Page 3 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
Yes, his plans had included a very different bride. He had spent most of the last Season and a fair amount of this autumn courting the exquisitely beautiful Gloriana Blakely, a woman whose reputation for rejecting eligible bachelors was overtaken only by admiration for her social graces. She would have made the ideal partner as he navigated the viper pit that was High Society.
In truth, he imagined that Glory herself had probably experienced something less than heartbreak upon learning of his departure. It had been clear to most of the guests at Somerton over the last few months that her interests had diverted, rather obviously, to Alex Somers.
It didn't bother Nathaniel. He hadn't been particularly enamored of the girl, despite her looks. He wanted a wife to assist in his plans for the future, and Miss Blakely would have done just that, regardless of her romantic predilections. They would have suited one another.
Now ... well, now he was married to a woman who would be far more at home in a stack of books than she ever would be amongst theton.
He supposed he shouldn't be terribly surprised. Fate had shattered his plans many times before, after all. The important thing to remember was that he always managed to find his way back onto the path he'd intended, despite all manner of surprises and obstacles.
This particular challenge wasn’t even a terrible one. He would buy his dowdy wife a cottage wherever she liked and tuck her away with her books. She would be content while he carried on with his business. If necessary, they could hash out further stipulations and details as the need arose. Surely such an arrangement would satisfy them both.
He had barely slept for the last several nights. Between the mounting panic over his failure at his first mission and the distraction of sharing a bed with a woman for the first time in eons, it had been all he could do to curl onto his side and squeeze his eyes shut in lieu of sleep.
She was hardly a temptress, of course. The poor thing had been stiff as a plank of wood on her own side of the mattress, gripping the blankets at her chin. He got the impression that she didn't sleep much either, and that her wide gray eyes spent hours affixed on the alien ceilings above them rather than closed in restful slumber. He wasn't sure if her equal state of concern was a comfort or salt in the wound.
It was a little of both, he decided.
In the haze of his fatigue, it seemed to him that he blinked and suddenly a marriage license was being proffered at him to sign, which he did with markedly less finesse than his signature usually entailed. That was appropriate, he thought. This whole damned event was the opposite of finesse.
The girl, for her part, signed in neat little letters and handed the pen over to the witnesses, two complete strangers, who would seal the legality on their union. She did not tremble or quake or shed tears at the disappointment of it all, nor did she frown at the trappings of the venue.
It occurred to him that perhaps this girl thought she was getting the better end of their bargain. Maybe she was, in the grand scheme of things. He hadn't paid her much mind prior to the necessity of a shared mission. He gathered she must be somewhat of a wallflower, who likely was not entertaining many marriage prospects.
It was a good thing, he reasoned. Much better to have a happy bride than one with discontent. If she was satisfied merely with the status of wife, he was happy to hand over his bachelorhood.
After all, Nathaniel had spent his entire life working toward a single goal, one which he had come uncomfortably close to utterly, permanently losing access to.
Little Eleanor Applegate was going to bring him directly to his desired destination, whether she realized it or not.
* * *
Much of thefirst day in the carriage had been passed in mutual slumber. While their plight had not been wholly resolved, they had reached enough of a conclusion to allow for a bit of rest.
Nate's dreams were a muddle of memories related to their current situation. One moment he was slipping into a corner of Almack's to unseal a letter bound in silver wax, his hands shaking with anticipation. The next, he was approached by a veiled woman as the clocks chimed midnight in the run-down London neighborhood of Seven Dials. Before she could speak, he found himself at Somerton, digging through the belongings of Alex Somers, and then in a blink, on the road with his new wife. On and on it went, no sooner ending than it would all begin again.
It didn't make for a very restorative type of sleep. He found himself jerked awake more than once by some latent concern that was long past by now, replaced by a newer, keener, more desperate fear or ten. In those few moments when he was pulled back into the waking world, he never saw a difference in his wife's reclining posture, her hands folded under her cheek as she was embraced by some perfectly serene flavor of sleep.
Enviable.
They stopped twice that first day. The first time, neither Nate nor Eleanor could be stirred from their rest, not even by the temptation of a hot meal as the horses were changed. The second time, many hours later, they begrudgingly dragged themselves from the carriage and into a way station, partially by the promise of food and a bed, but ultimately convinced by the fact that their driver also required some sleep if they were ever to make it to London.
He had hoped to drive through that first night, as to avoid any connotations or expectations befitting what was technically their wedding night.
He had opted to bathe before sleeping, and to his relief, he found his new bride had returned deeply into her own slumber before he could join her. He had pulled a pair of fresh trousers on, though they were not ideal for sleeping, just to enhance a sense of propriety onto the evening. When he found her dead asleep instead of rabidly awaiting a ravishing, he felt rather sheepish about the whole thing.
She looked so very, very small curled on the bed, blanket trailing off her body and pooling onto the floor next to her. This wasn't some conniving social climber, entrapping him for her own ends. This was a young girl who had somehow become involved in dangerous matters that someone should have shielded her from. If not that brother of hers, then a father, surely?
Those smudged spectacles of hers were discarded on the table next to her pillow, their silver frames gleaming in the light of the candle she'd left lit, as though she had not intended to fall asleep just yet. She had pulled some pins from her hair, he assumed, judging from the little stack of gleaming needle-like objects next to her spectacles. However, her dark hair was still bundled up over her head, as though it had become permanently affixed in its lopsided bun, pins or none.
He repressed the urge to sigh, opting instead to towel off his wet hair and find a shirt to sleep in. He wished to high heaven he had requested a second room. He’d sleep much easier in a bed by himself, especially after wasting all that needless worry over what she might want from him on their wedding night.
Why was he so adverse to the idea, anyhow? He frowned, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He was thinking like a spinster aunt, not a bridegroom. Surely that was the result of pragmatism, some deep instinctual reason that had kicked itself into play through the fatigue, despite the lag in his rationale.
It wasn’t that he’d made any particular choice to be celibate for so long. It had simply evolved as a matter of necessity, with women fairly low on his list of important tasks that must be conquered. In the years of establishing himself as a competent statesman, a cunning ambassador, and a charming party guest, there had scarcely been time to breathe, let alone take a mistress.
Of course, there had been dalliances here and there in his youth, and there had been more than one proposition from some of the more daring ladies he'd encountered in London ballrooms. Ultimately, the risks involved in most potential trysts had outweighed the appeal of momentary satisfaction, and so he'd somehow found himself on an embarrassingly long hiatus from the pleasures of the flesh.
Perhaps he was frigid, he thought unhappily. Could men be frigid? Surely he wasn't strictly frigid if he'd found himself tempted by sharing a bed with the likes of Eleanor Applegate, even in her state of miserable exhaustion! Still, he hadn't exactly needed his full power of will to resist her these past few nights either.
