.
‘I’ll carry her up,’ Avery said behind her.
‘But—’
‘Blackie will put her to bed, you can look in later. We cannot both disappear together.’ His expression became sardonic. ‘Not this early, anyway.’
Laura watched him lift the child in his arms and remembered the three occasions when he had carried her in his arms, the feel of his body and the strength of his hold. She bent to kiss Alice’s cheek and felt an answering pressure on the top of her head as if he had laid his cheek there for a moment, or pressed his lips to her hair in a kiss. Her heart fluttered, then she realised he must be acting for their guests.
The smile was perfect on her lips when she straightened and she did not look back as she swept back into the centre of the room. She could act, too, be the loving stepmama who was still less to the child than Alice’s papa was. Someone made an observation and Laura nodded in agreement. ‘Indeed, Mrs Nicholson. Such a delightful child, so pretty and affectionate. So easy to love.’
* * *
Three hours later Laura sat bolt upright in the big bed with its froth of lace and net hangings and tried to decide what to do. Avery would be coming in soon, she had no doubt. He would insist on his marital rights until she was with child, of that she was certain.
But she was equally certain he would not force her. She could say no, but that would be to break her word to be a good wife, and besides, she wanted him to make love to her.
A somewhat humiliating realisation, that. But she loved him and she desired him and she knew he made love with toe-curling skill: she would have to be perverse indeed to recoil from him because he did not love her.
She could do what ladies were supposed to do, or, at least, what some young ladies were told was proper: lie still and allow one’s husband to do what he wanted. Laura suspected that Avery, if he did not laugh himself sick at the sight of her apeing a virtuous lady, would treat that response as the equivalent of a refusal.
A draught of air amidst the draperies was the only clue that the door leading from hers into Avery’s bedchamber had opened. Laura stiffened, unprepared and with no plan at all for what would happen next.
Her husband appeared beside the bed clad in a vivid red-and-green banyan, a tight smile and, apparently, not a lot else. Laura swallowed.
‘Shall I put out the candles?’ He must have noticed the convulsive movement of her throat.
It was a tiny kindness, but it made up her mind. ‘No, thank you. I want to see you.’
Avery lifted one eyebrow, untied the sash, dropped it to the floor, shrugged out of the heavy silk and stood regarding her quizzically. Laura stared back, then let her gaze slide slowly down over the sculpted muscles of his chest, the flat belly, the dark hair, to the inescapable evidence that whatever else her new husband was feeling it was not rampant sexual desire for his wife.
Laura closed her mouth and studied her interlaced fingers
