Chapter Six
For a few breathless moments, Rosina thought Lord Raith was going to explode. His eyes blazed, and he shot a look at her that spoke volumes. Inwardly quaking, she turned from him and moved to the table.
“If you please, Kirkham.”
The butler made haste to pull out her chair for her. Rosina seated herself, as nonchalantly as her fast-beating heart would allow. Then she looked at Kirkham and nodded towards her husband’s chair.
He drew it out, and coughed. “My lord?”
Raith was within an ace of marching straight out of the place. How could she trick him so cruelly? Now he saw why she had been conducting herself in that deceptively wifely manner. He heard Kirkham cough again, and saw that a maid and both the footmen were entering the room, laden with dishes. To make a scene before the servants would hardly accord with his desire to create an impression of marital harmony.
He moved across to the table, noting that the sideboards, where the staff were busily employed, had been shifted also, so that they were closer to the table. The light was all concentrated in one area, making the room cosier.
The relief Rosina felt on seeing him approach was short-lived. He had no sooner seated himself than he leaned towards her, taking advantage of Kirkham’s moving out of earshot. The grey eyes flashed, and she jumped.
“If we were alone, madam wife, I should be strongly tempted to take you to task in a manner you would scarce find to your taste.”
Rosina’s hands were shaking with fright, but she gripped them together in her lap, and answered him with low-voiced defiance. “You have forgotten, sir, that you told me to make myself mistress here.”
“I did not tell you to make of your husband a mockery!”
“Will you take wine, my lord?”
“What?” He turned quickly to the butler, looked at the proffered bottle. “Yes!”
The snap in his voice was alarming. Rosina watched the butler pour, and moved round to her elbow. “I will take water, if you please, Kirkham.”
Her husband looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You had better have wine. You may find you need fortifying.”
She eyed him, her alarm deepening at the dangerous look of him. The elderly butler was still waiting. “A little wine, if you please.”
Kirkham poured the wine, managing at the same time to convey to her a look of avuncular reassurance. Rosina smiled at him with gratitude. She was aware he had been aghast when she had put forward her request to him and Mrs Fawley. Neither retainer had anything to say against her desire to reduce the table but, severally and together, both had advised her most earnestly to place herself upon Raith’s left side. Rosina had been adamant.
“It is a risk, I know, but one I am willing to take. You need neither of you fear his lordship. He will have no hesitation in laying blame at the right door.”
An apprehension which had now been proven. For the moment Rosina was protected by the presence of the servants. She could only hope that by the time they withdrew, her spouse’s temper would have calmed a little. Knowing already how lightning were his changes of mood, Rosina averted her gaze from his face in the hope this might ease his consciousness. It availed her nothing.
“You need not try to mitigate the offence,” came at her in a derisive undertone.
Rosina looked to find the grey eyes smouldering. She steeled herself to meet them squarely. Her jumping nerves were steadying a trifle. “This morning, sir, you asked me if I could stomach—”
“I remember. And you chose this method of forcing yourself to become accustomed. That much I had deduced.”
“Then how can you accuse me of mocking you?”
He was staring at the soup bowl that had appeared in front of him as if he did not know what it was. “Could you not have found a less public expression of duty?”
Rosina was hurt by the implication she had done it from a sense of obligation to her married state. Her tongue sharpened. “I fail to see how I might do so else, since you are shy of my regarding it even when we are alone.”
She received a look that made her quake. But since Lord Raith chose to retire into a silence choked with tension, she was not obliged to attempt to speak again. Let him fester all he wished. As long as he refrained from throwing his tongue at her, she could endure it well enough.
But her spouse became increasingly ill-at-ease as the meal progressed, drawing at length her reluctant admission that her wild scheme might have been misplaced. While he ate, partaking more and more sparingly of the viands put before him, he was subject to shifts of discomfort from moment to moment. He could not be still, and now and then his hand stole up — unknowingly, Rosina thought — and hovered, as if it sought to conceal that misshapen side. Was it recollection that made him reach out swiftly for his glass, tossing back the wine? He drank a good deal more than he ate, and Rosina became more distressed for him each time he signed to Kirkham to pour.
His vulnerability was pitiful. By the time the last course had been set upon the table and the covers removed, she was deeply regretting having put him through this enforced exposure. His face looked haggard in the candlelight. It was for him, she now saw, a purgatory.
The moment the butler had set down the final dish, she spoke on a note of urgency. “Pray leave us, Kirkham.”
The elderly butler bowed correctly, and Rosina watched him leave, driving his minions before him. The door closed behind him and she turned in dismay as, beside her, her husband let out a groan of utter despair.
