Devil in Spring Read online

  “Yes, but there’s so much to plan—the trousseau, the ceremony and reception, the wedding breakfast and honeymoon, and of course things like flowers and bridesmaids’ dresses—”

  “I’ll help,” Cassandra exclaimed.

  “I can’t do all of that,” Pandora burst out anxiously, whirling around to face them. “In fact, I can’t do any of it. I have to submit two more patent applications, and meet with my printer, and look for factory space to lease, and . . . no, I can’t let the wedding stand in the way of all the important things I need to take care of.”

  Gabriel’s lips twitched at the comparative importance of the wedding to her board game company.

  “I’d rather elope, so I can go right to work,” Pandora continued. “A honeymoon would be a waste of time and expense.”

  She was well aware, of course, that a honeymoon had become traditional for upper- and middle-class newlyweds. But she was terrified of being swallowed up in a new life while all her plans and dreams fell by the wayside. She wouldn’t enjoy going away somewhere, thinking about all that awaited her at home.

  “Pandora, dear—” Kathleen began.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Gabriel said in a relaxed manner, and sent Pandora a reassuring smile.

  Turning back to Devon, Pandora muttered, “Did you see that? He’s managing me already. And he’s good at it.”

  “I know the feeling well,” Devon assured her, his sparkling gaze flickering to Kathleen.

  In the evening, the Challons and Ravenels gathered in the family parlor before going down to dinner. Champagne was brought out, and toasts were made to congratulate the betrothed couple and celebrate the union of their two families. Gabriel’s entire family received the news with a warmth and ready acceptance that almost overwhelmed Pandora.

  Taking Pandora lightly by the shoulders, the duke smiled and bent to press a warm kiss to her forehead. “What a welcome addition you are to the family, Pandora. Be forewarned—from now on, the duchess and I will consider you as one of our own children, and spoil you accordingly.”

  “I’m not spoiled,” Ivo, who was standing nearby, protested. “Mother thinks I’m a jewel.”

  “Mother thinks everyone is a jewel,” Phoebe said dryly, as she and Seraphina came to join them.

  “We’ll have to wire Raphael right away,” Seraphina exclaimed, “so he can come back from America in time for the wedding. I wouldn’t want him to miss it.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Phoebe said. “A wedding this large will take months to plan.”

  Pandora lapsed into uneasy silence while they continued to chatter. None of this seemed quite real. In a mere week her life had changed entirely. Her head was full of commotion, and she needed to go somewhere quiet and sort out her thoughts. She tensed as she felt a gentle arm curve behind her shoulders.

  It was the duchess, her blue eyes radiant with kindness and a hint of concern, as if she understood how frightening it was to have made the most important decision of her life based on a few days’ acquaintance. But there was no way this woman would understand what it was like to face the prospect of marrying a virtual stranger.

  Wordlessly the duchess drew Pandora away with her through one of the doors that led to the outside balcony. Although they had spent time together in the company of others, they hadn’t yet found an opportunity to talk alone. There were more or less constant demands on the duchess’s time: everyone from her infant grandson to the duke himself desired her attention. In her quiet way, the duchess was the hub around which the entire estate revolved.

  It was cold and dark out on the balcony, the breeze causing Pandora to shiver. She hoped the duchess hadn’t brought her out here to say something disapproving. Something like, You certainly have a lot to learn, or You’re not what I would have chosen for Gabriel, but it seems we’ll have to make do.

  As they stood side by side at the railing, facing the dark ocean, the duchess took the shawl from her shoulders, unfolded it, and draped it over them both. Pandora was still with astonishment. The cashmere was light and warm, fragrant with lilac water and a hint of talcum. Tongue-tied, Pandora stood next to her while they listened to the soothing chirr of a nightjar, and the musical trills of nightingales.

  “When Gabriel was about Ivo’s age,” the duchess remarked almost dreamily, staring out at the plum-colored sky, “he found a pair of orphaned fox cubs in the woods, at a country manor we’d leased in Hampshire. Has he told you about that?”

  Pandora shook her head, her eyes wide.

  A reminiscent smile curved the duchess’s full lips. “It was a pair of females, with big ears, and eyes like shiny black buttons. They made chirping sounds, like small birds. Their mother had been killed in a poacher’s trap, so Gabriel wrapped the poor th-things in his coat and brought them home. They were too young to survive on their own. Naturally, he begged to be allowed to keep them. His father agreed to let him raise them under the gamekeeper’s supervision, until they were old enough to return to the f-forest. Gabriel spent weeks spoon-feeding them with a mixture of meat paste and milk. Later on, he taught them to stalk and catch prey in an outside pen.”

  “How?” Pandora asked, fascinated.

  The older woman glanced at her with an unexpectedly mischievous grin. “He dragged dead mice through their pen on a string.”

  “That’s horrid,” Pandora exclaimed, laughing.

  “It was,” the duchess agreed with a chuckle. “Gabriel pretended not to mind, of course, but it was qu-quite disgusting. Still, the cubs had to learn.” The duchess paused before continuing more thoughtfully. “I think for Gabriel, the most difficult part of raising them was having to keep his distance, no matter how he loved them. No p-petting or cuddling, or even giving them names. They couldn’t lose their fear of humans, or they wouldn’t survive. As the gamekeeper told him, he might as well murder them if he made them tame. It tortured Gabriel, he wanted to hold them so badly.”

  “Poor boy.”

  “Yes. But when Gabriel finally let them go, they scampered away and were able to live freely and hunt for themselves. It was a good lesson for him to learn.”

  “What was the lesson?” Pandora asked soberly. “Not to love something he knew he would lose?”

  The duchess shook her head, her gaze warm and encouraging. “No, Pandora. He learned how to love them without changing them. To let them be what they were meant to be.”

  Chapter 15

  “I should have stood my ground about the honeymoon,” Pandora groaned, hanging her head over the railing of the paddle steamer.

  Gabriel removed his gloves, tucked them into a coat pocket, and gently massaged the back of her neck. “Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

  They had wed that morning, only a fortnight after he’d proposed. Now they were crossing the Solent, the narrow channel between England and the Isle of Wight. The voyage of three miles took no more than twenty-five minutes from Portsmouth to the harbor town of Ryde. Unfortunately Pandora was prone to seasickness.

  “We’re almost there,” Gabriel murmured. “If you lift your head, you can see the pier.”

  Pandora risked a glance at the approaching view of Ryde, with its long line of white houses and delicate spires bristling from wooded shores and inlets. Dropping her head again, she said, “We should have stayed at Eversby Priory.”

  “And spent our wedding night in your childhood bed?” Gabriel asked dubiously. “With the house full of our assembled relations?”

  “You said you liked my room.”

  “I found it charming, love. But it’s not the appropriate setting for the activities I have in mind.” Gabriel smiled slightly at the recollection of her bedroom, with its quaint framed needlework samplers, the much-loved wax doll with a tangled wig and one missing glass eye, and the bookcase of well-worn novels. “Besides, the bed is too small for me. My feet would hang over the edge.”

  “I suppose you have a large bed at your terrace?”

  He
toyed softly with the dark wisps of hair at her nape. “We, madam,” he murmured, “have a very large bed at our terrace.”

  Pandora hadn’t yet seen his house at Queen’s Gate, in the Royal Borough of Kensington. Not only would such a visit have gone against all propriety, even in the presence of chaperones, but there hadn’t been time in the mad flurry of wedding arrangements.

  It had taken Gabriel nearly the entire two weeks to find a way for the word “obey” to be struck from the wedding vows. He had been informed by the Lord Bishop of London that if a bride didn’t vow obedience to her husband during the ceremony, a marriage would be ruled unlawful by the ecclesiastical court. Gabriel had then gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had reluctantly agreed to give him a special and highly unusual dispensation, as long as certain conditions were met. One of them being an enormous “private fee” that amounted to bribery.

  “The dispensation will render our marriage lawful and valid,” Gabriel explained to Pandora, “as long as we allow the priest to ‘set before you’ the necessity of wifely obedience.”

  Pandora had frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you have to stand there and pretend to listen while the priest explains why you should obey your husband. As long as you don’t object, it will be implied that you agree with him.”

  “But I won’t have to promise to obey? I won’t have to say the word?”

  “No.”

  She had smiled, looking both pleased and contrite. “Thank you. I’m sorry you’ve had to go to so much trouble on my account.”

  Sliding his arms around her, Gabriel had viewed her with a mocking grin. “What would I do with a meek and submissive Pandora? There would be no sport in that.”

  Obviously theirs had been no ordinary courtship, and the need for an expedient wedding was obvious. But as tempting as the idea of an elopement had been, Gabriel had rejected the idea. With all the newness and uncertainty Pandora faced, she had needed the comfort of her loved ones and familiar surroundings on her wedding day. When Devon and Kathleen had offered the use of the chapel at their estate, Gabriel had agreed immediately.

  It had made sense to have the wedding ceremony in Hampshire, and spend their honeymoon at the Isle of Wight, just off the southern coast. Often referred to as “the garden of England,” the small island was flourishing with gardens, woodlands, tidy coastal villages, and an assortment of inns and luxurious hotels.

  But as they approached the island, its charms appeared to be lost on his impatient bride.

  “I don’t need a honeymoon,” Pandora said, glowering at the picturesque town rising steeply from the water. “My board game has to be stocked in stores in time for the Christmas holiday.”

  “Anyone else in our circumstances would honeymoon for at least a month,” Gabriel pointed out. “I’ve only asked for a week.”

  “But there won’t be anything to do.”

  “I’ll try to keep you entertained,” Gabriel said dryly. He moved to stand at her back, his hands gripping the rail on either side of hers. “Spending a few days together will help us ease into our new life. Marriage will be a considerable change, especially for you.” He lowered his mouth close to her ear. “You’ll be living in an unfamiliar house, with an unfamiliar man—who’ll be doing very unfamiliar things to your body.”

  “Where will you be?” Pandora asked, and barely restrained a yelp as he nipped at her earlobe.

  “If you change your mind midway through the honeymoon,” he told her, “we can go back to London. We’ll board a steamer bound for Portsmouth Harbour Station, ride a direct train line to Waterloo station, and reach our front doorstep in no more than three hours.”

  The statement seemed to mollify her. As the steamer continued the crossing, Pandora tugged off her left glove to admire her wedding ring, as she’d already done a dozen times that day. Gabriel had chosen a loose sapphire from the collection of Challon family jewels, and had it set in a gold and diamond ring mounting. The Ceylon sapphire, cut and polished into a smooth dome, was a rare stone that gleamed with a twelve-ray star instead of six. To his satisfaction, Pandora seemed inordinately pleased by the ring, and was fascinated by the way the star seemed to move across the surface of the sapphire. The effect, called asterism, was especially noticeable in sunlight.

  “What causes the star?” Pandora asked, as she tilted her hand this way and that.

  Gabriel tucked a kiss behind the soft lobe of her ear. “A few tiny imperfections,” he murmured, “that make it all the more beautiful.”

  She turned and nestled against his chest.

  Their wedding had been a three-day affair, attended by the Challons, Ravenels, and a limited number of close friends, including Lord and Lady Berwick. To Gabriel’s regret, there had been no time for his younger brother Raphael to return from his business trip to America in time for the ceremony. Raphael had sent a telegram, however, and promised to celebrate with them when he returned home later in the spring.

  As Pandora had taken Gabriel on a private tour around her family’s estate, Gabriel had begun to comprehend exactly how secluded she and her sisters had been for most of their lives. Eversby Priory was a world unto itself. The rambling Jacobean manor, set among ancient forests and remote green hills, had been largely unchanged for two centuries. Devon had begun making much-needed improvements to the estate ever since inheriting the earldom, but it would take time to fully renovate the house. They had installed modern plumbing only two years ago. Before then, they had used chamber pots and outdoor privies, leading Pandora to tell Gabriel with mock gravity, “I’m barely housebroken.”

  The festivities had provided an opportunity for Gabriel to meet the two Ravenels he hadn’t yet encountered: Devon’s younger brother West, and Pandora’s older sister, Lady Helen. Gabriel had taken an instant liking to West, a charming rogue with a sharp wit and an irreverent manner. As the manager of Eversby Priory’s farms and tenants, West seemed to have a thorough grasp of all their issues and concerns.

  Lady Helen, who had been accompanied by her husband, Mr. Rhys Winterborne, was far more reserved than the twins. Instead of Pandora’s raw and radiant energy, or Cassandra’s effervescent charm, she possessed a quality of sweet, patient gravity. With her silver-blonde hair and willowy slenderness, Helen seemed as ethereal as a figure from a painting by Bougereau.

  Few people would have envisioned a match between such a delicate creature and a man like Rhys Winterborne, a big, black-haired Welshman whose father had been a grocer. Now the owner of the largest department store in England, Winterborne was a man of considerable financial power, known for his forceful and decisive nature. Since his marriage, however, Winterborne seemed to have become far more relaxed and content, smiling with an ease Gabriel hadn’t seen in him before.

  Gabriel had met Winterborne several times over the past four years, at the biannual board meetings of a hydraulic equipment manufacturing company. Winterborne had shown himself to be a pragmatic and decent man, with remarkable intuition and shrewdness in business matters. Gabriel liked the Welshman, for all that he lacked polish, but they moved in very different social circles and had never encountered each other outside of business meetings.

  Now it seemed that Gabriel and Winterborne would be seeing a great deal of each other. Not only had they both married into an extraordinarily close-knit family, but Winterborne was a mentor to Pandora. For the past year, he had encouraged and advised Pandora about her board game company, and had made a firm commitment to stock her game in his department store. Pandora made no secret of her gratitude and affection for the man. In fact, she hung on to his every word, and glowed at his attention.

  As Gabriel had seen how comfortable they were with each other, he’d struggled with an unexpected pang of jealousy. The realization appalled him. He’d never been jealous or possessive of anyone in his life, having considered himself above such petty emotions. But when it came to Pandora, he was no better than a primitive brute. He wanted her all to himself, eve
ry word and glance, every touch of her hand, every glint of light on her hair and breath from her lips. He was jealous of the air that touched her skin.

  It didn’t help that Pandora was so determined to remain independent from him, like a small sovereign nation afraid of being conquered and absorbed by a powerful neighbor. Every day she added more conditions to her list of marital boundaries, as if she needed to protect herself from him.

  When Gabriel had discussed it privately with Phoebe, his sister had given him an incredulous glance and said, “There are items in the meat larder that are older than your relationship with Pandora. You can’t expect eternal love and devotion from a woman after a mere two weeks’ acquaintance.” She had laughed affectionately at his disgruntled expression. “Oh, I forgot. You’re Gabriel, Lord St. Vincent—of course you would expect that.”

  His thoughts were drawn back to the present as Pandora lifted her face to the cooling breeze.

  Wondering what was going on in her restless brain, Gabriel stroked back a lock of loose hair that clung to her cheek. “What are you thinking about?” he asked. “The wedding? Your family?”

  “A rhombus,” Pandora said absently.

  His brows lifted. “You’re referring to the parallelogram with opposite equal obtuse angles?”

  “Yes, Cousin West told me the Isle of Wight is shaped like a rhombus. I was just thinking that if ‘rhombus’ were an adjective . . .” Raising a gloved hand to her chin, Pandora tapped her fingertips against her lips. “It would be rhombuseous.”

  Gabriel toyed with a tiny silk flower on her hat. “Rhombusphobia,” he said, entering into the game. “Fear of rhombus.”

  That earned him a spontaneous grin. Her deep blue eyes became places to frolic and revel in. “Rhombusolotry. Worship of rhombus.”

  Stroking the exquisite line of her cheek, Gabriel murmured, “I’d like to worship you.”

  Pandora barely seemed to have heard him, her mind still occupied with the word game. Smiling, Gabriel kept an arm around her as the steamer approached the dock.