Chapter Ten
When George came down to the breakfast room the next morning, Mr Challenger was there to greet her with his usual disapproving expression.
‘Good morning, Husband,’ she said, smiling brightly. Then, for the benefit of the footman, she went to his side and gave him a kiss upon the cheek before taking her seat. When she glanced back at him while reaching for the eggs it was clear that the gesture had affected him. He was still frowning, but his cheeks had gone pink and it looked as though he had forgotten what it was he meant to say.
At last, he settled on, ‘Good morning, Georgiana.’
Silence fell, again. She sipped her tea.
‘Did you enjoy your shopping trip yesterday?’
He would not have asked if he did not know the truth. She smiled sweetly. ‘Yes. Very much so. I bought a new bonnet.’
‘To replace the one you lost while carriage racing on the Hounslow Road,’ he finished, taking a slice of toast from the rack and reaching for the butter. ‘Did you not listen to a word I said, on the night we married?’
She touched a finger to her chin, pretending to think. ‘I believe you wished me to be frugal. Since I got the money for the hat off Mr Gregory, it cost you nothing.’
The bread in his hand crumbled under the pressure of his knife and he tossed it uneaten on his plate. ‘I also told you to avoid making a public spectacle of yourself.’
‘A public spectacle?’ She laughed. ‘It was only a mile down the road and back.’
‘In the company of a man who is not your husband,’ he reminded her.
‘A good friend of yours. Surely...’
‘And betting.’
‘One small wager,’ she said. ‘Which I won.’
‘The amount is not the point,’ Mr Challenger said. ‘The point is that I forbade you from driving...’
‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘You threatened me with a pony cart.’
‘I do not threaten,’ he said.
It was not really a threat to be so overprotective. He might have been trying, in his own misguided way, to be kind. He had followed it by defending her against Marietta. For the first time in ages, someone had taken her side in an argument. Despite how much he annoyed her, she had wanted to kiss him in gratitude.
And then, on the ride back to the house, he had told her of his plans to abandon her for the evening to go to his stupid club.
An hour later, she had been tearing down the road toward Colnbrook with the wind in her hair and her husband’s friend swearing on the driver’s seat beside her.
‘You do not threaten?’ She smiled and took a sip of tea. ‘Well, neither do I. I said I had no intention of following the ridiculous strictures you placed on me. And I meant it.’
She waited for his response. He did not seem like the sort of man who would strike a woman. But what could he do to her, short of lock her in her room? She almost hoped he would try, so she might test the strength of the drainpipe outside her bedroom window.
‘Then I will renege on my part of the bargain,’ he said, smiling over his coffee cup.
‘And what might that bargain be?’ she asked, feeling the first hint of worry.
He set down his cup and stood, walking over to stand behind her chair, resting his hands on the back, so she could feel the heat of his fingers through the back of her gown. He bent down until his lips were touching her ear. Then he whispered in a voice so soft that the footman at the door would not hear a word. ‘You wish to live apart? If you do not obey me, it will never happen. You will never be rid of me, until death us do part, just as the bishop said. We will be together, night and day. We will live in the same house. We will sleep in the same bed.’
‘You would not dare,’ she whispered back. ‘I would not...’ She turned her head to whisper back into his face. And this time she was the one who forgot how to speak. Their lips were less than an inch from each other, so close that she could smell the coffee on his breath.
When he kissed her, it was more gentle than their last kiss had been, as if it was nothing more than his answer to the morning greeting she had just given him. His hands were on her shoulders, kneading the muscles until she was near to purring with pleasure. She could not help herself. She kissed him back, eager for more.
Then he kissed his way back to her ear, nibbling the lobe before whispering again, in a calm, unemotional tone, ‘If you do not obey me by choice, I have the power to make you beg to do exactly what I want. Do not forget it.’
Then he stood up and gave her an avuncular pat on the back. ‘Have a good time on Bond Street, my sweet. And be sure that shopping is all you do today.’
The man was insufferable. She had known it from the first moment they’d met. But then, she had not seen the worst of him. At first, she had hated him without reservation. Now, that hatred was mingled with confusion. When she’d agreed to the marriage, she’d had no idea that his kisses could make her act against her better judgement.
When he was not kissing her, she was as resolved as ever to go where she pleased and do as she pleased. But with one touch of his lips, she could imagine nothing more pleasurable than total compliance to whatever he suggested. And while he was not totally unmoved by her presence, she saw no sign that receiving a kiss from her could similarly move him to become more reasonable.
But knowledge of the fact did nothing to help her decide how to spend the day in a way that did not annoy him or bore herself. She wrote a brief note to her father to tell him of the carriage race, then tore it up before sending it. At one time, he’d have thought it the most amusing thing in the world. But perhaps now he would disapprove, just as her husband did. It might create an even greater wedge between them. In the end, she wrote a whole page of boring nonsense that even Marietta could not object to and closed with another invitation to tea.
After such a bland missive, it seemed only natural to spend the rest of the day behaving in the conventional manner that her husband expected. She spoke with the housekeeper about the week’s menus, spent some time familiarising herself with the household accounts, then dressed to go out. She made her first official social call: a visit to the home of her husband’s brother to see her sister-in-law, Caroline. Between them, they agreed to take his younger sisters shopping that afternoon.
He could not possibly object to her making nice with his family. Though she’d had no luck with her own, it was her duty to make an attempt with his. A success with the Challengers might prove to him that she was not as difficult as he claimed.
At least she could be less contrary than her husband himself. On their wedding day, he’d made little effort to encourage a friendship between her and the ladies of the family, treating them every bit as rudely as he had her. Now that they’d spoken, she found Caroline to be quite charming and just as eager to accept her friendship as she was to offer it.
Neither was it hard to gain the approval of the younger sisters. On their shopping trip, the three girls occupying the carriage seat opposite her were lovely and well mannered, so she told them so. In response, they giggled. Judging by their behaviour at the wedding, it was their answer of choice for many situations.
‘Do not be tiresome, girls. If your incessant chatter gives me a megrim I will take you home immediately.’ Caroline, Viscountess Linholm, might have experience with the girls, but she had far less patience.
The eldest of the three was barely fourteen. George remembered the age well and how hard it was to balance the desire to be a grown up with the fact that ladylike behaviour was boring. When the novelty of hair ribbons and bonbons wore off, George did a thing she had always wished someone would do for her.
She took them to a pet store. There she bought them a shiny black bird that the store owner assured them could be trained to speak. It already had a vocabulary of some sort, though as far as George knew, it was mostly gibberish. After some discussion, it was decided that he would be named Pootah, after one of the sounds he kept repeating.
Once they had the bird to occupy them, they did not mind being sent home so the ladies could continue to shop. As the carriage rolled down the street and away from her, George saw them passing the cage back and forth between them, offering Pootah bits of biscuit and trying to coax him into saying hello.
‘Now that those annoying children are gone, the real fun can begin,’ Caroline said, taking George gently by the shoulders and casting a sidelong look down at her day dress. ‘The first thing we must do is to get you to my modiste.’ Though she smiled as she said it and was nowhere near as critical as Marietta, it was plain that she found fault with George’s clothing.
George glanced down at it herself to see if there was something obviously wrong. ‘I hardly think it necessary. I bought a new wardrobe at the beginning of the Season.’
‘For your come-out,’ Caroline replied with a shake of her head. ‘Those dresses were all well and good for a green virgin. But you are married now.’
And the dresses still suited her. She was almost as green and definitely as virginal as she had been a couple of days ago. The few kisses she’d exchanged with Mr Challenger so far put her on par with some of the other girls she had befriended who had been able to dodge their chaperones long enough to experiment with such things.
If her husband did not want the world to see her as an innocent, she had best not look like one. ‘I am married,’ George admitted cautiously. ‘But I do not know if Mr Challenger wishes for me to spend all of his money at the dressmaker.’
‘How else would he want you to spend it?’ Caroline replied. ‘And even if you are right about his opinion, you must not take Frederick’s word as law. The whole family knows that he is a miser and a fussbudget. If he is allowed to, he will see you in rags and think it good value.’
But he was her husband, at least for the month, and George felt required to defend him, though she had no real desire to do so. ‘He has been most generous with me thus far. And I would hardly call him a fussbudget.’ Stick in the mud? Joyless authoritarian? There were any number of more accurate phrases, none of which she desired to share with Caroline on their first meeting.
‘All the same, you cannot go out with him in the modest attire of a girl. You are a lady now. People will expect elegance.’
This was a conundrum. For when she looked at the Viscountess’s wardrobe she could not say that she actually liked it. It was expensive, of course. And very au courant. Marietta had often said, with guarded admiration, that the woman never wore the same gown more than once. Even so, George doubted that many of the styles she had seen so far would suit her. She did not wish to wear a cap in the house just because she was married. She certainly did not want one like the starched organza confection favoured by Caroline when she’d called upon her. Nor did she want ballgowns that were cut so low one was in danger of falling out of them if one sneezed.
But perhaps it was not about what she wanted at all. It was clear that Mr Challenger did not like her as she was. She had said she would not change. If she could dress the part of a good wife when they were together, she might not have to alter anything else about herself.
The choice of gowns had been one of the chief battles between her and Marietta. If her new sister-in-law did not like her clothing either, maybe it was time to admit that she might be wrong on the subject. ‘Perhaps I do need some help choosing a fashion that suits me,’ George said hesitantly. ‘We are attending a ball this evening hosted by Frederick’s friend, the Duke of Westmoor. I do want to look my best for it and would be most happy for you to advise me.’
‘Excellent!’ the woman responded, clapping her hands in approval. ‘You will not be sorry that you have put yourself in my hands.
* * *
This proved false almost immediately.
It was four in the afternoon, well past the time George liked to be sitting down to tea. And yet the Viscountess was still calling for more silks.
‘The stripes next. With tassels of gold,’ Caroline announced, helping herself to the sweetmeats displayed on the gold ormolu table in the corner of the fitting room. The dressmaker’s assistant scurried for the back room to get more fabric.
George’s stomach growled in response. She lowered her arms for a moment to shake the numbness from them and received a disapproving sniff from the modiste who was trying to adjust the armhole of the sample gown so it might be possible to dance without ripping out a seam.
Caroline’s choices so far had been less outrageous than she’d feared. The current dress—a grass-green silk with gold-embroidered hem—was quite pretty, though shockingly low-cut. But if she stood for stripes and tassels, she would end up looking like the ottoman Caroline was perched on. ‘Do we not have enough gowns already?’ she asked.
‘For evening, perhaps,’ the Viscountess said. ‘But what of days and mornings? And you have no fans or gloves as yet.’
George had a drawer full of white gloves that would go with the dresses she had bought and nearly as many fans. Since her plan was to leave London as soon as she was able, her current day clothes would do nicely. They were well made, comfortable, and never seen by neighbours in the country.
Today, she must find another method to dissuade her new friend that did not display her disappointing lack of interest in fashion plates. She blinked and smiled sweetly at the Viscountess. ‘If we buy everything today, we will have nothing to shop for next week.’
‘How true,’ the Viscountess agreed. ‘Perhaps the rest of the wardrobe can wait.’
‘Wonderful.’ George replied. ‘And now, we can go for tea.’
‘But tea shops are so stuffy. Fit only for girls and old ladies,’ Caroline said. ‘I would prefer something more filling. A meal at Steven’s Hotel would do nicely.’
‘Is it really necessary to go there without our husbands? Surely we will call attention.’ While she did not wish to follow Mr Challenger’s silly rules, neither did she want to flout convention just to spite him. Did ladies dine at hotels unescorted? She had heard Steven’s was a gathering place for gentleman and former officers. If she was seen there by a member of her husband’s old regiment, what would Mr Challenger say in response?
‘Of course we will call attention, my dear,’ The Viscountess replied with a wave of her scented handkerchief. ‘That is the object of this whole endeavour. If we did not wish to be noticed, why else would we have left the house at all?’
* * *
George went straight to her room, when she returned home, not wanting to risk even a brief meeting with her husband. If he was to ask how she had spent her afternoon, she did not want to blurt out that it had ended in eating oysters and drinking champagne with half the Horse Guard.
She closed the door, locking it behind her, relieved that her maid was already in the room. ‘Has a new ball gown arrived for me, Polly?’
‘Yes, madam.’ The girl grinned. ‘And a fine thing it is.’
‘I am glad you like it,’ George replied, no longer sure what she thought about the dress, the Viscountess, or anything else. ‘There will be a large number of them just as nice arriving in the next few days. When they come, you are to take up the bodices by at least an inch. I will not be seen in them unless you can manage to return some scrap of decency to the necklines. It is either that, or send them back unworn.’ She sighed. ‘But I expect it is too late for that already, if they have been fit for me. Lord knows what a row we will have when Mr Challenger sees the bills.’ She had assumed the only instruction she might be capable of following was the avoidance of needless extravagance, but she had failed again. The mere thought of what she’d spent made her want to faint.
‘Perhaps, if you model them for your husband before I alter them, he will not mind the price so very much.’ By the sly tone in the maid’s voice, she was expecting George to coax her way out of trouble with her non-existent feminine wiles.
If it saved her one evening’s grief, it was worth trying. ‘Very well,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Leave tonight’s gown as it is. I doubt it will make matters worse than they already are.’