The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [129]
Yes, Mary Rose thought as she dressed for dinner, her new family were very nice people, delightful really, and they seemed to like her very much—the Scottish bastard who was now, magically, an English vicar’s wife. She’d even brought her husband a hundred-pound dowry.
She managed to find beds for all their guests. The three boy cousins would sleep with Max and Leo, and she imagined that they would be awake most of the night. Grayson, Sophie and Ryder’s son, was a mesmerizing storyteller, despite his meager eight years, or maybe because of them. In the dark of the night, Ryder had told her at Chadwyck House, his boy could make his listeners’ hair stand on end. He’d told his first ghost story at three years old, and his old nurse had run screaming from the nursery.
She gave Meggie’s bedchamber to Douglas and Alex, and once again Meggie would sleep in their bedchamber. It was a pity. She wanted to know what was bothering Tysen.
At dinner that evening, just the adults present, he was quiet, his expression austere, his speech, when he was required to say something, really quite cool, detached. He simply sat there at the head of the table, eating little, just listening to his family toss jests and insults to and fro across the table. He was, Mary Rose thought, uninvolved, and she hated it. Had it been just the night before, he would have been laughing as much as they were now. Dear God, she missed his humor, his lightness of touch, his kindness.
What had happened?
What was wrong?
When at last the house was quiet and Meggie was asleep on her cot against the wall on the far side of the bedchamber, Mary Rose came up on her elbow, bent over her husband and kissed him.
What he did was the last thing she expected.
He didn’t move. His mouth stilled beneath hers, and he said, “Don’t.”
She whispered, “But I love to kiss you, Tysen. It’s been far too long. I won’t wake Meggie. Just another kiss.” He was wearing a nightshirt because Meggie was in the room, and Mary Rose hated it. Her hand strayed to his belly. She loved to touch him, feel his entire body tense, feel the power of him.
He grabbed her hand and lifted it off him. “Go to sleep, Mary Rose.”
Slowly, she pulled back. She couldn’t see his expression, just the shadow of his face in the dark of night. “Do you feel all right, Tysen?”
“Yes.”
“Have I done something to upset you?”
“No.”
“Something has happened. Won’t you talk to me?”
“There is nothing to say. Go to sleep.”
She lay on her back, gazing up at the darkened ceiling, wondering what was wrong, wondering why he wouldn’t talk to her.
The following day was Sunday. All the Sherbrookes went to church. Gathering the children together was a task for Ryder, the most patient of all the adults in the house. As they walked from the vicarage to the church, the bells were ringing, the air was clear and sweet with the smells of late fall, and the gray clouds and rain wafted away early that morning. They filed into the pews, an adult assigned to every two children.
Tysen hadn’t come into the church with them. He’d told her that he and Samuel Pritchert would go in through the vestry.
The organ, Mary Rose thought, was just a bit out of tune, but it was played very well by old Mrs. Caddy, whose fingers were gnarled and bent with arthritis.
It was the first time Mary Rose had seen her husband as a vicar. He came in quietly, wearing his black robe, his linen very white, standing back while Samuel Pritchert gave out all the announcements, led the congregation in the singing, and offered a single prayer for God’s grace, a rather long prayer that had the children twitching.
Then Tysen walked forward to stand tall behind his beautifully carved walnut pulpit. When he spoke, his voice was deep and resonant, reaching every ear in the large church. His Sherbrooke blue eyes were clear, radiant in the gentle morning