Like Sisyphus with his stone, but her boulder was a living man. With loose morals and even looser habits.
The loose morals she could live with. She often thought she’d like to try some loose morals herself, actually. She’d long ago found a hoard of rather salacious books and pamphlets stashed in a trunk in the attic, and her imagination and her right hand had made good use of the stories and accompanying illustrations. And of course, there had been that house party, where Eleanor had wandered into the Foscourts’ temple folly at the wrong moment and saw things that hadn’t left her mind since.
However, loose morals rarely ran both directions in married couples. Men were allowed these things; women were not. And while it was tacitly accepted by society at large that husbands would stray, Eleanor wasn’t interested in playing the expected counterpart: the meek wifey, embroidering cushions at home while her husband caroused and dallied however he pleased.
But perhaps Sloreley would consider her argument if she made it to him. Perhaps they could come to an agreement, and if that were the case, then the morals would not bother her very much at all.
No, it was the loose habits that bothered her. It was his reputation for missing important functions, for making public scenes, for inveterate rudeness, and for constant sloppiness. While she’d never been able to picture her ideal future with any real clarity, she knew that Gilbert Gifford was its exact opposite. She predicted that marriage to him would be a trap of thanklessly spent time, of smoothing over his gaffes and crudities. Of trying to improve someone who gave no indication he wanted to be improved.
She appealed to her father to no avail. She appealed to her mother with even less success. No one could understand why she didn’t want to become a duchess someday; everybody seemed to think Sloreley would eventually be brought in line by her quiet, efficient personality.
Indeed, that’s why she’d been chosen.
A graceful bride for a disgraceful man.
And what were her choices? Truly? If her parents would not change her mind and the duke was intent on having her as a bride for his nephew, what else could be done, other than run away?
If she ran away, where would she go? And to whom? And with what money?
So, as the invitations were penned and the trousseau was packed, she’d resigned herself.
She would marry Sloreley at the duke’s seat of Far Hope, where she and Sloreley would rusticate afterward until he could possibly be seen as respectable by society again.
She would begin the project of making him a fit heir and preparing him for a dukedom.
She would marry him and she would find a way to bear it, just as she’d always found a way to bear everything.
When they’d first glimpsed the ancient manor tucked away in the moors, her mother had taken one look at the frowning stone edifice and told Eleanor, “This will all be yours someday. You must remember to be grateful.”
For a very brief moment, Eleanor agreed. Far Hope looked like an etching in a book—moody and wonderful—and there was something about this wild, lonely land that made her feel like she’d stepped into a story. Her very own story, where there would be adventures and romance and—
Abruptly, she remembered that wasn’t the case.
Her story was already written, the book already closed and put back on the shelf. The beauty of Far Hope might indeed be hers, but there was no mystery or adventure here.
As per usual, her mother was never ill when she didn’t want to be, and so had accompanied the Lord Pennard and Eleanor down to Dartmoor for the nuptial celebrations. Eleanor had never really begrudged her the malingering—if anything, she was jealous of her mother’s ability to dodge work—but right now, in the face of this terrible marriage, it chafed. Especially since her mother was using her convenient good health to exhort Eleanor to her famous serenity when all Eleanor actually wanted to do was leap from the carriage and run as far as her legs would carry her.
“Anything else?” Eleanor had asked, trying and failing to sound composed. “Anything else I must do while I’m marrying a reprobate?”
“You must not do anything to jeopardize the marriage,” her mother said seriously. Gray shadows had moved over her face, turning her porcelain features into an ominous, inhuman silver. “You mustn’t, Eleanor. Nothing outrageous, nothing scandalous. The dukedom of Jarrell is the chance of a lifetime.”
Eleanor had nearly snorted at her mother’s warning, but her mother didn’t notice.
If Eleanor hadn’t done anything outrageous during her first twenty years of life, she hardly saw how it would happen out here in this gorse-ridden wasteland. “Of course, Mama.”
“And,” her mother pronounced, “you must not leave.”
“Leave?” Eleanor asked, not bothering to hide her incredulity this time. “Where would I go?”
She gestured out the carriage window to prove her point. They were surrounded by miles and miles of gorgeous but desolate hills. Heather, growing brown and rusty under the fading autumn light, covered everything. Fog laid heavy in the dips and valleys and the road was a single muddy track, occasionally diverted around cheerless granite crags. There was not another inn, house, or hovel for miles.
They might as well have been at the edge of the world.
Her mother had nodded then, satisfied. There was no escape.
She broke the first rule that very night. After they were received at Far Hope and allowed to rest, they took dinner with a sallow-faced Sloreley, who was already drunk and sulky beyond belief at Eleanor’s presence. He alternated between glaring at her and avoiding her gaze altogether; he practically flung her hand off his arm when they reached the table. When he scratched his neck under his lacy neckcloth, she caught a glimpse of a fresh love bite on the pallid skin below his ear.
Why was it that Sloreley could cavort with whomever he pleased and could show up to the dinner table with bites on his neck, but she was made to promise all sorts of good behavior when she’d been nothing but well behaved her entire life?
It wasn’t fair.
Maybe you’re the one not being fair, she countered to herself. She’d already told herself she would make the best of this, and all successful projects started with determined optimism.
“So, my lord,” she started, trying to cast about for any topic that would give them common ground, “have you been at Far Hope long?”
Sloreley didn’t bother looking at her when he answered. “No.”
“When did you get in?”
“Yesterday. And I’m ready to leave,” he said shortly.
This surprised her. Far Hope was lonely, yes, and even the interior had an austerity to it that bordered on bleakness, but it was still beautiful for all that. There were stained glass windows in the great hall and the attached family chapel, and there was a library three times the size of Pennard Hall’s. There were sheltered gardens outside that went right to the very edge of the hills, and there were parapeted towers she was told gave expansive views all the way to the far end of the valley. Far Hope had the feel of a place caught out of time, and it had never occurred to Eleanor that someone wouldn’t like that.
“I suppose you miss London,” she said, trying to keep the conversation going. “Far Hope is quite isolated.”