Page 21 of A Marriage is Arranged

It was late afternoon by the time Louise was awakened by a knock on her door and the entrance of a maid bearing a tea tray.

“Mr. Lisle said to bring you tea and tell you ’is lordship said ’e would see you at ’alf past seven in the drawing room,” she announced. “Dinner is at eight, unless you would like it different,” she added, “’e said to say.”

“No, please tell him that would be fine.” Louise thought for a moment. “Is his lordship downstairs?”

“I don’t think so, m’lady. D’you want me to ask Mr. Lisle?”

“No,” Louise said quickly. “No. I, er, it’s not important,” she ended lamely.

The maid curtseyed and left. Louise thankfully drank the tea, and ate one of the little cakes accompanying it. She’d eaten very little at the wedding breakfast and was now quite hungry. But then she remembered how the Dowager had merely tasted the sugar wafers the day she visited her and her mother, and decided that was enough. From now on she was her ladyship and her ladyship did not gobble down sweets, no matter how hungry she was.

She slipped out of bed and ran across to the communicating door between her and her husband’s rooms. She pressed her ear to it but could hear nothing. As quietly as she could, she turned the knob and opened the door a crack. It was too dark to see anything, but the intense stillness told her the room was empty. She pushed the door fully open and stepped inside. Immediately the same masculine scent as that in the library assailed her nostrils. Her heart beating, she took another step and peered around. There was no one there, or seemingly had been recently; the bedcover was perfectly smooth. Where had her husband been all afternoon, if he wasn’t downstairs, and hadn’t been here? Surely he could not have gone to the House of Lords on his wedding day?

Louise stepped back and closed the door, undecided what to do next. She went back to the tea tray and, without thinking, ate a second little cake.

For heaven’s sake , she told herself angrily when she realized what she was doing. There are any number of explanations as to where he is. You were fast asleep. What was he supposed to do, wait by your bedside like the prince in the fairytale? Stop eating!

She went over to the large wardrobe in her room and, apart from her wedding dress, saw her meager array of gowns hung there. She surveyed them: her old brown dress, brought because she had an unaccountable attachment to it, the gold evening gown and yellow day dress her mother had had altered for her, the blue chintz day dress, and a couple of nondescript garments she’d had for ages. Knowing what Véronique had told her, she knew not one of them was becoming, but they were all she had.

In fact, she should order a whole new wardrobe, but she was conflicted. As the Countess of Shrewsbury she knew that being properly gowned and coiffed was important. But as wife to Gareth Wandsworth, it was different. Her husband must take her for what she was. She didn’t want to try to capture his interest by wearing expensive gowns in compensation for her lack of beauty. That was ridiculous, anyway. The minute she took off her dress and let her hair down she would be herself: plain Louise Grey. But neither did she want to be the little wife tucked away at home. She wanted him to appreciate her and then, she hoped, love her. How was that to be achieved?

Mulling this over, Louise washed herself in the cool water on the washstand, and shivering slightly, slipped on a clean chemise and petticoat. Then she stepped into the gold evening dress that had been her mother’s. It was a testimony to the lack of fit that she could do it up easily behind the neck. She looked at herself in the long mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. She now saw how it bunched under the arms and made her look shapeless.

And what about her hair? It was still pulled on top of her head, but strands had fallen down. If she took it out, neither she nor Rose would be able to do it up again, so she simply tried to push the errant locks back in place. Tomorrow she would braid it as always.

A pretty ormolu clock in her sitting room told her it was now gone six. She would go downstairs and find something to read. There might be a newspaper in the library.