Chapter Seventeen
They sat together on a broad garden bench under a lilac bush, well away from the laughter and shrieks of the playing children. Alice stood in front of them and listened, wide-eyed, her hand clasped in his as Avery told her that he had found her a stepmama and that Lady Laura would be his wife. He had hoped she might be pleased, but he was unprepared for the emotional kick in the gut when she wriggled her hand free of his and threw herself into Laura’s arms with a shriek of delight.
Alice’s joy should not have been a shock, he knew she liked Laura, had seen their rapport when the child had grown to know her Aunt Caroline. Surely he could not be jealous, or worse, resentful that the child had found another adult to love? Avery shifted that uncomfortable, unworthy thought away and watched Laura. He was not prepared for the tears on her cheeks, nor the fierceness of her embrace in return for Alice’s. She had protested all along that she loved her daughter and now he knew he had to accept that was the truth. No actress, however skilled, could feign the depth of her emotion and, in his heart, he had always known it.
And, despite her fierce independence, her dislike of him and her desperate need to be with Alice, she had yielded on every occasion when he had put pressure on her for the sake of the child.
Now, against his every prejudice, he had to accept she would do anything for Alice. Even, it seemed, marry a man she detested. But why leave it so late to try to claim her child? It could not even be that she had refrained from making contact while her parents were alive for their sake, because it was not until over a year from their deaths that she had sought Alice out. And the conventions of mourning would not have kept her from the child, he could see that. There had to be some good explanation, he wanted to believe that.
But could he trust her with anything else? She had turned on Piers, furious and full of spite, when he had simply been doing his duty. She had flaunted herself amongst the fastest set in society for years, earning a reputation that had been an inch from ruin. And she had lied to him, disguised herself, wormed her way into Alice’s affections with a charade she could never have sustained. Even when she had come to him, acknowledging the dangerous sensual attraction between them, it had been a lie, a stratagem, a cold-blooded manoeuvre to trap him. It had not been her fault that she had delivered exactly what he had decided he wanted.
No, he could trust neither her word nor her virtue. She was a danger and he knew he did not understand her. Last night as she lay in his arms and had yielded with passion and fire to his lovemaking he had almost believed he was falling...
Avery gave himself a sharp mental shake. He could not afford weakness. He had gone to her room this morning when it was empty and he had taken that pair of evening slippers. Now one was locked in a dresser drawer, a physical reminder of a deliberate betrayal.
‘May I call you Mama?’ Alice asked.
Laura looked at him over the top of the child’s head, her face tranquil, her eyes stark. ‘Of course, darling. As soon as I am married to your papa, then I will be your mama.’
‘Do you love Papa?’ The innocent question startled him, and Laura, too, from her expression. Her gaze switched instantly to Alice’s face and she smiled. It was not the smile she kept for him, edged with icicles, and not the genuine warm one that transformed her face whenever she looked at Alice. This, Avery realised, was a smile that hid something very deep.
‘He will never know how much,’ she said.
There was nothing he could return for that, not with Alice listening. For a moment he had thought it sarcasm, directed at him, and then he saw the glimmer of a tear as the dark lashes lowered to veil Laura’s eyes. Her teeth caught her lower lip for a second and then she was calm again. She had not responded about her feelings for him, but for Piers, Alice’s real father. But then she had written that letter to Piers. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Had he somehow misunderstood her? The woman tied him in knots.
‘Is it a secret or may I tell everyone?’ Alice was already off the seat, hopping from foot to foot in her eagerness.
‘Yes, you may tell,’ Laura said and sat, her hands lax in her lap, watching Alice as she raced across the lawn to the other children.
‘You loved him, then?’
She turned to stare at him, a frown of puzzlement between her arched brows. ‘Him?’
‘Alice’s father.’
‘Piers?’ Her confusion puzzled him. ‘Why, yes, of course I did. I would never have lain with a man I did not love.’
‘Really? And last night?’
‘What do you think?’
‘That you overcame your revulsion very well.’ He got to his feet and took a few angry paces away from her, furious that he was letting his guard down, that she might suspect he cared.
‘I am not an innocent girl barely eighteen years old any longer.’ She kept her eyes on the children, over by the house. ‘And you are an attractive man and, as I expected, skilled in bed.’
Avery felt himself flush at the dispassionate description. ‘I am glad I gave satisfaction.’
She looked at him then and this time there was more than a hint of tears in the brown eyes. ‘You know you did. Stop trying to sound like a...a...as if I was paying you.’
‘You do not have much good fortune with your lovers, do you?’ He had not meant to mention Piers, ever again, but that last accusation splintered his resolve. ‘How did you feel about Piers when he left you? Went back to do his duty?’
‘Bereft,’ she said and stumbled as she got to her feet. Avery put out a hand to steady her and she hit it away with a swiftness that betrayed the depths of her turmoil. ‘In the moment when I read his note I felt betrayed, alone and frightened. You would have been proud of what you had achieved, sending him back to his honourable death and making me hate him, if only for a second.’
Laura turned and walked away from him, away from the house, into one of the winding walks through the shrubbery.
His hand hurt like the devil. She had slashed out with the edge of hers and caught him on the side of the palm. He stood rubbing it while he watched the laurel branches sway and then settle in her wake. Innocent girl, barely eighteen. Bereft, alone, frightened. Pregnant. The wave of guilt swept through him, leaving the taste of bile in his mouth as it had so often in the months after Piers’s death. What had I done? Was I wrong? Should I have listened, helped?
Too late now and, however hurt and frightened she had been, surely no woman who was truly in love could have written those cruel words to a lover facing battle?
Avery turned from the shrubbery and went towards the house. He needed a glass of brandy and straightforward male company with its certainties and its emotional directness.
* * *
‘You may kiss the bride.’
The church swam into focus as Avery lifted the veil and folded it back over the wreath of myrtle and orange blossom that crowned her hair. Laura closed her eyes as he bent and touched his mouth to hers and a sigh went round the sophisticated, fashionable congregation. An excellent marriage of equal status and a great deal of land and money. How very satisfactory.
She clung to the cynical thought as Avery’s lips moved over hers, warm and possessive. Her hands were on his lapels and she had no recollection of placing them there, but it was a good gesture, one that confirmed her affection and her submission to him in front of witnesses.
They went arm in arm to the vestry and she signed her new name carefully, as she had rehearsed. Laura Caroline Emilia Jordan Falconer, Countess of Wykeham. Beside her, Avery made a sound, quickly bitten back, presumably as he realised she had not lied about her name at least, those days in Hertfordshire.
Then they were in the chancel again, surrounded by faces in the pews and peering down from the wide, dark-panelled gallery. Her hand felt heavy with the broad gold band as she lifted her skirts to negotiate the steps to the nave and the great organ over the west door thundered into life, making her jump. All her senses seemed to be alert, raw. But not her feelings—those were numb.
On the steps she smiled and threw her flowers and waved as she sat in the open carriage and was driven away into New Bond Street and no one seemed to notice it was all an act.
‘You look beautiful, Lady Wykeham.’ Avery resumed his tall hat and sat back beside her.
‘Thank you.’ He looked exceedingly handsome, barbered and groomed to perfection, dressed with elegant formality, his patrician features suited to the grave solemnity he had projected all through the service. ‘Alice behaved very well.’
‘She was feeling so grown up in her miniature version of your gown that I think she was afraid to move.’ Avery’s face relaxed as he smiled. ‘Do you mind not having a proper honeymoon?’
For a moment she could not follow his train of thought. ‘Oh, you mean taking her with us tomorrow when we go to Westerwood? No, of course not.’ Conscious of the groom clinging on behind she lowered her voice. ‘After all, it is hardly as if we would wish to be alone together, is it?’
Avery was silent, occupied for several minutes with pulling off his gloves and smoothing them flat over his knee. ‘We did not get off to a very good beginning with our relationship,’ he said eventually, equally low-voiced.
Was this a flag of truce? Or a trick? ‘No,’ Laura agreed. ‘We did not. However, I keep my word. You may be certain that I will do my utmost to be a good wife and you know I will do everything in my power for Alice.’ He sighed, just on the edge of her hearing. ‘What more do you want?’ she demanded sharply, then caught herself before the groom could hear. Avery did not answer.
* * *
The wedding breakfast went exceptionally well. Laura knew everyone and, with the confidence of maturity, knew how to make a social event a success, even when her brain seemed numb and the house, her new London home, was unfamiliar. The guests retired to the vast drawing room after the meal, champagne continued to flow, the noise level soared. It was, people were saying on all sides, the wedding of the Season. And, of course, it was spiced by the speculation about how Avery Falconer would tame Scandal’s Virgin.
At six o’clock Laura went searching for Alice and found her curled up asleep on a sofa.
‘I’ll carry her up,’ Avery said behind her.
‘But—’
‘Blackie will put her to bed, you can look in later. We cannot both disappear together.’ His expression became sardonic. ‘Not this early, anyway.’
Laura watched him lift the child in his arms and remembered the three occasions when he had carried her in his arms, the feel of his body and the strength of his hold. She bent to kiss Alice’s cheek and felt an answering pressure on the top of her head as if he had laid his cheek there for a moment, or pressed his lips to her hair in a kiss. Her heart fluttered, then she realised he must be acting for their guests.
The smile was perfect on her lips when she straightened and she did not look back as she swept back into the centre of the room. She could act, too, be the loving stepmama who was still less to the child than Alice’s papa was. Someone made an observation and Laura nodded in agreement. ‘Indeed, Mrs Nicholson. Such a delightful child, so pretty and affectionate. So easy to love.’
* * *
Three hours later Laura sat bolt upright in the big bed with its froth of lace and net hangings and tried to decide what to do. Avery would be coming in soon, she had no doubt. He would insist on his marital rights until she was with child, of that she was certain.
But she was equally certain he would not force her. She could say no, but that would be to break her word to be a good wife, and besides, she wanted him to make love to her.
A somewhat humiliating realisation, that. But she loved him and she desired him and she knew he made love with toe-curling skill: she would have to be perverse indeed to recoil from him because he did not love her.
She could do what ladies were supposed to do, or, at least, what some young ladies were told was proper: lie still and allow one’s husband to do what he wanted. Laura suspected that Avery, if he did not laugh himself sick at the sight of her apeing a virtuous lady, would treat that response as the equivalent of a refusal.
A draught of air amidst the draperies was the only clue that the door leading from hers into Avery’s bedchamber had opened. Laura stiffened, unprepared and with no plan at all for what would happen next.
Her husband appeared beside the bed clad in a vivid red-and-green banyan, a tight smile and, apparently, not a lot else. Laura swallowed.
‘Shall I put out the candles?’ He must have noticed the convulsive movement of her throat.
It was a tiny kindness, but it made up her mind. ‘No, thank you. I want to see you.’
Avery lifted one eyebrow, untied the sash, dropped it to the floor, shrugged out of the heavy silk and stood regarding her quizzically. Laura stared back, then let her gaze slide slowly down over the sculpted muscles of his chest, the flat belly, the dark hair, to the inescapable evidence that whatever else her new husband was feeling it was not rampant sexual desire for his wife.
Laura closed her mouth and studied her interlaced fingers on top of the satin coverlet.
‘I have discovered,’ Avery said drily, ‘that it is one thing making statements in the heat of anger and another altogether to carry them out.’ He tugged on the banyan again and sat on the end of the bed, his back against one of the carved posts. ‘It occurred to me that you would be lying there expecting me to march in and... Hell, I can’t find a word that isn’t downright crude or—’
‘You certainly do not want to say, make love,’ Laura agreed.
His mouth tightened at the sarcasm. ‘—have you, whether you want it or not. You wouldn’t be aroused, I would hurt you.’
‘Many, perhaps most, men would, without a second thought.’
‘I am not most men.’
No, my love, you are not and that is why I love you, despite everything. ‘I cannot think of an unexceptional euphemism either. Would it help if I said I would like to have sex with you?’
‘You would?’ The unfastened banyan fell open as he shifted to look directly at her. He was not so very far from arousal after all, or perhaps her frankness was stimulating.
‘I think you would have noticed if you repelled me. Despite everything, I enjoyed lying with you before. You must have noticed that.’ Laura pulled the ribbon tie of her negligée open. Catlike Avery watched the moving silk. ‘Women do enjoy sex, you know. They don’t have to fool themselves by imagining they are in love, or have to be wanton and abandoned.’
It was half the truth. She wanted him, badly, yet just as badly did not want the suspicion and hostility that lay between them like a hedge of thorns. She needed tenderness and affection and the slow slide of those long brown fingers across her flesh, the gentle torture of his mouth on her body.
‘Then let us, as you say, lie together and whatever follows from that.’ Avery flipped back the covers and shifted up the bed to prop himself on one elbow next to her. She could not imagine speaking so frankly with any other man under such circumstances. Somehow that very ease made her sadder. They could have so much, share so much if only they did not have this history between them.
Bold, because she knew what she wanted and needed him to want it, too, Laura pushed the heavy silk from his shoulders and ran her fingers into his hair, pulling him down to kiss her. Avery obliged, his fingers deft in the ties of her negligée, the urgency in contrast to the slow, almost lazy sweep of his tongue between her lips.
Avery disposed of her nightgown with an efficiency that made her smile against his mouth. One warm hand moved down her body, slid between her thighs. She was ready for him, embarrassingly so if she had a particle of shame left in her. Laura pressed against the questing fingers, arched into his palm to find it gone. He shifted his weight over her, nudged her thighs apart with his knee and entered her in one hard stroke.
Surprised, yet excited, Laura curled her legs around his hips and looked up into his face. Avery’s eyes were closed, his face stark, the tendons of his throat taut. He thrust steadily without kissing her, his hands still on the pillow beside her head. Laura struggled to meet his rhythm, to pace her own pleasure. Then he stilled, groaned deep in his throat and thrust hard, hanging over her, his face contorted into a mask of effort. She felt the heat of his release deep inside her, braced herself for his body as he relaxed onto her and held him to her when he subsided, crushing her breasts against his chest.
Her body was throbbing and tingling with unsatisfied desire, but part of her was flattered and titillated by his urgency. She rubbed her cheek against his hair as he lay, his face buried in her shoulder.
Then, taking her by surprise, he rolled off her body, rose from the bed and pulled on his robe. ‘Thank you,’ Avery said politely, as though she had poured a cup of tea or hemmed a handkerchief for him. ‘Goodnight, Laura.’