Love Match by Maggie MacKeever Read Free Book Online Page B

would know. Yes, and why should she be surprised that her bridegroom had taken his amorous inclinations elsewhere? Maman had said that he would likely do so, after the honeymoon. Maman had failed to explain how, afterhehad taken said inclinations elsewhere, Elizabeth was expected to act. She was still pondering that matter as she reached the bottom of the stair.
    The duke smiled at her. “You are very fine today,” he said, and offered her his arm. Elizabeth remembered the feeling of his hands in her hair, on her shoulders, against her cheek. How warm she’d felt, how breathless. How confused. She placed her fingers on her husband’s arm, and squelched her impulse to box his ears.
    The morn was bright and sunny, the air a little chill. Dew sparkled on the grass. The huge sweep of the Palladian facade glowed golden in the bright tight.
    At the front door waited an elegant phaeton. The carriage was painted, varnished, and polished to a high degree of perfection; the horses sleek and black. Justin helped his bride into the high seat, in the process enjoying a glimpse of a well-formed ankle and silver boots; sprang up beside her, and took the reins from his groom. There was no coachman in the vehicle, no place for a tiger to ride behind. “I thought you might like to see Bath by daylight. You will tell me if you begin to feel travel-sick.”
    His coat was not light-colored today, Elizabeth noted, but dark. The duke was a cautious man. Or his valet was. “I am fine, Your Grace.”
    “I told you to call me St. Clair.” Justin flicked the reins.
    Bath was a town of hills and trees and fish ponds, bowling greens and clipped yew hedges; terraces and buildings and flights of steps enlivened with beautiful stone and bud vases and garden sculptures. Lord Charnwood entertained his bride with stories of the city as the phaeton clattered over the cobblestones. Bath had been established as a town soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in A.D. 43. It soon gained fame for its baths and the adjoining temples. For over two thousand years the main attraction of the place remained the same, sulphurous waters that sprang out of the earth ready for use.
    Modest Brock Street opened into the Royal Circus, a perfectly circular space divided into three segments of uniform houses, their separate identities indicated by doors at intervals, for all the world, Elizabeth thought, like an English version of the Roman Coliseum twisted inside out. From there they progressed past the Assembly Rooms, the Baths, the Abbey—an Abbey in name only since the dissolution of the monasteries in 1530—where in pinnacled Gothic grandeur, angels perched on a ladder to the heavens. Elizabeth was fascinated to observe that one of the angels was carved upside down. Then on to Pulteney Bridge, a three-arched structure with a Venetian window in the center and domed pavilions at each end, lined both sides with shops. By the time the duke had finished explaining that in the 1600’s the waters at Bath were so revered for fecundity that after one visit ladies often proved with child, even in the absence of their husbands, the streets were filling up with smart barouches and gentlemen on splendid horses and elegantly garbed women out for a stroll.
    Hoofs and wheels clattered, newsboys shouted, the muffin man’s bell clanged. The duchess expressed a desire for a muffin. The duke fetched her one himself.
    Justin brushed crumbs off his coat. Elizabeth was happily devouring her treat, temporarily oblivious to both propriety and mess. Rather like Birdie with a biscuit. Had his duchess given her breakfast to the bird? Ah well, easy enough to have the carriage cleaned out. More to the point, what was he to say to her? Something, certainly, for he had delayed long enough.
    “I wanted to speak to you without interruption, Elizabeth. Which is deuced difficult in the house.” At last he had her attention; she abandoned her muffin to observe him warily. “I regret Augusta has