A Marriage of Inconvenience Read Free Page B

aunt’s wishes. At least Aunt Arrington had welcomed her cordially enough, bought her several new dresses for this sojourn in Gloucestershire to see Portia wed and said she looked forward to Lucy’s continuance as her companion. For such was to be Lucy’s married life, at least at first. Sebastian had laughed when she had asked if she might follow the drum at his side, saying that she was far too delicate and gently reared for so harsh a life.
    Sebastian too was impatient with the secrecy and delay. He had already told her to be prepared, for he had obtained a special license and meant to marry her the very morning after Portia’s wedding.
    Yet even that bewildered her. Why was Sebastian in such a hurry? He was kind, he was affectionate, he talked of his plans for their future, but he was not ardent. He had never tried to kiss her again since the morning he had made his offer. When Lucy tried to press him on his reasons for marrying her, he spoke of her modest ways and good sense, qualities he claimed must appeal to any man of sound judgment, but he never spoke of love.
    She mused on such matters as the young housemaid who had been assigned to see to her comfort during her stay at Almont Castle helped her into a simple muslin dress. It was one of her old things, as she was saving her new dresses for grander, more public occasions. Since the early June morning held a chill, she draped her favorite scarlet cloak about her shoulders before taking up her sketchbook and pencils, and asked the maid the best way out of the castle if she wanted to walk to the south.
    After only one wrong turning, she found the correct door and made her escape into the bright, fresh air. The chance to explore the countryside surrounding Almont Castle was the sole saving grace of what she expected to be a thoroughly trying visit. She planned to climb the hill she had seen from her bedchamber window and sketch the castle from that vantage point. It was a splendid edifice, its oldest section five hundred years old, set alongside a river in a broad valley, and she yearned to capture it on paper.
    She crossed the stone bridge spanning the moat—how amazing to live surrounded by an actual moat, even if it was now merely a convenient stew-pond for carp and the like—then hurried through the gardens and began picking her way up the lightly wooded hillside. By the time she reached the summit, she felt pleasantly winded, and she clutched her side against an incipient stitch. The morning was breezy, and she laughed as the wind tossed her cloak and loosened a few locks of her hair from its neat coil.
    She had meant to immediately find a good place to sit and sketch, but she was so caught by the sight of the valley on the other side of the hill that she forgot her intent.
    It was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. It was narrower than the Almont Castle valley, and more densely populated, with a tidy village at its western end—a collection of snug cottages, some of the local golden-brown stone, others whitewashed with thatched roofs. A Norman church with a tall stone tower commanded the village square. Scattered throughout were farm cottages and a few larger homes that must belong to the local minor gentry. Woolly sheep and glossy-coated horses grazed in verdant pastures, and young wheat and barley grew abundantly in the lower, more level fields alongside the broad stream that flowed down the valley. It was a fertile, wholesome place, and yet the tall hills on either side kept it from appearing quite tame.
    But the crowning glory of the valley stood at its eastern end—a castle, but a new-built castle, as playful and whimsical as Almont was dignified and weighted with history. No moat encircled this one, and its windows were many and wide. Towers and crenellations decorated it with asymmetrical abandon, and at one end stood a grand, glassed-in conservatory.
    Lucy changed her mind about sketching Almont Castle. She would draw this perfect little