Mariah's Marriage by Anne Stenhouse

Author:Anne Stenhouse [Stenhouse, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
Published: 2013-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Mariah heard her aunt’s strident tones before she saw her. She groaned and turned over in her bed to bury her face in the pillows. Was it only three days since her world had been destroyed? Was it as long as three days since she had faced the entire company from the Blue Salon entering the gardens of Mellon House behind John Brent?

She threw her legs out straight as the frustrations of being hoodwinked by Tobias Longreach catapulted her whole body into spasm. How could she have been so naive? In such a clever move it took her breath away still, he had destroyed her reputation with all the people who mattered in the world of education. If she did not marry him now, she would never find work, nor would she find a husband.

“If you do not agree to go down your aunt says she’s coming up, miss, even if Mr. Wilson has to carry her,” Tilly said from her position inside the bedroom door.

Mariah screamed.

Tilly closed the door. “Even with the pillows muffling, Miss, that’s going to carry down the stairwell,” she said briskly. “I’ve laid out your brown stripe because I didn’t think you’d want to inflame Mrs. Wilson further by going down in one of the new gowns.”

Mariah rolled onto her side and glared at her maid. “Then I do not agree with you for once,” she said. “I am the one who has been wronged here and my aunt will not intimidate me. I have suffered at the hands of a master manipulator. She holds no fear.”

Tilly took a deep breath and folded the brown stripe over her arm. She pulled open the large oak cupboard and hung the dress away before lifting out a morning gown of palest cream silk. She pattered about the room finding clean linen and fresh stockings while Mariah splashed her face with warm water from her basin and tried to muster her thoughts.

Tilly dropped the dress over Mariah’s head and knotted its ties behind. “You can stand up now, Miss. That dress is so beautiful with its piping around the sleeves an’ all. I think there’s a handkerchief of your mama’s in just that shade of peacock blue,” she said and rummaged in one of Mariah’s drawers. Triumphantly, she waved the square of cloth around. “Let me just pin this at your breast,” she said and did so with a small brooch from the dresser.

Mariah gazed into the mirror and teased one or two curls around her chin. She smoothed the ribbons Tilly had inserted in her hair and straightened her posture. The girls had spent about twenty minutes making Mariah look as beautiful as they could, but it was simply making the best of things. She had been crying for three days. She’d sobbed in frustration, in anger, and in despair, but most of all because she knew she loved the earl. Without a shadow of a wisp of a doubt, she had fallen in love with him and he would never love her.

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