“You had better be worth it,” she warned.
Lord Granborough blinked at her.“What?”
Louisa dusted the last bits of glass from her fingertips into his open palm. The little sprinkles caught the light filtering through their porthole window and became luminescent, brilliant, even in their ruination.
She owed her husband no explanation for her words, just as she’d owed him no explanation for her actions. He had hurt her, so she’d lashed out, destroying the most fragile things she could find. She’d taken her pain, grief, and disenchantment out on the roses.
American Beauty, indeed.
She could tear this stateroom apart and write a cheque to cover the damage. Lord Granborough couldn’t write a cheque to cover his dinner. She held tight to that kernel of defiance, nursing it in her breast until it became a pearl—the seed of a pearl, still in the infancy of its irritation. Louisa placed that in his hands, too, though its weight was perceptible only to her.
She stood, unburdened. She held her head up, undaunted. Let His Lordship clean up the mess she’d made.
Louisa rang for her maid and dressed at her leisure. She emerged wearing pink chiffon adorned with sprays of delicate silk apple blossoms. She felt fresh, verdant, brand-new, and full of promise—like spring.
It wasn’t an appropriate dress for the time of year, but Louisa was saving her rich velvet cloaks and lustrous satin frocks for later in the week. Tonight, she wanted to feel buoyant, as light as air, as if nobody could pin her down.
Lord Granborough sat on their bed, already dressed for dinner, nursing a series of nicks on his palm. He chewed at a splinter of glass that had lodged itself into one fingertip and stubbornly refused to surrender.
He frowned, and she sensed that he disliked her flouncy, fussy clothes.
She shook out her skirts, asking, “Is something amiss?”
“That’s rather juvenile for a woman in your position,” he said, fighting the piece of glass in his flesh. “You look like a schoolgirl, yet you’re the Marchioness of Granborough.”
True, she was dressed more like a debutante than a bride, but Louisa wasn’t ready to abandon those fleeting days of freedom that came with being ajeune fille, and she wanted him to know it.
“Fancy bodices are the fashion,” she argued. Sleeves grew larger every season, and New York girls had taken to stuffing their shoulders with padding to meet this trend. Louisa added, flatly, “I’m sorry they’re not to your taste, my lord.”
She wondered how English ladies dressed, or whether she ought to emulate them—that was what Lord Granborough wanted, wasn’t it? A dispassionate English wife, as pale, dull, and doleful as himself.
He should have stayed in Britain.
Abandoning the splinter, he shrugged and said, “It’s merely my opinion, Louisa. You may dress how you wish, but, between us, I prefer your tidy little tailor-mades.”
“Tailor-made walking suits cannot be worn to dinner.” He knew this fact as well as she did. His Lordship was merely teasing her, maybe in his odd way, he was even flirting with her.
Louisa observed him in the dressing table mirror as she reached for her jewelry bag. She fished through it until she found what she sought. She held a double strand of pearls out to him. “Fasten this for me, won’t you?”
He slid off the bed and crossed the stateroom. The pearls coiled in his open palm, and he tested their heft for a moment, appreciating them, before clasping the twin strands at her throat.
The necklace had been made especially for her by the famous pearlers J. Dreicer & Son—a wedding gift from the belles.
“These are very fine,” he said, admiring her necklace in the mirror. The pearls complemented the dress, but Louisa wore them as a reminder of her dear friends back home. Lord Granborough’s fingers, still tender from picking up glass shards and rose stems, traced her bare skin above diaphanous layers of chiffon. Maybe she had hurt him, too…
She turned beneath his hands to face him. Even in heeled slippers, she only reached the level of his white bowtie and stiff, starched collar. Louisa had to crane her neck to meet her husband’s eyes.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, softly. “You needn’t dress to impress me.”
She smiled shyly, still unaccustomed to receiving compliments from this stranger. How could she know how to please him when she did notknowhim?
Louisa laid her white-gloved hand on the lapel of his dinner jacket. She smoothed the spotless fabric beneath her palm. Even a fool must admit that Lord and Lady Granborough made a striking couple. She was small, he was tall. She was money, he was class. Louisa had desired him from the moment she first laid eyes on him in the Vanderheid’s ballroom.
“Take me to dinner,” she said, moving her hand to his sleeve.
He escorted her from their stateroom suite. Arm-in-arm, they walked down the paneled passageway, tilting with the slow roll of the ship. Dozens of diners milled in the reception area, meeting friends and making introductions. Louisa suspected that traveling across the Atlantic was a social event, and passengers liked to share the journey with those ‘in the same boat’ as them.
She and Lord Granborough knew nobody on board and made no effort to ingratiate themselves with the others as they made their way to the dining saloon. They descended the teakwood staircase, footsteps creaking on treads that protested under the weight of so much silk, and wool, and sable, and patent leather.
