Innocence Undone by Kat Martin

Author:Kat Martin [Martin, Kat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical
ISBN: 9780312960896
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1994-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

By the time Jessie arrived at Belmore, several days later, she was a married woman. Well, almost married. The vows had been spoken, but the marriage had not yet been consummated. She told herself there hadn't been time.

Jessie paced the floor of her new suite of rooms at Belmore Hall, a luxurious accommodation done in ivory and gold that adjoined the earl's elegant, very masculine quarters of paneled wood and gold brocade. Unfortunately, her husband was not home.

As he had promised, they had stopped their headlong journey in Weybridge, at the country home of a school friend from Oxford, Adrian Kingsland, Lord Wolvermont. Wolvermont wasn't in residence, but they were welcomed nonetheless. The housekeeper, a thin, scarecrow of a woman who remembered Matt from his previous visits, provided them with guest rooms, where they bathed and changed into borrowed clothes.

Matthew left after that, for a meeting with the vicar of the local parish church. Word was sent to the archbishop, who for fifty guineas—double the usual, already exorbitant sum—arranged for a special license.

Jessie barely remembered the wedding that took place the following morning in the chapel of the small, ivy-covered church, only that it was nothing like the extravagant affair in St. James's Cathedral. Just a quick, simple ceremony and a brief, nearly passionless kiss. Through it all, Matthew was politely formal and perfectly solicitous, if unsettlingly reserved. As for Jessie, she felt mostly numb.

They left the church as soon as the wedding was ended and set off on the road again. All the way to Belmore, the earl remained broodingly silent, his broad shoulders propped against the plush velvet squabs as he stared out the window, and he never touched her unless he had to.

It didn't bode well.

She knew he was pondering the enormity of what he had done, wondering perhaps if she had told him the truth, and feeling wretched about the scandal he had created. In four hundred years, there had never been a hint of aspersion breathed upon the Belmore name. That Matthew had been the first to cause it hung like a pall over his head.

He blamed her for it, she knew, though she couldn't imagine how she could possibly be responsible for his actions that day at the church. Still he'd remained distant and impersonal since the morning they had left the inn, and now as she stood at the window of her elegant bedchamber, she worried that the pointedly reserved way they had started might be the way they would go on.

Jessie wished Papa Reggie would come home. Surely he would know what to do. Word had been sent to him, of course, but he had declined to return, opting to remain in London so the newlyweds might have time to themselves. Privately, Jessie thought he was probably also speaking to the duke, working in Matthew's behalf to make some sort of restitution. In that, no doubt, he had his work cut out for him.

As for Matthew himself, instead of making her his wife in truth, her husband was gone.

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