“Osgood has excellent taste,” Priscilla said. “And he can indulge his taste because Marchmont never cares what anything costs and refuses to be bothered with choosing gifts. He refuses to be bothered with anything that looks like a decision or a responsibility. All the world is agog that he chose your ring himself.”
Zoe had simply assumed he’d chosen it. She hadn’t realized how significant this was. Oh, this made it worse. He was making her feel special. She’d never be able to steel her heart against him, and he’d break it.
“There’s no making him out, to be sure,” said Priscilla, “but I’m very glad for you, indeed.”
She left minutes later.
When the door had closed and her sister’s footsteps had faded away, Zoe looked down at the diamond on her finger, the immense center stone surrounded by smaller ones, like a queen surrounded by her attendants.
She told herself not to be an idiot. She told herself not to be a sentimental fool. But how could she help it? He’d taken care about her ring, and he’d truly wanted her to like it—and that was too sweet of him, more sweetness than she could bear.
Her chest heaved and a sob escaped her. Then another. And another.
She put her face in her hands and wept.
The night before the wedding, Zoe held a little party in her bedroom.
The guests were her sisters.
“A party in your bedroom?” had been the first reaction. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”
She had waved her great diamond ring in their faces, and the fussing subsided.
They had all married well. They all owned heaps of fine jewelry. Zoe’s engagement ring, however, had a magical effect upon all of her sisters, not only Priscilla, the least insane of them all.
Zoe had ordered little sandwiches and delicate pastries and tea and lemonade and champagne.
When they’d supped and drunk and gossiped and offered the usual marital advice, she had Jarvis bring out the treasures Karim had showered upon his second so-called wife and favorite toy.
Rubies and garnets, sapphires and emeralds, diamonds and pearls and topaz of every color. Necklaces and bracelets and rings.
She gave them all away to her sisters, all but a few pieces she’d reserved for Jarvis.
They were shocked into silence.
Then, finally, Priscilla spoke up. “You said you’d share, I remember, Zoe, but all of it? Are you quite, quite sure?”
“That was my old life,” Zoe said. “I won’t take it with me into my new life.”
In the end, in spite of what Zoe’s sisters had claimed about hole-in-corner affairs, the wedding turned out to be large and complicated.
Once they’d invited all of Zoe’s siblings and their spouses, they’d had to invite Marchmont’s aunts and uncles and cousins. And then, since Adderwood must stand at his side, the other fellows must be asked, too. There were royals, too, who must come. Even leaving out the respective nieces and nephews, the large drawing room of Lexham House became suffocatingly crowded.
Or so it seemed to Marchmont.
At last the clergyman appeared, and Zoe entered the room soon thereafter, wearing a shimmering silvery confection that made Adderwood say in an undertone, “Oh, this is deuced unfair. Some fellows get all the luck. She looks like an angel.”
Zoe Octavia was not an angel, not by a long stretch, but at this moment she looked purely innocent. At this moment it seemed to Marchmont that she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. As she joined him before the clergyman, he felt a surge of pride, which was not at all surprising, and a quick, deep stab to the heart, which was.
The ceremony began. No one speaking up when the time came to declare “any just cause, why they may not be lawfully joined together,” and neither of them announcing any impediments, it continued to the end, through each promise and “I will,” and through her father’s giving her to be married, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears, while his wife sobbed openly. On it went through Marchmont’s placing the wedding ring on Zoe’s finger and wedding her and worshipping her with his body—the easiest of promises to make—and on through psalms and the prayer for fruitfulness and more prayers and advice from St. Paul.
It seemed to him that he’d spent a lifetime marrying Zoe, but at last the Solemnization of Matrimony came to an end.
At last she was the Duchess of Marchmont—his Duchess of Marchmont. His wife.
He had a wife.
He was responsible for her. He’d sworn it before heaven and before witnesses.
…to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other…
Forsaking all other.
It dawned on him, then, what he’d done.
He’d given his word.
There was no turning back, no undoing.
His life was going to change, like it or not.
Thirteen
Some hours later
Zoe remembered the wedding ceremony vividly. Events thereafter were not so clear. A great many guests. Speeches and introductions. Food and more talk. A sea of people to wade through.
She hadn’t slept soundly the night before, and by the time it was all over, and she and he left Lexham House, weariness overcame her. She fell asleep in the carriage during the short drive to Marchmont House and didn’t wake up until the vehicle stopped. She’d started out on the seat opposite Marchmont, but when she woke she was sharing his side of the carriage. He had his arm around her.
When she looked up at him, he laughed. “Am I that boring?”
“Getting married is hard work,” she said.
“Your labors aren’t quite done,” he said. “Now you’ve got to meet the servants. Brace yourself. The good news is, it will soon be over.”
He was right. It didn’t take long.
They found all the staff awaiting them in the gleaming entrance hall. Harrison made a formal welcoming speech. The duke introduced his secretary, Osgood, and Harrison introduced the upper servants. And that was all.
The formalities completed, the duke took Zoe by the hand and whisked her up the carpeted stairs.
“That’s the lot,” he said. He looked down over the iron railing, where below, the numbers of servants dwindled. They marched out of the entrance hall, a small army in strict order of rank. “I didn’t realize there were so many. I don’t recall ever seeing them before in that way, all at once and in one place.”
There were a great many, yet their numbers didn’t daunt Zoe. In Cairo she’d lived among hordes of slaves and servants, and before long she knew each and every one.
This day she studied the faces of Marchmont’s staff, because she meant to know all of them, too. She’d noticed that the footman who’d attended her the first time she’d been here was absent.
Not surprising. In Yusri Pasha’s palace, if the chief eunuch was reprimanded or embarrassed, he usually executed any witnesses to his discomfiture.
“It was gently hinted to me by certain of the ladies that my new bride might require time to rest and otherwise prepare herself for the wedding night,” Marchmont said.
“I shall need time to change my clothes, yes,” said Zoe. “I’m glad I chose to be married in this gown. It’s very beautiful. But to get it off will be the most tedious process. A thousand tapes to tie and pins to take out and buttons and hooks, and then all the things underneath.”
“Well, I would be happy to help, of course,” he said.
She could picture him undoing her, bit by bit, taking off her clothes, layer by layer, and she felt as though she walked next to a moving fire, so heated she became.
She looked up and found him looking down at her. Heat flickered in his green eyes.
“I should look forward to that, in fact,” he said. “But perhaps tonight is not the best time for complicated ceremonies.”
It most certainly wasn’t. With a few words and a look he’d made her unbearably impatient for this night’s bedding. She was more impatient than most new brides sinc
e she had an excellent idea of what it would be like. Tonight it would be far wiser to let Jarvis get her out of the wedding dress and into something much flimsier. The less time Marchmont spent undressing his new bride, the more time he could spend making love to her.
“Yes, let us have complicated ceremonies another time,” she said.
They had reached the first floor. He led her down one side of the gallery landing to a corner where a pair of mahogany doors met.
“This will take you to the duchess’s apartments,” he said as he opened one of the doors. “You’ll find a connecting door between our bedrooms. I thought we might sup quietly together this night, in the great bedroom, rather than dine in state.”
She squeezed the hand clasping hers. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d like quiet. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like.”
“Not too quiet,” he said.
She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Not too quiet,” she said. “As you wish. I vaguely recollect promising to obey.”
“I supposed it would be the one item about which you’d have only the dimmest recollection.” He lifted her hand to his lips and lightly kissed her knuckles. “I shall look forward to seeing you again in a little while, Your Grace.”
Your Grace.
The two words hung in the air after the door closed behind her.
That was when it truly sank in: who she was and who she’d be from now on…and how far she’d come since the night she’d pounded on an unknown Englishman’s door in Cairo.
She’d found the courage to escape her old life.
She’d find the courage for whatever her new life turned out to be.
Later
Zoe’s quarters, she discovered, were about twice the size of her mother’s apartments.
Given this, she could hardly be surprised at the vastness of Marchmont’s bedroom. She was impressed nonetheless.
It was larger than the large drawing room of Lexham House, and it was the antithesis of austere.
His Grace, she saw, liked his comfort. Furthermore, the leader of fashion was no slave to the latest fashions in décor.
His bedroom was a delightful hodgepodge of furnishings of various styles and times.
A great tester bed dominated one wall. Its canopy rose nearly to the ceiling. From it hung curtains of gold and green velvet and silk. Nightstands stood on either side, a set of steps on one side. She took in chairs, tables, a bookcase, and a chest of drawers. In one corner of the room stood a lacquered Chinese screen and nearby, a matching cabinet. On the walls hung several beautiful paintings, including one of his parents. Though she had no memory of them, the style of clothing and the physical resemblance told her who they were.
A thick, richly designed carpet covered most of the floor—and that was considerable acreage—while elaborate plasterwork adorned the ceiling.
This marble chimneypiece was even more impressive than the one in the entrance hall. Before the fireplace stood a table laid for two and a pair of well-padded armchairs.
Zoe stood in the center of the room, hands clasped under her chin while she turned, taking in her surroundings.
Jarvis had dressed her in the nightclothes Zoe had carefully chosen for her wedding night: a simple muslin nightdress under a muslin wrapper embroidered in green, pink, and gold silk thread.
Shortly after she entered, Dove appeared, with a small train of footmen behind him, bearing trays and a silver bucket. Zoe watched them set out the supper—an array of dainty dishes, small sandwiches like those she’d served her sisters, and cheeses, fruits, and pastries. Champagne cooled in the silver bucket, which was filled with ice. She knew that Marchmont House had its own icehouse, as did other great houses.
Marchmont stood over the servants, giving orders, moving a dish a fraction of an inch this way and another that way. She watched him for a moment and remembered what Priscilla had told her: that Marchmont bothered about nothing and nobody.
But he’d bothered this time. He’d thought about this and planned it and decided what it ought to be.
For her.
She looked down at the great diamond on her hand, the wedding ring nestled alongside, and a lump formed in her throat.
Oh, heaven, he truly could be sweet, like the Lucien she’d known long ago. How was her heart to withstand such sweetness? And if he captured her heart, how would she bear it when he grew bored with her?
Never mind. She’d survive somehow. She always survived.
And that day was sometime in the future.
Now he wasn’t bored.
And for now, she knew how to make sure he stayed not bored.
At last everything seemed to be in order. Marchmont knew he couldn’t fault Cook, for the man had done exactly what he was told to do. If it all added up to too much or too little, the duke had no one to blame but himself.
He waved the parade of footmen out of the room and waited until they closed the door behind them. He poured the champagne, took up the glasses, and turned toward the center of the room, where he’d last seen Zoe, slowly going round and round, taking it all in.
He had no idea whether she approved or not. He tried to tell himself he didn’t care. She had her own rooms, which she could furnish as she pleased.
Yet he couldn’t help wondering whether she found his bedroom old-fashioned and cluttered, with its odd assortment of furniture from various generations. Some of the pieces came from other houses, and had belonged to the earliest holders of the title. Other pieces had been his grandparents’ and parents’ purchases, and a few, his own.
She wasn’t there.
“Zoe?”
No answer.
He set the glasses down on the table. He looked toward the door that led to her bedroom. She couldn’t possibly have…
Then he heard it, a faint rustling from behind the Chinese screen.
He’d had one of the nightstands containing a chamber pot moved behind the screen. She must have found it while he was busy with the footmen. For his bachelorhood, it had stood in the open, near his bed. But now he was married, and he knew that women tended to be more circumspect about such things than men.
He turned away and began to whistle.
He heard a giggle.
He turned toward the sound.
She stepped out from behind the screen.
She was wearing a smile. And the great diamond ring. And a great deal less clothing than she’d been wearing when she first entered his bedroom.
Then she’d worn a lace-trimmed nightdress under an embroidered, lace-trimmed wrapper of fine muslin.
Now she wore only the wrapper.
He couldn’t see through it. While fine, the muslin was not transparent, and she was not standing in front of the fire. Where she stood, firelight and candlelight and shadows danced on the pink and green and gold embroidery, making the garment a shimmering veil.
The shadows and shimmer outlined the curves of her body, not fully revealing but calling attention to every alluring undulation.
He swallowed hard.
She began to sing. Her voice was low, barely above a whisper, and the melody was in a strange minor key. He felt it, like a touch, skimming over his skin. He couldn’t have understood the words even if she’d sung louder, but his body understood the message and every fiber of it came fiercely alive.
Then her hands went up, sinuous as snakes, and she began to dance.
She moved with the fluid grace of a ballerina, but it was nothing like any ballet he’d ever seen. Her hands, her hips, the movement of her head and her eyes, glancing toward him and away—every gesture was exotically, unmistakably suggestive.
She moved about the room, but it was like the motion of a wayward breeze, advancing, then retreating. Now and again her hand went to her hair, and he caught the glint of a hairpin dropping. The devil danced in her smile and called to him from her eyes. Around him she danced, her hair tumbling loose, and he turned, mesmerized, following her.
She danced backward towar
d the bed and her hands glided down over her body, pausing to cup her breasts, then slid lower, her fingers skimming over her waist and belly. Further down they moved, to trace the shape of her hips and buttocks…then they moved to the front, under her belly, sliding over the triangle between her legs.
He’d bedded women, experienced and talented women, but they might have been wooden puppets compared to her.
She was all fluid carnality, shameless beyond shameless.
She caught hold of one of the carved posts at the foot of the bed and let her fingers trail over the carvings. Then she let go, to let her hand drift over the bedcover while she moved to the side of the bed.
In one easy motion she glided up and onto the bed. She settled into the middle of it on her knees. She lifted her hands above her head and pressed the palms together, like a prayer, and swayed there, her torso moving in ways the human body couldn’t possibly move.
All the while she sang in the low, lilting minor key words he couldn’t understand but whose meaning was obvious.
He’d long since forgotten about the supper he’d so carefully planned.
He’d forgotten everything in all the wide world.
He simply moved toward her, unthinkingly, because thinking wasn’t necessary even if it had been possible. She could have been Eve, apple in her hand, Eve the temptress.
She brought her hands down as far as her heart, the palms still together, the gesture as fluid as silk. Then she opened her hands and smiled and curled her two index fingers, beckoning him.
He went, moving to one side of the bed, but as soon as he placed his knee on it, she laughed, and slipped out of the bed on the other side as easily as she’d slipped onto it.
He moved away from the bed and started toward her. She darted away, laughing again.
He tried a few more times, but she danced away from him. When she leapt onto the bed again, he leapt onto it, too. She scrambled away before he could get his hands on her.
He climbed off the bed. “Zoe Octavia,” he said.
She backed away. “Lucien Charles Vincent,” she said, and in the low voice, with its shadows and soft edges, his name became unbearably intimate. She stuck out her tongue, the brat. Oh, but not a brat. She’d become a woman, and this woman was sin incarnate.