The Marquess Tames His Bride

Was this really how marriage was going to be? Tiptoeing round her husband the way she’d had to tiptoe round her own father’s increasingly erratic temper? At least she’d been able to see her father’s moods brewing, and had known, for the most part, how to deflect them. But Rawcliffe’s behaviour made no sense to her at all.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘The cobbles are a bit uneven, just here, that’s all.’

‘Hmm,’ he replied, looking unconvinced.

But he didn’t pursue the matter.

Well, he wouldn’t. Because he would understand her need to guard her own thoughts, since he guarded his own so carefully.

She glanced up at his face as they mounted the single step and passed into the portico of the Three Tuns. It was set in the expression he normally wore. Shuttered. As though determined to keep everyone from guessing what he was thinking, or feeling.

As though determined to keep everyone at arm’s length. Instead of being open and friendly, he would put on a disdainful look and use a mocking tone of voice, and give anyone who tried to encroach upon him the most severe put-downs.

Which made many people think he was a horrible person. But he wasn’t. A horrible person would not have married a woman who’d punched him, nor made any attempt to reconcile with her brother, which could only be for her sake, because Rawcliffe detested Clement and made no secret of it.

No, he was not horrible, he was just…guarded. He wrapped his dignity and consequence round him like some kind of protective shield. As though he couldn’t bear to let anyone close to him these days.

And he was consistent in that.

When he’d heard that Mr Kellet had died, he sort of withdrew into himself, after that one, brief moment when she’d seen he’d really been devastated by the news.

From there, it was but a small step to see that it was whenever she’d started to act affectionate towards him, that he’d done something, or said something, to make her fly into the boughs, effectively re-establishing some distance between them and also enabling him to retreat with his dignity intact.

Even having Mr Slater ride with them in the carriage on what should have been their bride trip had been a way to preserve some distance from her.

And that fit in with the way he got up immediately after they’d had conjugal relations. At the very moment when she felt as if they’d really become one flesh, one person, and wanted to hug him and get closer in an emotional way.

But why? Why did he need to go to such lengths to keep her at arm’s length? What did he think he had to fear from her? From drawing close to her?

She sighed. It was becoming increasingly obvious that she was going to have to be the sensible one in this relationship. Men were such babies when it came to their emotions. She ought to know, having had to nurse the tender sensibilities of three brothers and a father, who all threw tantrums over the most ridiculous and imagined slights on a regular basis.

Although, to be fair, so far she was the one who’d done the tantrum throwing in this relationship. Whenever he made her feel shut out, she’d practically flung herself at the barriers and tried to batter them down. She’d flung herself at him in the street just now, too, though for a different reason.

Well, she’d just have to stop doing that if it made him uncomfortable. And accept it when he pulled away with such vehemence that it felt like a slap in the face. And then, perhaps, once he began to realise she wasn’t going to demand anything he wasn’t prepared or able to give, she decided as they passed through the open door into an airy hallway, he might not feel the need to be quite so nasty.

‘Welcome to the Three Tuns, sir, madam,’ said a man she guessed must be the landlord. He was extremely neatly dressed. In fact, he looked more like a butler than the keeper of a large inn.

Ah, yes, but hadn’t Rawcliffe told her that they wanted visitors to think of the place as a hotel nowadays? That was why he’d tacked on a reading room and an assembly room, and, according to a sign hanging over a doorway to the right of the hall, a library and gift shop, too. And that was why this man was dressed the way she suspected managers of hotels dressed.

‘Would you care to sign the visitors’ book?’ he said, indicating an immense leather-bound ledger, situated on a waist-high shelf under the stairs. ‘We do like to know who is staying in Peacombe, so that we can apprise you all of the events planned during your stay and facilitate your enjoyment of all that Peacombe has to offer.’