The earl threw back his head and laughed. “I think she will suit me, Ger,” he said. “I think she will. Despite the talkativeness, which has taken me by surprise, I must admit, there is a basic shyness, I believe, and an eagerness to please. I like her.”
“Eagerness to please?” Sir Gerald said. “Enough to compensate you for the loss of Jenny, Miles?”
“Now, that,” the earl said, raising one finger to summon a waiter, “is privileged information, Ger.”
“Did you know that Northcote and Farthingdale are fighting over Jenny?” Sir Gerald asked. “And that her price is going up and up? It is doubtful that Farthingdale can afford her anyway. Though he is more personable than Northcote, of course, and Jenny is quite discriminating.”
“How is Prissy?” the earl asked. “Still threatening to move back home to the country?”
“Some rejected swain wants her back,” his friend said, “even knowing what she has become. She should go, I keep telling her. She does not really suit the life of a courtesan. It’s time I found someone else anyway. A year is too long to spend with one mistress—makes them too possessive. How about a stroll to Tattersall’s this afternoon, Miles? I have my eye on some grays.”
“I have promised to take Abby driving in the park,” the earl said. “And before that I will be giving her waltzing lessons.”
His friend stared at him.
“She has never waltzed,” Lord Severn explained. “And Lady Trevor’s ball is this evening. I promised to teach her.”
“Good Lord,” Sir Gerald said. “I see the noose tightening with alarming speed, Miles. I strongly advise you to tell your good lady quite firmly that you are going to Tattersall’s. Better still, send a note.”
“You play the pianoforte,” the earl said. “You confessed as much to me in one rash moment, Ger. Come and play for us. Otherwise I will be reduced to singing a waltz tune. I don’t think Abby sings. At least, when I asked her, she dissolved into peals of laughter, had me laughing too, and never answered the question.”
“Don’t try dragging me into this cozy domestic arrangement you have,” Sir Gerald said with an exaggerated shudder. “If your wife wants to waltz, Miles, hire her a dancing master, and take yourself off about some more manly pursuit while the lessons are in progress. You’ll be sorry if you don’t, mark my words.”
“I knew you were a true friend,” the earl said, getting to his feet. “We will expect you at three, Ger?”
“I say,” his friend said.
“Don’t worry if you are a little early,” Lord Severn said. “My wife and I will both be at home.”
He grinned, turned to shake hands and exchange greetings with another pair of well-wishers, and made his way from the room and the club.
Gerald could be right, he thought as he made his way home. Abby was certainly not the quiet, timid creature he had taken her for on first acquaintance. Perhaps she would in time try to dominate him and he would have to exert himself to be master in his own house, as he had never done with Mama and the girls.
But he did not think so. Despite her talkativeness and her firm and clever handling of his mother the day before, he believed there was a certain innocence and basic shyness in Abby. And he had spoken the truth to Gerald: in two days she had shown an eagerness to please him, refusing to demand his company, entering wholeheartedly into the scheme to convince his mother that they had fallen deeply in love, wearing her hair as he liked it at night.#p#分页标题#e#
And she had made no protest against anything he had done to her in bed, claiming in that unexpectedly candid way that always had him laughing that she found it not at all unpleasant, though he had touched her more intimately than he had expected to be allowed to do with a wife and had prolonged his love-makings beyond the limits he would have expected her willing to endure. She had not complained about being taken a second time on both their wedding night and the night before. He had restrained himself at dawn that morning, when he had wanted her again.
She had even said that she wished him to sleep in her bed. He had plans for taking her into his own that night, making it a permanent arrangement. She could use her own room during the daytime when she needed rest.
Yes, he thought, he had unwittingly made the wisest move of his life when he had impulsively asked Miss Abigail Gardiner just four days before to marry him.
She was going to make his life comfortable, he suspected. And to hell with Gerald, who warned him differently. What did Gerald know about marriage, anyway?