She smiled lazily and reached out with her finger to nudge the wave of his hair back. “A scene like this?”
“A fire, a good meal, a beautiful lady. Most assuredly the stuff of dreams.”
Emma laughed. “You are certainly easy to please!”
“Who could ask for more than this?”
“Some people dream of riches, gold, jewels, exotic lands.”
“Do you dream of those things?”
“I’ve always dreamed of doing just what I wanted, of not having to dance with some elderly man with hair in his ears because he was a duke. Of being able to sit in my dressing gown and read all day if that’s what I want. Of eating as much as I want.” She put the last bit of bread into her mouth and chewed happily.
Jack shook his head with a grin. “You are the one who is easy to please. I can tell that our life together will be very successful.”
Emma certainly hoped so. “When did you have dreams of a place like this, Jack?”
His grin faded. “In Spain.”
“During the war?”
He nodded and sat back in his chair. “People who have never experienced war think it is all glorious adventure, but it is not. It is dirty and hot and very, very dull. Sometimes at night when I could not sleep, I would lie under the sky and look at the stars and imagine that it was all over. That I was at home again, in England where it is cool and green and quiet. That I had a wife, a lady with soft hands and a sweet scent, who waited to welcome me in our home.”
Emma’s eyes itched with tears at the images his words conjured, at the heartbreaking thought that he had been lonely and sad. Just as she had.
She wanted to put her arms around him, to hold him, to be that sweet-scented wife. She contented herself with reaching across the table and taking his hands in hers, folding his long, callused fingers inside of her own.
He raised her hand up and kissed it. “So, this is what I thought of. And now it is mine. Ours.”
“Yes.” Emma could say nothing else past the lump in her throat. Just that one word.
He gave her a regretful little smile. “I am sorry, my dear. This is meant to be our wedding trip, and I have cast a cloud over it with my own maudlin thoughts. You must be so tired.”
She was, a bit. Her head felt thick with wine and exhaustion, but she still did not want to let this evening go. She wanted to hear more about his time in Spain, his hopes for the future. She wanted to tell him of her own wartime in the lonely, cold Russian countryside. But perhaps this was not the time. Perhaps this evening was complete in itself, and of course they would have many others.
She nodded. “I am tired. As you said, it has been a long day. I am sure Natasha is waiting to help me undress.”
Oh! She had not meant to say undress in front of Jack. It seemed wrong, silly somehow. She pressed her fingers to her lips to hold in a drunken giggle.
But Jack did not seem to notice her little indiscretion. He just nodded and let go of her hands to lean back in his chair. “I will see you later.”
Emma stood up the leave the room. At the door, she glanced back at Jack once more, but he was not watching her. His gaze was on the dying fire, his hands flat on the table. He did not seem to be there anymore. He was somewhere far away.
Emma thought perhaps she should go back to him, kneel beside him, hold him close. She was loath to interrupt his perfect quiet, though, to disturb the invisible bubble that surrounded him. Instead, she shut the door quietly behind her and followed one of the inn’s maids upstairs to the bedchamber that waited.
Natasha dozed in an armchair there. The large, high bed was ready, the bedclothes turned down, her new nightdress, a frothy affair of handkerchief linen and pink satin ribbons, laid out. Her traveling valise sat on a stand, next to Jack’s brown leather case.
Emma frowned in puzzlement. Were they meant to share this room, then? That seemed a bit odd to her, but then she had never been a bride on her wedding night before. Perhaps it was just how things were done. Perhaps it had something to do with the deed.
She was just too tired to puzzle it all out right now. The excitement, the tension of the past few days drained out of her very muscles and bones as she looked at that white, inviting bed. Whatever had been keeping her upright flooded away, and she sagged against the door, as weighty as a bag of rocks.
Natasha awoke, startled, sitting up straight in her chair. “Oh, my lady!” she cried, and jumped to her feet. “I did not mean to fall asleep. I was waiting for you…”
Emma waved away Natasha’s words with a feeble gesture of her hand. “It is no matter, Natasha. It has been a very long day, and we are all tired. Has Madame Ana already retired?”
“Yes, my lady.” Natasha unfastened the buttons at the back of Emma’s carriage gown and began unlacing her light stays. “We have the room right above this one, very comfortable. The landlady apologized for having to put you and Lord St. Albans in the same chamber, but it was the last large one still available.”
Ah, so that was the explanation. A mere happenstance of practicality. “It is quite all right. We are married, after all.”
Natasha giggled. “So you are, my lady! I keep forgetting.”
“I confess I find it a difficult fact to hold in my mind, as well,” Emma murmured. She leaned against the back of a chair as Natasha reached down to take off Emma’s shoes.
Natasha paused. “My lady?”
“Hm?”
“Where are your shoes?”
“My shoes?” Emma looked down to see the strange sight of her stocking-clad feet. The white silk was smeared with dust, a tiny run just starting over the arch of her foot. She remembered slipping them off under the table, to ease the ache of her toes. She must have forgotten to put them back on.
How very odd, she thought. How truly improper to go walking around a public inn in her bare feet. This must really be the beginning of her new life.
She laughed at the silliness, the sheer exhaustion of it all. “I must have left them downstairs in the dining parlor.”
“The dining parlor, my lady?”
“Don’t worry, Natasha. We can fetch them in the morning.”
Natasha gave her a doubtful glance, clearly wondering what exactly Emma had been doing downstairs, but she said nothing. She just reached for Emma’s nightdress and dropped it over her head in a drift of cloudy, perfumed white.
As Emma tied the pink satin ribbons at the neck and wrists, Natasha released her hair from its pins and brushed it out. Thus arrayed, Emma climbed up into the bed and sank gratefully into its feather softness.
Natasha tucked the bedclothes around her. “Good night, my lady,” she whispered, a note of some avid reluctance in her voice. “Will you—will you tell me about it in the morning?”
Emma peered up at her drowsily. “It?”
“Yes. It.“
“Oh. It. Yes, of course.” Emma was really only distantly aware of what it might be at this time, but she was so tired she would have said anything to be alone. “Good night, Natasha.”
The maid left her then, with a soft click of the door to mark her passing. One candle still burned, casting its soft goldenness over the room. The curtains at the window were closed, but a small opening where the damask did not quite meet showed a sliver of the night sky.
Emma stared at that bit of starlit darkness and thought that really she ought to stay awake and wait for Jack. It seemed somehow important that she do so. But the tiredness that weighted her mind and eyelids was stronger, and her eyes drifted shut.
———
Jack waited what seemed a decent interval for his bride to do whatever it was brides did, waited until the clock on the wall chimed the hour. He had never actually possessed a bride before so was not sure of the exact protocol.
He had never had this precise blend of emotions before, either, a bizarre concoction of eagerness, need, desire, reluctance, uncertainty. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He knew he did not like the uncertainty. He was a man accustome
d to certitude, yet with Emma, with his wife, he always seemed on the very knife’s edge of suspense, always wondering what she might do next. Run away dressed as a maid? Row a boat across a pond like the veriest midshipman? Fall over a blasted potted plant and tear her skirt?
With Emma, one never knew, and that was part of her great attraction for Jack. But it also meant that he had no idea how she would react to having a husband—a greatly aroused husband—climb into her bed.
Jack shifted in his chair, staring at the last dying embers of the fire. The ensuing scene could really be almost anything. Just as he had never had a wife before, Jack had never bedded a virgin, either (at least not knowingly). He did not want to frighten her, didn’t want to overwhelm her with the desire that came over him like an inexorable tide whenever he saw her. This was the beginning of what would, he hoped, be many years together, and he wanted to make it right. He wanted to make it perfect.
Jack laughed at himself, at his ridiculous, circuitous thoughts. He could never make it perfect by sitting here alone while his bride waited in their nuptial chamber, perhaps growing more and more uncertain as she waited for him. He swallowed the last of his wine and left the dining parlor with a falsely confident step. The inn was quiet now, everyone abed except for a yawning footman who waited to clear away the supper remains and direct Jack to his chamber. In the thick silence, the creak of the stairs beneath Jack’s boots seemed to him like thunder.
He reached for the doorknob, half-fancying that it might be locked, but it turned easily in his hand. He slipped inside, closed the door behind him—and paused.
One candle, set on the dresser, lit the room, casting flickering shadows into the corners and over the figure of the woman who reposed on the bed. She was not waiting for him, nervous or otherwise. She was fast asleep.
Jack grinned at himself for working himself into such a state, imagining Emma worried and nervous and scared. She did nothing in the usual way—she would not have the usual bridal nerves. She appeared to have no nerves at all. He was the one who had been truly frightened, scared that his ardor for her, for his night-and-snow princess, would consume them both if unleashed.
At the sight of her there, peaceful against the pillows, he knew that his ardor burned no less bright but not so urgent now. He could touch her and not be consumed in the flames. Not at once, anyway.
He tossed his coat over a chair and unfastened his waistcoat, unwound his cravat. He pulled off his boots and moved forward in his stockinged feet to sit carefully on the edge of the bed.
Emma stirred a bit and wrinkled her nose in her sleep but did not wake. Her hands curled in the bedclothes, and she sighed. Jack reached out to gently disentangle a strand of her black hair from the pink ribbons at her neck. He kept his hand there—resting on the soft white material that covered her shoulder, feeling the gentle rise of her breathing—and just looked at her.
He should not have been so maudlin about his time in Spain, he thought. It was their wedding trip; things should be light and bright, not full of war and sadness. Yet there, in that quiet parlor with her, he had felt he could speak of it for the first time since he returned to England. It seemed safe and so far away. Her presence made all that horror, that ugliness, seem the distant unreal dream, and this time the only reality.
As he looked at her now, sleeping so peacefully, looking so beautiful and so breathtakingly young, he knew very clearly what he had faced those horrors for. It was not for some abstract concept of “England.” It was for women like her, so they could be safe and live then-happy lives with no dark threat over them. It was for her, his wife, who lay so trustingly on her feather pillows, so that one day, just maybe, he could leave that ugliness behind him and curl up inside her lilac sweetness and be at peace.
He threw his cravat and waistcoat onto the floor and crawled beneath the warm bedclothes next to her. She murmured and rolled toward him, curling into his arms as if she had been doing it for years. For forever.
Jack drew her close and buried his face in the satin spread of her hair. He listened to her soft breathing, to the sounds of the night outside their window, and fell asleep to its lullaby.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The bright beam of light arced into Emma’s eyes, cutting her sweet dream in half. She had been dreaming she was in a warm summer meadow, lying in soft, scented grass. She groaned and turned her head into the pillow, but it was too late. She was awake, and the dream was gone.
She flopped onto her back and opened her eyes onto a strange room, a new day. It took her a moment to remember that she was at an inn, that she was on her wedding trip. It was the second day of her marriage.
Emma turned her head to look at the sunshine coming through the gap in the heavy window curtains. It was too bright to be very early in the morning. The last thing she remembered was coming upstairs after supper, climbing into bed, trying to stay awake and wait for Jack. Apparently, she had not succeeded, because here it was morning, and she was all alone in the middle of the large bed.
Emma pushed back the blankets and sat up against the bank of pillows. She saw some of Jack’s clothes piled up on a chair, a waistcoat, a shirt, a rumpled cravat. His leather case was open, shaving kit laid out beside a basin of water on the dresser. Obviously, Jack had been here at some time, but he was gone now.
Had they, could they, have done the deed, without her even knowing it? Emma lifted the bedclothes and peered down at herself. Her nightdress, still neatly tied at the neck and wrists, lay pristinely over her legs. She did not feel at all different. Nothing had happened. But the pillow next to her still bore an indentation, a strand of waving dark brown hair caught in the white linen case.
Emma frowned as she glanced from that hair back to her own legs. Why had he not woken her up?
Still behind the shield of her upheld sheet, she heard the chamber door open, the tune of a soft whistle.
She peeked over the edge of the sheet. Jack stood there, dressed in a fresh blue coat and simply tied ivory-colored cravat, an overloaded breakfast tray in his hands. He grinned when he looked up and saw her peeking at him, interrupting the whistled tune.
Emma dropped the sheet and smiled at him tentatively. She did not say anything. She wanted to see what would happen next.
Jack came to the bedside and balanced the tray on one hip while he smoothed the covers over her legs so he could place the tray there. “Good morning, Lady St. Albans! I told Natasha I would bring your breakfast to you. There is tea and toast, some fruit—I hope that is fine?”
“It is perfect.” Emma watched him as he poured out the tea for her. He seemed quite cheerful this morning, smiling, happy, perfectly at ease. Not like the man who had spoken of Spain in such a quiet, pained voice. Not like a man who had been deprived of—something. She wondered what exactly had happened when he came to this room last night.
Jack kissed her cheek and sat down in the armchair, lounging back against the cushions. He hooked his leg over its arm, swinging his booted foot. “Well, eat up!” he urged. “We can leave when you are ready, but there is no hurry. Weston Manor is an easy half-day’s drive from here. Perhaps we could stop for meat pies and ale at luncheon.”
Emma laughed at the reminder of the simple fare she had enjoyed with such gusto on the day they met. She reached for her tea cup, feeling a bit more at ease. This was Jack. She was silly to be so nervous around him. But nervous she was. She wished she knew what was expected of her. She wished she had one of Madame Ana’s lists for married life.
When she had eaten a piece of toast and drunk all the tea, she pushed the tray away and looked over at Jack. He had left the chair and was packing away the shaving kit, the rumpled cravat.
“Why did you not wake me last night?” she asked quietly.
He put the last item into his case and turned to face her, his half-smile fading. “You were so tired after supper and were sleeping so very peacefully. I did not want to disturb you.”
Unable to meet his gaze any longer,
Emma looked down at her hands on the sheet. It would be so very easy to leave it at that, to agree that she had been tired and go on with their day. But something was left undone, something vital. She knew that their sudden marriage must have been as disruptive to Jack’s life as it had been to hers, even more so, and she did not want him to have regrets. Any regrets.
She would do her duty. But how to go about expressing that to him? She was not sure she even knew the right words.
“My aunt said…” she began, then swallowed hard and tried again. “My aunt said there would be— expectations about my wedding night.”
Jack’s smile returned, yet now it had a rueful quality, a mockery that could be either for himself or for her. She could not tell which.
“Oh, Emma,” he said. “I can only begin to imagine what else your aunt might have said to you.” He came and sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of her hands in his. He cradled it on his palm as if it were some fragile and precious piece of porcelain, looking down at it. “Close your eyes and think of England, perhaps?”
That was so close to what Lydia’s own mother had told her that Emma had to laugh. Her laughter seemed to ease something in Jack. His fingers closed over hers, and his shoulders relaxed. “Or of fat, pink babies,” Emma said.
“Yes, well, that, too.” He looked right at her, then, serious and steadfast. “Emma, I truly did not want to wake you last night because you were so very tired, and I was, too. It has been a very strange few days, for both of us. But I was glad of the time, because I was able to think.”
Emma wasn’t sure she liked where this conversation was going. She felt an ominous cold tingling in her toes, at the back of her neck. But Jack still held her hand, and she could not look away from him. “To think?”
“Yes. We have not known each other for very long at all, and the last thing I would ever want to do is frighten you in any way. We will be married for the rest of our lives, and I want us to be as happy as possible. I want us to begin properly.”
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