“I do,” he said. At her incredulous look, he grinned and added, “Actually, I learned in Portugal. I was on a miss . . . er, trip there a couple of years ago—”
“Yes, Rafael, a mission. I’m not completely without brains or hearing. I do not know how you came out of it with a whole skin. I realized by your stories—all of them in places where there is fighting—that you were not a simple ship captain. Now, about the bread?”
“You know something, Victoria? I talk in my sleep, or so I’ve been told. Eventually, when we come together, you are liable to garner enough information to blackmail me into my grave.”
“Bread, Rafael.”
“I learned to make it over a campfire, that’s all. There was an old Gypsy woman who was supposed to do for us—I was with another fellow at the time. But her hands were so filthy I couldn’t see myself eating anything she made, so I did it myself, with her giving me instructions. The bread wasn’t at all bad, actually.”
Victoria rose from her chair. “Shall we, then, sir? To the kitchen and the flour?”
She was no longer angry at him, he thought, trailing after her to the small cottage kitchen. Mrs. Ripple had already left and the bread makings were spread on the oak kitchen table.
He waited until her hands were immersed in sticky dough, then pulled her gently back against him. He slipped his arms about her waist. He lightly nipped her neck just below her earlobe. “Forgive me, Victoria,” he said.
She felt his warm breath in her ear and wondered at him. Surely he was taking a chance, what with her hands covered with bread dough. No, she thought, forlorn, he knew her, knew she would succumb to him as easily as spreading butter.
“I won’t ever again leave you. Or stop, once I’ve begun loving you. Will you forgive me for being such an insensitive clod last evening?”
She drew in a deep breath. Already she was feeling a pervading warmth inching up from her toes. And his hands weren’t moving. But her back was against his front and she could feel the hardness of him.
“Victoria?” His hands opened and his fingers splayed, going downward over her stomach.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Why did you do it last night?”
“Because I’m a bloody proper sod, that’s why. You smell so sweet, Victoria, so much a woman.” She felt his teeth lightly nip her earlobe.
“I can’t do anything,” she said after a full minute of sheer enjoyment. “My hands are a mess.”
“That’s all right. Just tell me you don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t even dislike you at the moment. There must be something wrong with me.”
She sounded worried, so he kissed her neck.
“I’m not going to go any further, else the bread will never make its way to the oven. All right?”
She wanted him to continue, no question about that, and damn the wretched bread. But she was a lady, she reminded herself, and a virgin, and a maiden, and all those proper things, and she shouldn’t want lovemaking in the kitchen.
“All right.”
He kissed her neck again, then stepped back.
“Now, the next thing we do is add a bit more water.”
She did as he told her. He was delighted in a most basic masculine way to see that her hands were shaking a bit.
Their finished product, both of them agreed, wasn’t a profoundly satisfactory result, but it ranked above Mrs. Ripple’s efforts. They ate the hot bread in the kitchen, smearing it with sweet butter and strawberry jam.
Between bites, Rafael was telling her one of his adventures near Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean.
Victoria listened with half an ear. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off his mouth.
“Victoria, what do you want?”
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Your story’s fascinating,” she said.
“You weren’t paying a bit of attention to my ridiculous tale. One, I might add, that I was telling you on purpose, for it didn’t involve any missions or assignments on my part, just simple trading and making money.”
He paused a moment, readying to screw himself to the sticking point. So what if in the deepest recesses of his mind he was still very uncertain about her?
He said in his best calm captain’s voice, “I believe you and I trust you. I want you to be my wife. I want to consummate our marriage. Now.”
She stared at him, moistening her suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Rafael, although she didn’t notice, found the movement of her pink tongue quite fascinating. “You have,” she said at last, “made two very big statements all in one breath. I would ask you first: why? All of a sudden—perhaps because I made bread with you—you don’t believe me to be a trollop?”
“That’s right, but it came before the bread.”
She waited, but he added nothing more. She frowned at him. “You’ve perhaps decided I’m not a trollop because I eat warm bread with just the right amount of butter?”
“No.” Well, he thought. If one committed an untruth, one should do it to the best of one’s meager abilities. “I realized—and I am just a man, don’t forget, Victoria—that you are utterly guileless and innocent as a babe. And you’re right. The fact that I touch you and you melt all over me, well, that simply means that you respond to me, Rafael Carstairs, your husband and an excellent lover.” He paused a moment, judging the effect of his fluency.
She lowered her eyes, saying softly, “I was thinking about that, you know. When Damien kissed me, I was repelled and horrified. As for David Esterbridge, I just didn’t feel anything. I would have thought it was very distasteful if it hadn’t been so very personal and intimate.” She raised her eyes to his face. “It’s magic, I think, with you. You’re magic.”
He was moved; he couldn’t help himself. She sounded utterly sincere, simple honesty shining from her eyes. But could a woman respond to only one man with such wonderful abandon? An inexplicable something that existed just between two certain people? It sounded like nonsense to him. He’d responded to every woman to whom he’d made love.
He remembered Victoria before Damien had filled his ears. Not once had he doubted her virtue, but then again, not once had he kissed her or caressed her.
“I suppose it would be more accurate to say that we are magic together.”
She gave him a sweet, dazzling smile and he was hard instantly. His voice sounded harsh to his own ears when he said a moment later, “And my second statement, Victoria?”
“Consummating our marriage?”
“That’s a rather formal way of saying it, but yes.”
“But we’ve barely finished our breakfast.”
He shrugged, and his grin—showing his lovely white teeth—was decidedly wicked.
Suddenly Victoria was very tired about being so wretchedly helpless—at least as far as he was concerned. She felt like a puppet dancing to his string-pulling. It wasn’t fair, just because for some odd and inexplicable reason he had this power over her. “I believe I should like to go riding, perhaps visit Milton Abbas again. We didn’t really explore the Norman church all that completely. I am fond of old graveyards also, and I would like to find the oldest grave. We could make it a sort of contest, if you would like.”
His grin never wavered. Rafael supposed he should tell her that her expression was so open, her eyes such a mirror, that her thoughts showed as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud. He leaned toward her and clasped her hand in his. “You’re beautiful, Victoria, and yes, I too am much enamored of graveyards. I really hadn’t realized it before, but now I do. I shall have Tom saddle our mounts. Will you meet me at the stables in, say, thirty minutes?”
He still had the control, she thought. He was merely allowing her to have her way. It galled her to realize it, but since it had been her suggestion, she would be spiting herself to go against it now. She nodded somewhat curtly and took herself up to her bedchamber to change into her riding habit. It occurred to her as she buttoned her blous
e that once Rafael hd initiated her into the intricacies of lovemaking, perhaps she would lose this disconcerting reaction to him. She flushed slightly, knowing full well what would happen this evening—after dinner, she hoped. Whether or not she should believe him, well . . . he had said he trusted her, so that was that. If one couldn’t believe one’s husband, one was in a sorry situation.
Rafael won the graveyard competition. He found a gravestone with the date 1489 still legible on the worn granite.
“What is my prize?”
She looked at him blankly. “I was so certain I was going to win,” she began.
“Shall I tell you what your prize would have been?”
He was striding toward her as he asked that question, and she saw the answer in his eyes.
“No,” she said. “I’m not stupid.”
“Kiss me, Victoria. I will accept that as my prize.” He clasped her arms and drew her gently against him. “Tilt up your head. Yes, that’s all right. Part your lips just a bit. Excellent. Now, all you have to do is just respond to me as you always do, and no holding back.”
She responded, just as she always did.
It didn’t occur to her to do any holding back.
He held her then, not moving, forcing his hands to remain still on her back. “This is enjoyable,” he said.
“Yes, it is quite a surprise that you too enjoy graveyards.”
“No, I was referring to our kissing.”
“I need more practice.”
He stiffened at her words but forced himself to relax. He had found himself wondering why she kept her lips firmly closed when he’d kissed her before. It was as if she were completely inexperienced . . . and he mustn’t forget that she was, that he had told her he trusted her, believed her. “I’ll teach you everything,” he said at last, gave her a squeeze, and released her. “Shall we return to Honeycutt Cottage and prepare our dinner?”
She nodded. “We mustn’t forget about Tom.”
“Actually, I gave him a holiday as well. He and Mrs. Ripple will return day after tomorrow, Friday morning. We will leave for Drago Hall in the afternoon.”
She nodded, but she wasn’t at all happy about it. Drago Hall meant Damien and Elaine, and neither of them wanted her there.
Victoria grew more and more nervous as the late afternoon dwindled into evening. She didn’t want to cook. She wanted to hide. She didn’t want to be near her husband, but it seemed that he was there, wherever she happened to be, and there was that look in his eyes that made her flush to her hairline.
“Just a light dinner, Victoria?”
She hadn’t turned a page in her book for the past half-hour, but she still jumped when he spoke suddenly. “Yes, that’s fine, Rafael. You came in so quietly, you startled me.”
“I learned many times over that my hide depended on how quiet I was. Lyon once called me as silent as a big cat. I laughed, of course. He’s the one with the name for that, not I. Don’t be nervous, Victoria. You will enjoy yourself, I swear it. Remember that I’m magic, all right?”
“You have an excellent opinion of yourself, that is certain.”
“I believe I should like dinner now. Fruit, cheese, and the remains of our bread?”
“But it’s not even dark yet.”
He said in a tone of infinite patience, “My dear wife, it isn’t dark until after seven-thirty. If I kept my hands off you until then, half the night would be gone. Now, don’t argue with me. Come to the kitchen.”
As she rose, the hem of her skirt caught on a splinter of wood on the chair leg. It yanked her back, pulling her off balance. She fell heavily onto her lame leg. It gave way in an instant and she tumbled to the floor.
Rafael was at her side in an instant. “Are you all right? Good grief, Victoria, what the devil happened?”
She wouldn’t look at him, she couldn’t. She was too mortified. She’d conveniently forgotten about her wretched leg and now she’d made a clumsy fool of herself in front of him. “Nothing, I just slipped.”
He helped her to her feet and she sent thanks heavenward that her leg didn’t give out again. “I’m sometimes not very graceful,” she said, looking down at the deep red swirls in the Aubusson carpet. “I hope you will forgive that.”
He gave her a bewildered look. “You, not graceful? Don’t be an idiot, Victoria. Everyone stumbles occasionally, even your perfect husband. Now, are you truly all right?”
She nodded. She didn’t realize that she was rubbing her leg until Rafael said, “Would you like me to take a look? Did you bruise your leg?”
Her hand fell away as if she’d been touching a hot oven. “Oh, no, I’m fine. This is foolish, really.”
He’d asked her so many times what her confession was. Now it appeared that she would have to tell him. She didn’t want to. What he thought of her was too tenuous. She was afraid.
Rafael, for his part, put down her nonsensical behavior to her nervousness about bedding with him. He thought it rather endearing.
Victoria had slowly and thoroughly chewed her last piece of bread before she said, her words a tumbled rush, “I want you to have the lights out, please.”
He paused with the slice of delicious local cheese halfway to his mouth. “It’s only six o’clock. It won’t matter if the lights are on or off. It won’t be dark, as I told you, until after seven-thirty.”
She looked ready to burst into tears. Rafael sat back in his chair and studied her. “What’s wrong? Please, Victoria, there is no reason for you to be afraid of me or what we are going to do. It’s enjoyable, you know, truly. I venture to say that practically all husbands and wives indulge in lovemaking quite regularly.” He didn’t add that once he touched her he hoped she would forget all about her nervousness in any case. Unless, his thinking continued, they were back again to her lack of virginity. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” he asked again, this time his impatience showing through.
She flinched. “Nothing.”
“All right, have it your way. Why don’t you go upstairs now and bathe. I will put our kitchen battlefield to rights.”
She nodded, not looking at him. As she walked from the kitchen, he thought he heard her curse. A man’s curse that sounded very odd coming from her. He very nearly laughed.
After she’d gone, he found himself reverting once again to old thoughts, and his jaw knotted. Perhaps he should toss her a vial of chicken blood when he went to her.
It was close to an hour later when Rafael, garbed only in a blue brocade dressing gown, his thick hair still damp from his own bath, knocked lightly on the adjoining bedchamber door, then opened it quietly.
He stopped short. The room was dark. He blinked to adjust his eyes and saw that Victoria had closed all the draperies, tying them together so there were no gaps.
“My God,” he said aloud, torn between annoyance and amusement, “will you put a sack over my head as well?”
13
I am ready to give you satisfaction . . .
—JOHN GAY
“Victoria?”
“I’m here.”
He followed the sound of her low voice and saw her finally huddled behind a wing chair in the far corner of the bedchamber. “I wondered if you wished me to cover my head. If not with a sack, perhaps a pillow cover?”
“No, please, Rafael, I want the lights out.”
“Why?”
He wished he could see her expression but her head was lowered. She was wearing a filmy sort of negligee and it fired his imagination and his body. He’d wanted her forever, it seemed to him now as he stood in the near-dark with his wife behind a chair, unwilling to talk to him.
“Why, Victoria?” he said again.
“Modesty. Yes, that’s it.”
He said in his most reasonable voice, “There should be no embarrassment or shame between a husband and wife. There’s no reason for you to fear me. I won’t hurt you. Do you believe me?”
“It’s not that, truly.”
He f
elt baffled and was becoming a bit impatient with her. He strode toward her, nearly knocking over a small chair. “This is bloody ridiculous.” He drew up on the other side of the chair. “Victoria,” he said, “talk to me. Tell me what is wrong. I am your husband, you know.”
“There is nothing wrong, Rafael. Please, can’t we just get it done?”
Some way to talk about lovemaking, he thought. “Why, Victoria?”
She was fretting with some loose threads on the back of the chair. He wasn’t going to give up, and she wondered what she should do now. He looked perfectly lovely; at least she thought he did. It wasn’t so dark that she couldn’t make out his blue brocade dressing gown. She imagined that he had nothing at all under that blue dressing gown and it excited her unbearably.
She blurted out “Oh, all right, I’m ugly.”
“Ugly?” he repeated blankly. He remembered quite clearly his reaction the first time he had seen her breasts in the cream silk ball gown, her shoulders, slender and creamy as the creation she was wearing, a temptation to any man except perhaps a blind one. And her ankles, he thought, that time he had assisted her into Lucia’s carriage, gave great promise to the shapeliness of her legs.
“Where?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Rafael. Just leave the lights off, all right?”
“It will eventually be morning, Victoria. Your draperies will undoubtedly keep out some of the light, but not all. I will see you, you know, all of you.” He saw she was truly upset and was completely bewildered. He gave it up without a further thought. “It’s all right, love. Come here, now. It will be as you wish.”
“We can really have done with it?”
“Yes, we will have this lovemaking business behind us in no time at all.”
She walked around the chair and came to a halt in front of him. She didn’t look up at his face, but at the gold frogged fastenings on his dressing gown.
“They’re fascinating, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but it’s difficult to see them clearly, for it is so very dark in here.”
“That’s certainly true enough. You’re a puzzle, Victoria. Did I ever tell you that I’m quite adept at puzzle solving?”