Page 40 of A Marriage is Arranged

Louise tiredly changed into her purple silk for dinner, though it caused her a pang when she remembered the first time she wore it. She was in the drawing room when her husband came home, and the formality of it helped her maintain a distance when he came in for his pre-dinner sherry. She did not ask where he had been and he did not say. His temper had not been improved by his losses that afternoon and he wasn’t sorry when she still appeared less than usually chatty.

When she did speak, though, he was surprised by her formality.

“My lord,” she said, “we received a number of notes and gifts of thanks this afternoon, as well as numerous invitations. I imagine you wish me to answer them?”

“If you want to. Or I can get my secretary to do it.”

“By no means. I consider it one of my duties. I shall place them on your desk in the library when I have done so.”

“Very well.”

Their conversation at dinner was equally detached. Gareth couldn’t understand it, but decided Louise was like all other women: given to odd moods and fancies. It was best not to engage them when they were like that. He concentrated on his dinner. The meals they served in his club were at most times indifferent but on occasion, and today had been one of them, positively poor. That’s why he almost always lunched at home. He had left nearly all of it on his plate. So now he ate with a good appetite. Louise touched practically nothing: everything she put in her mouth tasted like ashes. Watching her husband, she had to clench her jaw in the effort not to cry out How can you sit with me and eat like that when you know how poorly you have behaved? Have you no conscience?

When Lisle came in with the port, Louise left the table and went immediately up to her rooms to finish a caricature she had begun that afternoon. It was of Diane Courtland. It showed her with an exaggeratedly large bosom, tiny waist and an enormous necklace and earrings. Her mouth was screwed into an avaricious bud that made her look positively ugly, but it was unmistakably Diane.

“I saw that lady,” said Rose, when she came in later to help her mistress prepare for bed. “She ’ad all that floaty stuff on ’er gown. What was it?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” said Louise, not wanting to pursue the conversation.

“Ever so pretty she was. You didn’t draw her looking very nice, though. Don’t you like her?”

“It’s nothing to do with liking or not liking. I don’t know her. I told you, the caricatures are just for fun. They make me laugh.”

“They is usually quite funny,” said Rose, “but that one’s a bit mean, really.”

Louise laughed off the remark as she put the picture in the portfolio, but she knew Rose was right. It was mean.

Finding his wife had disappeared into her apartment, the Earl took himself off to a disreputable inn deep in the Tothill Fields where he watched a boxing match more remarkable for its violence than its science. He was well known at that location, and the pickpockets usually left him alone. Tonight, however, a newcomer saw him as an easy mark as he leaned his broad shoulders against a post, apparently lost in the back and forth of the bout. But his lordship was awake on all counts. When the man, feigning drunkenness, bumped into him with a slurred beggin’ yer pardon, yer honor , he spun him around, forced open his hand from which he took his wallet, and dealt him a right that sent him sprawling on the packed earth floor. That made him feel better than he had all day. So much better, in fact, that he peeled off a note and sent it fluttering into the man’s face. The thief had lost consciousness for a moment and came to with the money falling on him from above. He thought for a second he’d died and was in paradise.

“You’re lucky you put me in a good mood,” said the Earl. “But don’t ever take me for a flat again.”

He went home, washed the blood off his knuckles, fell into bed and slept like a baby. His conscience bothered him not at all.