Butwherewould she invite Dora? Agnes almost panicked again. She did not even know where her home was going to be. She knewnothing—except that her last name was Arnott. She was Agnes Arnott, Viscountess Ponsonby. She sounded like a stranger to herself.
And then everyone was gone. The vicar’s gig was already clopping along the terrace and turning to skirt about the formal parterres. The Duke of Stanbrook was handing Dora into Mr. Harrison’s carriage, and it too moved off as soon as Mr. Harrison had climbed in after her and shut the door.
Dora was gone home to a cottage that was no longer Agnes’s. Her trunk and bags were already packed—she had spent a few hours of last night getting them ready, as well as a bag of things she would need tonight and tomorrow morning. Her possessions would be picked up tomorrow, and then she would no longer belong in Inglebrook. She did not know when she would see Dora again.
Flavian had drawn her arm through his and was peering into her face, a large white handkerchief in his free hand.
“I will see to it that you are never s-sorry,” he said, his voice low. “I p-promise, Agnes.”
The tears that had been brimming in her eyes spilled over then, and she took the handkerchief from him to mop them up.
“I am not sorry,” she said. “I am only sad about saying good-bye to Dora. It is not easy to leave one’s home, even though it has been my home for less than a year. And I do not even know where my new home is to be. I did not even know what mynamewas to be when I arrived at the church this morning.”
“Arnott?” he said. “I kept it from you. I thought it m-might tip the scale against me last night. I thought you might not like the s-sound of Agnes Arnott.”
She folded the handkerchief and allowed him to take it from her.
“You are sometimes quite absurd,” she said.
He smiled. It was a new expression, one she had not seen before. It crinkled his eyes at the corners and contained not a discernible trace of mockery. She thought he was going to say something else, but he appeared to change his mind. He merely patted her hand on his arm and turned back into the house with her.
Oh, dear heavens, he was herhusband.
13
The guest suite was above the state drawing rooms—both of them. It was large, to say the least. Two people could, Flavian concluded, hide quite effectively from each other if they wished. There were two bedchambers, with two side-by-side dressing rooms between, each large enough to hold a prince or princess with all their attendant ladies- or gentlemen-in-waiting, with space to spare for them to breathe. And there was a grand sitting room, spacious enough to accommodate all the aforementioned court of persons, plus a generous allotment of guests.
The whole of the apartment had been cleaned to a shine. The top of one sideboard was more than half-covered with wines and liquors and glasses. There were silver and crystal dishes of fruit and nuts and bonbons on various tabletops. There were covered plates of cakes and sweet biscuits on another sideboard, with a tray of both tea and coffee, which had been delivered only moments after the bride and groom had arrived. And supper would be brought at nine o’clock, the liveried servant informed them with a bow—in two hours’ time, in other words.
“But you surely wish to be with your friends tonight,” Agnes informed Flavian after she had finished sinking into one of four cushioned seats on a magnificent and obviously extremely comfortable sofa with gilded feet and arms and back. “It is your last night together.”
“And by coincidence,” he said, taking up his stand before her, his hands clasped at his back, his feet slightly apart, “it is myfirstnight with my b-bride. Those friends might well beat me about the h-head with one of Ben’s c-canes if I were to choose them over you.”
She was still wearing her green dress. She was still looking like a prim and pretty governess. He had almost told her so out on the terrace when she had said he was sometimes quite absurd. But she might have been offended to be called prim, and not even have noticed thepretty. Women could be like that.
“Andy-youmight well beat me about the head with your b-bare hand if I chose them,” he added. “You would all have to draw lots.”
“I would n—” she began.
“AndIwould beatmyselfabout the head if I was t-tempted for even a moment to be such a d-dolt as to leave you here and d-dash off to them,” he said. “We wouldallhave to draw lots. I believe I and my head will be safe, however. Conversation with one’s f-friends on the one hand and sex with one’s new w-wife on the other is not even a fair competition.”
As he had expected, her cheeks, and even her neck and the small amount of bosom that had been allowed to show above the neckline of her dress, were suddenly suffused with color. Her lips did something that made her look even more like a governess. But she held his eyes.
“I wish you would not loom over me like that,” she said, “trying to look sleepy when I know very well you are not.”
He smiled slowly at her. “I amdefinitelynot s-sleepy,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
He sat on the cushion beside hers and found himself at least two feet away from her. Where the deuce had a former Viscount Darleigh found such a monstrous piece of furniture? It probably weighed a ton and a half, and it would surely accommodate twenty persons seated side by side, provided they were slender and did not mind cozying up to one another. Yet it did not come even close to dwarfing the room.
He took her hand in one of his and curled his fingers about it.
“What shall we do between now and nine o’clock?” he asked her. “Sit here and c-converse like polite s-strangers, or go to bed?”
She drew a breath through her nose and released it through her mouth. “It is not even quite dark.”
Which remark spoke volumes. Sex in her first marriage had been conducted under cover of decent darkness, then, had it? But he didnotwant to think about the dull William.
“Where is home?” she asked him.
