Cate hardly saw her new husband for the first four days of her marriage. Demery always rode behind the coach, regardless of the weather. Each night on the road, they stayed at inns where he would arrange private rooms for Cate and Miss Skinner before disappearing into the ale parlour. At some point during the second day, they crossed into Wales, although Cate was not exactly sure when. The countryside continued largely unchanged outside the window — wet and green. By the third day, they were near the sea. Sometimes, Cate caught a glimpse of it on the horizon, misty and sullen under a crown of clouds.

Late in the morning of the fourth day — their route was taking them entirely along a coastal road now — they climbed a steep green hill overlooking the sea and approached a gabled stone manor of castle-like appearance thanks to a fanciful tower and many narrow windows. Plas Bryn. Demery's home. And Cate's now too.

Demery introduced her to the servants, lined up and awaiting her arrival, then took her and Miss Skinner into the front hall. Here, the walls were painted in pale turquoise and the panelling varnished in warm honey tones. From the outside of the house, Cate had expected stone walls and tapestries, perhaps a suit of armour. It was a relief to find the medieval theme did not continue indoors.

"My grandfather built the house sixty years ago," Demery said as he led Cate and Miss Skinner through the hall to a sky-lit stairwell. "Unfortunately, my uncle never liked it here. He spent the last years of his life in London and rather neglected the estate. I've been working on restoring it."

Cate thought that deserved polite compliment. "I like what I see of it so far."

"You have not seen more than the entrance hall. It would be foolish to make up your mind off that," Miss Skinner said. "I will reserve my opinion until I have seen the rest."

Demery's manners were too polished to show offence, if he felt any. "Caution is always wise, Miss Skinner."

They reached the landing at the top of the stairs and turned into a gallery overlooking the front lawn.

"This part of the house contains the family apartments," he said. "Mine are beyond the first door, if you ever need me. Yours are here."

He opened a door but did not go through, and through the gap Cate could see hints of a pleasant sitting room: pink and cream papered walls, and dust-blue armchairs.

"I hope you will find the arrangement suitable," Demery said. "If not, you may alter it as you like. Miss Skinner, your bedroom is further along."

Demery moved away down the gallery and Miss Skinner trotted after him.

Cate went into her sitting room. It was large and very well-appointed, with tall windows overlooking the sea in the distance. Further doors opened off it. One seemed to lead to Demery's quarters, but when Cate tried it she found it was locked, or perhaps blocked off. The second led to a windowless servants' passage with further doors off it and a bathtub leaning against a wall. Cate shut it again. The last door led through to a generous pink and cream bedroom, and a soft, welcoming pink bed. There were another two doors within this too: one leading back into the passage, and one leading to a further, smaller bedroom, complete with a crib, nursing chair, and sofa. This was done in cream and blue, and warm, thanks to the fire already going in the grate. Cate lowered Luke gently down into the crib. He yawned and blinked up at her, quite at home in his new surroundings.

Tears blurred Cate's vision. She sank down onto the nursing chair and clutched a cushion to her chest, breathing hard. A suitable arrangement? It was perfect. She had not expected such kindness, such thoughtfulness. And she did not understand why it made her so sad.

It took her some time to regain control of herself, clutching the cushion and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. When she felt recovered, Luke was asleep. She left him sleeping and went through the last door, which took her, as she had expected, back into the passage. There was one more door here. She thought it would take her to Miss Skinner's room, but when she tried it she found it opened into an alcove in the gallery. She came out of the alcove to find herself face-to-face with Demery, who must have been waiting for her.

"How do you find the apartments?" he asked.

"They're lovely. You have been very thoughtful. I cannot thank you enough."

"I must confess I commissioned others to be thoughtful on my behalf. None of it was my doing."

"Then you must pass my thanks on to your agents, though I know they would have done nothing without your direction." Cate found tears pricking her eyes again and shook them away. "I'm very grateful, Captain Demery. Truly."

Demery stared at her feet. "I'm glad to know they suit."

Cate had always been afraid of Demery, with his height, and sombreness, and stilted, over-polite conversation. Now, in the rush of gratitude she felt on seeing Luke's room, that was forgotten. His stilted conversation excused as shyness. His sombreness passed off as gravity. They could be friends, Cate thought. She very much needed a friend.

"We have not yet dined together," she said. "Will we dine together tonight?"

"I don't think so." His tone was polite, but his reply was so instantaneous that Cate could not help but feel repelled. Silence hung like a veil between them for the space of several breaths. Cate waited for some further response, some explanation.

Instead, Demery changed the topic. "I am going to visit my mother and sister," he said. "They live in the village, not far from here. I would like you to come with me. Will you?"

"I would be glad to, but I am not dressed for a social call and all my clothes are still packed away in trunks."

Demery's gaze ran up and down her figure. "You will not offend as you are. And I would like very much for you to meet them. My sister is about your own age. I hope that the two of you will be friends."

Not offending was a rather dubious compliment, but Cate had nothing to lose by doing as Demery asked, and besides, there was something intriguing about the thought of a woman her own age for company. Miss Skinner was not precisely a friend.

"Let me ask Miss Skinner to look after Luke while we are gone. He is sleeping, and I do not wish to wake him."

Demery did not smile, but he looked relieved. "Her room is the second door over."

Cate went further down the gallery and found it. The door was open and Miss Skinner was standing in the middle of a spacious bedroom with her arms crossed, regarding the furniture suspiciously. Before she could open her mouth to criticize it, Cate interrupted with her own request. Miss Skinner was reluctant in the offices of making tea or answering doorbells, but she was always glad to look after Luke. Sometimes Cate even suspected her of holding affection towards him.

When Cate came out, Demery took her back downstairs again. There had been a change of carriages. The coach she had come in and the horses that had drawn it had been taken away, and a pretty cream and red curricle drawn by two chestnuts awaited them. This meant that Cate had to sit next to Demery, who was driving the horses. They had not driven together like this since he had courted her a year or more ago. Then, their drives had been full of well-mannered conversation and not much else. Today, they spoke not a word as they rolled down the hill, past fields of sheep and copses of trees, and onto a stony road leading down towards a harbour, on the banks of which lay a village of slate-rooved houses.

Towards the outskirts of this village, attached by a mile or so of stony track, stood a large white cottage. The curricle diverted towards this house and Demery's attitude changed. Catherine was aware of a subtle stiffening of his posture. The air itself seemed to prickle with unsaid thoughts. That was one of the reasons Demery frightened her. In the long silences of their courtship, she had been acutely conscious of his unsaid thoughts. Other men could hide them with light chatter — or did not have them at all. Cate hated having to interpret, in the narrowing of an eye or the drawing of the mouth, displeasure at a word spoken, or disgust at a confession, or some other slight. At least now, she thought, it could not be her that brought it on — no, whatever upset Demery lay in the white cottage ahead.

When their carriage stopped in front of the house, the front door was already opening. A woman, about Cate's age, dark-haired and pretty, stood in the doorway and watched as they got down from the carriage.

"David dear," she said. "What have you brought home this time?"

"Laurie." Demery's tone was curt. "Is Mother in? I asked her to stay in."

"She is. And Paul too." Laurie's eyes were all over Cate, curious and dancing with malice. She turned back to Demery. "Did you bring me a present? Something from London? Something nice?"

"I've brought you a sister-in-law." Demery ushered Cate forward. "Mrs Demery. My younger sister, Laura Wynn."

"How do you do?" Cate said.

Laurie made a little noise in the back of her throat in reply. She twisted her hand through Demery's shirt cuff. "Something nice, I said. I was hoping for a bottle of perfume, or perhaps some lace gloves."

"I had no time for shopping." Demery shook her loose. "Where's Mother?"

"Having a coze with Paul in her bedroom. I was not invited."

Demery's mouth tightened. He hitched the horses to an iron hoop by the cottage door and pushed past Laurie into the house, leaving Cate behind.

"David is not usually so forgetful of his manners," Laurie said with a smile. "But then, Mother has a way of making people forget them. She wants to meet you. She's very curious. I think Paul is too, or he would not be here."

"Is Paul your... husband? Brother?"

The smile hardened. "Brother. There is no more Mr Wynn."

"I'm sorry."

"It is not your fault." Laurie's tone made it sound like it was. "Well, you had better come in."

She led Cate inside and into a sitting room sparsely filled with hard and unwelcoming furniture. Perhaps some of the original furniture from Plas Bryn had been sent here. An ugly woman in seventeenth-century dress sneered down at them from an oversized oil painting over the mantel.

"We shall wait here," Laurie said, sitting down on a wooden bench. "David will herd Mother down shortly. You are not as pretty as David said. But then, having a baby takes a lot out of one. How old is he now?"

Cate lowered herself gingerly to an uncushioned oak chair. "Eight months."

"And you still have not recovered? It must have been a very bad birth. You have my sympathies." Laurie's smile was anything but sympathetic. "Then, I imagine it is harder to birth a bastard than a legitimate child. The guilt must weigh upon one. Forgive me if I speak honestly. I always did prefer open conversation."

Cate had faced all manner of wanton cruelty in her life, but she had never before come up against such an onslaught of blatant rudeness. She was too out of her depth to come up with a response.

Laurie did not require one. She continued in the same merry tone:

"I never had the luck of children. I lost Mr Wynn before I could. I'm well-disposed to being a kind aunt towards the baby, you must know. I consider it a pity you did not bring him today — but then, perhaps it is for the best. Mother bears him a grudge." Laurie cocked her head to one side as floorboards creaked upstairs. "She comes now. How the floor groans! She will bring the ceiling down upon our heads."

From that, Cate got the impression that Demery's mother was very fat, but when Demery walked into the room, the woman who followed him was slender to the point of gauntness, though with a thumping gracelessness to her bearing. Her bony face was sharpened further by the bitterness of her expression. Following behind her was a man with the same bony features, blunted under a layer of adipose and a mouth disposed to smiling.

Cate rose to her feet and curtsied.

"My mother," Demery said. "Mother, this is my wife. Catherine."

Until now, Demery had always referred to her as 'Mrs Demery' or, before then, Miss Balley. Catherine sounded unnatural on his lips. And, as it was a name Cate had never liked herself, unpleasant.

"You can call me Cate," she said. "My friends all do."

"I shall call you Catherine."

Good manners would have dictated that Cate kiss her mother-in-law's cheek, but that made it quite impossible.

The plump man pushed past Mrs Demery and held out his hand. "I'm Paul. The younger brother. How do you do?"

Cate shook his hand. "Very well, thank you. How do you do?"

Paul continued to shake her hand for longer than was comfortable. "But marvellous, marvellous! I have just been telling David some very good news. We have high hopes of a new arrival next summer."

"It has been two years of high hopes," Laurie said. "My expectations are correspondingly depressed."

"No, no. Have heart, Laurie. Annabelle is feeling very poorly this morning, and she has had such strange dreams of late."

"That sounds a great deal like indigestion." Laurie's mouth curved upwards in a catlike smile. "No, I am afraid the only baby we shall have around here is Catherine's. But I am sure we will all be charmed by him."

"Charming he may be. Most babies are." Mrs Demery's voice dripped with venom. "That does not make him less a bastard."

Cate recoiled as though she had been slapped. "He's— It's not his fault."

"Mother." Demery crossed the room to stand next to Cate. "She is my wife now. I brought her here in the hopes that you would be friends. If that is impossible, I must, at the very least, insist upon civility."

Mrs Demery sucked her upper lip. "You always do. Yet what civility has she treated you with, to get with child to another man? You would turn your cheek until your teeth are knocked out."

"I must insist," Demery repeated, more force than authority in his voice.

Mrs Demery sneered. "As you will."

With a sinking heart, Cate realized that Mrs Demery was determined to be her enemy, despite what Demery said.

"I should like to be friends," Paul said. "I always wanted an older sister."

Cate eyed Paul confusedly. Surely he was older than her; she had not taken him to be less than thirty. But of all those in the room, he was the only one smiling. She would take him at his word.

"I am always happy for new friends," she said.

"Too happy in the past, I think," Mrs Demery said. "More caution would be advised."

"Not of my own brother, I would hope," Demery said. He took Cate's arm in his. It was a gesture of possession rather than comfort. "I am trusting all of you to look after Catherine when I am absent from Plas Bryn. I know you will. But Catherine may find it easier to believe if she is shown some decency now."

"I will not coat my tongue in honey for anyone's sake. I never have." Mrs Demery scowled. "But, yes, Catherine, have you ever any urgent need when David is absent, we will serve. The family does close ranks."

Catherine did not think she could ask Mrs Demery for anything, ever. She hoped she would never need to.

Their visit did not last much longer. Mrs Demery half-heartedly suggested tea but made no efforts to organize it. They sat down on the hard benches and chairs and Demery exchanged news with his family. Cate listened silently, watching them, thinking. Laurie was rude, and Cate hated rudeness. Mrs Demery hated Cate. Paul appeared friendly, but there was something faintly repulsive about his manner. Too smiling. Which was quite an irrational complaint, because what she disliked about Demery was that he did not smile enough.

It was a relief when Demery stood and said they had to go. When they were rolling back up the hill towards home, Cate said, tentatively, "You said you would be absent from Plas Bryn? Will you be going away for a while?"

"Much of my business lies in London. I will return there as soon as I have seen you settled. Probably by the end of the month."

"Will you be away long?"

"I will visit for Christmas, I think, and probably again in the summer. I usually do, when I can. The country is very pretty here in the summer."

Visit. "I thought you lived here."

"I planned to, once upon a time, but there is a certain convenience to remaining in London."

It could be shops, Cate told herself. London had many convenient shops. Or it could be the banks, or some other matter of business. But somehow Cate knew that the 'certain convenience' was the two hundred miles of distance that would lie between them.

Demery had married her, but he had not forgiven her.

__

2022-09-25: But will I have much of a story if I let Demery run off to London and leave Cate behind? I might have to think of a way to keep him back...