Page 66 of Deceiving an Earl
She woke early, dressed carefully, barely ate breakfast. Her mother frowned at her meager plate of toast and cup of coffee. Ellen was so excited she almost felt sick with it.
The morning dragged on and Oliver did not arrive. Maybe he was delayed by his father. She knew that the earl liked to have Oliver with him as he conducted business, to teach Oliver all he needed to know about being an earl.
She was going to be a countess someday! Surely, that would bring a smile to her mother’s usually unsmiling face. Her mother was a baroness, but it had never been enough for her. She’d wanted more and, since Ellen was an only child, it had always been her mother’s wish for Ellen to marry well. And an earl was very well, indeed. Oliver was a viscount now, but someday he would be an earl.
She was sitting in the front parlor, trying to concentrate on her stitching and not stare out the window looking for Oliver, when her maid motioned to her from the doorway.
Ellen hurried to her, and Hazel pulled her aside and handed her a folded note. It was from Oliver, and her heart sank. He’d been unexpectedly sent out of town with his father and wasn’t returning for…four days?
She couldn’t live with this anticipation for one more moment, let alone four days.
She felt she would surely expire, but no, if she was adult enough to have a husband, then she was adult enough to wait four days for Oliver. After all, what was four days compared to a lifetime together?
She went to her bedroom and lay down on her bed, dreaming of a small house on the ocean, a place they could escape to, with a passel of children that looked like a combination of them both.
Two interminable days later Ellen was wandering through the house when she saw a man she’d never seen before leaving her father’s study. She didn’t think much of it and continued her bored wanderings. She missed Oliver terribly and silently cursed his father for taking him away at such a crucial time. By now she had expected to be planning her wedding. That she wasn’t was frustrating. Plus, she just missed Oliver. She wanted to see him, talk to him, kiss him. Discuss their future. But she told herself to be patient. They had a lifetime together.
That afternoon she was summonsed to her father’s study. She was rarely allowed in this room where her father sat behind a large, imposing desk. She wasn’t sure what he did in here.
“Yes, Father?” She stopped in front of his desk, her hands folded in front of her, and waited while he read some correspondence. She was only vaguely curious as to why she’d been called in.
“I just met with the Earl of Fieldhurst’s solicitor and signed a marriage contract with him.”
She furrowed her brow. “A marriage contract for whom, Father?”
He looked at her just as confused as she probably appeared to be. “For you. You will wed Fieldhurst.”
The room began to spin, and her knees went weak. Surely she was hearing this wrong. “But…I can’t marry him.”
“Don’t be a foolish girl. It’s a remarkable match. He is an earl, well established, his line long. You will be a countess, and you will produce heirs for the Fieldhurst name. The marriage is set for three weeks from today.”
He pulled another paper toward him and started reading it, while Ellen’s vision blurred. She couldn’t marry this Fieldhurst. She was marrying Oliver. It was all planned.
Except it wasn’t planned.
Oliver had not spoken to her father and now other plans had been made for her.
Ellen paced the parlor. Periodically, she would enter the hall and press her ear to the study door where she could hear Oliver and Philip talking, but not what they were talking about.
Lunch was served, but she barely ate, and the men didn’t come out to join her. She assumed that the books Oliver had brought were the ledgers from the estate and that he was teaching Philip everything that Arthur had not had time to teach their son.
She should be grateful that Oliver was willing to do this. Shewasgrateful. But she was also frightened.
Frightened of her carefully held secret and frightened of Oliver, because she still loved him. As much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t anymore.
She’d loved Arthur, too, in time.
But, oh, the guilt she had felt on her wedding day, knowing she loved another man, had made love to another man less than a week before her nuptials. And when Arthur had taken her to bed on their wedding night she had naively assumed that it would be the same as it had been with Oliver.
How wrong she had been.
How very, very wrong.
Oliver and Arthur were nothing alike.
Arthur had not hurt her, but he had not paid attention to her, either. He had done his duty and left. There had been little kissing, no hugging, and no whispered words in the dark.
She’d been left cold and alone in her own bed and that had set the course for the rest of her marriage.
