by Mary Balogh
Perhaps, he thought, this was the best they could expect of the coming weeks—a few fleeting moments of amity. Not nearly enough to become a working basis for a marriage. They lapsed into silence.
* * *
MOIRA was tired and footsore. She was also excited and exhilarated. She had been to her first ton ball, and it had been wonderful. She could still hear the music and smell the flowers and see the swirling colors of silks and satins and the sparkle of jewels. She was also disappointed. She had danced the opening set with Kenneth, but after that he had not come near her even once or spoken a single word to her except when he had wanted to waltz with her after supper. She had wanted so badly to waltz with him. She had remembered their waltz at the Dunbarton ball. She had expected that they would be together much more than they had been.
She felt rather dreary about the coming day. She looked forward to the walk in the park with Catherine and Lady Baird, but she had agreed to it before her mother-in-law had suggested the afternoon calls. She knew that ladies spent very little of their time, especially during the day, with their husbands. Even at home in Cornwall it was so. But her situation with Kenneth was not an ordinary one. Somehow, last evening, when he had suggested that they enjoy the Season together, she had pictured them being together, all day and all evening.
But the train of her thoughts surprised her. Did she want to spend all her time with him? Could she not better enjoy London and the Season with the new friends she was already making? But how would she know within a mere two weeks or so if she wished to remain with Kenneth or if she wished at least to see him occasionally?
A few things puzzled her. Why had he brought her to London? Why had he even thought to try to make something of their marriage? He was an extraordinarily handsome and attractive man. She had seen the way other women had looked at him, both on Oxford Street and Bond Street during the morning and at the ball during the evening. He did not need her for any of the obvious reasons.
And there were her memories of that most dreadful of all nights, when she had miscarried. Memories of his ashen face, even of tears, and of his voice saying the same things over and over again: Moira, my love, don’t die. I won’t let you die, my love. She had dismissed them all afterward as products of her imagination, quite at odds with the coldness of his behavior during the morning and week following her ordeal.
But—Mr. Gascoigne told Rex that Lord Haverford actually cried when he finally mentioned it. Kenneth had not told his friends for a long time. And when he had, he had cried. Why? Because he was fond of her, Catherine had suggested.
There was one part of each day when husbands and wives could be alone together without the press of other company, she thought.
She pushed the thought away.
One cannot allow fear to rule one’s life. Not unless one wishes to be endlessly unhappy—and lonely.
“Kenneth?” She turned her head to look at him and found that he was sitting across the corner of the carriage seat, looking silently at her in the darkness.
“Yes?” he said.
One cannot allow fear . . . “You asked me last evening,” she said, and she could hear the breathlessness in her voice, “if you might ask again.”
Clearly he knew just what she was talking about. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“And I said yes.”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other. They must be almost home.
“Do you wish us to have marital relations?” he asked her.
“I think we ought,” she said. “I think we must if we wish to make a—a sensible decision. It is not a friendship we are putting to the test, after all, is it? Or even a courtship? It is a marriage.”
“Yes,” he said. “I may come to your bed, then? Tonight? Are you too tired?”
“I am not too tired,” she said.
The carriage lurched slightly on its springs and came to a halt. They both turned their eyes to the door, which would soon open.
She felt as if she had run home rather than ridden in the carriage. She had to force herself not to pant out loud. What had she done? She had not really considered the matter, pondered it, looked at it from all possible angles to know if it was wise.
She remembered that there had been something rather frightening about what happened. Not so much the pain—there had been less than she had expected—but the dreadful intimacy, the sense of violation, the giving up of oneself, even of one’s body, to the control of a man.
There had also been something exciting about it. His weight, his size, the heat and pleasure his movements had aroused.
That time he had got her with child.
Perhaps it would happen again tonight. For a moment she felt blind panic. She clutched her new fan until she could feel the sticks digging painfully into her fingers.
One cannot allow fear to rule one’s life.
The door opened, and her husband vaulted out and turned to hand her down. She looked at his hand for a moment before setting her own in it. It was large and strong and warm. Frightening. And exciting.
20
SHE did not know whether to leave her hair loose or braid it as she usually did at night. She left it loose. She did not know whether to wear a dressing robe over her nightgown or leave it off. She left it off. She did not know whether to get into bed or stand somewhere in the room—at the window or beside the fireplace. She got into bed after imagining herself walking across the room to climb into it—with his eyes upon her. She did not know whether to prop her pillow behind her or lie flat. She lay flat—on her back, and then on her side. She noticed that she had left all the candles burning. She should have blown out all except the one beside the bed.
But it was too late to do anything about that. There was a tap on the door, and it opened even before she could call an answer. She despised her nervousness. She was acting like a skittish and virgin bride. She hoped fervently that the color in her cheeks did not match the heat she felt in them.
He was wearing a long brocaded dressing robe of dark green. She could see the white of his nightshirt at his neck. She was shocked by the stabbing of pure lust she felt for him—she would not dignify it even in her mind by a softer word. It was certainly not love. She did not love him.
He snuffed the candles she had remembered too late and strolled toward the bed, where a single candle still burned. “It might be as well to remember,” he said, “that this is not the first time, that you know what happens, and that tonight there will be no pain.”
The color in her cheeks did match the heat, then. She felt them burn hotter. “I am not nervous,” she said. “How foolish. Are you going to blow out the candle?” He had removed his robe and was drawing back the bedcovers.
“I think not,” he said. “I wish to see that it is with you I do this, Moira. I wish you to see that you do it with me. It is important that we accept the truth.”
“Are you suggesting that in fantasy I might make you into someone else?” she asked, shocked.
“It is not an impossibility,” he said. “I am Kenneth, the boy you loved, though you never put your feelings into words; the man you hated and perhaps still hate; your husband.”
Her mind had been trying to focus on just the last of those identities. Did he have to remind her at this particular moment of what they had agreed to forget for these weeks?
“And you are Moira,” he said, “the girl I adored; the woman who threatened to shoot me through the heart and almost did succeed in killing me; my wife.”
Yes, she thought, looking into his face and feeling one of his hands working on the button at her neck, perhaps he had been right about fantasy. Perhaps without the candle, without his words, she would have pictured him only as the very handsome, elegant stranger with whom she had spent much of the day, the man with whom she had wanted to waltz earlier.
“Yes,” she said. “This is very seriou
s, is it not?” She was not even quite sure what she meant by the words.
He kissed her.
She had never really thought of a kiss as a sexual act. She had kissed any number of people in her life as a gesture of affection. Even as a girl, when Kenneth had kissed her, it had been a romantic thing, not really anything deeply physical. But she remembered now how he had kissed her in the hermit’s hut—entirely as a way to raise her temperature. It had not been an affectionate gesture. He did it again now, opening her mouth wide with his own, reaching deep inside with his tongue, tickling surfaces with its tip, moving it rhythmically in and out until she felt a rush of sensation in that other part of herself where he would soon do something very similar.
She became aware of the total helplessness of her inexperience. While her whole attention had been focused on her mouth, her nightgown had been unbuttoned and folded back so that she was to all intents and purposes naked to below the waist. The hand that was not about her shoulders was smoothing lightly over her breasts. His thumb was pulsing against one of her nipples and making it both hard and tender, almost sore. And then he slid his hand down over her stomach and abdomen and down between her legs. His fingers probed with shocking intimacy. She was wet. She jerked at the embarrassing realization.
“No, no,” he said, his voice low against her ear. “This is as it should be. I would cause you discomfort if you were dry. Your body has been warned of what is to come and has prepared itself.”
She hated her ignorance and inexperience. She felt quite helpless in his so obviously very experienced hands. She wondered how many women there had been in the last two months and shut down the thought with an inward shudder.
It was all very different without the layers of heavy winter clothing, without the bone-chilling cold. His body now was not just a heavy bulk that promised warmth. It was magnificently hard and masculine—and naked. She could not remember when he had removed his nightshirt. There was not this time the necessity to remain covered, the uncomfortable, narrow confines of the lumpy cot. When he bared her, ready for union, he lifted her nightgown to her waist, threw back the covers, and settled himself between her thighs, pressing them wide. She had not remembered its being quite as physical as it was tonight.
But she remembered what came next. She remembered the mounting—the hardness and the size of him, the stretching sensation, the momentary fear that she could not contain such deep penetration. But tonight there was no pain. And tonight she could hold herself wide so that she could feel it all. She slid her legs up the outside of his, braced her feet flat on the mattress, dropped her knees outward. And she tilted her hips so that she could draw him deeper. It was surely the most rawly physical sensation in the world—the union of man and woman. She realized that his weight had been lifted away from her chest and opened her eyes. He was bracing himself on his elbows and looking down into her face.
“Yes, it is very serious,” he said. He withdrew almost completely from her and paused on the brink of her while her eyes fluttered closed again in anticipation of what this time she knew was coming. She had not known that first time. He came back into her slowly, smoothly, deeply.
“Ah,” she said with a satisfied sigh, feeling the pleasure of the moment, anticipating the pleasure yet to come. It had been pleasant. There had been so many other things that night and the following morning to cloud the pleasure. But it had been a wonderful feeling while it had lasted—and not only because it had brought her warmth.
He lowered himself onto her, though she knew that she did not bear his whole weight. And the pleasure began, the slow and rhythmic pumping, which she could enjoy so much more consciously tonight because she was warm and comfortable and could feel him with the whole of her body, and not just there, where they were joined. And he was able to move more freely in the warm room and on the wide bed. His inward thrusts were firmer, deeper than they had been on that other occasion. He was more comfortably centered between her hips, in the cradle of her thighs.
But her mind did not long hold to the comparisons or to any other moment than the present. It was such a very physical thing, the marriage act, that thought was unnecessary and indeed impossible after the first minutes. She became centered upon sensation, upon the ache between her thighs and up inside where he worked her. The ache spread upward in waves, through her womb, into her breasts, into her throat and up behind her nostrils, out to her fingertips. She lay very still so that she would not miss one moment, one pulse of it.
She did not want it to end. She could hear herself make little protesting noises when his rhythm finally changed, quickening and deepening even further so that she knew it was ending. It could go on all night as far as she was concerned. But then memory was back as he strained against her, held still and deep, and sighed almost soundlessly against the side of her head. The rush of heat at her core was familiar. He had given her his seed.
He was Kenneth, she thought as his full weight relaxed down onto her. She did not open her eyes, but she did not need to. She did not need the candle. She had known with every mindless moment of what had just happened that he was Kenneth, that he could be no one else. That there could be no one else.
They must do this, she had told him earlier in the carriage, if they were to make a sensible decision. How could she make a sensible decision now? For what had happened had only succeeded in exposing to her conscious mind what she must block from it if she was to make any rational decision about her future. It was really quite immaterial that she loved him, that she always had and always would. Love was not blind, despite what the poets said. Or if it was, then it ought not to be. There were other considerations of far more importance in a workable relationship—liking, respect, trust, for example. It did not matter that she loved him. But she feared that after tonight she would no longer be able to put that fact far enough to the back of her mind. She sighed.
“I beg your pardon. I must be very heavy.” He moved off her and she felt suddenly cool and damp—and a little bereft. He pushed her nightgown down and pulled the bedcovers up about her. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow. “I believe you were right,” he said. “We must use this dimension of our marriage as well as others to help us work out our future. You will learn in time—if we decide to give ourselves enough time—to come to full pleasure. You have much to learn—and doubtless just as much to teach. But it is very late. It must be almost dawn. Do not worry about rising early. We are invited to the Adamses’ for dinner, did you know? And to the theater afterward. I will see you in time to escort you to dinner.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She would not see him again until evening? She waited for him to lie down properly. She felt chilly with his body removed from her own. She wanted to touch him, sleep with her body against his, as they had slept in the baptistry.
But he got out of bed and pulled on his nightshirt and his robe unhurriedly, without any apparent embarrassment. But why should he feel any? They had passed the point of physical embarrassment with each other. Besides, he was perfectly beautiful. Even the numerous scars of old wounds did not detract from that.
“Good night,” he said, turning to look at her before he left the room. “I am glad you came, Moira.”
“Good night,” she said. He waited for a moment, but she could not bring herself to say that she was glad too. She was not sure she was—or rather, she was not sure she ought to be.
She had not expected to be left alone, she thought after he had gone. She was chilly—she buttoned up her nightgown—and she was a little sore. No, not really sore. She still felt the pulsing ache he had aroused in her. And she felt lonely—and alarmed by the thought. She might well be spending the rest of her life alone—she did not wish to start thinking of aloneness as loneliness.
You will learn in time to come to full pleasure. What had he meant? Did he not know how much pleasure she had felt? There could not possibly be more. There could be nothing mor
e pleasurable in the whole world. You have much to learn. She felt shamed, humiliated. He had found her wanting. Of course he had. She knew nothing. She had thought it the most wonderful experience in her life, and he had thought that she had much to learn.
She sighed hugely and turned onto her side to punch her pillow. The whole day—and almost the whole night—had been nothing but turmoil. It was a day and a night that seemed to have been a month long. She was not sure she could endure two weeks or more of this.
But then, she was not sure she would be able to endure the quiet tedium of life alone at Dunbarton after even this one day. She lifted her head and punched her pillow into shape once more, though with rather more vengeful force than was strictly necessary.
She wished—oh, how she wished!—she had not brought into the open her deepest, darkest secret. She wished she had not admitted to herself that she loved him. And she wished she had not lain with him. She wished he had stayed and kept his arms about her and his body half covering hers as he had done that other time.
Perhaps she was with child again.
She wrapped the pillow about her head and addressed herself determinedly to sleep.
* * *
KENNETH spent a congenial morning with his friends. Although he had had only a few hours of sleep, he felt full of energy as he rode in the park with them. He even welcomed the blustery chill of a cloudy morning.
Lord Pelham spent a few minutes apologizing abjectly and with obvious embarrassment. “That will teach me to be witty and cruel at the expense of strangers I do not even know,” he said. “I did not realize at the time that she was anything more to you, Ken, than a neighbor. But even if she had not been, it was unkind to make fun of her behind her back.”
“Better that than to her face, I suppose, Ede,” Mr. Gascoigne said.
