The Youngest Dowager: A Regency romance(8)
How could she feel like this? It was improper, humiliating, shameful. Not only had she let him kiss her, but she had kissed him back, like a wanton. Even if she had, however briefly, accepted his embrace, she should never have answered it. No lady should ever allow herself to show passion in any form. Two years of marriage had reinforced that lesson well. How could she have felt so safe in his arms? How could kisses as gentle as those lead, as she knew they did, to the reality of the marriage bed?
Marissa fell into bed, dragged the covers tight around her ears as if to block out her own tumultuous thoughts. How could she face him tomorrow?
But face him she had to. With the house full of guests, Marissa made a special effort to be early at the breakfast table, but even so the new Earl was before her, sitting in a patch of the weak sunshine that streamed in through the parlour windows. Whiting removed a plate bearing the remnants of a large beefsteak and placed a basket of fresh rolls in front of his lordship.
‘My lady. Good morning.’ Whiting moved to pull out Marissa’s chair as the Earl rose to his feet and waited courteously for her to take her place at the oval table.
Marissa arranged her black skirts into order, then made herself sit with perfect deportment, quite still, head up, back straight. As if I am carved in marble.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ she remarked calmly. ‘I am sure Whiting has been looking after you. No, Whiting, I will just take tea.’
‘Chocolate will be more sustaining,’ Whiting coaxed. ‘And a sweet roll, my lady. It is a bitterly cold morning, ma’am.’
‘Very well. I will take a roll. But no chocolate, Whiting.’ The thought of the rich liquid made her stomach roil. She could crumble a roll without the butler noticing she was scarcely eating a morsel. She knew perfectly well that he would report exactly what she had eaten to Mrs Whiting, his wife, the housekeeper, who would worry.
Across the table the Earl buttered a roll, although she could sense he was watching her. Would he feel he had to say something about last night? She prayed he would not.
‘My lord…’
‘Will you not call me by my given name?’ he asked abruptly. There was a sharp indrawn breath from Whiting who was standing immobile by the sideboard. ‘After all, we are related, if only by marriage, and I am not used to this formality.’ She bit her lip and he added, with a charming smile, ‘Won’t you take pity on a stranger in a foreign land?’
Marissa doubted if his lordship was ever out of countenance, but once again found herself yielding to the charm of that smile. ‘Very well then, Cousin Marcus.’
The door opened as she spoke and Whiting busied himself with seating Mr Hope and some of the less elderly second cousins who had decided against taking breakfast in their bedchambers.
Marcus stood up and bowed. ‘If you will excuse me, Cousin, gentlemen, I have an appointment with the steward.’
Marissa managed to maintain a flow of polite small talk for a few minutes, before excusing herself to go and talk to the housekeeper. She should ring for her, she knew, but the thought of sitting passively in her morning room was suddenly intolerable. As she made her way towards the green baize door which separated the servants’ quarters from the main house she reflected that she had never been so glad to see Mr Hope as when he had come into the breakfast parlour just then.
How assured Marcus had been. He seemed not to have the slightest self-consciousness about his behaviour last night. And as for asking her to call him by his given name… She should never have agreed so readily, but how could she have snubbed him in front of Whiting?
Marissa’s heels clicked on the stone floor as her pace increased to match her growing irritation with both herself and Marcus. That smile, the glint of white teeth in his tanned face, the slight exotic accent. Oh, yes, he was charming all right, and he used that charm very easily, too easily. Doubtless young women fell into his arms with such facility that what had happened last night was nothing remarkable to him.
She had worked herself up into such a state of righteous indignation that when she rounded a corner and found herself face to face with the object of it she made no attempt to hide her frown.
‘Cousin Marissa. As you can see, I have become lost looking for the estate office.’ His smile was apologetic, inviting her to laugh at his inability to navigate the big house.
‘If you retrace your steps to the first door into the courtyard, cross the courtyard itself, then it is the green door in front of you,’ she directed briskly. Finding herself alone with him again was embarrassing and she was aware of a tightening knot of anger in her chest, though whether at herself or him she had no idea.
‘Cousin, is something wrong?’ Marcus moved closer, his expression puzzled.
‘You can ask me that after last night?’ she demanded. She could feel the colour rising in her cheeks, which was mortifying.
‘I had thought perhaps I had been forgiven after you agreed to call me cousin this morning,’ he began.
‘Oh, forgive me, my lord, if I have misled you. I foolishly believed it would be better not to discuss our encounter in front of Whiting. I should, of course, have regaled him with the entire episode. As it is, you put me in a position where I have scandalised him by agreeing to a form of address which can only be regarded as quite inappropriately informal. But doubtless in the West Indies you do things differently, so we must all learn to make allowances for the new Earl.’