“They do,” she said. “You never did understand women, Boris. “I am going to ask Miles—”
“No!” he said sharply. “Absolutely no, Abby. I am going to find my own way in life, do you hear me? I am going to pay off Papa’s debts if it is the last thing I do. And then I will find something to do with the rest of my life—without your help and without Severn’s help. If you try getting him to assist me, Ab, I will disappear entirely from your life and you will never see me again. Understand?”
She sighed and pushed a lock of fair hair back from his forehead. “I have just written to the girls’ Great-Aunt Edwina,” she said. “I am going to have them back, Boris. Miles said I might.”
“I’m glad,” he said, smiling fondly at her. “They belong with you, Abby, and you with them. I had better be on my way.”
“Stay to luncheon?” she said.
He shook his head and reached out to touch her cheek with one knuckle. “Mad, mad Abby,” he said.
“How long did you know him before you married him, anyway? You did not answer my question.”
“Two days,” she said. “It is four days now.”
He stared at her for a moment before chuckling softly.
“Well,” he said, “it is about time life started to turn around for you, Ab. I will just hope that this is it. I’ll see you again.”
She could not persuade him to change his mind about staying. She stood at the door a minute later, watching him striding down the street. And she raised a hand to brush a tear from her cheek.
NOW WOULD COME the main test, Abigail thought, taking a deep breath and resisting the urge to reach out a hand to cling to her husband’s sleeve. Now and this evening.
It was true that she was wearing another new outfit, a dress and pelisse of spring green and a straw bonnet trimmed with spring flowers that one would swear were real, though they were not. And true too that Miles had taken her by both hands before they left the house, squeezed them, and declared that she would cast all the other ladies in the park quite in the shade.
But bridegrooms were supposed to pay such lavish and foolish compliments to their new brides. The ton would doubtless see her as very plain and ordinary and wonder what on earth the very handsome Earl of Severn had seen in her to marry her, considering the fact that she was a nobody and had had nothing by way of a fortune to bring to the marriage.
The Earl of Severn was turning the heads of his horses through the gateway into Hyde Park, which was already crowded with horses, carriages, and pedestrians. It was right on the fashionable hour.
This was it, Abigail thought. The notice of their marriage had appeared in the papers that morning, and the ton must be agog to see Miles’s bride. The ladies must be all poised and ready with their spiteful tongues and their cats’ claws. And who could blame them? Miles had doubtless been the most eligible and the most desirable bachelor in London just four days before.
She would probably die of the ordeal ahead of her.
Her very best plan would be to remain quite silent and to smile and nod graciously at anyone to whom Miles chose to present her. That was what she would do, she decided.
“I feel like a performing bear tied to a post,” she said. “Very conspicuous and very much in danger of being torn limb from limb.”#p#分页标题#e#
“Do you?” The earl turned to smile down at her.
“We will just take one turn about, then, Abby, and go home again. But it will make things a little easier for you tonight if you are familiar with at least a few faces.”
“Sir Gerald Stapleton,” she said. “Your mother and your sisters. That sounds like plenty of faces, Miles. I really don’t think I dare try doing the waltz, do I? That is, assuming that anyone asks me, of course. But you will, won’t you? And with you I can do it, Miles. You have the remarkable ability to keep your feet from beneath mine. I did not tread on them more than three or four times, did I? And that was at the beginning, when we were both laughing so hard and Sir Gerald was playing so many wrong notes that we were not concentrating at all.”
“Staying away from your feet is called good leading, Abby,” he said. “Most gentlemen are quite skilled at it, I assure you. You need not be afraid.”
“Did you mind my inviting Sir Gerald to spend the summer at Severn Park?” she asked. “I realized as the words were coming from my mouth that I should have asked you first, Miles. But it seemed such a splendid idea for you to have a friend with you. If your mother and Constance come, with me that makes three ladies—not to mention Bea and Clara—and you all alone.”