Royal Weddings(18)
Cicely thought, then, smiling fondly, shook her head. “I don’t think so. There are some secrets between sisters that are best left . . . secret.”
Ever After
Gaelen Foley
In London society, it was altogether unfashionable to be in love with one’s own spouse, as Eleanor Montford, the Countess of Archer, was well aware. But seated at her vanity, she went motionless when the earl, her husband, sauntered into her boudoir, tall and handsome, devastating in his full dress uniform as a former officer of the Blues.
“Almost ready, darling?”
For a second, staring at him, she could not find her voice, and rued the girlish flutter of her heart.
“Almost,” she managed coolly.
“Allow me.” With gallantry polished to a sheen like the war medals on his chest, Roland James Augustus Montford, Colonel Lord Archer, stepped up behind her dainty chair and took over the task of fastening her necklace for her.
The warm brush of fingers against her nape made Elle quiver, much to her dismay.
“There,” he murmured.
She lifted her hand absently to the necklace, but could not tear her gaze away from the magnificent man in the reflection behind her.
Oh, she could not even imagine what he would say if he knew the depth of her passion for him, jealousy and all. He’d probably find it amusing. But for Elle—a lady who prided herself on decorum—she could not bear for him to think her silly.
She resolved to keep her secret to herself. Especially now.
Doing her best to ignore him, she picked up the powder puff to finish adding a hint of color to her cheeks. He remained behind her, a smile curving his hard, narrow mouth as he leaned down, bracing his hands on either side of her on the edge of the vanity. With a fascinated look, he watched her proceed to darken the tips of her lashes with black frankincense resin on a tiny camel-hair brush. “Such intricate goings-on,” he remarked. “I had no idea.”
She met his glance in the mirror, his warm gray eyes full of that irresistible charm, and for a moment the tension between them of late was forgotten. “Well, we have our standards, don’t we?” she teased.
He bent his head and kissed her bare shoulder. “You are perfection, darling.”
Amid her rush of pleasure at his rare attention, she absorbed the compliment with a measure of cynicism. Perfection, or as close to it as one could come, was merely the expectation she’d been held to all her life. She’d gone from striving through her childhood to be the perfect daughter, to playing the part of the perfectly well-behaved debutante, and now she was cast in her current role as the perfect political wife, and mother to their two young sons.
Not that she was complaining. She understood her duty quite as well as he. Five years ago, as a new bride, having had the good fortune to marry a national hero, she had overcome her dread at the prospect of disappointing him by dedicating herself to supporting her husband in all his endeavors how ever she could, but she did not flatter herself to think that he was in love with her. He had married her because it was a good decision—her looks, her pedigree, her temperament—not out of some fine romantic feeling. No highborn bride in her right mind expected that.
The way she felt about Archer was the way he felt about England. His specialty was love of country; hers was love of home. Together, it had made them a force to be reckoned with in Society.
But in their long campaign to get to this point, they barely saw each other anymore, drifting ever farther apart in their separate spheres.
“Perfection,” he repeated softly, his clean-shaved chin brushing her shoulder, and when his warm gray eyes met hers in the reflection, her one wish would have been to forego the royal wedding and let him throw her onto her nearby bed.
But of course that would have been unthinkable.
She dropped her gaze, her cheeks pink with more than her cosmetics. “You’re looking rather smart yourself,” she admitted, though she supposed it was folly to feed his ego with her praise.
“Ha! You think so?” Archer straightened up with a roguish grin and smoothed his dark blue, neatly belted tunic. It had shiny gold buttons down his chest, gold braid on his shoulder; the scarlet stand collar, cuffs, and facings were made brilliant with rich gold embroidery.
White buckskin breeches adorned his perfect lower half, a gold tassel dancing from the hilt of his dress sword. As he pulled on his white gloves, she feared he might outshine the royal bride-groom—and then what would become of his new career as a rising star in politics? “I’m just glad it all still fits,” he muttered, “what with all the sitting around Town I do these days.”
No doubt he still preferred a good cavalry charge, though he was not as unscathed by it all as he liked to pretend. There were, of course, the nightmares. But they didn’t talk about that.