Regency Innocents

by Annie Burrows

  I love you, she wanted to cry.

  His mouth found hers, and the words were never uttered. He kissed her as though his life depended on it, pounding into her while she clung to him, her anchor through the storm of passion that swept them away.

  This time, they drifted to shore together, clinging to each other like survivors of a shipwreck. Their limbs tangled, they sank to the floor, gasping and shaking with the force of what they had shared.

  ‘My goodness,’ Deborah panted, her face pressed into the worn cloth of his jacket.

  ‘Goodness had nothing to do with it.’ He chuckled, rolling on to his side to look down at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyelids still heavy with passion. He leaned down to kiss each one in turn.

  She flung her arms about his neck, arching up against him. She wanted this interlude never to end. She had hated it when he rolled away from her at night, silent and brooding. If only she knew how to prolong this sense of closeness!

  ‘Have mercy, woman,’ he groaned, rolling over so that he was partially on top of her. ‘At least wait until after luncheon, when I have had a chance to recover, and we may retreat to the privacy of our bedroom.’

  ‘What?’ She gazed up at him in bewilderment for a few seconds before the penny dropped. He thought she wanted more of what they had just been doing! There was no tenderness in his look, just a sort of smug pride. The sort of look she guessed a man would give a woman he had just thoroughly seduced in his office.

  She felt confused, cheapened somehow by the realisation that as far as he was concerned, their joining had nothing to do with love.

  She sat up, twitching her skirts down over her knees. He rolled on to his back, his arms splayed out at his sides.

  ‘Look at what you have done to me, woman,’ he groaned in mock despair. ‘You will have to help me to my feet, tuck in my shirt, do up my breeches …’

  She wanted to slap him. It had been as much his doing as hers. More, in fact. He was the one who had suggested going back to bed in the first place! Briskly, she knelt up, then bent to the task of tidying his clothing. He caught her hand.

  ‘What have I done now to make you angry?’

  ‘Nothing!’ she snapped.

  And all the light died from his eyes.

  He rolled on to his side, and pushed himself up on to his good knee, supporting his weight on his hand.

  ‘I can manage without you!’ he said, when she went to help him to his feet. And then, with an agility she had not suspected, after the way he had gone on and on about needing Linney all the time, he got to a standing position, using the leg of the desk, the back of the chair and sheer determination.

  ‘I will leave you alone, then,’ she said, as he slumped into the chair behind the desk.

  ‘Deborah, wait!’ she heard him say as she whirled away to the door. It took her a few minutes tugging on the handle before she remembered he had locked it.

  ‘Deborah, for God’s sake …’

  She did not hear whatever else he had to say. Flinging the door open, she dashed out into the hall, making blindly for the front door, which stood ajar. Once outside, she lifted her face to the sun that streamed down from a cloudless blue sky. It seemed all wrong. How could it be such a gloriously beautiful day, when she felt so churned up and … muddied inside?

  It made no difference though. She had to put some distance between herself and the man who could make her melt into a puddle of surrender at one moment, then shatter her with his coldness the next.

  Stepping off the porch, she made her way out into the grounds.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Would you tell my husband I have gone to our room for a rest?’ Deborah asked Mrs Farrell.

  She had walked for what felt like hours. She was footsore, and heartsore, and had the beginnings of a headache nagging at the base of her skull. It was her own fault, for dashing off without a bonnet. She could not quite understand what had happened to the sensible, practical girl who had weathered so much in the wake of her father’s death. The slightest thing had her flying off the handle these days.

  She had not even got across the lawn before seeing that the scene in the office had not been Robert’s fault at all. She had been feeling ashamed of her wanton behaviour, and, when he had teased her about it, had lashed out at him. Turning towards the orchard wall, she harboured the mutinous thought that if only he had whispered words of affection, and reassurance, she would have been able to carry off the whole thing with aplomb.

  But her innate honesty soon had her rejecting that scenario. As she pushed open the door to the orchard, she realised that it was the fact that she loved him enough to abandon all her principles that had left her feeling so prickly. Whatever he had said would have been wrong. Even if he had murmured those lover-like words she so longed to hear, she would only have accused him of being dishonest.

  No, none of this was Robert’s fault. He had been scrupulously honest with her. She was the one who was living a lie, by letting him think she had married him for financial security.

  Mrs Farrell gave her a strange look.

  ‘Well, since you missed your lunch, would you like me to bring you a tray too?’

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ she said, fumbling for the handle to the door to her rooms. ‘If you will excuse me?’ She crossed the sitting room swiftly, but paused on the threshold to the bedroom. Somebody had already been in, and drawn the curtains, as if they had known she would return with a headache.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  The voice, emanating from the bed, made her jump out of her skin. Through the gloom she could make out Robert, reclining on top of the quilt. He looked incongruously dark and menacing, lounging against the froth of lace pillows banked against the headboard.

  Her hand flew to her throat. ‘I have been walking about the grounds,’ she gasped, her heart still pounding with shock at the hostility in his voice. Though why should she be surprised he was angry with her? She had behaved extremely badly.

  ‘Robert,’ she said, hastening to the foot of the bed before he had a chance to say another word, ‘I am so sorry for the way I ran off, after we—after, umm, well, you know.’

  ‘Had marital relations up against the wall of my study?’ he said coldly.

  ‘Please don’t make this more difficult for me,’ she begged, her fingers gripping the footboard until her knuckles went white. ‘I don’t want to fight with you all the time. But I cannot … quite cope with …’

  ‘The practical reality of being married to a cripple?’

  Her head flew up, a stunned expression on her face.

  ‘It is not that! You must never think that!’

  She had thought once before that Robert’s wounds were not just physical. His hurts went deep, and, in typical male fashion, he lashed out at anyone who touched on them.

  Ruefully, she reflected she was guilty of doing exactly the same thing. Every time she became aware of just how little he valued her, her wounded pride made her lash out at him.

  If they were ever to get beyond this dreadful sniping at each other, one of them was going to have to be willing to abandon their pride, and simply absorb the hurts the other dealt them. She did not suppose for a minute that person would be Robert.

  She went round to the side of the bed and perched on the edge of the mattress.

  ‘The practical reality of just being married at all is quite enough for me to cope with,’ she confessed, linking her hands in her lap, and regarding them solemnly. ‘I had little idea of what went on in the marriage bed before our wedding night. It was such a revelation. And when you began to speak of it …’ She faltered, searching in vain for the words to describe what she had felt. ‘My heart began to pound,’ she said, her cheeks flushing as she admitted, ‘and it suddenly struck me that we could do that again, and I … well, I know I lost my head. And afterwards, when you began to make a joke of what we had just done, I … well, I felt humiliated, if you must know. I had done something of which I felt qu
ite ash … shamed.’ Her voice hitched on a suppressed sob. She paused, sucking in a breath, turning reproachful eyes on him as she said, And then you mocked me.’

  ‘That was not my intent,’ he grated, reaching out to place his hand over hers.

  ‘No, I … I worked that out for myself, as I walked round the orchard. You were just trying to make light of the difficulties you would have getting up off the floor.’ She shot him another look, this one full of trepidation.

  ‘In future, I think it would be better if we restricted our activities of that nature to the bedroom,’ he growled. ‘You may remember it was my first choice. I just wanted to get you naked and into bed and keep you there until it is time to return to town.’

  She had completely forgotten the earlier part of their conversation, until this reminder. Her mind flew back to his stated determination to get to know her, and his puzzling reference to not needing clothing. Why had she not understood at the time that he had meant in a carnal way?

  At that moment, Mrs Farrell returned with the promised tray. Deborah was glad of the interruption. She was feeling quite flustered by the blunt way Robert spoke of what she considered a very delicate topic.

  ‘There, now,’ said Mrs Farrell, placing the tea tray on the small table under the window, ‘you have a nice cup of tea, and a bite to eat, and you’ll soon be feeling much better.’

  Smiling wanly, Deborah went to the table, allowing the housekeeper to pour for her.

  ‘You too, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. Hardly touched his lunch,’ she informed Deborah, with a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘I can see the news Mr Travers brought you came as quite a shock.’

  After only a moment’s hesitation, Robert swung his legs off the bed and joined Deborah at the table.

  She noticed that all the food which had been brought had been prepared so that her husband could eat it without assistance. Even the cold mutton pie had been cut into tiny squares. There would be no need to ring for Linney and have him hovering over them while they ate. She felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders.

  Mrs Farrell only departed when she saw they were both making inroads into their light meal.

  ‘She seems quite determined to mother us,’ said Robert, jerking his head in the direction of the doorway through which their housekeeper had just gone.

  Instead of making the riposte that his own manservant was not exactly a typical valet, she pondered over something Mrs Farrell had said, which had puzzled her.

  ‘Did Mr Travers not bring the news you expected? Are you very disappointed?’ She was not surprised the supposed fortune was not what Robert had hoped for. The house was modest in its dimensions. And from what she had seen, the grounds were only capable of providing the kitchen with the barest essentials. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she added hastily, at the stony expression on her husband’s face. ‘I did not mean to pry ….’

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said, eyeing her keenly. It had not occurred to him, until this very moment, that she had no idea of the size of the fortune that would transform their lives for ever.

  He could no longer attribute her enthusiastic participation in their sexual athletics in his study to a desire to pander to her suddenly wealthy husband, in anticipation of the rewards he would shower on her for showing him such generosity.

  ‘I never did get round to telling you what Travers told me, did I?’ he mused.

  If he had been thinking logically, he would have known that if avarice had prompted her spectacular departure from propriety, she would not have flounced off in such a huff afterwards. He might have been able to eat his lunch, instead of pushing the food around the plate morosely, wondering why he was so disappointed at receiving further proof Deborah was no different from any other woman.

  ‘When that was the whole purpose of asking you to join me in the office. We got … distracted, did we not?’

  She looked away, quickly, rolling a piece of bread and butter between her fingers into a doughy ball.

  He popped a piece of mutton pie into his mouth, recognising her action as a symptom of acute embarrassment.

  Though she had shown no embarrassment in his office. She had been just as keen to lift her skirts as he had been to get underneath them.

  Until that morning, he had always thought she was a rather shy, retiring girl. And her stammered confession earlier had confirmed his belief she was also rather naïve. What on earth had come over her, then? Not two days ago she had been a virgin. This morning, she had practically ripped off his shirt in her eagerness to press herself against his naked skin.

  Had she truly enjoyed her first sexual experience so much that she could not wait to repeat it? She had admitted to losing her head. It was only afterwards that she had felt ashamed.

  Having a vicar for a father, she was bound to have had a rigidly moralistic upbringing. Did she believe that enjoying sex was sinful? Was that what it had all been about? Not money, but morals? It certainly fit with his initial assessment of his wife’s character.

  ‘Deborah,’ he said gently, ‘there is nothing wrong with enjoying marital relations. Don’t you remember the words of the marriage service? Yes, celibacy is an honourable estate, but there are some people who just have passionate natures. You are one of them.’

  She dropped the sticky ball of dough on to her plate, wishing she had the courage to tell him how wrong he was. She did not have a passionate nature. Until she had met him, she had never hankered after male attention. She could have lived her whole life without ever marrying, and been content. It was meeting Robert that had changed everything. Because she had fallen in love with him!

  When he was not with her, she had only to think of him to turn shivery with longing. When she saw him, she always yearned for his touch. And when he did touch her, she stopped thinking of herself as a practical, plain spinster, whom no man would look at twice. She became Captain Fawley’s woman, her heart beating with such passion it swept everything away but her body’s insistent clamour to merge completely with him.

  But he did not want to hear her speak about anything to do with the emotions. No romantic nonsense for him! She turned to stare bleakly out of the bedroom window.

  ‘You don’t need to be ashamed of the way you are,’ he persisted. ‘I, for one, am very glad of it.’

  She was shocked when a little dart of pleasure shot through her.

  He reached across the table, capturing her chin in his hand, and turned her face towards his. Looking deep into her eyes, he said, ‘Do you have any idea what it did for me, to have you clawing at my back, urging me on, while I pushed up your skirts?’

  ‘Robert, please, don’t …’ How could he like the idea she could behave like that, without knowing it was because she loved him? She tried to avert her head, but his grip on her chin was too strong.

  ‘No, Deborah, it is too late to pretend you don’t enjoy my attentions. Why should you even wish to?’ He relaxed his hold, so that his fingers only framed her face. ‘We are man and wife, now. I never thought,’ he said, his hand stroking her face gently, now that she had ceased trying to avert her gaze, ‘that I could …’ He halted, on the brink of confessing he had once feared he would never fully recover his manhood. He had accepted the fact that even if he ever did regain his natural urges, any encounters would be brutish, brief, and confined to the kind of dark dens where money exchanged hands. To have this lovely woman kissing his face as though there were nothing wrong with it, exploding into rapture while he took his pleasure in her, was more than he could ever have dreamed of. That, he suddenly saw, was why he had been so disappointed to think she had been motivated by avarice, had perhaps even faked her response.

  He shook his head. He had met this woman only a few weeks ago, had been intimate with her for a matter of days. He was not about to bare his soul when he had not the least idea what motivated her.

  So he leaned across the table and kissed her instead.

  For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she ought to p
ut up some resistance. But it was only the last dying gasp of her rapidly withering pride. He wanted her, and even if it was only in a physical sense, even if this was the only way he would ever want her, she would not deny him. Besides, she wanted him too. She would be a hypocrite to pretend otherwise when just the merest brush of his lips on hers reduced her to a quivering mass of longing.

  She sighed into his mouth, winding her arms round his neck. It was all the encouragement he needed. Getting to his feet, he dragged her upright, and pulled her hard against him. He wondered, after what had happened this morning, if her conscience would make her fight her own inclinations. But far from struggling away, she pressed herself up against him, her breath coming in needy little gasps.

  ‘Bed,’ he said firmly, in between kisses. He did not break contact with her for more than the second necessary to grate that one word as he backed her away from the table.

  She felt her knees hit the edge of the mattress, and then they fell together in an ungainly tangle of limbs. Clinging to her resolve to concentrate on his needs, she asked, ‘Don’t you need Linney?’

  ‘Not until later,’ he growled, raising himself to tug at the laces to her gown. He pulled her bodice down, growled, ‘Much later,’ and lowered his head to suckle at her breasts through the material of her chemise.

  ‘These buttons would not dig into you so if you were to undo them,’ he said, a little later.

  She felt a sense of jubilation at this invitation to remove his jacket. She knelt up on the bed beside him when he sat up to facilitate the procedure. It would not have been at all hard to push the sleeves down his arms, since he was not in the habit of wearing his false hand when they were at home, if he had not been kissing her neck all the while.

  ‘Now your shirt?’ she asked, still hesitant to proceed without his full agreement. Once she had bared his upper body, he would not be able to hide the scarring she had glimpsed down the left side of his chest. When he nodded, she felt honoured that he was permitting her to do something so intimate for him. It was a simple matter to unlace his shirt, and pull it over his head. But, terrified of shattering his trust at such a crucial moment, she kept her eyes averted from the stump of his left arm, bending swiftly to kiss his mouth, as soon as she had flung the shirt to the floor.