Mr. Monfort's Marriage by Vonnie Hughes

Author:Vonnie Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, love, suspense, historical, danger, nineteenth century, regency, society, ton, convenient marriage
Publisher: Vonnie Hughes

Chapter Eleven

One unhappy week later they returned to London. Since Matthew’s disclosure about Anne’s death, their marriage had settled into armed neutrality.

Verity found it hard to understand how Matthew could sustain such a single-minded hatred of the nobility based on one woman’s transgressions. He was a logical man. He was an intelligent man. Surely he must understand that not all women of the ton were like the Marchioness of Lyddon. No, there must be more to his ingrained mistrust than the appalling circumstances surrounding Anne’s death.

Perhaps she could winkle the information out of his mother.

Matthew had said nothing further about the purchase of a larger townhouse. They settled into a mundane existence, conversing in tedious platitudes. Her ridiculous daydreams of a loving and sharing marriage had not prepared her for a life like this, but she had only herself to blame. Heavens, her own parents never had a civil word to say to each other. Their lives were engineered so that their paths rarely crossed. What had made her think her marriage would be different?

She was bitterly disappointed but she had no intention of meekly accepting the situation. Her opening salvo was fired at the breakfast table several days after they returned from their bride trip.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

Not very promising. His head was buried deep in the Observer.

“Might I have your permission to change some of the furnishings in the foyer and in my room?” For there was no ‘our’ room as she had expected. She was back in the room she had first slept in, and Matt had not visited her once, not once, since the day he had told her about his sister. On their bride trip he had resorted to hiring an extra chamber at each inn they stayed at.

He raised his head from the paper. “Do you think it is worth changing the furnishings?”

She tilted her head to one side. “How do you mean?”

“If we are going to spend most of our time at the monastery, it hardly seems worthwhile going to the trouble of changing these rooms around.”

She said nothing. What she really wanted to know was: did he still intend to purchase a new townhouse? Or had he decided to stay in this townhouse in which he was so comfortable, surrounded by his own things? She, too, loved the carved jade and soapstone pieces which crammed the occasional tables, but she was not fond of the leering serpent that snarled at her from the staircase, nor the horrifying elephant’s foot provided to house her parasols.

“Do you not agree?” he asked, dark brows much in evidence.

She looked straightly at him. “Sir, I deplore the use of a dead animal’s foot as an ornament. It sickens me.”

“I am sorry you feel like that, madam. Most of us who have been to India have brought back such things. Tigers’ heads are much in vogue I believe,” he said in a bored tone.

She hated it when he called her ‘madam.’

“Perhaps the tigers and elephants might be better left in the jungles.

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