Chadwick snapped, “I am not usually dealing with a virgin!” He laughed humorlessly. “In fact, after reviewing the procession of women in my misspent life, it occurs to me that I have never yet deflowered a maiden.”
Perrin smiled wryly. “It is a highly overrated experience, I assure you.”
The marquess did not seem to hear him. He snorted, “Oh, there were one or two who would have had me think I was the first, but I am an old campaigner and not easily gulled.”
“I see,” Perrin said. He rested his chin on his thumbs. “Then am I to understand that you are asking my advice as a physician?”
Chadwick’s blue eyes met his grey ones. “I suppose I am.”
“Bien entendu.” The Frenchman leaned back in his chair, absently rubbing the knotted muscles of his injured leg. “Well, then,” he began in the dry voice of a lecturer giving a tutorial, “you must remember that this is the one time when your first concern is not to give your partner pleasure, but to lessen her pain...” He continued in precise, clinical terms for some minutes, at last concluding, “Above all, be patient and reassuring, and help her to look forward to a more satisfying future.”
One of Chadwick’s brows had arched sharply upward. “A tall order, my friend,” he drawled.
The doctor eyed him squarely. “Oh, I expect you will rise to the occasion.”
Chadwick gave a yelp of laughter. “You may be right,” he declared as he pushed his chair back from the table. He stood up and clapped the other man on the shoulder.
Forgive me for deserting you, but I think I will bid you a good night now.”
“So soon?” the doctor mocked dryly. “Ah well, it has indeed been a long day. Bonne nuit, Glover. Dormez bien.” Perrin watched the marquess leave. It occurred to him that he should have inquired about the location of Emma’s quarters. After a moment he shrugged, and with a windy sigh he reached for the port once more.
Chadwick gazed down at his sleeping wife. She lay snuggled under the downy coverlet like a cygnet beneath the sheltering wing of its mother. Her left hand rested pale and defenseless on the pillow next to her smooth cheek, the jeweled rings only just visible under the flounced cuff of her white linen nightdress. Emma had brushed her long hair and braided it loosely into a thick plait that streamed over the top of the quilt, gleaming as brightly as her rings in the wavering light of the lone candle. Her repose seemed more normal now, more restful and regenerative than that near-cataleptic stupor he had noticed before, and she stirred slightly, as if she were dreaming. He wondered if he dared rouse her.
He perched on the edge of the bed and with moth like delicacy trailed the tip of one finger across her cheekbone, ruffling her gold lashes, outlining her soft mouth. Her nose twitched. He traced the line of her jaw back up to her ear; then his hand stroked lightly over her hair. Under his sensitive fingers it felt like satin, and he began to unbraid the fine strands. Soon her tresses spread over the pillow, over her shoulders, like a mantle of silk, with a sheen whose richness made him catch his breath. He swivelled away from her, and with uncharacteristically jerky movements he began to remove his boots.
When he slid his lean, naked body between the cool, lavender-scented sheets, he was already tumescent, and he regarded his swollen organ impatiently. Cool down, he ordered himself. You’re not sixteen anymore, and if you go off half-cocked this time, it’ll put paid to the night’s work!
He looked at Ginevra again, at the heartbreaking purity of her young face, and he sobered at once. He did not want to think of her in such terms, to defile her innocence even in his mind by describing their union with the same offhand and salacious phrases he had bandied with the doctor, language he might have used for coupling with a tavern maid. Ginevra was his wife, his marchioness. He ached to make her his in every possible way, yet he knew he wanted to do more than merely possess her. He wanted to cherish her, to ... to reverence her, as it said in the marriage service. God help him, he wanted to love her.
The Marquess of Chadwick stared upward into the shadows of the threadbare tester, and he thought with bitter irony that hell must reverberate with the laughter of whatever demon had arranged this little prank of fate: that he who had sworn as a youth never to touch another woman with anything but his body, had at the ripe age of thirty-five given his heart to a green girl who cared nothing for his wealth or title, who feared his temper and despised him for a libertine. Who might just be in love with the boy he called son.
He turned to her and gently but insistently drew her sleeping figure into his arms. She stirred, and he held his breath as he waited to see if she would waken completely. She stilled again, nuzzling her face into the coarse black hair on his chest. He could feel the warmth of her slender body radiating seductively through the flimsy ruffled fabric of her long gown, and his hands trembled as they moved slowly across her back. He bent his head and brushed his lips across her ear, her cheek, her brow, teasing her fair flesh until almost instinctively in her sleep she turned her petal-soft mouth to his. The instant their lips met he was possessed of a fierce desire to abandon his gentleness, to force open her mouth and delve its sweetness in a relentless search for the center of her being, for her unique essence that must surely at last satisfy his sickening hunger. Her gold lashes fluttered uneasily against her cheek, and he felt her mouth retreat from the pressure of his. Sweat broke out on his forehead as, with ruthless self-control, he restrained himself,
Ginevra dreamed. The dream seemed familiar, yet she knew it could never before have been so vivid, so achingly real. She stood on a promontory overlooking the ocean. She did not know what had brought her to this place; it made her wary. Far below her the rocks rose sharp and cruel, with cold grey foam licking at their bases, but here at the top of the cliff for the moment she was warm and safe. The sun beat down from a bright blue sky, and dew-rich grass sprang thick and inviting under her fingertips when she bent to touch it. A temperate breeze blew from the west, ruffling her hair, billowing her long skirts behind her. She grew languid yet curiously alive as it stroked her face, her body. She could feel her small breasts lifting, firming, under its gentle caress. When, as always in her dream, the breeze from the water stopped abruptly, she was left bereft, and she wanted to sob with disappointment.
He pushed back the coverlet. In the candlelight her white nightgown gleamed in virginal contrast to the darkly tanned contours of his lean body. His breath quickened as one by one he fumbled with the long row of pearl buttons. His hand paused at her waist, and the soft fabric fell away, revealing her high, well-shaped breasts, the rosebud nipples erect even in her sleep. He began to shake. His lips moved greedily over her skin, savoring her salty nectar. For one heart-stopping moment he felt her arch her back, as if to give his questing tongue better purchase. He tugged at the remainder of her buttons. He was drugged with her delicate perfume, and he closed his eyes to stop his dizzy spinning. He did not open them again until his seeking fingers stroked over her rounded belly to encounter the soft mound with its triangle of silky golden hair. Then all control snapped.
The ocean breeze grew stronger, breaching with hot insistence the unsubstantial protection of Ginevra’s garments. She ripped off her clothes and the wind tore them from her hands and sent them flapping away like some large ungainly bird. Ginevra presented her naked body wantonly to the caress of that fiery, urgent gale. She knew now why she stood at the rim of the precipice: she was Psyche, and the wind must surely be Zephyrus, come to bear her away to her lover. If only she would submit to its invisible embrace she could at last find the nameless bliss she had sought all her life. But even as realization came to her the gusts increased, began to scorch, and frightened by their sudden torrid ferocity, she cried out in terror. The wind swirled up around her, murmuring her name while it propelled her over the edge. She was falling, falling, her tawny tresses streaming behind her like the tail of a comet. In the back of her mind she thought with momentary clarity: But it’s only. a dream. She struggled to escape the coils of that d
ream, the long hair that wrapped tightly about her slender body like tentacles, like a man’s hard arms. As she plummeted into the abyss, the velocity of the passing air became a weight crushing her breath from her lungs, and something wet and darting forced her startled wail back into her mouth. She could only moan helplessly under the glaring blue skies—blue eyes—as the rocks rose up to impale her.
“Ginnie ... oh, God, Ginnie!” He shuddered with the force of his release, groaning against her bruised lips as he plunged relentlessly into her slight body and spewed his seed deep inside her. He was beyond thought, almost beyond sensation; the only reality was Ginevra’s novice flesh enclosing his—possessing the possessor. He buried his flushed face in her bright hair to muffle the rasping sobs that ripped through him with each spasm of his not-quite-spent member, and only gradually did he become aware of her unnatural rigidity. He lifted his dark head to look at her. Her eyes filled his universe, as he knew his own must fill hers, but he was stunned by the shocked vacancy of her stare. Beneath her trembling lashes he saw glassy emptiness, as if the vibrant girl he loved had suddenly retreated somewhere very far away, leaving behind only a beautiful husk.
Still holding her tightly, he eased his weight off her. He tried to catch his breath so that he could speak to her, reassure her. He knew he had hurt her, and—sweet Jesu!—he had never intended that. Despite Jules Perrin’s cautionary advice, he had wanted to do more than merely avoid pain, he had hoped to pleasure her. He had thought that if he used her fatigue as an opiate to soothe her fears, once the initial discomfort had been overcome he could draw on his considerable experience to gentle her toward fulfillment, so that she would literally awake to glorious womanhood. Instead his own throbbing desire had driven him mad, throwing off all restraint as he shattered her innocence. Forgotten was the suggested pillow to go under her hips, the careful lubrication—forgotten was everything but the urgent need at last to slake his own wild hunger. Now he was abjectly aware that in doing so he had dragged her from her chaste dreams to what must have seemed a nightmare of ruthless violation, even rape.
“Ginevra,” he murmured, his deep voice hoarse and unsteady. She turned her gaze to him, but he was not sure that those wide unblinking eyes saw him. “Ginevra,” he repeated, “listen to me. I promise it will not always be this way. I know this is strange to you now, but there will come a time—very soon, I hope—when you will find great pleasure in my arms.” Still she did not respond. His hands began to move intently over her body, stroking, caressing, as he tried desperately to give her some inkling of what he meant.
She lay impassive and immobile in his searching embrace until he sought to part her clenched thighs. She flinched. “Please,” she said hollowly. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Please, I need to ... I must ... I beg you, excuse me for a few minutes.”
Reluctantly he released her, and she sat up in the bed. For the first time she became aware of her nakedness, and even in the dim candlelight he could see bright flags of color form in her wan cheeks. She slid from beneath the coverlet and retrieved her nightgown from the floor. Quickly and silently she pulled it on, her unsteady fingers groping with the buttons. When she was dressed, she picked up the candlestick and stumbled to the screen on the opposite side of the room.
As he watched her he decided that she must have no idea her every motion was silhouetted on the yellowed chinoiserie silk screen. The guttering candlelight caused her image to waver somewhat, but he could see her outline clearly, her stilted movements. She squatted over the chamber pot, then returned the vessel to its discreet hiding place in the bottom of the washstand. She smoothed her long hair with her fingers and shook it so that it streamed unconfined down her back. She poured water into the basin and bathed her face and hands. After a long pause she took the washcloth, and bunching the skirt of her gown with her other hand, bent over to clean her private parts.
Because the shadows cast by the candle oscillated with each flicker of the small flame, Chadwick watched for some time before he realized that Ginevra’s hand had stilled, that she seemed frozen in that awkward hunched position. “Ginevra?” he called uncertainly. She did not answer. He swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and stalked across the room to her. He yanked back the screen. She did not look up. She was staring transfixed at the cloth she held, its rough cotton stained with a sticky mixture of semen and blood. With a quiver of some fierce emotion—guilt? rage? he wasn’t sure what—he pulled the cloth from her unresisting fingers and flung it savagely to the floor. Then he jerked her into his arms. Only when he felt the buttons of her nightgown press into his bare skin did he remember his own nakedness, and he glanced down to find her eyelids tightly and resolutely shut against the sight of him. He shook his head with wry impatience, and his hold on her changed, softened. He cradled her against him, running his hands over her back, rocking her tenderly and crooning in his gravelly baritone. At last she seemed to relax.
He murmured, “It will be better, little Ginnie, you will see. But whatever happens now, you belong to me. No matter where you go or what you do, nothing can ever change that. You understand me, don’t you?”
When he felt her body tense again, he swore silently at his clumsy tactlessness. He caught her chin in his fingertips and tilted her head so that her shimmering gold eyes stared upward into his, round with mute reproach. Her expression stabbed at his heart. His grip tightened brutally. “Don’t look at me like that!” he grated. “Say something. Do something. Cry! But for God’s sake, don’t look at me like that.”
She blinked, and moisture beaded on her lashes. “I won’t, m-my lord,” she stammered, biting her lip. Then with a sob she buried her face in the comforting, scratchy warmth of the hair on his chest, and at last the tears came.
7
London alarmed Ginevra. After her near-cloistered life in the country, she was frightened by the vast size of the city, the hordes of people, the noise. The filth appalled her, as well as the sea-coal smoke that hung thick in the streets, and the stench that rose from the polluted waters of the Thames. When she remembered Wordsworth’s paean to the glories of the city—“All bright and glittering in the smokeless air”—she decided that the poet must have been in his altitudes the morning he stumbled across Westminster Bridge.
But here in Mayfair, in Chadwick’s elegant town house of warm red Georgian brick, she would have been indeed hard to satisfy if she did not admit that life was very pleasant. From the moment the marquess had introduced his bride to the household, she had been cosseted and pampered, treated with an indulgent deference so utterly divorced from her former life that she hardly knew how to react. She had always been respected by her servants, but their regard had derived in part from their knowledge that she worked as hard as any of them. Now she discovered she could lie abed until noon, turn her hand at nothing more strenuous than a bit of fancy needlework or the choosing of a wine for their evening meal, and she found all this leisure gratifying, if a little boring.
Ginevra picked up the silver hairbrush from her dressing table and began to brush her hair with long, practiced strokes. On the wall within easy reach hung a bell rope: one tug was all it would take to summon Emma or any of the maids to tend her hair for her, as if she were incapable of performing even that not-very-onerous task for herself. She was wryly aware that she lacked the courage to question the staffs behavior toward her, for they patterned their attitude after that of the marquess, and since that first traumatic night at Dowerwood he had treated her with extreme consideration, a rare gentleness and concern that made her feel almost as if she were convalescent following a long illness. When, the day after her husband’s return, Ginevra had tried to resume the tasks she had given herself, he told her that she needed to rest; with dispatch he summoned a sizable party from Queenshaven, who set about putting the old house to rights, under the supervision of Chadwick himself. He turned Bysshe’s care over to the doctor and forbade Ginevra entry into the sickroom, saying that the boy’s slow r
ecovery would only distress her. Dr. Perrin did request that Emma assist him, and Ginevra was able to monitor Bysshe’s progress through her friend. Several days later the marquess allowed Ginevra a brief courtesy call on the patient, but for some reason the visit had proved stiff and unrewarding; Bysshe seemed unwilling even to look at her.
As her honeymoon passed quietly, with a serenity almost unreal after the stress of the first days, Ginevra slowly realized that her husband had deliberately relieved her of all responsibility so that she need worry about nothing but coming to terms with her marriage. He was trying to alleviate the fear he saw in her-wide gold eyes each time he approached her. After the way he had ridden roughshod over her emotions in the past, his consideration frankly bewildered her, but she knew she was learning to accept if not enjoy her situation. At times only the benign and knowing glances of the servants reminded her that this holiday was different from those she had spent at Dowerwood as a child. She rested, ate Mrs. Harrison’s savory gingerbread, and strolled about the grounds with little Jamie, who had been crowded out of the kitchen now that his grandmother had maids to order about once more. Sometimes, at Emma’s suggestion, Ginevra spent the afternoon teaching the little boy his letters; other days they watched as the workmen began to restore the house to some semblance of order. She laughed along with the child when someone cut loose the thick runners of ivy that clogged the rain gutters, and the whole viny mass fell to earth in an avalanche of green leaves. When she saw her husband throw off his coat and scale a ladder, hard muscles rippling across his back as he helped a carpenter reattach a heavy piece of iron fretwork that had come loose from the eave, she grew silent, blushing as she recalled the strangely pleasant feel of those muscles under her sensitive fingertips when she clung to him in the night.
The evenings at Dowerwood had been spent in the parlor, where, Ginevra remembered vividly, Tom had proposed marriage to her. Looking at the marquess as he conversed quietly with the doctor, she wondered sometimes if he ever thought of that fateful day so long before. If he did, he gave no sign. Whenever his blue eyes surveyed the room, clean now but in dire need of redecoration, they seemed to note nothing but the disintegration of the furnishings. The cherrywood chairs were reasonably sound, but the upholstery was moth-eaten. Moisture had collected behind the glass of the framed engravings, leaving them streaked and mottled. Assuming he would want to discard the lot, Ginevra was surprised when, after she hesitantly mentioned the rusty duelling swords crossed over the mantelpiece, Chadwick said with a smile, “I thought I might have the pair polished and honed, and then we could send them to your father as a gift, if you like. I believe he told me once that the rapiers were a memento of his salad days.” As Ginevra looked up at him from across the card table—they had been playing whist, with Emma as a fourth—she was suddenly captivated by her husband’s grin. Something deep inside her stirred in a most peculiar fashion, and she was hardly aware of the doctor’s wise chuckle when she rose and made her excuses shortly thereafter.
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