The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  “Where is Miss Catherine’s pianoforte?” I asked curiously.

  “Upstairs, in the blue drawing room,” Mrs. Frome replied.

  “My, this certainly is a large house,” I said lightly. “Tomorrow you must give me a tour, Mrs. Frome.”

  “I am at your disposal, my lady,” the woman said, her face back to its usual stoic expression.

  She left, and I crossed the Turkish carpet to look at the cranes. I was still standing there, staring rather blindly at the beautiful, delicate creatures, when the door opened once more and Philip came in.

  I turned to face him. Outside night had begun to fall and one could not see the garden beyond the terrace. I looked at him gravely and said what was in my heart. “I am so sorry that you had to marry me, Philip. I know that I blackmailed you into presenting me, but truly, I did not mean to force you to marry me.” With difficulty, I kept my eyes steady on his face. “It cannot be pleasant for you to be married to a woman you can’t respect, and I am sorry.”

  He gave me a look that was infinitely weary. “Georgiana,” he said, and my heart leaped at hearing my name upon his lips, “believe me, it is not I who have been wronged by this marriage. A man like myself has no business marrying an innocent girl like you. I would never have done so if circumstances had not conspired to make it necessary.”

  I stared at him in astonishment.

  “What do you mean, a man like you?” I said at last.

  “You have no idea of the kind of life that I have led,” he returned somberly. “The tale is far too ugly for your ears, but believe me when I tell you that it amounts to a desecration for me to even contemplate touching you. I want you to know that. I want you to understand that I am giving you a choice. If you wish to accept only the protection of my name and dispense with the other aspects of married life, I will understand completely.”

  I was thunderstruck. This was the last thing I had expected to hear. I didn’t know what to say. In truth, I didn’t quite understand what he was proposing.

  “Are you suggesting that we could live together like . . . like brother and sister?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes. If that is what you want, I shall respect your wishes.” His voice sounded quite calm, but even though he was on the other side of the room from me, I had become so attuned to him that I could feel his tension. He said, “The last thing I want to do is force myself on a girl like you.”

  I tried to think clearly, which under the circumstances was extremely difficult. I finally decided that the best approach I could take to this entirely unexpected development was to be practical.

  “We cannot do that,” I said. “Whatever you may have been in the past, you are the Earl of Winterdale now, and as such you must have an heir. And to be honest, I want children, too, Philip.” My voice sounded slightly breathless as I concluded, “In order to achieve those things, we cannot live together like brother and sister, can we?”

  His face was stark. “No, we cannot.”

  “Well then,” I said, trying desperately to sound as if I was merely showing common sense about an essentially trivial matter. “I think that our marriage ought to be a real one.”

  I saw his fists open and close at his sides. “Are you certain about this, Georgiana?” he asked harshly.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to sound as certain as I was saying I was. “I am.”

  CHAPTER

  sixteen

  BETTY HELPED ME TO GET READY FOR BED. MY nightdress was of the finest, thinnest cambric and the scooped neck and long sleeves were trimmed with lace. She brushed my hair vigorously until it hung in a shining pale brown mantle around my shoulders.

  When she had finished, I went through the connecting door to my bedroom and got into the big four-poster that had been made during the time of King James.

  Earlier, when Philip had offered me my choice about whether or not I wanted to make our marriage a real one, I had not doubted what my reply had to be. Nor was it really the issue of children which had prompted me to answer as I had. It was simply that I had felt in my heart that if I was not close to him in this way, then I would never be close to him in any way at all. And I wanted to be close to him.

  All the same, I was definitely apprehensive about what was going to transpire between us on our wedding night.

  The bedroom windows had been closed against the chill night air, and the room seemed very quiet. I couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving around in the earl’s dressing room next door. There was a fire going in the fireplace and I stared at the glowing red coals with intense interest, trying to keep my mind blank and my eyes away from that dressing-room door. The vase on the marquetry table between the windows was filled with a mixed bouquet of flowers, and their sweet scent hung in the air, mingling with the smell of the fire. The lamp next to the bed was lit. I sat up against the pillows, smoothed the coverlet over my pristine white lap, stared fixedly at the fire, and waited.

  The latch on the dressing-room door rattled slightly, and my eyes swung around in time to see Philip coming in. He was wearing a black dressing gown and as he crossed the floor toward me with those panther-light steps of his, I could feel a mixture of apprehension and excitement flutter in my stomach.

  I thought that he would get in on his side of the bed, but he didn’t. Instead he came around to my side, sat down beside me, and took my hands into his. My pulses began to race.

  “Do you understand what is going to happen between us tonight, Georgiana?” he asked seriously.

  I could feel the hot color flood my face. I had been raised in the country, after all, and I certainly knew the basics of animal reproduction. The picture was not a pretty one, however, and my mind much preferred not to contemplate it. I had been working hard at not contemplating it all week.

  My eyes dropped away from his. “I think so,” I said.

  “Do you understand that I am likely to hurt you?” he said next.

  My eyes flew back upward. “Hurt me?” I echoed. I hadn’t known about that part.

  “In order for me to enter you, I am going to have to break through your virginity, and that will hurt,” he said. “I want you to understand this while there is still time for you to change your mind.”

  I looked up into his face. It looked taut and hard, as if he were keeping himself under strict control. “Will it always hurt?” I asked.

  “No. Just the first time.”

  “Oh well,” I said with a mixture of stoicism and bravado, “then I suppose we had better get it over with, hadn’t we?”

  For the first time in days, I saw a faint smile touch his lips. “Always so practical,” he murmured.

  I looked into his incredibly blue eyes and I didn’t feel practical at all. I felt dizzy.

  I nodded helplessly.

  He raised his hand and ran his fingers through my loose hair. My scalp tingled. “You have such beautiful hair,” he murmured. His hand tangled in the soft brown fall of it and pulled gently so that my head tilted farther back. He bent his head to mine and began to kiss me.

  The power of my own response startled me. I put my arms around his neck and when he slid me from a sitting position to a lying position on the bed, I went without objection. Through the thin cotton of my gown I could feel his fingers begin to caress my breast and I shivered.

  It felt so good.

  His lips left my mouth and kissed my ear, my throat, the hollow between my breasts.

  I was astonished by the sensations that swept through me at his touch. That little frisson of awareness that had always leaped in me at his touch was as nothing compared to the feelings that were swamping me now.

  He kept kissing me and kissing me until I was so dizzy I couldn’t think at all. I don’t know at what point he shed his dressing gown, but all of a sudden I realized with dim surprise that he was naked. I ran my hands up and down his arms and felt the strength and power of him under my fingers. It was exciting. He kissed my mouth again, his own mouth hard and urgent, and I opened my lips and
was shocked to feel his tongue enter and curl against mine.

  His hands came up on either side of my head to hold me in place. I shut my eyes and slowly my tongue began to follow the rhythm of his. My nightdress was already rucked up and I could feel his hand creep up under it and slide along my leg.

  Then he touched me.

  I quivered with a mixture of shock and delight.

  He kept kissing me and rubbing gently with his finger, and my quivering increased.

  I could feel the hardness of him pressed against my thigh, and part of me was frightened and part of me was thrilled.

  Then he said, in a hoarse voice I scarcely recognized, “All right, Georgie. Hold on, this is it.”

  The strangest thing was, I wanted him to come into me. I wasn’t even thinking about pain, all I was thinking about was the incredibly pleasurable sensations he had created and that I wanted him to come in. That’s why the pain, when it came, was such a shock.

  He had to push hard to enter, and I went rigid with the unexpected, burning discomfort of it. Then I remembered what he had told me.

  But I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected to be pierced until I bled. I hadn’t expected to find myself pinned under him while he slammed in and out of me, hurting me every time he moved. He was so much stronger than I. He not only hurt me, he made me afraid.

  When it was all over, and he was lying on top of me, sweating and breathing heavily, it took all of my willpower not to cry.

  He lifted himself off of me and looked down into my face, which I quickly averted.

  “God. I’m sorry, Georgie,” he said. His voice was harsh, and he was still breathing as heavily as if he had been running hard out for half an hour. “I didn’t mean it to happen that way.”

  He rolled away from me and lay on his back, one arm flung across his forehead, his eyes on the ceiling.

  “Christ,” he said.

  He sounded so desperate that it pierced through the fog of my own misery. I said in a very small voice, “Did something go wrong?”

  “I should have been more gentle,” he said grimly. “It didn’t have to be like that. I’m afraid I got . . . carried away. I’m sorry.”

  He should be sorry, I thought miserably.

  I shifted away from him slightly and realized that part of my discomfort came from the fact that I was lying in a sticky wet spot on the bed. I put my hand down to investigate the cause, and that was when I found the blood.

  “Philip,” I said, my voice panicky, “I’m bleeding!”

  His hand closed around my wrist, holding my hand high between us, and we stared together at the bright red stuff that stained my fingers.

  “It’s all right,” he said in a very strange voice. “It’s just a sign of your virginity, Georgie. It’s a sign that you have never belonged to any man but me.”

  He kept staring at my hand as if he were in a trance, and after a minute I said in a suffocated voice, “I’ll have to change my nightdress, and the sheets will have to be changed, too. We can’t sleep in these.”

  He released my wrist and when he spoke his voice sounded normal once again. “I told Betty to wait in your dressing room to help you. Go ahead, I will see to it that the sheets are changed.”

  I scrambled out of the bed and tried to walk not run to my dressing-room door.

  “Here I am, my lady,” Betty’s comfortable, familiar voice said as I entered my private sanctuary and shut the bedroom door behind me. “You go into the water closet and clean up, then I’ve got a nice clean nightdress for you to put on.”

  She didn’t appear to be at all shocked by my bloodstained appearance, so I supposed that Philip had been telling the truth when he had said that this was what happened to all virgins on their wedding nights.

  I finished my ablutions in the water closet, and Betty slipped another pretty white cotton nightdress over my head. I wasn’t bleeding any longer, but I was very sore indeed as I walked reluctantly to the door leading back to my bedroom.

  The last thing I wanted to do was to meet the chambermaid as she was in the process of changing those disgusting sheets, so I peeked in the door to see if she was finished. The room was empty. I crept quietly in and got back into my marital bed.

  I curled myself into a ball facing away from Philip’s side of the bed, shut my eyes tightly and pretended that I was asleep. Sleep was very far away, however, as I lay there in the quiet of the large, elegant room. For some reason, I felt very very sad.

  It was then that the tears began to fall.

  Ten minutes later, Philip came into the room. I didn’t stir, praying that he would think that I was asleep. He blew out the lamp and got into bed beside me. I held myself very still, trying not to move, trying not to let him know that I was crying.

  I know I didn’t make a sound, but all of a sudden he said, “Please don’t cry, Georgie.”

  His voice had that same desperate note it had held earlier.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come here,” he said.

  I turned around unwillingly and was surprised to find myself gathered close into his arms. At this point I gave up all hope of concealment, buried my face in his shoulder, and wept with abandon.

  “I’m sorry, Georgie,” he said. I could feel his lips touching my hair. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s just that it was so so . . . n-nice at first,” I gulped, “and th-then it . . .”

  I cried harder.

  “I know.” He sounded infinitely weary. “Remember how you once told me that life was unfair to women? Well, this is another example for you. A man’s first time is usually very exciting, but a woman’s hurts.”

  My tears were slowing now and the regular beat of his heart under my cheek was very soothing. His nightshirt was soaked where I had cried into it, but I thought that this was a small price for him to pay after what he had done to me.

  I yawned, suddenly and horrifically.

  “Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he said. “You must be exhausted.” And his arms began to loosen from around me.

  I was exhausted, of course, and it was all his fault, but for some odd reason I didn’t want him to let me go.

  I cuddled closer into his warmth, muttered something like, “Hold me,” and dropped like a stone into the depths of healing sleep.

  * * *

  When I awoke the following morning, bright sunlight was peeking in through the slats of the blinds on the windows. I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and was horrified to discover that it was ten o’clock in the morning.

  I was alone in the bed.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept until ten in the morning. I had probably never in my life slept until ten in the morning.

  How mortifying, I thought. What a slovenly way to start my new life at Winterdale Park.

  And where was Philip?

  I got out of bed and went to one of the long windows that looked out on the back of the house. I opened the blinds and found myself facing the beautiful park for which Winterdale was justly famous.

  The view in the morning sunlight was breathtaking. A broad grass path led from the stone terrace behind the house to a castellated belvedere to a yew-fringed bowling green. Beyond the bowling green the park was planted with beeches, oaks, chestnuts, and cedars surrounding a rather large ornamental lake with a small island in the middle, which was crowned with a pavilion.

  Running along the grassy path near the bowling green, a blue ribbon in her golden hair and her dog at her heels, was Anna. She was laughing.

  A lump came into my throat.

  “Ah, you’re awake, my lady.” It was Betty, coming into the room with a tray of chocolate and some toast.

  I swung around to face her. “I’m so embarrassed, Betty. I’ve never slept this late in my life. You should have awakened me.”

  “Well now, you had cause, my lady,” my maid replied comfortably, “and his lordship said to let you sleep, so I did.”

  I drank my chocolate, ate my toast, dresse
d in a pretty pale yellow morning dress and went downstairs to meet the housekeeper.

  I spent the rest of the morning with Mrs. Frome being given a tour of the house. To a girl who had lived all her life in a simple brick gentleman’s house, the state apartments of Winterdale Park were intimidatingly magnificent. I don’t believe I had ever seen so much marble in all my life.

  Fortunately, the family rooms were more comfortable. The green drawing room downstairs, the one with the Chinese figures, was very formal, but there were two smaller drawing rooms on the second floor that were more comfortable-looking. It was in one of those rooms that I saw Catherine’s pianoforte.

  Seventeenth-century Italian landscapes and great gilt mirrors predominated as wall decorations in most of the rooms I viewed.

  It was almost lunchtime when I finished my tour, and I thanked Mrs. Frome for her time and went out onto the terrace to see if Anna was still in the park. She and Nanny were just coming in.

  “Georgie, Georgie, Georgie!” Anna called to me excitedly. “Do you know what Philip had made for me?”

  “No,” I said. “What?”

  “A swing!”

  My eyes swung to Nanny. “A swing?”

  Anna’s nurse nodded. “That is right, Miss Georgiana . . . that is to say, my lady.”

  “Don’t you dare to call me my lady,” I said fiercely. “I shall always be Miss Georgiana to you, Nanny. Is that clear?”

  She smiled at me, her raisinlike eyes twinkling. “Aye. It’s clear.” Her smile grew more radiant. “It’s true. His lordship is having a part of the garden made over especially for Miss Anna’s use. The swing is already there, and there will be a small barn for her donkey, and he has said that if she wants any other animals, he will have housing built for them, too.”

  I felt tears sting behind my eyes. “Oh Nanny,” I said. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  She nodded vigorously. “He’s a kind lad, Miss Georgiana. You made a good choice.”

  I thought of what had happened between us last night and didn’t think I would exactly call him either kind or a lad. There could be no doubt, however, that he was being excessively good to Anna.