Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 2)

The thought was so unexpected, so sudden, that she gasped and sat down in the nearest pew with a bump.

‘Bella?’ Daniel sat down too. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I was thinking of Mama,’ she lied. ‘I do not know where she is buried and I wish I could leave flowers on her grave, visit it from time to time.’ Using such an excuse stung her conscience. Forgive me, Mama, she thought. I had to tell him something.

‘But you are thinking of her,’ Daniel said. ‘That is all that matters.’

‘Yes, you are right, she is in my heart.’ She took her handkerchief, a very pretty scrap of Swiss lace that Elliott had picked out for her when she had been buying her reticule, and dabbed her eyes, pretending tears.

Am I in love with him? It was too difficult a thought to come to terms with here, now, with Daniel, unwittingly tactless at her side.

‘I am sorry to be such a watering pot,’ she said with a smile. ‘The monuments all look very handsome against the grey stone, I think. Will you come back for luncheon?’

‘If it would be no trouble.’ Daniel walked her back, handed her up into her carriage then followed in his. Bella regretted her polite invitation the moment she made it. Now, instead of the simple luncheon she had intended to eat on the terrace and the opportunity to try to come to terms with what she actually felt for her husband, she would have to sit inside in the small dining room and make conversation while Henlow and at least one footman danced attendance. She just wished Elliott would come home.

Elliott studied the stonemason’s notes. The man was right, he was almost certain. If the memorial slab was made a little narrower and taller and the angles at the top replaced with a wreath, then it would sit more harmoniously next to his parents’ monument. It would be the work of a moment to look again at the chapel and then he could get home and see Arabella, put her mind at rest about the bishop before he broke the news about her brother-in-law.

He wondered how she was and hoped she would have sent for the doctor if she had felt unwell again. He wondered, as the carriage drew up at the churchyard, if she was thinking of him.

He strode down the aisle, hat in one hand, notes in the other and into the Calne chapel, put down his hat on a pew and studied the wall. Yes, he would write and order the changes. His eye was caught by something close to his foot, a scrap of white, and he bent to pick it up.

The very new, very pretty handkerchief embroidered with lily of the valley in whitework was one of the set he had given Arabella in Worcester. Arabella had been here.

She had sat here, amidst his ancestors, carrying the child who could well carry on the line. She would be hoping for a boy, he thought. It was the natural wish for every wife with a title and an inheritance to secure for her husband. It would not occur to Arabella that her husband could be so dishonourable that he hated the idea of her with his brother’s son in her arms.

I hope she found peace here, Elliott thought as he took up his hat and strode out of the church, the heavy door closing with a bang behind him, because it gave me none.

‘I’ll walk,’ he said to the coachman. ‘Tell her ladyship I will be home after luncheon.’ He strode off in the direction of

the village before the man could respond. What he wanted was not a civilised noon meal with his wife. He wanted to get drunk and hit someone.

He probably needed someone to hit him, he acknowledged furiously as he vaulted the fence into the lane—a fight would be deeply satisfying. He felt betrayed, which was nonsense, illogical. It would be satisfying to be able to shout at Arabella, rant at her for her actions, her pregnancy. He had felt none of that when she first told him, only anger at Rafe and pity for her.

But the child had not been real to him then. Now he could see the changes in Arabella, saw the consequences in the doctor’s visit, her desire for the nursery. She had ordered the cradle to be polished—for Rafe’s son.

Elliott reached the village duck pond and kicked a stone into it, sending three ducks and a coot panicking to the far shore. Two small boys, who doubtless should have been doing something useful for their mothers, looked up from where they were fashioning a fishing pole from a length of twine, a bent stick and a pin with a wriggling worm, dismissed him as no threat to their truancy and went back to their task.

Elliott sat on a log, ignored the effect on his elegant pantaloons, and watched them. They were about six, he supposed, grubby, ragged, gap-toothed and utterly absorbed in their adventure. He wanted a son like that. He wanted Arabella to have a son, his son. They would go fishing together, play truant from the tutor together. He would teach him to ride and shoot and care about the land. His son, a boy with Arabella’s hazel-green eyes and his own dark honey hair.

Damnation. He had no right to be thinking like this. It had been no problem at first. It was as he came to know Arabella, to like her, to realise she was not just his wife in some abstract sense, but a person who mattered to him—that was when the fact that the child she carried was not his began to hurt.

He hated himself for it, he decided as he stood up and circled the pond. If she knew, she would despise him for feeling like this after all his talk of honour and duty. Elliott dug into his pocket, found two sixpenny pieces and tossed them to the boys as he passed. Their gasps of delight made him smile, albeit grimly, as he headed for the Calne Arms.

Bella finished her luncheon and went back to contemplating the pile of parcels the footman had brought in from the carriage. She supposed they must be for her—who else would Elliott be buying hats for?—but she did not like to open them. The thought that he had been choosing gifts for her made her happy, but she dare not cling to the hope that the gesture meant more than the kindness he had shown her all along.

She wanted to see him, to hear his voice, discover whether the pleasant ache in her heart was truly love. She feared it was. The misery of loving and her love not being returned warred with the happiness the emotion brought her. Elliott had already been so kind, had sacrificed so much, been so patient, she could not burden him with her feelings, feelings he would not return. And why should he believe her, even if she told him that she loved him? She had fancied herself in love with his brother—Elliott would think her fickle, would question her judgement.

But where was he? It was two hours since the carriage had returned and the footman said his lordship had apparently finished his business in the church and had walked off towards the village.

The clock struck three and she found anxiety had turned into worry and worry into anger. He had been gone for almost three days, he must know she was anxious, and yet he had not even put his head round the door, just sent a message and a pile of shopping.

Bella seized the nearest thing, a hat box, and yanked at the ribbons. It cost her a broken nail before she could open the knot she had jerked tight. Inside was the most frivolous villager hat with a big knot of green ribbon over one ear. She tossed it aside and tore open another that proved to contain a stack of fabric samples. They spilled at her feet as she looked at the next. Elliott, it seemed, had indulged himself by buying her fine lawn chemises.

‘Hah!’ Bella dropped them back on to the tissue paper from where they slid on to the floor. What did he care about her underwear? He didn’t even come straight home to see her.

‘Don’t you like them?’ She spun round as the deep voice from the doorway made her breath catch. Elliott lounged there, looking very slightly dishevelled. She was not sure whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him. Possibly both.

‘You’ve been drinking,’ she accused.