‘Why did you marry me, Max?’
‘What?’ he yelped as if Georgia had stung him. The question came at him out of the night and he should never have allowed her to creep up on him while he was holding a hammer. He dropped it hastily and added a limp sounding, ‘Why?’ while he tried to think of an answer that would make her go away again, before he begged her to take him into her bed and never mind why.
‘I need to know,’ she said and he didn’t want to tell her.
He had wondered the same thing so many times lately, despite the joy of seeing her children blossom and having a family around him just as he dreamt he might before Georgia burst back into his life and turned it upside down again.
‘I needed a wife and couldn’t endure the thought of Ness and his Duchess playing tug-o’-war with your daughters and you having to watch them,’ he managed to say and felt quite proud of himself.
‘And?’ she demanded as he felt frustrated and a little bit angry with her for not taking his reasons for marrying her as final and going away.
‘And I thought we had discussed this as much as it needs discussing when we agreed to marry one another in Zach’s park that morning.’
‘Becky says you were in love with me when we were young,’ she said bluntly and he barely suppressed a groan.
‘My little sister should learn to keep her mouth shut,’ he grumbled and could not look at Georgia in case he saw pity in her lovely eyes.
‘No, she should not and don’t you dare tell her so because I’m glad she told me.’
‘Glad I suffered as only a very young and inarticulate youth can from calf love?’ he said as if it was almost a joke. It really wasn’t, so he glared at a plank of green oak and wished she would go before he broke down and begged her to love him now, or at least tolerate him in her bed if he wooed her carefully enough.
‘I wish I had known,’ she said as if she was almost as uncomfortable with this subject as he was. Why was she persisting with it, then?
‘Would it have made any difference?’
‘Yes, of course it would. I would have refused Edgar for one thing. You were my best friend and knowing you loved me would have made it wrong for me to marry him.’
‘You wouldn’t have married me, though. Not a boy of eighteen without a title and a grand house or many prospects; your mother would never have let you.’
‘Papa would if he thought we loved one another enough, although I expect he would have made us wait a year or two.’
‘Ah, but first you would have had to love me back—as a man and not a gawky boy—and you didn’t, did you?’
‘I don’t know, Max,’ she said sadly. ‘I was so young and silly and full of my own importance and Mama’s warped ideas I don’t think I knew what love was.’
‘Maybe I didn’t, either,’ he said, defending himself because he really had loved her then and when he was one and twenty and it was even more hopeless than when she was married to another man. He was trying so hard not to love her again and sometimes he thought the effort of keeping it at bay was going to drive him to drink. ‘And I did try to tell you once, but you were not listening.’
‘You did?’ she said, looking shocked and puzzled. So much for his grand declaration all those years ago when she couldn’t even remember the day a stammering boy was stopped in mid-fluster by the entrance of smooth and sophisticated Lord Edgar Jascombe.
She had been so puzzled by what he was trying, and failing, to say at the time that she had looked relieved at the interruption. Jascombe must have seen and heard more than she did since Max suffered that beating the next night. He supposed it took Jascombe a day to find bullies skilled and discreet enough to only half kill him and make sure he was out of the way while Jascombe stole his love. No doubt doing it had added spice to the whole sorry business for the devious little rat.
‘The day before I was injured I tried to tell you how much I adored you, but I couldn’t get the words out and you seemed to think it was a joke. Then I heard about your marriage while I was at home recovering and there was no point in trying to say it again.’
‘Now I remember! I thought you meant you loved me like a brother, as we had been such good friends, and that was why you insisted on being in London when I was there. I assumed you were there to make sure I chose the right husband. I even felt annoyed with you when you glowered at my suitors because I thought you were being overprotective.’
‘No, I meant every glower and grumble, young idiot that I was.’
‘You were not,’ she defended the boy against the mature man. ‘I secretly thought it was wonderful you wanted to look out for me since you knew Mama was so in love with the idea of a title she wouldn’t fight off improper advances from anyone who had one.’
‘Some protector I was when you married Jascombe anyway.’
‘I can’t tell you how much I wish you had managed to tell me you loved me that day. My life would have been so different if only you had and I must have hurt you so badly.’
‘I mended in more ways than one after I was set upon and sent home and you still wouldn’t have had me as a scrubby youth if I had managed to say I loved you. Jascombe could dazzle and outdo me and he was a grown man. You thought me such a boy you didn’t seem to want to listen to what I was trying to say to you that day and I wasn’t very good at saying it,’ he told her with a shrug and a wry smile he hoped said Ah, well, it was a long time ago.
‘I would have thought harder about his dazzling and outdoing if you had stayed and tried again. I would have said no to you as well, but I wouldn’t have married him either.’
‘It’s all water under the bridge. You did marry him and I grew up. We are both very different people now.’
‘And you married me for old times’ sake?’
‘I married you because you needed a husband and I will need a wife one day if you can bear to be one to me. We have had the rest of this conversation already and it isn’t the right time or place to rehash it.’
‘When will it be, then?’
‘I don’t know—maybe when you make up your mind whether you can tolerate me as a husband or not,’ he said rashly and saw her flinch and felt ashamed of himself. ‘Please forget I said that,’ he added wearily and turned to pick up his hammer and hoped she would take the hint and leave him to his frustrated solitude.
‘I want to, but I’m too afraid,’ she said bravely and he didn’t want bravery from his wife, he wanted the impossible. He wanted her to love him and he didn’t want to love her again unless she did—stalemate, then—checkmate even.
‘You humble me, Georgia, but I still wish you would go away.’
‘Very well,’ she said and he had to be glad because he was only human and the impossible was still impossible.
Max wasn’t sure if he was relieved or sad when Becky’s revelation didn’t change much between him and Georgia. If anything, they were more wary with each other than they had been before. She seemed more worried about hurting him than she was about trusting him with her most vulnerable inner self and she would have to do that if they were ever going to make love. He didn’t want her to tiptoe around him because he had once loved her and she wasn’t too sure that he didn’t still love her now. But that was what she was doing now.
He let out a sigh as softly as he could manage. Being married to Georgia was remarkably easy in some ways, but in others it was a refined form of torture. From the moment they had walked back down the aisle together as man and wife, he had been racked with frustration and something even more painful that he didn’t want to think about too deeply. He had promised her patience and it felt all the more crucial for him to keep his promises because Jascombe had lied through his teeth. That didn’t mean it was easy, but here they still were and hope wasn’t dead yet.
‘It was an interesting evening,’ he lied as the carriage rumbled on through the moonlit fields.
‘Yes,’ she said, as if she had been deep in thought and he wished they were of him. ‘Miss Stevens plays very well, don’t you think?’ she added.
Who the devil was Miss Stevens? Ah, yes, the musical one. ‘Better than the usual run of accomplished young ladies, I suppose,’ he replied carefully. He hadn’t spared Miss Stevens or her playing much attention while he was busy with trying not to stare at his own wife all evening like a mooncalf.
‘Hmm, and she is quite the beauty with it.’
‘I suppose she is pretty enough.’
‘You should know since you watched her so intently while she played that Mozart sonata you should be able to list her perfections without a pause.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes, you did,’
‘I was wool-gathering.’
‘Yet she would have suited you very well if I had not got in the way, wouldn’t she, Max?’
‘I can’t say I have ever noticed her in that way either before or after we were married, but she is a fine pianist and Caisters is clearly enamoured with her, so perhaps they will be able to play duets whenever they choose to before the year is out.’
‘Clever,’ she said flatly and he wondered if he should keep his mouth shut and give the occasional hmm of agreement or tell me more some husbands seemed to have perfected.
‘Not really, I meant musical duets,’ he said with a grimace at the shadowy landscape they were passing through. He had to watch it as if he was fascinated to remind himself there was a world outside this too-intimate carriage and hope his senses would stop being so achingly conscious of her, in here with him. He didn’t want to think about sensuous duets for lovers when he had another night of grinding frustration ahead of him and no end in sight.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said.
He heard the whisper of fine silk as she shifted on her side of the carriage as if she was uncomfortable as well, but it was unlikely to be for the same reason.
‘She is an excellent musician,’ she said and he might think she was jealous if his wife was that way inclined, but unfortunately she was not.
‘True,’ he replied shortly.
Even another wary silence felt more comfortable than talking about a lady he had hardly seen tonight while he was making such an effort not to stare at his own wife as if he was besotted with her. Tonight Georgia was dressed in a lavender silk gown that nearly matched the colour of her extraordinary eyes and the sad truth was she was the only woman he had ever seen through this haze of enchantment.
It was left over from the old days, he hoped. He had to tell himself so since she seemed as resistant to the idea of him as a man now as she was then. It was probably as well that fate had got between him and his plans to find a sweet-natured wife to settle down with her so he could forget Georgia as anything but an old friend, though, since beauty seemed to be purely Georgia-shaped for him.
Now he was confusing himself and he should stick to what was instead of wandering into fantasies of what might have been, if he was a lot luckier eight years ago. He couldn’t regret marrying her now, despite this gnawing, endless hunger for a wife who said she wanted to want him, but couldn’t quite manage to do so.
This wasn’t the right time for him to imagine her eager and responsive to his endless desire for her in either of their wide and lonely beds. Unfortunately for him there was no right time for that yet, but he preferred to be bitterly frustrated in private.
‘I was adding up how many tons of barley and oats we must keep for bread and reseeding in spring and what can be sold,’ he admitted at last. He had better make sure he gazed at something inanimate next time he needed distracting from wanting his wife so ridiculously in public he dare not watch her instead.
‘Oh, Max, that’s probably sacrilege,’ she chided him and was he fooling himself she sounded relieved? Probably, since he might as well be made of wood for all the notice she took of him as a man. Every time he tried to touch her she either jumped as if he’d scalded her or flinched away. ‘You really must forget about the farms and Holdfast’s doors and floors and windows now and again. You can’t go around thinking about what needs doing there next every moment of the day.’
Why not? It stopped him thinking about her and how wrong he had been to think this devilish need would get easier to live with when his stupid sex realised it was not likely to be lucky any time soon.
Idiot! he raged at his merrily oblivious self before they were married.
They had been married over a month and every day had felt as if it was etched on his soul in a calendar of unmet longings that were eating away at it more deeply with every day that passed.
‘I can listen to fine music with one ear and think about Holdfast at the same time,’ he argued as if he had nothing much on his mind but his castle and crops. ‘But I hope the musical Miss Stevens had no idea her playing wasn’t holding my attention.’
‘I suspect she was far too busy cursing me for snatching you out from under her nose to have even noticed that your mind was really elsewhere, especially as your brooding gaze was fixed on her for most of the evening as if you were fascinated by her.’
‘I’m sure she has too much common sense to imagine that’s true.’
‘Why? There wasn’t one man present tonight who could hold a candle to you for manly looks and presence and you have a castle to your name.’
‘And a wife,’ he reminded her dourly.
‘Ah, yes, her,’ she said with a sigh. His heart ached as well as his much-tried manhood at the notion she regretted making those solemn vows to him as if she intended to keep them all one day. ‘I am forever being congratulated on dragging you away from your precious castle and out into the wider world so you can socialise with your neighbours and I know you’re only doing it for show. It makes me feel more like a well-trained sheepdog than the Lady of Holdfast Castle.’
‘Well, you don’t look like one if that makes you feel any better and I thought you liked being sociable. We are both expected to be so as newlyweds and I thought you were enjoying it.’
‘As you don’t like doing it, I shall soon grow weary of it.’
‘Why? You didn’t seem to suffer from ennui when you lived in London.’
‘I did sometimes and that was different.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ he said and heard the sarcasm in his own voice and sighed. ‘We can talk about it in the morning, Georgia; we are both too tired to be sensible tonight.’
I have been too tired for that since we were married and now I’m bone-weary from not being able to sleep with you so close, but always on the other side of the sturdy oak door between our rooms. It is locked and we did put the key in your desk drawer the first night you became my wife in name only so you knew you could trust me to stay meekly in my place and not intrude on yours.
‘We won’t though, will we?’ she argued, as if she was as frustrated with living in the same castle with him and them not being close as a man and wife should be as he was and that was highly unlikely. ‘You will be up and away by the time I come downstairs tomorrow.
‘You will come home to spend time with the girls before bedtime. Then we will dine with Leonora and maybe even your sister, before you spend the rest of the evening hammering away at some floor, or piece of panelling, or a window seat in another part of the castle so as not to wake the baby. You will be so tired after that you will go straight to bed and another day will have gone by without a chance for us to talk in private.’
‘You should be glad,’ he said shortly.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Georgia, use your head.’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said with a sceptical sniff that said she knew perfectly well she was being awkward and irritating, but she wasn’t going to stop it. If he was calmer and less tightly wound up in this endless, frustrated desire for her, maybe he would let himself hear the confusion under her offended reply.
As it was, he was much too tense to worry about her mixed-up feelings when his own were gnawing away at him so savagely. Thank heavens they were nearly home so he could get away from her before he blurted out needs that she didn’t want to know about.
‘It’s best for us to be apart for as much of the day as we can manage without the wider world or your daughters noticing,’ he told her, because she needed warning not to play with fire. ‘I am just about civilised enough to accompany you on evenings like this as long as we keep to the terms of our agreement.’
‘Do you hate me, Max?’ she whispered as if she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
‘Of course I don’t,’ he insisted brusquely and he didn’t, not even after this endless month and several days of wanting and not being able to have his wife in his bed. ‘I couldn’t if I tried,’ he added shakily and wondered if his life would have been easier if only he could.
As soon as the carriage halted outside the gate to the inner courtyard, he jumped down and waited for the steps to be lowered so he could hand her down from the neat carriage she had brought to their marriage as coolly as if they were polite acquaintances.
‘I shall take a short walk before I retire,’ he told her stiffly and walked away, pretending not hear her murmured question.
‘Why?’
Because he had to. He had to stop himself from begging her to take him to her bed so he could please, please introduce her to the seductive arts and sensual pleasures she had no idea even existed at the moment and hope to slake at least some of this desperate pent-up passion at long last.