by Rose Lerner
And tonight he had planned to deflower her. He had never been with any woman who did not know exactly what she was doing. How painful was it, the first time? He knew there was often blood, but how much? What if he hurt her? What if she found the whole business unsanitary and repulsive? What if she cried?
Worse yet, what if she endured his lovemaking with the same expression of patient forbearance she sometimes wore when he talked? What if she said, Never mind, I expect it will not be so very bad when I am used to it?
Nev wished that he were a man of good sense and character. Then he would know what the devil to do.
When they finally pulled into an inn yard for the night, Penelope was starving and exhausted. And there was another whole day of this to endure on the morrow! Her remark that a good, sensible man must always be pleasing had effectively silenced her husband. He had looked very doubtful, but refrained from contradicting her. How did he contrive to make her feel a puritanical schoolgirl, when she knew that it was he whose too-lively mind had been led astray by bad company and worldliness?
She sighed. She could hardly give herself airs of superiority when she herself had chosen a pleasing form over every dictate of reason.
Feeling penitent, she said nothing when he left her standing in the hall while he saw to the stabling of his horses. By the time he came back, she had fallen half-asleep leaning against the wall.
She opened her eyes to find her husband regarding her with an unreadable expression. “How much did you sleep last night?”
“Not very much,” she admitted, then realized that might not be politic.
He gave her a crooked smile. “Come along, I’ve engaged a room and a private parlor. Supper should be along at any moment.”
Supper! She gazed at him gratefully.
Supper was a silent affair. The food was good, but as the meal drew to a close, Penelope’s nervousness increased. She could hear her abigail in the next room, laying out her night things. In an hour, or perhaps two, she would no longer be a maiden.
She glanced at her husband, but he was not looking at her. He hadn’t been looking at her any of the admittedly hundreds of times she had glanced at him throughout the last half hour. That didn’t seem to bode well. Several times he’d been eying the decanter of wine with a peculiar expression on his face, but he drank only tea, as he had done at her parents’ home. Was it for her benefit, or had he really given up drinking since his father’s death? Penelope was not sure whether to approve or to think the gesture theatrical. She didn’t let herself look at him again until she had finished the last of her apple tart.
This time, his eyes were on her face. She was reminded, somehow, of the way he had looked at the wine.
“I-I think I’ll get ready for bed,” she said, and went into the next room.
Molly was waiting, looking distressingly energetic. Penelope was sore and tired, but she let Molly help her into her nightdress. Then she got her copy of Mansfield Park out of her trunk and sat down in bed to read.
This would be the way to Fanny’s heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects…
But she must not have been as absorbed in her reading as she thought, because when her husband put his hand on the doorknob, she heard it immediately.
Nev looked her over. Penelope felt her soreness and weariness fading. Now-now, he would-
“You look tired out,” he said.
“Not too tired.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
For some reason Penelope really, really didn’t like the sound of that.
“Do-do you know what goes on between a husband and wife?”
Penelope’s lips went dry. “My mother explained it to me.”
He nodded. “What did she say it was like?”
“She said it could be uncomfortable and awkward the first time, but that it got better with practice.”
He blanched.
“Was-was that not right?”
He seemed at a loss for words.
“Surely it cannot be so very bad. I had hoped it might even be-pleasant. When you kissed me-” She stopped, blushing. A lady did not speak of such things.
“When it’s done properly, it’s very pleasant.”
“For women too?” she blurted out.
He nodded. “For women too. Only-perhaps not the first time, as your mother said.” He licked his lips. Penelope’s gaze was riveted on his tongue. “I think we ought to wait until we know each other a little better. Then perhaps you will be more comfortable helping me find out what you like.”
Penelope could not tell if she was disappointed or relieved. It hardly mattered; such decisions naturally belonged to him. “If you think it best.” Her voice sounded small.
She had not realized how tense he was, until he relaxed. “I do think it best.” He looked at her for a moment, and then he came and sat on the edge of the bed, grinning at her. “This is deuced awkward, isn’t it?”
Some of her own tension eased. She nodded.
“That is why it will be better to wait. Now turn around like a good girl while I put my nightshirt on.”
It was a little chilly; she didn’t want to get out from under the blankets. Instead she snuggled down on her side of the bed, facing the wall and closing her eyes. She heard one boot hit the floor, then the other. Then a chair rattled-she conjectured that he had thrown his jacket over it. After that there was nothing definitive, only a series of rustlings and footsteps.
She tried not to think about it, but her imagination was out of her control. Candlelight would glint on his naked shoulders, his torso, his-but here her mind skittered away. She had seen paintings and statues of naked men before, of course-Greek athletes and etchings of Michelangelo’s David. But a wide gulf lay between that and what she would see if she turned around, and she was not capable of bridging it.
The bed bounced as he jumped into it. The darkness behind her eyelids became darker; he had extinguished the candle. There was silence for a moment. “Good night, Penelope.”
“Good night, Nev. ”
The mattress shifted as he lay down and pulled the blankets over him. Penelope lay perfectly still, not daring to move. But soon enough everything faded into exhausted sleep.
Now that Nev had done the generous-or was it cowardly?-thing and given his bride time to accustom herself to him, he couldn’t think about anything but bedding her. She sat across from him in the carriage, not a shining brown hair out of place, turning the pages of some appallingly proper novel-and he was imagining ripping the book from her hands, getting her out of that depressing black, and exercising his conjugal rights in all the deliciously improper ways the cramped confines of the carriage would necessitate.
Of course, there was nothing else to think about, except what awaited him at Loweston, and Nev did not want to think about that. Unlike his bride, he had not brought a book. He was bored, bored, bored. He longed to be out in the open air, spelling the coachman with the horses-but that would be rude to his wife, and besides, he could not drive the horses as fast as he would like, because they weren’t changing them at the next stage. Every time his restless mind began to search for a new topic, it brought up unwelcome, all-too-pleasant images of Amy or his friends or even a damned game of solitaire. Nev had sworn off cards along with liquor and horse racing and women of easy virtue, and so all that was left was mentally undressing his wife, over and over again.
To make matters worse, the interior of the carriage, even with the windows open to their fullest extent, had become unbearably hot. The day before had been cloudy, but this afternoon there was no such shelter from the elements. Nev ’s black coat, pantaloons, and boots were suffocating him, and even Penelope in her short-sleeved carriage dress was starting to wilt. July was a poor time for long journeys in full mourning. Nev was well aware that in a few minut
es he would be indulging in thoughts of the most unfilial kind-viz, if only Papa had had the decency to die in the winter, when it was not so damned hot!
Then, as he watched, a trickle of sweat ran down Penelope’s collarbone and into the space between her breasts, and Nev had had enough. “What are you reading?”
She laid down the book readily enough. “ Mansfield Park, by Miss Austen.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
She looked away. “Not quite as much as I did the first time. I don’t think-” She licked her lip. “I don’t think she likes music very much,” she finished awkwardly.
He could have sworn that wasn’t what she’d been planning to say. “She doesn’t?”
“Well…” She flipped through the book. “In this scene she talks of Miss Crawford playing-here it is-‘with an expression and taste which were peculiarly becoming.’ Not pleasing or inspiring, becoming. And it is not even her playing that ensnares Edmund, but rather the elegant picture she makes with the harp.”
Suddenly Nev found he was in complete harmony with her. “Plenty of young ladies make a dashed elegant picture with their harp! But most of them don’t practice sufficiently, or haven’t the feeling for it. Even if they are proficient enough, one grows bored after a very few minutes. One certainly doesn’t fall in love with them.”
She gave him an approving smile; he tried not to feel as proud as if he’d slain a dragon for her.
“This is too bad,” he said. “I’d been planning to read Miss Austen’s work, for Sir Walter Scott gave one of her books a most favorable review in the Quarterly-”
Penelope raised an eyebrow. “You have been planning it a long time, then. That review was three years ago.” Her eyes glinted with amusement.
“I’ve been busy. Besides, now I am thinking of changing my mind.
‘The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.’”
“Merchant of Venice,” she said. Damn her, she looked startled. It wasn’t even an obscure quote.
“I’m not quite a dullard, even if I can’t audit a banker’s books.”
“I’m sorry. I should have known better. You took a first at Cambridge, didn’t you?”
It was his turn to be startled. “How the dev-how on earth did you know that?”
She bit her lip and gave him a mirthful sidelong glance. “My mother looked you up in Debrett’s.”
“Really,” he said, fascinated. “What else do you know about me?”
She considered, a smile playing around her mouth. “I think I shall keep the strategic advantage best by not telling you. I don’t think that quote is quite fair, anyway. Edward is tone-deaf, and he-” She stopped, looking stricken.
“Ah, yes, Edward,” Nev said cautiously. “He is like a brother to you, is he not? You correspond.” Then why did she look guilty as sin every time his name came up?
“Not very often.”
“Well, that is only to be expected, isn’t it?” Nev was startled at the undercurrent of anger in his own voice, but he couldn’t stop. “Brothers are notoriously bad correspondents. But sisters are rather different creatures. And you, presumably, are like a sister to Edward-”
She shot him a furious, cornered glance. “Stop it! We quarreled, all right?”
Well, he had wanted to know, and now he did. Penelope and Edward had quarreled between Penelope’s betrothal and her wedding. What else could it be about? He wanted desperately to inquire further, but something stopped him. It’s none of my affair, he thought. Well, that was patently ridiculous. Of course it was his affair; Penelope was his wife. But he felt, nonetheless, that he had no right to demand confidences. She had married him; he was sure she would not betray him. That would have to suffice.
Penelope was staring out the window. He did not think she was seeing the landscape.
“I’m sorry,” he said, clumsily. “Surely-surely he’ll come around, in time.”
She shrugged. Then, with an effort, she turned and smiled at him. “Maybe so. I do recommend Miss Austen’s work. As Sir Walter wrote, her writing is astonishingly entertaining and lifelike. There are none of the constant swoons and desperate duels amidst Gothic ruins that one sees so often in the work of other novelists.”
“But they are novels,” Nev said with some surprise. “I never imagined they were supposed to be lifelike. That is not their purpose.”
“But they can be. They ought to be. Have you ever read a horrid novel?”
In fact, Nev ’s shameful fondness for the Minerva Press had been an open secret among his peers since Lower Shell at school. But he found he had not the heart to admit it, not when Penelope’s eyes were flashing scornfully. “I prefer poetry, myself,” he said, “but my sister is uncommonly fond of The Castle of Otranto.” Damn. He would have to inform Louisa of that as soon as possible, before she let slip that she generally read nothing but tales of knights and accounts of the doings of pirates, the bloodier the better. Oh, and Byron’s poems, but only because he was so handsome, and The Corsair was about a pirate, after all.
“Much may be forgiven the enthusiasm of youth, but I could never read that book without a shudder-not at the horror or pathos of the material, but at the woodenness of the prose, the improbability of the action, and the flatness of the characters! It and its ilk never taught us to know ourselves or our fellows better; it never inspired the spark of recognition that Miss Austen achieves so effortlessly. I never felt, while reading, that here was myself.”
“Perhaps so,” Nev said, stung, “but one doesn’t always wish to be oneself. Sometimes it can be pleasant to imagine oneself as a dark hero tormented by his sinful past, or a noble knight capable of saving a fainting female with one blow of his lance.”
She leaned forward, her cheeks flushed. Nev tried not to look at her bosom. “Do you have any notion how galling it is to see oneself everywhere portrayed as a fainthearted creature incapable of a single coherent speech or thought? Existing merely to be abused by one’s guardian or abducted by an unprincipled rake? I never fainted in my life, and I am quite as capable of self-exertion and rational thought as Sir Horace Walpole.”
Nev, prey to the lowering suspicion that his wife was a good deal more capable of self-exertion and rational thought than he was himself, turned the subject. “If you are so hot on the subject of Gothic ruins, you won’t be best pleased when you see Loweston.”
“Is there a ruin? Surely Mama would have mentioned that.”
“Oh, there’s a ruin, all right. A ruined corner of a medieval Ambrey fortress, on a hill near the house.”
She nodded sagely. “I expect most of the stones were carried away for reuse. Papa took Mama and me to Canterbury once, and all the old abbeys were nearly down to the foundations.”
“I’m afraid most of the stones were never there at all. It was built by my grandfather.”
She stared for a moment, then started to laugh. “Oh, dear.”
“You should have read Debrett’s more carefully. We haven’t been at Loweston long enough to have family ruins. If you were hoping we dated to the Conquest, you’ve been most cruelly deceived. The first earl was one of Charles the Second’s by-blows.”
“Alas, Mama only read me the parts about your Cambridge career and your grandfather’s art collection.”
He tsked.
She shook her head regretfully. “If only I had thought of it, I might have refused you and waited for an earl with a genuine ruin!”
He realized all at once how little she had sought to find out about him. She had not asked or investigated anything-she had accepted him on the spot, on an acquaintance of a few minutes. Would she have accepted any peer with full use of his limbs?
He had assumed he understood the nature of their bargain: he got
her money, while she got his title and his position. After all, the idea of a Cit’s daughter not wishing to marry an earl had been utterly foreign to him. Everyone knew that was a self-made man’s goal in life. First he made his millions; then he bought a noble name for his grandchildren; then he sold his business and purchased a house in the country.
But she had never suggested, by word or sign, that she cared a straw for his title or his position. She could not even say that “there was something about a title” without blushing for her frivolity. Her parents had not pushed her into it; they had been against the match. If he read matters aright, this Edward, no doubt a “good, sensible man,” had wanted to marry her.
What then? Why had she married him?
And was she satisfied with her mysterious side of the deal, or did she regret her choice?
Seven
Penelope awoke in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, with unfamiliar sounds leaking in from outside. It took a moment to recall that she was married and at her husband’s seat of Loweston. Yes, now she remembered; the last hour, after they diverged from the highway, had been over terrible country roads. They had stumbled into her new home travelstained and weary, and Nev had simply taken her to “the countess’s room” and given her privacy. After Molly had undressed her, Penelope had gone straight to bed and fallen into a deep sleep. Too deep, evidently, for nerves-her stomach had not troubled her in the mornings since the wedding, for which she was profoundly grateful. Casting up her accounts in front of Nev would have been the worst possible start to a marriage.
Now she sat up and looked about her with interest. The room showed no signs of neglect, even in the bright sunlight streaming in through the enormous picture windows. The furnishings and wallpaper were modern and fashionable. The bureau was cluttered with an array of expensive perfume bottles, rouge jars, and silver brushes and combs that Penelope realized must be the dowager countess’s. She moved to the window-it was late morning, and the room was already close and hot. Opening the casement was not a large improvement and made the cheeping of birds even louder, but at least there was a warm breeze.