by Mary Balogh
Oh, Lord, he thought, he wanted her. But the knowledge made him feel guilty, though she was his wife and though he fully intended to have her. It should not be so easy for him. He was the guilty one. For her this would be the culmination of all the horrors that had happened to her in the past two days. Except that he knew one small fact about her that might give him a thread of hope. She responded to his physical presence. Slightly and unwillingly, perhaps, but quite unmistakably. She had kissed him in the carriage this morning just as he had kissed her.
“Jennifer.” He had stepped up close behind her but found it difficult to touch her.
She turned and looked at him with a pale, set, defiant face. “Yes,” she said. “I am here. I am yours. You will find, I believe, that I know my duty and will perform it without protest.”
Lord!
“And without enjoyment,” he said.
“Enjoyment?” Color flooded her face, but he saw immediately that it had been brought there more by anger than by embarrassment. She spoke the next words slowly and distinctly. “You are the wrong man to bring me that, my lord Gabriel.”
He set his hands on her shoulders, felt the tension there, and massaged them with his hands. “This will not do,” he said. “This anger and this bitterness. They are understandable, though I am not as guilty as you believe me to be. But they will only bring you intense unhappiness, Jennifer, and perhaps even destroy you.”
“You have done that already,” she said.
“Perhaps.” He moved his hands in and worked at the taut muscles of her neck. “But I have married you and I am seeing to it that you are not cut off permanently from the people of your own class. And I intend to be gentle with you. Meet me halfway. I am not the man of your choice. You believe that I have trapped you into marriage and you are partly right. But like it or not, you are in the marriage. For life. I cannot give you happiness unless you are prepared to receive it. Don’t close your life to it merely in order to punish me.”
“I know what is going to happen on that bed,” she said, her face pale and set again. She had not given an inch. His massaging hands had met nothing but resistance. “I know just how it is done though it has never been done to me before. Do it, please. Get it over with and leave me to sleep. I am tired.”
Deliberately defiant and rather vulgar words, which she could not possibly have spoken just two days ago.
He lowered his head and opened his mouth over hers.
He could feel her lips trembling. They were quite unresponsive, but she did not pull away. He slid one of his arms about her shoulders and the other about her waist and drew her against him. And felt for the first time the slimness of her long legs against his own and her curves against his body. Her full breasts pressed to his chest. Do it, please. Get it over with … His body clamored to be allowed to give it to her just as she wanted it. His mind ruthlessly imposed control.
He kissed her gently, moving his mouth in a soft, warm caress over her closed lips until the tautness started to go and she leaned into him and her lips relaxed. He licked them lightly with the tip of his tongue, tested the seam of her lips and found it relaxed, prodded through, and licked at the soft moist flesh inside.
Her hands, he realized, had moved up and were gripping the satin collar of his brocaded dressing gown almost at the neck.
He ran his tongue along her teeth until they parted, and then eased it inward. She made a sound in her throat. He took his mouth from hers and kissed her eyes, her temples, her jaw, her chin, her throat. He found fine lace trimming in his way. He kissed her mouth again and found her lips parted.
Her hands, he noticed, were flat on his shoulders, gripping tightly.
He kissed her and opened the buttons of her nightgown. He slipped his hands inside to the warm silky skin of her shoulders and found the tightness gone from her muscles. He moved his hands down over the sides of her breasts and beneath them. He felt suddenly weak at the knees.
But she drew a sharp breath, jerked her head back away from his, and stared at him with wide eyes.
“Beautiful,” he murmured to her, gazing back at her through half-closed eyes. “Beautiful, my wife.” He stilled his hands. “Kiss me.”
She was breathing in jerky gasps, but she brought her mouth obediently back to his. He rather thought that he might have bruises on his shoulders with the imprints of her fingers in the morning.
He stroked her breasts lightly as his tongue circled about hers. He touched his thumbs to her nipples and found them hard and peaked. She gasped, drawing cool air in about his tongue. Lord, he thought, he could not wait. He wanted to be inside her now. He wanted to be thrusting mindlessly toward release. But he needed his mind. Quite desperately. Take her now like a heedless, dominant male and he might forever kill any faint chance they had for some sort of amiable marriage.
“Come.” He withdrew his hands from inside her nightgown and set one arm about her waist. “I think we had better lie down on the bed.”
“Yes,” she said, looking at it as if it were the executioner’s block.
He kept his arm about her waist while he blew out the three candles that stood on the nightstand beside her bed. Then he turned her in the darkness, slid his hands beneath the shoulders of her nightgown again, and lifted away the fabric—off her shoulders, down her arms. It slid to the floor. She made a sound rather like a moan and was silent again.
“Lie down,” he told her, edging her back onto the bed. He removed his dressing gown and dropped it to the floor before joining her there.
She was rigid again.
“I am going to love you, Jennifer,” he told her, sliding an arm beneath her shoulders and turning her onto her side against him, “not punish or humiliate you. Love in its physical form can be very beautiful.” He took her mouth with his again. Could it? He had only ever performed this act to relieve a physical craving. It had only ever been intensely satisfying.
She was incredibly beautiful. He explored her body lightly with his free hand, learning the shape and feel of her naked. And this was not for one night only or for as long as he cared to employ her. This was forever. She was his wife. He would plant his seed in her. She would bear his children. They would grow old together. Strangely, there was nothing frightening in the thought.
“My love,” he found himself whispering against her mouth. “My love.”
He would not touch her where he most wanted to touch her. Not with his hand. Not yet. She was only just beginning to relax again and accept the fact that the marriage act—for him, at least—involved nakedness and the touching and caressing of every part that modesty had kept hidden through her life. He sensed that he must wait for the more intimate and ultimately more pleasurable touches of full foreplay.
He turned her onto her back and lifted himself over her. He nudged his knees between her thighs and she opened them without further bidding. She was relaxed, acquiescent, heated. He slid his hands beneath her, positioned himself carefully, and mounted her slowly but steadily, moving without pausing beyond the unfamiliar barrier of virginity, though he felt her sudden tension and gasp of pain and panic, until his full length was embedded in her. He held still there, waiting for her body to master the shock of being penetrated for the first time.
God! Dear God in heaven, the urge to let go and to drive on with the act was almost overpowering. He clenched his teeth hard and pressed his face into her hair. She had raised her knees and slid her feet up the bed. He could feel the slim length of her legs against his own. Her body beneath his was soft and warm and intensely feminine.
He drew a few steadying breaths and lifted his weight onto his elbows. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and he could see that she lay with her eyes closed, her head thrown back on the pillow, her mouth slightly open.
Lord, he thought, watching her face as he withdrew slowly and as slowly sheathed himself in her again, she was enjoying it. He watched her as he loved her with steady, rhythmic strokes. He would continue the rhythm, he deci
ded, feeling her inner muscles begin to clench involuntarily about him, until she had come to full pleasure. Even if it took another half hour.
And then she opened her eyes. For one moment, so brief that he thought afterward he might have imagined it, they were heavy with passion. Then they were fully open and even in the darkness he could see them fill with tears and he could see the tears spill over. With his body he could feel her first sob even before it became sound. He knew that she was fighting to control both tears and sobs. But she failed miserably.
He closed his own eyes and did what he had been fighting not to do for what had seemed like an eternity. He abandoned control and drove into her swiftly and deeply until he felt the blessed spasms of release and his seed sprang in her.
He lowered his weight onto her body and his face into her hair again. Her sobs sounded as if they were tearing her apart.
He moved to her side, disengaging himself from her body, and brought her with him, his arms locked about her. The very best thing he could do for her at the moment, one part of his mind told him, was to leave her alone. That was what she must want more than anything else in the world. But the instinct to comfort was stronger in him. He cradled her in his arms while she wept, murmuring some nonsense into her ear, stroking his fingers through her hair with light fingertips.
When she quieted eventually, he took a corner of the sheet and dried her eyes and his chest with it. Her eyes were closed, he saw. She made no move to pull away from him. When he drew the bedclothes up about her, she seemed even to cuddle closer to him.
He held her, his mind and his heart numb. He should leave. He should give her privacy for the rest of the night. God, how was he going to be able to come back tomorrow night to do this to her all over again? And yet how could he not? What sort of a nightmare of a marriage were they facing?
Tomorrow morning he would tell her everything, he decided. And yet everything would not exonerate him. Far from it. If she knew everything, she would know she had been only a helpless pawn in a game. That she had been of no importance to either of the players—to either Kersey or himself. How would he convince her then that he would make her the figure of primary importance in the rest of his life?
And would it be enough even if he could convince her?
Numbness did not last nearly long enough sometimes, he thought. He must leave. He must not indulge himself like this with the physical pleasure of holding her warm and naked body while his own relaxed into the physical satiety that followed a vigorous sexual encounter. He must leave.
But even as he made the decision he realized that incredibly she was asleep. The physical and emotional exhaustion of two days had caught up with her and she slept snuggled up to his body like a trusting child.
He felt a tickling in his throat and swallowed. He had not cried for so long that he was not sure he would know how to do it. He swallowed again and tried to blink the moisture from his eyes.
SHE WAS WARM AND relaxed and comfortable. And for a moment—just for the merest moment—she did not know where she was. But then she did, and her very first thought was a treacherous one. She was glad he was still holding her. She was glad he had not gone back to his own room, as Aunt Agatha had assured her he would after he had done that to her. He was warm and solid and she could hear his quiet breathing. Strangely and quite unreasonably she felt safe. She would have gone all to pieces if he had left her.
She kept her eyes closed and grief washed over her again. Grief because this was her wedding night yet he was not Lionel. When she had opened her eyes earlier as he was … doing that to her, she had … what? Expected to see Lionel? Had she kept her eyes closed imagining that it was he making love to her? No, not really. Not even at all. She had firmly shut her mind to Lionel, not invited his image into her marriage bed. But even so …
Oh, the reality of it all had hit her at that moment. She was naked on the bed, spread wide, and her body was being used by someone who was not herself. It belonged to him, to be used for the rest of their lives whenever and however he chose to use it. She was no longer in possession of her own body or of her own person. She had felt in that moment all the total and permanent loss of privacy. Even the inside of her body—there—no longer belonged to her.
And yet she had been enjoying it. The amazing and totally unexpected intimacy of his kiss, the touch of his hands on every part of her body, especially on her breasts, about which she had been self-conscious for several years because they were larger than anyone else’s she knew, the feel and smell of his naked body—she had relaxed into the enjoyment of it all. And when he had—well, when he had come inside her, hurting her and then frightening her because she had not thought there would be enough room, and when he had started to move, she had thought she would swoon with the wonder of it.
It was not that she had imagined he was Lionel. It was just that when she had opened her eyes and seen in the darkness that he was not Lionel, but Gabriel, she had felt deep grief. For if she could lose Lionel so cruelly one night and enjoy this just two nights later with the man who had torn her away from him, how could she convince herself that she really loved Lionel? And yet if she did not, then everything she had lived for in the past five years had been an illusion. And if she could be enjoying this with this man, how could she feel moral outrage against him?
She had wept for the weakness of her body and the fickleness of her heart. She had felt all the humiliation and horror of weeping openly while he was still doing that to her, but she had been quite unable to stop herself. She had been at the point of exhaustion.
She had wept because he was not worthy of her liking or her respect. Because he was totally without honor. Because he had cruelly destroyed her and severed her relations with the man she had loved deeply—or perhaps not loved at all—for five years. And because she had enjoyed his two kisses while she was still betrothed to Lionel and was enjoying the deep intimacy of the marriage act with him.
She had wept because her body wanted to love him while her mind and her heart never could. Never.
And yet she was married to him for the rest of her life. She would live with him in the intimacy of daily life unless he chose to give them separate establishments. She would get to know his habits and his preferences and his tastes and perhaps his thoughts just as she now knew Papa’s and Samantha’s. And she would bear his children. His seed was in her now. He would continue to put more there until she conceived—and she would continue to enjoy the process.
She was a married lady. No longer a virgin. And this was the man who owned her. Not Lionel. Gabriel. He smelled musky, she thought, inhaling slowly and deeply. And sweaty. He smelled wonderfully masculine. She tipped her head back suddenly, alerted perhaps by a change in his breathing. His dark eyes were looking back into hers.
He lifted one hand and stroked the backs of his fingers over her temple. “I am so very sorry, my dear,” he said softly. “I know the words are woefully inadequate, but they are the best I can do. It is a damnable mess I have got you into, but there is only one way out. We can only go forward and try to make something workable out of what seems impossible tonight.”
She stared at him, remembering the Chisleys’ garden and the library and Lady Bromley’s orchard. Remembering that she had liked him.
“Can you try?” he asked. “Will you try?”
She really had no choice. She really did not. “I cannot.” She closed her eyes. “Gabriel, I cannot bear the thought of you touching your father’s wife as you have touched me tonight. I cannot bear the thought that somewhere in Europe you have a child who is both your daughter and your half-sister. It is horrible and obscene. I cannot bear it.”
She tried to pull away from him, but his arms tightened. She felt horrified suddenly, and dirty, remembering that she had enjoyed what he did to her.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice stern. “That I am guilty of one offense does not mean that I am therefore guilty of every offense of which I have been accused. You believed me
once, Jennifer. I have never touched my stepmother unlawfully. I am not the father of her child. I did not abandon her. I took her away because she was miserable and afraid and desperate. I took her because my father might have done her harm and because the blackguard who had impregn—well, who had impregnated her had taken himself off as soon as it appeared that his fun might bear consequences and then denied all association with her. I took her away to a place where she could bear her child in peace and comfort, and I left her there because she had discovered that it was a place where she could start again and perhaps find respectability and even happiness.”
She pressed her face against his chest. She was so naive. She had always believed everything he had told her, despite warnings, despite all the evidence against him. She was believing him now.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we will write to her, Jennifer. Both of us. You will ask for the truth and I will beg her to tell it. You may read my letter before I send it. If that will not satisfy you, I will take you to Switzerland after I have reestablished you here with the ton. You will believe it when you see her—and when you see her blond, blue-eyed daughter. Catherine is as dark as I am.”
“You do not need to take me or to write,” she said. “If you say it is so, I will believe you.” Her voice was toneless, but she knew she spoke the truth. If he said it, God help her, she would believe him. She wanted so very, very badly to believe him. The realization startled and rather frightened her.
“No,” he said quietly. “We will write so that you will feel not a shadow of a doubt. Of that at least I am not guilty. Just as I am not guilty of writing that letter. The other things, yes, to my shame. I wanted to end your betrothal. I wanted to charm or force you into it. I even went as far as compromising you with that kiss. But I could not have been so wantonly cruel as to write that letter and ensure that it fell into the wrong hands on just that occasion. I could not have done that to you.”
The temptation to believe him was strong. But if not he, then who? There was no one else. It would make no sense.