He didn’t join her that night. Nor the next, nor the next. Elinor tried not to wonder whether Lucius, even in their home village, was getting his satisfaction elsewhere, with more experienced ladies. After all, despite the words in the wedding vows, Lucius had never truthfully promised fidelity. He had made that clear when he had offered for her; and Elinor could not clam that Lucius was not fulfilling his side of the agreement. Her mother could still not be considered well, but compared to her previous state of health Mrs Everton was a different woman. Rid of the constant anxiety about money, as well as being under the care of the best doctor in the county, she was gaining fitness with every day which passed.
No, Lucius had certainly kept his promise. And Elinor must keep hers: be the complaisant wife Lucius required. If she was fool enough to hope that he might ... might what? Be kept satisfied by Elinor alone, an ignorant young woman whose only sexual experience had been her wedding night? Might not care to stray, at least so soon? Even, fall in love with her? Well, if Elinor had ever hoped for any of those, let alone the last, she was a fool indeed and she deserved her disappointment.
‘Idiot,’ she whispered into her pillow, and determined to think no more on the subject.
It was the following week when something occurred to Elinor. If Lucius was not prepared to pleasure her ... she could at least satisfy herself to a certain degree. Some of the things he had done – the places he had touched – were surely possible for her to copy. The night could become, once more, a time of learning and sexual exploration.
The first night, she began slowly, removing her nightgown and revelling in the sensation of the soft sheets against her skin. He had touched her lips with his … Her finger drifted across her lips; she sucked it into her mouth, sliding it in and out. He ran his fingers over her breasts … Elinor’s free hand moved up to cup her left breast, and she moved her palm all around it, conscious of the change to hardness of her nipple as her hand brushed over it again and again. She took the damp finger from her mouth and pressed it to her right nipple, her back arching a little at the sensation. It was not Lucius, it was not as good as if he were there – but there was still something stirring inside her; a tiny flicker of pleasure which Elinor intended to fan. His hands grew firmer. She rubbed her hand harder across her breast, squeezing it gently. The same tingles she had noticed when Lucius held her like this swept across her. Not as big, nothing like as incredible, but still … Making her heart beat that little bit faster. Making her breathing catch, just for half a second.
‘Lucius,’ she whispered, remembering how he’d smelt: musky and manly. She took in a deep breath, imagining she could smell his scent on the air. ‘Lucius,’ she sighed again, sliding her hand down over the pale skin of her belly until it rested on the nest of auburn curls between her legs.
There was a dampness between her thighs, and she ran a finger through it, then brought it to her mouth to taste herself. Then, daringly, she pushed her fingers inside her, just a little distance, and felt how her flesh gave way to her touch. It felt ... nice. For a moment, Elinor was disappointed by “nice” – an insipid word for an insipid feeling. When Lucius had done it, it had been so much more than merely nice. Never mind. She was learning her way; Lucius knew exactly what he was doing. She wiggled her fingers experimentally, fascinated by feeling a part of her own body that she’d never touched before. There was a tingly place just above her fingers, and she pressed the palm of her hand against it. Involuntarily, her hips bucked upwards at the touch, and she caught her breath. That was unexpected. She was not entirely sure whether it was wonderful or terrible; certainly it had brought a definite response from her body. How had she never known about this? How had she never thought to try this before? She thought back to the “old” Elinor of two weeks previously. Had marriage already changed her so much? She suspected it had; and she would not change back for the world.
Soon, however, the honeymoon was over. Elinor visited her mother one last time before she and Lucius set off for London. Mrs Everton was pleased to see her, as always, and they chatted about everything under the sun – except Elinor’s marriage. Elinor’s mother had come to believe thoroughly that Elinor had married for love and love alone (just as Mrs Everton herself had done, so many years previously), and there was no chance that Elinor would disillusion her mother of that comfortable and comforting belief. Nevertheless, as Elinor made to leave, Mrs Everton stopped her, a pale hand on Elinor’s wrist.
‘I shall miss you, my darling,’ she said simply.
Elinor bit her lip. For so long she and her mother had been all-in-all to each other. Even if Elinor’s marriage had indeed been all her mother imagined it, Elinor would have found it hard to be parted by so many miles from her mother. As it was, Elinor had a sick sense of dread about the prospective move to London for the Season. It was so long since her solitary début year there, and her life had changed beyond imagining during those missing years. She felt disconnected, uncertain whether the “society manners” which had once been so natural to her would return at will.
‘I will miss you too,’ she said finally, smiling down at the still wan face of her mother. ‘But I can go with my mind at ease to see you looking so much healthier.’
Mrs Everton tapped the back of Elinor’s hand admonishingly. ‘I will manage quite nicely without you. You are not to spend your precious time with Lucius worrying about your silly old mother.’
‘No, mamma,’ Elinor said obediently, her eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘But I suppose I am allowed occasionally to think of my “silly old mother”, especially since I am peculiarly fond of her? And maybe even – since I am being daring – to address a letter to her, now and then?’
Her mother laughed. ‘I think that might possibly be acceptable, you awful child.’
Elinor leaned down and kissed her mother’s forehead affectionately. ‘You will look after yourself, and I shall look after myself, and we will neither of us worry about the other.’
‘I have no intention of worrying about you,’ Mrs Everton said serenely. ‘I will be imagining you having the time of your life with Lucius – just as you deserve.’
Elinor said her farewells and left, determined that she would not cry. In which determination she was almost successful.
To her surprise, Elinor enjoyed London. There was no reason, of course, why she should not have done so – but it had not crossed her mind that she should. Taken up with the thoughts of her mother’s delicate health and her own unexpected marriage, not to mention the massive changes which had happened to her entire life in the last few months, her predominant feeling had been a determination to make everything work for all the parties involved. Her own enjoyment had not been on the agenda.
Lucius did not visit her room in London any more than he had done, after that first night, in the country, but Elinor was resigned to that now. If he had not needed to gain satisfaction in her arms in the country, he would hardly wish to do so in London where his alternative options were that much broader. Meanwhile, she continued her solitary explorations of her own body, and told herself that it was enough. Although Lucius did not want her, she had no intention of attempting to find solace with another man. Aside from the fact that she owed him that much in return for all he had done for her, there never had been any other man for Elinor, whether she liked to admit it or not. It was his name she whispered when a certain touch of her fingers sent shivers through her body; his mouth that she imagined on her own; his hands ...
She had had one night of pleasure. More than she had ever hoped for or expected. She would be content with that.
Elinor was interested, though not altogether shocked, to discover that Lucius himself was not universally popular. Sometimes she wasn’t certain that she altogether liked him; she was in love with him, certainly, but he regularly annoyed and frustrated her. The ladies of the ton appeared to fall into three separate groups: those who enjoyed his company, and his reputation as a roué, without ever having been attracted to hi
m; those who had once liked him more, perhaps, than they should, and who now regretted it; and those who looked upon Elinor as an interloper, and the only reason why Lucius would not now be marrying them. The middle category was unnervingly large: Elinor wondered sometimes whether Lucius could really have flirted with – seduced? – quite so many ladies. Their attitudes towards her ranged from pitying, through resentful, to out-and-out catty. If Elinor had not known the nature of the gentleman she had married, she thought often, she would soon have been made aware.
‘Mr Crozier’s new little wife.’ Belinda Dolinger had been one of the first “ladies” to use her conversation with Elinor to express her contempt of Elinor’s husband.
Irritating though she had found this expression, Elinor was uncertain, so early on, of Miss Dolinger’s intentions. She had, therefore, bitten her tongue and refrained from suggesting that not only was she not little, but that she was also Mr Crozier’s only wife.
‘That is correct,’ she’d said, nodding politely to her new acquaintance.
‘We all pity you, you know,’ Belinda had continued with a tinkling laugh.
‘Really?’
‘Oh, marry in haste, repent at leisure, you understand,’ Belinda explained. ‘Your marriage was very sudden, Mrs Crozier, was it not?’
Elinor gave her a self-possessed smile – a talent which would become an art form over more conversations with the poisonous Belinda. ‘Hardly. We’ve been acquainted since childhood.’
‘Oh Heavens, you mean he married a country girl from that backwater village of his?’ Miss Dolinger clasped her hands to her mouth as if the words had accidentally been forced from her, rather than being – as Elinor suspected – utterly intentional.
‘That is one way of putting it,’ said Lucius dryly, coming up behind Miss Dolinger in time to hear the last line. He put an arm around Elinor’s waist. ‘Though you might remember Mrs Crozier from her Season in London three years ago, when she was Miss Everton.’ He smiled. ‘Except of course she attended the best parties, Belinda; something that you have never done. Good evening.’
He gently manoeuvred Elinor away, much to her indignation.
‘If she didn’t hate me before that, she’s certain to now,’ Elinor commented crossly. ‘Really, Lucius, that was unacceptably rude.’
‘And what was she?’ asked Lucius. ‘I merely shared a little of the truth with her, Elinor.’
Yes, thought Elinor, a very little. For although it was true that she was as well born as any of the ladies present, it was equally true that directly before her marriage her circumstances had been nowhere near as salubrious.
‘And besides,’ Lucius added calmly, ‘she would never have liked you anyway. I suspect the only person Belinda Dolinger truly loves is herself.’
Belinda’s overt unpleasantness, however, was more easily dealt with than the subtle digs Elinor received from other women. She put the majority of them down to jealousy: she saw how almost every unattached lady – and many an attached one – kept their eyes on Lucius as he did the rounds at balls and card evenings. She could not blame them, really: she was no less easily attracted by the wretched gentleman she had married. And they weren’t to know, she thought resignedly, that he’d married her in order to keep his options open, rather than to cut off his other female options. Lucius’s popularity with the gentlemen, too, was mixed. He had a wide range of friends, many of them ladies’ men themselves, such as Lord Argett and Mr Black; but Elinor was also intrigued to meet other gentlemen, ones whom she saw outside the usual social occasions.
One such was Octavius Wootten. Elinor thought on first meeting him that she did not like the gentleman. He was sullen-faced, reserved and unfriendly. Then he smiled at something she said, and his whole face changed. She learned later that he was severely shy and all too aware of his own defects, whilst not appreciating his attributes as much as he should. In many ways, he seemed an unusual friend for outgoing, confident Lucius; but neither man seemed aware of the incongruity and it was certainly no one-sided friendship on Wootten’s part. If anything, Lucius deferred more to Wootten than the other way around, and Elinor was fascinated by this new insight into her husband. As well as having the light charm which made him so popular, Lucius demonstrated in his dealings with Wootten that he was also well-read, thoughtful and with a generosity of spirit that few people would associate with him. The pair of them donated large sums of money to one of the London workhouses. Wootten was on the board of the committee; Lucius kept his involvement considerably more secret but, Elinor suspected, provided more in the way of cash than he acknowledged.
And yet, just as Lucius turned out to have hidden depths of seriousness that Elinor had not expected, she found Wootten better and better company as she began to know him more. He was not, it seemed, quite so solemn and worthy as she first imagined; instead having a wry sense of humour, and a sarcastic wit which made many things he said worth considering twice: the obvious meaning might not be the only way in which one could take his words.
But not all gentlemen appreciated Lucius. At a ball one evening, Elinor spent a good deal of her time fascinated by the byplay between her husband and a gentleman whose name, it seemed, was Sir Hugo Mansfield. Lucius had bowed coldly to him at the beginning of the evening, and been given a colder bow still in return. When the pair met at the card table, the stakes seemed to be considerably higher in emotional value than in currency, though both, it seemed, were known gamblers who regularly played for large sums. Yet the atmosphere between them was tangible, deep dislike pouring off them both in a way that Elinor could see no reason for. Sir Hugo seemed in every other way completely unexceptionable: he was tall and handsome, with good dress sense, and a pleasant smile. Lucius rose from the table a winner; and it seemed only the obligation of good manners was enough to make Sir Hugo shake his hand at the end of the game.
‘Sir Hugo Mansfield seems to dislike you intensely,’ Elinor commented in the carriage on the way home.
‘Yes.’ Lucius leaned back against the sumptuous seat. ‘He resents me because he believes I stole his mistress.’
‘Oh,’ Elinor said blankly, wondering whether all husbands were as open about their peccadillos as Lucius. Though, she thought ruefully, she was not precisely the usual sort of wife. Lucius had made it clear when marrying her that he intended to continue womanising: she had been bought and paid for to find it acceptable. ‘Did you?’ she asked, controlling her voice in a way she felt was impressive in the circumstances.
‘In a way,’ he said. Elinor wondered how there could possibly be a middle ground in such things. Surely one either had a mistress or did not? Lucius was clearly aware of her thoughts, and smiled at her before continuing. ‘I assisted her to get out of a situation not to her liking.’ He paused, clearly wondering how much more to say. ‘He hurt her,’ he said coolly. ‘Sometimes with whips or knives.’
‘Oh,’ said Elinor again; then, in an attempt to live up to Lucius’s savoir faire, she added, ‘I take it she did not wish him to?’
‘No.’ There was a flash of anger in Lucius’s eyes, and he spat the word sharply. ‘No,’ he said again, this time more calmly, ‘she did not wish him to.’ Elinor said no more, slightly ashamed of her question; and after a minute or two had passed, Lucius spoke again, in the polite tones of a stranger. ‘I trust you had a pleasant evening?’
‘Yes,’ she said, wishing she hadn’t gone at all; wishing she’d never married this gentleman with his moods and his complicated history. ‘Yes, a very pleasant evening.’
It was three nights later when Elinor, waiting for her most recent dance partner to fetch her a glass of champagne, overheard a conversation between Miss Dolinger and a couple of her friends.
‘I never did think much of Crozier,’ Miss Dolinger announced, ‘but surely he could have done better than that squat little wife of his. After all of those inamoratas, well known for their beauty, as well! I don’t know how he could.’
‘Well, Jane Fevell says that Miss
Shaw’s sister saw Crozier with that actress last week,’ one of the other ladies commented. ‘You know, the one who’s making so many of the gentlemen’s heads turn.’
‘And it’s not for the quality of her acting,’ squealed Miss Dolinger happily. ‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t take Crozier long to set up a new mistress, given what he has to go home to.’
Elinor’s partner returned with the drink, and Elinor gratefully moved out of earshot of Belinda Dolinger. Of course, it was perfectly reasonable that Lucius should be bedding another woman: he had certainly made it clear that fidelity was not on the agenda. But still, it hurt. It hurt more, too, to have it society gossip – surely, thought Elinor grumpily, the least Lucius might have managed was to keep his affairs private. It only occurred to her considerably later that Miss Dolinger and her satellites might have known that she was close enough to overhear them; but that consoled her very little. She nevertheless had no reason to doubt the information
It was more comforting when Elinor was granted tickets for Almacks – that holy of holies for everyone who wanted to count as someone. Why the exclusivity of Almacks made up for the fact that the balls were very tepid affairs, and the refreshments extremely uninteresting, no one could quite say. The fact was, however, that being given tickets to the place assured one of claiming a high place in society. Elinor had a shrewd suspicion that her disagreements with Belinda Dolinger had assisted her to gain such a prize: the Princess Esterházy, one of the guardians of Almacks, had a barely disguised loathing for Miss Dolinger, whom she saw as distinctly common in her manners and ways, even if not by birth. Elinor suspected strongly that she was invited to Almacks more as a slap in the face for the vulgar Belinda than because of her own merits. It didn’t hurt, either, of course, that several of the middle-aged ladies who ran the place had an undeniable fondness for Lucius; but Elinor preferred not to think about that. Too many people were fond of Lucius, and Elinor would not be jealous, she would not.
One Long Hot Summer Page 10
