The Merry Marquis by Meredith Bond

Author:Meredith Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: romance, england, music, regency
Publisher: Meredith Bond

Chapter Fourteen

Richard knocked on Teresa’s door. “Teresa, come along, we will be late,” he called through the door.

The door opened to reveal her maid.

“Where is… her ladyship?” he asked, peering into the room over her shoulder.

“I am sorry, my lord. She is in the drawing room waiting for you. Has been this past quarter of an hour.” The maid curtseyed to belay her rudeness.

“She is?” Richard was shocked. Both Julia and his sister had always taken a long time to dress. He had just assumed all women did. He went down to the drawing room.

When he opened the door, he felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. There stood the most beautiful woman—his wife. She was dressed all in white and silver. A silver cloth with pearls sown onto it was wound round her head holding her hair up and away from her face while the rest of her long black hair fell in graceful curls down her back.

“You are beautiful.” The words came from his mouth before his mind had registered them in his brain.

She blushed. “No, but it is kind of you to say, nonetheless.”

“If I did not mean it, I would not have said it. You look beautiful this evening, Teresa.” He came further into the room and gently took her fingers, which had been tying themselves up in the strings of her reticule.

She looked down at their hands. “Thank… thank you, my lord.”

Richard took his first breath since he had walked into the room. Somehow his heart felt too tight in his chest. “Do you know, that you have not called me by my name since we’ve been married?”

She looked up, her large black eyes wide with wonder. “I am sorry, I felt that that would be rather… rather intimate.”

Richard wondered if she would prefer not be intimate with him at all. He supposed that she would not. For some reason this hurt him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

He forced himself to smile, “We are married, Teresa, we are supposed to be intimate. No one else knows that ours is merely a marriage of convenience. Shall we, at least, try to give others the impression that we are happy?”

Teresa turned towards the window so that Richard could not see her face. “Yes, of course, my… Richard.” Her voice was very soft, almost hoarse. For a moment Richard wondered if she were trying not to cry, but he quickly dismissed that idea when she turned back to him with a smile on her face.

“We should go, or else my mother and aunt will wonder where we are,” she said, in a much stronger voice.

Richard held out his arm for Teresa to place her hand on it and then led her out to their waiting carriage.

Richard spent the journey trying not to think about the fact that his wife would rather be married to someone else, or not married at all. Instead, he tried to focus on the upcoming evening.

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