Neighbors. He had never thought of the tenants as neighbors. He glanced back at the cottage door and found himself wondering about the Christian name of the farmer’s wife, and the name of their child. He wondered how long Mrs. Jenson had been without her sight, and why he hadn’t heard about it, for they did not live far from the castle.
“And it does me good to come here,” Sophia continued. “When I look at dear Mrs. Jenson’s face, listening intently to what I’m reading and finding such joy in the words she cannot read for herself, I feel a great sense of peace. I’m happy to come here and do something for her, James, for the strength and tranquility it gives me.”
Gazing into Sophia’s clear blue eyes, James began to feel a similar sort of peace and tranquility himself. He had never felt anything quite like it before.
“You really should bring your maid with you,” he said, retreating into rules and protocols.
“Actually, James, I am considering replacing Mildred.”
He rested a hand on the side of the cabriolet. “Replacing her? But she is very experienced and highly recommended. She has always been—”
“Always. Yes, I know. But that’s just it, you see. She is your mother’s choice, not mine, and I am nothing like your mother.”
That was a vast understatement.
“I wish to choose for myself,” she continued. “I want someone I can feel comfortable with. Perhaps then I wouldn’t mind my maid doing all the things a maid is supposed to do for me.”
Comfortable. “All right then,” he replied. “Why don’t you see Mrs. Bealer about it? I’m sure she’ll be able to look into—”
“I already did. I also explained everything to Mildred last night, and she agreed to accept her pension early. She was quite relieved, actually. I think I might have—how shall I put it?—put her off more than once.”
James couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Sophia putting Mildred “off.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised.”
Sophia returned his smile. “You don’t mind, then?”
“Of course not. If it will make your adjustment easier.”
James realized with an unaccustomed sense of good cheer that they were having an orderly, casual discussion about the household. Perhaps it was possible for them to abandon what they had been to each other on their honeymoon—when they’d touched and kissed constantly, held hands, locked ankles under clothed tables.
There was some aloofness on Sophia’s part today, as if she were willing, at last, to accept this marriage without a constant display of affection.
Perhaps he had not made such a terrible mistake after all. Perhaps there was some hope here.
He slapped the side of the carriage to signal the driver. Then he mounted his horse and watched until they grew distant, trundling down the rocky, winding road toward the main house.
Sophia did not permit herself to turn around in the carriage and look back at James at the Jenson cottage. He was too handsome today, too charming, and she feared she might slip back into the passionate longings she had known during their courtship and honeymoon.
It had been a difficult week. One minute she wanted to pitch a vase at her husband, who had been inconceivably cruel to her on that horrible night before he left for London. On top of that, he’d thrown her into this new life with a cavalier “sink or swim” approach and had offered no support.
Other times, on those rare occasions like today when he spoke to her and flashed a smile, she wanted him back. More than she’d ever wanted anything. The knowledge that he would make love to her again when her body was ripe to produce an heir was, quite frankly, the only thing keeping her going. She could not relinquish the hope that they would rekindle something of what they’d had, for she needed intimacy in her life, a soulful connection with another human being. She could not live without it. Her visits to the tenants were filling a small part of that need, but it was not the same thing as the spiritual and physical connection she’d thought she had with her husband.
Sophia pulled off her gloves and felt a sting at the realization that she had given up all her previous intimate relationships for him—her sisters, her mother, her father. She had been so sure that he would fill her world completely.
With a melancholy sigh, she prayed that one day they would come to a livable arrangement that would suit them both and that she would understand the real reason he had rejected her.
Chapter 19
Exhausted, hoping sleep would come swiftly, Sophia climbed into bed after an evening of interviews with potential new maids. Sophia required a woman with experience—for she needed to rely on her maid to school her in aristocratic protocol. At the same time, Sophia did not want anyone quite as “experienced” as Mildred.
She turned the key in her crystal lamp and snuggled down into the ducal sheets.
A gentle knock sounded at her door. Sophia sat up in the darkness. “Come in.”
The door opened and there stood her husband in his black silk night robe, holding a candelabra. The robe was open in front, and Sophia could see the smooth, muscular curves of his chest and stomach. His jet-black hair tumbled loose and wavy about his shoulders.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
She struggled to sound easy and relaxed, and to hide the fact that at the mere sound of his voice, a shiver of desire had coursed through her body. “No, I just put the light out a moment ago.”
Was he here for what she thought he was here for? To make love to her again, after all this time without so much as a smile or single gesture of affection? Had the time finally come?
He moved into the room and set his candles on a chest of drawers. Like Sophia, he must have been counting the days until the completion of her courses. A part of her felt some indignation at that, for he was making it clear that their lovemaking was still about duty, nothing more, just as he’d said it would be that dreadful night before he left for London.
Another part of her—the more hedonistic part she could not seem to deny, no matter how hard she tried—couldn’t care less about his motivations. All that mattered was that he was here…here to make love to her, and she was going to enjoy every glorious moment of it. She only hoped she would be able to maintain her composure and not succumb to feelings of heartbreak when he left her bed afterward.
Her husband closed the door behind him, locked it, then approached the bed. All Sophia’s senses prickled with awareness of him as a sexual being.
“Any success finding a new maid?” he asked.
“Not yet.” She tried to keep her voice from revealing the quickening of her pulse. “But there are two more ladies coming tomorrow.”
“May I presume Mrs. Bealer has been cooperative?”
“Yes, very.” Sophia suddenly suspected that James might have spoken to the housekeeper himself, to ensure the hiring went smoothly.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “How are things otherwise?”
Gooseflesh shimmied up the length of her body. “Fine, though I still have a great deal to learn.”
“I have no doubt that you will master everything in your own time, Sophia, and in your own way.”
“My own way?” Her head drew back slightly. “I don’t think your mother would approve of that. And what has changed, James? A month ago, you wanted me to pipe down and behave like a conventional English duchess.”
He looked away for a moment. “I’ve been watching you over the past week. I’ve seen you go off to visit tenants. I know about the scullery maid you sent away on holiday.”
Sophia felt her cheeks flush.
“I can only imagine the opposition you must have faced to accomplish that particular feat,” he added.
“Mrs. Bealer wasn’t impressed,” Sophia explained. “Neither was your mother, but I stood my ground.”
He met her gaze and chuckled softly. “It’s good f
or my mother to have someone stand up to her every now and again. You did a brave thing, let her know you’re not a jellyfish. If you had given in, she would have had strings tied to your wrists and ankles in no time, and the servants would continue to look to her for direction.”
“They still do,” Sophia confessed. “They listen to me when I am alone, but when your mother is in the room, they glance at her for a final nod about whatever request I make.”
He inclined his head. “They’re set in their ways, Sophia, and they expect things to be done the way they’ve always been done. They’ll adjust to you eventually, as you will adjust to them.”
For the first time in weeks, Sophia melted into the comfort of having someone acknowledge her challenges and care enough to try and ease her woes. If only James could come to her like this every night. It would make this strange new life so much easier to bear.
Sophia sat forward, cupped his hand in hers and kissed it. “Thank you, James. I’ve been feeling so lost and—”
He cradled her chin in his hand and lowered his mouth to hers. Sophia responded instantly, burying her fingers into the hair at his nape. She wanted the warmth and the touching, and no amount of pride was powerful enough to make her refuse him.
He withdrew from the kiss and held her face in his hands. “You must know why I am here?” he murmured.
She nodded.
“And you’re willing this evening?”
In some indirect, roundabout way, he was handing over the reins, allowing her to be the one to decide what would or would not occur in this bedchamber tonight.
“I am more than willing, James. I’ve been waiting for you. For days, now.”
His eyes glimmered with pleasure. “And what, exactly, have you been waiting for? This?” Tenderly, he pressed his mouth to hers again while his fingers played in the wisps of hair around her temple, igniting her with desire. “Or this?” He growled out the words as his hand slid down her neck and into the warm confines of her nightgown, stopping to relax upon her breast and massage it gently.
Awakening to a sudden and intense onslaught of need, Sophia gasped.
“Or perhaps you’ve been waiting for what I’ve been waiting for....” He eased her onto the bed and leaned over her.
“Yes?” she asked breathlessly.
“Everything. Beginning with this.” He gathered the hem of her nightgown in his hand and carefully drew it up, sliding his fingers up the side of her leg as he did so. His breath was hot and moist in her ear, sending fresh waves of goose bumps all over her body.
Sophia melted like butter in his hands. Closing her eyes, she barely managed to whisper a reply. “Yes, James, that.”
And then she surrendered to the sensual power he wielded over her—the pleasure he knew so well how to bestow—which propelled her senses into a whirlwind of rapture.
Dizzy with a need so fierce, it would have knocked her off her feet if she were standing, Sophia tore at her nightdress with frantic fingers and pulled it off over her head. She had no idea where she threw it. The cool air met her bare flesh, and the sensation enflamed her already savage desires. She wiggled down and indulged in the feeling of her husband’s strong body, tight against hers.
“I’ve missed you, James. I’ve missed this.”
With his face buried in her hair, he nodded, then he entered her with a smooth, deep thrust that took her breath away.
In the warmth of the candlelight, they made love until a sweet ache shot through Sophia’s body in a series of swells, followed by an overpowering tingling sensation. She cried out in shuddering release.
James, too, was overcome. He drove into his wife’s sweet body again and again, reveling in her heat as she tightened and pulsed around him. The pain of her fingernails in his back and the sound of her amorous cries brought his own pleasure to the fore. At last, he thrust deep to feel the wonderful upheaval of his own release.
He relaxed his weight upon her and waited for his breathing to return to normal, while Sophia lightly stroked his back. Her gentle fingers soothed him.
A few minutes later, not wanting to crush her precious, petite body beneath his own, he rolled off her and kissed her on the cheek.
“Will you stay all night?” she asked, in a quiet, careful voice.
“Yes,” he replied, holding her close, and again—like the first time he had made love to her on their wedding night—he found himself forgetting who he was. James fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep, full of the usual dark and frightening dreams.
Sophia woke in the middle of the night to discover that James was gone.
She sat up. The moon in the window cast a silvery glow upon the bed, and she leaned over the side to reach for her nightdress, in a heap on the floor. She pulled it on and sat for a moment, thinking.
He had left her again. She should not be surprised, but she was most certainly disappointed. If she had any sense at all, she would let this go and snuggle back under the ducal sheets and be grateful for her lofty position in the world, but she was coming to realize that giving James the space he wanted might very well be impossible for her. In her family, they always worked out any problems by talking to one another, and everyone felt better afterward. There was never this stiff silence, this ignoring of emotions, pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.
She needed to speak openly with James about their relationship. Her own happiness—and her mental equilibrium—depended upon it. She needed to understand why he did not want to love her, and she would not accept that loving one’s wife was simply not done.
Sophia climbed out of bed and padded across the cold stone floor to fetch her shawl. Shivering, she struck a match to light her candles, and decided she would not wait to undertake the installation of hot-water heating. She would begin before winter set in because this coal-in-the-fireplace procedure was just plain primitive.
Carrying her candles into the dark corridor, Sophia walked to James’s room. She knocked lightly but did not wait for a reply before she pushed the door open and entered.
James was sitting in front of a roaring fire, staring at the flames, a full glass of brandy in his hand.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, offering an explanation before she asked.
A spark snapped noisily in the grate.
“Neither could I.” She set her candles down and approached him. “I was cold.”
“Come here, then.” He invited her to sit on his lap.
Sophia curled into the warmth of his chest and sat wondering again if she should try to be content with this level of intimacy—which was an improvement over the past few weeks—rather than push her husband for something deeper. She decided to keep things light, at least to begin with.
“Is it always this cold in October?”
“No, this is unusual. I won’t be surprised if the snow spoils our shooting party.”
“Will we still have it?”
“Yes, the guests come for much more than the game.”
As he stroked her shoulder with his thumb, she had to fight the urge to kiss him or they’d never get to talking.
Sitting forward, she looked into his eyes and moved a lock of his dark hair away from his forehead. “May I say something?”
“Of course.”
“You won’t be angry?”
“That depends on what you say.”
She paused, thinking about how she could phrase things to avoid sounding like she was attacking him. She needed to burrow in gently. “I’ve been thinking about the things you said to me before you went away to London, and the way I reacted, and I want to apologize for my behavior—for being so angry with you.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and she knew she had surprised him. “You have nothing to apologize for. All of this must be a difficult adjustment for you.”
She nodded. “I’d be lying if
I said it wasn’t difficult. But I do want you to know that I’m doing my best, James. I want to be a worthy duchess.”
His expression softened, and she knew she had broken through at least one barrier. All the better to reach a deeper one.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You’ve been more than worthy, Sophia. The tenants adore you.”
“But your mother doesn’t,” she said with a smile, still burrowing....
“Mother is a tough nut to crack. In fact, I’m not even sure that she is a nut. A stone, more like it, but stones do break.” His eyes narrowed with humor. “If, for instance, they’re dropped from a very high tower.”
Sophia laughed out loud. “Are you saying I should push her out the window?”
“Of course not,” he replied, then lowered his gaze. “I shouldn’t joke about such things. It has happened.”
Sophia felt any amusement drain away. “It has? When?”
He shook his head as if to dismiss it. “A long time ago.”
“Someone was murdered?”
“No, not murdered. The second duchess of Wentworth took her own life. She threw herself out her bedchamber window.”
Sophia shivered with a chill as she recalled what Florence had told her about James’s father drinking himself to death, and his grandfather shooting himself in the head. She couldn’t imagine life being so horrific that a person could lose all hope, but as she reflected upon that portrait of James’s ancestor in the hall, Sophia began to feel a deep sympathy for the woman.
“She jumped from my window?” she asked as an afterthought, curious about the details.
He grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a long time ago. Things were different then.”
How different, she wondered uneasily.
Sophia rested her head on his shoulder, suddenly forgetting all the clever things she had wanted to say when she’d tiptoed down the hall. The flames in the fireplace leaped and danced as a gust of wind blew down the chimney. James sipped his brandy.
To Marry the Duke (American Heiress Trilogy Book 1) Page 17
