Sterling caught his wife as she went totally limp and slid down his body. Her head lolled back as lifeless as a rag doll.

Hell’s bells. His virginal wife had fainted during his attempt to seduce her.

He laid her down on the bed. What to do? Smelling salts.

He had none.

“Mary.” He knelt beside her and shook her.

Nothing happened. He pressed his fingers against her neck. She had a pulse, too fast and too thready, but she hadn’t dropped dead on him.

What else should he do? Burn feathers? All right he’d give her a minute and if she didn’t respond he’d wipe her face with a cool rag, then he’d burn feathers. He could rip apart a pillow and get feathers.

Why had she fainted? Had he been moving too fast for her? She’d been participating, slightly, with his guidance. She hadn’t protested his increasing intimacies, not until he had her gown half undone and she’d moaned a low no.

He watched her breathe. Her chest rose and fell ever so slightly and too rapidly. She wore a corset. He’d felt the rigid stays underneath her gown. He’d dealt with them before. Even run into a few women who refused to take them off ever, which made it into a one-time visit for him.

Lordy, she was pale, the skin around her lips bluish. He rolled her to her stomach and finished undoing the buttons and fumbled with the double knots of her corset strings.

Damn she had the strings tighter than a dried rawhide drumstring. He finally got the knots released without resorting to his pocketknife.

She moaned.

He lifted her enough to get the dress down to her waist, and he yanked the strings completely out of the grommets of her corset and pulled the contraption of torture out from under her.

Had the liberties he’d been taking shocked her so badly she passed out?

He figured he’d never dealt with a virgin before. No, no probably about it. The few women in the western territories were either married or making their living on their backs. There had been one Chinese laundry girl who had taken a shine to his looks, but even she had been well versed in the art of seduction.

Mary hadn’t protested his advances, but would she? She was in the habit of accommodating other’s needs rather than protecting her own well-being.

He had shocked her. Clearly she wasn’t ready for the physical side of a marriage she’d suggested only just this morning. He’d been in too much of a hurry to make this marriage permanent when she was still getting used to the idea of promising to spend her life with him.

He grabbed the nightshirt from the end of the bed. If his unbuttoning her gown frightened her, waking without the gown or her corset on would scare her witless. Leaning back against the headboard, he pulled her up to a sitting position. Her body had more rigidity, and she moaned a protest. Good, she was coming around.

He swiftly pulled his nightshirt over her head as he made short work of her chemise. He winced as he saw the angry welts the creases in her undergarment had made on her skin where her corset had been.

“Sterling?”

“Shhh.” He grabbed her wrist and pushed it through the sleeve and she followed suit groggily with the other arm. He pulled the chemise out from underneath his nightshirt and removed his hands. He lifted her up and pushed the dress down below her hips and the satin slithered to the floor.

She put a hand to her forehead. “What happened?”

“You fainted.” He slid out from behind her and yanked down the covers. “Lay down.”

Instead she bolted upright. “I fainted?” She sounded bewildered and alarmed.

“I want you to rest. You’ve had a trying day.” He needed to get out of the room before the idea that he had undressed her and had her in his bed tempted his overheated blood to continue to explore her perfect little body. He backed away from the bed. “I’ll get you a fresh cup of tea.”

She looked down at nightshirt he had pulled on her and looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and questioning.

He felt like a heel. A molester of innocents, a man who never should have aspired to touch her, perhaps she had been trying to tell him something when she protested the daylight. Perhaps in her world, relations only occurred hidden in the dark. Good God, he’d swear she’d never been kissed before. “Nothing happened. You fainted.”

He wished she didn’t look so relieved.

* * *

Mary was only glad she hadn’t missed anything. What he had been doing had felt so wonderful and wicked and oh, so right. Her knowledge of these matters was sketchy, the role she should play even hazier. She started to say she didn’t need tea, but he had left the room.

He must have realized her corset was too tight, because she had been stripped of it. Yet, he’d put her in a nightshirt to preserve her modesty. She’d woken to feel her clothes being tugged off. She had a slight headache, and her shoes were still on her feet. She bent over and struggled to push the buttons through the leather without a buttonhook.

Mary straightened the room, hanging her mother’s wedding gown in the wardrobe, and Sterling still hadn’t returned. She picked up the cup of tea he had left on the dresser, found it tepid, and drank it anyway. Now that her stomach was no longer squished, she realized she hadn’t eaten at all today. She never eaten breakfast because she’d been trying to find Suzanna and well...she was hungry.

And where was Sterling?

She sat down in front of the looking glass and removed the pins from her hair. Because she didn’t have her brush, she finger combed it and plaited it in a long braid.

She picked up the cup and saucer, and with the trailing nightshirt held in her other hand, she made her way down the darkened staircase.

Sterling stood in the kitchen, leaning against a wall near the stove. She studied his broad shoulders and his bowed head. Her husband.

A swelling of satisfaction settled under her breastbone. The way he had carried her into the house and his kisses surely meant he wanted to be her husband, perhaps not as much as she wanted him, but enough for their marriage to work. She wanted to move forward and touch him, but shyness held her back.

“Sterling?”

He spun around a crockery mug held in his hand. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Mary took a step back, gathering the neckline of the nightshirt in her fingers. “I’m not sleepy.”

He stared at her.

She forced herself to move forward to the table in spite of the intense heat in her face. She was tired, but too full of an edgy anticipation to sleep, to even lie still. “Actually, I’m a little hungry. Is there bread or perhaps a tin of biscuits?”

“Sit down. I’ll fix ham and eggs for you.” He thumped his mug on the table.

He had coffee. She could use coffee. “I can do it.”

“Sit. You just fainted.”

“I forgot to breathe. I’m fine now.”

He pointed, and she sat on a straight chair by the solid butcher table in the center of the room. She felt suitably chastised. He opened a door to what must be the larder and emerged with a partial ham and three eggs.

She folded her arms across her chest hiding the jiggle in her unrestrained figure. “I’m sorry, my corset was too tight.”

“Don’t ever wear one again.”

She stared at him. She had thought he liked her corseted figure. He had seemed interested in her waist. “I have to, my clothes won’t fit without one.”

“Buy new. I can afford it.”

“I promise I won’t ever lace it so tight.” Was he angry that she had fainted? She stood up and picked up one of the eggs. “I never eat more than two.”

She replaced it in the larder and took a look around to see what shopping she would need to do, but the larder was well stocked. When she returned to the kitchen he had a big slice of ham sizzling in a pan. She covered the remaining ham and returned it to the coolest part of the larder. Grabbing a towel, she leaned over to get the pot that must contain the coffee.

“Will you please sit down?” he said.

“I’m used to taking care of things.” She poured the black liquid in her teacup before setting now empty pot on the stove. “Should I make more coffee?”

“No. Would it be so terrible if you were taken care of for once?” He folded his arms across his chest and looked at her and then looked quickly away as if the wall had suddenly sprouted horns.

If she were her sister, she would expect to be taken care of, but she was Mary, the one who took care of everyone else. That was what everyone valued her for. She sat down and tried to appreciate his efforts to make her comfortable and instead felt robbed of the one thing she was good at.

“Your bath water was too hot, but it should be comfortable by the time you’re done eating.”

He was very nearly acting as if he was her personal servant, and she couldn’t explain why it made her uneasy. He seemed to be studiously avoiding looking at her. Would there be a resumption of his caresses and kisses after she ate, after her bath? She rather felt he was imposing a number of artificial delays.

She searched her mind for suitable subjects of conversation. “I’ll put an advertisement in the newspaper for servants as soon as I have clothes to wear.”

* * *

Sterling rested his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Mary lay beside him with her back to him. He wasn’t sure if she was asleep yet although they both should have been dreaming hours ago. He vowed he wouldn’t touch her until she was settled into the marriage. When she was in the bath he slipped into the room and changed out of his clothes into one of the nightshirts he hated. After that he stayed downstairs for a long time staring at the pages of a book and turning them every now and then.

Mary had padded down the stairs on her bare feet after her bath and peeked in, but he had pretended not to notice her.

He knew he could pull her into his arms, and she would submit. The thought tempted him, but she had fainted. As much as she blamed her corset, part of it had to be shock at what he was doing to her.

He wanted her to want him, to need him, to love him. And how likely was that he asked himself. He hadn’t even hoped for love when he asked Suzanna to marry him. Hadn’t hoped for it, because there was no earthly reason he should expect more than duty.

His wealth had bought him a good wife of acceptable family, and he knew to want more was to tempt fate. Even if Mary did think she loved him, one hint of the man he’d been as Silver John would have her despising him forever.

But when he had been kissing her and filling his hands with her full curves he’d tasted a pleasure beyond the physical, beyond earthly desire, oh Lord he’d given her his heart.

As he stared at the ceiling he cursed the dreams of his lonely childhood that had bid him to strive for the fancy carriage and the fancy house just to learn the only thing he really wanted was this woman to love him. He knew the cruelest emotion to an orphan was hope.

And she was eager to fill the house with servants so they would never again be alone together.

* * *

Mary had spent the week following her marriage with practical matters. Only practical matters, like hiring an upstairs and a downstairs maid, a groundskeeper, a scullery maid, and making sure the cook had menus and a schedule to follow. She’d discussed budgets and additional purchases for the household with Sterling, but there had been no more passion. No kisses, no touches, not even so much as an interested look from him.

In fact, he hardly looked at her all. Well, except the one time he caught her with her hair down and unbraided and he’d stood staring as if mesmerized for a moment or two, but then when she touched his shoulder that night in bed, he’d gotten up and gone downstairs and slept on the floor.

She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t make herself over as pretty as Suzanna.

Sterling was as considerate as ever. He treated her much the same as he had treated her when she was to be his sister-in-law. But she felt shut out, shunned, held separate when she should be growing closer to him. She missed her father’s absent-minded pats on the head. She missed Suzanna’s twirling around the room filling it with empty chatter. She missed feeling needed.

Her days were empty and a newly wed woman wasn’t expected to entertain visitors, even if her husband spent long hours working. On a whim, she’d taken a trip to the church and asked the minister where one would take an orphan in Boston. Recruiting a friend for companion, she’d traveled to the orphanage near the docks. Her friend had found the squalor of the living conditions too much to bear and waited in the carriage.

Children with dirty faces, tattered clothes and runny noses stared at Mary as she walked through the dormitory where the children were housed four and five to a bed with little regard for age. The little ones surely suffered for space.

A chubby woman with few teeth and a bulbous red nose named Mrs. Crump led Mary through the cramped and sour-smelling building. Mary could only understand about every other word the woman uttered.

“What do they eat?”

“Gruel, for they mornin’ meal, round ’bout ten so. Gets a bowl o’ soup and a bit o’ bread for supper.”

“And for dinner?”

“Don’t get no dinner, just gruel and soup.”

Many of the children didn’t look like they had more than skin on their bones and they had the gray look of sailors returning from long voyages without enough fruits and vegetables.

“Do you remember Sterling John Cooper?”

“Ah, little Johnny Cooper, he was a rascally one. Pretty child, could always steal himself silly. People trusted those purty eyes o’ his. He stole so much the fences started calling him Silver John.”

“He was a thief?” Mary tried to keep her voice neutral.

“Thief and worse. Fair near killed a man, then took off for Spain or some such. ’Spect the law was after him. Why you ask about him?”

Mary needed time to absorb this. Sterling was a good man, an honest man, she’d stake her life on it. “I’m married to him.”

The woman put her hand on her chest and reared back. “Lord almighty.”

“Are the children schooled?”

“You married Silver John?”

She’d have to wait on answers to settle this woman’s curiosity. “Are there any records of his parents?”

“Oh no, child. None of them what’s here left like he was have a mother worth having. No better than she ought to be.”

“Are you saying his mother was a...prostitute?”

“Well, I ain’t saying that for sure, but she weren’t no salt of the earth like as not.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“No, I might o’ had a guess back then, but that was a long time ago.”

“You must have been a very young woman then.”

Mrs. Crump looked pleased.

“Now do the children have proper schooling?”

The woman shook her head. “Ever now an’ again some women come down and try to learn the children, but they are wicked wild. The minister comes and reads the bible to them twice a week, though. Most of the healthy ones get apprenticed. Silver, now, he ran away from every apprenticeship got for him.”

“Destined for better things,” said Mary. Did he realize back then? Or was he just fighting to survive this horrid place. “How many people work here?”

“Me an’ Mrs. Potter are regular like. There’s a few others what come and go. You can leave money for the care o’ the children.”

There were at least forty children that Mary saw. “Thank you for showing me around, Mrs. Crump.”

She left without ceremony and before Mrs. Crump asked for more money that Mary wasn’t sure would make it past the liquor cabinet. This place needed more than money. How had Sterling survived a beginning like this?

* * *

“You went where?” Sterling shoved back his plate on the dinner table and stood so quickly his chair tumbled backwards. Shock and fear coursed madly through his blood. How could she have gone there?

Mary folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate. “I went to the orphanage where you were raised.”

Sterling ran his fingers through his hair. His heart pounded. His Mary had seen that...that place? How could she sit down and eat a meal with him, after seeing the filth and squalor where he’d lived? “Why would you do that?”

She met his eyes squarely. “I want to improve conditions for the children. Organize a society to reform the orphanage.”

He paced down the length of the dinning room. He felt cut open, raw and exposed. “No, stay away from that place. You didn’t give them money, did you?”

Desperation clawed at his throat. What did she think of him now? If he had scared her before...

“I didn’t think money would make it to the children. I suspect Mrs. Crump is too fond of strong drink.”

“Is that wicked woman still there?” Oh, God, what had Mrs. Crump said? Did she tell Mary about the bullwhip she kept in the cupboard?

“The children need better food and education.”

“It won’t help.”

“Sterling, you came from there. How can you just ignore the conditions?”

“I’ve been trying to put that place behind me my whole life.”

She stood and rang the bell for the maid to clear away their plates. “Then you shouldn’t have come back to Boston.”

Sterling stormed out of the room before he threw a plate. He paced the darkened parlor, but Mary didn’t follow him in. He shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. He sank down onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. He was lost. How could he ever gain Mary’s admiration if she knew his past?

Truth was, he knew nothing about how to gain her trust. He feared if he touched her, kissed her, he would not be able to stop. And he wouldn’t know if she was frightened or repulsed unless she fainted again. He didn’t know anything about how to live in this world with a woman who had been sheltered from earthly pleasures.

If he had married Suzanna, he never would have worried about it. He never would have cared if Suzanna loved him.

* * *

Mary didn’t know what to do. She had angered Sterling, and she hadn’t meant to. She just wanted to know and understand him. But now that she had seen the conditions of the orphanage she couldn’t turn her back on the orphans.

She was tired of spending her nights in a bed inches from Sterling, yet not touching him. Afraid to touch him. She wanted him to kiss her again, but he didn’t. She no longer wanted to torture herself with the idea that she should be tall and slim and blond like her sister.

As she readied herself for bed she told herself it was time to admit failure. She had caught Sterling in a moment when he was vulnerable and persuaded him to enter a marriage he clearly didn’t want. At least not with her.

In the morning she would tell him that she wanted a divorce.

She folded back the quilt to the foot of the bed; the summer night was too warm to need it. A slight breeze from the open window served to keep the heat from becoming unbearable.

Mary slid between the sheets she had sewn with loving care. She wondered if Sterling would come to bed at all. He would undress in the dark with his back to her, long after she had climbed up the bed stairs. Then he would be out of the bed before she woke in the morning.

Only as she lay still into the night, she suspected sleep would elude her. She knew almost as soon as she offered herself as substitute for her sister that it was wrong to ignore everyone else’s wishes to steal what she wanted.

And as Sterling must have learned, stealing didn’t gain the thief what was really needed. There must have been a point when he turned away from a life of crime and relied on his own hard work to get ahead in life. He must have learned that the things worth having, like love and respect were gained more often by giving, than by taking.

She sighed and turned on her side. She pretended to sleep as Sterling tiptoed into the room. He had removed his shoes in the hallway outside their bedroom. Either he was very considerate, or he really didn’t want her to waken.

Mary didn’t move and kept her breathing steady and even. He settled into the bed, lying flat on his back, his hands behind his head. She must have dozed at some point because she woke in the darkest part of the night.

She could hear Sterling breathing, regular and deep. She turned to her side and studied his silhouette. He was such an admirable man. The conditions of his youth broke her heart. She wished she could comfort him, take care of the rough and tumble youth who had fought to survive when others were beaten by the deplorable hand they had been dealt.

She, who had lived a soft pampered life, could only admire the strength of his will that had made him triumph over the harsh reality he had been faced with. She wanted to take care of him, pamper and spoil him, but living in close proximity to him in the last week, she had learned he was uncomfortable with her efforts to take care of him. He was more at ease turning the tables and taking care of her.

She leaned up on an elbow. This would be the last night she spent in bed with him. She would return to her father’s home tomorrow. There was no point in staying. She had spent the evening packing her trunks.

She wished he could have given her his heart. A wave of longing and despair swept over her. Tentatively, she reached out and laid her palm on his chest. Her hand encountered warm skin and a light springy hair.

Goodness!

Because of the warmth of the night, he must have taken off his nightshirt. She knew he didn’t like them, but he had worn one faithfully every night of their marriage. She flattened her hand against his skin, then traced her fingers up the thick line of his collarbone, enjoying the solid warmth and feel of his chest.

What she wouldn’t have given if he could love her. But the very thing others valued her for, her caring and compassion, was the trait that made him uncomfortable.

Still, she wished things had been different, but just for a moment, in the darkness she wanted to pretend things were all right, that her husband would allow her to soothe and cherish the child in his heart who had experienced nothing of kindness and love. She leaned over and brushed a kiss on his shoulder closest to her. She started to pull back, but found Sterling had lowered his arm around her. His hand rested between her shoulder blades. Was he awake?

Her heart began to beat frantically. Had his breathing changed? The silence of the night bore down on her as she realized her own breathing had changed, was faster.

He brought his hand to the back of her head and urged her to rest against his shoulder. She felt awkward and uncertain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I’ll pretend to be asleep. Don’t stop,” he said.

His voice was low and sleep-burred and it stirred her in a way she couldn’t explain. She wanted to hear his voice more, to explore its effect on her, and she had no idea what she was doing. Was he awake enough to know it was her? Did she care?

A tug on her scalp made her realize her was loosening her braid.

“You have beautiful hair,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Then he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss in her palm and another on the inside of her wrist. With his arm around her back he pulled her tighter against his side. “Mary, are you going to pass out on me?”

“No. Of course not.” She wasn’t wearing her corset.

“Good. Because I don’t think I can pretend to be asleep.”

He tilted her chin up and kissed her. His fingers stroked along her neck, and she closed her eyes and held on. His bare skin under her fingers enthralled her, and she explored the delineation of the hard muscles of his back. His body was so different from hers, strong and firm where she was soft and pliable.

He kissed her throat and stroked her back. She savored the feel of him, his weight pressing her into the mattress. His kisses made her blood grow thick, and her bones turned liquid. She waited for him to touch her breasts, yet he seemed maddening interested in avoiding what she wanted. She arched up against him wanting...wanting...more.

She whimpered.

“Are you scared?” he whispered against her throat.

She threaded her fingers in his hair. To be honest, fear was part of the emotional concoction coursing through her mind, but so was the hope that this wouldn’t end. Holding his head she found his mouth in the darkness. “A little,” she whispered against his lips. “But I trust you.”

He nudged her legs apart with his knee and settled his lower body against hers, supplying a pressure that was intriguing and subtly rhythmic as if they were about to engage in some primitive dance.

As she stroked him, exploring the indentation of his spine, she felt a sheen of perspiration coating his back. She pressed her lips to his shoulder tasting salty skin. And he caressed her in places that hungered for his touch.

His kisses deepened, and she could no longer think, just feel a building thirst that only he could quench. She sensed the same urgency burning in him, heating his skin, roughening his breath and in his low moans. “Mary, I have to light the lamp. I have to see you.”

A drop of doubt clouded her roaring senses, but he wasn’t waiting for her permission. He’d leaned to the side and lit the lamp on the table beside the bed. He trimmed back the wick until only a soft glow lit the room. Then she realized that he wouldn’t want the light if he wanted to pretend she was another woman.

When he turned back to her, his deep blue eyes were dark and heavy-lidded. In no time at all he shoved off his drawers and unbuttoned her nightgown. As he peeled back the material he scattered kisses over her exposed skin. She clenched her eyes shut as the last of her clothing was stripped away.

He stroked her hair and spoke softly to her in a mix of encouragement, commands and compliments. Sweet nothings, she supposed. Then he was touching her in that most private of places, urging her legs apart. His fingers found a rhythm that made her feel as if she was coming apart. Pressure built and she clawed at him until she shattered.

She whimpered and he stroked her and held her and urged her to open her eyes. When she did he pressed forward with a new nudging force at her very center. Then with a tearing thrust he was inside her, part of her, and it felt as if she had been waiting her whole life for this joining to happen.

She held him tight as their hearts beat together. In this moment united with him, she felt love and boundless hope in her heart. And she had been so close to walking away from the marriage, from him and this wonder she had no idea existed before this night.

Sterling couldn’t believe it when Mary touched and kissed his chest, but he ran with it. He could do no less. His beautiful wife’s response to him was everything he could have asked for, everything he dreamed about, and he never wanted this moment to end.

His heart pounded, and he wrapped his hands in her long dark hair. For the first time in his life he felt as if he were home in her arms. She held him tightly as he found heaven.

He brushed a kiss on her nose and cradled her close. He rolled to his back taking her with him and pulled the sheet over her lush body. He didn’t want to crush her, he didn’t want her to grow cold, he didn’t want to ever let her go. Yet, as he leaned up to put out the lamp, he saw what he had missed before in his haste to make love to his wife.

He rolled her off of him and swung his feet to the floor.

Her trunks and bandboxes sat beside the door. The lid of one full trunk stood open. He glanced at the dressing table and most of her toiletries and her box of hair ribbons and jewelry not on the surface.

It could only mean one thing. His chest hurt. If a sledge hammer had been slammed into his chest, it couldn’t have hurt worse. “You are abandoning me?”