Chapter 5

It felt like a new experience. But then it was a new experience. He felt almost as if he were the virgin, not knowing how to approach her, what to say to her, what to do to her. He did not know quite what she wanted apart from the consummation. He had never been with a woman under circumstances even comparable to these.

He smiled as he approached the bed. “I almost forgot the way to my own room when I left yours,” he said. “All the doors looked the same.”

“Oh.” She laughed.

She looked younger when she laughed. And with her hair brushed out loose. It was thick, shining, healthy-looking hair. He sat down on the edge of the bed and twined a lock of it about his fingers.

“I should have had it braided,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It is lovely as it is.” It was rather lovely, too. It looked better loose than piled on her head. She was looking at him with wary, questioning eyes and he realized that there was nothing in his experience to carry him through this moment. It was all new to him, this consummation of a marriage with a woman he found in no way appealing. And yet he owed her kindness, loyalty. What did she want? He wished he knew.

He lowered his head and kissed her. She was warm and apparently relaxed. Her closed lips trembled slightly beneath his closed lips and then pushed back against them. Ah, she was beginning to answer his unspoken questions. He smoothed back the hair from one side of her face and ran one knuckle of the other hand along her jawline, over her lips, along her nose.

“My love,” he said, setting his lips to hers again, “you must tell me immediately if I cause you pain or discomfort. Will you?”

But she was pressing her lips to his again, and her hands were first on his shoulders and then about his neck. He felt the fingers of one of her hands twine in his hair. She wanted it, then. She was not merely going to endure for the sake of duty or in order to make the marriage more real. She wanted it. There was a restrained and inexperienced eagerness in her embrace.

So be it, then. He would give her what she wanted. He owed her that.

He got to his feet to remove his brocaded dressing gown and watched her eyes move over his form, clad only in a nightshirt. God, there was heat in her eyes. Desire. With some relief he felt the stirrings of arousal. There was something slightly erotic about being wanted when he did not want. He drew back the bedclothes, snuffed the single candle that stood on the table beside the bed, and lay down beside her.

“My love,” he murmured to her, sliding one arm beneath her and leaning over her to find her lips with his again. He parted his own, wondering how she would react. But she followed his lead almost immediately, her mouth opening beneath the teasing of his own. She was warm and moist. She tasted good. And smelled good. There was a clean soap smell about her hair and her skin. He could feel her hands lightly exploring the muscles of his back and shoulders.

“Freddie,” she said when he moved his mouth to kiss her eyes and her temples and her throat. Her voice was low and husky.

It was going to be easy to make love to her after all, he thought. She was inexperienced, but she was not shy. He just hoped that his weight would not cause her harm when it came time to cover her. He ran one hand lightly down her side. She was so very slender. He spread the hand behind her and brought her over onto her side against him. Slender and warm and surprisingly supple. And more shapely than he had noticed. Strange, really, that he had not done so. Perhaps it was because he had never really looked at her as a woman, as any sort of sex object.

His hand verified the impression his chest had given him. Her breasts were not large, but they were firm and well-shaped. He caressed them through the filmy cotton of her nightgown and set a thumb against one hardening tip.

“Mmm,” he said, finding her mouth with his own again, both open this time. He licked at her lips with his tongue, teased it up behind the tender flesh of her upper lip. “Beautiful.” He was fully aroused at last. It was not going to be an impossibility after all. Or even difficult. He was infinitely thankful. Her mouth and her hands and her body told him that she wanted pleasure. He was glad he was going to be able to give it her.

He stretched down with one arm, grasped the hem of her nightgown, and raised it. He intended to raise it only to her hips, but there was no resistance in her, no shrinking. He drew it up to her waist, to her breasts, and then she raised her arms and he pulled it off altogether and tossed it over the side of the bed. And then to his surprise—not totally unpleasurable—he felt her hands dragging at his nightshirt. He helped her and threw it to join her nightgown somewhere on the floor.

Her legs were thin as were her body and her arms. He could feel her ribs with the hand that explored, but her skin was warm and silky. Her breasts were taut with desire. Her kiss demanded, and he gave, moving his mouth over hers, deepening the pressure, darting his tongue inside. One of her hands was spread over his chest. The other was moving over his back, her palm pressing against the muscles there and moving down even to his buttocks.

It was time, he thought. She was ready and somehow he had persuaded himself into desiring her. Perhaps it was that he felt pity for her and gratitude for what she had unknowingly done for him. But whatever it was, he was ready for her. Ready to give her pleasure. And afraid of giving her pain. She seemed so fragile, so thin as he turned her onto her back again and came over on top of her.

“My love,” he murmured against her mouth, “I don’t want to hurt you. But I fear I must in a moment. It will not last. It will be for a moment only. Am I too heavy for you?” He could have taken her on top of him, but she would have been unable to kneel over him.

“No,” she whispered. “No, Freddie.” And then she moaned a little as he positioned himself at the entrance to her and began to push slowly inward.

Small. Warm. Virginal. An untraveled path. And soon the barrier. He did not want to hurt her. He nudged forward when instinct would have had him plunging. And then the barrier gave way at the same moment as she gave an almost inaudible whimper, and he mounted all the way into heat and wetness. Into woman. She was as much woman as the most voluptuous courtesan of his experience, he thought in some surprise.

He was afraid that his weight was squashing her. He was afraid that her legs would be paining her from being spread wide by his own. He raised himself on his elbows and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. God, he thought, she was enjoying this. She looked to be in near ecstasy. He felt a totally unexpected rush of tenderness for her. She opened her eyes. They looked huge and dreamy in the dimness of the room.

“Am I hurting you, my love?” he asked.

She shook her head and reached up her arms to his shoulders, drawing him down to her again.

And so he began to move in her, withdrawing and thrusting slowly until he was sure that she felt no pain, and then pleasuring her with a firm, steady rhythm. He was doing something he had never done before, he realized. For several years, ever since he had developed some expertise, he had prided himself on giving pleasure to his women as well as to himself. But he had never concentrated more on his woman’s pleasure than on his own. Not until now. This was not for his pleasure. It would have pleased him better to have accomplished the consummation with one swift inward thrust and a speedy spilling of his seed.

He worked to give pleasure to his new wife, stroking her until she relaxed and rocked to his rhythm, slowly building speed and depth with a skill of long practice to bring her toward climax, moving his hands to her buttocks, holding her steady while he finally held deep and hard and still in her once, twice, three times before all the tension shuddered out of her with one long, satisfied sigh. He held still in her until she was totally relaxed again and then finished swiftly before disengaging from her and moving to her side.

She turned her head and nestled her cheek against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, he could see. There was a half-smile on her lips. The smile of a woman who had just enjoyed good sex. He was used to seeing it in the faces of the courtesans and whores he took frequently to his bed. There was something strangely moving about seeing it on the face of this woman. His wife. She was as much woman as they, he thought again. It was not her fault that she looked less alluring. And yet, strangely, beneath the bedsheets she had felt not a great deal less desirable than they. And she had been flatteringly eager.

“Well,” he said, his voice low against her ear. He kissed her cheek and her mouth softly. “Now you are in every way Mrs. Frederick Sullivan, Clara. For life. Any regrets?”

Her eyes fluttered open. “No, Freddie,” she said. “None. And you?”

He kissed her again. “I love you, my darling,” he said. He wished he meant it. He tried to mean it as much as he could. He wanted her to be happy. He would make it one of the goals of his life to make her happy.

She closed her eyes again, made a sound that was almost like a purr in her throat, and was asleep. She had not responded to his words, he noticed.

He had not gone back to his own room. That was the first thought she had when she woke up. She had been afraid that he would. She had expected that he would. As far as she knew, most husbands and wives slept in separate rooms. But he was still there beside her. He was not holding her, but her cheek was pressed snugly to his shoulder and all down the length of her body she was touching him. All that splendid warm maleness was against her.

Naked maleness. She remembered suddenly their unclothing each other, the shock and wonder of his firm, bare flesh beneath her hands and against her own equally naked flesh. Strangely, there had been no terror, no embarrassment. Only an exultation in his muscled strength and an almost swooning desire to be possessed by him.

She could almost have believed during those minutes that she loved him, that the desire she felt, the desire that surged at his touch, was for Freddie himself, not just for his body. She even whispered his name more than once. And indeed, she thought now in her own defense, it had not been all purely carnal, what she had felt. She had been aware at every moment while the strange, delirious new delights were happening to her body that it was Freddie with whom she was doing those things. Not just any man, but Freddie. Freddie’s splendid body.

Not Freddie himself, but only his body? Clara turned her head so that her lips were against his shoulder, and her nose. He smelled good, partly of soap, partly of sweat. But there was nothing unpleasant about the latter smell. It was masculine and virile. It reminded her of how that sweat had been generated.

There was something shameful, surely, about loving a man’s body but not the man inside it. It was what men must feel for whores. Was there nothing more in her feelings for her husband? She despised him—his marrying her for her money and pretending to different motives. She wished he would not keep calling her his love or his darling. She wished he would not keep telling her that he loved her.

And yet she did not really despise him, she thought. She had felt gratitude toward him earlier. And a certain tenderness. Inexperienced as she was, she knew that it could have been different. She knew that he had deliberately taken the time to give her pleasure. She knew that he had used patient skill on her. He need not have done so. She had not really expected that he would. She had expected to have to snatch pleasure in any way she could.

He had given it to her. As a sort of wedding gift perhaps. And a wonderful gift it had been, too. She had expected pleasure to come from the mere touch of his body. To have that beauty and that strength against herself, inside herself—it had seemed the pinnacle of all that was wonderful. She had not expected pleasure to act on her own body, making her ache and pulse and tense and yearn. She had not expected the wonderful flow of peace and sheer joy that had come at the end. Or almost at the end. There had been a little more for him. She had felt the warm gush of his seed after she was relaxed and almost swooning with happiness.

He had asked her if she had any regrets. She had none. God help her, she could live for this. She felt like a woman, warm and desirable and beautiful. A foolish notion. And of course it would not last. His expertise had been obvious even to an innocent like her. It was inconceivable that he would be satisfied with her for the rest of his life. She resolutely shut her mind to the possibility that he might even have found their coupling distasteful. Certainly she was going to have to share him with other women. Many other women. She must not let the thought hurt her. After all, she did not love him.

No, she had no regrets. If there could be occasional nights like this one to look forward to, then she would be content with her life more or less as it had always been. It was too late now to dream of love. It had always been too late. She was not the sort of woman to attract the love of any man, and the circumstances of her life were such that she could not hope to find even a satisfactory relationship.

This was satisfactory. It was all she needed.

“You cannot sleep, my love?” She was startled by the sound of his voice. She had not realized he was awake. “Would you be more comfortable if I returned to my own room? I fell asleep here, I’m afraid.”

“I have just woken up,” she said, “and I am very comfortable, thank you, Freddie.”

He turned onto his side, set an arm beneath her head, and kissed her mouth. She had not realized that kisses between a man and woman could be open-mouthed. She liked the feeling. It was—intimate.

“Are you sore?” he asked her.

She understood suddenly what he was asking. Yes, she was rather. She was sore. Very pleasantly so, and throbbing too now that he had spoken.

“No,” she said.

And then his hand was there, causing her to tense with shock for a moment. But he set his mouth to hers again, and explored her gently with his hand, his fingers stroking lightly, circling over particularly sensitive areas, parting, probing. He pushed one finger up inside her and then two. She could hear wetness—and the pounding of blood through her temples.

“Does it feel good, sweetheart?” he whispered against her mouth.

“Yes.” She had that feeling again of being about to swoon.

“No soreness?”

There was an aching soreness there where his fingers were. The ache was in her breasts too and in her throat. And in her lips.

“No.” She ran her hand up his arm, from the wrist to the shoulder. It was covered with fine hairs and rock-hard with muscle. “Freddie.”

She had not expected that he would do it to her again. She had not dreamed of it. It had seemed too momentous an act to be performed more than once in a night. But he came over her again and into her again. She was indeed sore. Very sore. He was hurting her enough to make her bite her lip. But the ache was more insistent than the soreness, and the throbbing pulsed through her body, all but deafening her. Release came almost instantly—it had almost come with just his hand. As before, he waited for her to finish shaking and to relax and then continued what he had been doing before—pushing himself deep, partially withdrawing, and plunging inward again. She lay still and enjoyed it despite the raw soreness. She had left him far behind this time. There were a couple of minutes to be simply enjoyed.

He was Freddie, she told herself as he worked and as she enjoyed. She had her arms about him, holding him warmly. He was the handsome, charming rogue she had spotted for what he was right from that first time at the Assembly Rooms when he had been presented to her. It was he making love to her in exchange for a twenty-thousand-pound dowry. She wondered if he regretted his decision, if he found the prospect of being married to her for life insupportable.

And yet, she thought, he had not been compelled to stay in her bed after the consummation. He had not been compelled to do this again.

She set her cheek against his shoulder as he sighed and stilled in her. Perhaps, she thought, they might come to like each other if they both wished for it. Enough anyway so that he would not feel utterly trapped by what debts had forced him into. And enough that she would not feel so wanton and guilty for lusting after his beauty and his health and strength.

He was lifting himself off her and moving to her side again, but keeping one arm about her this time. He kissed her, settled her comfortably against him, and drew the blankets up about her naked shoulders. He did not say anything this time, but was asleep almost instantly.

She was glad he had not said again that he loved her.

She was glad that he had still not returned to his own room.

She sighed with sleepy satisfaction.

Lord and Lady Bellamy arrived early the next morning, before breakfast, to see their son and new daughter-in-law on their way to Kent. They sat down to breakfast so that the newly married couple had no chance for private converse. His wife had good taste in clothes, Frederick thought. At least he could say that in her favor. Her pale blue carriage dress looked elegant and becoming.

His mother was looking curiously at both him and Clara all through breakfast. Trying to decide if the deed had been done, Frederick guessed. He looked at Clara himself. Was it in any way obvious? Was there a tinge of color in her cheeks, or was it merely the reflection of the flowers that adorned the table, left over from the day before? Was there a glow in her eyes, or did he merely imagine it? She was talking about Ebury Court, the estate her father had bought on his return from India, and about the house he had built there to replace the moldering Tudor mansion the previous owners had allowed to fall into ruin.

And was there anything in his face for his mother to see? Frederick wondered. It seemed hardly likely since he had been bedding women with some regularity for the past seven or eight years. And yet his mother contrived to take him apart after breakfast before they left while his father was still asking Clara questions about India.

“Freddie,” the baroness said, linking her arm through her son’s and squeezing it, “all is going to be well, as I have been telling Papa since you first broke the news to us. I do not care what the truth is about those foolish debts—and I do hope you have learned your lesson this time, dear. Nor do I care that dear Clara is not quite the beauty I would have expected you to choose and that she cannot walk. I have seen this morning that you are fond of each other, and that is all that matters when all is said and done. You are fond of her, aren’t you Freddie?”

He patted her hand. “I love her, Mama,” he said.

She sighed. “I am glad after all that you did not marry Julia,” she said. “I know the two of you have always been fond of each other, but I always thought you were more like sister and brother than anything else. You were not disappointed when she chose Daniel instead of you, dear?”

“If I was, Mama,” he said, “it was quickly forgotten. If I had married Jule, I would never have met and fallen in love with Clara, would I?”

“That is very true,” she said. “And Julia seems excessively happy with Daniel. And he with her, though one would not have expected it. He never seemed particularly to like her until she surprised us all by announcing their betrothal. Though really it was he who announced it, for dear Julia mumbled so that no one heard what she said.”

He was perhaps the only one who had not been taken by surprise with that announcement, Frederick thought. He had seen it coming and that was why he had done what he did. But he did not want to think of it.

His father was not so easily taken in as his mother. “Well, Freddie,” he said, extending a hand to his son while the baroness was taking a prolonged farewell of Clara, “it remains to be seen what you make of this marriage. Your wife’s handicap will make life difficult for you and your reason for marrying her will make it more so. But she is a woman of sense and breeding, son, and deserves better perhaps than what she is getting. Unless you surprise me. I hope you surprise me.”

Frederick put his hand in his father’s and looked him in the eye. “I love her, Papa,” he said. And he almost believed his own words. She had wanted him the night before—both times—and he had felt a certain tenderness for her as he had given himself to her. She was his wife. He would look after her. Even the suggestion that he might not annoyed him. “I will see to it that I do deserve her eventually. You will see.”

His father shook his hand warmly. “It is time you were on your way,” he said. “Your mother will cry over your wife until noon if you allow it.” Father and son exchanged a rare conspiratorial grin.

Frederick carried his wife out to the waiting carriage, and they were on their way, followed by a baggage carriage with her maid, her manservant, and his valet, Clara with tears in her eyes waving to the baroness, who had tears running down her cheeks.

“They are so kind,” Clara said, turning finally to smile at her husband. “I feel almost as if I have parents again, Freddie.”

“You do,” he said, taking her hand in his. “They both seem to be agreed that I have done very well for myself. Better than I deserve. Do you miss your own parents, my love?”

She nodded. “Especially yesterday,” she said. “And perhaps this morning. I wanted Papa to be there.”

“Tell me about him,” he said.

They did not lack for conversation all through the long journey to Kent. It was one thing that surprised Frederick. He had never conversed a great deal with women, since he had always had only one important use for them and that had had nothing to do with talk. Certainly he would not have expected to find himself able to converse with the very quiet, respectable, and surely dull Miss Clara Danford. Mrs. Clara Sullivan, he corrected himself mentally. But in fact she liked to talk about her father and about her life in India and in England afterward. And she enjoyed listening to the stories he told about his family—about the aunts and uncles and cousins who had always gathered during the summers at Primrose Park, home of his uncle, the Earl of Beaconswood. The late earl. Dan had inherited the title a few months before, of course.

Frederick would not have expected his wife to enjoy his humor. But she had done so the evening before and she did so now during their journey. She chuckled a great deal and laughed outright with him at some of his stories of boyhood mischief—usually involving him and Dan.

“I did not know you were of such a large family,” she said. “I thought it was just you and your mother and father and Lesley. It must be wonderful to be part of a large, close family.” Her tone was wistful.

“They are yours too now, my love,” he told her, raising her hand to his lips. “You will be a part of the next gathering.”

He wondered if Dan and Jule would perpetuate the custom of inviting everyone for the summers. Primrose Park actually belonged to Jule. Dan had given it to her for a wedding present, Frederick’s mother had told him. But even if they did, and even if everyone decided to continue going, he would not be able to join them there. If he never had to look either of those two in the eye again, it would be rather too soon. A pity really. He had cut himself off from his own past and from two of his dearest friends through an act of desperate stupidity.

”What is it?” Clara asked. She was gazing up into his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just remembering that my uncle died only a few months ago. He was something of an eccentric, you know. He ordered in his will that we were all to put off our mourning immediately.”

“It is oppressive to wear black for a whole year,” she said. “I would have preferred to remember Papa in my own thoughts than to be forced to remember him in such a morbid way. I hate black. You were fortunate, Freddie.”

He surprised both himself and her, he guessed, by leaning across the seat and kissing her mouth. He really was fortunate. He could be riding now with a cold and sour stranger.

“I love you,” he said.

She smiled slightly and turned to look out of the window.

It was a pleasant journey, the tedium eased by the conversation that filled most of the time. Frederick lifted his wife in and out of the carriage on the few occasions when they stopped, scorning the assistance of her manservant. She was as light as a feather.

“Besides,” he murmured against her ear on the first occasion when he had turned the servant away, “it gives me an excuse to get close to you in public, Clara. Most men would not dare touch more than the fingertips or the elbow of a lady in such a place, even if she were his wife.”

She looked at him, her arm twined about his neck, and laughed. “How absurdly you talk sometimes, Freddie,” she said. “Are you never serious?”

“Sometimes,” he said, looking into her eyes with that intense gaze that he knew usually had a melting effect on women. “Especially when I am busy doing things that don’t require words.”

Comprehension dawned in her eyes and she actually blushed. “Set me down,” she said. “You have been standing before this chair for all of two minutes, Freddie. Put me down.”

He chuckled and held her for a few moments longer before setting her down on the chair and turning to the innkeeper to order their tea.