by Lynne Barron
“I thought we might take dinner informally this evening.”
Jack’s softly spoken words brought her out of her melancholy thoughts. She looked away from the carriage window to find him watching her. She focused her gaze on his jaw, on the muscle that ticced beneath the shadow of whiskers. It was a wonder he hadn’t done permanent damage. It seemed that every time she’d seen him of late his jaw had been clamped tight.
“With Charles and Frances ensconced at Hastings House and Justine with my father and Lucille for the night,” he continued, his voice low, “I see no need to have the servants lay a proper dinner in the dining room. There is a pretty sitting room between your bedchamber and mine where we might share a quiet dinner.”
“As you wish,” Olivia agreed, careful to keep any trace of her thoughts from her voice.
What did he mean share a quiet dinner in the sitting room that connected their chambers? Surely he did not intend to spend the night with her. What would be the point?
“What do you wish?” he asked, leaning forward in the seat across from her, his blue eyes intent upon her.
“I wish…”
What did she wish? She hadn’t a clue in that moment.
“You wish?” he prompted.
“I wish we might find a way to be happy together.” The words tumbled from her lips unbidden, tumbled into the shadowy carriage where they seemed to swirl around them.
As if surprised by her admission, Jack leaned back against the seat, his hands landing on his knees.
“But you don’t believe we will,” he whispered.
“I will do my best to be a good wife to you,” she hurried to assure him, pasting a practiced smile on her lips. “You have only to tell me how to please you.”
“You don’t have to please me,” he breathed.
“I am sorry to have stolen your dreams from you.”
“You did not—”
“Twice, no less.”
“Olivia, listen to me.” He leaned forward, his hands coming out to grasp hers where she’d twisted them in her lap. “I’ve had time to think these last few days. It is obvious to me now that you did not know Elizabeth and I had been forced to marry.”
“I swear to you that I did not run to my mother. I never even saw her that day.”
“Yes. I realize that what happened all those years ago was not your doing.”
“But it was. My mother saw the way I…she saw and she set a trap for you.”
“Your mother, not you.”
“You can’t have forgiven my part in it?”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“When I think of how I followed you about all pie-faced…”
“I think you mean moon-eyed,” he corrected with a smile.
“Moon-eyed, pie-faced, whatever,” she replied. “And now I’ve done it again.”
“You’ve hardly followed me about,” Jack responded slowly.
“Didn’t I? If I hadn’t foolishly believed I could dare to be wicked,” she said, injecting a trilling laugh into the words that grated in her ears. “I imagine you found the entire episode ridiculous.”
“What episode?”
She pulled a shuddering breath deep into her lungs, fought to calm her racing thoughts. She would not fall apart before him. She would be the proper wife he wanted.
In truth that was all she had to give him, her new husband. She would be London’s Darling for him, the oh so proper Lady Bentley. She would be a credit to his name, seeing as how she’d assured it would end with him.
“What sort of lady goes down on her knees in a carriage?” she asked with a wry grimace that she immediately forced from her lips. “Trapping you yet again.”
“You did not trap me.” His hands tightened around her fingers.
“We must cry a spade not a spade,” she answered. “Or something like that.”
Jack chuckled, the sound dark and gravelly. Olivia shied away from his touch, from the memories evoked by his husky laughter. Carefully she extricated her hands from his.
“You did not get the wife you’d hoped for, I know,” she continued relentlessly, determined to get it all said. “I cannot give you what you want—”
“Olivia, stop this,” he interrupted with a shake of his head.
“Please, you must allow me to say it,” she implored. “Then we will never speak of it again.”
She waited until Jack settled back against the carriage seat.
“I cannot ever give you a child, a son. But I can give you all the rest. I want to be the wife you’d hoped for in all other respects. With the help of my family, I will open every door you wish to enter, for you and for Justine. I will be a loving stepmother to your daughter. I will be a proper wife to you.”
Jack made no reply to her speech, in fact he seemed not even to hear her words. Or perhaps he waited for more. But there was nothing else she could offer him.
“It will be enough,” he finally answered with a decisive nod.
Olivia smiled across the space that separated them, hoping he spoke true, hoping she would prove to be enough for him, hoping that they might find a way to live a peaceful life together.
“Welcome home, my lady,” Pendergrass greeted when she entered the narrow foyer, Jack following behind her with one hand pressed to the small of her back.
“Thank you, Pendergrass,” she replied as Jack handed his gloves and hat to the butler.
His rented house in Bedford Square was just as she remembered it. Cluttered with outlandish bric-a-brac and too many furnishings.
“I believe I will rest before dinner,” she said when it appeared her husband intended to usher her into the front parlor. She was not ready to enter the room where only weeks before she’d demanded he put his cock…
She pushed the memory from her mind as she’d done a hundred times in recent days. It hurt to remember how she’d crawled all over him that day, how she’d fallen to her knees and cried afterward, how he’d carried her to his bed and made love to her with his mouth.
Worse yet, how he’d forged the head of his shaft into her swollen cunny, intent upon planting his seed in her barren womb.
What a silly, wanton woman she must have seemed to him with her endless curiosity and her shameless response to his every touch. She couldn’t decide which had likely plagued him more, her quiet adoration all those years ago or her unrestrained lust of the last few months.
It mattered little. She would not torment him with either, not ever again.
As she slowly made her way upstairs, she vowed that she would lock away that wicked part of her. She would make no demands of him. If he should ever decide to come to her bed, and truly she could not imagine why he would, she would behave with the decorum expected of Lady Bentley, the decorum expected of any proper wife.
Three hours later Olivia sat in the window seat of her chamber, her legs curled beside her on the floral cushion. Celeste had assisted her in bathing and dressing in a lavender muslin dress, one of a dozen she’d ordered her maid to retrieve from the depths of her closet where she’d shoved them when she’d returned from Idyllwild.
Olivia had taken one look at the bed covered in a bright pink comforter and brimming with pillows of every imaginable shape and size and opted for the padded window seat where she could watch as evening descended over the small garden behind the house.
She turned at the soft knock on the door which she assumed led to the sitting room.
“Come in,” she called to whichever servant waited on the other side.
But it was Jack who opened the door and strode into her chamber. He wore a long blue robe belted loosely at his waist. His legs and feet were bare beneath the embroidered silk. His chest gleamed in the deep vee between the wide lapels.
Olivia felt heat rise to her cheeks and quickly ducked her head.
“Dinner awaits, Mrs. Bentley,” he drawled. “That is, Lady Bentley.”
She scrambled off the window seat, disconcerted by the reminder of her married
state and his near nakedness.
“I hadn’t thought…” she began, uncertainly. “That is I…you are dressed as if for…as if to retire for the night.”
“I fully intend to retire for the night,” he agreed with smile. “To bed in fact. With my bride. As soon as I’ve fortified her for the coming ordeal.”
“Coming ordeal,” she repeated, tempted to grin back at him, tempted to toss back some naughty quip.
They looked at one another through an awkward beat of silence.
“Did you think I would not wish to make love to you on our wedding night?” Jack finally asked in obvious surprise.
Of course. They must consummate the marriage or it was not a true marriage.
“How silly,” she said as much to herself as to the man who stood staring at her from across the room.
“Indeed,” he agreed, holding his hand out to her.
Olivia walked to him and placed her hand in his, a shiver racing up her spine at the feel of his fingers engulfing hers.
The sitting room was cozy, or it would have been had there not been a huge stuffed bear in one corner.
“Goodness,” Olivia said as she took in the ferocious beast with his great clawed paws raised above his massive head.
“I should have thought to have him removed before now,” Jack replied with a laugh. “In truth I have found him to be a soothing companion these last days.”
Mrs. Good had curbed her tendency to over accentuate a room, but only just barely. The walls were a soft buttery yellow above white wainscoting. Blue drapes were pulled back from the tall open windows to reveal the night beyond. The furnishings were a hodge-podge of dark wood and delicate white pieces. Portraits and landscapes dressed the walls at uneven intervals, creating a haphazard jumble that appealed to Olivia.
In the center of the room before the cold hearth sat a round table draped in rose silk. A dozen candles scattered about the room cast flickering light over silver trays of cold meat and cheese and fruit. A bottle of champagne rested in a matching ice bucket, two glasses already having been poured.
Jack seated her on a chair before circling the table to take the seat across from her.
“I hope you don’t mind if I ordered a light dinner,” he said.
“Not at all.”
“I thought with the weather being unseasonably warm a full seven-course meal would be too much.”
“It has been dreadfully hot this past week,” she agreed, watching as he served her from the various platters.
“The past two weeks,” he replied.
“We could do with a bit of rain,” she added.
Olivia worked hard to keep the conversation casual, steering them into a protracted discussion of the weather, the latest gossip, and finally which invitations they should accept in the final weeks of the Season. And all the while she was painfully aware of Jack’s wide chest visible across the table, of his hands refilling her glass, of his warm gaze on her face, on the column of her throat, on the swell of her breasts above the bodice of her gown.
Only a few weeks ago she would have imagined she saw desire in his hooded gaze. She might have pushed back from the table to clamber into his lap. Perhaps she would have fed him with her hands, her fingers teasing over his lips, trailing over his jaw and down his neck to disappear beneath his robe.
She shook her head at her foolish thoughts. A proper wife did none of those things.
“Is the custard not to your liking?”
She looked up in surprise to find him watching her stabbing her spoon into the warm desert.
“It’s fine,” she replied, shoveling a spoonful past her lips to prove it. She darted her tongue out to catch a wayward drop and Jack’s eyes fixed on her mouth.
Her breath caught at the fierce look in his eyes. His jaw clamped tight.
“I should,” she began, not at all sure what she should do. He was looking at her as if he desired her. But Olivia was no longer fooled. It wasn’t desire that she saw in his eyes, in the clenching of his jaw. It was the same cold determination she’d seen a dozen times, every time he’d forced himself to bed her.
“You should prepare to have your husband make love to you,” he whispered, his eyes lifting to hers.
“Of course.” She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet, her heart racing. “If you will give me a moment to call my maid. I will receive you shortly.”
“Receive me?” he repeated as he too came to his feet.
“I just need a moment of…of privacy…to prepare.”
An almost comical look of confusion drifted over his strong features and Olivia might have smiled had she not been so terribly confused. This was her wedding night and her new husband intended to exercise his rights.
Without another word Olivia spun and retreated to her chamber, all too aware of the man who silently watched her until she closed the door. She stopped in the center of the room, her gaze darting to the bed where the coverlet had been turned down in her absence. A pale-blue silk and lace nightgown and matching robe lay at the foot of the bed.
She realized she needn’t ring for Celeste at all. Her gown buttoned in front. She’d left off her corset in favor of light stays that laced up her stomach.
In less than two minutes she’d changed into the shimmering silk nightgown and burrowed beneath the sheets, tucking them beneath her arms. Flat on her back, she waited for her husband to join her.
She had little time to wait, little time to prepare herself for what was to come. Jack knocked on the door and pushed it open without waiting for an invitation. He stopped just inside her chamber, his broad shoulders blocking the light from the sitting room beyond. His face was cast in shadows, his eyes hidden from her.
“You’re already in bed,” he murmured as he stepped into the room, pushing the door closed behind him.
Olivia watched him prowl nearer, all of her senses alive with the knowledge that he would take her, whether she wished it or not.
On that point she was torn. She wanted to feel his hands on her, to feel his cock buried deep within her cunny. She wanted the pleasure he could give her.
But how would she bear it knowing he didn’t truly want her, thought only to consummate their marriage, to make it legal and binding. He’d never wanted her, never truly desired her. No more than Palmerton had ever desired her.
She remembered the one time the earl had come to her bed after she’d born him the necessary heir.
Surprised by his sudden appearance in her chamber after months during which she’d seen him only across the dining room table and occasionally over breakfast, she’d mistakenly believed he came to her from a desire to bed her. What else could she think? They both knew another child was an impossibility.
When Palmerton had kissed her, when he’d squeezed her breasts she’d made every effort to relax and enjoy his attentions, returning his kisses, arching into his touch. For a few brief moments she’d felt a stirring, a whisper of desire.
“Quit shifting about,” he’d gritted out between clenched teeth as he prodded at the opening to her body. “Just lay still and let me find whatever pleasure I can.”
Horrified, she’d immediately subsided. But there’d been no pleasure to be found, not for either of them. After no more than a few minutes of fumbling between her spread legs, Palmerton had snarled an oath and lurched from her bed.
“How can you expect me to get hard when you lay there squirming beneath me,” he’d growled before pulling his nightshirt over his head. “I should have gone to my mistress, no matter that her courses are flowing. If you’d just submit as you ought to I could imagine she was beneath me. But no, you can’t even do that for me. You’re useless to me, madam.”
She wondered who Jack had thought of all those times he’d been thrusting into her body.
It hardly mattered as this was likely to be the only time he would come to her bed, the last time she would find pleasure at a man’s hands.
Jack halted beside the bed, his gaze raking over
her form beneath the light sheet.
“You look like a virgin bride,” he said, his voice laced with laughter.
“I’m sorry, was I wrong to wait for you in bed?” she asked in confusion.
He seemed baffled by the question, his hands stilling on the belt of his robe.
With a smile that she hoped appeared welcoming, Olivia raised the sheet.
“There is no right or wrong between us, Livy,” he replied after a moment.
“No, of course not,” she agreed. “Would you like me to remove my nightgown?”
“I’ll do it.”
“No, you needn’t. I wasn’t certain what you would prefer.” She rose to her knees on the bed and quickly yanked her nightgown over her head, tossing it unceremoniously on the floor.
Still he hesitated beside the bed, his hands clenching on the knot of his belt.
Unsure what he expected of her, she settled on to her back once more and waited.
“Olivia,” he breathed. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she answered. “I am…I am ready.”
“Ready,” he repeated.
“If you are,” she added, her eyes dropping below his hands to the unmistakable proof of his readiness.
“Oh, I’m ready,” he said, tearing at the belt of his robe before shrugging out of the garment. “You are decidedly not ready.”
“But I am,” she protested as he crawled over her, his knees wedging her legs apart, his hands resting on either side of her head.
“There’s ready and there’s ready,” he growled as his head dipped.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack captured whatever nonsense hovered on Olivia’s lips, afraid he would howl with either laughter or frustration if he listened to even one more word.
I am ready.
For what? The woman had gone completely daft if she thought he would settle for a quick coupling to seal their marriage.
He’d known halfway through dinner that something was terribly wrong with his bride. Hell, he’d known three days ago when she’d demurely accepted his offer of marriage after the fiasco in the stables. He’d certainly known it each day since as she’d avoided his eyes and evaded his every attempt to touch her, to tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow, to brush a wayward curl behind her ear, to kiss her chastely on the cheek.
