by Jane Lark
It was such a long walk up the aisle, with her footsteps ringing on the old tiles, she still had her walking boots on beneath the evening dress, and yet she did feel pretty, and she celebrated the bonnet she wore most, it was a precious gift from Alethea. She was with Susan in spirit.
When she reached her position before the altar she mouthed, Hello, to Henry.
Hello, you look beautiful.
“We are here today…” The minister began the service.
Susan’s father squeezed her hand gently before he passed it to Henry. When Henry received it he squeezed it gently too. She looked into his brown eyes. His lips mouthed, I love you…
Had he said that before, in that manner? She could not remember. So much had happened. But she loved him. I love you too.
They spoke the vows that bound them together and committed them for life, looking into each other’s eyes as though no one else was there, as they held hands.
Then he had to give her a ring. She had not thought that he would have a ring, yet he must have bought one yesterday when he’d been to York because he turned to Harry and Harry handed one to him. Perhaps he’d called at his cousin’s on the way back from York, she could barely remember half the conversations of yesterday.
“Here.” He smiled holding the gold band in his fingers so he might slide it on to her finger. “And now you are snared,” he whispered when it was in place.
She looked up suddenly and a sound of amusement escaped her throat as the minister gave him more words to repeat.
Today he was the Henry she had always known—or not known, she had never really known him until this spring when he’d come home with his injury.
“With this ring…”
Her heart raced as Henry made his declaration.
Married…
Married? I thee wed…
Married… His beautiful, perfect brown eyes, looked into hers.
“I now pronounce you man and wife!” The minister spoke as though the Minster was full of people and the words echoed about the great columns and into the choir stalls.
“Man and wife,” Henry repeated, then he ducked slightly as she lifted her head, to sneak beneath the rim of her bonnet and press a kiss on her lips as his hand gripped her nape. When he pulled away, as heat crept into her cheeks, he said over her lips, “I love you, my wife.”
It was such a beautifully reassuring thing for him to say she rose on to her toes and wrapped her arms about his neck. Her posy of flowers brushed against the back of his head as the rim of her bonnet struck his cheek.
He squeezed her body for a moment then let her go.
“Congratulations.”
“You do make a beautiful couple.”
“You are a husband then, Henry…”
They were surrounded by members of his family giving them felicitations.
“Come and sign the register,” the minister requested.
When that was done they went outside and climbed into his father’s state carriage. His parents then travelled with hers, while his brothers and sisters used a secondary carriage.
Henry’s arm lifted encouraging her to come beneath it. She pressed against him, her bonnet resting against his shoulder as his arm settled on her shoulders. His free hand pulled the bow tying her bonnet loose.
“May we take this very pretty ornamentation off?” He did not await her answer but slid it off then threw it on to the far seat. Then his lips pressed against hers. Her arms wrapped about his neck, as they’d done in the Minster, and in that small room at the ball where they’d first kissed.
His mouth opened and his tongue danced with hers.
When he broke the kiss, her head fell and her forehead rested against his shoulder. “The bonnet is Alethea’s, she sent it for me to wear. Do you think that means she will forgive me?”
A rumble of amusement sounded in his chest. “Either that or she wished to have an element of control over you and I today.”
She looked up and into his eyes.
He smiled. “Yes, I have seen how she manipulates you, and yes I know how she has manipulated me, when I played along because I did not care to think of others. But now I care, I care for you, and I do not care for her manipulation. We will leave the bonnet in the carriage and have a footman take it back to Alethea either way. But, yes, I believe she will forgive us, and most particularly you, because for all her tricks to have you at her beck and call, I know she cares for you as I do.”
“Henry, it was a kind gesture…”
“Perhaps. But either way, we will send her bonnet back, and send it today, or it will become an excuse for her to interfere in some way and I wish us to continue being selfish for a little longer.”
“She will not interfere, she is going to London with Mama and Papa tomorrow.”
“Then that I am glad of, but she is still having her bonnet back.” His fingers came up and cupped her cheek, and then he kissed her again, and kissed her endlessly until the carriage turned on to Farnborough’s drive.
“Is my hair falling from its pins?’
“A little. It looks adorable.”
“Henry.”
“I swear you look beautiful and not untidy at all, only loved.”
“Henry!”
He laughed, probably at her expression of horror.
“Not in that way, Susan, darling.” He laughed again.
The carriage rolled on under the arch and the raised portcullis of the old medieval entrance to Farnborough and into the noisy cobbled courtyard.
The carriage turned about the fountain and drew to a halt before the door, then rocked as the footman jumped down to come around and open the door.
“My Lady,” he said when he held the door wide. She had not been called that before.
“No Frank.” Henry hurried out before she could rise. “This is my prerogative.”
She stood up and moved to step down, holding her hand out to Henry but he did not take it, instead in a moment she was swept up into his arms. She squealed and clasped his shoulders. “Henry!”
“A wife is to be carried over the threshold of her new home, and for now this will be yours.”
He proceeded to walk across the cobbles with her in his arms.
Davis held the door wide for them smiling broadly. Henry smiled back. “Good day, Davis.”
“Congratulations, my Lord, my Lady.”
“There is a bonnet in the carriage, to be sent over to the Forths, but pray save my hat from the carriage.” He looked at Susan. Her fingers were pressed into his shoulders. “Now I believe we are to have a small wedding breakfast in the dining room, but first of all champagne in the drawing room and so I shall carry you there.”
He did so and then proceeded to drop her on to a sofa. “Ahhh! Henry!”
He laughed once more leaning over her and kissing her lips before rising. “Happy, Lady Marlow?”
Lady Marlow… How odd that sounded. But… “Yes.”
“Champagne, my Lord…” A footman stood at the open door.
She shared a look with Henry, a look which said they might have been caught kissing.
He straightened up. “Thank you.” Then walked across the room to take two glasses from a tray full of them.
“My Lord…” Davis’s voice echoed in the hall as the others began to return.
Susan sat upright and then stood as Henry brought the glass of sparkling wine to her.
“Now swear to me you will not rebel and run off to the library, this is our wedding day…”
She shook her head and made a face at him, but in truth she was glad of his humour. It was holding her together.
Chapter Twenty-seven
If his father and mother were still angry that he’d had to marry Susan so soon after William’s funeral there was no sign of it on his wedding day. The day may have been a subdued affair, but everyone had been perfectly pleasant, especially to Susan, and quite probably for her sake. Even Harry had kept his lips closed on the reason for the rush.
Edward and Ellen and his cousins had left after everyone had eaten an early dinner. A meal that had yesterday become a quickly planned wedding breakfast.
Then Susan’s parents had left and she’d cried, his family had drifted away, leaving her to her goodbye. He’d stayed and watched as she’d held them as though she never wanted to let go.
There had been a fear of change in her eyes. Lord, he knew that emotion, he’d become used to it in the days since William’s death. She’d had no time to adjust to leaving her home and her family.
She’d glanced at him when she’d let go of her father. Her eyes speaking to him. Sorry. Why an apology? But the sadness in her expression, her heightening colour and the turn of her lips had expressed her embarrassment. She’d been comparing her feelings of losing her parents to him losing William, and judged herself. He’d stepped forward then and set his arm about her waist. Susan had taught him what it was to be selfless. But in return he would teach her to allow herself to sometimes think only of herself. She was allowed to feel sad over leaving her parents, no matter what anyone else felt.
He’d touched her waist often today and held her hand and rested his palm at the back of her neck, and he’d quietly revelled in the freedom of it. There were things he already knew were good about marriage and the comfort of having Susan in his bed was going to be one of them.
They’d come upstairs before the sun had even set because his parents had not been talkative, and the girls and Percy had already chosen to retire. She’d suggested they retire too. It was going to be an odd thing, though, to spend the night with Susan in his bed, in his home, with his family in the house.
He sighed. He’d been standing outside the door of his own bedchamber for nearly a half hour listening to a maid help Susan undress, waiting and imagining Susan disrobing from her undergarments. He perhaps should have knocked after he’d heard the maid leave, but he’d not been certain Susan would be ready.
But he could not stand here forever, like a coward. His knuckles tapped the door. “Susan! Are you ready?”
After a moment there was a call back. “Yes.” The response sounded with a hesitance of, no, though.
He turned the handle. Samson rose to follow him. “No, you stay, and do not dare whine. If you argue over the bed with Susan, she will always win, and you will be in the kitchens.”
He walked in alone as Samson padded off towards the chair he favoured.
Lord. He wanted to laugh. He’d stripped off his evening coat, his black stock neck-cloth and waistcoat and taken off his shoes, and yet in his shirt and trousers he was probably as heavily clothed as she was in her bed attire. His gaze dropped to her naked toes peeping from beneath her nightdress then lifted to her face. “You are all buttoned up still.”
The nightdress she wore came to her wrists and the lace even hung over her hands, and also formed a flurry about her neck.
At least with her nightdress, though, unlike the dress she’d been wearing in the rose garden, the buttons were at the front.
He walked across the room. She was smiling at him although her cheeks were pink. “There will be a rule, the first in our marriage, I may set them and you may set them as we go on, but this first rule will be mine. You are never to wear a nightdress in bed.”
“And what if I am cold?”
“You will not be cold. I shall warm you.”
His smile twisted when he looked down at the row of tiny round pearl-like buttons, then he began releasing them. “I do not wish to fight with a thing like this every night.”
She was looking at his face. “Every night?”
He glanced up. “Indeed, every night.”
She laughed but when she spoke her voice was serious. “Thank you, you have been making me laugh all day and making me feel better, when you must still feel very sad yourself. I have not told you, Henry; I take it back, you are not self-centered. I have seen everything you are doing for your family.”
His fingers continued their work releasing the buttons between her breasts as he looked into her face. “No. You were right, I am. You being here is only more evidence of that. The way I behaved in the rose garden was for my own selfish interest I thought nothing of the impact on you.”
“You just needed some comfort, I understood…”
“But you had made up your mind not to marry me and I took that choice away.” He moved aside her nightdress and cupped her left breast. She stood straight and unmoving as his thumb brushed over her taut nipple.
“I do not regret what we did. I think I shocked myself… that is all.”
He laughed at that. She was still an anomaly, but now she was his wife and he could take as long as he liked discovering all the facets of her nature.
Desire, attraction and affection clasped in his stomach tightening the muscle. He let go of her breast and then lifted off her spectacles, then put them on the dressing table beside her.
“Will you take off your shirt? It feels strange to stand here like this when you are clothed.”
A low sound of amusement rumbled in his chest. Her nightdress was gaping open, it was only fair that he stripped too. He gripped his shirt above the waist of his trousers and pulled it up over his head, then discarded it in one of the pale green upholstered chairs in his room.
Her cool fingers spread out over his pectoral muscles, her gaze following the movement. “I wanted to touch you in the spring.”
When she had come up here to his rooms…
“When you laid on the sofa in the library. You were so bruised, and so beautiful.”
“And so reckless and self-centered.” His hands pressed over hers.
She looked up. “No, I was trying to convince myself I had every cause to dislike you, but I did not dislike you that day. You fascinated me.”
“Like one of those flowers in that book.”
“Yes, like that.”
“Well you now have a lifetime to explore your fascination, both for me and for that book of orchids.”
He leant and she raised her head, and then he kissed her.
Her soft lips pressed gently back against his. Every time he kissed her he was reminded of her inexperience. He treasured it.
His hand slid inside her open nightdress as hers lifted to his shoulders.
He kissed her for a moment more, then bent and kissed the exquisite skin of her upper breast. Her nightdress fell off her shoulder, hanging down her arm. His tongue played with her nipple as her hands stroked across his back exploring the contours of his body.
He lifted his head. “Let us be rid of this nightdress.” He slipped it off her other shoulder and pulled the cuffs over her hands. Then she straightened her arms and let it slide to the floor, in a pool of white cotton.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again, glad that she showed no self-consciousness.
She broke the kiss, looking into his eyes with a gentleness he’d never seen in a woman’s eyes until he’d started looking more closely into Susan’s. “I love you,” she said.
To hear those words… They did very strange things to his stomach. “I love you also, Susan. Now run and get into the warm bed, while I finish undressing.”
Before she turned away, she smiled widely.
As she did turn he smacked her bottom with a satisfying crack.
She squealed and then ran for the bed as the orange light of sunset shone through the window on to her skin, highlighting her slender curves.
He would have no complaints in his marriage bed.
He unbuttoned his trousers, and then bent and pushed both his trousers and underwear down, stripping his stockings from his feet too. He left his clothes in a pile on the floor beside her nightdress.
“Are you not going to close the shutters?” She asked as he walked towards the bed.
“No. I want to see you in the last of the daylight, and then I will wish to look at you in the moonlight. Now make some
space for me.”
She moved over, lifting the sheet and blanket.
He climbed in beside her.
“I am used to sleeping with Alethea, we often share a bed…”
Her innocence made him laugh. “I hope sleeping with me will not be at all comparable.”
She giggled with a lightness he’d only heard in her voice when she’d been in a ballroom. If he could make her as happy in their marriage as she was in a ballroom, then he would be happy too.
He leant over her, his hand embracing the back of her neck and kissed her again. Then he threw the covers back and kissed a path down her neck and across her shoulder. This is how he had wanted to make love to her in the rose garden. To have been able to kiss her skin.
His hand moved to her hip as her fingers combed through his hair and he kissed a path across her breast then lower, over her stomach.
When he kissed her inner thigh she squealed as she had when he’d smacked her. He did not stop, but held that one thigh and cherished it with several more kisses.
She laughed.
But she stopped laughing when he kissed the place between her legs. Her in-breath was sharp as she gripped his head through the sheet. But she did not stop him, and her hips rocked upward with a natural instinct.
Her naivety was as beautiful as she was.
As he carried on, one of her legs lifted and lay over his shoulder. He used his fingers as well as his tongue, pushing them into her moist warmth. She sighed into the air of his bedchamber.
He’d never lain with a woman in his bed here. She was the first to make those sounds of satisfaction in this room. At least there was an innocence on his part too, in that.
There would never be another woman here. There would never be any other women now.
He lifted up and crawled up the bed, his hands moving either side of her body.
Her legs pressed against his outer thighs.
“Ready?” he asked as he hovered over her looking into her pale eyes.
“Yes.”
Her eyes shone with want, discovery and… affection… Love. He’d not noticed any of those things when he’d been drunk, all he’d felt was the acceptance of her body.
He pressed into her.