“Your wife?” she said, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Your wife?How utterly preposterous. You think you owe me marriage just because you have suddenly discovered that I am Lady Sara Illingsworth of Candleford rather than Jane Ingleby from some orphanage?”
“I could not have phrased it better myself,” he said.
“I do not know what you have planned for the rest of the afternoon, your grace,” she told him, looking into his cold, cynical face and feeling the full chill of his total indifference to her as a person, “but I have something of importance to do. I have a visit to the Pulteney Hotel to make. If you will excuse me.” She turned resolutely to the door.
“Sit down,” he said as quietly as before.
She swung to face him. “I am not one of your servants, your grace,” she said. “I am not—”
“Sitdown!” His voice, if anything, was even quieter.
Jane stood staring at him for a few moments before striding across the room until she stood almost toe-to-toe with him.
“I repeat,” she said, “I am not one of your servants. If you have something more to say to me, say it without this ridiculous posturing. My ears function quite well enough when I am on my feet.”
“You try my patience to the limit, ma’am,” he said, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
“And mine is already triedbeyondthe limit, your grace,” she retorted, turning toward the door again.
“Lady Sara.” His icy voice stopped her in her tracks. “We will have one thing straight between us. Soon—within the next few days—you will be the Duchess of Tresham. Your personal wishes on this matter are not to be consulted. I am quite indifferent to them. You will be my wife. And you will spend the rest of your life ruing the day you were born.”
If she had not been so white with fury, she might well have laughed. As it was she took her time about seating herself in the nearest chair, arranging her skirts neatly about her before looking up into his eyes, her own carefully cool.
“How utterly ridiculous you make yourself when you decide to play the part of toplofty aristocrat,” she told him, folding her hands in her lap and pressing her lips tightly together. She girded herself for the inevitable battle.
21
EWAS SURPRISED BY THE FORCE OF HIS HATREDfor her. He had never hated anyone—except perhaps his father. Not even his mother. It was unnecessary to hate when one did not feel strongly about anyone. He wished he could feel nothing but indifference for Lady Sara Illingsworth.
He could almost succeed when he thought of her by that name. But his eyes saw Jane Ingleby.
“You will not be forced to behold your ridiculous husband very often, you will be relieved to know,” he told her. “You will live at Acton, and you know how fond I am of my main country seat. You will see me only once a year or so when it becomes necessary to breed you. If you are very efficient you will have two sons within the first two years of our marriage and I may consider them enough to secure the succession. If you are extraordinarily clever, of course, you may already be increasing.” He lifted his quizzing glass and regarded her abdomen through it.
Her lips had already done their familiar disappearing act. He was glad she had pulled herself together. For a while she had looked pale and shaken and abject. He had found himself almost pitying her. She was glaring at him with her very blue eyes.
“You are forgetting one thing, your grace,” she said. “Women are not quite slaves in our society, though they come dangerously close. I have to say ‘I do’ or ‘I will’ or whatever it is brides say to consent to a marriage. You may drag me to the altar—I will concede your superior physical strength—but you will be considerably embarrassed when I refuse my consent.”
He knew he should be delighted by her obvious reluctance. But she had duped him, humiliated him, made a fool of him once. Her will would not prove stronger than his on this particular matter.
“Besides,” she added, “I am not yet of age. And according to my father’s will I cannot marry below the age of five and twenty without the consent of my guardian. If I do, I lose my inheritance.”
“Inheritance?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Everything my father owned except Candleford itself was unentailed,” she explained, “and his title, of course. His other estates, his fortune—everything, in fact—will be mine at the age of five and twenty, or my husband’s if I marry with consent before then.”
Which explained a great deal, of course. Durbury had the title and Candleford and control of everything else at the moment. He would have permanent control if he could persuade Lady Sara to marry into his family—or if he could make her life so uncomfortable that she would rashly elope with someone else before her twenty-fifth birthday.
“I suppose,” he said, “if you break the rules Durbury himself inherits everything?”
“Yes.”
“He may inherit everything, then,” he said curtly. “I am enormously wealthy. I do not need my wife to bring me a fortune.”
“I suppose,” she said, “if I am convicted of murder I will be disinherited. Perhaps I will even d-die. But I will fight to whatever end is in store for me. And I will marry no one, whatever the outcome. Not Charles. Not you. At least not until I am five and twenty. Then I will marry or not marry as I choose. I will be free. I will be dead or imprisoned or transported, or I will be free. Those are the alternatives. I will be no man’s slave in the guise of wife. Certainly not yours.”
He gazed at her in silence. She did not look away, of course. She was one of the few people, man or woman, who could hold his scrutiny. She held her chin high. Her eyes were steely, her lips still in their thin, stubborn line.
“I should have seen it sooner,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “The essentially cold emptiness at the core of you. You are sexually passionate, but then sex is an essentially carnal thing. It does not touch the heart. You have the strange ability of opening yourself to other people’s confidences. You convey an image of sympathy and empathy. You can take in and take in, can you not, like some cold-hearted creature warming itself with its victim’s blood. One does not notice that in effect you give nothing back. Jane Ingleby, bastard of some unknown gentleman, reared in a superior orphanage. That was all you gave me—lies. And your Siren’s body. I am weary of arguing with you. I have other calls to make, but I will return. You will stay here until I do.”
