Page 28 of Not his Marchioness
Silence stretched between them. Then, she took a deep breath.
“So I take it now we must put on our masks and pretend to care for one another?”
“I think that is wise,” he replied. “Otherwise, what was all this for? Can you pretend not to despise me, perhaps for the duration of the wedding breakfast and the occasional ball?”
“I suppose, given that you have set up an entire library in the townhouse, I can muster some enthusiasm for our performance.”
“Good, then. Everybody shall see us as the happy pair we are.”
“Happy,” she echoed. “I do not know what there is to be happy about. It will all be pretense.”
She looked at him. He meant that he wasn’t happy about this, was he? He couldn’t be. It was ludicrous.
“I am quite happy. I am wed. I no longer have to worry about what Society thinks of me. My standing in the House of Lords will improve, and I have a beautiful wife of my own. What is there not to be happy about?”
His voice dripped with sarcasm.
She crossed her arms. “I must remind you that I have never belonged to anybody, and I never…” she trailed off.
Nonetheless, she had meant the words as a warning. To put him on alert. To keep him on his toes.
Yet seeing the way he looked at her—a small smile on his lips, his eyes sparkling with mischief—she realized that he had understood her words as a challenge.
She took a deep breath, ready to tell him there was nothing to smile about, when the carriage came to a halt. They were outside his townhouse once more.
Hertownhouse now.
The last time she had been here, she had seen the townhouse in the dark. She hadn’t really taken it in properly.
It had appeared small to her then, but now she realized it wasn’t. It stood on the corner, and the house next to it appeared to be connected. Decorations had been placed on the windows of the house she assumed was his and the one on the corner.
She turned to him. “Our neighbor celebrates with us?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “They are both our homes. My father bought the house adjacent when I was a little boy. I told you, you are now the mistress of a grand country estate and a London townhouse. You should be the envy of everyone in London.”
She looked up and heard music spilling out of the windows. Their guests had already arrived, with more and more carriages streaming by and people entering through the front door and the door of the house next door.
“Are you ready? You know that all of polite society is waiting to see the bride and groom,” he said, offering his arm once more.
“I thought you said it was no more than 50. That is hardly the entire ton nor a fraction of it,” she replied.
“You know very well what I mean,” he said and moved his arm as if to prompt her to take it.
She took it. Her stomach lurched as she walked up the stairs.
It was time to present themselves, for the first time, as the Marquess and Marchioness of Ravenscar.
CHAPTER 12
The wedding breakfast passed in a blur of forced pleasantries and fake laughter.
Charlotte spent most of her time seated beside her sisters and aunt, whilst Rhys kept company with his friend, whose first name she’d finally managed to catch—Gideon.
She knew a great many of the guests, and nearly every one of them came up to offer their congratulations on her new “position,” as though she had just been promoted to some prestigious post rather than shackled to a man she barely knew.
But she understood perfectly well what came next. As soon as they walked away, they would begin whispering. About the marriage, about her, about him.
Of course, they would. That was what Society did. It fed on itself, fattened on secrets and speculation.
