Bluestocking Bride by Thornton Elizabeth

Author:Thornton, Elizabeth [Thornton, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780821775370
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 2003-07-15T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

They were married quietly, one week later, in the old parish church in Breckenridge. Lucy and Norton had traveled down from London to stand up with them, but few other guests were invited. Lady Mary had returned to her home in Hampshire to await the birth of her child, and Rutherston's mother was content to receive Catherine to her bosom when they should return to town some three weeks later.

Catherine, solemnly repeating her wedding vows to love, cherish, honor and obey, cast a veiled glance at Rutherston's unsmiling face and thought that she had never seen him look so stern. And when he took her trembling hand in his to slip his ring on her finger, she looked up to meet his steady gaze, concealing nothing of what was in her heart, and all the depth of her emotion was written in her face for him to see. For a long moment he regarded her, in perfect comprehension, and when he smiled, a look of exultation suffused his face, and Catherine, seeing that look, felt her confidence waver. He leaned down to brush her lips with his, and his whispered, "My wife," evoked in her mind all the pride of possession of the primitive male, and she trembled in dread anticipation, knowing that her destiny was bound to a man whom she hardly knew.

Catherine had proposed that after the wedding they return to London with Lucy and Norton, but in this Rutherston demurred, and when she would have argued he had cut her short. They were to travel by coach to one of his smaller estates which lay a day's journey to the northwest, where, Rutherston averred, there were many matters that needed his attention, and that he had been an absentee landlord too long.

There was nothing that Catherine could say that would change his mind, and she could scarcely tell him that the real reason she wanted to return to town was that it made her uncomfortable to be too long alone in his company. He had sent the servants ahead with their baggage some days before in readiness for their arrival, and as soon as the wedding breakfast at Ardo House was consumed, Rutherston was impatient to be off.

The journey was pleasant and uneventful, Rutherston pointing out all the places of interest on the way. She had been dreading their close proximity within the closed carriage, half fearful that, now she was wearing his ring, his ardor would be unrestrained, but everything about his manner allayed her fears. He was content merely to draw her hand through his arm, and never once uttered any kind of remark that was likely to draw a blush to her cheeks, and Catherine's overstrung nerves began to unwind and the smiles came more readily to her lips. It was exactly what Rutherston had intended, for he was conscious that his unguarded look in the church had been a tactical blunder.

It was close to dusk when their carriage approached the gates to

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