Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (24 page)

It was the hardest thing she had yet done. Except that she found when she did it that eyes were not directed at her at all. No one had even as much courage as she, she thought, raising her chin a notch higher. They could not meet her eye to eye and so pretended hastily to be looking elsewhere. She saw Sir Albert Boyle in a box opposite with Rosalie Ogden and her mama and another older gentleman, and smiled warmly at him. He smiled and bowed his head in her direction.

It was working, she thought several minutes later, just as the play was about to begin. Their entrance had obviously caused something of a sensation. Most people would not look directly at them when they thought themselves observed. But there had not been a great booing or hissing. No one had jumped up onto the stage to demand that they leave and not dare to contaminate decent people with their presence ever again. A few people had inclined their heads to her. One or two had even smiled.

Everyone, her husband had said, would know that they were married. Sir Albert and Lord Francis had made it easier for them by making sure that word spread this afternoon. Doubtless they had ridden in the park and made the wedding the sole topic of their conversation.

Two evenings ago, she thought suddenly, perhaps at
about this exact time, her betrothal to Lord Kersey was announced. This evening she was another man’s wife.

Before she could shake off the distressing thought and before the play could begin, she was aware of another of those almost imperceptible pauses in the general conversation, followed by a renewed buzz of talk. And she saw instantly why. The box close to theirs in which she had sat one evening last week had been mercifully empty thus far, but now it was filling—with the Earl and Countess of Rushford, another older couple whom Jennifer did not know, and Viscount Kersey escorting Horatia Chisley.

It was perhaps the most intensely painful moment of her life, Jennifer thought. A hand clamped down hard on hers as she was about to get to her feet to flee she knew not where.

“Smile!” her husband commanded. “Look at me while I talk to you.”

She smiled and looked. And had no idea what he said to her, his eyes warm on hers.

“Brave girl.” She heard his words at last. “It will become easier, my love. You do not think so now, but it will. I promise.” He raised her hand and held it to his lips.

She felt intense hatred for him. He had caused this. She should be there in the other box with her betrothed, radiant with the expectation of her coming nuptials. This man had seen to it that that dream was shattered. To be replaced by this.

Samantha leaned close to say something to her. She was flushed and bright-eyed and looked very unhappy,
Jennifer thought. Poor Sam. All this must be ruining her Season too.

And then, as the play began and she turned her attention at last and gratefully to the stage, she heard the echo of Lionel’s laugh. Was he too masking heartache with laughter? she wondered.

Oh, Lionel. Lionel.

“T
HERE
. Y
OU SEE
?”
HER
husband said hours later when they were in the carriage on the way home—Lord Francis had escorted Aunt Agatha and Samantha—“It is all safely in the past. You carried it off wonderfully well.”

She set her head back against the cushions of the carriage and closed her eyes. “Gabriel,” she asked quietly, “why did you do it? Could you not have simply asked me and if I had said no accepted defeat? Why the letter? I was in the ballroom when it was read, surrounded by half the
ton
. You cannot imagine the horror and humiliation. How could you have done that to me?”

He did not touch her. There was a short silence.

“I know nothing of the letter,” he said. “I did not write it or have it written or send it. Someone else did so, knowing that it would be easily believed in light of other things that had happened between us.”

“I suppose,” she said wearily, “that it was not you who kissed me in full view of everyone at the Velgards’ costume ball either? And that you did not deliberately kiss me there instead of out on the balcony or not at all?”

He did not answer.

“It does not matter anyway, does it?” she said. “We are married and I am halfway to being respectable again and there is no point in hankering after what is gone forever.”

“Kersey?” he said. “The time may come when you will realize you had a narrow escape from him, Jennifer.”

She could not speak for a while. Her teeth were clamped together. “I cannot command anything, can I?” she said. “I would ask you, Gabriel, I would beg you please never to mention his name to me again. If there is one shred of decency in you, do that for me.”

They traveled the rest of the way to Grosvenor Square in silence. And entered the house and ascended the stairs together in silence. He stopped outside her dressing room door. The door was ajar and there was light within. Her maid was in there, waiting for her.

“I will join you shortly,” he said, bowing over her hand.

“Oh, yes, I have no doubt of that,” she said, her voice bitter, knowing that she would be wiser to keep her mouth shut. “It is what you have waited for, is it not? But not really for very long at all. You have arranged all with admirable speed.”

She wondered as he set his hands behind him and regarded her quietly if he would break the promise he had made to her yesterday morning. She wondered if he would cuff her. Or if he would set about a more ordered chastisement. She would have no recourse. She was his property. And she had provoked him.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “it is what I have wanted. I will be with you shortly, Jennifer, to make love to you.”

And there. As she stepped inside her dressing room as he pushed the door open for her, her stomach churned quite as painfully as her face would have done if he had given her the back of his hand. He had put it into words and terrified her.

She heartily despised herself.

Her maid, she saw, had set out her best nightgown and was smiling knowingly at her.

I
T HAD NOT BY ANY MEANS BEEN AN EASY DAY. HE still could not quite digest the fact that he was married. The evening had been a dreadful ordeal. He had had to force himself through this twice now, facing the
ton
, refusing to hide from them, daring them to cut him. Except that this time it had been worse because this time an innocent was involved with him, and loss of reputation was always worse for a woman than for a man.

Kersey had basked in the situation at the theater. He had looked tragic and brave and had been gravely attentive to Miss Chisley. He had laughed once early in the evening, seemed to realize that gaiety was not appropriate to the image he wished to project, and had not laughed again. Far from being embarrassed at the ending of his betrothal, he was cleverly enlisting the sympathy of the
ton
.

It would be the greatest pleasure in the world to kill him.

But it was his wedding night, the Earl of Thornhill reminded himself after he had dismissed his valet. And it was difficult to face, much as he wanted her. She hated him. She had not made any secret of that. It was going to feel like violation, like rape. And yet it was something
that had to happen. The only chance either of them had for a measure of contentment in their future was somehow to make something normal out of their marriage.

Her dressing room was empty and in darkness. He passed through it, tapped on the door into her bedchamber, and opened it. His wife’s room. It felt strange to know that this empty room in his house was now his wife’s.

She was not in bed. She was standing facing the fireplace, looking down into it though there was no fire. She wore a white, lace-trimmed nightgown. Her hair was loose and hung heavy and shining to her waist. He had hoped she would not braid it or try to stuff it beneath a nightcap. She did not turn, though she must have heard his tap and the opening of the door. Her shoulders hunched slightly.

Oh, Lord, he thought, he wanted her. But the knowledge made him feel guilty, though she was his wife and though he fully intended to have her. It should not be so easy for him. He was the guilty one. For her this would be the culmination of all the horrors that had happened to her in the past two days. Except that he knew one small fact about her that might give him a thread of hope. She responded to his physical presence. Slightly and unwillingly, perhaps, but quite unmistakably. She had kissed him in the carriage this morning just as he had kissed her.

“Jennifer.” He had stepped up close behind her but found it difficult to touch her.

She turned and looked at him with a pale, set, defiant
face. “Yes,” she said. “I am here. I am yours. You will find, I believe, that I know my duty and will perform it without protest.”

Lord!

“And without enjoyment,” he said.

“Enjoyment?” Color flooded her face, but he saw immediately that it had been brought there more by anger than by embarrassment. She spoke the next words slowly and distinctly. “You are the wrong man to bring me that, my lord Gabriel.”

He set his hands on her shoulders, felt the tension there, and massaged them with his hands. “This will not do,” he said. “This anger and this bitterness. They are understandable, though I am not as guilty as you believe me to be. But they will only bring you intense unhappiness, Jennifer, and perhaps even destroy you.”

“You have done that already,” she said.

“Perhaps.” He moved his hands in and worked at the taut muscles of her neck. “But I have married you and I am seeing to it that you are not cut off permanently from the people of your own class. And I intend to be gentle with you. Meet me halfway. I am not the man of your choice. You believe that I have trapped you into marriage and you are partly right. But like it or not, you are in the marriage. For life. I cannot give you happiness unless you are prepared to receive it. Don’t close your life to it merely in order to punish me.”

“I know what is going to happen on that bed,” she said, her face pale and set again. She had not given an
inch. His massaging hands had met nothing but resistance. “I know just how it is done though it has never been done to me before. Do it, please. Get it over with and leave me to sleep. I am tired.”

Deliberately defiant and rather vulgar words, which she could not possibly have spoken just two days ago.

He lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers.

He could feel her lips trembling. They were quite unresponsive, but she did not pull away. He slid one of his arms about her shoulders and the other about her waist and drew her against him. And felt for the first time the slimness of her long legs against his own and her curves against his body. Her full breasts pressed to his chest.
Do it, please. Get it over with …
His body clamored to be allowed to give it to her just as she wanted it. His mind ruthlessly imposed control.

He kissed her gently, moving his mouth in a soft, warm caress over her closed lips until the tautness started to go and she leaned into him and her lips relaxed. He licked them lightly with the tip of his tongue, tested the seam of her lips and found it relaxed, prodded through, and licked at the soft moist flesh inside.

Her hands, he realized, had moved up and were gripping the satin collar of his brocaded dressing gown almost at the neck.

He ran his tongue along her teeth until they parted, and then eased it inward. She made a sound in her throat. He took his mouth from hers and kissed her eyes, her temples, her jaw, her chin, her throat. He found fine
lace trimming in his way. He kissed her mouth again and found her lips parted.

Her hands, he noticed, were flat on his shoulders, gripping tightly.

He kissed her and opened the buttons of her nightgown. He slipped his hands inside to the warm silky skin of her shoulders and found the tightness gone from her muscles. He moved his hands down over the sides of her breasts and beneath them. He felt suddenly weak at the knees.

But she drew a sharp breath, jerked her head back away from his, and stared at him with wide eyes.

“Beautiful,” he murmured to her, gazing back at her through half-closed eyes. “Beautiful, my wife.” He stilled his hands. “Kiss me.”

She was breathing in jerky gasps, but she brought her mouth obediently back to his. He rather thought that he might have bruises on his shoulders with the imprints of her fingers in the morning.

He stroked her breasts lightly as his tongue circled about hers. He touched his thumbs to her nipples and found them hard and peaked. She gasped, drawing cool air in about his tongue. Lord, he thought, he could not wait. He wanted to be inside her now. He wanted to be thrusting mindlessly toward release. But he needed his mind. Quite desperately. Take her now like a heedless, dominant male and he might forever kill any faint chance they had for some sort of amiable marriage.

“Come.” He withdrew his hands from inside her
nightgown and set one arm about her waist. “I think we had better lie down on the bed.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at it as if it were the executioner’s block.

He kept his arm about her waist while he blew out the three candles that stood on the nightstand beside her bed. Then he turned her in the darkness, slid his hands beneath the shoulders of her nightgown again, and lifted away the fabric—off her shoulders, down her arms. It slid to the floor. She made a sound rather like a moan and was silent again.

“Lie down,” he told her, edging her back onto the bed. He removed his dressing gown and dropped it to the floor before joining her there.

She was rigid again.

“I am going to love you, Jennifer,” he told her, sliding an arm beneath her shoulders and turning her onto her side against him, “not punish or humiliate you. Love in its physical form can be very beautiful.” He took her mouth with his again. Could it? He had only ever performed this act to relieve a physical craving. It had only ever been intensely satisfying.

She was incredibly beautiful. He explored her body lightly with his free hand, learning the shape and feel of her naked. And this was not for one night only or for as long as he cared to employ her. This was forever. She was his wife. He would plant his seed in her. She would bear his children. They would grow old together. Strangely, there was nothing frightening in the thought.