DARE THE WILD WIND (35 page)

Brenna was torn between relief and dismay at his admission that Theodora delighted in causing grief. 

"Cold comfort when I may find myself spending more time in her company than yours." 

He paused in the act of pouring a glass of wine to look up at her.  "What gives you that notion?"

Your grandmother
.  She bit back her reply, running a finger over the silky glaze of a Chinese porcelain vase.  "You've said yourself you spend too little time at Wellingbroke." 

Drake straightened and took a swallow of the claret.  "Left to my own devices, I'd spend the great part of the year here.  But that isn't possible.  And I'd think last night would indicate I'll want you in any bed I occupy for the foreseeable future."

His mouth twitched in a smile he clearly expected her to share.  But his last words rang ominously in her ears.  For the present, as long as their first passion lasted, he would keep her by his side.  But no longer.  Then she almost laughed at her reaction.  Had marriage made a clinging coward of her?  As early as yesterday, she would have been only too glad to see Drake gone
    wherever his business or the Crown's might take him. 

"As long as we don't find Theodora in it."      

Drake laughed aloud.  "I can promise you that."  He turned to pour her a glass of claret.  "Theodora is firmly ensconced in the dower house, and there she'll stay.  I pay very little heed to my grandmother.  She ruled my father with an iron hand, but she's had very little success with me."

It heartened Brenna to hear Drake wasn't Theodora's puppet.  But the old countess had been very sure of her power at Welling
broke.  She took the diamond engraved goblet he handed her.  As she lifted it to her lips, he toasted her with his own. 

"As yet you haven't asked me where I've been this morning."

Some of her relief faded.  Did he expect her to play a fool's game with him?  "My lord, I'm your wife, not your inquisitor."

"And too prickly by half," he told her.  "You make it difficult to surprise you."  Drake shook his head at the startled look she shot him.  "For once, trust me to indulge you."      

He took her by the hand.  "What I have to show you is outside.  I'd expected delivery before we arrived at Wellingbroke, but circumstances conspired against it.  There was nothing for it this morning but to expedite matters myself."

The note of mischief in his voice dissolved her suspicion.  "Where are you taking me?" she asked. 

He laughed at the change in her.  "Not to the nearest haymow, though the idea has merit."

He strode down the wide barrel
vaulted hall to the great entryway to the house, refusing to reveal any more.  Ediston signaled to a pair of footmen, and the massive doors swung open.  They stepped out onto the pillared portico, and Brenna stared down the curving steps, her questions abruptly silenced. 

"Your wedding gift," Drake said quietly.

Brenna looked up at him
mutely.  Then she whirled to gaze back down the steps at the animal held by a groom at their foot.  It was a blood bay with the height and conformation of a hunter, a horse with the deep chest and powerful hindquarters bred long ago in the Barbary desert, and a small white blaze on its fine  sculpted head, next to her beloved Gypsy, the most beautiful creature on four legs she had ever seen. 

   *****

Drake and Brenna spent the next few weeks in Surrey riding over the estate, dining in lonely splendor, and going very early to bed, even when they had just left it to partake of an intimate supper. 

The recollection of their lovemaking daunted Brenna when they sat at opposite ends of the long table in Wellingbroke's dining hall.  Outside their bedchamber, Drake's manner was casual and occasionally as mocking as it had been before their wedding.  Apart from the courtesy he paid her when they were in the presence of his servants, she might have been a paramour spirited to
Surrey for a country tryst. 

But she couldn't fault his kindness when it came to the gift of Dancer.  The bay mare had a gait as smooth as cream, and she could take a six
foot fence beside Drake's stallion Ares.  And she was sweet natured and willing in the bargain.  Dancer would never replace Gypsy in Brenna's heart, but Drake had dissolved a barrier between them with his gift of the thoroughbred bay. 

Though he never raised the subject of that horrifying after
noon at Lochmarnoch, he had understood how Malcolm's savage and senseless act had devastated her.  She felt small and petty to distrust him, to refuse to warm to him anywhere but in their bed.  Drake had dealt fairly, even generously, with her.  Maddening as he could be, often as they had clashed, he understood her well enough to know his bridal gift would mean more than silks or jewels, more than the title he had bestowed on her with his name.

But guilt twisted a tight band around her heart when she thought of
Cam.  How could she tremble in such wild ecstasy in Drake's arms?  She had loved Cam with her whole soul.  And now she betrayed his memory with her response to Drake, to the sensation that she had been released from the very bonds of earth in his bed.

But a painful voice somewhere inside her whispered she had to bury her dreams and memories of
Cam, to face the truth that he was dead.  If it was chiefly carnal pleasure that united them, Drake treated her better than many another husband might, and Brenna was surprised to find he could be good company in spite of his provoking and sardonic sense of humor.

Though Drake was as good as his word about Theodora, Brenna couldn't entirely avoid her.  When at last etiquette dictated they invite his grandmother to dine with them in their first fortnight at Wellingbroke, Theodora had declined. 

But today, as they returned from their afternoon gallop across the downs, they encountered Theodora's coach.  Brenna reined in Dancer, patting the mare on the neck, hopeful a brief hello would serve before they could turn their horses back toward the stables.

"Have you been out calling?" Drake asked, though the dowager countess rarely stirred from her own hearth.  She preferred to hold court for neighboring gentry anxious to keep her favor, and dispense it sparingly despite their efforts to flatter her.

"I should think you can see I intended to pay you a visit," Theodora said testily.  A footman leaped down from the back of the coach to open her door, and she waved him away from the window.  "What I have to say can be said well enough here."

"You wound  me, Grandmother," Drake bantered in a tone of regret.  "Does the wine in our cellars taste of vinegar, or is it my cook?"

She frowned impatiently at him.  "How often do I have to tell you to have done with your endless jokes?"  Her gaze flicked briefly and coldly to Brenna, but she didn't acknowledge her presence with a greeting.  "Lady Bennington has enlisted me as a bearer of messages, since you choose to ignore the note she sent.

"Anne Bennington is giving a harvest ball, as much in honor of your marriage as the season.  She's told everyone in the county you'll make your first public appearance with your bride at her ball.  Imagine how mortified I was to hear you've refused to so mu
ch as reply to her invitation."

Drake shrugged at being taken to task.  "I seem to recall you calling Lady Bennington a climber and an odious pretentious bore.  Should we welcome being shown off like prize pigs at a fair?"

"You're the leading peer in the district," Theodora said.  "The local squires look up to you.  At the least, you have an obligation to show your face to them with your new wife."

"
Noblesse oblige
, Grandmother?" Drake asked.  "Am I back in the schoolroom at your knee?"

"At times," Theodora said sharply, "it's a great pity you're not.  You came into your title far too young, and you think much too highly of your own judgment." 

On that point, Brenna could agree.  Drake's father had died when he was seventeen.  He had take
n on the burdens and the power of an Earl at an early age, and that in some measure could account for an assurance that bordered on arrogance. 

"As opposed to yours?"  Drake's tone was mocking, and Brenna could see his patience was wearing thin.

"You listen to no one," the old countess snapped back, "and one day you'll pay dearly for it."  She shot a scathing glance at Brenna.  "Am I to think you're ash
amed to introduce your bride?"

Brenna saw Drake's hands tighten on Ares' reins, and the big gray shied under him.  Quickly, he brought his horse under control, but when he spoke, his face was dark with anger.

"Madame, if you think to manipulate me with accusati
ons, you tread very shaky ground."    

Brenna had seen his temper explode only once.  He had laid hands on her that ill
  fated afternoon on the moor, and Theodora was provoking enough to shake.  She couldn't think Drake would touch a hair on Theodora's head, but he could easily curtail the dowager countess's freedom if he couldn't curb her tongue. 

"Lady Seton, you make too much of a harvest ball," she broke in, and turned back to Drake.  "If you don't object to pres
enting me to the local gentry, my lord, I see no reason not to accept Lady Bennington's invitation."

                                                                                    *****

Langthorpe Manor loomed ahead of them, a square rose brick house with two stories of mullioned windows, its smooth facade broken only by a columned porte cochere that welcomed visitors alighting onto its circular drive. 

Ashamed to fall victim to Theodora's ploy, Brenna couldn't quite dismiss the seed of doubt the old countess had planted with her question.  Had Drake been uneasy at the reception his country neighbors might give her at the ball?  In
London, with Eleanore Wittworth as her sponsor, no one had dared insult her to her face.  But here in Surrey, whatever respect the local landholders owed Drake, their wives could cut her in private.  Still, better to face it now than to let them think she shrank from meeting them.

Above the
décolleté
neckline of her silver satin gown, the Seton emeralds blazed at Brenna's throat.  The gown had been stitched for her trousseau, and the necklace had been handed down from the wife of the first Stratford earl. 

When Drake had fastened it at the nape of her neck, Brenna had been acutely aware that once the emeralds had adorned Theodora's firm young throat.  On the death of Drake's grandfather, the dowager countess had not only been evicted from her home of thirty years, but stripped of the jewels she had worn as the consort of the second earl.  So many losses in one stroke.  Had relinquishing so much left her determined to rule what she could no longer have? 

"It's been too many years since this has been worn," Drake said.  "It becomes you."  More than approval glinted in his eyes at the creamy swell of her breasts below the ornately
  set emeralds.

"The coach is waiting outside," Brenna reminded him, nervous in spite of herself at facing the assembly at Langthorpe Manor. 

"And I have to share you at last?" he asked, a wry twitch of humor pulling the corner of his mouth.

"Not for any longer than necessary," Brenna had told him with a frankness that made him laugh.

"Then I'll forgive your sudden desire for the company of rustic squires and their lad
ies."

Brenna's need to confront the rumors about her was unspoken between them.  Wearing the emeralds should have given her added confidence.  Instead she felt like an imposter as Drake handed her down from their coach
, decked in the finery of a rank she had never aspired to, braced to brave the curious and malicious stares of an inbred and hostile society she never expected to enter.     

Lady Bennington surged from the receiving line, a pouter pigeon of a woman tightly laced into a beruffled fuchia and indigo gown awash in bows and rosettes and yards of ruching.

"Lord and Lady Seton," she exclaimed.  "What a rare
honor!  Everyone so feared you meant to stay forever in seclusion."

"Only long enough to recover from the exertions of a
London wedding," Drake said dryly.

Lady Bennington turned to Brenna.  "And how do you find our
Surrey countryside, Lady Seton?"

Brenna felt as if Lady Bennington's lorgnette magnified her every pore.  The noisy buzz of voices in the ballroom hushed as the other guests attempted to eavesdrop on their conversation.

"
Surrey is lovely, but a little tame after the Highlands."

Lady Bennington's brows arched in her round face.  "Ah, of course, I'd forgotten.  You're lately from
Scotland."  She wet her lips, at a loss as to how to skirt the subject of the Rising.  "And quite the horsewoman.  If I hear aright, you gallop over the downs with the Earl every day."

"Thanks to my husband's gift," Brenna said, regaining some of her resolve to be gracious.  "A beautiful blood bay."

Muffled reaction rippled along the receiving line.  "Rumor has it you mean to ride to the hunt, Lady Seton."