by Louise Allen
‘Good morning, Elliott.’
‘Good morning.’ A footman appeared through the serving door, placed his coffee pot on the table next to a tea pot. The dogs, impatient, pushed past Elliott’s legs and went to lay on the hearth rug as usual.
‘Dogs, out!’
‘Do they usually come to breakfast? I do not mind them.’ She was smiling and immaculate in a creammuslin morning gown, her hair twisted up into a simple knot. ‘Those two are very handsome.’ She clicked her fingers at the pointers and they turned their long intelligent heads towards her.
This was the woman he had left tear-stained in her nest of pink satin frills and now here she was, cool and outwardly composed. Elliott fought back a strong sense of unreality. He had expected shyness and reserve. Yes, the reserve was there behind the smile. ‘If you are sure? Lie down.’ The pair obeyed, still watching Arabella. The woman with the bacon, Elliott thought. Cupboard love. ‘I did not expect to see you for breakfast.’
‘No?’ She put down the cover and picked up a plate. ‘Some bacon and eggs? There is sausage as well.’
And preserves and fruit on the table, and a double rack of toast and a platter of butter. ‘I do not normally eat much for breakfast, I do not have the time.’ Toast was easy to eat with all his attention on the papers and his post. They lay neatly folded and stacked beside his place, as always, but next to them was a small vase with a posy of flowers. Flowers?
‘Will you not join me, just this once?’ She was already filling a plate, carrying it across.
‘You do not have to wait on me,’ he said as she placed the plate on the table before him. He sat. To do anything else would be impolite. Just this once, though.
‘But you must not waste time.’ Arabella’s voice was earnest as she went back to the sideboard and filled her own plate. She came and sat at right angles to him, as he had placed her at dinner the night she had come to the house, and reached to pour his coffee. ‘Do you take cream? Sugar?’
‘Neither, thank you.’ Elliott had a strong sense of being outflanked and out-manoeuvred, but the scent of the bacon was making his mouth water and the room seemed somehow warmer and more welcoming than usual.
‘Oh! Another dog.’ Arabella was looking down beside her. ‘What a very interesting-looking animal.’
‘That is Toby. Doubtless he is begging. Ignore him.’
‘I would not dream of feeding your dogs titbits. No, Toby. Good dog, go and lie down.’ She waited a moment. ‘Of course, he will not obey me.’
‘Nor me,’ Elliott admitted. ‘He adopted me when he was a puppy, but he has not grasped the concept that I am the master. You can try reasoning with him, that sometimes works. Provided you understand that this is his house now and we are here for his convenience, he will be happy.’
‘Ah.’ She smiled and he found himself smiling back. ‘A dog who thinks he is a cat.’
‘Arabella.’
She caught the change in his tone and put down her knife and fork. ‘Yes, Elliott.’ All the laughter had gone out of her eyes, and colour touched her cheekbones, but her expression remained pleasant and attentive.
‘About…’ He had been going to talk about last night, but he realised he had no idea what to say or even what he wanted to convey. He had made her his wife, that ought to be enough. He could hardly ask her over breakfast why she had so obviously found the entire experience so unsatisfactory.
The candid hazel eyes gazed back, as she waited for him to speak. He wished, suddenly, that she was not so obedient and compliant. It would be easier to deal with temper and a tantrum. He saw the colour ebb and flow under her pale skin.
He said the first innocuous thing that came into his head. ‘How do you intend to spend the morning?’
‘I want to explore the house. I will ask Mrs Knight to show me around. Then I will discuss the week’s menus with Cook. I have a letter to write,’ she added, the animation ebbing away to leave her voice colourless.
‘Your father?’
‘Yes. I really cannot delay it any longer.’
‘I have already written, setting out the provision I am making for you,’ he said. ‘Even though you are of age, I felt I should put his mind at rest. You could enclose your letter in mine.’
‘You have not told him—’
‘That he is to be a grandfather? No. I have also been rather vague on how we met. If he makes enquiries he will find that Viscount Hadleigh was staying in the neighbourhood in February and he can draw his own conclusions.’
‘Thank you.’ Arabella returned to taking small forkfuls of food. ‘I will write this afternoon.’
‘You are feeling more like eating today?’ The bacon was delicious. Elliott cleared his plate and got up to explore the other dishes. Fat sausages, mushrooms—he dug in.
‘A little. I know I must make the effort to eat properly.’
‘Would you like me to show you around the house?’ It had not been his intention, but he had a sudden interest in how Arabella would deal with this rambling mansion. It must seem daunting after a country vicarage.
‘You will be busy,’ she demurred. But he saw her eyes. It would please her if he did this. ‘Cook said that you did not normally eat much breakfast because you have so much to do and I have already delayed you.’
‘You are more important.’ Elliott found he meant it.
‘Where are we going?’ The stairs seemed endless. Elliott had ignored the ground-floor reception rooms, the main bedroom floor, and just kept climbing as the shallow treads of the old staircase got narrower and narrower.
Bella glanced to either side as they passed landings and glimpsed more steps, doors, changes in floor level. The house rambled, she realized; it would take time to learn it.
‘Do you want to rest?’ Elliott paused at last. There were no more steps, only a dusty landing with corridors to either side. Toby, who had been trotting behind them all the way up, took off down one, nose to the floor, stumpy tail wagging.
‘No, the exercise is good.’ It was invigorating to stretch her legs again. She worried fleetingly if it was all right for the baby, then decided it must be better than sitting around.
‘Just one more flight, then.’ Elliott opened a door to reveal steep stairs. ‘I’ll go first.’
Bella followed, telling herself that it was only natural to admire the long legs climbing in front of her. Elliott had muscles she did not recall Rafe possessing, but then, she had spent most of her time with him looking into his eyes, not staring immodestly at his nether limbs.
‘Do you mind heights?’ Elliott called back as he reached up and threw back a trap door. Light flooded down the stairs.
‘No, not at all. I always enjoyed raising the flag on the church tower.’
He climbed out and stretched down his hands to help her out through the low door into the sunshine. Bella found herself, still handfast with Elliott, on the flat leads between the slope of the stone-tiled roof and the edge of the waist-high parapet.
‘How lovely!’ The view stretched for miles across the Vale of Evesham, off into the distance to the misty bulk of hills that must almost be in the Welsh Marches.
Elliott moved to be between her and the edge. ‘Keep hold of me.’
It seemed very right to do so, somehow. He was strong and solid and steady, Bella thought, freeing one hand, but leaving the other one in his warm grip. He would make a reliable father, she was certain.
As she looked out over what had been Rafe’s land until so recently she realised that she could never tell the child who its real father had been. To do that would be to betray Elliott, and Rafe certainly did not deserve any posthumous devotion from the child he had so carelessly created. But should a child not know its own parentage?
‘What is wrong?’ How alert Elliott was to her mood, to her physical reactions.
‘I feel a little melancholy. I am sorry, that is the last thing I should be saying the day after we were married.’
‘It is hardly surprising. Did you e
xpect to feel better once you had a husband?’ When she stared at him, startled, Elliott was looking out over the view. The thumb of the hand that held hers brushed gently against her wrist. He must have felt her pulse jump at his frankness.
‘I wish…I should wish I had not lain with Rafe, but I do not regret the child,’ she said. ‘But I am ashamed at what I did, what I felt. I should have known better, I should not have allowed passion and my desire for escape to overcome everything I had been brought up to believe was right.’ But surely needing to love cannot be wrong? It was all so muddling. ‘I am ashamed at putting you in this position. I thought it would be better when I did not have to agonise about providing for the baby, but there is so much else to worry about that I know I am not behaving as I ought. I will do my best to be a good viscountess, Elliott.’ And a good wife. Somehow.
‘So you feel a sense of duty?’ The thumb stilled its soft caress.
‘To you? Of course. And gratitude. And liking,’ she added, looking up, shy at what she would see on Elliott’s face.
‘That is something, then.’ He turned so his back was against the parapet and she was standing in front of him, toe to toe, his body shielding her from the breeze.
‘Last night…’ she managed, her eyes fixed on the simple knot of his neckcloth.
‘Yes?’
‘You…I did not satisfy you.’ Lord, but this was difficult.
‘I did not say that.’ But he did not smile. ‘Rather, you were the one who was unsatisfied, I think.’
‘That is my fault,’ she confessed. He shook his head, opened his mouth, but she stumbled on. ‘I will try my best, truly I will. Tonight will be different.’
‘Tonight will be no different unless you can convince us both that you want me to make love to you.’
Bella jerked up her head and stared at him. ‘Convince you? But how do I do that? I submit—is that not what you want?’
‘No, it is not.’
Her heart sank. She even had that wrong. Now he would tell her just how unsatisfactory she was. Kindly, no doubt, for this was Elliott, not his brother. ‘When you want to make love, then you will know how,’ Elliott said.
Chapter Eleven
He is smiling, but he is not amused, Bella thought, looking into the blue eyes that held no trace of laughter in them. Is he angry? But he did not feel angry, not with her. ‘I like it when you kiss me,’ she admitted, offering the thought as if to mitigate her failings. How can I ask him to show me what to do? A proper woman knows it instinctively.
‘So I should hope.’ Now his eyes were smiling and she smiled back. This was a different Elliott, the one she had seen glimpses of before. This one was light-hearted and flirtatious and ready to laugh at himself. ‘Without wishing to brag, I am considered an accomplished kisser.’
‘Do you practise much?’ she asked, greatly daring.
‘I have been known to,’ Elliott admitted. ‘But now I must perfect my technique with only you to help me.’
That was encouraging. Did he mean he would not go back to his mistress? She thought about his words and saw the amusement in his eyes at her all-too-obvious thought processes. But the laughter was not unkind.
‘But I do not have any technique at all,’ she said at last. This all sounded very complicated. Arabella had assumed that a kiss was a simple placing of lips together. Rafe had felt almost…brutal. He had apologised so charmingly, she remembered, when she had pulled back, shaking, her fingertips pressed to her bruised lips. It was the uncontrollable passion she aroused in him, he had explained, leaving her feeling guiltily that it had been her own fault.
And now it was her duty to learn to kiss her new husband properly. Only, it did not feel much like a duty, more like a pleasure. This was so confusing and the fact that she was standing between Elliott’s braced legs—how had she moved that close?—made it oddly difficult to think through the tangle of shame and need and fear.
‘I can assure you, Arabella, that when you stand there, so close, with the tip of your tongue just touching your upper lip like that,’ he said, his voice husky, ‘you need no technique whatsoever.’
My tongue? She whipped it back in and closed her mouth, but too late. Elliott leaned forwards and kissed her. Arabella let herself go, gave herself up to the sensation, stopped thinking. Things seemed to happen quite without any conscious thought. Her lips knew how to part, her tongue knew how to touch his, to explore the heat of his mouth, slide over teeth, caress the delicate inner flesh. Oh, I can do this! Her hands knew how to move up his chest until she could feel his heart beat under her palm…
Elliott shifted, pulling her in closer between his thighs. Bella felt the heat of him pressing against her belly and her breath hitched. That was what it was all about, not this drugging, sensual kissing. It was all about that.
Kissing she could learn, it seemed. But that was different. How did she learn to do something that hurt so much? She flinched like a child expecting a cuff around the head.
‘What is it?’ He freed her mouth and his hands slid down to cup her buttocks as he leaned back a little to see her face. The movement brought her tight against his erection and unexpected sensation, a hot, molten, desperate urge to rub herself against him, flared through her. Desire hit like a big wave on the beach, knocking her off balance with the shocking force of the need. She struggled against it, knowing she would be clumsy and inept, and jerked back just as Toby erupted on to the roof, sending the pigeons into the air in a panic of flapping wings.
‘Bad dog!’ Bella turned, twisting out of Elliott’s arms. ‘The silly creature—as though he could catch one. My goodness, he did make me jump. Toby, come back here!’
‘Was that what was wrong?’ Elliott asked, straightening up.
‘Of course. I think I would like to go down now.’ Quite deliberately Bella let her hand rest on her stomach for a moment and saw Elliott’s eyes follow the gesture. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her other than the shameful effects of Elliott’s kiss and her own fears and she felt a pang of guilt. She was deceiving him for the first time. Lying, in effect, to extract herself from a situation she had no idea how to handle.
The guilt tightened its grip as she saw the concern on his face. ‘I should not have dragged you up all those stairs.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I am much better today.’
‘Then let us go down,’ Elliott said, getting through the door first to help her. ‘And you must go and rest.’
But that was not what she wanted. She wanted to continue exploring the house with Elliott, not resting with nothing to think about but that kiss and her body’s reaction to it. Bella negotiated the steep steps with care, wrestling with her feelings.
She had lain with Rafe because she thought she loved him and—she could see now—he had blackmailed her into it, not because she had felt uncontrollable carnal desire. Now here she was with his brother, whom she hardly knew, and every time he touched her, her whole body ached for his caresses. That was wrong, surely? What was happening to her? She had no idea, except that the fear was still there, the knowledge that she could not willingly do more than surrender her body to Elliott.
But if she let him keep kissing her—would that help? Only it was not fair to him to arouse him and then be such a disappointment in bed; she understood enough now about the male body and its needs to know that.
Elliott was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hand held out to her. ‘I am fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ It was easier when they did not touch.
‘If we go this way…’ he gestured down the right hand passage ‘…we come to the stairs that lead directly to your suite. You can rest; I will have tea sent up.’
‘I do not want to rest.’ Bella made her way down the uncarpeted passage in front of him.
‘But you will, won’t you?’ His tone did not encourage discussion.
Bella firmed her lips. It was almost more comfortable to bicker than to kiss. Only, she was the one do
ing the bickering, Elliott was simply laying down the law. An alarming hint of rebellion stirred inside her. After years of obeying one man’s every order, she found herself prepared to argue with this one, which was disconcerting. A woman was supposed to obey first her father, then her husband, in all things. But one did not choose one’s father, whilst a marriage was a partnership, was it not?
A door stood slightly ajar, a distraction from her troubling thoughts. ‘What is in here?’ Without waiting for Elliott’s reply she pushed it open and went in. The room was large and would be airy and light if the windows were cleaned and opened wide, Bella thought as she turned slowly to look at it. There were two little beds on either side, a wooden horse, a drum, a shelf with a line of red-coated soldiers marching to do battle with dust and spiders, and something shrouded in a dust cloth.
‘A nursery! But so far away from the main floors.’
‘It was ours until we reached six,’ Elliott said from the doorway as she went to peek into the room leading off. It was obviously the nurse’s room, with adult-sized furniture. ‘There’s a scullery on the other side where the nursery maid would make our meals and do the washing. It is quite self-contained.’
‘But—did your mother not want you with her?’ ‘We would be taken down for an hour before bath time to see Mama in her room.’
‘Oh.’ How cold. ‘And you and Rafe both lived up here?’
‘He went down to a suite on the floor below when he was six, so I was by myself after that. He had his own room and there was a chamber for his tutor, and a school-room. When I joined him I had my room there as well.’
‘Poor little boy,’ she exclaimed. ‘How lonely you must have been up here.’
Elliott still had not moved from the doorway. He shrugged. ‘It is what I was used to. It is normal in big houses.’
‘Well, it is not going to be normal here any longer,’ Bella said. Tradition was all very well, but this isolated room made her uneasy—it was as if children were banished for the crime of being young. ‘I must have the baby close. What is this?’ She flicked back the dustsheet. ‘Oh, a cradle—how lovely. Is it very old?’ Under her hand the dark oak was tactile, almost a living thing. Her touch sent it rocking gently. She peeped under the high gabled hood and smiled, imagining her baby lying safe inside smiling up at her.
