Pleasure For Pleasure (24 page)

A
nnabel couldn't stop laughing all the way up the stairs, and saying in a low, wicked voice, “Don't ever challenge one of the Essex sisters!” But Josie was beginning to feel a deep, swelling sense of panic.

Mayne was downstairs.

The
Earl of Mayne
.

And he had married her. Or she had married him, one or the other. Because—But she couldn't think about
because
at the moment.

As soon as they reached Tess's bedchamber, Josie turned
to Annabel. “I have to ask you something terribly important. Did you tell Mayne I was ravished? Is that what he means by ruined?”

The laughter fell out of Annabel's face. “Thank God you weren't ravished.”

When Josie escaped from her hug, she asked it again. “But where did Mayne get the idea that I was, Annabel?” She looked to Tess. “
Did
you two tell him that so that he felt he had to offer marriage?”

“Darling, we would never do such a thing,” Tess said, with all the authority of an elder sister. “Never. That would be an untruth.”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “Then why does he think I'm ruined? Unless I am ruined, just because of that kiss. I was under the impression that there was a great deal more to ruining than a kiss.”

“Men,” Annabel said, “exist primarily to make mistakes. They don't know it's true, but it is. It seems that Mayne made a little mistake. He overestimated the unpleasantness of your experience. The truth is that he would never have married you unless he wanted to do so.”

But Josie was having trouble breathing. Couldn't a marriage be annulled under these circumstances? Wouldn't Mayne feel that the whole thing had been a hoax to trick him?

Tess wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “None of us married in a conventional way, Josie. And we're all quite happy.”

But Josie was launching into full-fledged panic. “I must have lost my mind! He really thinks—he thinks I've been
ravished
. Oh my God. I married under false pretenses.”

“He'll be ecstatic to find that is not the case,” Annabel said, obviously trying in vain to school her face to gravity.

“The two of you are quite blithe when it comes to morality!” Josie cried. “What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that you wanted to marry Mayne—what is his given name?” Annabel asked.

“Garret,” Josie said.

“There! I collect you are the only woman other than Griselda who knows his real name. The truth is that you wanted to marry Garret, and he wanted to marry you. And never mind what excuse he offered for the business.”

“Lucius put forward the excuse that Mayne had jilted me,” Tess said.

“It just doesn't seem the same level of seriousness,” Josie said with a gulp. “I lied—well, in so many words—I lied to my
husband
. In order to get him to marry me.”

Annabel gave her a hug. “It'll be all right by tomorrow morning. I promise.”

“I have to make him fall in love with me. By tomorrow morning!”

Annabel sat down on the bed. Tess was curled into an armchair by the fire, but Josie couldn't calm herself enough to sit down. She just stood in the middle of the room, feeling panic roaring through her like a tidal wave.

“I wouldn't discuss the question of your ravishment until
after
the wedding night,” Annabel said, after a moment.

“That's what I need to know about,” Josie said tightly. “The wedding night. I understand the mechanics of the situation.”

“There's really not much more to it,” Annabel said. She was on the verge of giggling again.

“Don't ignore me,” Josie hissed. “I'm not a baby anymore. I'm about to marry—no! I just married a man who has slept with a great many women, and I need—I need—” She couldn't put into words what she needed. Some trick, some stratagem to make him think that she was a better bed partner than all those others.

Tess smiled at her, and there wasn't mockery in her eyes. “Just enjoy yourself.”

“That's right. Enjoy yourself,” Annabel affirmed.

Josie had never felt more rage toward her sisters in her life. “I don't want to seem presumptuous, but I'd like you to be specific.”

“There are some things that can't be spelled out,” Annabel said.

Josie turned on her. “Spell them out anyway.”

“Use your imagination,” Tess suggested.

“My imagination,” Josie said, stunned by the enormity of what she couldn't visualize. “Where does imagination come into it? As I understand it, the man climbs on top of his wife and—and does what he has to do. I don't see any room for imagination. From what I've heard, it's painful. Mrs. Fiddle, in the village, said there might be blood.” She made a face.

“Oh, as for that first time,” Tess said, “don't worry about it. I hardly felt it.”

“I was exactly the same,” Annabel said, nodding. “A tiny pinch, and no blood. I think Mrs. Fiddle must have been rather hysterical on the subject.”

“You still don't understand. You don't seem to grasp what I'm facing. Mayne has slept with the most beautiful and seductive women in London. And I am—what I am. I need some sort of special technique.” She felt desperate. “Annabel, you must know something!”

Annabel frowned at her. “There aren't any special techniques. That is, perhaps there are, but they're something you have to discover on your own. Between you and Mayne.”

“Don't be fearful,” Tess put in.

“That's wonderful,” Josie snapped. “I'm going into this situation blind, and you tell me not to be fearful. Tell me something helpful!”

“The most helpful thing I can tell you is to allow your husband to give you pleasure,” Annabel said. “I never understood that before I was married. What will drive him mad with pleasure is if
you
are overcome by the same emotion.”

Josie sat down and tried to think about that one. Whether that was enough to keep Mayne at her side when he had fled the beds of so many other women, doubtless all of whom were overcome by pleasure.

“I wish Griselda was here,” Annabel said. “She would know the precise details, but I do think that Mayne has never managed to keep a relationship with a woman going above a week. Or is it two? Tess, do you know?”

Tess made a face. She hated this sort of gossip as much as Annabel loved it. “My understanding is that it has been a question of a week, if that.”

“So, Josie,” Annabel said. “All you have to do is keep your husband in your bed over a week, and you've won the battle.”

Josie thought about that.

Annabel came and perched on one side of her armchair. “I think that you and Mayne will be very happy together,” she said, smiling.

Tess sat on the other side and stroked Josie's hair. “Mayne has just won the greatest Ascot of them all.”

Josie managed a wobbly smile. They seemed to have forgotten that Mayne was in love with another woman. She didn't have the heart to bring Sylvie up. It was one thing to contemplate a victory, if one could call it that, over all of Mayne's married lovers. It was another to imagine ever dislodging his love of Sylvie from his heart.

“I'm going to be the best wife he ever has,” she said in a little stony voice.

“Of course you will be! And luckily, you're his first and only wife, so you needn't even worry about competition,” Annabel said.

“I'll have to be—” she gulped “—well,
nice
.”

“You are nice,” Tess offered.

But Josie wasn't interested in compliments. “Not most of the time,” she said, looking at her sisters. “I'm a bad-tempered
beast, just as you've called me so many times. I really am. I'm horrible.” Her face started to crumple and she caught herself. “You don't understand just how much I
hate
all those people who called me a sausage. Or who laughed along with it. In fact, sometimes I think I hate most of the population of London.”

“You might wish to disguise that a bit,” Annabel suggested.

“I'm going to be much, much nicer than I really am,” Josie stated. “Sweet. Honey-sweet, like all the heroines in my books.”

Tess was looking doubtful.

“Don't you think I can do it?”

“Of course you can do anything you wish—”

There was a knock at the door. It was Lucius, who put his head around the door and said, “My lord bishop is begging leave to return to his house.”

Josie rose to her feet, feeling the comforting presence of her sisters at her sides. “I am ready,” she said.

It seemed that Lucius was accompanying the bishop to his house, and that meant—that meant she and Mayne were free to leave. To go to his house.

“I have no nightgown,” Josie whispered to Tess in a moment of pure terror.

“My maid already gave a bag to the footman,” Annabel said, giving her a warm hug. “I'm so happy for you, darling.”

Tess came too, and the three of them stood in a wreath of arms and kisses. “I just wish that Imogen were here.”

“I love you both,” Josie said a bit damply.

“You'll be all right,” Annabel whispered in her ear. “Just—”

“I know!” Josie said, panicked that Mayne would hear her sister's advice about pleasure and the rest of it. Or worse, advice about her temper. Because there he was at her elbow:
the man who had, according to gossip, slept with virtually every beautiful woman in London—and left them a week later. And she thought to keep him as a husband?

He didn't look like a seducer at the moment. There was something wild and dark in his eyes, a note of anguish that Josie didn't like. “I'm all right,” she said to him, before she even knew she spoke.

“Shall we…” He hesitated.

How could she go with him? She couldn't! But before she even knew what was happening, she was being wrapped in a pelisse. She couldn't even find her voice when they were in the carriage, so they sat in silence for at least five minutes while she sank deeper into a morass of embarrassment. If she told him the truth, what would he do? What would he say? He only—

“I just want you to know, Josie, that I would never force you into any sort of intimate experience that you are not prepared for,” Mayne said suddenly.

She could hardly see his face, but then he leaned forward and the light from the small lamp hanging at the side of the carriage fell on him. He looked so earnest, kind, and resolute that her heart dropped into her toes. She didn't deserve him.

“I cannot imagine a more terrible experience for a woman.” He took her hand, and even though Josie knew she should be writhing in guilt, her heart started beating more quickly. “I'll do anything I can for you. And if there's a child—”

She shook her head.

“You can't know.” He said it so gently that her heart turned over and she pulled her hand away.

“Garret—” But somehow her confession died on her lips. She wanted to be married to him. At the base of it all, there was nowhere on earth she wanted to be other than in this carriage, able to call him by his first name. And if she was going
to go to hell for the blackness of her crimes…He was so beautiful, with his straight brows and serious eyes.

“Of course neither of us have been in this situation before. Our marriage may have begun in a bungling fashion, Josie, but it will be as serious to me as if we'd wed in Westminster Abbey. I know I have a poor reputation, but I said farewell to that life a while ago. I will not betray you.”

“No,” she said. “Nor I you.”

“I shall guard you a bit more fiercely than I did at the racetrack,” he said, turning her hand over. “I suspect it will take some time for you to countenance the idea of intimacies. I want you to feel at ease. We can wait for those matters as long as you wish. A year even.”

Josie swallowed. The only thing that came to mind was a forlorn line of Desdemona's when Othello was sent off to war:
the rites for which I married him are bereft me.
A fancy way of asking the governor not to send her husband off to war before they consummated their marriage. But how could she say such a thing? With Mayne thinking that she was devastated by Thurman's disgusting advances?

Of course, if she were a more ladylike person, she probably would be distraught. After all, Thurman certainly made an attempt to grab her breast, the loathsome muckworm.

Something must have showed in her face, because all of a sudden Mayne was sitting beside her.

“Who was it?” he asked. His voice echoed queerly around the carriage.

Josie's breathing missed a hitch. How could she tell him? He'd probably murder poor Thurman, and all the man did—albeit with a singular lack of grace—was kiss her. Well, maul her. Still…

She was quite aware that if the upshot of being mauled by Thurman was being married to Mayne, she would endure it all over again. “I took care of it myself,” she said.

“What?”

Josie gulped. There was no help for it; she'd have to tell the truth. “We were behind the stables.”

He wrapped an arm around her and it felt so good that she let herself lean into his shoulder.

“Why were you behind the stables?”

“I didn't really notice where we were going,” Josie confessed. She could hardly say that she had been tired of watching Sylvie's darling little turban and her slim little figure and the way she clung to Mayne's arm.