His At Night

by Sherry Thomas

  Or perhaps that was the three glasses of champagne that she’d tossed back one after another.

  Had she never read the book on matrimonial law that had once been in her uncle’s library, perhaps she would now be tentatively rejoicing that she was both married and blessedly left alone. But with knowledge came fear: an unconsummated marriage carried severe risks.

  Had her uncle returned to Highgate Court yet? Had he learned what had happened and set out in pursuit? Was he even now hunting them in London?

  And where was Lord Vere? Smoking? Drinking? Gone elsewhere by himself, even though a small suitcase of his had been delivered to the suite?

  What if her uncle should locate her husband, sit him down for a talk, and point out all the obvious reasons why he did not want to be married to Elissande? Once he had Lord Vere convinced, it was only a short hop to an annulment, which would leave her with no husband, no protection, and not even the right to brag of having ever been married.

  The height of the hotel was suddenly dizzying. She retreated into the relative safety of the sitting room, where on the table sat a small, beautifully iced cake, with pale blush marzipan roses blooming along deep green marzipan vines—her wedding cake, compliments of the hotel. With the cake had come a cake knife, napkins, plates, a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Sauternes.

  And no one to share any of it with.

  She had been certain some mishap would erupt during the wedding ceremony. Lord Vere would mangle his vows. He would say the name of some other lady. Or, God forbid, he would decide at the last moment that he could not go through with the wedding, his reputation and her ruin be damned.

  Instead he’d been solemn and steady. And she’d been the one to say his name wrong—Spencer Russell Blandford Churchill Stuart was quite a mouthful—and stumble over her vows not once, but twice.

  Married.

  She dared not understand it fully.

  The door handle rattled lightly. She leaped to her feet. She’d locked the suite door out of fear of her uncle’s sudden appearance.

  “Who is it?” Her voice was wobbly. Breathless, almost.

  “Is this Lady Vere’s room?”

  Lord Vere’s—her husband’s voice.

  She squeezed her eyes shut a second, then moved forward.

  Smile.

  She had her smile in place before she opened the door. “Good evening, Lord Vere.”

  “Evening, Lady Vere.”

  He still wore the dark gray formal coat in which he’d been married—and which had somehow remained miraculously immaculate.

  “May I come in?” he asked very politely, his hat in hand.

  She realized that she had been standing in his way, staring at him. “Of course. I beg your pardon.”

  Would he notice her flushed complexion? He might, if he’d look at her. But he only walked past her into the middle of the sitting room and glanced about.

  The suite had been furnished in the manner of a gentleman’s home, the wallpapers a muted blue, the furniture sturdy yet unobtrusive. In Aunt Rachel’s suite there had been Chinese vases painted in red ochre; here there were blue Delft plates displayed in a semicircle above a mahogany chiffonier.

  “The cake is here,” she said for something to say, locking the door again behind her.

  He turned around, not so much at her words, but at the sound of the door locking—for that was where his gaze flicked before coming to rest on her face.

  He had misunderstood what she meant by locking the door. He thought she signaled that she was ready to be his wife in truth: There was a tautness to his stare, a challenge almost.

  She found she couldn’t hold his gaze. Her eyes instead focused on the boutonniere on his lapel, a single blossom of blue delphinium, the color so deep and rich it was almost purple.

  “The cake is here,” she repeated herself. “Would you like me to cut it?”

  “It would be a pity to eat it; it’s too pretty.”

  She hurried to the table and reached for the cake knife. “Even something too pretty to eat will still spoil if no one eats it.”

  “How profound,” he murmured.

  Was that irony she heard in his voice?

  She glanced at him and belatedly noticed that he clutched a bottle of whiskey by its neck in his left hand. She swallowed. Of course he was not happy. He’d been abused abominably. He knew quite well he had been entrapped.

  Any idiot would know that.

  She grimaced at the vocabulary of her thought, lowered her face, and attacked the cake, heaping his plate with an oversized slice. He set down the whiskey bottle, accepted the cake, and walked across the sitting room to the balcony.

  She wished he’d revert to his blabbering ways. She could not have imagined that his silence would be so difficult to ignore—or to fill.

  “Would you like something to drink with the cake?” she asked. “Some whiskey, perhaps?”

  “Whiskey doesn’t go well with cake.” He sounded faintly impatient.

  “Sauternes then?”

  He shrugged.

  She looked at the bottle of Sauternes. There was a cork underneath the wax seal. She believed it called for a corkscrew. And indeed, one had been supplied, between the bottles. She picked it up and turned it around in her palm. How did one use it? Uncorking bottles was the work of the servants at home.

  “Should I call for assistance?” she asked timidly.

  He returned to the table and set down his untouched cake. Taking the corkscrew from her, he inserted it into the cork. With a few deft turns of his wrist and one decisive pull, the cork emerged with a clean pop. He poured a full glass and set it before her, poured a full tumbler of whiskey for himself, and returned to the balcony with only that.

  The rain had abated to a near-mist when she had returned to the suite after dinner. But now a strong, cold wind whipped, and the clouds looked ready to burst again. He drank slowly but steadily from his glass. The shaded electric light of the sitting room illuminated his profile against the dark, overcast sky beyond.

  He was supposed to fidget, to tap his fingers against the glass or scrape his feet back and forth across the floor. He was not supposed to cut a stark, almost ominous figure ahead of an approaching storm.

  She could not look away from him.

  To distract herself, she raised her own glass. She didn’t much care for wine or spirits, but the Sauternes was sweet, almost like a dessert on its own. She drank with a nervous thirst and, within a minute, stared at the bottom of her glass.

  “It’s been a long day,” he said. He straddled the threshold between the balcony and the sitting room. “I think I’ll retire early.”

  Was that her cue that he was taking her to bed? Her stomach felt as if someone took it by the ends and gave it a twist—though not as awful a twist as she would have expected. It must be the Sauternes and the champagne from dinner. She was only mildly panicked.

  “You don’t wish for a taste of the cake?” she said, not sure what else she could say. Good night? I’ll join you shortly?

  “No, thank you.” He set down his empty glass and ran his hand through his hair. She’d thought he had brown hair with strands of dark blond. She was quite mistaken. It was the other way around—he had mostly dark blond hair, and a few chestnut streaks here and there. “Good night, Lady Vere.”

  He disappeared into the en suite bathroom. She poured herself another glass of Sauternes. A few minutes later, as she was once more looking at her empty glass, he came out of the bathroom, headed directly into one of the two bedrooms, and closed the door.

  Only to come out thirty seconds later, grab the whiskey bottle from before her, and leave again with a perfunctory nod.

  She was flummoxed. She did not want to go to bed with him, but given the way he’d looked at her when they were at Highgate Court—and inside the Clarence brougham this afternoon—she had not considered the possibility that he would ignore her outright on their wedding night.

  Well, this would not do.
She could not possibly give her uncle such an easy opening as an unconsummated marriage. He was not going to stroll through the courts with some trumped-up invalidity concerning her wedding ceremony, and then wave this non-consummation before the judges. He’d have to exert himself to prove that she was of unsound mind, at the very least.

  This marriage would be consummated, and that was that.

  * * *

  Easier said than done.

  Half an hour and the rest of the Sauternes later, Elissande was still where she was, alone in the sitting room.

  Well, what was she waiting for? Consummation didn’t happen by itself. If he wouldn’t come to her, then she had to go to him.

  She didn’t move. She was so very ignorant of those things. And frankly, the thought of coming into renewed bodily contact with Lord Vere kept her bottom fastened firmly to the chair.

  She had to use the sledgehammer on herself. She had to actually recall her uncle’s image to mind, when her entire life she’d tried her best to banish it: the cold eyes, the aquiline nose, the thin lips, the soft-edged menace that lay at the root of her nightmares.

  She took a few deep breaths and rose. And swayed so much she had to sit down again. Her uncle frowned upon women drinking. Until Lady Kingsley’s guests arrived with their own supply, wine was never served at Highgate Court.

  She’d completely underestimated the effect of an entire bottle of Sauternes—plus three glasses of champagne—on her balance.

  Gripping on to the table, she rose again, this time with much greater caution. There, she was upright. She inched along the edge of the table, not quite looking as if she were an untried alpinist upon the north face of the Matterhorn.

  The other side of the table was closer to Lord Vere’s bedroom. She turned so that her back was to the table and carefully set off to negotiate the ten-foot distance to his room.

  It was like walking on water. No wonder he had stumbled about when he’d had too much to drink; one really couldn’t help it, not when the floor swelled and dipped without the least warning.

  At the doorway she gratefully gripped the door handle and rested her weight, for a moment, against the jamb. Good gracious, the room was sliding back and forth—best get on before she became too dizzy. She turned the handle.

  He was in bed already, naked from the waist up. She blinked, so that he would stop sliding back and forth in her vision. Who knew something as sweet as syrup would have such fascinating ophthalmological effects?

  Slowly he came into focus. The periphery of his person became less blurred, his torso gained sharpness and definition. Goodness, he must be a Muscular Christian, for he was certainly muscular, his physique something Michelangelo would approve of, since the maestro never painted a young man who didn’t have such a body.

  And look, he had a book with him. Vaguely she remembered what he had said about using books as general anesthesia. No, that wasn’t quite right. Laudanum, that was it. He used books as laudanum.

  But it didn’t matter just now. He looked halfway intelligent with that very big book in his lap.

  She liked it.

  “My lord,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed—or was that also an optic effect? “My lady.”

  “It’s our wedding night.” It was very important to state the obvious, lest he’d forgotten.

  “So it is.”

  “Therefore I’ve come to oblige you,” she said grandly. She felt at once brave, dutiful, and resourceful.

  “Thank you, but it will not be necessary.”

  What silliness. “I beg to differ. It is absolutely necessary.”

  His tone was pointed. “Why?”

  “For the flourishing of our marriage, sir, of course.”

  He closed the book and rose. Hmm, shouldn’t he have risen as soon as she entered? She could not decide.

  “Our marriage has come as a shock to both of us. I’m loath to impose myself on you when everything has been so rushed and…bizarre. Why don’t we go on at a more leisurely pace?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We don’t have the time.”

  He gave her a look that was almost sardonic. “We’ve a lifetime—or so the clergyman said.”

  She needed to be mindful about her future consumption of Sauternes. Not only were her eyes functioning only questionably, her tongue had become thick and unwieldy. She had a coherent argument in her head concerning the urgency of the consummation. But she could not motivate her mandible to deliver that argument. It flatly refused.

  So she tilted her head and smiled at him instead, not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

  His reaction was to pick up the whiskey on his nightstand and take a swig directly from the bottle. Oh dear, but that was a very masculine thing to do. Very forceful and decisive.

  Attractive.

  Indeed, his whole person was attractive. Outstandingly handsome. That thick, slightly unruly hair that glinted like polished bronze. That bone structure. Those wide, tightly sinewed shoulders.

  “I forgot what color your eyes are,” she murmured.

  How preposterous that after four days of acquaintance—and a wedding ceremony—she didn’t remember the color of his eyes.

  “They are blue.”

  “Really?” She was beguiled. “How wonderful. May I see?”

  With that, she approached him and peered up. He was very tall, taller than she’d remembered, somehow, and she had to place her hands on his arms and stand on her tiptoes to see deeply into his eyes.

  “Many people have blue eyes,” he said.

  “But yours are extraordinary.” Truly they were. “They are the color of the Hope Diamond.”

  “Have you ever seen the Hope Diamond?”

  “No, but now I know what it must look like.” She sighed. “And you smell good.”

  “I smell like whiskey.”

  “Yes, that too. But”—she breathed in deeply—“better.”

  She could not define or describe it. It was a warm scent, like that of sheets freshly returned from the laundry. Or that of sunbaked stones.

  “You’ve had too much to drink, haven’t you?”

  She stared at his mouth, firm yet enticing. “‘Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.’”

  “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  She smiled. He was so very amusing too. Her hands spread against his arms. So firm, they were, yet so smooth. She remembered the night of Squeak Piggy Squeak. She’d liked touching him even then. No wonder. He was marvelous to touch and he smelled like Lebanon.

  She looked up into his eyes. He did not smile back at her. But he was very handsome this way, severe and judgmental.

  “‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’” she murmured. “‘For thy love is better than wine.’”

  “No,” he said.

  She wrapped her arms about his neck and touched her mouth to his. But only for an instant. He firmly removed her person. “You are completely inebriated, Lady Vere.”

  “No, not inebriated. Intoxicated,” she declared proudly.

  “In either case, you should go to your room and lie down.”

  “I want to lie down with you,” she breathed. “‘He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’”

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “No, Elissande. My name is Elissande.”

  “This is enough, Lady Vere. You may leave now.”

  “But I don’t wish to.”

  “Then I will leave.”

  “But you cannot.”

  “Oh, can’t I?”

  Her tongue, which had been effortlessly lithe for quoting from the Song of Songs, again refused to cooperate here. “Please don’t. We must, for my aunt. Please.”

  Surely he’d seen how shrunken and faded her aunt had become in her uncle’s house. Surely he understood the importance of keeping her free from further oppression. Surely he was as compassionate
and perceptive as he was handsome.

  Gorgeous, really. She could not get enough of looking at him. God in Heaven, what a sensational jaw. Those magnificent cheekbones. And those Hope Diamond eyes. She could stare at him all day.

  And all night.

  “No,” he said.

  She threw herself at him. He was so solidly built. How she wished she’d had someone like him to hold on to in all the darkest days of her life—hugging Aunt Rachel had always made her sadder, but Lord Vere made her feel safe. He was a fortress.

  She kissed his shoulder—she loved the taste and texture of his skin. She kissed his neck, his ear, his jaw, which was not quite as smooth, but had a slight roughness that scraped her chin most deliciously.

  She kissed him on the mouth, capturing those very seductive lips with her own, savoring the taste of whiskey that lingered just inside his mouth, running the tip of her tongue over his teeth.

  Oh, dear. His—his—

  They stood hip to hip and she felt it. Him. Hard and growing harder.

  And then she felt it no more as she sailed through the air. Landing on the mattress rather knocked the breath out of her and made the room spin like a kaleidoscope. But, goodness gracious how strong he was. She weighed a solid nine and a half stone. But he’d picked her up and tossed her as if she were a bridal bouquet.

  She smiled at him.

  “Stop smiling,” he said. It sounded as if he ground his teeth as he spoke.

  Never smiling again was exactly what she aimed to do. For understanding her, she smiled at him with even greater abandon. Perhaps she ought to rethink the wholesale banning of smiles. They were quite enjoyable at times like this, when she was under no duress whatsoever, when she was relaxed and happy and at peace with the world.

  She beckoned him with her index finger. “Come here.”

  For once, he obliged. He loomed above her for a moment, then leaned down and took her jaw between his fingers.

  “Listen and listen well, if you can get anything into your barmy, addled head: no. You can force me into a corner and make me marry you. But you can’t make me fuck you. Say one more word and I will have this marriage annulled tonight and send you back to the bedlam where you came from. Now shut up and get out.”