Page 43 of To Marry and to Meddle
“All that monologue has illustrated,” he said, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair and leaning down so that she could not lookanywhere but directly into his eyes, “is that I was so taken with you that I proceeded to do everything in my power to woo you.”
She snorted. “It hardly counts as wooing, Julian, when there’s no feeling involved.”
He registered, with a faint pang of surprise, that he didn’t like to hear her dismiss their courtship in such terms. She was entirely correct, of course—the whole point of their marriage was that there was no feeling involved. And yet, as he had gazed at Emily, he’d realized that helikedbeing married to her. This in itself was somewhat startling, and so he’d quickly put the thought from his mind, instead bickering with her amiably and trying his very best not to consider the fact that it was not, perhaps, strictly accurate anymore to claim that no feeling at all existed between them.
He smiled over the memory now as he sat at his table, waiting for the cream-of-veal soup to be brought out. Emily had discussed the menu at length with him, before deciding to ignore his advice and settle upon exactly what she’d had in mind to start with. Julian, sensing that his role in these situations was merely to smile and nod agreeably, had done so with good humor. But the result of this was that he now knew precisely how much thought Emily had put into this dinner—how much she’d considered every last detail. It seemed an awful lot to worry about.
Darting a glance down the table at his wife, however, he was relieved to see that she didn’t look worried at all. Indeed, she looked… luminous. This was, in and of itself, nothing out of the ordinary—Emily’s aesthetic qualities were well established, both among thetonin general and, in greater detail, in Julian’s own mind. Tonight she was wearing a gown of midnight-blue satin, the neckline lower than he’d seen her wear before. He’d told her, as soon as they’d arrived in town,to feel free to set up accounts at the modiste, the haberdasher, and anywhere else she might wish to give her custom; when she’d asked him hesitantly about pin money, he’d named a sum that had made her blink in astonishment.
“But that’s merely an estimate,” he’d told her. “You can of course spend more, if the need arises.”
At these words, Emily, wide-eyed, had said, “You… you already paid off my father’s debts—I hadn’t expected this much in pin money.”
“Your father’s debts have nothing to do with you,” Julian said coolly, thinking of the strongly worded letter he had sent to Rowanbridge the morning after his meeting with Cartham regarding the financial arrangements.
“You are my wife, and what is mine is yours,” he added. “Besides, we made an agreement when we married—I can hardly have you wearing gowns three seasons out of date.”
This had seemed to mollify her, and tonight she was wearing one of those new gowns. He didn’t realize how accustomed he’d grown to seeing her wearing a style that was ever-so-slightly out of fashion until he saw her now, looking entirely à la mode. She looked grown-up. It was an odd turn of phrase to use, considering that she was his wife, and certainly not a girl, and in no way did he think of her as childlike. But her parents had, he realized in a rush, and so too had Cartham. To them, she was a girl incapable of knowing her own mind or making her own decisions, to be used as they saw fit.
But the version of Emily at the table this evening—she was a woman. And she knew it.
She was, at present, laughing at something Lady Fitzwilliam had said, and her entire face was alight. Julian found it impossible to tear his gaze away—which was why he did not miss the furtive hand sheslipped beneath the table. Julian was quite certain that, were he interested in dropping to the floor like a madman and crawling around underneath his dining room table, he would see Cecil Lucifer Beelzebub happily holding court on Emily’s lap. Julian, however—perhaps lulled by a couple of glasses of wine and not feeling quite up to a kitten-induced argument—decided against confirming this.
“You’re mooning, Belfry,” came Audley’s amused voice from Julian’s right, and he started, remembering that they were surrounded by friends and that any gawking he did would be in plain sight.
“I’m hardlymooning,” he said shortly, shooting Audley a look—Julian generally liked the man, finding him thoughtful and serious in a way that most idiots of thetonwere not, but he did have a tendency, now that his own marriage had been so happily reconciled, to look around with the gaze of the smugly besotted. “But only a fool could fail to appreciate how beautiful my wife looks this evening.”
“Very good, Belfry,” said Bridgeworth’s wife, Jemma, who was seated on Audley’s other side, and who never hesitated to interject herself into any conversation. When Julian had first met her, he’d thought her rather an odd match for his somewhat mild-mannered friend, but he supposed it was no stranger a match than his marriage to Emily.
“However,” Jemma continued, “it is better to hold such compliments until the lady is nearer, so that she can pretend not to hear them but be secretly pleased nonetheless. I wish Bridgeworth would take note of this.”
She had spoken a bit loudly, and her husband, several seats down the table, glanced over at the sound of his name. “Is there something wrong with my compliments, my love?” he called, interrupting whatever conversation he’d been having with Diana, who was seated next to him.
“You neverpayme any compliments,” Jemma said severely.
“I certainly do,” Bridgeworth protested, his neck flushing a bit. He leaned forward in his chair with an embarrassed glance at those seated near him and said, a bit more quietly, “What do you think all those notes on your dressing table are?”
“Do you hear that, Jeremy?” Diana called down the table to her fiancé, who was sipping a glass of claret while Violet explained something to him with great eagerness; both turned at the sound of Diana’s voice. “Love notes,” she said, giving him a significant look. “On her dressing table. I hope you are taking notes on how to be a good husband.”
“I do live in abject terror that you will decide to leave me,” Willingham said lazily, not sounding remotely terrified. “Don’t know if I can manage love letters, though, my precious diamond.”
Diana shot him a look. “Do not call me that again—you’ll put me off my food.”
“Of course not, my radiant emerald,” he agreed.
“Please stop speaking to me now,” said his beloved, and she promptly turned back to Bridgeworth and Jemma, who were at the moment giving each other the sorts of lovesick looks down the table that Julian thought very likely to put him offhisfood.
“Are dinner parties always this chaotic?” he asked Audley, who looked faintly amused. “I don’t frequent terribly polite circles these days, you understand, but it does seem as if the dinners I have attended in the past haven’t borne quite such a strong resemblance to the kitten races the children in my village used to stage.”
“How on earth do kittens race?” Audley asked, momentarily diverted.
“Without much semblance of order,” Julian informed him.
“This is, unfortunately, what you’ve agreed to, by marrying Emily,” said Audley, with the heavy sigh of a man already deep into his own sentence. He gazed at Violet. “Utter madness at every turn.”
“Speakingof madness,” Diana said brightly. “Belfry, did Emily tell you the positivelybrilliantidea she had?”
Diana gave him a dazzling smile. She was—there was no denying it—an extremely attractive woman; indeed, in his younger days, Julian thought, he likely would have wasted a fair amount of energy chasing after her. But when she smiled at him like this, with the full force of her attention, he found her—well—
