SHE SAT AT HER DRESSING-TABLE MIRROR, BRUSHING her hair long after she had dismissed her new maid for the night. There was little point in going to bed. She would never sleep. Her brain teemed with activity.
It had seemed so easy at first. In return for a lifetime of security for herself and her family, all she had to do was marry a man and spend a few weeks with him, meeting his family. She had very deliberately asked no questions. She had not needed to know.
It had still seemed relatively easy even after she had discovered exactly who her new husband was and who his family was. It had been somewhat nerve-racking, of course, to come to Enfield Park and to be presented to the Duke of Withingsby and everyone else. A great deal more had been expected of her than she had at first anticipated. But even so, it had been fairly easy.
If she had just done as she had been told. If she had just been content to be quiet and demure, to be his shadow. To be a quiet mouse. If she had only not looked about her and seen people—just human people caught up in the drama of life and really not doing very well at it at all. If she had just not come to care.
She sighed and set her brush down on the dressing table. She was not even going to try to sleep yet. She would go into the sitting room and write some letters—one to Philip, one to Penny and the children. It was time she wrote to them. She had been avoiding doing so. What, after all, could she write but lies? Not that there was any point in hiding the truth any longer, she supposed, since it was too late for any of them to stop what she had done. But she could not tell them in a letter. It must be face-to-face.
She seemed to have done nothing but lie for—for how long was it? Yesterday they had arrived at Enfield. The day before that they had married. Was it really less than three days altogether? Four days ago she had not even met the Marquess of Staunton. She had merely been feeling jittery at the prospect of being interviewed by Mr. Earheart.
She took a candle with her into the private sitting room of their apartments and lit two more when she got there. She found paper and pen and ink in the small escritoire and sat down to write.
“Dear Phil …”
The Earl of Tillden had acted all evening as if she did not exist, even though his grace had seated him to her right during dinner. The countess had nodded sweetly and nervously in her direction whenever their eyes had met but had avoided coming close enough to make conversation necessary. Lady Marie Lucas had been taken firmly under Marianne’s wing. She was a beautiful, elegant young lady, who fit into the drawing room at Enfield and blended in with the family there as if she had been born to it all—as indeed she had.
The marquess had not wished to marry her. Hence his marriage to her. But he had not seen Lady Marie for eight years or longer. She would have been a child. It must have been a shock to him to see her today. She wondered if he regretted … But she dipped the pen firmly into the inkwell. If he did, it was his problem.
“Dear Phil, You must think I am lost. Two whole days and I am only now writing to you. Everything has been very busy and very new. I am only just settling. There are four children, not three, but the youngest is not ready for my services yet. He is a plump, adorable baby, who crawls into everything he is not supposed to crawl into, who puts everything he finds into his mouth, and who considers everything that happens—especially the exasperation of his nurse—worthy of a chuckle.”
It was hard to believe that such a happy child could have come from Marianne and Richard. He had her thinking wistfully of motherhood. But no matter. She would be the world’s most attentive and indulgent aunt to Phil and Agnes’s children and to Penny’s.
“The oldest child, Augusta, is eight years old,” she wrote. “She is a grave little girl who has never learned to be a child, and she is hostile to me and to”—Charity brushed the feather of the quill pen across her chin for a moment—“Mr. Earheart. But I did coax first a smile and then a giggle from her after tea today when I told her about the lodgekeeper’s two children ambushing me this morning by hiding in the branches of a tree and showering me with leaves as I passed beneath. I believe she must be fond of those children. I will have to see if I can arrange for them to play together occasionally. I do not believe she has been allowed a great deal of time simply for play.”
She had told Augusta about some of her own childhood exploits, including the time she had climbed to the topmost branches of a tree close to the house to rescue a kitten who was mewing most piteously, while Penny wept and Phil sniveled on the ground below. The kitten had tired of its perch and removed itself to the ground long before Charity had climbed laboriously to the top to find it gone. And then the inevitable had happened—just as it had this morning to a lesser degree with Harry. It had taken a gardener, their father, and a passing peddler—not to mention oceans of tears and much anxious and conflicting advice from the other two children and their mother—to get her down again. Charity had milked the story for all it was worth when telling it to Augusta.
Charity stopped writing. She frowned and brushed the feather absently across her chin again. She had invented ages and genders for the three mythical children she was to teach. What exactly had she told Phil? She must be careful not to completely contradict herself. That was the trouble with lies. A good memory was essential if one was going to start telling them.
But something happened to distract her. The sitting-room door opened. She looked over her shoulder in some surprise.
Her husband was standing there. He was wearing a wine-colored brocaded dressing gown with leather slippers. His hair was disheveled but only succeeded somehow in making him look even more handsome than usual. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Ah,” he said, “it is you. What are you doing?”
She half covered her letter with one hand, trying not to look too secretive about it.
“I thought I would write a couple of letters before going to bed,” she said. “I am sorry. Did the light disturb you?”
“Not at all,” he said. “To whom do you write?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “To some friends.”
“At your old home?” he asked. “I was under the impression that you were alone in London.”
She was thankful that his curiosity did not extend to strolling across the room to look over her shoulder.
“At my old home, yes,” she said.
He stood just inside the door, his hands at his back, his lips pursed, looking almost awkward. As if he felt he did not quite belong there. As if he were embarrassed. Yet he was in his own apartments in his own boyhood home.
“I never used this room,” he said as if in answer to her thoughts. “It seems like a woman’s room.”
“It is cozy,” she said.
“Yes. Well, good night.” He turned back toward the door.
“Good night, my lord,” she said.
He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. “Would you mind if I sat here while you write?” he asked. “I will not disturb you.”
This was the Marquess of Staunton—that cold, haughty, cynical man? This uncertain, almost humble man?
“I would not mind at all, my lord,” she said. “Please do join me.”
He sat on a cozy love seat, set his elbow on the arm, and rested his closed fist against his mouth.
“Proceed,” he said when she continued to look at him.
His eyes looked darker than usual—it must be a trick of the candlelight. But no, she thought as she turned back to her letter. It was more than that. Something had been lifted behind his eyes. But she would not turn back to see if she had been correct.
It had been a difficult letter to write even when she was alone. It was next to impossible now. In the course of fully twenty minutes she limped her way through another few sentences and brought a very unsatisfactory letter to an end. She waited for the ink to dry before folding the page carefully. She would have to take it into the village tomorrow. She could not set it on the tray downstairs addressed to Mr. Philip Duncan.
“I have finished.” She turned and smiled—and was jolted to find that he was sitting exactly as he had been twenty minutes before. He was still watching her.
“It is a very short letter,” he said. “And it is only one. I broke your concentration.”
“It does not matter,” she said. “I can write another letter tomorrow.”
“You are gracious, Lady Staunton,” he said. “Always gracious. My father appears to have grown remarkably fond of you.”
“He is kind,” she said.
He laughed softly. “ ‘My dear,’ ” he said in his father’s voice. “ ‘Dear daughter. My dear daughter, come and seat yourself on this stool at my feet.’ And then a careless hand resting lightly and affectionately on your shoulder. A soft look in his eyes.”
“He is kind,” she said again. The duke had made a potentially impossible evening really rather pleasant for her.
“His grace is never kind,” he said, “and never affectionate. He plays a game with you, my lady. Or rather he plays a game with me. We play cat and mouse with each other.”
By each pretending to an affection for her to infuriate the other. Neither of them felt the fondness for her that they showed in public.
“Does it hurt you?” he asked.
Yes, it did. It hurt dreadfully to be seen and used as a pawn rather than as a person. But she had freely agreed to be so seen and so used and she had ignored the advice to make herself into a mere shadow. Shadows had no feelings of personal hurt or of pity for those who did the hurting.
She shook her head. “It is just a temporary arrangement,” she said. “It will soon be over.”
“Yes.” He gazed at her and she was sure she had not been wrong about his eyes. Some of the defenses had been allowed to fall. Perhaps he felt safe with her here in his own apartments late at night.
She got to her feet. “It is late,” she said. “It is time I went to bed. Good night, my lord.”
“Let me come there with you,” he said as she reached the door and lifted her hand to the knob.
She realized her naiveté then. She had felt the atmosphere ever since he stepped inside the room, and she had thought it to be mere self-consciousness on her part. She recognized the tension now for what it had been from the start. They both—oh, yes, both—wanted to lie with each other again. It was open now in his words and the tone in which they had been spoken. And it was open too in her body’s response to his words. There was a heavy throbbing in that most secret inner place where he had been two nights ago—and where she wanted him again.
It would not be wise. It was not love or even affection. It was not even marriage. It was need, the need of a twenty-three-year-old woman to mate, to celebrate her womanhood. It was a need that had lain dormant and almost unfelt in her until two nights ago. Now it was a need aroused with almost frightening ease. It was a need, she suspected, that might well grow into a constant craving if she gave in to it and became more familiar with the earth-shattering delights she had discovered two nights ago.
“You may feel free to say no,” he said. “I will not force you or even try to persuade you.”
And yet if she was honest with herself she would admit that it was already too late to prevent the craving. It had been there last night, it had been one reason for her staying up tonight, and it would be a demon to be fought for years to come. Tonight she had a chance to experience that delight again, to savor it, to commit it to memory for the barren years ahead.
“Allow me to open the door for you, my lady.” His voice came from just behind her. “It was no part of our agreement. You must not feel coerced. I will not trouble you by asking again.”
“I would like to lie with you,” she said.
One of his hands touched her shoulder. The other reached past her to open the door. “I will take you to my bed, then, if you have no objection,” he said.
“No,” she said. “No, I have none.”
His bedchamber was identical in size and shape to her own, but his was a masculine room, decorated in shades of wine and cream and gold. It smelled masculine—of leather and cologne and wine and unidentifiable maleness.
Did it matter that it was not for love? Or even for conjugal duty? Did it matter that it was just for need—for craving? Did the absence of either love or duty make it immoral? He was her husband. She turned to him and looked up into his eyes. Her very temporary husband. She would think about morality when he was no longer her husband, when she was alone again. Alone with her family.
Alone.
IT HAD BEEN the day of his final triumph, the day when he had at last won his undisputed independence and had moreover forced his father publicly to accept it. He had come home and faced his demons and even made some peace with them. It would no longer be a place to be avoided and his family would no longer be people to be avoided. He could be civil to Will again.
He should be rejoicing. He should be planning his return to his own life. He should be turning over to his man of business the matter of his wife’s settlement.
He was not rejoicing. He was restless. He tried lying down. He tried willing sleep. It would not come. He was going to have to stay at Enfield, he admitted to himself at last. His father was gravely ill—dying, in fact. The admission brought him momentary panic. They were going to have to talk—really talk. His father was going to have to be persuaded to let go the reins of power so that he could relax and perhaps prolong his days. That meant that he, Staunton, was going to have to take over. He was going to have to stay. Indefinitely. He could not—would not—let his father die alone.
He could not keep his wife here indefinitely. He stood at the window of his room looking out into the darkness. Clouds must have moved over—there was no moonlight. There was no need to keep her here longer than a few days more, in fact. Once Tillden and his family returned home, she might be allowed to leave too. After all, he had not deceived his father about the true nature of his marriage, and he had no real wish or need to deceive him. The point was that the marriage was real and indissoluble. His father, being a realist, had accepted that. She had served her purpose. Now, soon, she might be allowed to go.
The marquess set his hands on the windowsill and leaned on them. He drew in a slow and audible breath and admitted something to himself. He wanted her. Now—in bed. But it was not she specifically he wanted, he told himself. He wanted a woman. Probably because he knew he would not have a woman for a long time. His grace had always been particularly strict about any dalliances his sons showed signs of initiating with local wenches. And his eldest son quite agreed with him. There were places enough where one might slake unruly appetites. The place where one exercised mastery and carried out the responsibilities that came with it was not one of them. He wanted his wife because she was close by—in the next bedchamber—and because she would not be there for long and he was going to be very womanless. He laughed softly in self-derision.
He wondered how she would react if he were to walk into her bedchamber now, demanding his conjugal rights. Perhaps she would give them to him without argument. His nostrils flared. He would go into his study, he decided. He would find something to do there. Some of his favorite books were there. If he thought hard enough, he would surely think of someone to whom he owed a letter. If that failed him, then he would dress again and go tramping about outside in the darkness.
But as he approached his study, he saw the light beneath the sitting-room door. And so he went there instead and invited himself to sit with his wife as she wrote her letter—and what had kept her up so late? he wondered. She was wearing a very plain, very serviceable white cotton dressing gown. Her hair was loose and lay in shining waves down her back.
He still wanted her. And he would admit to himself now that it was not just a woman he wanted. He wanted her—her innocence, her wholesomeness. He had found them enticing qualities two nights before. She had played her part well, he thought, watching her as she wrote, her posture correct yet graceful. More than well. She had shown a warmth and a charm and a graciousness that had affected them all, with the possible exception of Marianne. Even Charles had watched her this evening as she sat on the low stool by their father, a puzzled frown on his face.
She had done well. He had caught himself feeling proud of her, pretty and dignified in the appallingly dull gray silk, before realizing that pride was not an appropriate feeling under the circumstances. Not a warm pride, anyway.
He wondered to whom she wrote with such difficulty. Was it someone to whom she merely felt duty-bound to write? Or was it someone of whom she was so fond that she was inhibited by his presence? But he had no right to his curiosity. And no wish to be curious. When she left him, he wanted to be able to forget about her.
But tonight he wanted her. He wanted her beneath him. He wanted his face in her hair. The sooner she was out of his life the better it would be for him.
He gave in to weakness—and thought that she was going to refuse him. It would be as well if she did, though he did not know what he would do for sleep. But she did not refuse.
“I would like to lie with you,” she said after he had got to his feet to open the door for her.
His wife did not mince words. And so he gave in to another weakness. He wanted her in his own bed. He wanted the memory of her there—though the thought, which took him completely by surprise, had him frowning in incomprehension.
There was no timidity in his wife—it seemed laughable to him now that he had mistaken her for a quiet mouse only a few days ago. She turned to him when they were in his bedchamber and looked full into his eyes—her own as wide and defenseless as they had ever been. He hoped they did not denote vulnerability. He hoped no one would ever hurt her deeply.
He undid the sash of her dressing gown and pushed the garment off her shoulders. He undid the buttons of her nightgown, opened back the edges, drew it down her arms, let it fall to the floor. She stood still and unresisting—and looked into his eyes.
She was beautifully proportioned without being in any way voluptuous. He had always thought that he preferred voluptuous women—until tonight.
He removed his dressing gown and pulled his nightshirt off over his head. Her eyes roamed over his body.
“We will lie down,” he told her.
“Yes,” she said.
He liked a great deal of foreplay and he had many skills. He liked to mount the bodies of his women just for the final vigorous ascent to release. He never kissed his women—not on the face at least. A kiss was too intimate a thing—too emotionally intimate, that was. A bedding was a purely physical thing with no emotional overtones whatsoever.
He did not kiss his wife. His hands went to work on her in the long-familiar ritual. But although he was aroused, he could not seem to get his mind involved in what he did. The pattern had become wearying. It would no longer satisfy. Not with her. He wanted to be lying atop her body. He wanted to be warmed by her heat, soothed by her softness. He wanted to be inside her, enclosed by her femininity. He wanted his face in her hair.
And so he let go of the pattern, the ritual, the familiar skills. He lifted himself over her and lowered his weight onto her. He nudged her legs apart. He had no idea if she was ready. It took women a long time to be ready for mounting. He slid his hands beneath her and pushed carefully inside. She was smooth with wetness.
It was strange, he thought, breathing in the erotic smell of soap, how one could be taut and pulsing with arousal without feeling any of the usual animal urges to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure out of the experience. He wanted merely to be in her, to ride her, to be close to her, to be this close, to be a part of her, of her grace and her warmth and her charm, to breathe in the essence of her. He stopped thinking.
He followed instinct. He had nothing else to guide him. He had abandoned skills and expertise and familiar moves. He followed instinct, mating with her with slow and steady rhythm, prolonging with unthinking instinct the exquisite and regrettable moment when they would become even more nearly one for the merest heartbeat before becoming two and separate once more. He did not know when she twined her legs about his but was only aware of the more comfortable unison of the rhythm they shared.
He sighed into her hair. She made low little sounds of contentment. It amazed him during one lucid moment that there was no great excitement in either of them. Only something far, far more dangerous—but he shut down the thought before it could be articulated.
She lost rhythm first. Her inner muscles began to contract convulsively. Her breathing became more labored. She untwined her legs from his and braced her feet against the mattress. She pushed upward, straining against him. He thrust hard into her and pressed his hands down on her hips.
There were several moments of rigid tautness in her before she surged about him in utter, reckless abandon. She came to him in silence. She came to him with everything she had. He felt gifted, which was a strange feeling when all that had happened was that she was having a good sexual experience. A purely physical experience.
He let her relax beneath him. He savored the warmth and softness and silence of her. He waited for her breathing to become normal. Then he drove himself to the place where he longed to be, the place where he had always longed to be. Always. All his life. Though it was not a place exactly. It was … He heard himself shout out. He felt her arms come about him. He felt her legs twine about his again. He heard her murmur something against his ear—something exquisitely sweet and totally incomprehensible.
He felt as if he were falling and was powerless to stop himself.