The Proper Wife Page 3

  Was the price of salvaging his estate to be a life of misery, wedded to such a one?

  No, he decided, rising to refill his glass. He could endure marrying a woman he did not love, but he must marry one he could respect. If, as Jeffers commented, such a woman was likely to be as scarce among the aristocracy as accurate cannon shots in battle, he must look elsewhere.

  Perhaps among the middle class? A faint interest stirred. Two of his men, Master Sergeant Trapper and Lieutenant Fitzwilliams, both of yeoman stock, had brought their wives to the Peninsula, and finer, more competent, courageous women of character he’d never meet. Why not choose such a woman for his wife?

  Of course, a simple solicitor’s daughter wouldn’t do, but perhaps among the merchant class there might be some captain of industry wishful of securing the social advancement of his daughter through marriage into the gentry. A man who had spent years, as he had, in hard and bitter enterprise and emerged by his own exertions with wealth and power, as a soldier skilled in battle rises through the ranks. Such a man’s daughter surely would prize her husband’s character higher than his bank balance, lack the self-centered haughtiness of an aristocratic beauty, and possess an ingrained distaste for idleness, profligacy and waste. She might not be too proud or vain to set her own hand to mending and cleaning as she worked beside her husband to restore a grand and ancient estate.

  By Heaven, he decided, he would look for just such a bride, and no other.

  The solution settled in his mind with a solid, convincing ring, like the sense of rightness he’d always felt after the best order of battle had been determined. His spirits rising for the first time since he’d made port at Dover, he held his glass high. “To a sensible middle-class bride,” he saluted and downed the rest of the wine.

  A light rapping sounded and he turned toward the door. Probably Alex, come by to introduce him at his Club, as Sinjin had never stayed in London long enough to join one. He’d not have the blunt for it now, certainly. Still, Ponsonby, Wetherford and some of his other fellow-officers had already returned from Paris. It would be good to see old comrades again.

  “Come in, Alex,” he called. “I’ll pour you a round.”

  Hands busy with decanter and glass, he glanced up to greet his guest. Surprise jolted the smile from his lips, carried away his words of welcome on an exhale of breath.

  Poised on the threshold, smiling faintly, stood Nicholas Stanhope, Marquess of Englemere. Sarah’s husband.

  After a few startled seconds, Sinjin pulled his wits together. “Englemere, this is an unexpected—” he couldn’t get his lips to form the word “pleasure” and opted for “visit” instead. “Please, come in. I’m not settled yet, but I can offer wine.” He motioned the marquess to a chair.

  “Thank you.” Englemere sat and took the proffered glass. “I learned through my contacts at Horse Guards that the Tenth was due back. Then Glendenning spotted you on the street this morning, so I knew you’d arrived.”

  “He must have a sharp eye. And with the help of those same contacts, you ascertained my address?” Sinjin asked, taken aback at the swiftness of Englemere’s action—and the accuracy of his sources. “Rather good intelligence-gathering on your part.”

  “As you once told me, ’tis a useful skill. I see you’ve sold out. Are congratulations in order?”

  Sinjin smiled wryly. “I’m not sure yet. The change is still too new.”

  The Marquess paused to take a sip, and Sinjin knew they were both remembering another call in another room over three years ago. “Kind of you to welcome me home so speedily, but I assume you had some other purpose in mind?”

  His guest smiled back. “Ever one to proceed directly to the point. You may recall, when last we had private chat, you indicated the business we discussed would, in your estimation, remain ‘pending’ until after Bonaparte was vanquished.”

  Since the “business” they’d discussed was Sinjin running off with Englemere’s wife, he knew exactly what the marquess wanted to settle.

  When she’d written to him of her predicament, Sinjin had bent every effort to obtain leave to return from the Peninsula and rescue Sarah from the loveless marriage her family’s desperate financial condition was forcing upon her. Only to find he’d arrived too late. The anguish of that discovery had never left him.

  Nonetheless, the matter was well past mending now. He should inform Englemere of his tentative plans to wed an heiress, to get on with the duty of recovering his estate. But though he had previously determined, with a wrenching pain his heart would carry forever, that Sarah had come to love the man circumstance compelled her to marry, for some perverse reason he couldn’t seem to make himself assure Englemere he no longer had any designs on her. And sever the last tenuous link to the days when her affection had been his alone.

  Instead, he took a long, slow sip of wine before replying, “Your recollections are quite good.”

  “I assure you,” Englemere said, the smile fading from his lips and his eyes like flint, “every word was indelibly burned into my brain.”

  “And mine.”

  “So you will understand that I ask once again what your intentions are concerning my wife. She is well, by the way, though I’m sure you know that.”

  “Yes. I received her last letter just a few weeks ago,” Sinjin couldn’t help adding that baiting comment.

  “I thought it best to allow the correspondence. You are, after all, her oldest friend.” Englemere added subtle emphasis to the word.

  “You think she’d not have written had you not ‘permitted’ it?”

  “Certainly not. Her strong sense of duty, you know. But it would have…saddened her to break off all contact, and I didn’t wish that. I assure you, I place my wife’s well-being above all things.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And so I felt it might be wise for me to see you before Sarah knows you’ve returned. And to ascertain your…plans.”

  Once again, Englemere gave him an opening, and once again, he couldn’t take it. “That depends on Sarah.”

  The marquess raised frosty green eyes to stare straight into his. “Once you claimed to love her, to want to make her happy.”

  “I’ve always loved her.”

  Englemere’s expression softened. “She is a matchless treasure. I admit, I understand your feelings better now than I did three years ago. To have won Sarah’s love, and then been forced to give her up, would be a nearly impossible task. But circumstances did require it, and we must all move beyond that. She is happy, Sandiford. I intend to see she stays that way, with no…disturbances to distress her. She’s…in a delicate condition again.”

  The long-simmering rage he’d never quite mastered boiled up, choking off reply, even had there been one he could give. Rage at two rakehell fathers and a beautiful, selfish mother whose carping at him to do his duty and wed an heiress had driven him into the Army, taken him so far away he’d not managed to return in time to prevent Sarah marrying another man. Rage at Englemere’s half-pitying look that said she now loved him, and finally, rage at the unspeakable image of another man, this man, holding her, touching her, making love to her.

  Englemere, who with Sarah and her children now had everything he’d ever wanted. He clenched his fists at his sides and took a deep breath, trying to stifle the furious desire to pummel that handsome face.

  The marquess’s voice, when he spoke, held sympathy rather than triumph. “You’re welcome to try and plant me a facer, though you wouldn’t succeed. No doubt I’d feel the same, did I stand in your boots.”

  Another echo from the past—a deliberate one, he felt sure. And their positions were reversed. Englemere now had law, family—and Sarah’s love on his side.

  “You do love her?” was all he could think to ask.

  “Absolutely. And since, by your reaction, I judge you still care, I invite you to call. See for yourself that she is content and cherished. If you truly desire only her happiness, it will set any concerns on that score t
o rest. And it would please her if we could be on friendly terms.”

  Sinjin made a choking sound, and Englemere nodded. “Perhaps too much to ask. Still, all I’ve heard of you from Sarah and from others tells me you are a gentleman of honor. I made this call, and issue my invitation, with that understanding.” Once again his face sobered and he looked Sinjin in the eye with deadly intent. “I promise you this, however. Regardless of your conclusions on the matter, I will protect what is mine.”

  As a man of honor, he ought to now give Englemere the assurance he was looking for—that Sinjin accepted their marriage and relinquished his claim to Sarah. But between the tightness in his chest and the constriction in his throat, he couldn’t get the words out.

  Englemere drained his glass and put it on the side table. “Thank you for the wine. Sarah usually receives in the afternoon. She’ll soon learn from the on-dits that the Tenth has returned, so I’ll expect to see you.”

  Sinjin stood as his visitor rose, then walked him to the door. “Englemere.”

  The marquess extended a hand and, reluctantly, Sinjin shook it. “Welcome back to England, Colonel.”

  Much as he thought he’d steeled himself to it, as he stood long moments by his door after Englemere departed, trying to still the trembling in his hands and subdue the fury churning in his gut, Sinjin finally had to admit that though he’d swallowed the concept of Sarah married, he’d not been able to countenance the idea of her possessed by another man, carrying his child. Not been able to accept that the girl who threw herself in his arms and covered his face with kisses in a barn at midnight before his departure for the Army all those years ago, vowing to love him forever and never marry another, had eventually turned to Englemere.

  As she’d been compelled to. As she should have. He should thank Heaven the man who’d been near enough to rescue her was as fine as the marquess.

  He went to the sideboard and poured himself another glass with unsteady hands, then wandered to the window to look out over the gray London sky.

  Six years. Since then he’d endured hunger and thirst, the burning heat of a Peninsular summer and the frigid winds of a Pyranees winter. He’d suffered the thrill and terror of battle, the agony of being wounded and the anguish of friends dying beside him. It was time, past time, to put an end to a dream born in the lazy days of an English summer long since past.

  But first, he would see her again.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning Sinjin dressed with care in a new jacket of deep azure over a cream figured waistcoat and buff breeches. Despite the blue of the coat, the figure reflected in the glass as his fingers worked the unfamiliar stiffness of the starched cravat still seemed a stranger. He felt another sting of longing for his old dolman with its panels of braid.

  He’d never paid much heed to his looks, but now he paused to inspect the face staring back at him. Skin still bronzed a shade darker than his English counterparts, though not so tanned as it had been after months under the strong Peninsular sun. The scar over his right eye, remnant of a saber slash at Corunna, was fainter now, matching the fine web of lines at the corners, the lips thinner and more compressed under a sharper nose. Altogether a harsher face than three years ago.

  Would Sarah find in it any echo of the boy she’d once loved?

  He was about to find out. Though Englemere had told him she received in the afternoons, he did not intend to risk meeting her again after three long years in a drawing room full of visitors. He would go this morning, early and unannounced if he could prevail upon Glendenning to permit it. Hopefully before she learned of his return to England, before she could prepare her response. He wanted to see the unrehearsed reaction on her face and judge for himself if she was, as Englemere claimed, content. And though it was probably selfishly unfair to test her thus, he craved to know whether the aching burden of love he bore her was now entirely unrequited.

  As it happened, his call being so unfashionably early he was lucky enough to catch Glendenning gone from his post. The young footman who admitted him was much easier to manage, and with his Colonel’s commanding manner he swiftly overrode any protest.

  Lady Englemere was working in the back parlor, the footman reluctantly revealed. As the servant ushered him down the hallway, memories rushed back of the last time he’d been in this house.

  She’d been abed, recovering from injuries suffered at the hands of that now deceased blackguard Findlay. Her gray eyes shadowed, her pale blond hair a mass of braid-bent ripples about her shoulders, she’d taken his hand and kissed it, thanking him for coming to her rescue. He’d clutched her slender fingers, his eyes recording every feature of her face, knowing with the vicissitudes of battles to come it might be the last time he ever saw her.

  Close his eyes and he could see her visage still, as he had on countless nights lying in a cot in his tent, bedded down around a campfire, or shivering under sodden blankets on the soaking ground. In that twilight time between waking and sleep, when years and distance and the harsh realities of her marriage and his poverty dissolved, for a few magic moments she was again his own true love.

  A beautiful dream that had sustained him through lonely, dangerous years. A dream he had come today to confront, most probably to bury forever.

  The footman halted before a paneled door. “Are you sure, my lord—”

  “Yes. That will be all, thank you.” At his gesture of dismissal, the boy slowly retreated down the hallway. Sinjin’s lip quirked as he heard the footsteps stop. The lad would probably creep back to listen outside the door and send the first passing housemaid to fetch Glendenning. The staff seemed properly protective of their mistress.

  Despite his firm intent, his footstep faltered on the threshold. Taking a deep breath, he unlatched the door.

  As he would expect in Sarah’s well-run household, it opened soundlessly on oiled hinges. Behind a desk across the room, framed by windows overlooking a garden beyond, Sarah sat, pen in hand, head bent over an account book.

  For a timeless moment he stood spellbound. Hair pinned up in her usual coronet of braids under a small lace cap, skin pale but glowing with health, in her sea-green morning gown she looked beautifully serene as she marked an entry in a firm hand. And then glanced up.

  Her glorious gold-flecked silver eyes widened, the quill dropped from her fingers and her lips opened in a gasp of surprise. “Sinjin?”

  “Hullo, Sarah.”

  Then he saw it, a flash of gladness that lit up those starry eyes, and his splintered heart exulted. “Sinjin, how wonderful to see you!”

  Her face brightening in a luminescent smile, she jumped up and came toward him, arms extended. Halfway across the room, she remembered herself and halted, a delicate blush creeping to her cheeks as she lowered her arms and clasped them behind her.

  “You rogue, sneaking up on me like that! I shall have to read Glendenning a royal scold!”

  So poignantly strong was the desire to take her in his arms, he stumbled over his reply. “D-don’t blame him. I more or less crept in. I wanted to catch a glimpse of you unawares. And how lovely it was.”

  “You’re looking fine as fivepence yourself, despite half-scaring me to death! And out of the Army at last. How good it is to have you back.”

  Smiling still, she held out both hands. He caught them, brought them to his lips, closing his eyes to savor her nearness. Ah, the satin touch of her, that sweet lingering scent of lavender.

  The piping sound of a young voice shocked his eyes open. “Mama! Aubrey soldier gone. Mama have?”

  Sarah pulled away to intercept the running figure of a small boy. Facing him toward Sinjin, she said, “Aubrey, make your bow to Mama and Papa’s dear friend, Lord Sandiford. He’s just back from being a soldier.”

  The child bobbed a bow, then inspected him up and down with curious green eyes. Englemere’s eyes. “Soldier?” the child said doubtfully.

  Though he knew she’d borne a child, still he scarcely heard Sarah’s soft explanation t
o the boy whose cheek she stroked. A wave of emotion engulfed him as he stared at Sarah’s son, the child that might have been, should have been his. Their son.

  He must have looked as stricken as he felt, for after a glance at his face, Sarah instructed the child to search under the desk for the missing soldier, then turned to him.

  “I wrote you of Aubrey’s birth. You did get the letter?” she asked as she motioned him to a chair.

  “Y-yes. Yes, I knew. Somehow, seeing him…is different.” He swallowed. “Harder.” Beyond all expectation harder, he was finding, to witness the demise of a dream than to merely contemplate its ending.

  Her gentle voice mirrored a sympathetic sadness. “Sinjin, everything is different now.”

  “I know that too,” he replied, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “But an end is also a beginning. When life changes, it can bring undreamed-of blessings. Like children. Until you experience it yourself, you cannot fully imagine the joys of a family.”

  The bitterness cut deeper, striking the flint of anger. “No, doubtless I cannot. Nor do I ever expect to.”

  Her eyes flashed with an answering ire. “Do you think yourself the only one ever to have lost his heart’s desire? Recall, sir, that you were the one to ride away! Whilst those you left behind had to deal as best they could with the circumstances life dealt them. I make you no apologies for that! Indeed, I thought we’d settled this long since.”

  Paradoxically, her anger snuffed out his. “So we did. Still, understanding the reasons for it makes seeing you—him—now no less…difficult.”