Betrothed to the wrong gentleman: Historical Fiction

CHAPTER 30

In the three weeks they had been married, Chadwick was becoming more and more confused about the lady he married.  After the first week he expected Madison to demand he take her back to her father’s home, but every evening when he came home, she was enthusiastically waiting for him with a cheerful smile.  She seemed to adore their cottage.  Every night she animatedly related to him about her day, what she and Buttons got up to in the garden, or how she and Beth rearranged the furniture either in the sitting room or their bed chamber.  It irked him immensely that she never once questioned him about his day, where he went to each day, or what he did.

The ever resourceful groom, Buttons had built a picturesque water pond on the side of the cottage, attracting birds and frogs.  The property now had an abundance of poultry and livestock.  There were fowls, ducks and rabbits running around.  Chadwick had introduced sheep, pigs and goats.  Occasionally he brought home fresh trout or salmon, Madison did not know where it came from.  She assumed he bought it at the market.  It did not matter where it came from, she delighted in the delicacy, he seldom treated her to.

‘Darling oh good, you are home early’ Madison exclaimed, as she hugged Chadwick the second he waltzed through the door.  She had heard his carriage coming to a sharp halt outside. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

‘Good afternoon my wife,’ he laughed.  ‘What is this surprise?’  Chadwick had sped home.  He had been impatient to take her for a drive.

‘Close your eyes,’ she murmured, taking his hand and opening his palm.  Obediently Chadwick closed his eyes and was startled when he felt the very familiar texture of four gold coins being placed in the palm of his hand.

‘What is this?’ He looked at her ominously.  She knew her husband’s stubborn pride.  Had he not demonstrated that to her when he had arrogantly rejected her father’s dowry?  Cautiously she began to explain.

‘We have been selling eggs and our own fresh produce in the market,’ she smiled tentatively.  Beth even baked biscuits and pastries so we could sell them.  This is from the profit we have made,’ she could not contain her happiness.

‘It is yours,’ he shoved it back into her hand.  ‘Use it on yourself.  Buy yourself gowns---slippers.’  He did not even have the grace to look her in the eye.  In the three weeks they had been married, he had not once bought her a ribbon for her hair, let alone a dress, neither had she asked him for a single thing he painfully reminded himself.

‘I thought perhaps we could build a wash room at the back of the cottage, attached to our bed chamber,’ she studied the coins he had dumped back into her hand as if it had burned a hole in his palm.  When Madison dared to lift her eyes up to Chadwick’s he saw the threatening moisture pooling in her eyes.

He swallowed furiously at the saliva forming a lump in his throat.  That was another lack, his wife had silently endured.  In her father’s home, she had a wash room in her own chamber.  Here in this cottage, Buttons performed the ritual morning and night.  He carried the bath from outside, filled it with hot water for when she and Chadwick took their baths and removed it when they were done.  Instead of being appreciative or a little compassionate, the sinister beast in Chadwick reared its ugly head again, fuelled by his incapacity to deal with his wife’s threatening tears.  It was the first time, he had seen them.

‘I am acutely aware you were spoilt with every conceivable luxury in your father’s house,’ Chadwick ranted, ‘but you are married to me now.  Do not expect to be mollycoddled,’ he growled harshly. 

Madison’s eyes widened.  She was not making any demands on his financial resources.  Surely the gold coins were more than sufficient.  She was even certain there would be change left over.  Last week she had enquired with Buttons on the material that would be required to build the bath.  When she, Beth and Buttons had gone into the market, Madison had mentally calculated the prices of all the material that was required.  She was more than happy that the four gold coins she had been safely keeping was more than sufficient.