by Mary Balogh
He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. A startled Frances was being kissed before she could even begin to defend herself. She stood still in utter shock and revulsion. His mouth was open over hers, and softly moist.
"We will drive over to my home tomorrow," he said when he finally lifted his head. "I see that you are learning after all."
"I really think I should not," Frances said. "I do not know what I have done to give you the impression that you might take liberties like this, sir."
"Are you crying?" Sir John asked, peering at her in some surprise. "You are a tender creature, are you not? Here, take my handkerchief. I had no idea my embrace would be so overpowering to a lady of such tender sensibilities. I will have to remember to be more gentle the next time, until you are accustomed to my attentions. Come, I will take you back to the drawing room. The rose garden will have to wait for another night."
"Thank you, sir," Frances said as he took her arm and. led her back onto the terrace.
16
Arabella sent her maid away as soon as she was in her nightgown and had had her curls brushed out for the night. She paced restlessly to the window and back to the bed. Would he come soon? Or would he stay up for most of the night as he had half-promised, talking to Lord Farraday and Mr. Hubbard?
The four-poster bed with its domed canopy and heavy velvet hangings suddenly looked very narrow. She and her husband were to share that bed, sleep together side by side. They had not been together as man and wife for more than two weeks. They had never spent a night together.
It seemed to Arabella impossible to climb into that bed and address herself to sleep. She would not be able even to close her eyes. She would be as stiff as a board.
She did eventually climb in on the side farthest from the window and then wondered if she should move over to the other side. Which side would he prefer? She stayed where she was, as close to the edge as possible, clinging to the side with both hands.
She closed her eyes and then opened them wide again. The candles were still burning. Should she leave them so or should she snuff them? She jumped out of bed, snuffed the candles hastily, and almost ran back to the bed. It seemed to be far safer to be hidden beneath the covers than to be caught standing in the middle of the room.
Arabella tried to coax her mind into thinking of pleasant things: the conversations she had had at the garden party during the afternoon; the friendly exchanges she had had with her neighbors at the dinner table; the hilarity of the charades, in which she had acquitted herself not at all well; the good fellowship afterward. She tried not to think of the depression that was waiting to oppress her.
Her husband had tried to patch up their quarrel earlier that afternoon. He had suggested that they start all over again, put the first month of their marriage behind them, try to become friends. He wanted to take her to his home in Norfolk so that they could be alone together.
And she had rejected him. She had pointed out that the past was forever with them, that there was no way now to make something pleasant of their marriage.
And she was right, was she not? Even if he was sorry for what he had done—and he had never said that he was—how could she ever trust him again? If he had needed a mistress when he first married her, would the need not return? After all, she had no great attractions either of person or of character with which to hold his interest.
How could she forget? How could she become his friend? A friend was someone one trusted.
She was right. It was too late for them.
But she did not want to be right. She wanted to trust him and admire him as she had at the start of their marriage. She wanted to be able to depend upon him as a wife should upon her husband. She wanted to obey him from inclination and not merely because her marriage vows dictated that she must.
She wanted… She did not know what she wanted, but she knew that if she did not think of something else very quickly and concentrate her whole mind on it, she would cry.
She would not cry. If she did, her nose would get stuffed up and she would have to breathe through her mouth. And she would snore when she slept. If she slept! How very humiliating that would be.
Much later, Lord Astor lay awake, his head turned to one side, watching his wife. She was curled up on her side of the bed, facing away from him, so close to the edge that he wondered that she had not fallen off. She was sleeping. He had his hands clasped behind his head. He had resisted the temptation to touch her. It was a strong temptation. She looked like a child, positioned as she was. But he knew that she felt very much like a woman. And he had not had her for more than two weeks.
She turned suddenly, making a great to-do about the matter, wriggling into a comfortable position, burrowing her nose into the pillow, pulling the blankets up to her chin. Her curls brushed against his arm. Lord Astor smiled.
And then he knew that she had awoken. There was an unnatural stillness about her body. She opened her eyes and looked at him without moving. She stared at him for a long time. The faint light from the window was behind him. He realized that she could not see that his eyes were open.
"Hello, sleepyhead," he said.
She still did not move. "I was sleeping," she said. She sounded surprised.
"Did you think you would not?" he said. "Because I would be coming?"
"Yes," she said.
"Arabella!" he said softly. He took his hands away from behind his head and turned onto his side, facing her. "I am not quite a monster, you know. I am a man, the same one you trusted just a few weeks ago. The only difference is that at that time I was unfaithful to you and now I am not." He touched her cheek lightly with his fingertips.
She lifted her hand and unexpectedly caught at his. She pressed it against her cheek and then turned her head so that her lips were against his palm.
"Arabella." He kissed her temple, her cheek, and—when she turned her head—her lips. "Let me make love to you. Don't freeze me out. Don't just be dutiful. Love me. Please. Love me, Arabella."
He feathered kisses on her lips and cheeks until she took his face in her hands and offered her mouth to him. She whimpered when he kissed her more deeply. He pushed an arm beneath her pillow and brought her warm, tiny body against his. He teased her lips with tongue and teeth until she opened her mouth and allowed him entrance. She grew hot in his arms.
Arabella had lost herself. She had been sleepy and quite without defenses. Now there was no possible way of fighting. Indeed, there was not even any thought of putting an end to what had begun. Her husband's arms were about her, she was pressed to the heat of him, his mouth was over hers, his tongue creating erotic aches and arousing a desire that totally precluded thought. She wanted him, all of him. Then. There could be no holding back, no waiting.
"Yes, oh, yes," she gasped when his mouth left hers and began to blaze a hot trail along her throat. She twined her fingers in his hair. "Yes. Love me. Oh, please, love me."
Then she was helping him unbutton the front of her nightgown. Hindering him, rather, in her impatience, her hands plucking at his. And then she gasped as strong hands lifted the fabric right away from her shoulders and down her arms and returned to touch her breasts, to explore them lightly, to touch her nipples, to tease them, to arouse them so that she cried out with the pain of her longing.
"Arabella." She was on her back, her husband leaning over her, kissing her eyes, her mouth, her throat, her breasts. "My love. Oh, so beautiful. So very beautiful."
She cried out to him again as he took one nipple into his mouth and touched the tip with his tongue.
They were both naked suddenly. She reveled in the feel of powerful muscles beneath her fingers and palms as she ran her hands over his chest and shoulders, down his arms. And she ached and ached with painful desire as his hand aroused her and readied her for his entry.
"Make love to me," she pleaded against his mouth. "Make love to me. Oh, please, please."
But when he pushed inside her, there was none of the re
laxed enjoyment that she had learned to expect from their earlier beddings. There was no detached and pleasurable analysis of what he was doing to her. There was only the need to feel him drive even deeper and more powerfully toward that unbearable ache of her longing.
He could feel her coming. He had his weight on his arms so that he would not crush the small body beneath his own. But he had her against him, taut with a passion that he had not suspected her capable of, on the brink of release.
Every move of his had been calculated from the moment he had felt her turn hot in his arms. Everything was for Arabella, so that she would know the power of his love, so that she would be satisfied, so that he might see her happy in his arms afterward. Gratification of his own desire became nothing. Only Arabella mattered. He would not care if he took nothing at all. He was making love, something he had never done before. He was giving her everything he had to give. He was giving himself.
And yet—strange reward of a love only now recognized by the heart, still not by the mind—as he felt her come, he knew that he was coming to meet her. He knew that they were to experience the rarest of all blessings of physical love: they were to unite at the moment of a shared climax.
Lord Astor held his wife's hands against the bed on either side of her head as it happened, his fingers twined in hers. His face was buried amongst her curls.
"Geoffrey?" she whispered, her voice surprised. And then she gripped his hands, cried out against his shoulder, and shuddered into release. He sighed, relaxed his weight on her, and went with her into the land beyond passion, beyond feeling, almost beyond consciousness.
* * *
Arabella awoke the following morning with the feeling that it was late, much later than she had intended to get up. She had planned to rise early so that she might take George for a walk before anyone else was about. But she had overslept.
She turned her head suddenly as memory overtook her. But she was alone. She must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have missed her husband's getting up and dressing. Arabella blushed despite the emptiness of the room as she stretched and felt her nakedness beneath the covers.
How could she have! She had given in to utter wantonness, ignored the dictates of reason and morality, and allowed her physical needs to lead her on. How could she now convince either her husband or herself that she was bound to him only by the ties of law and the church and duty? And what defenses would she have against her own misery when the novelty of having her had worn off and he turned to a more practiced courtesan again?
She could not even blame him. She had started the whole thing the night before. It was true that he had spoken to her and touched her, but she was the one who had pressed his hand against her cheek and kissed it. And she had eagerly followed him every step of the way in what had ensued. She could even recall begging him to love her.
She could have pleaded sleepiness if that had been all. He had touched her before she was properly awake, and by the time she was, she was so physically aroused that there had been no resisting what had happened. But that could not be pleaded for the second time. She had been awake, staring at him, studying his strong and handsome profile in the gray of early dawn, touching his chest, long before he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at her. And she was the one who had snuggled closer and raised her face for his kiss.
She had not been unaware that time of what she was doing and with whom. She had let him arouse her, lift her on top of him, and bring her knees up under his arms. And she had put her hands on his shoulders as he moved with powerful strokes in her, and gazed into his eyes until the end, when she had lowered her forehead to his chest and taken into herself all that he had to give, and gave in return all that was herself.
She had known that he was Geoffrey, her faithless husband, and she had not cared. Not, at least, until several minutes after it was finished and he had rolled over with her and set her down on the bed and kissed her deeply on the mouth. Then, the passion gone, she had wanted to cry, knowing how vulnerable she had made herself, knowing that now she had given him the power to hurt and hurt her. She had allowed herself to love him, she had opened all of herself to him, and given all she had to give. Not just her body, but her very self. And now she would never be able to wrap herself around with the assurance that she did not care, that she could make a meaningful life for herself independent of her husband.
She had turned over onto her side, facing away from him, and concentrated every effort of body and mind on not sobbing aloud. Her body had been rigid with tension when he had moved over behind her and smoothed back the curls from the side of her face with a gentle hand.
"Are we friends now, Arabella?" he had asked. "Am I forgiven?"
She had been quite incapable of answering.
"What is the matter?" he had asked, running his hand down her side and feeling how tense she was. "Are you crying?"
She had bitten both lips and willed the sob that was trying to escape her back down her throat.
"This has made no difference, has it?" he had said at last. "I am still the erring husband who must grovel at your feet. And even then I will not be forgiven, will I, Arabella? You will never trust me. I will never be allowed to forget."
He had rolled away from her and she could feel him lying awake behind her even as she lay, fighting to control her tears, knowing that she might as well get up then and go out for George before the grooms were up even. She would certainly never sleep.
But she had slept. And deeply so. And lay now bitterly regretting her lack of moral control the night before. And filled with wonder at the ecstasies of physical passion. And utterly confused.
Arabella threw back the bedcovers, flushed yet again at her nakedness and all it had meant the night before, and pulled on her nightgown before ringing for her maid.
Lord Astor was out riding with Lord Farraday and several of the other gentlemen from the house. They were inspecting a newly drained portion of the estate that had been seeded for the first time that spring.
"Where is Hubbard?" Lord Astor asked his friend when they had a moment together.
"He is taking himself off back to London," Lord Farraday said. "I can't think why, when he made the journey all the way out here with every intention of staying until tomorrow. Strange fellow, Hubbard. I suppose one can understand it when one remembers what he has gone through in the last year."
"Yes," Lord Astor agreed. "Arabella seems remarkably friendly with him. She has a weakness for lame ducks. I hope she did not say anything yesterday to upset Hubbard."
"I can't think she would," Lord Farraday said. "Sweet little thing, Astor. How is it you were so fortunate? She don't have a sister, I suppose? Apart from the beauty, I mean."
Lord Astor grinned. "There is Jemima," he said. "Fifteen years old and straight as a beanpole, Farraday.
Something of a hoyden, by all accounts. And she has reddish hair. One would shudder to imagine what your children would be like. Shall I secure you an introduction?"
"No," his friend said with a mock sigh. "I had in mind someone more like Lady Astor. She wouldn't bully a fellow, would she? And always cheerful. She must be good to come home to. Mama is constantly coming up with likely prospects, managing females all of them. They would have me in leading strings before we left the church."
Lord Astor laughed.
"There goes Charlton now," Lord Farraday said, squinting his eyes and looking off to the roadway in the distance. "He must be going home. Whoever is that with him?"
Lord Astor shaded his eyes. "She is female, anyway," he said. "I would lay a wager it is Arabella's sister. And no maid or groom in sight. What a brainless girl that is, Farraday. She has no business being alone with him."
"I say," Lord Farraday said. "If he is taking her to his home, Astor, one or other of us should get along after them as fast as possible. Not a savory character is Charlton. Fancies himself. And is not above seducing young ladies he has no business seducing. It has happened before. Miss Wilson don't strik
e me as a female of very strong character, if you will excuse my saying so."
"Devil take it!" Lord Astor said. "I am on my way, Farraday. I can take care of this myself."
And he cantered off, trying not to draw the attention of the other gentlemen. He could not follow directly after the distant phaeton, as there was still some marshy ground to be skirted beyond the reclaimed fields.
He really should not have been so careless about his charge of Frances, Lord Astor thought, not for the first time. The girl had taken very well with the ton and never lacked for friends and admirers. The connection with Charlton had seemed quite proper, even eligible. But it had been going on long enough that he should have found the opportunity to ask the man his intentions.
He had not known what he now knew, of course. He wished that Farraday had seen fit to warn him before now. But it was plain to common sense that Charlton was a vain and shallow man, very unlikely to have serious intentions toward someone like Frances. Clearly her beauty was the lure.
And now he was taking her, unaccompanied, to his own home. What on earth had induced the girl to go along with him? She must have windmills in her head. Did she not realize that she was probably being taken there to be seduced, perhaps even raped? He did not have any high opinion of Frances' character, but he did believe her virtuous. She would not willingly give in to seduction. Her only hope seemed to be that she would drown Charlton with her tears.
What a blessing that Farraday had spotted them, Lord Astor thought. How would he ever comfort Arabella if her sister was ruined? Not that Arabella would be the principal sufferer, of course, but it would be her suffering that would be his chief concern.
He wanted Arabella to be happy. He had only very recently realized that that had become his life's goal. She deserved happiness if only because other people's contentment always seemed more important to her than her own. He was convinced that she had offered to be the one to marry him—or his father, as she had thought—just so that the rest of her family could be secure and free to pursue their own happiness. And he had seen that several of her friendships were with people for whom she felt sympathy and whom she tried to help.