Even a wedding breakfast was dispensed with in favor of summoning a carriage. She didn’t demur, being as eager to leave London as her father was to send her away.
“Thank God that’s over,” her bridegroom said as he entered the carriage and sat opposite her, his back to the horses. “My commiseration, Sarah.”
She glanced at him curiously. “For what? This disaster of a marriage?”
“Your childhood. Your father cannot have been pleasant to deal with.”
“And your own childhood? Was it so pleasant?”
“Yes.” A moment later, he began to smile. “I had a very enjoyable childhood. In fact, I’ve had a very enjoyable life. You might say that I’ve been enormously blessed.”
“Not the least of which is finding yourself married to the Duke of Herridge’s daughter.”
“Do you always refer to yourself as the Duke of Herridge’s daughter? Are you never simply Sarah? What a disappointment for you, if that’s the case, to marry a simple mister.”
“I didn’t come to this marriage because of anything you offered me, Mr. Eston. On the contrary, I married you to give my mother a few more months of life. Being sent to Scotland could not improve her health. In fact, it would have done the opposite.”
“So I can consider myself an object of expediency.”
“Am I not the same?” She regarded him with what she hoped was a calm expression. Beneath it, however, she was growing irritated. “You wanted my father to invest in something evidently, and he did so. Not only did he invest, but he granted you a daughter and the use of a house, if you can consider Chavensworth simply a house. I cannot see anything any more expeditious than that, can you?”
“You looked unbearably sad.”
Startled, she stared at him. “You pitied me? Is that why you married me?”
She turned her head again, concentrated on the view outside the window. She refused to believe him. He was a means to an end and the method by which to dispose of a troublesome daughter.
A daughter her father didn’t like very much.
“Perhaps I felt a measure of compassion for you. Perhaps that sweetened the match your father proposed.”
“He didn’t propose anything,” she said. “He imposed it. What would you call my being locked in a room for two days?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when enough time had elapsed that she grew curious, she glanced over at him. He appeared as annoyed as shefelt at the moment, but whether his irritation was directed at her or her father, Sarah was uncertain. Nor was she about to ask him.
What good would it do to discover that her new husband was incensed with her?
She was who she was, good or ill, and she didn’t want to begin this marriage with the pretense of being someone she was not. She wasn’t appreciably delicate—she’d never had the luxury of pretending to have the vapors. Everyone around her seemed to be weaker than she, so consequently she’d always been forced to be the one with the level head, a cogent plan, some sense.
Unbearably sad, indeed. He said that only to soften her heart toward him. He felt nothing for her, and even if he did, she didn’t want it to be pity. Let him be annoyed, then. Let him be as genuinely troubled as she felt.
“I’m not going to allow you into my chamber tonight.”
She clasped her hands together and waited for him to offer up a protest. She was fully anticipating for him to be even more annoyed. He would say something like, “I am your husband. You will submit.” Like blazes she would.
Instead, when she glanced at him it was to discover him smiling.
“I have no intention of coming to your bedchamber tonight,” he said.
The velvet of the seat was smooth against her fingertips, tiny fingers of fabric reaching out to brush against her skin in welcome.
“We’re strangers,” each said, exactly at the same time. With anyone else, she would’ve smiled at the coincidence. But not with this man.
His wife sat opposite him, elbows tucked against her sides, feet properly together, chin lowered—so rigid she appeared almost brittle.
Her black hair was falling loose on one side, but he wasn’t about to embarrass her by mentioning it. Nor would he comment on the fact that her dress—her wedding dress—would forever remain in his memory as the most egregious example of dressmaking he’d ever witnessed.
The sarongs of the Polynesians were infinitely preferable to what she was wearing now. In fact, she would probably have appeared attractive in a sarong. Add a smile, and Lady Sarah, now Mrs. Eston, would be lovely.
