Delight nodded, a shiver of fear running down her spine. In the back of her mind was the thought that Henriette was a very bad girl, and that neither of them should be here. Then the thought of Anthony Wyndham crossed her mind, and she focused her eyes on the couple in the stall box. The stableman had already unlaced and removed Henriette’s bodice. He had pulled her chemise down to her waist so that her big breasts were bare. Now he groveled on his knees in the stall before her, his head moving swiftly and he nuzzled, sucked, licked, and kissed at the ample bosom before him. Henriette looked down on him scornfully, and then she looked up to smile conspiratorially at Delight. Soon the stableman’s hands slipped beneath the girl’s dress, and then he pulled her down into the straw upon her back, pushing her heavy skirts up and baring her to the waist. To Delight’s surprise, Henriette had a triangle of dark curls between her legs. Kneeling between those outspread limbs, the stableman straightened himself back up, fumbled with his breeches, and suddenly Delight saw his organ—a great and long affair with a purplish head.
She gasped with shock, for she had never expected that a manhood could be that big. The stableman heard her startled sound, and turning about for just a moment, grinned, pleased at her. Delight blushed, to his vast amusement, but then Henriette was hissing, “Put it in me, you vain bastard! Put it in me!” With a shrug of apparent regret Johnny turned back to his partner and thrust himself into her body. Fiercely he jammed himself in and out of her body, and beneath him Henriette began to squirm and moan once more. Delight could not take her eyes off the spectacle before her. Her vision glazed and she saw, not Henriette and her brawny stableman, but herself and Anthony locked in passion’s embrace.
Delight’s legs grew wobbly, and she clung hard to the stall door to keep herself from falling. Her breathing grew harsh, and she moaned so softly that only she herself could actually distinguish the words. “Anthony! Oh, yes, my darling! Yes! Yes! Love me! Love me!” Only Henriette’s little shriek of satisfaction brought Delight back to reality.
The French girl smiled, and rolling her lover off her, stretched languidly before getting up to readjust her clothing and dress herself. When she had finished, she stepped over her still-fallen lover, and linking her arm in Delight’s, drew her back out from the dark stable, saying in the most conversational tone, “There, chérie, was that not exciting? Did you imagine yourself and your wonderful Tony the very same way?”
Delight flushed. “Aye,” she admitted. “I did, Henriette.”
The French girl laughed low. “The real act is ever so much better than the imaginary one, Delight, but in time you will find that out.”
“When, Henriette?” demanded the overwrought girl. “When?”
“You must not be in too much of a hurry, chérie,” replied Henriette. “In the spring we will make a plan, I promise you, dearest Delight. Until then you may watch me whenever I amuse myself with my Johnny. Have you ever let a man touch you, Delight? I will wager you have not, for you are an overly chaste little thing.”
“Never,” came the expected reply. “I save myself for Anthony.”
“Next time you come to watch Johnny and me, let him play a little with your pretty titties, Delight. You will still be a virgin, but it will give you great pleasure. You can close your eyes and pretend that he is your Anthony,” Henriette said.
“I do not know if I should,” Delight murmured.
“We will speak about it again when the time comes,” replied Henriette sweetly. “I am your best friend, and I want you to be happy, chérie.”
February came, and Blaze knew that she could no longer deny her husband her bed. She was growing to like Tony more each day, but she did not feel for him what she had felt for Edmund. How could she? Still, her duty as the Countess of Langford was to supply an heir for the Wyndhams. She would couple with Tony if only for Edmund’s sake. He had so desperately sought an heir. If she and Tony had a son, she would name him for her first husband. She knew that Anthony would not mind.
On the morning of the fifth of February she had Heartha wash her honey-colored hair and perfume it with her violet fragrance. If he remembered the date, he discreetly said nothing. After the evening meal was over Blaze arose from her place saying, “I will leave you now, my lord, for I wish a bath before retiring.”
“I shall join you in an hour,” he said without even looking at her.
So he had remembered! She had half-hoped that he wouldn’t, and yet she had hoped that he would. He had been gently courting her over the last few weeks, and she had to admit, albeit guiltily, to enjoying his kisses. Arriving in her apartments, Blaze was surprised to find that her tub was already set up, and filled with steaming violet-scented water.
“You are amazing!” she praised Heartha.
“Humphhh,” came the sharp reply. “ ’Tis the fifth of February, is it not?” She undid Blaze’s bodice and helped her from her skirts.
“Aye,” said Blaze slowly as she stepped from her petticoats. “What has that got to do with my tub?”
“Is not tonight the night that you will finally allow your husband into your bed?” demanded Heartha.
Blaze laughed. There was simply no use denying anything to Heartha. Heartha knew all her secrets. “I had to be certain that I was not carrying the king’s child,” she explained to her tiring woman. “I want no bastards for Langford.” She unrolled her stockings and allowed Heartha to pull them off.
“I understood that,” said Heartha. “Now, get into that tub, m’lady, before you catch your death!”
Blaze climbed into the tub and sighed as the warm water eased away her busy day. “Let me be awhile,” she said.
“Not tonight, m’lady,” came the quick retort. “You’ll not keep him waiting any longer than is necessary. Langford needs an heir!”
Blaze shook her head. It was obvious that she was going to get no rest from either the family or her servants until she had produced a son for the Wyndhams. She sat quietly while Heartha scrubbed her skin until it was glowing, and then ordered her from the great oak tub. When she had been dried thoroughly and dusted with fragrant powder, Heartha slipped the violet-colored silk nightrail she had originally chosen for Blaze’s wedding night over her mistress’s head.
“No nightcap!” she ordered in a tone so fierce that Blaze did not dare to question her. “Now, into the bed with you, m’lady! Nay, wait!”
“What is it, Heartha?” Blaze demanded, beginning to become annoyed.
“Take the gown off, m‘lady,” and before Blaze might protest, the tiring woman pulled her arms up and drew the silk over her head. “There is no need in wasting this lovely gown, m’lady,” she told her astounded mistress. “An eager man would only rip it off you, and Lord Tony loves you greatly. Into bed with you!”
Shaking her head, Blaze climbed into her bed. She did not know whether to laugh or to scold her tiring woman for her presumption. Having draped a lacy little shawl about her lady’s shoulders, Heartha bobbed a curtsy, and was gone before Blaze could make up her mind in the matter. She heard the footmen removing the tub from her dressing room, and then all was quiet. A chamberstick burned on either side of the bed, and the room was delightfully warm with the fine fire that burned in the fireplace. She was nervous, and yet she was not. After all, she was no virgin, and yet she could not help but wonder if they would please each other.
Lord Tony loves you greatly. Dear Heartha, who still believed in the fairy tales she had once told her children, and was now telling her grandchildren. Tony loved RiversEdge and the Langford earldom even as she did, and it was for this that they would produce children. Tony had married her because he had promised Edmund, but how could dear Heartha know this? What did it matter? she thought. This was her life, and it was not an unhappy one.
She dozed lightly, awakening to the sound of the door that connected his bedchamber with hers as it swung open. God’s foot! How long had it been since she had heard that sound? She opened her eyes to see him coming toward the bed. He was star
k naked, and his body was magnificent.
“Stand a moment in the firelight, my lord,” she asked him softly, and when he did, she said, “You are so beautiful, Tony! Never have I seen such a beautiful body upon a man.” Even in the dimness of the chamber she could see the light flush that stained his cheeks, and Blaze bit her lip to keep from laughter.
“Madam, you embarrass me,” he said softly.
“Why? Because I praise your body?” She threw back the coverlet and stepped from the bed. Proudly she walked toward him. “You may praise mine if it pleases you, my lord.”
They stood staring at one another, she with a faint smile upon her face. He was very straight, she thought, his broad shoulders and wide chest very much like Edmund’s. At first he could not take his eyes from her beautiful globe-shaped breasts. How many times had he caressed them over the last few weeks, and yet seeing them now, perfect adornments to her exquisite nudity, was almost more than he could bear. He felt a tightening in the region of his hard, flat belly. She felt an answering ripple of excitement in the pit of her softly rounded belly. Her pretty little Venus mons was properly denuded and plumply pink, but from his groin a mass of tight dark curls sprang. His manhood was beginning to arouse itself, the sight of her loveliness being a heady one.
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” he said simply.
“Dare I ask just how many it is that you have known, my lord?” she teased him.
“You may not, Blaze Wyndham. The answer would surely only serve to increase your natural feminine vanity.”
She laughed. The sound was a sensual, throaty one that set his heart to racing and his pulses pounding. Reaching out, he slipped an arm about her slender waist and drew her to him. Blaze looked up into his face, and was shocked by the love she saw in it. No! No! she thought. This cannot be! He cannot love me! He cannot! I do not love him! I do not! Irrational with her sudden panic, she placed the palms of her hands flat upon his chest to push him away.
Anthony immediately saw the change that swept over her features. “What is it, my angel?” he asked her gently.
“Do you love me?” she asked of him brokenly.
“I have always loved you, Blaze,” he answered her honestly.
“No, no, you cannot love me,” she began to sob. “Oh, Tony, it is not right that you love me. I do not love you, and I do not know if I ever can. When Edmund died, my heart was buried with him!” she wept against his hard shoulder.
“Perhaps that is so,” he agreed, “or perhaps you just believe it to be so, Blaze. Nevertheless, I cannot help loving you. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, even knowing that you were to be my uncle’s wife, but in my heart I ached for your love. Why do you think I could find no woman to suit me when I went to court? Why do you think I could not bring myself to arrange a match with your sister Delight?
“There was never any hope of your being my wife. Yet I knew that I could never be happy with another woman. I vowed to myself that I would never wed. I would leave Riverside and all I possessed to Nyssa, making her a great heiress. It was the only way in which I might offer my love without offending either you or my uncle. Then Edmund was killed.”
“He must have known of your feelings for me,” Blaze said low. “How like him to ask you to wed with me to protect me and Nyssa, yet at the same time manage to give you your happiness. In his last moments he thought of us all.”
He had to tell her the whole truth. He would have no more lies between them. “Edmund died instantly, Blaze. He did not have time to ask me anything, let alone exact a deathbed promise from me.”
“But you told the king . . .” she began.
“I would have sworn it before God himself to gain you for my wife!” Anthony declared.
The fierce reality of what he was saying burst inside her brain, and she cried out, “Oh, villain! Oh, brute, to do this to me! To love me so greatly when I cannot love you. To tell me so! Ohh, I shall never forgive you, Tony! Never!” and she burst into racking sobs of despair.
“Do not weep, Blaze,” he begged her. “Do not weep, my darling wife. I shall teach you to love me! I vow it!” and he held her tightly in his arms, letting her vent her terrible grief. He would have given his life to have avoided causing her any sort of pain, but tonight at their real beginning as man and wife he wanted the truth between them.
Blaze wept on. She did not think she could bear the terrible pain of what he had just told her. He loved her! He loved her! He had lied to the king in his bold attempt to have her for himself. Had not Henry been tiring of her, and his interest drifting in another direction, Anthony might have incurred the king’s undying wrath. He might have endangered his very life! He had done it for her. All for her! Yet she did not love him, and she could not be certain that she would ever feel anything more for him than what she felt now. But what did she feel for him now? She could not be certain anymore. This startling revelation had left her totally and utterly confused. She should be glad that he loved her, yet she felt guilty for her own lack of feelings toward him.
“Damn you, Tony!” she managed to sob. “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!” and she began to beat upon his chest in a frenzy.
He could not understand why she was angry at him. Had he not just admitted his love for her? Had he not just admitted the dangerous and daring deception that he had effected in order to make her his wife? He had believed that this truthful admission would somehow change everything. That she might even admit a love for him. What a fool he had been! Her overtures of friendship had been nothing more than a sham. He had been right all along. She probably wept because he had taken her away from court and a life she actually had been enjoying. Lies! Lies! All her sweet explanations had been nothing more than lies!
Catching her by the shoulders, he looked down into her face, ignoring, or perhaps not even seeing, the bleakness of her look. “If this is some ruse, madam, to avoid further your wifely duties to this family, you have failed in your intent. You will begin accepting your responsibilities to the Langford earldom this very night!” His voice was icy, and devoid of kindness.
Her hand flew to her mouth for a moment, and then lowering it, she said low, “You would force me, even as the king forced me?” Her look was hollow.
“A husband does not force a wife,” he replied. “A wife belongs to her husband. She is his to do with as he wills, Blaze. Did my uncle never teach you that?”
“How do you dare to even mention Edmund in the same breath as you voice your intent to rape me?”
“Rape you?” His voice was indignant. “A husband cannot rape his wife. She is his property, both body and soul.”
Blaze said nothing to him, but turning, she walked to the bed, and laying herself upon it, spread herself wide. “If I fought you I could not win,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion. “Have your will of me, my lord, but you will have no pleasure of it.”
All the hot desire that had been building in his body was suddenly and totally gone from him. He looked at his manhood, a small and shrunken thing now. He looked to her, lying coldly and without welcome upon her bed.
His first instinct was to call her the bitch he thought she was, and leave her. Then sanity prevailed. In his disappointment over her reaction to his admission of love he was again, he knew, misinterpreting her.
She had not lied to him. She had told him the truth, and as she had spoken, he had instinctively known it. If he left her now, if he did not try to repair the damage between them, he knew that he could lose her forever. He would be patient even in his angry and great disappointment. Some little warning voice deep within him admonished him that he must be.
Walking over to the side of the bed, he said, “Cover yourself, my angel,” and when she had obeyed him he sat down beside her. “Blaze, hear me out, I beg of you. When you wed with Edmund you did not know him, nor he you. Yet you both learned to love one another. Have you forgotten that? Such a love is a great blessing. In many marriages there is no love, none at
all, nor is there even friendship or respect to bind the couple together. Yet I have always believed, much to my mother’s amusement, that there should be love within a marriage. I have admitted my love for you as you have admitted the truth of your life at court. We chose to have no barriers between us, yet suddenly you seek to erect yet another one even as we have struck down the others. Do not do this to us, my angel.
“I love you, yet you say you do not love me. Still, you do not hate me. I had begun to believe that you were even beginning to like me perhaps. It is upon this strong, but small foundation that we should build. I can. Can you?”
A little tear rolled down her pale cheek. “You offer me so much, Anthony, for I know the great value of love. I am ashamed that I can offer you so little in return for your love. If you still want me knowing even that, then I am yours.” There was such sadness in her voice that he almost wept himself.
Instead he drew back the coverlet and the perfumed sheets, and slid beneath them. “I am beginning to get chilled,” he said softly, and he reached out to draw her into his arms. “Come and warm me, my angel.”
She lay quietly within his embrace, thinking that her body was probably even colder than his right now. He held her gently, so gently that she felt, not his captive, but rather something cherished and protected. He made no other move to touch her, and gradually as the warmth seeped back into their bodies, husband and wife relaxed and fell asleep. They slept half the night through, awakening when a large log within the fireplace fell noisily in a shower of sparks.
Rising reluctantly from the bed, Anthony padded across the bedchamber to add another large piece of wood to the fire, stubbing his toe in the process. “God’s foot!” he swore irritably.
“What has happened, my lord?”
“I have stubbed my toe,” he grumbled.
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