by Joan Wolf
“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I invited you to Steyning Castle for a purely selfish reason. I wanted to show you my home. I wanted you to meet my family. I wanted, in effect, to show you the whole picture before I asked you a question that is very important to my happiness.” He smiled a little wryly. “All this is a very long-winded way of saying that I find I love you and hope very much that you will be my wife.”
She was looking at him very seriously. “I do not know,” she replied slowly.
He came a little closer. “That is encouraging. If you are open to persuasion, let me persuade you.”
She smiled a little. “I wonder if you could?”
“I shall certainly try. What is it that worries you?”
“Why do you want to marry me, my lord? I, an American with merely workaday red blood in my veins?”
“The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone with eyes,” he returned, faintly smiling. She said nothing, merely watched his face. After a moment, the Duke went on, “What is really bothering you, Tracy?”
It was the first time he had ever used her name. Tracy looked at him directly, her eyes dark with an unreadable expression, and said, “Money.”
“Ah.” He did not look at all discomposed. “Do you think I wish to marry you because your father is rich?”
It was Tracy who betrayed restlessness. She rose to her feet and walked to the beautiful Adam chimney piece. Once there, she turned to face him, the width of the room between them. “Do you?” she asked baldly.
“No.” He was not smiling now. “I do not deny the fact that I could not marry a woman who had no money. My father was not so clever as yours; he wasted a fortune instead of winning one. But if money were my object, there are plenty of English girls who have money. I am not asking any of them to be my wife.”
He came across the room until he stood before her. “I am asking you because you are everything that is lovely and real and vital. Because you are like fresh air and sunshine. Because your eyes have the most fascinating way of changing color. Did you know, for instance, that right now they are almost gold?”
His voice had taken on a deep, caressing note that stirred her profoundly. She realized that he was trying to charm her, with his own sovereign personal power, into accepting him. “How can an American girl possibly become an English duchess?” she asked faintly, knowing she was now on the defensive.
“With the Stars and Stripes waving proudly around her,” he answered, and she laughed unsteadily. “Tracy,” he said, and his arm went about her waist. “Say yes.”
He had always thought her wide, passionate mouth was meant to be kissed. and was pleased to discover that he had been right. She was inexperienced, that was clear, but after a moment she responded to him, and the Duke thought that the future looked promising indeed. He raised his head. “Now they are green,” he said, looking into her eyes. “Baffling.”
His own eyes had turned an even darker blue, but Tracy, although she noticed, did not mention that interesting fact. “My lord,” she breathed, shaken to the core by that kiss.
“Adrian,” he corrected
“Adrian,” she said, and in so saying, she gave him his answer.
* * * *
The family and guests at Steyning Castle were all delighted with their news. It was a marriage that satisfied everyone, a joining of birth and position to beauty and money. Mr. Bodmin looked forward to a line of future Dukes of Hastings with his blood running in their veins. Lady Mary and Lord Harry looked forward to filling some of those empty stalls in the stables. Lady Bridgewater looked forward to seeing the House of Deincourt, of which she still considered herself a member, restored to its rightful eminence in wealth as well as prestige.
Of all the people gathered together under the roof of Steyning Castle, the only one who had serious doubts about the felicity of the coming marriage was the prospective bride. If Adrian were an American, she thought she could then put her hand into his with a fearless heart. But in accepting him she was accepting so much more; she was accepting a way of life whose complexities and distinctions were as foreign to her as those at the court of Suleiman the Magnificent. Her husband would be one of the most highly placed members of the highest aristocracy in Europe. And Tracy did not approve of aristocracy!
She would not have done it were it not for her father. She told herself, as she watched the air of triumph with which he went about the castle, that she had done the right thing. Whatever the outcome of such a marriage for her, the engagement had made her father happy.
There was one person whom it would not make happy, and Tracy had written a letter to him very shortly after she had agreed to marry the Duke. Adam Lancaster would feel she had betrayed him, and Tracy admitted to herself—as she would not ever admit to him—that he would have some justice in his complaint. Because of her guilty conscience, the letter she wrote tended to dwell rather heavily on her father’s pleasure and made little mention of her own feelings.
She was not sure herself of those feelings. She would have thought a man like the Duke would have been the last kind of man in the world to attract her. He belonged to a class she distrusted. He was, in fact, an almost perfect embodiment of that class. Yet, he did attract her. He was unlike anyone she had ever met. She was not marrying him, she admitted to herself in her most honest moments, solely to please her father.
Chapter 8
Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted.
—Shakespeare
The marriage of Miss Teresa Bodmin to the Most Noble Adrian St. John Geoffrey George Deincourt, Duke of Hastings and Marquis of Winchelsea, Earl of Hythe, Baron Deincourt of Hythe and Baron Deincourt of Bexhill, took place at the end of June at St. George’s, Hanover Square. All of the Deincourts were there, and all of the relations of all of the Deincourts, and all the Americans who happened to be in London. Mr. Bodmin wanted to see his girl married in style. There were five bridesmaids: Lady Mary, two Deincourt cousins and two American girls from the Ministry. Mr. Bodmin gave a sumptuous breakfast at the Clarendon Hotel and everyone was well satisfied that the thing had been done properly.
Tracy spent the weeks before her wedding shopping for clothes. The Duke’s man of business came to an extremely satisfactory arrangement with Mr. Bodmin’s lawyers. The Duke himself took his father-in-law in charge and introduced him to the exclusive domains of London clubs and parliamentary sessions. Mr. Bodmin was enormously pleased and tended to regard the Duke with all the satisfaction he would regard a highly prized possession. This didn’t bother the young man at all. After all, he told himself, he had been expensive enough. And, too, his father-in-law was scheduled to leave for America at the beginning of July. The Duke could put up with him comfortably enough until then.
The Duke and Duchess were to take only a week’s honeymoon at present, the bride desiring to be back in London in order to bid farewell to her father. The Duke owned a small estate in Hertfordshire, and it was there that they planned to spend their week. Servants had been dispatched from Steyning Castle two weeks previously, and it had been reported to the Duke that all was in readiness for his arrival.
It was a drive of several hours from London to Hertfordshire, and the Duke beguiled the time for Tracy by describing to her in hilarious detail the peculiarities of the various Deincourt relations who had jammed into the church that morning. This led Tracy to expatiate a bit about her own maternal relatives, who while not so highly placed as the Duke’s family, were certainly as odd.
They arrived at Thorn Manor in the late afternoon. The Duke showed Tracy around while their luggage was unpacked, then they changed for dinner. As dinner progressed, Tracy felt the slight constriction that had been in her chest all day growing tighter and tighter. The Duke, seated across the table from her, was a perfect stranger, she thought. Whatever had she done?
The tightness in her chest got worse when he sent her upstairs and said he would be along in a few minutes. Her l
egs felt like lead as she climbed the stairs and she could not say a word to the maid who was waiting to undress her. A beautiful sheer peach-colored nightdress—a gift from Lady Bridgewater—lay on the bed. Tracy let the maid put her into the dress and brush out her hair, but all the while stark panic was rising inside her. What had she done?
Mr. Bodmin, acutely aware of the lack of a close female relative, had attempted twice to speak to his daughter about the marriage act. However, though he was a very brave man who had steered his ship through typhoons and hurricanes, he could not bring himself to talk to Tracy about sex. Her mother would have done that, he comforted himself, forgetting that his wife had died when Tracy was thirteen. And surely they had discussed such matters at that advanced school of hers, he thought bracingly. Tracy didn’t need his advice.
Such matters had been discussed at Tracy’s school, but not in the classroom. The girls had pooled their ignorance and consequently Tracy half knew some things and misunderstood others. The result was she stood waiting for her bridegroom in a state of near terror. She did not go near the bed but stood dose to the window, as if looking for a way to escape.
The family apartment at Thorn Manor consisted of two bedrooms, with attendant dressing rooms, connected by a sitting room. Each bedroom had two doors; one led to the hall and the other to the connecting sitting room. It was through the latter door of Tracy’s room that the Duke finally came, dressed in a wide-lapelled, simple but very expensive-looking dressing gown. Tracy didn’t move when he came in but stood rigid, like a deer at bay.
It did not take the Duke long to assess the situation. “Ma mie,” he said, his voice full of warm sympathy and just a hint of amusement, “there is no need to look like that. I am not going to eat you, I promise.”
Tracy was not afraid that he would eat her; it was other unspecified things that she feared. He crossed the room to her, slowly and steadily, as one would approach a wild creature one was hoping to tame. She was trembling a little, he could see as he got closer, and her eyes were like emeralds. He made no attempt to touch her but held out a hand. “Come here to me and let us talk a little about these fears of yours.”
Talking was about the only thing Tracy felt prepared to do with him at this point, and, tentatively, she took two steps forward. He put his arm lightly around her and guided her to the small settee that stood before the chimneypiece. They sat down side by side and he kept his arm around her so that she was leaning against his side. “Has no one spoken to you about what takes place between a man and a woman when they are married?”
Tracy shook her head, and he reflected for a moment on the flaws of a culture that allowed young girls to come to their marriage beds in such ignorance. The Duke himself was not used to dealing with frightened virgins; his previous partners had all been women of the world, femmes du monde who knew very well what they were about. But he had seen fear before, on the battlefield, and he had recognized the seriousness of Tracy’s state almost instantly. It was not a state he was inclined to take lightly.
Tracy sat stiffly against him, nervous under his touch, apprehensive because of his nearness. Slowly, reflectively, he began to talk. He said nothing to her of her “duty.” He spoke instead of love, of how a man and a woman were but two halves of one whole, of how in marriage the halves came together and were completed.
Tracy listened, conscious of his body pressed against hers, conscious of the warm hand that was slowly caressing her bare shoulder, conscious of the quiet, reassuring voice so close to her ear. As she rested there, the power his closeness had always exerted on her began to reassert itself. He was being very patient with her, she thought. The terrible strangeness, the fear of the unknown, began to recede, overcome by the magic of her husband’s nearness, the tender reassurance she heard in his voice.
She began to feel that she had been behaving badly. She still did not quite understand what would happen in the next half hour or so, but clearly it was wrong of her to be afraid. He stopped talking and just sat quietly, holding her.
“Adrian?” said Tracy, after a minute.
“Yes, ma mie?”
“I’m being awfully silly. I’m sorry.”
He rubbed his cheek gently against the top of her head. “You are being silly if you think that I would ever harm you.” He cradled the warm, relaxed weight of her. “Come over to the bed with me now, Tracy,” he said softly.
She nodded and let him pull her up. With his arm still about her she walked across to the bed, kicked off her slippers and, in a swift, graceful movement, lay down on the bed. He took off his dressing gown and lay down beside her.
He was a consummately skilled lover and he used his skill to woo his young wife. He went very slowly, very gently, and Tracy, trusting him, soon began to respond. She had never dreamed that a man’s touch could make her feel the things that she was feeling. She slid her own hands over his back, feeling for herself the strength of the muscles that had so surprised her the day in the woods when he had moved the tree branch. She felt the most incredible aching tension deep within her and arched up against him, seeking release.
“Tracy,” he murmured, his mouth against the beautiful curve of her throat, “this may hurt you a little.” Then he came into her.
Tracy’s eyes opened wide with shock. All the delightful aching tension was gone and in its place was a fierce burning pain. She tried to push him away but he held her with unbreakable strength and would not let her go. Tears of pain came unbidden to her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
“Adrian!” she said in protest. “You’re hurting me!”
When he finally let her go, he raised himself on an elbow and looked down at her face. For the first time he saw the tears. “My poor darling,” he said in surprise and apology. “Did I hurt you so badly?”
Tracy bit her lip. “Yes.”
He kissed the tears off her cheek. “It was because it was the first time for you. It won’t hurt like that again. I’m sorry.”
Tracy was reflecting on his words and remembering how he had made her feel earlier when she happened to glance down. She sat up abruptly and yelped in horror. “I’m bleeding!”
At the expression on her face her husband began to laugh. When she turned large, reproachful eyes on him, he schooled his face to gravity. “That, my love, is the proof of your virginity,” he said.
“Oh.” She frowned thoughtfully. “It happens to everyone?”
“I have had no prior experience, but so I understand,” he replied gravely.
She shot him a look and then regarded the evidence. “What a mess.”
“It is indeed. You were a virgin with a vengeance,” he said cordially and Tracy chuckled.
“What a delightful sound,” he said, entranced. “Do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“That little laugh you just gave.”
Tracy frowned suspiciously. “Adrian, I think you’re trying to distract me. You’ve ruined a perfectly beautiful nightdress. And the sheets are disgusting.”
“Do you always dwell with such tenacity on the more unpleasant things of life?”
“I do when they pertain to me,” Tracy said decidedly.
He sighed and lay back on the pillow, folding his hands behind his head. It was Tracy*s turn now to prop herself up on her elbow. She looked down into his face and smiled slightly. “The first part was lovely,” she said softly and, bending, kissed him lightly on the lips.
He didn’t answer for a minute, just lay regarding her out of eyes of midnight blue. Tracy felt something vibrate in the air between them, then he smiled and it was gone. “It will all be lovely the next time, I promise,” he said lightly. “And now I suggest you ring for your maid and have her change the sheets and get you a new nightdress.”
“The maid? Oh dear, I’ll be so horribly embarrassed.”
“By the maid?” The Duke clearly thought she was being absurd. He swung himself out of bed and belted his dressing gown around him. “I’ll see you in the morning,�
� he said and bent to kiss her cheek. Tracy watched him depart through the connecting door back to his own room and felt a brief flicker of annoyance at being the one left to face the maid with the mess. For Tracy, who still called servants ‘the help’, a maid was irrevocably a person, not a faceless, depersonalized convenience. She truly would be horribly embarrassed.
The maid, however, was silent and mercifully swift. Soon Tracy, clad in a fresh white nightdress, was lying between clean new sheets. As she drifted off to sleep she spared a thought of pity for all the poor hapless girls who were unlucky enough to marry men without the kindness, tenderness and wisdom of her own husband.
Chapter 9
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
—Shakespeare
Tracy slept deeply and woke to find the sun pouring in the window. She stretched comfortably, hopped out of bed and went to the window. As she looked out at the sun-drenched morning she saw a horse and rider come out of the woods in the distance and start up a path that led toward the house. She smiled with pleasure; the man and the swiftly moving horse seemed almost a part of each other and certainly a part of the beautiful morning. As he neared the house, the man pulled the horse up to a sedate trot and for the first time Tracy realized that the rider was her husband.
The maid came into the room behind her, and Tracy turned reluctantly from the window. “Shall I bring your breakfast up to you, Your Grace?” the girl asked.
Tracy shook her head. “I shall never get used to being addressed in such a ridiculous fashion,” she said.
The maid, who was young and pretty, looked distressed. “Did I say something wrong, Your Grace? If I did, I did not mean to. I beg your pardon.”
Tracy was surprised. She was used to Americans, who thought of themselves as conferring a favor upon their employers by agreeing to ‘help out,’ and who certainly would not apologize for a totally unintended error. “I only meant that I am not used to titles of nobility. Your Grace sounds very strange to my American ears,” she explained.
