“Something to do with going to bed missing articles of clothing, isn’t it?” said her husband. His voice was ripe with laughter. “Went to bed with his stocking on—or no, I think he had his stockings off. I can’t quite remember.”
“I expect that’s a complaint suffered by Lord Godwin’s friend as well. Ah, what a pleasure it was to be young enough to wake with a song!”
“She’s not that young!” Godwin growled, but Henrietta could see a gleam—just a gleam—of appreciation at the back of those sullen eyes of his.
“There’s no need to make excuses,” she said soothingly. For someone who suffers so mightily during a conversation with a grown woman, I would guess that the separation in your ages is quite reassuring. You must be thirty years older than your companion, no? Children are so diverting.”
“There isn’t thirty years between us!” Godwin roared. “I’m in my thirties myself!”
Henrietta put a hand to her heart. She was enjoying herself mightily. “Goodness, I hope I have not insulted you!” She eyed him head to foot. He was as messy as he ever was, hair curling around his shoulders and his shirt all spotted with ink. “You’re absolutely right: I see now that you’re not so old.” She paused, as if doubting her own assessment.
“At any rate, time does have a way of solving this sort of problem, my lord! Just think: in a matter of what? Five years or so? Your lady friend will reach the age of majority and you will be able to ease into this whole difficult business of conversation.”
She took a sip of her wine and offered him a glinting smile full of the pleasure she was feeling. It was such a pleasure to be eating with two grown men, rather than with her stepsister and stepmother. She’d never, ever thought that she would be exchanging delicately insinuating barbs with men. The way Darby’s best friend was gaping at her was almost enough to make her laugh aloud.
“I’m afraid that Lord Godwin is having some difficulty even with this little chat,” she said, turning to her husband. “Darby, shall we model polite discourse for the poor man? Now, Lord Godwin, do listen carefully, and perhaps we can explain the Treaty of Paris to you.”
But Rees interrupted. “Damn it if you haven’t done yourself a favor, Darby,” he said with a bark of laughter. Then he leaned across the table and took Henrietta’s hand. While she watched in some amazement, he lifted it to his lips in as gallant an expression of courtesy as she’d ever seen. “You’ve surprised me. You’d better call me Rees, by the way. I can’t stand the title.”
She took her hand away and laid it over her heart. “Darby, do revive me in case I swoon. I can feel myself growing younger by the second. The earl is speaking to me. I do believe that I just entered the honorary ranks of courtesan!”
Darby leaned close to her shoulder. “I don’t believe you can truly achieve that title until after this evening, my dear.”
His deep voice pulled her straight from improper humor to a kind of reeling, overheated flush. In fact, she could feel pink stealing up her cheeks as she looked into his eyes. They were wicked. Purely wicked.
On the other side of the table, Rees chuckled. “Damned if I’m not almost envious of you, Darby.”
“Hmmm-hum,” Darby said. He had Henrietta’s hand in his, and raised it to his lips. Funny—when Rees kissed her hand, she felt nothing but a cheerful pleasure, but all Darby had to do was brush his lips across her knuckles and her stomach clenched in a confused, overheated muddle. “Shall we retire, lady wife?”
Henrietta pulled her hand away. “Certainly not! We haven’t even—there’s another course arriving,” she said, in some relief. The innkeeper pushed open the door, waving in footmen carrying a jelly, some apple puffs, and a plate of rout drop cakes.
Rees laughed again but thankfully didn’t comment. Once the door closed behind the footmen, he said, “I suppose politeness dictates that I should begin a subject of conversation.”
Henrietta gave him an approving smile. “You see how easy it grows to be!”
He snorted. “How did you survive in the carriage, then? I must say, the idea of traveling with wee Anabel makes my stomach churn. I visited the nursery just after the girls moved to London, and she upchucked on my boots by way of greeting.”
“Oh, it was lovely—” Henrietta said, and stopped. There really wasn’t any point to prevarication. “Actually, it was quite desperately horrible.” She cut her apple puff into four precise pieces. “Josie screamed like a demented person, to the point at which I thought she might crack a lung, if that is possible.”
Darby’s warm hand touched her back. “She’s an ungrateful little beast,” he said.
“No, she’s not,” Henrietta said. “She’s just quite—quite miserable. And I don’t know how to help her.”
“I thought Anabel’s stomach was the problem,” Rees said. “What did Josephine scream about, then?”
Henrietta tried not to think about the warmth of Darby’s hand on her back. “She cried and reminded me that she is a motherless child.”
“So? Tell her you’re her mother now,” Rees said.
“But I’m not her mother,” Henrietta pointed out. “I have informed her that since I’ve married her brother, I will act as her mother. Mr. Bartholomew Batt, a noted expert on child rearing, says that children should not be prevaricated to.”
“That’s rubbish,” Darby said. “I heard far too much truth from my own mother. Just tell Josie you’re her mother, and the end with it.”
Henrietta looked at him with a little frown, but he didn’t say anything further.
“I agree,” Rees said. “And then tell the girl to stop throwing up a fuss because she’ll never catch a husband at that rate. Nothing a man hates worse than a squalling wife.”
“Oh my, yes. I must tell her that. Husbands are such an enviable possession, after all. Just look at you, my lord.”
Rees gave his bark of laughter and pushed back from the table, standing up. He surprised her with a swooping bow. For a moment he looked almost handsome, his forbidding face relaxed into a grin. “Lady Henrietta, it has been indeed a pleasure. Darby, I take back everything I said in the carriage.”
The moment he left the room, Henrietta turned to Darby. “I knew he was telling you dreadful things in that carriage!”
Her husband drew her to her feet before answering. “I didn’t listen,” he said, looking down into her eyes. Henrietta was suddenly aware that she was alone with him. That they didn’t need a chaperone. That they were married.
“I was thinking of other things.”
36
A Wedding Night
Wedding nights are many things to many people: terrifying to the unwilling, too quickly finished to the eager.
Henrietta had read enough poetry, especially all those poems anticipating the night, to understand that some women were eager. Look at Juliet, going on and on about Romeo lying on her, like snow on a raven’s back. Of course, Juliet said that before Romeo climbed up to her room—which was the important distinction, to Henrietta’s mind. Juliet didn’t know what the marital act entailed, whereas she, Henrietta, did.
The problem was that she, Henrietta, knew far too much about the whole procedure to look forward to it. In fact, were there a rope ladder dangling from her window, she’d be down it herself in an instant. Never mind the fact that rope ladders were undoubtedly difficult to negotiate. She looked longingly out the window, but there was nothing to be seen but a brick wall with snow blowing over it.
“Just lie still,” Millicent had told her that very morning. “It’s over faster if you simply lie still. Think about something useful. I often cataloged the linen in my head. That way, one doesn’t feel as irritated by the event.” Then she added practical, if rather nauseating details about how to deal with leakage—none of which Henrietta really understood. It sounded as if the procedure were almost as messy as one’s monthly, which happened to be Henrietta’s least favorite time of month. In fact, had she any idea that marital intimacies required one to pad oneself with rags the ne
xt day, she would never have agreed to the marriage.
But then, Anabel had called her mama when she said good night. And Josie had only one small bout of tears before bed, and it was inspired by Anabel spewing on her nightgown. Henrietta considered throw-up a justifiable reason for temper. Now both children were fast asleep, with a likable girl named Jenny watching over them. Even better, Jenny had agreed to accompany them to London.
All of which left a newly married Henrietta Darby in the largest bedchamber the Bear and Owl could offer. By herself.
Henrietta couldn’t decide whether to disrobe or not. She had no maid until they reached London and could engage one, and so she was wearing a simple traveling dress that she could easily unfasten by herself. In the end she bathed (to remove the reminders of Anabel’s supper) and pulled on her night rail with a dressing gown over it.
She was sitting by the window gloomily thinking about Rapunzel’s ability to turn her hair into a ladder, when the door opened and Darby appeared.
“Good evening!” he said. He was holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. Henrietta looked at him rather bitterly. It was due to his inconvenient lust that she was sitting here awaiting such an unpleasant event.
The fact that he was so elegant made the whole procedure seem more embarrassing than ever. It had been a long day, but he was impeccably attired. His hair was tousled in a manner that looked coiffured, and his fingers were long and elegant as they wrestled the cork out of the bottle. Why did she have to endure leakages and pain and blood when he would doubtless remain as exquisite and polished as he always was?
Darby handed her a glass and she took a sip. Despite herself, she was rather curious to see her husband without clothes. An improper thought, no doubt.
“I’ve been downstairs, and the innkeeper confirms that we’re snowed in,” he said, with what seemed to her unnecessary emphasis.
She drank some more wine.
“How’s your hip feeling?” he asked, sitting down across from her.
She felt the beginnings of a blush. Was this married life? A husband mentioning body parts to you with no shame?
“Precisely as customary,” she said, inviting no further commentary.
Darby looked at his new wife and wondered how the devil he should proceed. Virgins did not come into his area of expertise, given that Molly, the third housemaid, resisted his blandishments. Henrietta was sitting as upright as a marionette. Her back was perfectly aligned with the straight-backed chair on which she sat, her head poised atop her body like the marble ball at the bottom of a staircase.
He should have guessed that her stepmother would feed her a load of tripe about the wedding night. Lady Holkham had made her distaste for the act clear enough. If he followed his own inclination and simply pulled off her nightgown and tossed Henrietta on the bed, she would freeze.
But then, Henrietta was no Lady Holkham. She desired him. He fancied that her eyes lingered on him, even now. He stood up. “I dismissed my valet for the night,” he said, trying for a careless tone. He hadn’t exactly expected her to leap to her feet and offer to help him, but she didn’t even make a comment. Instead she just watched him suspiciously, as if he were likely to rip off his clothes.
“Care to begin your wifely duties?” he asked. Despite her obvious distress, he couldn’t help thinking this was great fun. Probably the best fun he’d had since a certain Madame Bellini decided to show him all seven pleasures of Aphrodite. Henrietta was such a bundle of contradictions: her wild lioness hair (now tidily braided in an arrangement that he intended to undo as quickly as possible), her delicate little face, the steely resolve in her eyes and chin. The passion that lay under that rigid little body of hers. She was presumably not wearing a corset, but she was just as stiff as if she had one on beneath her night rail.
A small fraction of his soul felt sorry for her, but the truth was that she desired him. He had felt that desire coursing through her body. She simply didn’t understand her body yet. Or his body, for that matter.
“Wifely duties,” she said slowly. “I understand.”
She stood up and took off her dressing gown. But before Darby did more than glimpse an enticingly unsteady swing of breast through her night rail, she turned, climbed into bed and pulled up the sheet. For a moment, he just stood in the center of the room, dumbfounded.
Then he strode over to the bed and looked at his wife. She was rather white, lying as if ready for a coffin fitting, sheets up to her chin.
“Henrietta,” he asked, “what are you doing?”
Her eyes opened. “I’m ready to perform my duty, Darby. You may proceed.” She closed her eyes again.
“Ready,” he said, savoring it. This was too delicious. She looked like an early Roman martyr. He reached out a hand and let his finger trail down her white neck, down to the edge of the sheet. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, nudging her over a bit. And spread his hand and curled it around her breast. It was all he could do to simply leave his hand there. But he did. Waited for her, willing himself not to move, pretending not to notice that he was holding one of the most perfectly shaped breasts he had ever held.
She had backbone, his Henrietta. It seemed to take forever for her to open her eyes again and look at him.
He swallowed his grin at her bewildered look. Still, to reward her, he let his thumb wander over her nipple. And again. And again, until the pulse in Henrietta’s throat quickened, and he was humming with the urge to kiss her. Then he stopped.
She blinked. He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. He was betting that Henrietta would be unable to resist commentary, given that devastating honesty of hers.
She had to steady her voice first, which pleased him immeasurably. “Is there something I should be doing?” she inquired. “I was under the impression that you would simply…ah…proceed.”
“You need to help.”
She frowned. Clearly she thought that having to provide aid in something so distasteful to herself was not quite fair. “What would you like me to do?” she said resignedly.
“Help me undress,” he said, with just the right touch of pathos. She cast him a suspicious look, but she did climb out of bed. Given the way she thrashed about under the sheets for a moment, he’d guess that her stepmother had instructed her to pull her nightgown to her waist. He’d bet the woman had also told her that a husband would leap on her like a wild beast.
“You see, Henrietta,” he said in a discursive tone, “men can’t perform their marital duties without some participation.”
She blinked. “Why not?” she asked, bending her lovely head over his cuff links. “I thought this sort of thing was—was—” She stopped and amended the statement. “Men always find pleasure in this activity.” Being Henrietta, she didn’t bother to hide the hint of scorn in her tone.
“Not every man,” he said. “Why would I take pleasure in giving my new wife pain?” The look on her face encouraged him. “Do you think I wish to cause you embarrassment? Or discomfort?”
“No, of course not!” she said, clearly relieved. “I knew that Millicent must be wrong about your intentions, Darby.” A huge glimmering smile spread across her face. “I tried to tell her that you weren’t as—” she paused, uncertain of the word—“as debauched as she seemed to think.”
“Won’t you call me Simon?” he asked, ignoring the growling beast in his loins that suggested he fulfill her stepmother’s directions. “I have asked you before.”
She turned a bit pink. “I’m sorry. My stepmother addressed my father by his title until his death. Such informality seems unnatural.”
“You can call me Darby in public, if you wish,” he said.
“So what shall we do instead of that?” Henrietta asked. She had clearly jumped to the conclusion that he was too much of a gentleman to require marital intercourse. Her face was glowing with happiness.
Darby sternly warned himself not to laugh. “If you could help me remove my clothing,” he said gravely, “I could prepare
for bed. I won’t ask you for this assistance every night, naturally. It is only because I dismissed my valet.”
But Henrietta was obviously so pleased to be relieved of her marital duties that she would have emptied the chamber pot, if he asked. “I’m afraid that the current fashion demands that I wear very tight-fitting coats,” he said.
She was at his side immediately, biting her beautiful little rosy lip with concentration. “My valet simply wrenches it off,” he explained. He started slowly—so slowly—to peel off one arm. Her eager little hands were instantly on his sleeves, helping him slide the broadcloth down his arms. He pretended to be outrageously inept, brushing against her breasts as he struggled to free himself from the jacket.
“Ow!” he cried, once she was folding his jacket.
“What happened?”
“I must have been injured by a button,” he moaned. “We’ll have to remove my shirt in order to have a look. If you could…” He let his fingers slip apathetically from his buttons. She had to stand very close to undo his shirt placket. He could smell just a faint trace of spicy rose perfume. It nearly did him in, but he managed to rein in his lust and stand quietly as she discovered that he didn’t pad his coats because he didn’t have to. She seemed to be unbuttoning slowly, her fingers brushing his chest, so he stared at the other wall as if he had gone into a trance.
As soon as she finished unbuttoning, he pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it to the side.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked, staring at his chest.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps if you touch me all over, I could tell you when it hurts.”
She looked at him. “Why on earth would I be able to locate an injury on your chest that you could not? It must not be very painful.”
He sighed, giving up the idea of her fingers brushing over his chest. Instead he directed her toward his trousers. Her eyes widened, but she obediently started tugging at his waist. Her slender fingers brushed his stomach, and he shivered. Pink mounted in her cheeks, but she seemed determined to continue. Likely she thought that if she didn’t undress him, he might change his mind and demand marital satisfaction.