Gentle conquest

by Mary Balogh

  Georgiana threw herself back against her pillows, folded her arms belligerently across her chest, and scowled at the darkened canopy over her head. She hated him! He had made a fool of her. Ignorant little boy. Clumsy, awkward, blushing, timid, weak, unmanly little boy!

  And, oh dear, she thought, sitting upright suddenly and clasping her knees, what a shrew of a wife he had! It was no crime, surely for a man to come to his bride untouched himself. It was not obligatory for a man to have associated with high fliers, opera dancers, light-skirts, whores, or whatever types of women most men apparently did associate with. And she had criticized him. What could she have possibly done that would be more humiliating for him?

  Not like that, Ralph!

  Her own voice came back to her with uncomfortable clarity. And she had then proceeded to explain to him exactly how he should kiss. And she had even demonstrated! Georgiana put one hand tightly across her mouth. Oh, how could she have? What a brazen hussy! Papa would die of rage if he knew.

  And she had prattled on when they had got into bed. She could not remember a word she had said, but it seemed to her that she had talked for a long time, instead of lying like a demure bride and waiting for her husband to do whatever it was he was supposed to do. Oh mercy! The hand tightened over her mouth and she shut her eyes very tightly. Had she not said something about all the house knowing the exact moment of the deflowering? Had she really used that exact word? Was there any chance that she imagined it? What on earth had led her to that dreadfully vulgar expression? In her bridal bed!

  She did not know exactly how it was done, did she, for all her boasted experience with kisses? How could she expect Ralph to do so? If she had just lain patient for a few more seconds, all would doubtless have been well. She would be a wife by now. Whether he would have stayed in her bed or retired to his own, she could be lying here now, satisfied and relieved that the marriage had been consummated. She could have been planning her own future, content that she was now well versed in what would, for a while at least, be her main duty as a married lady.

  As it was, she had totally embarrassed herself and frightened her husband away. And did she dare blame him? She had been terrified herself. She, who had never been afraid of anything. Or almost never. She certainly had not expected to be quite so fearful of a perfectly normal experience such as being bedded by her husband. Especially such a kindly, unthreatening sort of husband as Chartleigh. She thoroughly despised herself.

  Indeed, she concluded, opening her eyes again and removing her hand from her mouth, this disaster of a night was far more her fault than his. Most of the time she did not even wish to be like other young ladies. She considered their lives insipid in the extreme. But just sometimes, just on the rare occasion, she wished she could behave in a more acceptable manner. She had ruined her wedding night and probably made a hopeless embarrassment out of tomorrow night too.

  Georgiana threw back the bedclothes and stepped resolutely out onto the carpet. The very best thing to do with fear and embarrassment, she had found from experience, was to grab them by the throat and throttle them to death. She would go to Ralph immediately, be suitably meek and contrite, and offer to climb into his bed beside him. And she would lie there quiet and yielding all night if need be, allowing him to do what he would with her in his own time and his own way.

  She moved resolutely through her dressing room and into his, groping her way because there were no windows in these rooms to give even some dim light. She knocked on his bedroom door-three times. Finally she opened the door and stepped hesitantly inside.

  "Ralph?" she whispered.

  Silence.

  "Ralph? My lord? Are you asleep?"

  She picked her way over to the bed, which was indisputably empty and unslept-in. She scurried back to her own room.

  And that was when she had started crying. At first it was an itch and a gurgle in the back of her throat and behind her nose. Then her facial muscles started behaving with a will of their own. The tears came next, first a few trickles down her cheeks and then a raging waterfall. The sobs came last, and they were the most painful. She did not try to stop or to stifle the sound. But she did not know why she cried.

  It was doubtless self-pity at first. Here she was, a bride on her wedding night, alone in a strange bed in a strange house, her marriage unconsummated, her husband goodness knew where, and her mother far away and probably fast asleep and not even dreaming of her.

  But soon enough it was for Ralph she wept, and it was at this stage of the crying session that her sobs tore most painfully at her chest. What had she done to him? It was true that he was a young, unassertive, inexperienced boy. But did those facts make him automatically despicable? Did they give her the right to scold and humiliate him? And she had done both. He had been nervous, but then, so had she. And he had been so gentle with her earlier that day and for the last month, believing her to be a shy young girl.

  He was a kind and a gentle man. She was sure of it. She could almost imagine how he would have behaved had she allowed him to complete that act he had begun earlier. His inexperience might have caused him to hurt her, but afterward he would have held her and soothed her. He probably would have stayed in her bed for the rest of the night, sheltering her and comforting her. If only she were the sort of girl he had thought her! He would make a wonderful husband to such a girl. He would be loving and protective and considerate. And there was nothing unmanly about such qualities.

  And the poor boy was shackled to her. Poor Ralph. She would destroy his manhood with her impatience and her incautious tongue and her thoughtless, hoydenish behavior. She would make him feel inadequate. He would have no one on whom to lavish the love and the care that he was full of. They had been married for fewer than twenty-four hours and already she had gone a good way toward destroying him. How must a man feel when his wife's criticisms and complaints rendered him incapable? And she had done that to him. On his wedding night.

  Georgians was not used to such introspection. She had developed the habit of believing that people who did not behave boldly and with an unconcern for the conventions were weak and of no account. She was accustomed to laughing at such people with her friends. She could not laugh at Ralph. He did not deserve scorn. She wept for him, long and painfully.

  Poor Ralph. He deserved so much better than she. Oh, poor boy!

  And thus she awoke the following morning, after only four hours of sleep, feeling as if her head had been replaced by a pumpkin. She rang for her maid.

  ***

  Both Ralph and Gloria were in the breakfast room when Georgiana finally came downstairs and found the room with the help of a footman. Her heart sank. She had hoped that she was late enough to have avoided them. Gloria did not rise. She merely smiled and bade her sister-in-law good morning. Ralph jumped to his feet and came striding toward her. He was looking very pale, Georgiana noticed in one hasty glance, and very pale, Georgiana noticed in one hasty glance, and very youthful. He looked as if he might have been wearing his riding clothes all night. His hair was more rumpled than usual.

  "Good morning, Georgiana," he said, taking her hand in his. His face flushed as he spoke to her, but he did not avoid contact with her eyes. "Did you find your way easily enough? I should have come to fetch you. But I did not wish to awake you."

  Memories of the night before crowded between them like a fiery wall.

  "Have you been riding, Ralph?" Georgiana asked as cheerfully as she was able. "I should have liked to come with you. I need some fresh air after spending most of yesterday cooped up inside a carriage."

  "But of course we will go riding," he said, squeezing her hand and smiling down at her. "I promised yesterday, did I not, that I would show you the grounds and the estate today?"

  He had said it when he first entered her room the night before. They both remembered as he spoke the words, and their eyes slid away from each other.

  "Perhaps you do not feel like doing anything quite as strenuous as riding, Georgiana
," Gloria said into the silence, unconsciously winning the undying gratitude of her brother and his wife. "I shall be walking over to the vicarage later with some flowers for the church. Would you care to join me?"

  Georgiana withdrew her hand from Ralph's with careful unconcern and went to sit beside her sister-in-law at the breakfast table. "Perhaps some other time, Gloria," she said. "I want to ride with Ralph this morning." She frowned with discomfort when Gloria colored, smiled, and looked down at her empty plate.

  It would have been a great deal easier to have gone with Gloria, Georgiana thought an hour later as she adjusted her riding hat to her liking over her smooth hair, which had been tied loosely at the nape of her neck. The last thing she wished to do this morning was to have to face Ralph. His night had clearly been more sleepless than hers. He had looked downright haggard in the breakfast room. She was still feeling guilt-ridden even after some sleep. She was also feeling a little angry. Why should she find herself in the position of feeling responsible for the feelings of a sensitive boy? She had not asked for this marriage. She had not forced him into it. Was it her fault that his confidence in himself was such a fragile thing?

  She made a face at herself before turning away from the mirror and drawing on her leather gloves. The fact was that she did feel guilty. She was going to have to do something to restore her husband's sense of manhood, though she could not for the life of her think how she was going to do it. It was an unpleasant task she was setting herself, and she had much rather not have to face him this morning and make conversation with him. But she was never one to shirk something that must be done. The embarrassment of being alone with him again would only grow worse if it were postponed. She picked up her riding crop and left the room.

  "I have had Flora saddled for you," Ralph said a few minutes later when she joined him in the stables. "She is quiet and will not fuss at a stranger on her back. You need have no fear."

  Georgiana looked with disgust and indignation at the plump little mare with the sidesaddle.

  “Wcll," she said, hands on hips, "yours makes her look like a pregnant cow. I would deem it a cruelty to ride such a sorry creature."

  Ralph laughed. "Have I offended you?" he asked. "I really did not know if you were an accomplished rider or not. You seem so small and so shy, Georgiana, that I guessed you were not. I am wrong, am I not? And I might have known it. Quiet people usually like to get away on their own, and what better way to do it than on a horse's back. Am I right?"

  Georgiana leveled a thoughtful look at him. "Yes, you are right about one thing," she said. "I was shockingly rude just now, was I not?"

  He laughed again and his whole face lit up with delight, she noticed with interest. "You must always say what you feel with me," he said. "Only so we can grow close as a husband and wife should."

  The smile faded during the awkward little pause that followed his words, and he turned away to summon a groom to return Flora to her stall and bring out a more mettlesome mount.

  Georgiana had planned to bring up the topic of the night before as soon as their ride began. Since it so obviously loomed large in the consciousness of both, she might as well bring it out into the open. But Ralph had clearly planned the conversation too. From the moment they left the stableyard he did not stop talking. He pointed out to her everything there was to see in the extensive grounds around the house. She soon knew the name of every variety of bloom that grew in the formal gardens throughout the year. It seemed to her that she was given the history the every tree within sight and a description of how each had been used in childhood games. Soon they were beyond the gardens and riding along a dirt road between fields that were almost ready to be harvested.

  For once in her life Georgiana kept quiet. It was almost as if her behavior of the last month had become a habit. She let him talk. Let them be well beyond the house before she forced him to discuss what was uppermost in both their minds. But, she thought ruefully a few minutes later, she had always been right to believe that if one did not tackle an embarrassing topic immediately, it became very much harder to do so later. When Ralph suggested that he take her to meet some of his laborers in the village, she readily agreed.

  It was immediately apparent that only the women and children were at home in the small cottages clustered together in a rough circle around a well. The harvest had begun early on one of the distant fields, Ralph explained. Children, in various stages of undress and grubbiness, were playing intensely in the dirt outside their doors. A small group of women was gathered at the well. A few more appeared in the doorways as the sound of horses' hooves drew their attention.

  Georgiana was surprised to note that all of the women smiled at their approach. Some of them called greetings. On her father's estate she always stayed as far away from the workers as possible. It was not that they were openly hostile. Rather, they lacked all expression whenever she was forced to be close to them. But she had always sensed hostility. The children here stopped their play to gaze curiously at the new arrivals. One child ran up to Ralph, grinned up at him to reveal two missing front teeth, and shyly stroked the toe of his boot.

  "Hello, Will," Ralph said, smiling down at the child. "Now did I imagine it, or did you really run all the way over here without once limping?"

  "I ain't limping, y'r lordship," the boy said. "See? It's all better." He lifted one skinny bare leg off the ground.

  Ralph leaned down from his horse's back and tousled the boy's hair. "Do you want to hold my horse's head while I get down and talk to your grandmama?" he asked. "And…" he looked around the group of eager faces and frantically waving hands of children who had gathered close. "Colin. Yes, you. Colin. Will you look after the countess's horse?"

  Georgiana watched in fascination. What had happened to her shy boy? Ralph had soon swung himself down from his horse's back and was stooping on his haunches examining with serious attention the string of gaudy beads that a scruffy urchin of a child had held up from her neck for his inspection.

  He touched the child's cheek and straightened up, turning a brightly smiling face in her direction. "Do let me lift you down, Georgiana," he said. "The horse will be quite safe. You can be sure that Colin here would die rather than let harm come to one hair of its body. And I assure you that Mrs. Harris will be mortally offended if we do not sample her cider. She has been plying me with it ever since I was too old to drink warm milk."

  Mrs. Harris turned out to be a withered little old lady whose face was so full of wrinkles that Georgiana wondered if she had ever been a girl. She was the grandmother of Will, the boy who had first approached Ralph, and lived with her son and his family in a tiny but immaculately tidy cottage. There were two mugs of cider and two small cakes on the table already when Ralph led his wife inside.

  Georgiana for once felt genuinely shy. She had never associated with the lower classes. The closest she had ever come to talking with any of them was in giving orders to house servants. She did not know how to behave or what to say. She clung to Ralph's arm and allowed him to lead her to a bench.

  "Mrs. Harris," Ralph said, "I had to bring my wife to meet my oldest friend almost as soon as we arrived home, you see. She cannot know Chartleigh without knowing you, now, can she? And without sampling your cider? Mrs. Harris used to spoil me shamefully when I was a boy, Georgiana. She could never let me pass without feeding me."

  The old lady chuckled. "Such a little dab of a boy you was too, Master Ralph," she said. "You always looked as if you would blow away in the wind. But look at you now. As handsome a lord as the king and all the dukes, I dare swear. And as pretty a wife as a queen or a princess."

  Ralph grinned.

  "Y'r lordship, y'r lordship," the urgent voice of Will Harris called, first from outside the house and then from Ralph's elbow. "Judy had her pups last week. Six of 'em. The prettiest little things. Susie's pa was going to drownd them, but me and Harold and Ellie's going to take one each and the others is to be let live. Will you come and see them, y'r lordshi
p? They are ever such little pups and we ain't let take them out of their box. Else we would bring them here to show you."

  "William!" a woman hissed from the doorway, and Georgiana recognized one of the women who had been standing at the well when they arrived. "Leave his lordship be! He don't want to be looking at no puppies."

  "On the contrary!" Ralph said, laughing and getting to his feet. "How could I possibly miss the treat of seeing six newborns? Lead the way, Will, and show me which one is to be yours. Georgiana?" He turned a laughing face and held out a hand for hers.

  "Oh, go on with you, Master Ralph," Mrs. Harris said, "Your young countess will stay here and have another cake. Such a pretty little thing don't want to be poking around a smelly old dog box."

  Ralph was dragged away by an excited Will.

  Mrs. Harris put another cake on Georgiana's plate. "Such a fine young lord," she said. "It was a glorious day for us when he became the Earl of Chartleigh. Not that I mean any disrespect to his dead lordship."

  Georgiana felt tense without Ralph to stand between her and exposure to this old lady who belonged to a class of which she knew nothing. "You knew him as a child?" she asked politely.

  "And such a sweet little lost soul!" the old lady said. "As different from his pa as day and night. I think he used to like being here, y'r lordship, more than he liked being at the house. He used to laugh here."

  "I am glad he had you to turn to," Georgiana said hesitantly. She was feeling decidedly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

  "Bless his dear heart!" Mrs. Harris continued, picking up the jug of cider and adding more to Georgiana's mug. "Going to build us all new houses, he is, because he says these cottages ain't fit for hogs to live in and there ain't no use doing more repairs to them, else we will be adding repairs to repairs, if you know what I mean, y'r ladyship."

  "Ralph is going to build a whole new village?" Georgiana asked in some surprise.