“A bishop, you say? My, that’s something. No, don’t take a chance of killing him, dearie. I don’t want you dumping cold water on him either, it would ruin my good bed.”
Meggie agreed and drank until her glass was empty.
She looked at Mrs. Miggs. “Nothing feels bad now,” she said and burped and smiled at the same time. “As a matter of fact, I rather think I would like to dance.”
“Drink yourself one more glass, then go back upstairs to that husband of yours.”
“But what can I do besides ask him questions?”
“Hmmm. Let me think about this, Meggie. Are you leaving in the morning?”
“I think so. He won’t tell me anything, curse his eyes. He has really quite lovely eyes, you know, all dark and brooding, but then he’ll laugh and his eyes change and dance and lighten up and flash. I don’t think he wets his finger and dampens his eyelashes to make them look longer and thicker. Many girls do that, you know. No, his are naturally thick and long. Did you remark upon his beautiful eyes when we arrived? No, well, you can remark upon them in the morning. Ah, perhaps I could take a mail coach and just go back home. I wonder if he would run after me, tugging on his trousers.” Meggie frowned. “Somehow I cannot imagine Thomas running after anything, particularly if his trousers are down.”
“No, Meggie, forget about mail coaches. They aren’t for you.”
Meggie was forced to agree. But she really didn’t feel at all bad now, didn’t feel like Thomas would be better off dead. “I can play the fiddle a bit, Mrs. Miggs. If you have one I will play for you and we could both dance.”
“I’m sorry, no fiddle, Meggie. Do you play well?”
“No, but it is at least music. I thought I loved my dratted almost cousin Jeremy just last year. Actually, I would have sworn I would love him to my deathbed just three months ago, but then he opened his mouth and out came such obnoxious condescension. I saw the real him and it wasn’t a pretty sight.”
“Cousins can get under your skin, that’s true.”
“Then he spoke to me right after the ceremony. I didn’t want him to, but he insisted. He told me it was all a ruse, a performance he’d given just for me, and he apologized and said he didn’t want me to feel badly about him anymore, that he really wasn’t a pig. He was noble, Mrs. Miggs, and for a time this afternoon, I just couldn’t bear it. I’d loved him so very much, then despised him while loving him, and then he has to tell me he was noble all along. It gave me a headache. And now Thomas is upstairs, snoring, and I’m not particularly pleased about anything right now.”
“I know, but things will change. You will learn how to manage him, Meggie. A taste of the whip, a lick of honey, and you can have a man at your knees, his tongue out, ready to evict your mother-in-law. Now, here’s a last glass for you, dearie. Then you need to get yourself to bed. You’re slurring your words, which is a sure sign that you will wake up wanting to die yourself. You just send your new husband downstairs first thing and I’ll give him something that will set you to rights again.”
Meggie said to the now-empty champagne bottle, “He makes me bleed, leaves me, then finishes the business, and now that I’m feeling really quite fine, she tells me I’m going to feel awful again.”
“It’s the wages of drink, my dear.”
* * *
Chapter 16
MRS. MIGGS WAS wrong. Meggie awoke alert, full of energy—no pounding head, no queasy stomach, not a single fuzzy residual thought in her brain. She felt strong and fit except for the ache between her legs and just a slight feeling of silliness. Actually, she believed she could still dance a bit. Had she really said she could play the fiddle for her and Mrs. Miggs?
Oh, dear.
Blessed hell. She’d forgotten—she was married. She had a husband, a husband who had behaved very peculiarly last night.