at ease, chatting to her neighbors and friends as if he’d known them forever.
He also looked far too attractive for words—and for her. Bianca had not spent much time thinking about marriage, which didn’t look very appealing to her. But when pressed, she’d always pictured herself, if she married at all, wed to someone comfortable, a little older, much more amiable. In her mind he was neither handsome nor ugly, easy in manner and kind in spirit.
Instead she found herself yoked to this spectacularly handsome but soulless snake, who glided into Marslip intent on gaining her father’s company and stealing her inheritance.
“Look at him,” she said quietly to her friend, without looking away from him. “A London dandy, handsome and sophisticated and as slippery as oiled glass. What can he want, all the way out here in Staffordshire? Is he a potter? Is he a modeler? Does he know anything at all about pottery? No. He saw an opportunity, and he seized it, didn’t he? It was all the same to him whether he married Cathy or me.”
As she spoke, he glanced her way, his dark eyes gleaming. When he saw her watching him, he smiled—that wicked, knowing smile—and made her a very handsome bow.
“Are you certain?” Amelia bobbed a hasty curtsy and leaned closer to whisper in Bianca’s ear. “That one doesn’t look like he holds what is his lightly.”
Bianca stiffened. “I am not his,” she hissed.
“You are.” Amelia nodded sympathetically. “His wife, his property by law. Even if you think he doesn’t care for you, that doesn’t mean he isn’t possessive of what’s his.”
That would clearly be the first notion she disabused him of. Bianca gazed back at him, expressionless, her resolve hardening. She and Mr. St. James were going to have a very blunt conversation.
She managed to avoid him the rest of the day. After the guests left, he disappeared, a circumstance that pleased her greatly until she overheard Ellen tell Cook that Mr. Tate wanted a hamper for him and Mr. St. James at the offices. Bianca scowled at the thought of That Man invading her workshop, but she could not slip away. In Cathy’s absence she had to oversee the tidying up after the guests, the distribution of the remaining food to the workers’ families, and the transfer of her own possessions to Poplar House.
That last drove home to her what she’d done. Poplar House had been their house before Papa built the large new Perusia Hall. It was at Poplar House that Bianca had been born and spent her childhood. When Mama died, just weeks before Perusia Hall was to be ready for them, Papa had moved them all up the hill to the Hall, disregarding its unfinished state, and promptly let Poplar House to his cousin.
None of them had been back to the quaint little house since. Papa had preferred the grander Perusia Hall, and the cousin’s wife had been a sickly woman who didn’t entertain guests.
Today Bianca walked down the hill to Poplar House as mistress of it, not a child but a married lady. With a sense of detached amazement she approached the familiar blue door under the freshly thatched roof. The cousin had moved out six months ago, having saved enough money to take his wife to Bath in a bid to improve her health. Upon St. James’s proposal, Papa had given orders for the house to be cleaned and repaired, making it ready for his daughter and new son-in-law.
No one had expected it would be Bianca stepping over the threshold, keys at her waist, to explore her new . . . old . . . home.
Cathy had furnished it very comfortably. It was a good thing she had, thought Bianca, wandering silently through the rooms, so familiar and yet so strange. Not only did Cathy have an eye for pleasing design and arrangement, Bianca would have been tempted to paint the master’s bedchamber black, including each pane of the casement windows.
Instead it was a welcoming shade of sage, complementing the new linen bed hangings of dark blue. The furniture had been polished to a warm glow, and the grate in the hearth was freshly blacked. A clutch of fresh daisies stood in a double-handled vase on the windowsill.
Bianca stood in the doorway for a moment. Her gaze lingered on the large bed. Pleasures that most women only dream of, echoed his arrogant voice in her mind.
“Ha,” she said to the empty room, and closed the door.
Her bedroom was far