by Mary Balogh
“I am so sorry,” she said at last. “I had no idea. I assumed that because you look so . . . I did not understand. Is it deliberate, I wonder, that we block out the shocking reality of what happens when one army defends the freedom of a nation against another army? And that we forget that an army is made up of real men with real feelings and consciences? Did Percy feel this way too? He never said anything. But he would not, I suppose.”
“I beg your pardon.” He got to his feet and turned his back on her, staring down into the unlit coals in the fireplace. “I gave a foolish answer to the simple question of why I do not smile. I believe I do smile, ma'am. And if I do not, it is doubtless because I am a Bedwyn. Have you ever seen Bewcastle smile?”
But he used to, a long, long time ago. When they were boys, they had used to holler and shriek and laugh, the two of them, and look on the world about them as their wonderful and magical and everlasting playground. That was the time when they had been the best of friends and almost inseparable.
But she would not allow him to change the subject.
“Why did you join the military?” she asked him.
He drew a slow breath. “It is what second sons of the aristocracy do,” he said. “Did you not know that? The eldest son as the heir, the second as the military officer, the third as the clergyman.” Except that Ralf had evaded the fate of the third son.
“But you stayed all these years, feeling as you do,” she said. “Why? Why have you not sold out? Apparently you are a very wealthy man and do not need the salary.”
“There is such a thing as duty, ma'am,” he told her. “Besides, you have misunderstood. I did not say I do not enjoy killing. I merely said that my life as a killer has prevented me from being a man who smiles at every empty frivolity.”
He turned to look at her when she did not answer him. She was sewing again, though it appeared to him that her hand was not as steady as it had been before.
“Did you enjoy your fittings this afternoon?” he asked.
This time, to his relief, she allowed her mind to be diverted. “I have ordered so many things,” she said. “It will be amazing if I wear each article of clothing even once during my brief stay in town. But Lady Rochester and Miss Benning both assured me that I have chosen only the bare minimum of necessary garments. It is all quite ridiculous. I dread to think what the bill is going to amount to, especially when all the accessories are added on—shoes, plumes, fans, bonnets, reticules, handkerchiefs, and so on and so on.”
“You need not concern yourself about that,” he said. “My pockets, as you just remarked, are deep.”
Her eyebrows rose sharply. “I will be paying the bills,” she said.
“I think not, ma'am.” He addressed her with deliberate hauteur. “I will clothe you and cover all your other living expenses for as long as you are with me.”
“No, you will not.” She threaded her needle through the cloth and set it aside. There were two spots of color in her cheeks. “Absolutely not, Colonel. I am quite capable of paying my own way. I will not hear—”
“Ma'am,” he said, narrowing his gaze on her, “the matter is not open for discussion. You are my wife.”
“I am not.” She stared at him wide-eyed. “You may speak to your men like that if you wish. You will not speak to me thus. I will not be bullied—not by you, not by the Duke of Bewcastle, not by the Marchioness of Rochester, not by anyone. I came to London of my own free will. I remained of my own free will—and against yours. I accepted Lady Rochester as a mentor of my own free will. I came and I remain, not as an inferior who must be whipped into shape in order not to shame the illustrious name of Bedwyn, but as an equal to return a favor you performed for me a few weeks ago. I will pay for my own clothes.”
“You are not my wife?” He ignored everything else she had said. “There is a certain register in a certain church that would give you the lie on that, ma'am. You wear my wedding ring on your finger. You engaged in conjugal relations with me yesterday afternoon. Today our son or our daughter may be growing in your womb. Is it your claim that that child would be a bastard?”
She paled noticeably. Had she not considered the possibility of conception? Truth to tell, he had not either until assaulted with it as he had tried to fall asleep—alone—last night.
“It is very unlikely,” she said.
“But possible.” He had been a fool to give in to lust. If there were a child, they would be forever linked by something far deeper, far more compelling than the simple marriage bond. He would not allow any child of his to grow up without a relationship with its father.
She reached down to her lap for her embroidery, which of course was no longer there. She clasped her hands together instead, lacing her fingers. They turned white under his gaze.
“I ought not to have come,” she said. “I ought to have resisted the duke's persuasions. It is not really true, is it, that the ton would condemn you if I were not here with you?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “There are plenty of people who believe that callousness and even cruelty come naturally to the Bedwyns. Though anyone who knows anything of our history would know too that it has always been a matter of honor with Bedwyn men to treat their wives with respect and courtesy. It is why most of us marry late or not at all, I suppose.”
“Would you have remained at home last evening and this if it were not for my being here?” she asked him.
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“Undoubtedly not,” she said, getting to her feet. “I am going to bed, Colonel. I am weary. You must go out if you wish. Go and find your brothers and sister or some colleagues and friends. You need not stay at home on my account.”
“You are my wife,” he said.
She laughed softly—a sound without humor—and turned away.
“Eve,” he said.
Her head jerked back his way.
“If we are to spend a few weeks in company with each other,” he said, “I believe we must dispense with this awkward ma'am and colonel business. I am Aidan.”
She nodded.
“And perhaps,” he added before he could stop to consider the wisdom of his words, “we should live together as man and wife for these weeks. Yesterday afternoon was good. We will both have enough years in which to be celibate.”
Her eyes dropped to the floor between them as she apparently thought over what he had suggested. All day it had been gnawing at him—the fact that they were married, that for the next few weeks they would inhabit this suite together, only the width of two connecting dressing rooms separating their bedchambers, that they had had each other once but apparently were not to have each other again. His sexual appetites were healthy enough, heaven knew. He did not know how he was going to deal with that other Bedwyn tradition—that its males, once they did marry, were scrupulously faithful to their wives. But in the meanwhile there were these few weeks.
“Of course,” he felt forced to warn her, though doubtless it was the very fact she was thinking over, “your chances of conceiving would be considerably increased.”
Her eyes came up to look into his, and he felt jolted by their expression, though he could not put a name to it. Wistfulness, perhaps? “I believe I would like that to happen,” she said. “Very well, then.”
She wanted it to happen? She wanted a child? He had been mistaken, then, in the assumptions he had made before wedding her? She had still hoped to find a man to love and marry? She had wanted a normal married life with children? He wondered briefly about the lover or lovers from her past—it still amazed him to know there had been any—but he brushed his curiosity aside. If she had wanted to marry the man, she had had her chance. Whoever he was, he had not rushed to her rescue a few weeks ago when she had so desperately needed a husband.
“I will come to you tonight, then,” he said. “In half an hour?”
“Yes.” She nodded and turned away again.
SHE MIGHT BE WITH CHILD. THE THOUGHT THRUMMED through her mind
, like a refrain. She might be with child. Or if she was not now, then she very possibly would be before these weeks were over and she returned home alone to Ringwood. She had very deliberately relinquished her dream of a happily-ever-after when she had agreed to marry in haste three weeks ago instead of waiting for John to come home. Now perhaps she had found another dream to dream.
She had always passionately wanted children. It was perhaps one reason why, at the age of nineteen, she had been ready to accept Joshua's offer even though she had felt no romantic sentiment toward him. It was definitely one reason why, when she turned one and twenty, she had suggested that John openly admit their secret attachment to the earl and countess—already of one year's duration by that time—and risk their ire by marrying her. In the four years since then, culminating in this year of total separation while John was in Russia, she had fretted at the passing of her childbearing years.
“No, leave it loose, Edith,” she told her maid when the girl, having brushed out her hair, was preparing to braid it as usual for the night. “And I will not need my nightcap.”
She met her maid's eyes in the dressing room mirror, and they both blushed. Edith turned away to hang up the gray silk evening gown Eve had just removed.
The advent of Becky and Davy into her life had been a blessing indeed, Eve thought as she moved into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her. She had taken them in only because she could not bear the thought of children being homeless and unwanted. But it had not taken many days before they had come to seem like her own children. They still did—they were her children. She had exasperated the marchioness after they had left Miss Benning's and gone to other shops to purchase various accessories by stopping to buy a pretty little bonnet for Becky and sturdy boots for Davy—and then, of course, she had had to buy a little sailor hat for Benjamin.
She missed them all dreadfully, she thought as she set a candle down on the table beside the bed. The days without them were already seeming to be endless. But perhaps these weeks would give her another child—a baby this time, child of her womb, to suckle at her breasts and cry every few hours for the comfort of her arms and the nourishment of her milk. It was too wonderful a thought to be dwelled upon. And of course there would be only these few weeks. She must guard against hoping too much.
There was a tap on the door and all thoughts of conception and babies fled as Aidan came into her bedchamber, wearing a royal blue brocaded dressing gown and slippers. He looked as large and grim and formidable as ever. He also looked overwhelmingly attractive, though she did not know why. He was certainly not a conventionally handsome man. And he was too broad and too large for a godlike physique. But she could hardly wait for him to touch her again, to be inside her again, to make love to her again.
Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had had yet another of those tantalizing glimpses behind the facade—this time at a man whose grimness hid suffering. He was a man who had devoted his adult life to duty—to family, to king, and to country—yet he saw himself as a killer. She felt a sudden and quite unexpected wave of tenderness for him.
DON'T LET AUNT ROCHESTER BULLY YOU INTO HAVING it cut,” he said, coming toward her and taking a lock of her hair between his middle and forefingers. “It is lovely as it is.”
It was, too. It was a shade of midbrown that did not attract as immediately as blond or red or black might have done. But it was thick and shining, and now that it was loose he could see shades of honey and gold glinting in it. And it waved in ripples over her shoulders and partway down her back. She looked amazingly enticing in her prim white nightgown, her long, slim legs outlined against the fabric. He had wanted to think of her with no more personal interest than he would feel for a casual mistress, but he had been very aware, crossing from his own dressing room through hers and coming into her bedchamber, that she was his wife. That it was not just sex they were about to have but conjugal relations—the term he had used to her earlier.
He lowered his head and kissed her openmouthed. She smelled of roses and soap. But she set her hands on his shoulders and set a little distance between them before he could deepen the embrace.
“As I have told you before,” she said, “I will allow no one to bully me, not about my hair or anything else. Not even you.”
“We are not back to your clothing bills, are we?” he asked. It had not occurred to him that she would try to pay them herself. He was still incensed at the insult, which she probably did not even realize she had dealt.
She sighed and shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “We will fight about those tomorrow.”
“A good thing too,” he said. “Tonight we will love. Tell me, Eve, are you one of those women who fear nakedness? Will you swoon quite away if I unclothe you? And if I remove my dressing gown before blowing out the candles?”
He was not wearing anything beneath it, but he would not force her to look at him if she preferred to perform in darkness and under cover. They had done neither yesterday, of course, but yesterday they had coupled with almost all their clothes on.
She shook her head.
He dispensed with her nightgown as soon as he had opened the buttons down the front of it. Although he had never been a great admirer of slender women, he found her very beautiful. She was slim and lithe and porcelain skinned. She was shapely in the right places. Her breasts were not large, but they were firm and uptilted, her nipples pink and puckering with the chill—or perhaps with embarrassment or desire.
He undid the silken sash of his dressing gown, shrugged out of the garment, and let it fall to the floor. Unlike her, he was far from beautiful. Though there was no excess fat on his body, he was large, he knew. He always had to be careful not to hurt his women. He bore the scars of numerous old wounds, and there were his large nose and his dark hair and eyes and complexion, all of which must repel some women. But she had admitted to having enjoyed what she had had yesterday. He would not hide from her now.
He cupped her shoulders with his hands and kissed her again, holding her slightly away from his body. She shivered. And then he lifted his head and watched as he slid his hands down from her shoulders to cover her breasts and then move beneath them—darkness against pale femininity.
“They are too small,” she said, watching his face.
Ah. She was not confident of her sexual appeal, then.
“For what purpose?” he asked her. “For suckling babies? I doubt it. For pleasuring a man? No. They fit my hands perfectly, you see.”
She looked down as he lifted them and set his thumbs over the hardened nipples and pulsed lightly against them. Then he lowered his head, took one nipple in his mouth, and sucked, rubbing his tongue over the peak. He felt himself tighten and harden into arousal.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her hands tangling in his hair. She arched in against him.
“We had better lie down,” he said, lifting his head. “Will you mind if the candles are left burning? I like to watch what is done. But I will extinguish them if you would prefer.”
She hesitated, and he could tell from the look in her eyes that she would prefer darkness.
“Leave them burning,” she said.
She lay down in the middle of the bed, but when he joined her there, he did not immediately top her as he had done yesterday when they had both been hot with passion. Neither did he lie beside her. Instead, he knelt on the mattress, spread her thighs wide with his hands, and then kneeled between them. She bit her lip and spread her hands, palm down, on the sheet on either side of her while he set his hands behind her knees, raised her legs, and spread his own wide beneath them.
He leaned over her then, his eyes devouring her, his hands exploring her slowly and thoroughly with all the expertise he had developed over the years, arousing her with feathering touches and light stroking, tickling, pulsing, scratching, pinching in erotic places he knew would heighten her desire. She lay still beneath him, her arms spread over the mattress, her eyes half closed, her lips parted, responding with hea
t and shortened breath and little moans of pleasure, but not participating. He played her with his mouth, his tongue, and his teeth as well as with his hands.
One thing was clear, at least. Her sexual experience was very limited indeed.
He slid his hands down over her slender, smooth legs, until they were behind him, finding and working the places on her feet that would arouse further need in her. And sure enough, when he moved his hands between her thighs, he found her hot and moist. He probed with the fingertips of one hand, stroking gently, parting folds, exploring between, sliding one finger up inside her, watching what he did and knowing that he could wait no longer than a few moments more before mounting her. He felt her muscles contract strongly about his finger and withdrew it.
“You are ready?” he asked, looking up into her eyes. He could read her body and knew the answer, but he would not penetrate before she had assented.
“Yes.” The low huskiness of her voice caught at his breathing.
He slid his hands beneath her to cup her buttocks, tilted her, and entered her with one firm thrust. Heat, moisture, and tightening muscles enfolded him and he closed his eyes, drew a slow breath, and imposed control over himself. He wanted to cover her with his weight and release all his tension into her with a few powerful thrusts. But he had aroused her and must now satisfy her. He stayed on his knees between her thighs, kept his hands where they were, and watched as he withdrew and entered again and again, concentrating on giving her his full length and a strong, firm rhythm. He watched, detaching his bodily needs from what he saw, waiting for her body to respond.
She was beautiful, all woman—woman in the act of sex. He could hear the wet rhythm of what they did together and smell the rawness of sex mingled with soap and roses. She moved her arms to cup his knees with her palms.