Trials of Artemis (12 page)

She
didn't receive nearly as many letters, just notes from her mother and sister
until finally one of her mother's envelopes held a forwarded letter from Sabre.
Letting out a small whoop of surprised delight she raced from the front hallway
all the way up to her sitting room in order to read it.

My
dearest Jack,

You
don't need to tell me what he's done. Just tell me where he is so that I can
kill him for you. We should be back from Italy before March is out. Send his
direction by way of Robert's address and I will take care of it.

Love,
Sabre

Jack
was still laughing over Sabre's staunch and pithy support when she heard a
knock at her open door. She looked up to see Gideon leaning on the doorframe.

"Is
everything all right?" he asked. "Dibbs said you shrieked in the
hallway and ran upstairs.”

She
bounced off the settee and sashayed towards him, holding out the letter.
"I have you now. My friends will be here soon."

He
read the short letter and handed it back to her with a laugh. "Your friends
are assassins?"

She
laughed again. "Not assassins exactly, but we are all quite deadly."

He
stepped forward and hooked his arms around her waist, holding her to him.
"Really? You're deadly are you?"

"Quite."

"Perhaps
I should give you a reason to defend yourself in order to test your
skills."

"You
have a gun or a knife on you?"

"You
aren't threatened by an assault on your chastity?"

"That's
hardly deadly, I shouldn't think."

Gideon
kissed the side of her neck and she could already feel her resistance to him
melting away.

"You
make a good point, though," she said.

"I
do?" he asked, moving to the other side of her neck. "What's
that?"

"I
should defend against this simply because you think I can't."

"Can
you?" he murmured.

She
quickly ducked out from under his arms and danced away. "Yes, I can. And
don't test me, it will make us argue again."

"Why
argue when we can do something much more... interesting."

"Stop
it," she scolded. "You always start this and you never finish it,
apparently distracted by your need to lecture me on my wanton ways."

"I've
never called you wanton."

"You've
implied it. I'm not stupid."

"Nor
have I called your stupid, although you seem bent on assuming so."

"Again,
you have implied it. I don't want to argue about this. I'm happy that my friend
is coming home in another month so just go away." She made a shooing
motion. "Go away. Go back to whatever you were doing before Dibbs told you
that your wife was screeching in the hallway. Go."

With
a shake of his head and a lopsided smile he finally left and Jack sat down to
write some more letters to her friends.

Gideon
sat at his desk idly tapping his pen on his blotter as he had been doing for
the last ten minutes. He had sent Phillip on a break to have time to think.
Seeing Jacqueline with that letter in her hand made him realize he had never
seen her happy before. She had vibrated with it and it had drawn him in like a
bee to a flower. He wanted to taste that joy, feel it under his hands. But she
had been right to push him away. He could still sense that moving too quickly
on the physical side of their relationship would be a mistake. An intensely
satisfying mistake, no doubt, but a mistake nonetheless. Since he now dreamt
about her nightly it was hard not to join her in her bed and try the acts his
mind had come up with. Every day began and ended with thoughts of her long,
silky legs wrapped around him as he pleasured her until she called out his name
in ecstasy. Fabulous. Now those thoughts intruded on the middle of his day.
He wondered how much longer he was going to have to
wait, but when he weighed his current frustration against whether they could
have a satisfying long-term marriage it really wasn't a contest. He had always
been one to believe in long-term investments. For good or for ill, they were
married now and that meant at least attempting to make a good marriage of it. His
Jacqueline had to make sense of their relationship in her own mind and that
would take time. He wasn't sure what it would look like when she had made up her
mind but he was confident he would recognize it. Until then he would just do
his best not to think about her in the middle of the day.

Buoyed
by Sabre's note Jack spent the rest of the morning reading her own journals
from their childhood together. Many of the stories were familiar from constant
retelling, but others had been forgotten over the years. She had chosen to tuck
herself into the charming window seat in her bedroom that looked out over the
side garden. With the delicate embroidered pillows and yards of gauzy drapes it
was the sort of spot that the three girls would have hidden in to giggle over
these stories when they were young. She heard the maids enter to straighten her
room and didn't think much of it. She supposed they did that every morning when
she was most often downstairs with Mrs. Gladstone or doing other errands. The
two girls chatted without her notice as they worked, until one sentence caught
her attention.

"My
sister says as he turned off his mistress without even so much as a by-the-by."

"Don't
see why he did that as it's certain he's not getting any attentions from her
ladyship."

"Gull,
I think they're quite sweet together."

"Tidiest
beds I've ever seen slept in. You're not going to keep a man inside his
marriage that way."

"But
when they arrived they certainly looked, well, you know."

"Some
women go cold quick. Especially the blue bloods, my mama says."

"I
adore milady," the first girl defended. "She's always kind."

"A
man doesn't want a kind woman in his bed, that's all I'm saying duck."

Jack's
cheeks were burning. She had drawn her feet up tight against herself to ensure
that she was fully hidden behind the curtain unless the girls decided to clean
the window seat. Once they had left she crept out of the window and put her
journals away in the trunk again. Then she took to her bed for the rest of the
day, sending word that she wouldn't be down for dinner due to a headache.

Late
that evening she heard a light tap on the door between her sitting room and
bedroom followed by Gideon's voice. "Jacqueline?"

She
couldn't talk to him, not yet, and pretended to be asleep. He came over to the
bed and felt her forehead then smoothed her hair back from her cheek. He stood
there over her for long minutes and it almost made her open her eyes and ask
him why he was lingering. Finally he straightened the coverlet over her and
walked to the door that connected their rooms. After moving her trunk out of
the way, something he was able to accomplish far more quietly than she had the
night she had dragged it there, he went through to his own room and left the
door open. She could hear him moving around and preparing for bed. Even after
the sounds in his room quieted she continued to stare at their open connecting
door. She finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the middle of the night.

Jacqueline
was already at the breakfast table when Gideon came down the next morning. She
looked wan and tired but not much worse for wear. He had been concerned that it
might be a fever, but at least that hadn't been the case. Perhaps it had been
something she ate the day before. This morning she seemed to be eating lightly,
buttered toast and some clotted cream on her plate. Following an impulse to
touch her and reassure himself that she was all right, he leaned down to kiss
the top of her head.

"Feeling
better?" he asked.

She
smiled a bit morosely and nodded. "Yes. A touch of the ague I
suppose."

As
he seated himself beside her, his mind became crowded with the things he wanted
to say, the primary one being that he had missed her yesterday. Abruptly he was
appalled at the direction of his own thoughts. When on earth had she suddenly
become important? And why? He'd had a full and satisfying life before she had
come into it, and he certainly hadn't been tied to any woman's apron strings.
What would be next, an inability to leave her on business? That would be
ridiculous. The more he thought about it the more irritated he became. What
made her any more exceptional than any other woman he had bedded? He looked at
her with a critical eye. She was certainly lovely. When she wasn't being
waspish she was actually quite pleasant, but there was nothing special about
that. There were dozens of lovely, pleasant women throughout England. Perhaps
the issue was precisely that he hadn't bedded her. It was the combination of
his unquenched desire and their constant companionship, that was all. After
they had consummated their marriage and got past this excruciatingly polite
interaction he wouldn't feel as drawn to her.

"May
I ask you a question, Gideon?" Something in the tone of her voice put him
on alert.

"Of
course," he said a bit hesitantly.

She
glanced around to make sure none of the footmen were close by and asked in a
low voice, "Why haven't we consummated our marriage?"

That
her mind had been thinking along the same lines as his own stunned him for a
few moments. "I wanted to give you time to become... acclimated. Since we
didn't have a long courtship."

She
looked over at him with a sardonic smile. "We had
no
courtship."

"That's
not true,” he said. “I took you riding in my curricle."

"That
was after we were officially engaged."

"Picky
little thing, aren't you? Next you'll be saying that you really do want rings
in very color."

She
looked down at her wedding ring a little sadly. "No, I like this
one."

Something
in her morose expression began to irritate him. "Well then, shall we? I
don't have anything on my calendar for the next two hours."

Her
attitude became wary and that served to infuriated him further. "You don't
have to be brusque about it," she said.

"I
said that I was being considerate and you said it wasn't necessary."

"I
didn't say that."

He
arched a brow at her. "You implied it."

She
withdrew into the kind of huffy silence he hadn't seen since that day in her
parent's garden.

"Meet
me upstairs in a half hour," he said.

She
gave him a baleful look but excused herself from her chair. He stood when she
did, as a gentleman should, and then resumed his meal after she left. Perhaps
he had been wrong, he thought. Perhaps it was best for both of them if they
just got this over with. It didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things,
they were both giving the act more significance than it deserved. He wished,
for the first time, that he kept brandy at the breakfast table.

Jack
sat at her vanity brushing out her hair. She had changed into her nightgown and
robe, not sure how else to prepare. Her husband became distant and prickly at
the strangest times. She was given to understand that men enjoyed the marriage
act, and he had on a number of occasions complimented her looks. And when they
had kissed before... Well, she had no reason to believe that he was indifferent
to her in that way. She saw movement in her mirror and turned to see that he
had entered through the open door connecting their rooms. He had also donned
his robe and stood near the doorway watching her. She couldn't decipher the
look on his face. It seemed a mix of concern, anger, and even grief. She was
cold and could barely feel her feet, but rose and moved across the room toward
him. She didn't want to lose her chance at whatever happiness or contentment
they could have in their marriage. If this was the path to securing it, then so
be it. Before she could join him at the door he motioned, "The bed,
then?"

She
nodded mutely, moving to the side of the bed. As she stood there, untying her
robe, she heard his footsteps behind her. He helped her slide the robe off her
shoulders, tossing it aside once it was free of her arms. Settling his hands on
her shoulders, his thumbs circled on her back as he began kissing her neck. His
nibbling kisses where her throat met her shoulder made her shudder, and he ran
his hands down her arms.

"You're
cold," he said.

"I'm
fine." She knew that she was still tense but trusted that he would
distract her shortly.

He
pulled her against his chest and settled his cheek on her head, sighing.
"We don't have to do this."

"It's
fine, if you want to."

"I
rarely think about anything else."

Jack
didn't know what to say to that. She hadn't considered how interested he might
be in marital relations but it lent credence to the second maid's opinion. She
turned towards him, tipping her head back to look at his face. "Then show
me what to do."