“Abby will be happy,” the earl said with a grin. “Though if she could just see beyond the end of her nose, she would have noticed a few evenings ago that her brother and Miss Seymour were exchanging more than a few appreciative glances. You may have competition for the fair little redhead, Ger.”
Sir Gerald Stapleton blew his nose loudly as his friend laughed and let himself out of the room.
His smile faded as he ran down the stairs and walked out onto the street. Abby at Mrs. Harper’s? And not a mention to him of having been there, though she had given him an exhaustive account during dinner the evening before and during their drive to the opera of all she had done during the day.
And Abby had asked him for six thousand pounds, a year’s allowance in advance.
For her brother? Had his guess been right? Or was she too gambling to try to pay off the family debts? It would be quite like her to try it and lose six thousand pounds at a sitting. Though of course, if she had asked him for the money three days before and called on Mrs. Harper yesterday, then she might have made more than one visit to the tables.
Her father must have been a gambler too. He had guessed that several days before. Was it a family weakness?
He knew so little about his wife, he thought in some frustration. In some ways it was almost impossible to believe that they had been married for only a week. In other ways it seemed that they were still total strangers, though they had been together and on intimate terms physically for a week.
And of course a week had been quite a long-enough time in which to fall in love.
ABIGAIL HAD had a quite happy day. She had spent part of the morning planning her picnic in Richmond and part with her husband on Bond Street, choosing a sapphire-and-diamond ring as a gift for their first anniversary.
“One week,” he had explained to her when she had looked at him in incomprehension. “We have been married for a week, Abby. Had you forgotten?”
And he had insisted on buying her the ring though she had assured him that it was a quite pointless extravagance and had reminded him that he had already given her a diamond necklace and her pearls.
“But I cannot let our first anniversary go by unheralded,”he had said with a smile.
Even after a week his smile was still turning her weak at the knees. And she still wished that he had brown or hazel eyes.
It had ended up with her buying him a matching sapphire-and-diamond pin.
“A combined wedding and anniversary gift,” she had told him.
And so a considerable dent had been made in her remaining thousand pounds, all that she had to last her for a year—or fifty-one weeks, to be exact.
She had begun the afternoon calling upon Lady Beauchamp and strolling with her in the park, having sent her husband on his way to invite Sir Gerald Stapleton to the picnic. If she threw them together often enough, perhaps he and Laura would be betrothed even before the summer came. They were very obviously perfect for each other.
In the park, they had met Lord and Lady Chartleigh and their young son, who was racing along ahead of them when he was not falling flat on the grass. The four adults strolled together for a while.
The Chartleighs must have been very young when they married, Abigail guessed. The earl in particular looked far too young to be a father. And yet despite his extreme quietness and his wife’s vivacity, there was clearly a strong bond of affection between them.
Perhaps there was hope for her, she thought. And yet the Countess of Chartleigh was very pretty. And perhaps the earl had not expected her to be quiet and to disappear into the background of his life. Perhaps he had loved her and her vivacity when he married her.
But she would not think of her problems, she had decided. Soon Rachel would be on her way to the Continent, and soon Boris would be out of his difficulties. Miles had promised to help him, and she had had an idea of how it might be done so that Boris would never know that he had been helped. By the time spring turned to summer, she would be at Severn Park with her sisters and perhaps she would be with child too. Certainly Miles must be very eager for it to happen without delay. In the week of their marriage he had coupled with her twice each night except for that one night when she had been upset at learning the brutal truth of their marriage.
She had accepted that truth. And really it was not so very dreadful. He had married her and saved her from a nasty situation, and he had not been unkind since except when he had reprimanded her over their dinner party. If she was to be taken to Severn Park and left there when he returned to town, well, then, so be it. She would think of that when the time came.
“I have been married for longer than a year,” Lady Beauchamp was telling her, “and I wept at the end of each month for eleven months before the miracle happened. I am afraid I have been a sore trial to Roger, Lady Severn. He has been foolishly assuring me that it will not wreck his life to remain childless and that of course he does not regret marrying me. And I can’t tell you how envious I have been of Georgie and Ralph, who had to wait no time at all after their marriage. But it has been worth the wait. The sun seems a little brighter each day now that I know I have new life inside me.” She squeezed Abigail’s arm. “You will know what I mean soon enough.”