by Louise Allen
‘There is nothing to be sorry for,’ Elliott said. But a dry undertone to his voice contradicted his words. She had been right, he was too kind to tell her how disappointed he was in her. He rolled off and tugged until she came against his side, her cheek on his shoulder. ‘Go to sleep now.’
‘But—’
‘We have consummated the marriage, Arabella. That is enough to be going on with.’
Bella looked up so she could see his face. ‘Was… was that how it is supposed to be?’
‘Do you think so?’ He lay watching her, expressionless, not giving her any help at all.
Of course it was not. How disappointed he must be to have been forced into marriage with her. Her shake of the head was so vehement that he laughed. ‘There you are, then. We can work on it. Come back here and sleep, Arabella.’
I amuse him? Is that better than scorn and insults and violence? It has to be. She lay down, her cheek against man-warmed linen and closed her eyes. Perhaps if he would do it again in the morning, before she was properly awake, that would be better. She would be relaxed, it would be over before she had time to be afraid and for it to hurt and he might find it more enjoyable.
Chapter Ten
Elliott woke in the early morning light, every muscle tense with arousal. It took a moment to realise where he was and who was lying, relaxed in slumber, against him. His wife. Arabella was about the only relaxed thing in the bed, he thought grimly. She was just where she had fallen asleep last night, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. In the night she must have moved her arm for it now lay across his body, her hand lightly clasping the erect length that ached for her to tighten the lax grip.
Last night had been…frustrating. He had thought her ready for him, willing, but something had gone wrong. Was she associating love making with Rafe’s betrayal afterwards? Or had he simply misread her, failed to see that nerves were overcoming her sensual responses? The temptation was to simply roll over, rip off his nightshirt and take her again before she had the chance to wake up and remember her nerves. No. Elliott tried breathing lightly, controlling the need to move under her palm. No, she had to know what she was doing, be fully involved with it. With him.
It had taken him a long time to get to sleep last night, puzzling over Arabella’s responses to his lovemaking. She reacted as he would expect a virgin to react, not like a woman who had had an affaire with an experienced rake. Perhaps it was the pregnancy. But he was hardly on such terms with any mothers that he could ask them how childbearing had affected their love lives.
Elliott inched out from under her arm. As he slid out of the bed he saw her face clearly, the track of one dried tear down her cheek. His wife had wept on her wedding night. He had no idea how to comfort her or what to say. You are safe now? I am not like my brother, even if you probably see him every time you look at me? I won’t abandon you and your baby? ‘I promise I will look after you,’ he murmured. But she knew that by now, surely? It seemed she needed something he did not know how to give her.
Elliott closed the door into his dressing room with care, walked through into his own bedchamber and closed that door too. Only, it was not his bedchamber, it was Rafe’s, just as that was not his woman in the pink boudoir that had been decorated for a whore. She was Rafe’s cast-off mistress and, somehow, they had to forget that.
He was not used to sleeping in a nightshirt. Elliott dragged it over his head, hurled the balled-up linen at a wing chair, missed, swore and threw himself on the bed. From the mirror above his reflection, naked, still half-erect, glared back at him.
He looked like a working man compared with his elegant, sleek brother. Rafe would not have dreamed of joining his farm hands in the fields to help in the last push to bring the crops before rain fell. He would not have sat up with the shepherds in the lambing fields in the small hours or found pleasure heaving roof timbers with the carpenters when there was a building to repair.
Rafe would not have enjoyed getting sweaty and battered in the boxing ring, then laughing in some comfortable inn afterwards with the friends who had just been trying to land him a facer. He would certainly not have relished a long hard road race in all weathers, pitting skill and the horseflesh he had chosen and trained against the best the Corinthian set could muster.
Rafe had been going soft, Elliott had thought when their paths had crossed in London. Those meetings had always been in gambling hells or society ballrooms, never in the fencing schools or the boxing salons where Elliott drove himself hard for the strength and stamina he prized.
He got off the bed, shrugged into his robe and yanked the bell pull for coffee. He had never felt himself in competition with his brother and he was not going to start now in the bedchamber. What he was fighting here was nothing as rational as physical appearance or intelligence or charm, but a broken heart and betrayed dreams.
She had shed one tear. He did not want Arabella to cry, he wanted her to smile for him, blush a little. He wanted her to laugh and sigh and moan in his arms. Damn this. He had thought to be rational and clear in his requirements as though he was appointing a new member of staff, not forging a relationship with a wife. He had spelled out what he expected from her in the bedroom and she had forced herself to do her duty, he was sure of that. And he was in here with a severe case of frustration because he did not want to distress her this morning and she was fast asleep in there.
What was the matter with him? He could surely feel compassion for the poor girl without getting himself this wound up about her feelings. He was over-analysing, Elliott decided after another length of the room. She had allowed Rafe to seduce her, she was old enough and intelligent enough to know what she was doing. She had got herself into a mess, he had rescued her from it and now they were stuck with each other. He was not used to women finding anything but satisfaction in his arms, that was the trouble, he thought with a rueful smile.
‘One day at a time,’ he said aloud. ‘One night at a time.’
‘My lord?’ Franklin, his valet, was standing in the dressing-room door looking a trifle bemused.
‘Coffee, Franklin. And then my riding clothes. I want to look at the Hundred Acre Wood first thing.’
‘At what time does his lordship normally take breakfast?’
‘Lord love us! Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but you did give me a start.’ Cook put down the basket of eggs she was holding. ‘At eight, normally, my lady. He comes back in then.’
Arabella walked into the kitchen and surveyed the preparations. ‘Back in? I am sorry, please can you remind me of your name?’
‘Mrs Tarrant, my lady. And that’s Bethan with the coffee grinder and Annie in the scullery.’
My lady. Goodness. I’m my lady now. ‘Good morning, everyone.’ There was a flurry of bobbed curtsies.
‘His lordship goes out to the estate every morning at six, my lady. He sends down for a cup of coffee, then he’s out until eight. Not like his late lordship—he would take his breakfast in bed at about ten.’ Her pursed lips looked incongruous in her cheerful face.
‘And what does his lordship take for breakfast?’ Arabella was determined to be a perfect, attentive wife in every possible way. She might be a disappointment to Elliott in bed, but everything else would be faultless.
She had slept last night, worn out by emotion, she supposed. But she had dreamed of Rafe again. At least, she thought it was Rafe, and she had wanted to run away, but every now and again the man in her dream had turned with a sharp, alert grace that was different from Rafe’s languid elegance. His face had been blurred, as though she could not quite recall the difference between the two brothers. And her body had ached and tingled with the disturbing aftermath of Elliott’s possession of her body.
Rafe had been right: she was hopeless in bed. Elliott had been kind, but he had been disappointed in her. He thought her plain, no doubt, and soon she would be very obviously pregnant, and none of that helped the fact that she had no idea how to respond to him, how to arouse him. How to
satisfy him. Her husband had done nothing to deserve such a… useless wife.
Elliott had been gone when she woke and the hollow in the bed was cool when she touched it. No morning kisses, no attempt to make love again. Would his patience snap and would she hear the same jibes, the same reproaches from him as she had from Rafe? Useless, wooden, plain, frigid… It was agony to imagine that she would hear words like that from him, see in his eyes that he despised her for being a failure as a woman.
As she had dressed, trying to get used to the hovering presence of Gwen, her new maid, sent up from the Dower House with Lady Abbotsford’s compliments, Bella had resolved that at least she could be the perfect mistress of the house. She would not fail at that, and she would not mope; Elliott would not want a miserable wife.
It was easier decided upon than carried out. Arabella made herself focus. The preparations in the kitchen seemed somewhat meagre for a gentleman’s breakfast, she thought.
‘Toast and coffee, my lady. I did ask when he first came here, but he said that was all he’d take.’ Cook folded her reddened hands on her apron front. ‘I can’t pretend I was not disappointed, my lady. I like to put on a good spread, and one thing I will say about his late lordship, he knew how to entertain.’ Again that enigmatic tightening of the lips.
Bella was not going to think about Rafe. The practicalities of feeding her husband were much more important. ‘And where does he eat his toast?’ If Elliott retreated into his study it was going to be a problem.
‘In the breakfast room, my lady.’ Cook seemed not to find it odd that she did not know her new husband’s tastes, or that he had gone out early as usual the morning after the wedding. Arabella suspected that Mrs Tarrant was a perfectly capable cook if she was given firm orders, but she lacked initiative or curiosity.
‘Very well. Today please serve toast and coffee as usual. I will take tea. But I think we should have something more as well, just in case his lordship has an appetite. Shall we have a look in the larder?’
‘Heel!’ The pair of pointers stopped dead in the middle of the hall and looked back guiltily. Toby, the terrier, who always treated orders as suggestions to be considered and then disregarded, trotted on and sat in front of the breakfast-room door, head on one side, stubby tail rasping on the flags.
Elliott dropped his hat, whip and gloves on the hall chest and sniffed. Bacon? ‘Henlow!’
‘My lord?’
‘I can smell bacon.’
‘Yes, my lord. Her ladyship is in the breakfast parlour.’
Avoiding Arabella was out of the question, it would be discourteous. But bacon? Surely not the choice of a woman suffering from morning sickness who might be expected to take a light breakfast in bed.
Elliott pushed open the door and went in, the dogs at his heels. Arabella was standing by the sideboard, the silver dome of a serving platter in her hand. A heap of bacon, crisp and tempting, was piled on one side opposite a small mountain of scrambled eggs.
‘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 cream-muslin 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 tearstained 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. I
t 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.
