No one had expected it would be Bianca stepping over the threshold, keys at her waist, to explore her new . . . old . . . home.
Cathy had furnished it very comfortably. It was a good thing she had, thought Bianca, wandering silently through the rooms, so familiar and yet so strange. Not only did Cathy have an eye for pleasing design and arrangement, Bianca would have been tempted to paint the master’s bedchamber black, including each pane of the casement windows.
Instead it was a welcoming shade of sage, complementing the new linen bed hangings of dark blue. The furniture had been polished to a warm glow, and the grate in the hearth was freshly blacked. A clutch of fresh daisies stood in a double-handled vase on the windowsill.
Bianca stood in the doorway for a moment. Her gaze lingered on the large bed. Pleasures that most women only dream of, echoed his arrogant voice in her mind.
“Ha,” she said to the empty room, and closed the door.
Her bedroom was far more to her taste, even if it did adjoin his. It had once been her mother’s, and just setting foot in it made her step lighter. So many happy memories here, of listening to stories at her mother’s feet . . . practicing her lessons while her mother sewed . . . showing Mama her own embroidery here, as proud as anything of her work even though she despised embroidery.
The sadder memories Bianca had always tried to ignore. That she’d spent so much time in here with Mama because her mother’s health was never robust. The numerous vases of flowers, because Mama could not go outside anymore. How many handkerchiefs had been scattered around the room, ensuring there was always one at hand when a coughing fit seized her mother.
Cathy had obviously wanted to banish those memories as well. She’d chosen a buttery yellow for the walls, with pale green bedcovers and brocaded upholstery. The windows faced west, and the afternoon sunlight made the room glow like a spring day after the rain.
Jennie had already unpacked her things. Bianca had changed earlier out of her morning finery into one of her everyday linen dresses, lacing up herself and tying on a much-mended apron. Now she brushed out the curls and pinned her hair into its usual twisted knot, peering into the small beveled glass to secure it.
There. She smiled at her reflection. That was better.
A stream of servants brought more things from Perusia. She supervised and organized and set up the rest of the house. It was hard not to think of her mother here, as she directed them to push the settee next to the front windows, where Mama had used to sit in the summer with her sewing.
This was her house, she decided then. It had been her home as a child and held her memories. She might have to share it with St. James, but it would never be his.
Chapter Seven
Max made his way home in the dark, lantern in hand. A neatly graveled path led down the gentle hill, just far enough away from Perusia, to the half-timbered farmhouse. Poplar House wasn’t as grand as Perusia Hall but it was the finest house he’d ever been able to call his own—the finest, and the first. Tate had presented him with the deed this afternoon as a wedding gift.
He wasn’t fond of old houses as a rule, but in this instance, he was prepared to make an exception.
The stout door was a cheery blue, a surprising note of color against the dark timbers and white plastered walls. A long wooden bench sat beside that door, its swaybacked seat hinting at generations who had sat there before, smoking a pipe and watching children chase a hoop across the grass. Max let himself in, savoring the prospect.
The door opened into a central hall, long and narrow. To his right was a wall of stone, with a fireplace set in the middle. A banked fire smoldered there, chasing away the late spring chill in the night air. Through a partly open door at the far end of the room, he could hear muted laughter and voices over the splashing sounds of dishes being scrubbed. The scent of freshly baked bread lingered on the air. It was all so . . . homelike.
Slowly Max set the lantern on the mantel.
He pushed open the door to his left and found the parlor—it was too comfortable and lived-in to be called a drawing room. A bank of windows set high in the wall looked out toward the hill he’d just descended. The candles in the wall sconces were out, but the linen draperies were open, letting in enough moonlight to see. A pair of wingback chairs stood drawn up before the hearth, and a long settee was beneath the windows, heaped with plump cushions. A round table was off to one side, holding a vase spilling over with flowers.
Max regarded it in silence. How easy it was to picture himself reading in front of that fireplace, his foot on the fender and a glass of claret on the table beside him. He had no idea if the wind whistled through those windows or if that chimney smoked—for all he knew, this room was beastly hot in summer and an ice house in winter—but it was his. Reverently, he closed the door.
He didn’t go to the back of the hall, where the servants were still moving about in the dining room and the kitchen beyond, but up the doglegged stairs behind the main door. Tate had warned him the house was old; Max narrowly avoided banging his head on the low ceiling as he climbed the stairs.
A broad corridor stretched in front of him, two doors to the left and two to the right. A massive chest sat between the doors on his left, beneath a large portrait of a family from some decades ago. As he took it in, a maid popped out of a disguised door at the far end, an ewer in her hands. She gave a startled gasp and bobbed a quick curtsy at the sight of him. Max nodded once, and she hurried through the door at the near right.
Candlelight shone across the dark planks of the floor in the corridor, glinting off the sconces on the wall. Female voices spilled out, including one Max identified immediately as Bianca’s.
How he knew this with such certainty, he couldn’t say. He’d never heard the maid speak. But somehow he knew it was she, in her bedroom, preparing for bed, and his feet led him there without any decision by his brain to go.
She sat at a dressing table, her back to him as she ran a brush through her hair. The maid was emptying the ewer into the basin in the corner, relating something about a pig in an animated voice.
Max folded his arms and rested his shoulder against the doorjamb. Bianca was smiling as she brushed and plaited her hair, listening to the maid’s silly story. He could see it in the small mirror in front of her. In the light of the lamp on her dressing table, her hair glowed with amber glints. Each stroke of the brush made the long, loose curls bounce.
Another homelike moment. His house. His wife.
She turned toward the maid then, caught sight of him, and promptly burst that thought like an errant bubble of soap. Stiffening in her seat, she gave him a frigid glare. “Did you want something, Mr. St. James?”
“To wish you a good evening, dear wife,” he returned. The maid whirled to stare at him, clutching the ewer in both hands, her mouth hanging open. “You may go,” he told her, stepping aside as she scurried out of the room. He closed the door behind her and faced his bride.
He’d spent the day with Tate in the pottery offices, reviewing the marriage contract and concluding all the business related to it. A piece of his brain, though, had been working away all day at the question of Bianca. Things had not begun well between them, and Max was quite sure he would have to make the first effort if he wanted their relationship to improve. But he also sensed that any appearance of craving her good opinion would only inspire contempt, not the amiable regard he wanted.