by Anna Gracie
Magnus.
Oh, God. He groaned in despair and tightened his hold on her.
He did not know how much time passed, but eventually she left his arms
and went behind the screen to wash her face. He lay on the bed,
listening to the sounds of splashing water, imagining her movements.
He felt exhausted, and for one cowardly moment thought of sneaking off
to his own chamber before she returned. That way he could take the
night to decide how best to deal with the situation. He had just eased
himself upright and was preparing to slip off the bed when she
returned, clad in a fresh nightgown. The look of soft expectancy in
her eyes sent his spirits plummeting. She climbed onto the high bed
and settled herself beside him.
"So..." She blushed rosily, unable to meet his eyes.
"If Laetitia was wrong..." She ran her finger back and forth along the
hem of the sheet.
"How...? I mean, what should I...? How do you wish me to behave when
we... you know?"
Magnus felt his throat tighten. He felt trapped, panic-stricken. What
the devil should he say? Visions of the various women he had known
flitted through his mind. Courtesans, sophisticated married women,
widows--with painted faces, vulgar minds and quick, clever fingers.
World-weary women, skilled in pleasing a man, who could calculate a
man's needs and desires as quickly and efficiently as they calculated
his income.
He did not want to teach his wife the tricks of their trade. He could
not bear to imagine his innocent little Tallie earnestly and diligently
learning how best to please him in bed as those women had.
But he had to say something, offer her some guidance to replace
Laetitia's poisonous advice. Only what? How? His mind was a complete
blank.
"Magnus?" she prompted.
"Just..." He wiped a hand over his suddenly damp brow. Lord, who'd
have thought marriage would be such a quagmire? It had seemed so
simple and straightforward just a few weeks ago.
"Just be yourself," he heard himself saying.
"But..."
"All I want from you are your honest reactions."
She looked back at him, clear-eyed and doubtful, waiting for him to
explain further.
"Don't hide anything," he said, feeling suddenly as though he had
stepped onto even more dangerous ground.
"Do and say exactly what you wish to. Honesty. That's all I require."
"Honesty?" she said hesitantly.
"That's all you want from me?"
He nodded.
She beamed at him, and it was like the sun breaking through the morning
mist.
"Then that will be easy."
He stared back at her, uneasy at her apparent confidence. If she could
be honest with him, then she would do more than any other woman in his
life had done, his mother included.
"Easy?" He raised his eyebrows in doubt.
"Very easy," she said, smiling radiantly and wriggling her fingers into
his warm grip.
"A great deal easier than the multiplication tables, I can tell you. I
am always making mistakes--especially with the eights."
Magnus blinked for a moment, then from somewhere deep inside him he
felt laughter begin to well up.
"The eights?" he gasped, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her
down to the bed with him. His laughter echoed around the room and she
rolled with him, clutching him and laughing with him. After a few
minutes the deep chuckles slowed.
He lifted his head and looked at her again, shaking his head.
"The eights?" he repeated.
"Utterly impossible," she giggled.
His eyes darkened and became intent.
"Then from now on," he said in a deep, slow voice, "I suggest you
concentrate on nothing but addition, starting from one plus one." And
he lowered his mouth to hers.
Tallie awoke very late next morning. Sunlight streamed through the
open curtains and lay in slabs of gold across the floor of her chamber.
She stretched and watched the dancing dust motes, feeling dreamy,
pleasantly lazy and filled with contentment. She was alone in bed, but
she did not feel lonely. Her husband had woken her at dawn and made
love to her again. And then he'd kissed her and told her to go back to
sleep and he'd gone out.
She had learnt many more things about the marriage act that night. The
most important by far was that once she stopped fighting her own
reactions it was utterly, thrillingly, splendid. She knew now why the
vicar had said marriage was a holy estate, for there had been times,
when her husband was making love to her, Tallie had known there could
be no more wonderful feeling in heaven or on earth. And afterwards,
when she I had lain silently in her husband's warm strong arms, his
hand caressing her hair while she listened to the beat of his heart
slowly returning to normal, it had felt as if she was floating on a
cloud, like the angels did.
She had been a little frightened at first about the extremity of her
reactions, but Magnus had reassured her and encouraged her and
continued that marvelous caressing and stroking. And then he had
become rather extreme himself, she reflected, smiling a secret feminine
smile. It was very exciting to think that a magnificent being like
Magnus could be brought to such a state by ordinary little Tallie
Robinson, she thought, snuggling into the pillows. She could still
smell his scent on them, and if she shut her eyes she could imagine he
was still here in bed with her.
"Milady?"
Tallie opened her eyes. Her new maid, Monique, stood there.
"Milady, your breakfast awaits you." Monique indicated a tray
containing Tallie's favourite French breakfast--sweet, flaky pastries
and a large pot of hot milky chocolate. Reluctantly she sat up, then,
blushing, clutched the sheet to her, recalling her nakedness. Monique showed no surprise, but came forward
with a wrapper.
"Votre peignoir. Milady."
Tallie supposed that a dresser was used to seeing people without a
stitch of clothing; it was she who had to get used to being seen. She
was a long way now from Miss Fisher's establishment, where pupils had
dressed and undressed beneath their voluminous nightgowns behind
curtained screens. Married women had no privacy at all.
"Milor' d'Arenville said you are to go shopping after breakfast,
Milady. I have ordered the bath, and laid out a gown for you. I
thought per'aps we go first to the milliner, and then later to the
glover, and after that..."
"After that we shall see," said Tallie, deciding she needed to be firm
about this shopping business. It was all very well to shop, but she
wanted to see more of Paris, too. She wanted to experience as much as
she could before they left for Italy.
"Where is my husband, do you know?" she asked, picking up a pastry. "E
'as gone out, milady.
"E say to tell you 'e will back in time to escort you to dinner."
Dinner? She was to wait until dinner to see him? Tallie was crushed.
She did so want to see him now, after all
they had shared during the
night.
"Oh, but-' We 'ave Claude, the footman, to escort us, milady," Monique
assured her.
"Milor' d'Arenville 'as left instructions that you are always to 'ave
'im as your escort, so you need not worry. All 'as been arranged by
mil or
So it seems, thought Tallie, disappointed. Escort indeed! A paltry
footman instead of her magnificent husband. She did not want to
explore Paris with a maid and a footman--she wanted Magnus.
"Very well, then, I suppose we will have to waste the whole day
shopping," she said dolefully.
"Perhaps if we hurry we can get it all finished and out of the way
today."
Monique gave her an odd look, which Tallie ignored. She finished her
pastries and the chocolate, had her bath, got dressed and went
downstairs. Her new personal footman, Claude, awaited her in the hall.
She blinked in surprise.
Claude was a most unlikely-looking footman. He was short, with a
barrel chest and long arms which hung down like a gorilla. His face,
too, had a simian quality; most of his teeth were missing and his skin
was badly pitted with the pox. He was quite the ugliest man Tallie had
ever seen in her life.
Wondering what on earth had possessed her husband to hire such an
odd-looking footman, Tallie allowed herself to be escorted off in
search of feminine falderals, Monique tripping beside her, Claude
trudging heavily in the rear.
Hoofbeats pounded over the cold ground, echoing in the dim silence of
the Bois de Boulogne. The hooves of the sweating horse tossed up
clumps of grass and damp earth. Branches swatted its sides. But the
rider held his mount with a firm hand and pressed on, faster, harder,
as if to outride the devil himself.
But it was not possible to outride one's own thoughts and fears,
thought Magnus, even as he spurred his horse to greater speed. He was
on the brink. She'd driven him to it. He rode onwards, oblivious of
his surroundings.
Was this how it had started with his father, too? With a declaration
of love from an innocent bride? A lifetime of control, shattered in an
instant. He pulled up his sweating horse, dismounted and led it to a
stream.
The horse drank thirstily. Magnus leaned against the warm, heaving
flank and stared into the fast-flowing water, listening to the burble
of clear water over smooth round stones. Her eyes were like that, he
thought--dappled with colour, clear and bright and glowing with life.
He groaned. Had his father also felt this aching chasm open up in
him?
This void, this abyss of need. Was this how it had begun for him?
He knew how it had ended--a slow, inevitable descent into hell. A
strong man of honour and dignity reduced to. what? A beggar at his
wife's gate. A slavish worshipper, whose happiness well-being and
position--whose very honour--depended, in the end, entirely on his
wife. A wife who cared for nothing but riches and the pleasures of the
flesh--with whomever her roving eye descended on.
Magnus could not remember a time when his parents had not fought,
lavishly and long. The bitter recriminations and violent rages. And
each time ending with his mother giving his father that sultry
come-hither smile, the smile which had invited him to her bed once
again. And his father gratefully accepting--honour, dignity and
self-respect forgotten--until the next time he discovered her with a
handsome footman, a good-looking stable boy one of his friends or even
a passing gypsy.
Magnus had grown up swearing he would never let a woman make a fool of
him that way. He'd resolved never to marry, never to allow a woman
close enough to cause such damage. He'd thought it no hardship. until
he'd held a sleeping toddler in his arms and realised he was depriving
himself of children. And so he'd married. Thinking he could handle
it. Believing he could keep his wife in her proper place--at arm's
length.
But he'd chosen Tallie, naive, innocent Tallie, who needed a protector
more than any female he knew. Who'd undermined his de fences from the
moment he married her. No, from even before that--he would never
forget the sound of her sobbing in the maze that day. He should have
walked away then. only he hadn't been able to leave her alone and
unprotected, to fend for herself in the world.
Bedraggled little orphan that she was then, he'd never suspected how
much he would come to desire her. Magnus closed his eyes in despair.
He had never desired a woman so much in his life. And that had been
prior to last night. last night, when she'd accepted his embrace with
a joy and a sweet, loving passion that had left him shaking inside. And
even now, hours later. He'd thought he could slake his desire for her
he only craved her more.
Man of the world that he was, thinking he'd experienced everything a
man and woman could do together--he'd never known it could be like
that, two coming together as one, an explosion of sensation and emotion
filling a void inside him he had never known existed.
When one blurted, tearful declaration of love had shattered a
lifetime's resolution and sent him spinning towards the abyss.
I love you, Magnus.
Magnus remounted his horse and spurred it onwards.
He returned in the evening. Tallie was overjoyed to see him, and
hurried forward for his kiss, but he turned away to remove his coat and
hat. When he turned back to face her his visage was impassive and
coolly polite.
"Did you have a good day?" he said, walking past her to a sideboard
and pouring himself a drink.
"I... all right," she faltered, a little thrown by his coolness.
"Enjoy the shopping?"
"N... I ... er, yes, I suppose so. We did a lot of it. Monique
insisted."
"Very good. It is almost time for dinner, so I suggest you make
yourself ready. We have been invited to dine with friends of Laetitia
who are also visiting Paris--Lady Pamela Horton and her husband Lord
Jasper. Shall we say one hour?" And with that he laid his glass
aside, stood up and left the room, leaving Tallie staring after him.
What had happened? Was he angry with her for some reason? Why was he
treating her as a polite stranger would? Where was her husband of last
night? The man who'd called her sweetheart--twice--and held her
tenderly in his arms while she wept? And then made magnificent,
glorious love to her--not once, but three times in one night. Four, if
you counted the wondrous morning episode.
Hurt and confused, Tallie allowed herself to be dressed in her new
finery. As Monique added the final touches to her hair Tallie stared
at herself in the mirror and ordered herself to stop moping. She
should be thrilled--she was going to dine out with her husband and his
friends. In Paris--the most romantic and exciting city in the world.
And she was wearing the finest and most fashionable clothes she had
ever worn in her life.
But she didn't feel thrilled at
all. All she could do was wonder what
had gone wrong, why Magnus was acting so distant and cold towards her
when only that morning he had made love to her and kissed her goodbye
so tenderly. Oh! It was foolish to repine, Tallie told herself
sternly.
It wasn't his fault if he did not love her--it was a marriage of
convenience, after all. He hadn't been cruel--not even cross or
irritable. Only reserved and distant. And very polite. It would be
foolish in the extreme if she allowed herself to fall into a fit of the
dismals merely because her husband was polite to her.
On that bracing thought Tallie left her chamber and joined her husband
in the entrance hall.
"Lord and Lady d'Arenville." The footman's announcement caused a small
stir in the spacious and elegant salon. Lady Pamela, a tall, elegant
woman dressed in a ravishing green dress, came forward and greeted
Magnus warmly.
"Magnus, you wicked man, you're late. And this is your little wife.
How do you do, my dear? " She cast a quick, indifferent glance over
Tallie, who at once felt small and plain, despite her fashionable
dress.
"Now, Magnus, there are a dozen people who wish to renew acquaintance
with you. Oh, and here is Jasper. Take care of Lady d'Arenville, my