"Once I knew for certain that I had erred, that you were not the woman I was expecting, I was shocked. I admit I was angry with you for not stopping me when you were a virgin. I was a rake, but I never deflowered young girls. But before I realised the truth, for a time, I thought it was a whore's trick. and I suspected for a tiny time that you might have been in league with Howell to discredit me. To blackmail me in some way. Especially with your talk of visions, your seeming to know something about what happened in the stables. Like I said, Francis and Chauncey were great friends, though they were so different in every way."
"But I was so glad I had made that bet and my error, for you were indeed so remarkable I couldn't have stopped even if I'd wanted to. Well, not unless you got up and left."
"I remember," she said with another smile despite herself.
"I remember too." He winked. "You didn't leave, you stayed because you desired me, for which I shall be forever grateful. I have the chance to change my whole life with you. It's a chance I would be a fool to throw away. Now a whole new vista of possibilities has presented itself. My life is like the sky after a storm. Drab and dull one minute, bedecked with a soaring rainbow the next. Breathtaking." His eyes were now bright and shining, and she smiled.
"I'm so glad."
He took her hand and kissed it. "I never dared to dream like this before, not since I was small. Look, my love, I know I've made a hamfisted mess of things, but I want a real marriage, Isolde. I know nothing about love, intimacy, but I'm willing to try to be a good husband, son and father. I'm willing to do anything you want if it will please you."
"Anything?" she challenged, rising from her chair and stepping away from him.
He nodded. "Anything except let you leave me without giving us some sort of chance to try to have a good marriage."
"What makes you think that I know anything about being married!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "I was never even kissed properly before last night. I don't know what is normal, expected. What you did to me last night..." She flushed and looked away.
"What about it?" he asked calmly.
"Is it normal? Dangerous? Am I going to be a good wife? How can I be enough for you when you've cavaulted half the Continent?" she asked, thinking of all the livid women in the shop when she had been buying her wedding gown.
He winced. "I give you my word, it will all work out."
Her lips thinned. "I'm sure many women who have married rakes have heard the same thing. Between that and what you've already told me about Francis, you can surely understand why I might be fearful of you. Have some doubts about what you're saying, Randall. You don't love me, after all. We are strangers for all intents and purposes. Why should I, how can I, trust you? Even people who say they are in love can be cruel."
"I have never raised a hand to a woman!" he declared indignantly, start up from the chair now to pace in front of the marble mantelpiece.
"You didn't raise your hand to your brother, now did you?" she pointed out waspishly.
"For which I've damned myself ever since!" he fired back.
"Besides, there are other forms of cruelty, like mockery, degrading someone, breaking their spirit, being unfaithful and casting all their hopes and dreams back in their face-"
He sighed heavily. "I'm sorry, Isolde, that you're so fearful of being married to me, but I wed you in order to protect you. I give you my word-"
"And it's easy to say you won't hurt me when you're so much bigger than me. How can I be sure-"
"My marriage settlements. I wanted you to be sure! I offered them up of my own free will, you know I did." He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, making himself resemble an indignant hedgehog.
She paused in the face of his obvious dismay, trying to gather her reeling thoughts. "That is true. But this is so vast an undertaking. I can't agree to be your wife if I can't be sure of anything, Randall. I don't even know if what I did last night was of my own volition, or if you just manipulated me. Seduced me as you did so many others. Tricked me somehow."
"Did it feel like a trick?" he asked gently, stepping over to her cautiously. "Any of the times we've been together?"
"No, but-"
He sat back down in front of her. "I know it was difficult, my dear, with you being a virgin, but it wasn't so terrible, was it?"
"No, indeed. It was wonderful, like nothing I ever could have imagined," she admitted shyly.
"And the second time, and the third, you most definitely wanted me, I know you did, just as much as I wanted you.
"Aye, that I did." She smiled gently as she reached up to smooth his spiky hair.
"And the other times?"
She leaned forward and admitted with a sigh, "Yes, all the other times as well. You touch me and my mind empties, my body ceases to be my own. It becomes, well, it becomes yours, to bend to your will!"
"And that frightens you?" he asked softly, his eyes never leaving her face.
She sighed, and nodded. "It terrifies me. You look at me like that, with those eyes of yours, Randall, so wistful and longing, and I want to believe you when you say that you care about me. I want to believe you when you say you want salvation from the empty life you've had.
"But I'm so confused. My heart tells me one thing, my mind another, and my body still another," she confessed. "And the fact is that so much is resting upon our success, that is terribly daunting."
"Such as?"
"The future of both our families and, well, me now being the wife of an earl, and a mother, if not of our own babe we've already possibly created, then the children down in Somerset."
"I see. Well, I can guess what your mind tells you about me."
She bit her lip before replying, "That you are a practised seducer, willing to say whatever he needs to in order to get what he wants. A rake, and not to be trusted," she revealed. "And now, with what you've just told me.... How all my visions were correct after all, well, once Chauncey had been here, it sort of brought everything out into the open and I was staring at the stark truth and just wanted to run screaming."
"Well, I thank you for not giving way to the temptation. Goodness knows what sort of trouble we would both be in now if you had."
Isolde nodded and sighed. "And one thing I'm not is a coward."
"No, indeed, you have spirit and verve. Chauncey was a fool to ever throw you away. I'm not about to make that mistake. I was a rake. Past tense. You are my wife, and deserve my respect at all times."
She smiled slightly. "Thank you."
"And your body? What does it tell you about me?" he asked with a slight smile.
She gave him the truth. "That you are a rake, that you know what pleases me even before I know it myself. And you fulfill all my wishes even before I know what they are."
His smile grew wistful at his recollections of last night. "Actually, my dear, as experienced as I am, that's not quite true. I was pretty fascinated by your response. I really had no idea. And I want to find out more, if you will trust me, let me learn how to love you. Not selfishly, for my own reasons, but generously, to make you happy. I never even knew I was capable of such delight until I moved inside you. It was nothing short of miraculous."
"I'll have to believe your words because you say you only want to tell me the truth. But I don't know that it's something that I can ever be sure of."
"What does your heart tell you, my love?" he asked softly.
She sighed. "I saw it last night, on your face."
"Saw what?"
"Need, desperation, despair. I saw-" She shook her head.
"Go on, tell me."
"You're bathed in red and black. All around you. But I don't know what it all means. Something beyond what you just confided in me, though I just can't seem to make sense of all of it."
"You saw this red and black when?" he asked quietly.
"When you looked at me, when you were inside me," she said, blushing. "I have a fleeting impression of it a few times more later, when we were, well, with
each other. You know."
"Making love," he supplied.
"I don't know. Copulating, swiving, rutting," she said angrily.
His brows shot up in surprise and dismay. "You have quite a vocabulary, my dear, no doubt acquired from Howell. But why don't we try something closer to our truth. Enjoying each other, assuaging, comforting -"
"Comforting," she snorted. "You make it sound like a slipping on a set of flannel undergarments."
He grimaced at the comparison and shook his head, groaning.
"Oh, sorry, that came out completely wrong. I meant like, like putting on a nice warm muff-"
The colour flew to both their cheeks and he laughed heartily.
She giggled, and then sat on the bed closer to him. "Good Lord, it was easier to do it than it is to talk about it! But I think you know what I mean. Comforted was most certainly NOT what I felt."
He stroked one finger down her cheek. "Well, I did. But only because you were so warm and soft and loving. Not hard and grasping and selfish."
She shook her head at that. "I was selfish. I took whatever you gave, with no thought of what you were getting in return."
He kissed her hand. "You asked me how to please me because you genuinely wanted to. No one had ever done it before."
"I just wish I could be sure. But you've made an art out of covering up your misery, who you really are."
"Who am I?" He sighed. "I'm not so sure myself any more. Which is why I've asked you for help, for the chance at redemption."
"But ironically, perhaps this is your ultimate revenge."
He frowned. "What is, Isolde?"
"Making me fall in love with you, the better to hurt me further down the road, when I'm in so far I could never draw back even if I wanted to."
"We're married. You're already in pretty far," he pointed out softly, "and while you did put forward some cogent arguments against matrimony, you did see your way clear to marrying me in the end, for many, many reasons."
Her eyes flashed fire. "Was that part of the plan? To make sure that I would be in so far that I couldn't leave? Are you going to lock me in and have your way with me, force me to remain with you by fair means or foul, until you're done with me one way or the other?"
He shook his head. "I admit I wanted to make sure you couldn't leave, Isolde. But only because of my absolute conviction that we belong together. I couldn't bear to have you walk out of my life, for your family or Howell to try to separate us. But if you really hate being my wife, there is always our marriage contract. I offered you that of my own free will."
"Aye, there is that," she conceded. "But still, the scandal would destroy us both, and even money would not be able to gloss it all over. Though I have to say now, I really don't wish to take any from you, no matter what happens. That would leave me little better than that unfortunate woman who was beating Howell over the harm he supposedly did to one of her friends."
"Aye, which is all the more reason why you should stay, and let me, well, woo you."
She smiled at that and shook her head. "Woo me, when we're already wed?"
Randall nodded. "I don't know what else to suggest. I don't want to lose you, but I know no more about being happily married than you do. know full well you've made a bad bargain, my love. I'm damaged goods. Embittered, haunted by the past. But that doesn't mean I can't be trusted. That I can't be a good husband, and father, if I try hard enough."
She put her head in her hands and groaned herself. "Oh, Lord, parenthood. We've been so careless and carried away--"
"I'll take care of you, no matter what you decide."
She rolled her eyes in disbelief, and tugged her hand away from his grasp. "There's that word again. Just what sort of choices do you think I have given we've just been married?"
He shrugged one shoulder, and gazed at her intently as he said, "Many different ones. This marriage can be what we both choose to make it, if you're willing to meet me half way, at least. I've confided in you about the children, for example. It may perhaps be too late now, as you say, but in case it is not, we can try to act more responsibly and carefully to prevent conception. So I'll be honest and say that while I would be thrilled if we had one of our own one day, I'm in no hurry either, and I know the perils of childbirth for women. So with respect to that part of our lives together, it is for you to decide."
"Meet you half way in a marriage? Practicing preventive measures together. What a novel notion."
"I mean it. I want you to be my equal in every way possible."
"Where? In bed? Out of it?" she dared to ask.
He gripped her hand for a moment, then replied, "Everywhere, and every day. I have no experience of that kind of relationship myself, but I know my parents loved each other and tried to do their best to be accommodating."
"But that's just it," she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "How can anyone know for sure? Who would ever think to look at you, all you had been through? Appearance often masks reality."
"I've trusted you, Isolde, told you everything," he insisted, reaching for her hand. "I think you're asking me a different question."
She arched one dark auburn brow coolly. "Oh?"
"I think you're asking me how you know you're in love. It's a good question, not one I'm sure I know the answer to. The plain fact is I thought I did til you and I met the other night. Between what happened then, and the tenth anniversary of the worst day of my life, I'm all in a muddle, which is what you've been seeing, and er, sensing, I suppose is the best way to describe it. Now that I've met you, I'm even more furious with myself for giving way to anger and jealousy. But as I've said, you've also given me a second chance at redemption. When Howell came, I was jealous, and yes, some part of me wanted to kill him for daring to presume to manipulate you, and to try to harm us both. But while even a year ago, nay even less than 3 months ago, before Papa died, I might have been sorely tempted, the thought of losing you and harming my mother pulled me back from the brink. So you see, as white hot and scorching as my feelings are for you, so far they've only helped, not harmed. Healed, not harried me into acting like a foolish, headstrong idiot."
"I see," she said, nodding, thinking of the way she had tested her powers over the red and black hazes with her own, kissing him, opening her heart to him in turn even as he had poured out all his longings into her.
She rose and began to pace in front of the hearth for a moment, her dressing gown sweeping behind her like a most regal train. "So, now that we're truly married, tell me what you want from me as your wife," she demanded.
He stroked her fingers delicately, as though he were afraid he might hurt her. "I would like to chance to love you, and make you happy. To be happy myself," he declared simply. He kissed her hand, and spread his own hands wide. "I am as you see me now, having confessed all to you. Do with me what you will, Isolde, for I can't go on like this, and nor can my poor mother. We need to look forward, not back."
She gazed into his eyes for what seemed an eternity. At length she nodded. "Very well, then. For all our sakes, I'm going to try to make a success of this marriage. But you're going to have to be patient with me."
He sighed in relief, and smiled. Resisting the temptation to try to kiss her, he said, "Tell me what you want. Anything you want will be yours for the asking. You won't regret this, Isolde, I swear."
"Only time will tell."
He reached for her to kiss her, but Isolde stepped out of his reach. She longed for him with every fibre of her being, but she couldn't put herself into his hands, his bed again, until she was absolutely sure of the character of the man she had married.
She shook her head. "I said I would try, Randall, but you need to give me some time. You can't rush me, not after the things you've just told me. I had a long tri from Surrey, on edge, desperate to help my mother and the children. I've not slept, not properly since Papa died, if the truth be told. I need to spend time with my family as well, see what they want to do about the house in Surrey, and our
plans to help them now that we're married. I'm very grateful for everything you've offered to do for them, and for Fanny and Stephen in particular. But I don't want it to be for, er, services rendered."
He shook his head, grimacing. "No, of course not, except for your skills with my mother and as the partner in life of an earl."
"Thank you. I'm glad you understand. So that being said, I'm really very tired. I'd just like to get into bed, and rest. By myself," she added for emphasis.
"Of course, dearest."
He moved over to the bed and began to peel back the sheets, but she shook her head.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection #4 Page 24
