“No,” she said, “not if you do not wish for it.”
“I don’t,” he said. “Something has made me tired. I cannot imagine what.”
“My tedious conversation, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps.” He laughed softly and pecked her on the nose with his teeth to take any sting from the word. “Go to sleep, Abby.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
“I don’t have a mistress, I promise you,” he said. “And at the moment I have no hankering for one, either. None whatsoever. Now, will you sound less forlorn and go to sleep?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t plan to say a word. I wanted you to fall asleep before you remembered that you should go back to your own bed.”
“Did you?” he said. “You would rather I slept here?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You are going to have to be quiet, then,” he said, “or I shall flee screaming to my own rooms.”
She chuckled.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
“Yes, my lord.”
She slept almost immediately.
7
WELL, THE SMUG BRIDEGROOM.” SIR Gerald Stapleton stopped in the doorway of the reading room at White’s, strolled inside, and peered over the top of the Morning Post at his friend. “You are looking very pleased with life, Miles.”
The Earl of Severn folded his paper and got to his feet. “Let’s find a room where we don’t have to strain our voices whispering,” he said. “And why should I not be feeling pleased with myself, Ger? A two-day bridegroom, the notice in this morning’s papers for all the world to see, and everyone eager to offer congratulations.”
He stopped to shake hands with a well-wisher to prove his point.
“And after two full days you have been driven to finding more congenial surroundings,” Sir Gerald said. “I must confess I was looking for you all day yesterday. I was obliged to go to the races with Appleby and Hendricks and to spend the evening with Philby and his crowd. You might have saved yourself the expense of the notices in the papers, Miles. I told everyone your sad story and they all commiserated.”
The earl chuckled. “The confirmed cynic,” he said. “I left Abby composing a letter to a relative in Bath and tickling her nose with the quill and ordering me from the room because she could not think with me there and finds the writing of letters difficult under the best of circumstances.”
His friend looked at him dubiously. “Oh,” he said. “And you left meekly, Miles—not only the room but also the house? Driven from your own dwelling after only two days? Not an auspicious beginning, old chap.”
Lord Severn laughed. “I was also excused from an outing to Bond Street later this morning,” he said. “One of Abby’s new dresses is ill-fitting and needs some alterations.”
“Doubtless you will be happy to be at some distance when she gives the dressmaker the length of her tongue,” the other said. “So, Miles, are you finding that your bride is exactly as you expected—quiet, demure, very ordinary, someone to be largely ignored, in short?”
“Do I detect a note of malice?” the earl asked. “You will be pleased to know, then, my friend, that Abby could probably talk nonstop from dawn to midnight without once running short of a topic or an opinion if no one insisted on having his say or if she did not occasionally notice that she is talking too much.”
“Ah,” Sir Gerald said. “I suspected as much on your wedding day, together with the fact that she is quite good-looking enough to cause you trouble if she so chooses. I am sorry, Miles. But you cannot say that I did not warn you.”
“No,” the earl said with a grin, “I cannot say that, Ger. She set Mama and the girls in their place quite magnificently yesterday.”
“Your mother?” Sir Gerald said, impressed.
“Told her to be seated and not to trouble herself about running my life,” the earl said, “now that I have a countess to take precedence over her.”
“She said that?” Sir Gerald sounded awed.
“Actually,” Lord Severn said with a laugh, “she told my mother to sit down while she rang for a pot of fresh tea. But the other was what she really meant. I think my wife has backbone after all, Ger.”
“In other words, she will be running your life just as the females in your family have always done,” his friend said gloomily. “You have jumped from the frying pan into the fire, Miles. And you continue to grin like an imbecile and look as if the world is your oyster—to mix metaphors quite atrociously. You will be a poor abject thing before the year is out. Mark my words.”