I felt an odd elation, a desire not to look beyond the moment. I was too excited to be unhappy.
By a stream we paused to rest awhile. We tethered the horses and sat on the grass.
Carleton took my hand and said: “So at last it has happened.”
“You always knew it would, didn’t you?” I said. “You made up your mind and what you decide you want you get eventually.”
“It seems to work that way,” he admitted with unaccustomed modesty.
I looked at the ring he had put on my finger. I had taken off that which Edwin had given me and had left it in a drawer in my court cupboard.
He took my hand and kissed the ring. Then he put his arms about me and drew me down beside him.
I said uneasily: “We should be going.”
He answered that we should celebrate our marriage.
I knew what he meant and I tried to rise. “Someone could come past,” I said.
“This is a very isolated spot. Besides, I want you now. Do you realize this stupendous fact? You and I have just been married.”
Then he held me to him and laughed and the leaves fluttered down on us as he made love to me.
The notion came to me that it would always be what he wanted unless I firmly resisted which, I promised myself, I should do if the inclination so moved me.
But I would be honest. I was elated. I didn’t know whether this was happiness. It was not what I had found with Edwin, but I wanted no more of that.
Excitement, passion, satisfaction. How much more appealing than romantic love!
I never intend to be hurt again, I told myself.
Carleton was right. There was great rejoicing when my father and mother-in-law were told the news.
“You sly dog,” cried Lord Eversleigh, gripping Carleton’s hand. “Marrying in secret, eh? Keeping it from us.”
Matilda embraced me warmly. “My dearest daughter,” she said, “for that is what you are to me. Nothing could have pleased me more.” She whispered: “You will be so good for Carleton … after that unfortunate marriage. It makes everything so right.”
“Why did you keep it secret?” asked Charlotte; her voice was cool but there was a strange edge to it.
Carleton was ready for her. “We decided on the spur of the moment. We knew that if we announced a formal betrothal, you would have wanted us to wait and do everything in style. I know you, Aunt Matilda.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “that would have been just like you, Matilda.”
“Naturally I should have wanted to have had a beautiful wedding. In fact …”
“It’s coming,” said Carleton. “What did I tell you, Arabella?”
Then Matilda said that of course if would be pleasant to have another celebration. That could be done. “Everyone will be so disappointed if we don’t. We owe it to everyone on the estate …”
Carleton looked at me and smiled.
“We’ll consider it, eh, Arabella.”
I said we would, for I could see that Matilda was already making her plans.
She thought that we should have a ceremony in the church—people never really liked those secret ceremonies—and there would be a reception afterwards at the house. The servants should have theirs in the hall beyond the screens. It was traditional.
“We must let everyone know that it is a repeat performance,” said Carleton.
“Oh …” said Matilda, a slow smile spreading across her face.
Then she turned to me and embraced me. “You have brought great happiness to Eversleigh, Arabella … as always.”
Charlotte sought an opportunity to speak to me. I was passing her bedroom and she called me in to show me, she said, how she was progressing with a piece of tapestry she was working. That was just a pretext, I quickly realized.
“I am thinking of working in a new shade of red, so you think it would be the right thing to do?”
I said I thought it would be very good.
“So you are already married to Carleton?” she went on.
“Yes.”
“It seems so strange. I thought you didn’t like him. Were you pretending?”
“Of course not. It was just … our way.”
“You always seemed to be sparring together … trying to score over each other.”
“I suppose we were.”
“Then how could you be …?”
“Relationships are complicated, Charlotte.”
“I see that they are. You were different with Edwin.”
My lips tightened. “Yes,” I said.
“You loved Edwin dearly. It was a terrible tragedy. People suffer when they fall in love. Perhaps it would be better not to.”
“That’s certainly a point of view.”
“Was Carleton implying that you are already …?”
“I am going to have a child,” I said.
“Is that why … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was just that it was such a surprise. You and Carleton, when I thought you disliked him. Of course I knew he was interested in you … but then, if all accounts are true, he is interested in lots of women.”
“From now on,” I said lightly, “he will have to be interested in one only.”
“Do you think that you can make a man interested in you only?”
“I believe that is what a wife must find out for herself by trying, of course.”
“You are attractive, Arabella. I’ve always seen that. It was only when that woman came …”
“You mean Harriet,” I said firmly.
“Harriet Main,” she repeated softly. And I guessed she was thinking of how Harriet had wantonly taken Charles Condey from her and then refused him.
“I am going to change things at Eversleigh, Charlotte,” I said. “We shall have balls and banquets. I think we should. And then you will …”
“Yes—” she said.
“Perhaps you’ll find out that there are other men in the world besides Charles Condey.”
“Oh, I always knew that,” she replied, smiling at me.
I’ll do it, I told myself. I’ll bring her out. I’ll find a husband for her. I’ll stop her brooding on the past. I had freed myself from it. So should she.
Yes, that was how I felt during the months that followed. I was free from the ghost of the past. Edwin had never really loved me. A bitter revelation, but it was proving helpful. I could not let my resentment against him smoulder. I was someone else’s wife now.
And Carleton. What can I say except that he carried me along on the waves of passion like a frail craft on hitherto uncharted seas? I began to wait to be alone with him, to long for him, to give myself up to him entirely.
I understood so much of what my mother had told me. I knew how she had fought against such a passion. I understood her story as I had never been able to before. She came to Eversleigh for the wedding celebration with my father and the rest of the family. Lucas could not come because his wife was having a baby.
My parents were delighted. I could see they liked Carleton. My mother told me confidentially that she could clearly understand the attraction, and she was sure I should be even happier in my second marriage than I had been in my first. I realized then that, although she had considered Edwin a suitable husband, she had felt he was so young and not quite as serious as she would like the husband of her darling daughter to be.
Carleton talked a great deal with my father. They discussed the state of the country—my father from the military angle, Carleton from that of politics. They were clearly interested in each other.