Louise Allen Historical Collection (45 page)

‘Glad to hear it. What do you say to that, eh, Elliott? You’ve done better than that rakehell brother of yours, bringing home a nicely behaved young lady who thinks as she ought.’ The black eyes showed no softening as she pronounced her approval.

‘I will do my best to make Arabella a good husband,’ he replied, bending to kiss his great-aunt on the cheek. She responded by fetching him a smart blow on the arm with her fan, but Bella guessed she was pleased with the gesture. ‘Thank you for looking after her for me. She is pale because she is tired; she has had a trying few days.’

‘Hmm.’ The knowing eyes studied Bella, but Lady Abbotsbury made no comment.
She knows
, Bella thought.
She knows about the baby.

She waved them to the sofa. ‘What is happening tomorrow? No one ever tells me anything.’

‘We will be married in the parish church by licence at three. Daniel Calne will give Arabella away. There will be a dinner afterwards, which I hope you will feel able to attend.’

‘Doesn’t matter if I feel up to it or not,’ the old lady snapped. ‘You need it to be seen that I approve. I’ll write to all my acquaintances, never you fear. Arabella will be accepted despite this hugger-mugger affair. You’ll be making the round of visits to all the family at once, I dare say.’

‘I thought not,’ Elliott said smoothly. ‘Arabella has a lot to learn here and I expect to be much occupied with estate matters.’

‘Will you, indeed?’ The chuckle was wicked. ‘That’s one way of describing it! So we can be expecting a happy event in the new year?’

Bella could feel herself turning scarlet. She had heard about the outspoken language of some of Lady Abbotsbury’s generation, but she had never encountered it before. Obviously the old harridan had second sight. She made a conscious effort not to lay her hand protectively over her belly.

‘So, you’ve found yourself a good girl who knows how to blush, Elliott. Excellent. Most of these modern misses are too brassy to remember how.’

‘As you say, Great-Aunt.’ Elliott got to his feet. There was no sign of a blush on
his
cheeks, Bella noted with resentment. ‘I will leave you now, Arabella. Daniel Calne and the carriage will be here for you at a quarter to three.’

‘Thank you, Elliott.’ She remembered to smile affectionately at him.

‘Well, take her out on the terrace and kiss her goodnight, Elliott!’ Bella regarded her hostess with fascinated alarm. They were true after all, the stories of shockingly lax behaviour in Grandmama’s day. ‘I don’t know what modern young men are coming to. No imagination, no passion. Shoo, the pair of you, do your canoodling, then I can stop being a chaperon and go to my bed.’

‘Arabella?’ Elliott offered his hand. ‘I am reminded that I am shockingly remiss as an eager bridegroom.’

The fascination turned completely to alarm as she strove for something light to say. She could hardly bolt from the room like a scared rabbit. ‘No doubt it was the interview with the bishop this morning,’ she suggested, getting to her feet and allowing him to guide her towards the doors leading out to the garden.

‘Of course, that must have had a sobering effect.’ His eyes were amused, even though his expression remained perfectly serious.

So, he has a sense of humour.
Perhaps the strains of his brother’s death and her arrival had buried it deep, for that was the first sally she had heard him make, although his smiles were warm. It was a relief to find her mild joke had been appreciated. The pleasure of that lasted just long enough to take her out on to the terrace amidst shadowed urns and tubs of clipped evergreens.

She turned, her hand still in his, and found herself close, almost toe to toe with him. In the dim light he looked so very like Rafe that she shivered and took half a step back in alarm.

‘Arabella?’ The deep voice was Elliott’s. This was not Rafe, she told herself, this man was kind and honourable and she must not show any reluctance. Tentatively she lifted her free hand to his lapel. Elliott did not need any further encouragement. He drew her to him, keeping her right hand, still clasped in his, trapped between their bodies as his left hand came round her shoulders. Bella felt the heat of his body down the length of hers and tipped back her head so she could look into his face, so disturbing and familiar in the shadows, yet so subtly different.

‘What is it?’ she asked, when he made no further move.
What is he going to do?

‘I am learning your face.’ Again, that thread of amusement under the serious tone.

‘In the dark?’ Perhaps he thought her too plain to look at for long in daylight.

‘I can see the shape of your face and the gleam of your eyes and the way you tip your head to one side when you are puzzled. I can smell the rosemary you use to rinse your hair.’ The hand that was flat against her back slid up and rested lightly at her nape. One finger moved, stroking. It felt as intimate as a touch on her bare breast and, despite herself, her body responded, heating, shivering as the tension coiled low in her belly and the breath caught in her throat.

As she gave a little gasp of shock that she could respond so, he bent his head and took her parted lips, sliding his tongue between them with a directness that had her starting in alarm. The hand at her nape held her still as his mouth explored hers and the intimate invasion was sensual, not forceful. But there was a demand there, behind the gentleness, that reminded her of his insistence on a true marriage.

Bella made herself kiss back, let her own tongue touch his in a tentative exploration that she knew was untutored, gauche.
He will become exasperated in a minute
, she thought.
This cannot be right.
But Elliott did not seem to find it displeasing, for he held her closer, angling his mouth over hers to caress the delicate moistness until she was lost in the feel and the scent and the disturbing heat of him. It seemed, strangely, that he was concerned for her pleasure as well as his.

When he lifted his head and freed her mouth she found her fingers had curled tight on his lapel and she was standing on tiptoe, the better to give him access to her lips. Blushing, Bella released the crushed coat and stepped back. ‘I think perhaps…’
How could I have done that, taken pleasure from kissing a man I do not love?
she thought, shaken. Was her father right after all, and this was wantonness? Yet she did not want anything more than Elliott’s kiss; everything else terrified her.

‘I think perhaps I had stopped thinking,’ Elliott said. He sounded somewhere between breathless and amused. ‘I had better take you back inside or even my great-aunt’s eccentric views on chaperonage may be outraged.’ They stepped into the light cast from the room across the flags and he looked down at her. ‘I have made you blush again; that will please the old reprobate.’

‘Is she? A reprobate, I mean?’ Bella snatched at the chance to let her pink cheeks cool a little before going back. She felt disorientated, as though she hardly knew herself.

‘Outrageous in her day, I assure you,’ Elliott said with a chuckle. ‘A string of lovers as long as your arm, if my mama was to be believed. She is the product of a more robust age than ours. And she still has an eye for a well-made footman.’

Bella was smiling as they stepped back into the drawing room. The amusement, and resisting the temptation to stare at the formidable old lady, tided her over the awkwardness of their return and Elliott’s respectful kiss on her cheek as he left. Then she was alone with the two women and the knowledge that by this time tomorrow she would be married to a man she scarcely knew who was wedding her only because his rigorous code of honour dictated it.

‘Y
ou must eat!’ Lady Abbotsbury sat enthroned in a vast brocade chair that had been dragged into Bella’s bedchamber. She had been supervising the bride’s preparations all morning and Bella suspected she was having the time of her life. She only wished she felt the same.

‘I cannot.’ Bella stared at the cold meats and fruit that had been laid out on a side table, her stomach revolting. She hoped the old lady did not realise that this was morning sickness as much as nerves and comment as much.

But even without that, her emotions were in such a turmoil that she had hardly slept. And now it was hard to work out which was uppermost in her mind—guilt for placing Elliott in the position where he had to marry her, fear at the thought of the wedding night or the residual confusion over the way his kiss last night had made her feel.

Her response to Rafe had been almost entirely emotional, she could see that now. She had been dazzled, flattered, swept off her feet by the handsome, sophisticated, wonderful man who was powerful enough to take her away, whatever her father said to the matter. She had tumbled headlong into love with Rafe. She had loved with her heart and not her head and she had given herself to him because of that, but somehow she had never been as physically aware of him as she was with Elliott, even when they had lain together.

In Elliott’s masterful kiss she had discerned respect and the desire to please her even as he had demanded and taken. And he had ignited feelings in her that were entirely novel. It was alarming and humiliating and left her in a confusion of guilty sensation. What would he think of her if he realised how one kiss had made her feel? He would think her even more abandoned than he must do now, she decided. Or perhaps he would be pleased—and then very, very disappointed.

‘Have a cup of tea and some bread and butter,’ Miss Dorothy coaxed. ‘We must start getting you dressed by one at the latest and it is twenty to the hour now.’

‘Mr Calne will not come until a quarter to three,’ Bella protested. She had bathed—fortunately without an audience—and then the maid rubbed her all over with some deliciously lavish cream that smelled of roses and came, apparently, from Lady Abbotsbury’s private hoard. Then her hair had been washed and rinsed in rosemary infusion, at which point Elliott’s great-aunt and cousin had arrived to direct the drying and brushing.

The maid had trimmed her nails and buffed them with a kidskin polisher, then her gown and undergarments and shoes had been laid out and inspected minutely while she was ordered to rest with her feet up, attired in one of the extravagant négligés she had bought the day before. Lady Abbotsbury expressed complete, and embarrassing, approval of it.

Now Bella could not imagine what else there was to do except get dressed and that would take half an hour at most. She did not relish the thought of sitting around in all her finery for an age with nothing to do but think.

‘We barely have time,’ the dowager said. ‘Eat! There’s your hair to dress, that will take almost an hour. No macquillage these days, more’s the pity, all you whey-faced modern misses—powder and patch and rouge, that’s what you need. Then your corsets—good and tight, that takes time. A man likes a small waist and a good bosom on display.’

Bella picked up a slice of bread and butter and made herself chew. Her real fear was that this alarming old dame would start lecturing her on the marriage bed. She knew she needed some frank advice, but she also knew she would never dare ask, however much some reassurance would help calm her nerves.

By the time Mr Calne arrived a glance in the mirror told Bella that she was white as a sheet. She stood in the drawing room when he was ushered in, too afraid of crumpling her gown to sit.

‘Well, now!’ Mr Calne stopped on the threshold, eyebrows raised, his hands full of yellow-and-white roses. ‘Elliott has caught himself a beauty, and no mistake.’

Bella blinked at him, then risked a second, longer glance at the overmantel mirror. She stared back at herself, eyes huge, lips deep pink against her pale skin. She was, if not a beauty, prettier than she had ever looked.