Page 55

The wedding was small and private in the end – a rather subdued but valiant best man in the shape of Mr Gastrell, both families, and Lady Keswick and her adult children.

They held a wedding breakfast in Brook Street, so that the Dowager Lady Wyverne was able to attend and still retire when she grew weary.

But she was on exceptional form that day.

‘Oh, if I had met you eighty years ago,’ she told Marcus with a completely straight face, ‘I would have cut the child out and won you for myself, I promise you!’

‘I take that as a great compliment, Madame La Marquise,’ was his grave reply.

‘So you should!’

The couple spent their first night together in Half-Moon Street, rather than in an inn upon the road, which must be less comfortable as a beginning to their married life.

Amelia remembered little of her first hours in her new home afterwards; she could not take her eyes from Marcus.

She had drunk a glass or two of wine in celebration, but he was her intoxication, not the champagne.

At last they could be entirely private, naked in a bed without fear of interruption.

It was of course not the first time they had touched each other, not the first time they had given each other pleasure, but it was the first time Amelia had welcomed Marcus into her body in the ultimate intimacy.

She was glad, afterwards, drowsing in his embrace, that any discomfort or awkwardness they may have felt was momentary, because of the knowledge they were already gaining of each other.

And much more important was the fact that at last they could fall asleep in each other’s arms, and wake together, and reach out again in mutual desire and need.

They left early the next morning, though not perhaps quite as early as they had originally intended, stopping that night at the Castle and Ball in Marlborough, taking up where they had left off.

Another early start, and now in the late afternoon, their chaise had turned off the post road to Taunton along the lane that led towards the house.

The heavier, slower vehicle with Amelia’s maid, Marcus’s valet and all the luggage had kept pace with them to Marlborough, but today, they had outdistanced it.

They’d been passing along a tall, well-maintained sandstone wall on their right for several minutes, and Marcus had told Amelia that this was the southern boundary of the Thornfalcon park, though many of the farms belonging to the estate lay on the other side of the road.

At last, the wall fell back to create a wide, gravelled space, which led up to a pair of Jacobean gatehouses and a set of elaborate, wrought-iron gates.

Amelia swallowed and smoothed down the skirts of her smartest amaranth pelisse, feeling ridiculously nervous suddenly, and Marcus squeezed her hand in silent sympathy.

There was no need for the coachman to blow his yard of tin officiously, or get down and seek admission; they’d clearly been looked out for, and the gates were swinging open as they drew up to them.

A man, a woman and a group of rosy-cheeked children had spilled out of the right-hand gatehouse, and Marcus leaned out to greet them all by name and introduce Amelia to them.

But it was a brief pause; soon they were moving along a winding, tree-lined drive cast into dappled shadow by the boughs that arched and met above the carriage.

‘I’m so glad to be coming home with you,’ he said, still holding her hand tightly, his voice a little rough with emotion.

The chaise crested a low hill, and the trees gave way to open parkland that rolled gently down into a shallow valley and then rose again to where the house stood, backed by more woodland.

It was, as Marcus had said, low and rambling, its roofline an irregular jumble of chimneys.

The central portion was Jacobean, like the lodge houses, and the wings on either side more modern in appearance, though she knew that much of that was mere facade, and some parts of the building behind it were medieval.

Sections of the stone walls were covered in climbing vines which had been clipped into shape around the mullioned windows, and great swags of yellow and white roses in full bloom.

It was much less grand than Wyverne, and because of it, much more immediately welcoming and homely.

The many panes of old glass in the irregular-sized windows caught the sinking sun and threw back flame.

‘Home,’ Marcus said, a wealth of emotion in his voice.

The carriage passed under an elaborate central archway and into a stone-flagged courtyard heady with the scent of more roses.

‘We don’t normally make such a grand performance of merely driving home,’ he told her.

‘There is a more convenient modern entrance to the coach house and stables at the back, which is in general use. This is all done in your honour, my love.’

Amelia saw that what she presumed to be the whole household staff had come out to greet her.

Marcus handed her down from the carriage and once more, she heard a flurry of names and saw the faces that went with them.

But he had thought to prepare her last night, trading kisses for remembered names and titles, and with that excellent incentive, she had managed to memorise most of them and knew them still so that she could greet them individually.

She did not dare meet her husband’s eye as she shook hands with everyone from the butler and housekeeper to the shyest scullery maid and most blushing stable boy; she knew he would be grinning wickedly at her, remembering just as clearly as she did how he had rewarded her when she had in triumph produced all the names of the kitchen maids without hesitation.

She did not know what recompense would be hers later for remembering them all correctly now, but greatly looked forward to finding out.

When all the greetings and congratulations had been exchanged, Marcus lifted his bride in his arms and carried her effortlessly over the threshold, which provoked an outburst of cheers among the assembled staff.

This turned to laughter – some of it scandalised but most of it raucously approving – when he did not set her down in the wood-panelled entrance hall, nor pause to remove even his hat, but continued on across the chequered marble floor and up the grand Jacobean staircase.

Rows of gold-framed Thornfalcon ancestors looked on with varying degrees of approval as he took her down a long passage into an apartment that contained a large four-poster bed, and no doubt a quantity of other furniture that Amelia did not concern herself with just now.

It was a bright chamber filled with golden light, which presumably offered fine views over the parkland at the front of the house, but this too was of not the least interest to her at present.

Marcus set her down on the bed with just the right balance of haste and care, and stripped off his overcoat, hat and waistcoat, flinging them aside with no thought at all for their final destination.

Amelia was busy with her gloves, smart bonnet and pelisse in much the same fashion, and hurled her half-boots aside with equal abandon, hearing them thump to the floor in some unseen corner.

‘I have been wondering,’ she said breathlessly, ‘how you would decide to reward me for my most impressive feat of memory downstairs, my lord.’

‘So have I,’ he said, his voice muffled for a moment as he dragged his shirt over his head.

Freed from it, he stood looking down at her for a moment, bare-chested, and then he seized her ruthlessly by the ankles and pulled her towards him across the coverlet.

This had the interesting additional effect of rucking up her gown and petticoats about her waist, leaving her long legs and bright-red garters uncovered to his hungry gaze.

She had not the least thought of attempting to cover herself, but smiled up at him, her face flushed and expectant.

‘And this is what I settled on, my deliciously wicked Wyverne bride.’