She risked another glance at his stern profile. He was uncommonly handsome, she thought. Or perhaps striking was a better word to describe his high cheekbones and sharply curving nose. His lips were chiseled and sensual, though they tended to be set in a rather sullen cast. Thick black eyebrows arched over rain-colored eyes. She noted that his long ebony hair was still pulled neatly back in its queue and that his well-cut clothes still looked immaculate. She knew that the indigo gown, and the rough woolen cloak she wore to ward off the January cold, were dreadfully wrinkled and stained with the dust of days of traveling. Not to mention that strands of her hair were escaping from the unfashionable knot at the back of her neck and straggling about her face.
He looked like an aristocrat. She looked like a tavern wench.
He seemed so far beyond her reach, so distant, and for a moment she almost smiled, pleased that this man had, for some reason known only to himself, wed her. He had not married a lady of his own class; he had chosen to wed her, despite her lowly origins. This knowledge made her feel very special and fortunate. He must feel something for her, she told herself firmly. After all, he had come to her defense in the ordinary, something no man had ever done before. And then he had asked her uncle for her hand in marriage. He must care something for her. He
must
.
Emboldened by the thought, she decided to risk another effort at conversation. “It must not be dreadful far now,” she ventured.
Grey did not so much as glance in her direction. “No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
And that was all. No smile, no effort to be pleasant. He merely kept his pale eyes fixed firmly on the path before him. Jenny stared at his profile, bewildered. Why had he married her if he did not care to speak to her, or even to look at her?
She puzzled over her husband’s eccentric behavior for a long time, but could come up with no explanation for it.
At long last the path began to show signs of constant travel, growing wide enough to accommodate a carriage. No longer could it properly be called a path; it had become a tree-lined avenue. Grey urged his horse, a magnificent dark bay stallion presented to him by Kayne as a wedding present, into a canter, and Jenny awkwardly urged her dappled gray mare to keep up, praying she would not disgrace herself by falling from the sidesaddle she was precariously perched upon.
The forest fell behind them as they swept past cultivated fields, delineated by the stacked split rails known as worm fences, and toward a house that, to Jenny’s unsophisticated eyes, seemed a palace. Compared to the lesser houses of Princess Anne Country, it was truly magnificent. It had been designed in the Georgian style popularized by the governor’s mansion in Williamsburg. With large one-and-a-half-story wings symmetrically placed on either side of the two-and-a-half-story main house, the enormous redbrick edifice was surrounded by lesser outbuildings—a smokehouse, lumber house, kitchen, poultry house, stable, and a quantity of slave quarters farther from the house. From a distance it appeared more like a small village than a house and dependencies. But even if it had stood alone the house would have been striking, fully two hundred feet long and with six chimneys rising high into the air above the dormered slate roof. Woodsmoke curled from the chimneys, permeating the cool air with its welcoming scent.
Beyond the house a formal garden with trimmed boxwood hedges and a lovely, velvet green lawn sloped gently down to the blue water of the James River. Jenny nearly fell off her mare with astonishment as they approached. She was to be mistress here! She, who had never lived in any structure more elegant than a whitewashed clapboard tavern, was to reside in this glorious house! She felt as though she were dreaming. But the magnificent structure was real,
and so was the man who rode beside her, slowing his mount to a trot.
As they rode closer to the mansion, Jenny saw a woman emerging from the pedimented stone doorway. A tall, regal woman who, despite her obvious youth, walked with a limp, leaning heavily on a cane. She waved happily at Grey, who pulled his horse up, dismounted gracefully, and bowed. “Catherine,” he greeted her, and the single word held more affection than Jenny had yet heard from him.
Jenny watched, forgotten and bewildered. Who was this woman her husband treated with such courtesy? He had not mentioned that he lived with any relatives. Surely her husband did not have a mistress installed in his house? And then the young woman looked up, her eyebrows swiftly drawing together in a frown at the sight of Jenny, clinging awkwardly to her saddle.
Catherine stared at the tattered and dust-covered girl for a moment, and then she turned to her brother. “Grey? Have you hired this girl as—a servant?” Her tone, and the disapproving pause that punctuated her sentence, made it clear that she thought Jenny to be a whore rather than a servant.
Jenny realized that she should dismount and be introduced, but her legs were tired and weak from the long ride, and her long skirt was tangled up in the sidesaddle abominably. She glanced pleadingly at her husband as her horse sidestepped nervously, but he made no move to help her dismount, merely raised one eyebrow sardonically and looked at her. The expression on his face, she noted in sudden burgeoning misery, was identical to that on the face of the woman—contempt, scorn, and distaste.
Recognizing at last that her husband was not going to help her, she tried to slip from the horse’s back as Grey had done—smoothly, fluidly, in one easy motion. Unfortunately for what little dignity she possessed, her foot inadvertently dug into the mare’s flank, and the animal, already made skittish by her inexpert riding, jumped sideways. Jenny fell in a graceless heap to the ground, embarrassment
flooding through her as she looked up at the two people who were studying her as though she were a rare and repulsive variety of insect.
Grey smiled mockingly. “Jenny,” he said, and in his voice there was a vicious humor, “this is my sister, Catherine Greyson.” He gestured toward the filthy, bedraggled creature who sat in a cloud of dust, peering up forlornly. “Catherine, meet my wife.”
The woman stared down at Jenny in horrified silence, then turned to confront the tall man beside her. “Good Lord, Grey,” she demanded, “what have you done?”
J
enny felt even more hideously awkward inside the great brick house than she had been sitting in the slowly settling dust. She had not imagined it was possible to feel this embarrassed. In the ordinary she had often been stared at, coarse remarks had been made about her anatomy, rough hands had groped rudely at her flesh, yet she had never been observed with such icy distaste. Perhaps it was because she had belonged in the ordinary. She did not belong in this house, in the midst of such splendor, and it was slowly beginning to dawn on her that she never would.
Grey had caught her arm and propelled her into the house as soon as she regained her feet. She stared at her surroundings with awe as the heavy paneled door swung shut behind her. Sweet-smelling beeswax candles in a brass chandelier of simple, graceful design lit the entrance hall. On either side of the door were stately ionic columns carved of wood, and elaborate dentil molding ornamented the fourteen-foot ceilings. The stairway was set off from the entrance hall by a wide elliptical arch of carved wood, and there was more ornate carving along the side of the stairway. Even the chair rails in the passage were ornamented with a wall-of-Troy molding.
And most surprising of all, the house slaves wore red-and-gold livery in the manner of English servants. Their clothing was by far finer than Jenny’s.
Jenny had never seen such richness. Grey had firmly
steered his gaping bride into the parlor and started to guide her to a chair, but Catherine instantly objected.
“Grey, she’ll dirty my upholstery. For heaven’s sake, put her on the settee. She can’t damage that.”
Jenny had thought herself incapable of emotion, but now she felt so sick with humiliation that she could make no objection as her husband deposited her on the cherry-black leather upholstery of a settee before the fireplace. Shivering in front of the roaring fire, she warmed her numbed fingers and watched the Greysons argue. She felt that, to them, she was of no more value than the settee she sat upon. Perhaps even less.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Catherine,” Grey was saying now in tones of exasperation, “you make it sound as though I have committed a hanging offense. And to think how often you have exhorted me to find a wife.”
“A
suitable
wife!” Catherine reiterated angrily. “Not this—this
creature.
” Jenny recoiled, both from the callous words and the acerbic tone.
“On the contrary, what woman could be more suitable?” Grey inquired sweetly. Upon his entrance to the parlor, he had demanded brandy from one of the slaves. He was now gulping it greedily between sentences. “I don’t want a wife who will expect me to fall in love with her, or even”—he glanced at Jenny and shuddered in fastidious distaste—“to bed her. This chit is perfect. She knows her place. She would never dare to criticize my, er, eccentric habits—”
“Your damned drinking!” Catherine flared. “You can’t bear the thought of a woman trying to reform you.”
“Quite right.” Grey’s manner, now that he had polished off one goblet of brandy and begun another, had transformed with dizzying swiftness from moody to cheerful. “A woman of our class would be horrified at my excesses. To this child, on the other hand, inebriation is the rule rather than the exception. She will not expect me to change, as a woman of breeding might.”
They were speaking of her as though she were invisible, apparently completely unconcerned as to whether their
discussion hurt her or not. Jenny cringed in an agony of embarrassment and humiliation, only to sit bolt upright at Catherine’s next words.
“For heaven’s sake, child, don’t slouch in such a manner. Have some pride. After all, you are a Greyson now—however distasteful that may be to us.” She turned hopefully to her brother as a thought occurred to her. “I don’t suppose an annulment is possible? Surely you did not actually bed the filthy creature?”
“It is possible,” Grey acknowledged, “but I will not obtain one. Marital relations are not necessary, not when there are so many other willing women about.”
“You do not intend to have a son?”
Grey frowned slightly and studied his brandy. “As we discussed before, I would not make a suitable father.”
“Nor do you make a suitable husband!” Catherine snapped.
“I agree.” Grey’s voice had turned glacial. “I was perfectly content to live in a fog of memories and alcohol, but you, my darling sister, persisted in pressuring me to find a wife. I at last decided to oblige you.”
“I had hoped a wife would give you new interest in living.”
“You were wrong.”
Catherine stared at him a few moments longer, engaging in a silent battle of wills, then she bent her head in defeat. Turning to the girl, who sat nervously erect on the settee, she said harshly, “Well, what’s done is done. Come along, child.”
As Jenny rose obediently to her feet, Grey demanded, “What are you going to do?” He was alerted by the defiant expression on his sister’s aristocratic features that she was, very definitely, up to something.
But the face Catherine turned to him was full of innocence. “Why, I’m going to make a lady of her, of course. What is there left for me to do?”
“A lady?” Grey repeated incredulously. His gray eyes swept over his wife’s unadorned, too-small indigo gown,
ludicrously out of place in such luxurious surroundings, and he gave a short contemptuous laugh. “This uneducated, uncultured child? Most likely she’s illiterate. Jenny, can you read?”
Startled to be addressed directly, Jenny stared at him, struck dumb. At last she stammered, “N-No, sir.”
“Simpleminded, unattractive, and filthy,” Grey growled. “And
you
want to transform her into a lady.”
“Damn it, Grey!” Catherine was visibly exasperated. “You brought her home. We have to do
something
with her.”
“Put her to work in the cookhouse,” Grey suggested helpfully. “She claims to be able to cook. You needn’t teach her anything.”
“And what will people say?”
Grey rolled his eyes. “I do not trouble myself about what others think.”
“Because you are in an alcoholic haze most of the time,” Catherine said tartly. “I’m not concerned about their opinions of you, Grey. Heaven knows most of them already believe you to be mad, and quite frankly I’m not certain they aren’t correct.”
Catherine paused for a moment and studied the pitiful young woman her brother had married, still staring at the chamber as if it were a castle filled with extraordinary treasures. The wide-eyed expression on the girl’s face filled her with an unwonted sympathy, which she tried her best to ignore. God knew the girl really did belong in the cookhouse. But she was determined to outmaneuver Grey. He had married this simple, common child merely to spite her, and she was not going to let him get away with it. She would not let him get the upper hand.
“No,” she said at last, “I’m concerned about this poor child. She must be terrified, for she knows full well she doesn’t belong here. The least I can do is make her feel welcome.”
Grey slanted her a look full of suspicion. “Just where were you thinking of installing her?”
“Diana’s chamber would be appropriate,” Catherine
began in her most reasonable voice, but Grey cut her off angrily.
“Diana’s chamber? Are you insane? The
stables
would be more appropriate! Catherine, I absolutely will not permit—”
“You are seriously suggesting that the lady of the house sleep in the stables?”
“Well, why not?” Grey demanded. “Look at her.
Look
at her! Does she not belong in the stables?”
Catherine studied the girl judiciously. “She could certainly do with a bath and some more suitable clothes. For the time being, we can cut down some of Diana’s—”
“Absolutely not!” Grey’s shout of outrage was frenzied, and Jenny shrank back, appalled and intimidated by his fury. The man she had married no longer seemed handsome. His face was dark with the combined effects of anger and alcohol, his eyes glinted silver with rage, and his mouth was compressed into a narrow slash across his face.