His At Night

by Sherry Thomas

  She stopped to gag after every swallow, but he kept tipping the cup at her lips and she, gasping and rasping, drank.

  After she’d swallowed every last drop of the foul brew, he gave her water, and she’d never tasted anything so sweet. She gulped eagerly, thirstily, happy to feel the water spilling down her chin. When she’d at last had enough, she turned away from the glass and pressed her face into his chest.

  His waistcoat was a very fine material, the linen of his shirt soft and warm. Her head still banged awfully, but she was—she was safe. She had a protector, for once, someone who cradled and looked after her and who smelled wonderful at the same time.

  Lebanon, she thought, for no reason at all.

  * * *

  This state of comfort and security, however, did not last long. Her protector set her back down on the bed, covered her again, and, despite her groan of disappointment and the hand she clutched at his waistcoat, left.

  When footsteps once more came toward her, she opened her eyes and immediately closed them again.

  Lord Vere.

  No.

  Not him.

  “Come, Lady Vere,” he chirped. “I know the temptation is strong to remain abed but you must stir. Your bath is waiting.”

  What was he doing in her room? She must still be dreaming.

  Memories of the past week returned with a vengeance. Lady Kingsley’s rat problem. A house full of bachelors. The lovely Lord Frederick. The tussle in her uncle’s study. The wedding.

  She was married. To Lord Vere.

  She’d spent the night with him.

  “Shall I sing you awake, then?” he said, all energetic eagerness. “I know just the song. ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you’—”

  She struggled upright. “Thank you. I’m quite awake now.”

  As she moved on the bed, the bedcover shifted to reveal a smear of red on the sheets. Her hand went to her throat as more memories spilled back into her head. She recalled his teeth against her tongue—what a bizarre, bizarre thing. She remembered being hurled onto his bed—dear God! And pain—awful, lacerating pain between her legs. She winced against the recollection.

  But how trustworthy were those memories? She also remembered speaking of the Hope Diamond and a handkerchief that smelled like Lebanon. What could possibly have led her to allude to the Song of Songs?

  “But I’ve just started,” Lord Vere whined. “Let me finish the song.”

  She swallowed and determinedly swung her legs over the side of the bed. As she straightened, she realized that she was barely dressed, wearing only her silk dressing gown. Thankfully it was quite dim; only a faint halo of light framed the curtains—she didn’t know why she’d thought the room unbearably bright before. “I’d be delighted to hear you sing another time. But you must excuse me now, sir. I believe my bath is waiting.”

  He ran before her and opened the bathroom door for her. “One piece of advice, my dear. Be very quick about it—or you’ll melt.”

  She blinked. “Beg your pardon?”

  “The water is hot. Don’t stay much more than a quarter of an hour, or you’ll start to melt,” he repeated, in all seriousness.

  Such an assertion could only be met on its own level of absurdity. “But wouldn’t the water have started to cool after a quarter of an hour?”

  His jaw dropped. “My goodness, I’ve never thought of it. That’s why we don’t hear more about people dissolving in their tubs.”

  She closed the door, lowered herself into the tub, and stared at the tops of her knees. She would not cry. She refused to cry. She’d known perfectly well what she was getting into when she’d taken off her clothes before Lord Vere.

  In precisely a quarter of an hour she emerged from her bath—to the sight of her husband at the table in the sitting room, staring at a fork in undiluted fascination. At the sound of her approach, he looked up, set down the fork, and smiled in that doltish way of his.

  “How’s your head, my dear? You drank a whole bottle of Sauternes.”

  Could he possibly be the person who had given her the bad head cure earlier? In whose arms she had lain so contentedly?

  Best not to think of that. It would only spoil the sweetness of the memory.

  “My head is better. Thank you.”

  “And your stomach? More settled?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Come eat something then. I’ve ordered you tea and some plain toast.”

  Tea and plain toast did not sound as if they would send her stomach into renewed convulsions. She walked slowly to the table and sat down.

  He poured tea for her, spilling enough to wet half the tablecloth. “I might have had a bit too much to drink myself, to tell you the truth, my dear. But it’s not every day you get married, eh? Worth a bad head, I say.”

  She chewed on her toast and did not look at him.

  “What do you think of the speaking tube, by the way? I think it’s marvelous. I talk in this room right here and they hear it all the way in the kitchen. I was a little surprised, however, that a man came to deliver the tea and the toast. Thought they’d pop right out of the speaking tube. I didn’t dare leave the spot. Wouldn’t be quite the thing if the teapot made the trip all the way up here and then—splat—because I couldn’t be there to catch it.”

  The throb in her head worsened; the place between her thighs also began to smart unpleasantly.

  “I was reading the papers before you came,” Lord Vere went on. “And I must tell you, I was shocked to read, in the pages of the Times, no less, the German Kaiser referred to as our dear sovereign’s grandson. How can anyone besmirch Her Majesty so, to attach that Prussian bounder to her blameless family? I fully intend to write a letter to the paper requesting a retraction.”

  The Kaiser was the queen’s grandson by her eldest daughter, the former Princess Royal. The House of Hanover was and had always been solidly German.

  She smiled wanly. “Yes, you should.”

  She was determined to be a good wife to him: She owed him everything. Perhaps tomorrow, when her head no longer hurt, when listening to him talk didn’t make her think longingly of a chorus of a thousand crows, she would sit down with him—and all the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—and correct some of his misconceptions.

  But now, it was all she could do to smile at him and let him be as wrong as a broken clock.

  * * *

  Elissande grunted in frustration. Her head was still not well enough for her to twist her neck and look into the mirror behind her. But without seeing her reflection, she fumbled with her corset, which laced in the back.

  A light knock came at her door. “May I be of some help, my dear?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.” The last thing she needed was his help. The two of them would be tied together to a chair with the laces of her corset if he were to involve himself.

  As if he hadn’t heard her, he entered, clad in a blue lounge suit. Her uncle always wore a frock coat for going out, but gentlemen of her generation seemed to prefer less formal attire.

  “Sir!”

  She clutched the corset to her torso. She was not dressed—she had on only her combination—and he should not be anywhere in her vicinity. Then her gaze fell on the bed, where God only knew what had transpired during the night.

  God and Lord Vere. Whatever it was that had taken place in this bed, it had certainly changed his mind about their marriage. Gone was the oppressive silence of yesterday; today he abounded with his usual bumbling zeal. She clutched harder at her corset.

  “Really, I don’t need any help,” she reiterated.

  “Of course you do,” he said. “Lucky for you I’m an expert on ladies’ undergarments.”

  Oh, he was, was he?

  But he turned her around and, for once, demonstrated what might be considered real skill as he tightened the laces down her back efficiently and well.

  She was astonished. “Where did you learn how t
o work a corset?”

  “Well, you know how it is. If you help ladies out of their corsets, you have to help them back in.”

  There were ladies who let him help them out of their corsets without being compelled by vows of marriage? She couldn’t tell whether she was shocked or appalled.

  He yanked hard. All the air squeezed out of her—a daily necessity for fitting into her clothes.

  “But that was before I met you. Now there is only you for me, of course.”

  A terrifying thought, that. But she did not have time to dwell on it as he proceeded with her corset cover and her petticoats.

  “Hurry,” he said. “We must make haste. It’s already quarter past ten.”

  “Quarter past ten? Are you sure?”

  “Of course.” He took out his watch to show her. “See, precisely.”

  “And your watch is accurate?” She had no confidence in him at all.

  “Checked it against Big Ben’s chimes this morning.”

  She rubbed her still-tender temple. She was forgetting something. What was she forgetting?

  “My aunt! My goodness, she must be famished.” And frightened, all alone in strange surroundings, with Elissande nowhere in sight.

  “Oh, no, she’s fine. You left her room key about, so I visited with her earlier while you were still abed. We even had our breakfast together.”

  He had to be joking. This was a man who forgot that he needed to change his egg-stained trousers by the time he went from the breakfast parlor to his own room. How could he possibly have remembered her aunt?

  “I invited her to come with us today, to call on your uncle. But she—”

  “Excuse me?” Her head spun. “I thought…for a moment I thought you said we are going to call on my uncle today.”

  “Well, yes, that is the plan indeed.”

  She could not speak. She could only stare at him.

  He patted her on the arm. “Don’t you fret; your uncle will be thrilled to see you respectably married—you were getting a bit long in the tooth, my dear. And I am a marquess, you know, a man of considerable stature and influence.”

  “But—my—she—” Elissande stopped. In her fear she was stammering. “Mrs. Douglas, what did she say?”

  He urged her into her blouse. “Well, I told her that we would be delighted if she could accompany us, but that I understood she must still be weary from her travels yesterday. She said she would prefer to rest today.”

  Elissande barely noticed that he was buttoning her blouse. “I thought she would,” she said. “But don’t you see, I can’t leave her. She doesn’t do well in my absence.”

  “Nonsense. I introduced her to my housekeeper and they are getting on famously.”

  “Your housekeeper?” She supposed he must have one, since he could scarcely be expected to keep his own house. But in the rush of the past thirty-six hours, she had not once thought about where he lived or what his household arrangements must be like. “Your housekeeper is in town?”

  “Of course. I don’t usually close my town house until early in September.”

  He had a house in town and they were at a hotel?

  “I’d like to see my aunt,” she said. She had little faith in his ability to hire good servants.

  However, Mrs. Dilwyn, his housekeeper, turned out to be quite the pleasant surprise. She was a tiny dumpling of a woman in her late forties, soft-spoken and meticulous. In her notebook she had recorded everything that had transpired since her arrival at eight o’clock in the morning: the amount of fluid Aunt Rachel had ingested, her visits to the water closet, even the precise number of drops of laudanum she had taken—Elissande noticed she’d taken three more drops than usual, no doubt to erase the horror Lord Vere had brought about by proposing to take her back to Highgate Court.

  “See, I told you,” said her husband. “Mrs. Dilwyn will quite pamper Mrs. Douglas. She spoils me extravagantly whenever I’ve the slightest sniffle.”

  “My mum was bedridden the last two years of her life—Lord Vere was kind enough to allow her to share my rooms, so I could care for her,” said Mrs. Dilwyn.

  “I quite enjoyed having her about. She used to tell me I was the handsomest man alive.”

  “Oh, you are, sir,” said Mrs. Dilwyn with what appeared to be genuine fondness. “You are.”

  Lord Vere preened.

  Mrs. Dilwyn leaned closer to Elissande and lowered her voice. “Mrs. Douglas, might she be a bit irregular? I know my mum was.”

  “Yes, unfortunately she is,” said Elissande. “She does not like vegetables and she hates prunes.”

  “My mum hated prunes too. I will see if Mrs. Douglas might like a stewed apricot better.”

  “Thank you,” said Elissande, half-dazed. She was not accustomed to having anyone share her burdens.

  She did have a look at Aunt Rachel, who was dozing in bed. Then Lord Vere hurried her out of the bedroom and out of Aunt Rachel’s suite.

  “Quickly now, or we’ll miss our train.”

  She made a last-ditch appeal as he marched her down the corridor toward the lift. “Must we? So soon?”

  “Of course,” he answered. “Don’t you want the man who raised you to meet your very fine husband? I must tell you I’m quite excited. I’ve never met an uncle-in-law before. We shall get along splendidly, he and I.”

  * * *

  Freddie owed much of his development as a painter to Angelica. She was the one who had seen his pencil sketches and recommended that he try his hand at watercolor and, then later, oil painting. She’d read the daunting book on the chromatography of oil paints and summarized it for him. She’d introduced him to the works of the Impressionists, with the art journals she’d brought back from her family’s holidays in France.

  He had never been able to work with anyone next to him, except her. From the beginning she had been there with him, usually with a thick tome on her lap, absorbed in her own interests. From time to time she might read aloud from her book: the scientific reason why sugar of lead in paints resulted in the rapid darkening of the finished painting, a spicy sonnet from Michelangelo to a beautiful young man, an account of the infamous Salon des Refusés of 1863.

  So in a way, it was inordinately familiar to work with her in proximity.

  Except for her nakedness, that was.

  She lay on her side on the bed he’d had his servants install in his studio, her back to him, her head propped up on one hand, reading The Treasures of Art in Great Britain.

  Her hair fell loose, a tumble of umber locks interspersed with shades of raw sienna. Her skin gleamed, lit from within. The softness of her bottom made his fingers grip hard at his pencil. And that was before he even took into consideration her breasts and the shadowed triangle between her thighs reflected in the mirror she’d strategically placed on the far side of herself.

  He had to remind himself every other minute that his purpose was art and the celebration of beauty. The comeliness of her body was as much a part of nature as the smooth bark of a birch or the sunlit ripples of a summer lake. He should have no difficulty appreciating it as form, color, interplay of light.

  Yet he wanted nothing more than to throw down his pencil, walk up to this particular combination of form, color, and interplay of light, and—

  He looked down at his sketchbook instead. Not that it was much help. He’d produced several drawings already, one a general outline of the entire tableau, one a study of her profile and her hair, one of her midsection, and one of what he saw in the mirror.

  “Do you know, Freddie,” she said, “before I returned to England, I thought surely your experience with Lady Tremaine would have left you brooding and resentful. But you are the same man you always were.”

  It was just like Angelica to raise unexpected topics. He looked at the empty canvas he had prepared.

  “It’s been a long time, Angelica. Four years.”

  “But are you completely recovered from her?”

  “She wasn’t an illness.”<
br />
  “From the loss of her then?”

  “She was never truly mine.” He took a sharper pencil from his box. “I think I knew from the very beginning that we were on borrowed time.”

  He’d been gloriously happy with Lady Tremaine. But there had always been an element of deep anxiety to his happiness. When she had reconciled with her husband, he’d been heartbroken but not bitter—because it had not been a betrayal, but only the end of a wonderful era of his life.

  He flipped to a new page in his sketchbook and drew Angelica’s shapely calves, wishing his hands were his pencils, that as the drawing took shape, he could slide his palms across her cool, soft skin.

  Lady Tremaine had once told him that Angelica was in love with him. Freddie rarely questioned Lady Tremaine’s pronouncements, but this particular one had come when Lady Tremaine had decided to reunite with her husband, when she no doubt wished that Freddie too would settle down with someone. Anyone.

  If Angelica had been in love with him she had certainly said nothing of it, ever—and she had never been one to censor her words around him. And even if Lady Tremaine had been right, four years had passed, a long time for affections to remain constant from far away.

  He glanced back at Angelica. Her head was bent, her attention absorbed in her book. She was even jotting down notations in the margins. A seduction this wasn’t.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” he said, closing his sketchbook. “I’ll step outside.”

  * * *

  Angelica would not say that she had been in love with Freddie forever. Forever meant the mist of time, the blurred years of childhood. Her love had a definite moment of origin at a much later point, when she had been seventeen, he eighteen.

  He’d come home following his first year at Christ Church. And she, set to join Lady Margaret Hall that autumn, had plopped herself down on a picnic blanket not far from him as he painted on the bank of the River Stour, to ask him as many questions about Oxford as it pleased her and to critique him as he worked. (She didn’t paint herself, but she had an excellent eye. And she was exceedingly proud of the fact that she’d been the person who’d explained to him, four years prior, that one did not use pure white for highlights, but a paler shade of the color one wished to highlight.)