Indiscreet (15 page)

No, it was not her lack of virginity that annoyed him as much as the fact that she had steadfastly denied herself to him while she had opened herself to some other man—or men. It was a blow to his pride, perhaps, that with him she had remained unseducible.

What had happened to her was as clear as day now, of course. She had fornicated with a man who for some reason had not married her, and she had been banished by her family to live out her disgrace in a country backwater. The family must have been supporting her for as long as she remained where she had been placed.

He hated the fact that she had been happier with such a life than with what he had offered her. He hated the fact that he was taking her from this cozy home of hers almost by force and certainly against her wishes. He hated the thought of rape, even if it was legalized by the fact that he had just married her.

Devil take it! He had laughed at Nat's narrow escape earlier in the year and at Eden's. There had been no escape for him. He wondered if they would make merry over his fate. He had written to them at Dunbarton to announce his coming nuptials. He did
not think they would laugh, though. They would understand his predicament and his feelings. They would sympathize.

Damn it, he wanted no man's pity.

The back door opened and Toby came trotting into the kitchen. Catherine came more slowly behind him. Her satin gown shimmered in the candlelight and looked incongruous with her surroundings.

He blew out one candle and picked up the other. “Show me to the bedroom,” he said. There was no point in delaying the inevitable, even though it was still only midevening. He thought back on the last time he had made that request of her, just over two weeks ago. He had burned for her then. Well, he burned now too. But then he had thought their hunger for each other to be mutual.

She turned without a word and led the way up the narrow wooden stairs to the bedroom. It was surprisingly spacious and noticeably feminine. The ceiling was high over the bed. It sloped with the roof downward to the wall opposite. It must seem strange to her, he thought, setting down the candlestick on the dressing table, where the mirror reflected and magnified the candle's light, after inhabiting the room alone for five years to have a man in it with her.

She turned and looked at him calmly enough. She was a woman of some courage, his wife. But then, of course, she was no virgin bride.

“Come,” he said, beckoning with the fingers of one hand. She came. “Turn.”

There must have been two dozen tiny pearl buttons down the
back of her gown, each of them hooked into even tinier buttonholes. He undid them all with methodical care and removed all the pins from her hair before pushing the gown and her chemise from her shoulders and down her arms. She shivered as he turned her and the garments shimmered down to her feet. He knelt to pull down her stockings. She lifted her feet one at a time for him and stepped away from her garments. He straightened up to look at her.

She looked unblinkingly back at him, her features shadowed by her dark hair. It waved almost to her waist, as he had known it would.

“If there is one imperfection of form,” he said, “I certainly cannot see it.”

“Since you are bound to me for life,” she said, “it is a good thing that you are pleased with your possession.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, indeed,” he said, and lifted one hand to run the backs of his fingers lightly down one side of her jaw to her chin.

He closed the distance between their mouths and kissed her lightly with lips that were only just parted. He was in no hurry. There was all night. He touched her with his hands, setting them at the sides of her small and shapely waist, moving them up to cup her breasts. They were warm and silky. They were not large, but they were firm and uptilted. Enticing. Her nipples hardened
instantly against the light pressure of his thumbs. He moved his hands behind her, sliding them lightly down her back to cup her buttocks. He kept a little distance between their bodies.

She shuddered violently and he drew her against him, the fingers of one hand spreading wide to hold her where she was, the other moving up to bring her breasts against him. He deepened the kiss.

There was something almost unbearably erotic about holding a naked woman to his fully clothed body. He savored the feeling, determined not to rush, though instinct would have had him tearing at his own clothes, bending her back onto the bed, and mounting her for release.

Despite her nakedness in a room without a fire, he felt her grow warmer over the next few minutes. He felt her arms come about him and her mouth relax and yield and open to his. Her body arched against his even when he eased the pressure of his hands.

At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that she wanted what she was going to get. It was not rape, even if such a thing were possible within marriage.

“Onto the bed,” he said against her mouth eventually. “We can better complete the consummation there.”

She lay watching him as he undressed. He did so unhurriedly, feasting his eyes on her beauty and his mind on his own desire. She watched him without any pretense of modesty or timidity. He decided against blowing out the candle before joining her on the bed.

She had become passive. She did not resist him in any way.
Neither did she display any eagerness to explore or experiment. There was warmth and compliance in her but no excitement. It had been five years for her. He set himself patiently to arousing her. There was no hurry. He was experienced at holding himself in check. He always enjoyed foreplay almost as much as the main feast. He liked his women hot and panting by the time he put them beneath him.

It took a great deal of time.

He raised himself on one forearm eventually and looked down at her with half-closed eyes. Desire was heavy in him. He ran the tip of one forefinger lightly across her moist and swollen lips.

“How many times?” he asked her.

She looked at him with uncomprehending eyes.

“Once?” he asked. “A dozen times? A hundred? More times than you can recall?”

She understood him then, though she did not answer immediately. She stared back at him. “Once,” she whispered finally.

Ah. She was as nearly virgin as made no difference, then. And it had happened five years ago.

He slid his free hand down between her legs and probed there with light fingertips. She closed her eyes. She was unexcited, but her body was ready. He moved on top of her, keeping his weight on his forearms, and pushed her legs wide with his own. Her eyes shot open.

“Easy,” he said. She was skittish after all. “Relax. Let it happen.”

He watched her face as he pushed inside her, slowly, to his full
length. Her teeth came down on her lower lip, but she gave no other sign of distress. Inner muscles contracted about him, causing exquisite pain, and she closed her eyes.

He moved in her slowly, rhythmically, giving her his full length with every stroke, forcing himself to take his time. Let her relearn the basics of intimacy. She could learn on future occasions what else he would expect and even demand of her as a bedfellow.

He stroked her for many minutes before she slid her feet up the bed on either side of his legs and lifted her knees to hug his hips. She whimpered once and then again. He stopped at her entrance, waited for the tension of anticipation in her body to reach its peak, waited for the moment that his body recognized by instinct, and then thrust hard and deep into her and held there.

She whimpered once more and shuddered against him.

He waited for the tension to go from her body, for relaxation to take its place. He waited until her feet rested on the bed again. And then finally, blessedly, he took his own swift, fierce pleasure and released his seed deep in her body.

He was exhausted. That was his first conscious thought. He was also lying heavily on her. He must have dozed off—he hoped not for long. He was no featherweight. He disengaged himself carefully and rather regretfully and rolled to her side. He felt that he could sleep for a week. It was a comfortable bed and she was a warm and enticing woman. It was going to be a pleasure teaching her and enjoying her in the weeks and months to come. She did not know a great deal. He was curiously glad of it.

He reached for the bedclothes to pull them up, intending to
slide his arm beneath her and turn her against him. But she moved faster, rolling over onto her side to face away from him.

He looked at her in the long shadows cast by the flickering candle—it had almost burned itself out. She was not sleeping or even relaxed. He could not see her face. He could not even hear her breathing.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Did I offend you?”

“No.”

He had the curious sensation after that that she was crying, though there was no telltale shaking of her shoulders and there were no sobs or sniffles. After a minute of hesitation he reached a hand around her and touched her face. She turned it sharply to hide it in the pillow but not before he had felt the wetness of tears.

He turned cold. And furiously angry. He clenched his hand. Too angry. He was too angry.

He got out of bed, scooped up his clothes, picked up the candle in passing, and went downstairs.

Toby, on the rocker in the kitchen, wagged his tail.

“Get down from there, sir,” the viscount ordered sternly as he dressed again in his best wedding finery.

Toby got down.

Lord, he was angry. He could cheerfully break every cup and saucer and plate in the kitchen. He had taken care with her so that she might have some pleasure, so that there would be no
semblance whatsoever of rape in what he did to her. Yet she had ended up in tears.

And they were stuck with each other for a lifetime.

But devil take it, he was ten times more exhausted than he was angry. He yawned until his jaws cracked. He looked about hopefully, but the only thing resembling a pillow in the room was the embroidered cushion on the seat of the rocker, and the only thing resembling a blanket was the tablecloth.

He tried to find a comfortable position on the rocker with the aid of both. He failed to find it, though he was at least slightly warmer once Toby had jumped onto his lap and curled up there. Somehow he dozed his way through the night.

S
HE
slept by fits and starts. She was surprised that she slept at all. She knew as soon as he left the room that he would stay downstairs, that he would not come back. She knew that she had made a terrible mistake.

It had been so very unexpectedly wonderful. Despite the shock of its beginning, when he had removed all her clothes and given her no chance to don the nightgown she had chosen for the occasion, and despite the fact that she had been as ignorant as a virgin and had not known quite what to do—despite everything, it had been the most wonderful experience of her life.

She had desired him from the start, of course, and felt a woman's need for the intimacy of his body ever since that first evening visit he had paid her. But she had not really expected that the act
itself would be so achingly beautiful. Or that it would last for longer than a minute or two at the most.

She lay on her back, staring up into the darkness long after he had gone, taking the candle with him, and long after her tears had dried. Her thighs were aching from being spread wide. She was sore inside, though it was not exactly soreness. There was a slight throbbing there still. When he had come inside her, she had thought she would die of the shock of his size and hardness. And yet it had been the shock of wonder.

She had lost reality in the long minutes that followed. Not the reality of
him
. At every moment, perhaps more intensely as the moments passed, she had been aware that it was he who was loving her so expertly and so intimately. There had been no one in the world but him and her for those minutes and nothing but what they did together. Nothing at all. Everything else—all the series of events that had brought them to this moment—had fallen away from her consciousness.

He was her husband and she was his wife and they were in their marriage bed on their wedding night. It had been as simple and as profound and as wonderful as that.

Except that it had ended. There had been unbearable tension, the single, almost panicked moment when she had felt that she could bear no more. And then suddenly—she did not know how he did it—he had opened up some door to her and all the tension had gone flooding through, leaving her feeling so totally at peace that she thought it altogether possible that she would never want to move again. And then
he
had moved again, and relaxed and
uninvolved, she had enjoyed the powerful thrusts of his body, and she had felt the hot gush of his seed.

Then his relaxed weight bearing her down into the mattress.

She had held him, feeling his weight and his heat, smelling the strangely enticing mixture of musky cologne and sweat, watching the dancing shadows cast by the candle on the familiar walls and sloped ceiling of her bedchamber.

And she had known reality again. He—Lord Rawleigh—had just finished consummating a marriage that neither of them had wanted. She did not like or respect him as a person. His only interest in her—he had never made a secret of it—was her body. He had tried several times to persuade her to give it or to sell it to him. He did not want to be married to her, but since he had had no choice in the matter, he would at least take advantage of the fact that her body was now his.

She could not argue with that. She would not argue. She had needs too and she had always found him attractive.

His breathing had told her that he was asleep. She had not moved. She had not particularly wanted to be free of his weight or of his body, still joined to hers. But she had realized the emptiness of what had just happened. It had been something purely physical, something done purely for enjoyment. There was nothing wrong with enjoyment, especially when a man was taking it with his wife.

But there had been nothing more than that.

She had told him once that there was a person inside her body. That person now felt bereft. Was it enough, what had happened? Would it ever be enough?

He had slept for no longer than a few minutes. Then he had moved out of her and off her. But the loss of him had left her feeling cold and empty and a little frightened. And very lonely. She had turned onto her side, facing away from him, afraid to look into his eyes and see a confirmation of all she knew she would see there. For the first time ever she had a man with her in her bed. For the first time, apart from brief social visits, she had company in her cottage. She was married and would be looked after for the rest of her life.

She had never felt lonelier.

Absurdly, unfairly, she had waited for him to say something, to touch her, to comfort her. She had longed for his arms quite as much as she had longed for his body minutes before. And yet when he
had
spoken to her, she had shut him out. She had not quite realized she was crying until his hand came around her to touch her face. Instead of turning as she might have done and burying her face against his chest, she had buried it in the pillow, shunning him.

How could she have ached for comfort and shunned it all at the same time? She did not understand herself.

Yes, she did. There was no comfort to be had from him. And she would not shame herself by letting him know that what she needed, what she dreamed of now that dreams had so painfully been aroused in her again, was a
relationship
. Not necessarily love, that nebulous something that no one could quite explain in words but most young girls dreamed of anyway. She could live without love if she could only have kindness and companionship and a little laughter.

All she could have was this—this that had just happened to her. Wonderful beyond imagining while it was happening. Only a powerful reminder of her essential aloneness once it was over.

And then he had got off the bed and taken the candle and gone downstairs. She had thought at first that he was going to leave the house, perhaps never to come back. But of course he would not do that. He had married her for honor's sake, for propriety's sake. Honor and propriety would dictate that he stay at the cottage.

She lay on her back through the rest of the night, dozing and waking, knowing that she had made a terrible mistake. A mistake in marrying him, and a mistake in not accepting that marriage for what it was once the deed was done.

Long and tedious as the night was, she dreaded the coming of morning even more, when she must face him again.

•   •   •

HE
woke, disoriented, when Toby jumped off his lap. Cramped muscles, a stiff neck, and general chilliness informed him that he was not in his own bed. And then his eyes opened.

Glory be, it was the morning after his wedding. And after his wedding night.

She was up. He caught the sound of the back door latch as she let the dog out. She did not come back immediately. She must have stepped outside with him as she had done the night before. Did she let one little—and poorly trained—terrier rule her life? he wondered irritably. It must be chilly, standing out there.

But it was far chillier in the kitchen. Especially with him there,
he supposed. He remembered grimly the humiliation of having reduced her to tears with his lovemaking.
That
had never happened to him before. A shame it had had to happen for the first time with his wife.

He was making and lighting the fire with inexpert hands—even in the Peninsula he had always had servants, he reflected ruefully—when she came in. He was beginning to feel a certain respect for domestic servants.

“I could have done that,” she said quietly.

He turned around to look at her. With her simple blue wool dress and her hair in a knot at her neck, she looked like Mrs. Catherine Winters, widow, again.

“I do not doubt it,” he said. “But I have done it instead.”

Impossible to believe that he had known that body last night. It looked as slim and as lovely and as untouchable as ever. And quite as enticing. He set his jaw.

“I shall make some tea,” she said, moving past him with her eyes fixed on the kettle. “Would you like some toast?”

“Yes, please,” he said, clasping his hands behind him. He felt awkward, damn it all, like an unwelcome visitor. “Get down from there, sir.” It was a relief to be able to vent his spleen on some living creature.

Toby, on the rocker, cocked his ears, wagged his tail, and jumped down.

Lord Rawleigh became aware of his crumpled coat and breeches and of a general feeling of staleness about his person. He had brought a bag with him. It was time to wash and shave
and dress for the arrival of his carriage and the beginning of the journey home.

With his wife. It was a strange, unreal thought.

His valet, had he been here, would have taken his clothes from the bag last night and set them out for him, making sure they were free of creases and lint. He had not thought of doing it for himself. Of course not. He had been too preoccupied with the desire to rush his bride upstairs and into bed as fast as possible.

Her movements were graceful and sure as she filled the kettle and set it over the fire to boil and as she sliced the bread ready to toast over the coals. She had not once looked into his eyes this morning. He was becoming more irritable by the minute.

“I shall go upstairs to wash and change,” he said. Was that where she washed? Or was it here in the kitchen? He had not noticed a washstand in her bedchamber.

“In the room opposite the bedchamber,” she said as if she had read his thoughts, busy spooning tea into the teapot. “If you would care to wait until the kettle has boiled, you may have some hot water.”

Damn! Of course, there were no servants to have carried up warm water for his wash and shave. How could she bear living like this? How would she adjust to life at Stratton? It was the first time he had thought of it. Would she be able to adjust? Would she be a fit mistress for his house? Well, if she was not, to hell with it. The house had run smoothly without a mistress for years.

Strangely enough they maintained a conversation through breakfast, which they ate while seated at the kitchen table. He told her about Lisbon, where he had spent a whole month at one
time recovering from wounds. She told him about going to the stables at Bodley House to choose a puppy from a litter of five. She had chosen Toby because he was the only one who had stood on his stubby little legs and challenged her, squeaking ferociously at her for daring to invade his territory.

“Though he licked my hands and my face with equal enthusiasm when I picked him up,” she said with a laugh. “What else could I do but bring him home with me? He had stolen my heart.”

She was gazing into her teacup and obviously seeing the cheeky puppy Toby had been. She was smiling, her eyes dreamy and twinkling all at the same time. He would not mind at all, Lord Rawleigh thought, having one of those smiles directed his way one of these days instead of being wasted on a teacup. But the thought brought back his irritation. She had turned away from him last night and wept!

He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

“The carriage will be here in little more than half an hour,” he said, drawing his watch from a pocket. “We should be ready to leave so that we may have as much daylight as possible for travel. It is a long journey.”

“Yes,” she said, and he became suddenly aware of her cup rattling down onto her saucer and her hand whipping away from it—so that he would not see how much it shook?

What now? Was the thought of leaving with him so dreadful? Or was it the thought of leaving here? The cottage had been her home for five years. And she had made it a cozy haven, he had to admit, however inconvenient he found it with its lack of servants.

He looked down at her, trying to form words that would show his sympathy for her feelings. Irritability vanished for a moment in shame that he was responsible for all this.

Would she really prefer to be staying here, alone again, living her life of dull and blameless routine and service to others? Single again? But there was no point to the preference or to his awareness of it and sympathy with her. They were married and she must come with him to Stratton. That was the simple reality.

She had got up too, without looking at him, and was pouring water from the kettle into a jug.

“I believe that will be enough,” she said, handing it to him. “There is cold water upstairs to be mixed with it, my lord.”

There was an awkward moment when she flushed and bit her lip and he felt a flashing of fury and perhaps too of pain. Then he turned and left the room, the jug of boiling water in his hand.

My lord.

She had married him yesterday. She had lain with him last night.

And she had wept afterward.

My lord.

•   •   •

MR.
and Mrs. Adams—Claude and Clarissa—had come in the carriage. They were going to walk back home, they explained. Daphne had intended to come too, but she had felt bilious at breakfast and Clayton had had to assist her back to their rooms.

“The excitement of the past week or two has caught up to her,” Claude said with a smile.