But Kate was right. They did not know each other.
He was a stranger.
He offered his arm. “It is time for us to go. This group is growing rowdier and I want you to myself.” There was a warmth to his tone. He sounded as if he meant the words.
For the briefest of seconds, Willa held back, stuck by how much she wanted to believe he had feelings for her, until she realized it was useless. This man was her husband. Her father had paid money to him. Reverly-Addison.
Like it or not, he was her fate. The best her life would be.
“Yes, please, let us go.” She tried to sound bright.
After all, it was her wedding day. She was expected to be happy.
And Willa always played her role well. She knew how to smile, when what she truly wanted to do was scream.
Chapter 7
Matt was furious with Kate.
How dare she blacken his wedding day with her accusations. She always thought she knew better, that she had not only a right, but an obligation to voice her opinion. Thank God, his other sisters were more discreet.
However, now that she’d pricked his conscience, he wanted to prove her wrong.
He had no doubt that she would report to his other sisters that poor Matt had lost his way. That he wasn’t the man he should be.
Well, he was damn tired of families all the way around.
It was true he was marrying Willa to save the impossible situation he had inherited. No, he wasn’t completely happy with the solution. He’d been resigned to being a lowly tutor. However, fate had conspired otherwise and given him the responsibility to preserve what his ancestors had built. He owed his descendants his very best.
Yes, he would have preferred to have had the luxury of marrying for love. Damn it all, he’d been so inspired by his parents’ example, he’d written a book of poetry about it. A bad book, but a book all the same. He believed in love... or thought he did.
He had lost his way in his affair with Letty. Looking back, he realized it had been doomed to fail from the beginning. Bainhurst was so possessive, he would never have divorced Letty for criminal conversation. They would have had to run away to the Continent, and Matt now realized he would have eventually come to his senses and regretted sacrificing everything meaningful in his life for her.
In that respect, Letty had been far wiser than he.
Marrying Willa was the right thing to do, no matter what Kate said. The Reverly money allowed him to take care of his sisters, his grandmother, and the numerous cottagers and tenants that depended on his sensible management of Mayfield for their livelihood.
Not only all of that, he actually liked Willa. He didn’t mind changing his last name to Reverly-Addison. Granted, Kate would have a field day if she knew how little time he had spent with Willa before the wedding.
Or that Willa hadn’t sparked his interest until she’d been willing to cut him loose.
However, now the deed was done. And he’d be lying if he claimed it didn’t feel good to have Willa’s dowry. Overnight, she’d resolved the majority of his problems. He owed her his allegiance and, to his mind, so did Kate.
So he was determined to give Willa all the deference that was her due as he moved toward the front door with his new wife on his arm.
Numerous suggestions of how they were to spend their night were called out. A few were crass enough to make comment about the difference in their height. Throughout the afternoon, Matt had overheard people speculating. He’d quickly steered Willa away from that nonsense.
In truth, he didn’t know if she was sensitive about her height or understood how men viewed women as playthings. A group of men had mentioned that he was fortunate to have such a doll-like wife, the lust in their voices enough to make Matt contemplate throwing them out the door.
Soren had calmed him down. “It’s the brandy,” he’d said. “People are damn fools.”
Matt could agree to that.
The worst, though, had happened after Matt had finished with Kate. He had searched for Minerva to let her know he was planning on leaving and caught her holding court with her friends on whether a woman as petite as Willa could give birth to a child sired by a man as big as he was.
“Big babies have difficulties coming out of small wombs,” one of the dowager’s friends had opined. “I had a maid die in childbirth for that very reason. Both she and the baby dead. Couldn’t get it out of her.”
Talk of wombs was not a deterrent to a man with sisters as vocal as the ones Matt had. The idea that his children would die made his brain spin.
