Laura Matthews

by A Very Proper Widow

  Her bedroom seemed to have grown stuffy and Vanessa slipped out of bed and padded in her bare feet over to the window. She was pleased to see there was a full moon. That surely would have made his drive safer. And even in his haste he was sure to drive carefully, remembering the pall under which he made the journey. There was a fresh breeze, too, as she pushed the window open more widely to allow the air to cool her, to drift past her tied-back hair and swirl the folds of her cotton nightdress. Frederick had teased her about her nightdresses, saying, “You shouldn’t bother with them, my love. They’re too lacy; I got my toe caught in one of them the other night. And the buttons are far too small for my clumsy fingers.”

  His fingers had been a bit clumsy. In his eagerness and arousal, he had twice torn her nightdresses, and she had secretly repaired them herself, not wishing one of the servants to get a mistaken impression. But Frederick had been very direct in his desires, and a nightdress had only stood in his way. He had been home so seldom during their marriage that when he was there, he seemed unable to have enough of her.

  After dinner, when it was perhaps only eight o’clock, he would break off in the middle of telling her something about the campaign in the Peninsula, his eyes suddenly opaque with desire. “Let’s go upstairs now,” he would say, grasping her hand with an urgency she couldn’t quite understand. He would follow her directly into her room, dismissing her maid with a cheerful, “You won’t be needed,” and proceed to undress her himself. Delicate gowns had been discarded in a heap on the floor, her underclothing tossed onto the nearest piece of furniture. His only intent was to disclose her naked body. He was entranced with her firm young breasts, occasionally sucking so hard on the nipples that she winced.

  Sometimes he was too impatient to wait for her to draw back the bedhangings and the bedclothing but would take her standing up, pressed back against the wall, moaning with his desire and pleasure as he hungrily fit his body to hers. The movement of his body would cause her bare back to rub against the wall, which was hardly a comfortable position. He never noticed, and she didn’t tell him. It had seemed enough that he was with her, holding her, after long months of absence. Wasn’t it sufficient that he loved her so desperately he could hardly restrain himself?

  Vanessa shivered at the open window. No, it wasn’t sufficient. She had been too young and naive to realize that she should have spoken up. That she should have made him understand that he handled her a little too roughly. His eager invasion of her body had usually come as something of a shock, damping down any flame of her own which might have consumed her. But not always.

  There had been the mornings. Frederick would awaken her several times in the night to consummate their love, and in the mornings he was frequently a little spent. Those were the times when she had most enjoyed their lovemaking. He was drowsy, half drugged with sleep and satiation, but not willing to admit he had had his fill. Then he would take his time (for himself, she later suspected), his hands roaming less greedily over her body, almost in a dreamlike way. Those were the times she could feel the flame growing, spreading through her sleep-softened body. Those were the times she had learned what desire was, when his lips were remarkably gentle on her lips and her breasts, and in fact all over her body. Then the tingling of first touch turned into the aching of longing, the drifting current of pleasure into a tide of passion. Those were the times of fulfillment.

  Fascinating that he hadn’t seemed to notice the difference in her reactions to his lovemaking. But then, he had not been a particularly sensitive man. He had been exuberant, full of laughter and life, giving pleasure to those around him as a natural offshoot of his own great joy in living. Everyone had loved him. You couldn’t help but love him. Vanessa had loved him. She had also come to see his shortcomings as a husband and father, but they had paled against his charm. He was intemperate in his thirst for life. And he was dead.

  The night seemed cooler now and she pushed the window back down to a small crack of an opening. Her warm spot in the wide bed had grown cold and she huddled under the single light blanket. In this bed, always her bed, she and Frederick had lain together. Never once had she been in his, and he only slept in it himself when he had had a little too much to drink. How few nights it seemed now that they had shared a bed, and how long ago. Those mornings of splendor were long gone, and, until recently, she had scarcely thought of them. There had been too few of them to set against the less pleasurable times when he had simply taken her and she had felt nothing. But her memories stirred as her body reawakened.

  Alone in her bed she could feel the tension in her as she recalled the three simple encounters with James. Her hand in his, his fingers in her hair and on her shoulder, his lips on hers. They were nothing compared with the complete intimacy of a married couple, but they were enough, now in the dark of night, to arouse her body, to send waves of anticipation through her veins, to make her breasts ache to be touched, her empty womanhood to be completed. She did not fight her fantasies. What harm could they do? Only she would ever know of them, of the vision of Alvescot coming into her room, coming into her bed. He would be gentle and loving. She could almost feel his hands on her, his body held close, his whisper in her ear, his manhood filling that aching void in her. She could feel how it would be, did feel it, all of it. A solitary tear slid from the corner of her closed eyes and wandered down her temple into her ebony hair.

  He had left and he wasn’t coming back.

  Vanessa lay awake for long minutes thinking, but she could not recall any occasion when Frederick had sat and simply held her hand, before or after they were married.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Everything seemed to settle into its old course the next morning. No one mentioned Alvescot at all, as though he had never come and influenced their lives. Mabel and Louisa slept until their usual late hour, and Hortense took her breakfast in her room. William and Edward didn’t speak to each other when they came into the Breakfast Parlor, but each directed comments to Vanessa, who was just finishing her meal.

  “How about letting me use one of the horses today, Vanessa?” Edward asked. “They need the exercise, and that nag of Harley’s is too old to hobble around much longer.”

  Vanessa thought it more likely Edward would go away if he didn’t have horses at his disposal. On the other hand, there was really nowhere for him to go, without money. His consistent abuse of her animals, however, had not ceased to annoy and upset her. If she granted the privilege again, there would only be more of the same. “Have you made some effort to help in the stables, Edward? None of the grooms has mentioned it to me.”

  “You can’t expect me to be mucking out stalls, Vanessa! I’m a gentleman, not a peasant, for God’s sake. Besides, you have more than enough people to do that kind of thing. I won’t have your grooms snickering at me behind my back when I’m up to my ankles in filth! And I haven’t a pair of boots I’d be willing to ruin that way. You’re treating me like a child.”

  The charge was true, of course. It was the sort of action she would take to instill some respect for animals in John. But how did you convince a grown man he could not mistreat your horses and continue to be permitted their use? Alvescot had sent Edward off on Satin with the comforting knowledge that his horse wouldn’t tolerate such abuse, but Vanessa’s mounts were not so highly strung. And they were in need of exercise. Rather than let Edward ruin them, Vanessa contemplated selling one or two. Surely the pair for the curricle should be sold; they would be of no further use. She would speak to Davies about it.

  “Well?” Edward demanded, impatient with her air of absent reverie.

  “No. I’m afraid not.” She met his angry eyes calmly. “I’ve decided to sell some of the horses and I want them to be in good condition when I do. You should continue to use Harley’s horse.”

  “Don’t you worry about it?” Edward asked, in a voice laden with sarcasm.

  “Frankly, I do, but it is not my responsibility.”

  Edward proceeded to ignore h
er, attacking his breakfast with a grim determination. His “cousin” needed to be taken down a peg or two, he decided, and he was just the man to do it. Cutsdean had become his home, and it infuriated him that he didn’t even have the use of the stables any longer. It was Edward’s intention to make Cutsdean his home permanently and the surest means of doing it was to marry Vanessa. He was not unaware that the estate was only held in trust for little John, but that made no difference.

  Any man with a bit of gumption could live luxuriously off a stepson’s property with great ease. Edward would have sneered at anyone who thought otherwise. When he married Vanessa, he would take over control of the estate and use its income precisely as he pleased. Alvescot’s visit had been a small stumbling block, with the man poking into everything, but Edward could now see it was a good thing he had been here before Edward took charge of the place. Alvescot was satisfied with what he had found, and he had no intention of returning to question further expenses.

  There had arisen in Edward during the visit a suspicion that the earl was interested in Vanessa, but fortunately this had proved untrue. Alvescot had obviously indicated he had no intention of returning. His brother’s accident had been fortuitous, to Edward’s mind, because he had to admit that Alvescot’s rank would have been of great weight in inducing Vanessa to marry him if the earl had asked. He was aware of his own lack of title, but was convinced that his other merits were more than enough to make up for this deficiency. Was he not exceedingly handsome? Alvescot could not hold a candle to him in looks. Edward’s conviction of his own prowess with females, verified by the lovely young woman in Basingstoke, was so great as to exclude any doubts that he could win where he chose. He was, after all, Mabel’s son.

  Some drastic measure would have to be taken to bring the matter to a head, he decided. Vanessa had come to think of him as merely a member of her household rather than a prospective husband. Unfortunate, but not insurmountable. Edward was convinced he had not given the proper attention to secure his bride, but he was willing, when faced with the thought of Vanessa’s selling off some of his horses, to put forth the necessary effort. There was no need to reduce the stables now, only to have to add to them at greater expense in a few months time when they were married. He had been remiss in his courting and he intended to make up for the lost time, but that might not be all that was necessary to jolt her out of her established habits. Something dramatic would have to be done.

  He had been paying no heed to the dialogue between William and Vanessa, but he now allowed it to penetrate his mind, though he made a pretense of not listening to them. The old fuddy-duddy was on his usual hobbyhorse about health.

  “I happened to note,” William was saying, “that your son came home the other day with wet feet. There is no more likely way to catch a cold, I assure you! Wet feet chill the whole body, and walking about in damp footwear is more hazardous than having wet hair, though that is nothing to minimize. I have known strong men caught out in a drizzle to succumb to the most debilitating illnesses, which have occasionally even proved fatal. You must take the greatest care with John. He does not, at his age, have the sense to attend to these details himself.” He frowned at the cup he held in his hand. “I don’t know how he can have gotten his feet wet. It didn’t rain that day.”

  “No, he was playing by the stream with his pony. It was a warm day, William, and he loves to play near the water. His feet weren’t wet for very long and he didn’t contract a cold.”

  “He very well might have. Children are susceptible to colds. I remember when I was a child . . .” And he was off on a long reminiscence about his youth and his health.

  Edward stopped listening and started planning. Oldcastle, despite being a dull dog, had given him the inkling of an idea. You never knew where an idea might come from, Edward had found, and he tended to keep his ears open at all times for the hint of scandal, or an opportunity.

  Now, it was true that Vanessa was a concerned mother, although she was an indulgent mother as well. John and Catherine were precious to her, no doubt about that. Edward found them a nuisance, but he was willing to concede that their mother, poor lonely widow that she was, put some store in them. It seemed perfectly reasonable to him that if he were to rescue young John from some peril, the grateful woman would fall into his arms without further ado. So he set himself to planning an accident where he could rush forward as the hero, but William’s voice irritated him and he found himself unable to concentrate. Edward excused himself.

  His hostess would have liked to do the same, but William continued to speak and she politely sat and listened to him. The thought did just run through her head, though, that she was not going to be able to tolerate this much longer. Either William was going to have to marry Louisa and take her away, or he was going to have to go away himself. When his voice began to run down, she asked, “Are you and Louisa going for a ride this morning? It’s perfect weather.”

  “I haven’t spoken with Miss Curtiss this morning,” he announced primly. “She will in all probability wish to parade about the garden with her new parasol.”

  Vanessa lost patience with him. Ordinarily she was a remarkably patient woman. She had to be to put up with all the disagreeable people who resided in her home. But having Alvescot leave had put her nerves on edge and she very unfairly snapped at William.

  “What are you doing here, William? Why are you at Cutsdean? Do you know you’ve been at Cutsdean for nine of the last twelve months?”

  Tactless people are often very sensitive to slights themselves. William was offended by her questions, mostly perhaps because he couldn’t think how to answer them, but for his dignity as well. He sulked. “You said I was welcome here.”

  “Well, I’ve changed my mind,” she retorted, unrepentant. “When you first came, I believed you to be Louisa's suitor. I thought her happiness was dependent upon your visiting and making her an offer of marriage. But it never comes—the offer, that is. You come, and you stay and you stay and you stay. We aren’t related, William, and I can see no reason to feed and house you, to say nothing of your horses, for endless periods of time, if you are unwilling to come to the point with Louisa. I realize it has been difficult for you, with Mabel pushing Louisa at Lord Alvescot, but you should have taken a stand instead of pouting about the house.”

  “I haven’t pouted.”

  “You’re pouting now.” Rather than being relieved by venting her spleen, she was growing more exasperated. She leaned toward him, tapping her spoon on the table to make her point. “One week, William. I will give you one week to make your declaration to Louisa. And then, if you don’t do it—out. There’s no point in this. You’re breaking poor Louisa’s heart. I don’t care if her mother is a pest and her brother a villain. If you want to marry her, you should do so. If you don’t, then stop hanging about her as if you meant to. It’s unfair to her and it’s unfair to me. You have a home to go to, and I want you to go there, with or without Louisa.”

  William stared at her, wide-eyed. No one had ever spoken to him quite like that before and he was near to expiring with the shock. She had always seemed such a refined young woman. If he hadn’t been so attached to Louisa, he might have made her an offer himself. Indignant, he pushed back his chair and bowed stiffly to her. But he had to have the last word and he said, “I shall go to London.”

  “Go anywhere you please. Just do it before the week is out.”

  “I shall go today.”

  “Just as you like,” she muttered, tossing down her napkin and rising. She was alarmed that things had gotten out of hand, but she refused to let him see it. “I’m sure, when you’re gone, Louisa will be besieged with suitors.” My God, she sounded just like Mabel. In order to keep herself from saying anything more of that ridiculous nature, she hastened from the room, leaving him standing there gaping at her.

  Vanessa hid in the Morning Room for the next two hours. She had no desire to see anyone, to talk to anyone. How could she have so mishandled the s
ituation? Her embarrassment made the color come and go in her cheeks each time she thought of it. There was no harm in William, any more than there was in Louisa. He had a few annoying habits, and he was no brighter than he needed to be, but that was no excuse for blundering into his private life and rudely ejecting him from her household.

  And Louisa was going to be so upset. Poor woman! She had spent twelve years waiting for him to propose to her, and now, when there might have been some chance, with Alvescot gone and Mabel presumably desperate to see her daughter settled, the opportunity was snatched from within her grasp.

  Vanessa was not ordinarily given to such dramatic mental images, but all her emotions seemed to be in a chaotic state that morning. She must take hold of herself and act more reasonably. Not so reasonably as to apologize to William, though. That she would not do. Of all of them, he had the least right to impose on her, and a stubborn core of her said that she had every right to ask him to leave if she wanted to.

  Eventually, she went to visit with the children. They were a little subdued that morning and she took them both on her lap and read to them. The story was not very exciting, but they cuddled close and listened almost absently. They were nearing the end of the little book when the door burst open and Louisa stumbled into the room.

  “He’s leaving! Vanessa, William’s leaving. All his valises are packed and sitting in the front hall. And he won’t say anything to me except that you told him to go.” In her distress, Louisa kept wringing her hands and shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I don’t understand. What did he do? Did you really tell him to leave?”

  The children stared up at Vanessa, puzzled and a little alarmed. She gave them each a hug and turned to the nursemaid. “Will you finish reading this story to them, Lucy? I’ll be back after luncheon.”