Now one was locked in a dresser drawer, a physical reminder of a deliberate betrayal.
‘May I call you Mama?’ Alice asked.
Laura looked at him over the top of the child’s head, her face tranquil, her eyes stark. ‘Of course, darling. As soon as I am married to your papa, then I will be your mama.’
‘Do you love Papa?’ The innocent question startled him, and Laura, too, from her expression. Her gaze switched instantly to Alice’s face and she smiled. It was not the smile she kept for him, edged with icicles, and not the genuine warm one that transformed her face whenever she looked at Alice. This, Avery realised, was a smile that hid something very deep.
‘He will never know how much,’ she said.
There was nothing he could return for that, not with Alice listening. For a moment he had thought it sarcasm, directed at him, and then he saw the glimmer of a tear as the dark lashes lowered to veil Laura’s eyes. Her teeth caught her lower lip for a second and then she was calm again. She had not responded about her feelings for him, but for Piers, Alice’s real father. But then she had written that letter to Piers. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Had he somehow misunderstood her? The woman tied him in knots.
‘Is it a secret or may I tell everyone?’ Alice was already off the seat, hopping from foot to foot in her eagerness.
‘Yes, you may tell,’ Laura said and sat, her hands lax in her lap, watching Alice as she raced across the lawn to the other children.
‘You loved him, then?’
She turned to stare at him, a frown of puzzlement between her arched brows. ‘Him?’
‘Alice’s father.’
‘Piers?’ Her confusion puzzled him. ‘Why, yes, of course I did. I would never have lain with a man I did not love.’
‘Really? And last night?’
‘What do you think?’
‘That you overcame your revulsion very well.’ He got to his feet and took a few angry paces away from her, furious that he was letting his guard down, that she might suspect he cared.
‘I am not an innocent girl barely eighteen years old any longer.’ She kept her eyes on the children, over by the house. ‘And you are an attractive man and, as I expected, skilled in bed.’
Avery felt himself flush at the dispassionate description. ‘I am glad I gave satisfaction.’
She looked at him then and this time there was more than a hint of tears in the brown eyes. ‘You know you did. Stop trying to sound like a...a...as if I was paying you.’
‘You do not have much good fortune with your lovers, do you?’ He had not meant to mention Piers, ever again, but that last accusation splintered his resolve. ‘How did you feel about Piers when he left you? Went back to do his duty?’
‘Bereft,’ she said and stumbled as she got to her feet. Avery put out a hand to steady her and she hit it away with a swiftness that betrayed the depths of her turmoil. ‘In the moment when I read his note I felt betrayed, alone and frightened. You would have been proud of what you had achieved, sending him back to his honourable death and making me hate him, if only for a second.’
Laura turned and walked away from him, away from the house, into one of the winding walks through the shrubbery.
His hand hurt like the devil. She had slashed out with the edge of hers and caught him on the side of the palm. He stood rubbing it while he watched the laurel branches sway and then settle in her wake. Innocent girl, barely eighteen. Bereft, alone, frightened. Pregnant. The wave of guilt swept through him, leaving the taste of bile in his mouth as it had so often in the months after Piers’s death. What had I done? Was I wrong? Should I have listened, helped?
Too late now and, however hurt and frightened she had been, surely no woman who was truly in love could have written those cruel words to a lover facing battle?
Avery turned from the shrubbery and went towards the house. He needed a glass of brandy and straightforward male company with its certainties and its emotional directness.
* * *
‘You may kiss the bride.’
The church swam into focus as Avery lifted the veil and folded it back over the wreath of myrtle and orange blossom that crowned her hair. Laura closed her eyes as he bent and touched his mouth to hers and a sigh went round the sophisticated, fashionable congregation. An excellent marriage of equal status and a great deal of land and money. How very satisfactory.
She clung to the cynical thought as Avery’s lips moved over hers, warm and possessive. Her hands were on his lapels and she had no recollection of placing them there, but it was a good gesture, one that confirmed her affection and her submission to him in front of witnesses.
They went arm in arm to the vestry and she signed her new name carefully, as she had rehearsed. Laura Caroline Emilia Jordan Falconer, Countess of Wykeham. Beside her, Avery made a sound, quickly bitten back, presumably as he realised she had not lied about her name at least, those days in Hertfordshire.
Then they were in the chancel again, surrounded by faces in the pews and peering down from the wide, dark-panelled gallery. Her hand felt heavy with the broad gold band as she lifted her skirts to negotiate the steps to the nave and the great organ over the west door thundered into life, making her jump. All her senses seemed to be alert, raw. But not her feelings—those were numb.
On the steps she smiled and threw her flowers and waved as she sat in the open carriage and was driven away into New Bond Street and no one seemed to notice it was all an act.
‘You look beautiful, Lady Wykeham.’ Avery resumed his tall hat and sat back beside her.
‘Thank you.’ He looked exceedingly handsome, barbered and groomed to perfection, dressed with elegant formality, his patrician features suited to the grave solemnity he had projected all through the service. ‘Alice behaved very well.’
‘She was feeling so grown up in her miniature version of your gown that I think she was afraid to move.’ Avery’s face relaxed as he smiled. ‘Do you mind not having a proper honeymoon?’
For a moment she could not follow his train of thought. ‘Oh, you mean taking her with us tomorrow when we go to Westerwood? No, of course not.’ Conscious of the groom clinging on behind she lowered her voice. ‘After all, it is hardly as if we would wish to be alone together, is it?’
Avery was silent, occupied for several minutes with pulling off his gloves and smoothing them flat over his knee. ‘We did not get off to a very good beginning with our relationship,’ he said eventually, equally low-voiced.
Was this a flag of truce? Or a trick? ‘No,’ Laura agreed. ‘We did not. However, I keep my word. You may be certain that I will do my utmost to be a good wife and you know I will do everything in my power for Alice.’ He sighed, just on the edge of her hearing. ‘What more do you want?’ she demanded sharply, then caught herself before the groom could hear. Avery did not answer.
* * *
The wedding breakfast went exceptionally well. Laura knew everyone and, with the confidence of maturity, knew how to make a social event a success, even when her brain seemed numb and the house, her new London home, was unfamiliar. The guests retired to the vast drawing room after the meal, champagne continued to flow, the noise level soared. It was, people were saying on all sides, the wedding of the Season. And, of course, it was spiced by the speculation about how Avery Falconer would tame Scandal’s Virgin.
At six o’clock Laura went searching for Alice and found her curled up asleep on a sofa.
‘I’ll carry her up,’ Avery said behind her.
‘But—’
‘Blackie will put her to bed, you can look in later. We cannot both disappear together.’ His expression became sardonic. ‘Not this early, anyway.’