The Chadwick Ring (14 page)

When he slid his lean, naked body between the cool, lavender-scented sheets, he was already tumescent, and he regarded his swollen organ impatiently. Cool down, he ordered himself. You’re not sixteen anymore, and if you go off half-cocked this time, it’ll put paid to the night’s work!

He looked at Ginevra again, at the heartbreaking purity of her young face, and he sobered at once. He did not want to think of her in such terms, to defile her innocence even in his mind by describing their union with the same offhand and salacious phrases he had bandied with the doctor, language he might have used for coupling with a tavern maid. Ginevra was his wife, his marchioness. He ached to make her his in every possible way, yet he knew he wanted to do more than merely possess her. He wanted to cherish her, to ... to reverence her, as it said in the marriage service. God help him, he wanted to love her.

The Marquess of Chadwick stared upward into the shadows of the threadbare tester, and he thought with bitter irony that hell must reverberate with the laughter of whatever demon had arranged this little prank of fate: that he who had sworn as a youth never to touch another woman with anything but his body, had at the ripe age of thirty-five given his heart to a green girl who cared nothing for his wealth or title, who feared his temper and despised him for a libertine. Who might just be in love with the boy he called son.

He turned to her and gently but insistently drew her sleeping figure into his arms. She stirred, and he held his breath as he waited to see if she would waken completely. She stilled again, nuzzling her face into the coarse black hair on his chest. He could feel the warmth of her slender body radiating seductively through the flimsy ruffled fabric of her long gown, and his hands trembled as they moved slowly across her back. He bent his head and brushed his lips across her ear, her cheek, her brow, teasing her fair flesh until almost instinctively in her sleep she turned her petal-soft mouth to his. The instant their lips met he was possessed of a fierce desire to abandon his gentleness, to force open her mouth and delve its sweetness in a relentless search for the center of her being, for her unique essence that must surely at last satisfy his sickening hunger. Her gold lashes fluttered uneasily against her cheek, and he felt her mouth retreat from the pressure of his. Sweat broke out on his forehead as, with ruthless self-control, he restrained himself,

Ginevra dreamed. The dream seemed familiar, yet she knew it could never before have been so vivid, so achingly real. She stood on a promontory overlooking the ocean. She did not know what had brought her to this place; it made her wary. Far below her the rocks rose sharp and cruel, with cold grey foam licking at their bases, but here at the top of the cliff for the moment she was warm and safe. The sun beat down from a bright blue sky, and dew-rich grass sprang thick and inviting under her fingertips when she bent to touch it. A temperate breeze blew from the west, ruffling her hair, billowing her long skirts behind her. She grew languid yet curiously alive as it stroked her face, her body. She could feel her small breasts lifting, firming, under its gentle caress. When, as always in her dream, the breeze from the water stopped abruptly, she was left bereft, and she wanted to sob with disappointment.

He pushed back the coverlet. In the candlelight her white nightgown gleamed in virginal contrast to the darkly tanned contours of his lean body. His breath quickened as one by one he fumbled with the long row of pearl buttons. His hand paused at her waist, and the soft fabric fell away, revealing her high, well-shaped breasts, the rosebud nipples erect even in her sleep. He began to shake. His lips moved greedily over her skin, savoring her salty nectar. For one heart-stopping moment he felt her arch her back, as if to give his questing tongue better purchase. He tugged at the remainder of her buttons. He was drugged with her delicate perfume, and he closed his eyes to stop his dizzy spinning. He did not open them again until his seeking fingers stroked over her rounded belly to encounter the soft mound with its triangle of silky golden hair. Then all control snapped.

The ocean breeze grew stronger, breaching with hot insistence the unsubstantial protection of Ginevra’s garments. She ripped off her clothes and the wind tore them from her hands and sent them flapping away like some large ungainly bird. Ginevra presented her naked body wantonly to the caress of that fiery, urgent gale. She knew now why she stood at the rim of the precipice: she was Psyche, and the wind must surely be Zephyrus, come to bear her away to her lover. If only she would submit to its invisible embrace she could at last find the nameless bliss she had sought all her life. But even as realization came to her the gusts increased, began to scorch, and frightened by their sudden torrid ferocity, she cried out in terror. The wind swirled up around her, murmuring her name while it propelled her over the edge. She was falling, falling, her tawny tresses streaming behind her like the tail of a comet. In the back of her mind she thought with momentary clarity:
But it’s only
.
a dream.
She struggled to escape the coils of that dream, the long hair that wrapped tightly about her slender body like tentacles, like a man’s hard arms. As she plummeted into the abyss, the velocity of the passing air became a weight crushing her breath from her lungs, and something wet and darting forced her startled wail back into her mouth. She could only moan helplessly under the glaring blue skies—blue eyes—as the rocks rose up to impale her.

“Ginnie ... oh, God, Ginnie!” He shuddered with the force of his release, groaning against her bruised lips as he plunged relentlessly into her slight body and spewed his seed deep inside her. He was beyond thought, almost beyond sensation; the only reality was Ginevra’s novice flesh enclosing his—possessing the possessor. He buried his flushed face in her bright hair to muffle the rasping sobs that ripped through him with each spasm of his not-quite-spent member, and only gradually did he become aware of her unnatural rigidity. He lifted his dark head to look at her. Her eyes filled his universe, as he knew his own must fill hers, but he was stunned by the shocked vacancy of her stare. Beneath her trembling lashes he saw glassy emptiness, as if the vibrant girl he loved had suddenly retreated somewhere very far away, leaving behind only a beautiful husk.

Still holding her tightly, he eased his weight off her. He tried to catch his breath so that he could speak to her, reassure her. He knew he had hurt her, and—sweet Jesu!—he had never intended that. Despite Jules Perrin’s cautionary advice, he had wanted to do more than merely avoid pain, he had hoped to pleasure her. He had thought that if he used her fatigue as an opiate to soothe her fears, once the initial discomfort had been overcome he could draw on his considerable experience to gentle her toward fulfillment, so that she would literally awake to glorious womanhood. Instead his own throbbing desire had driven him mad, throwing off all restraint as he shattered her innocence. Forgotten was the suggested pillow to go under her hips, the careful lubrication—forgotten was everything but the urgent need at last to slake his own wild hunger. Now he was abjectly aware that in doing so he had dragged her from her chaste dreams to what must have seemed a nightmare of ruthless violation, even rape.

“Ginevra,” he murmured, his deep voice hoarse and unsteady. She turned her gaze to him, but he was not sure that those wide unblinking eyes saw him. “Ginevra,” he repeated, “listen to me. I promise it will not always be this way. I know this is strange to you now, but there will come a time—very soon, I hope—when you will find great pleasure in my arms.” Still she did not respond. His hands began to move intently over her body, stroking, caressing, as he tried desperately to give her some inkling of what he meant.

She lay impassive and immobile in his searching embrace until he sought to part her clenched thighs. She flinched. “Please,” she said hollowly. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Please, I need to ... I must ... I beg you, excuse me for a few minutes.”

Reluctantly he released her, and she sat up in the bed. For the first time she became aware of her nakedness, and even in the dim candlelight he could see bright flags of color form in her wan cheeks. She slid from beneath the coverlet and retrieved her nightgown from the floor. Quickly and silently she pulled it on, her unsteady fingers groping with the buttons. When she was dressed, she picked up the candlestick and stumbled to the screen on the opposite side of the room.

As he watched her he decided that she must have no idea her every motion was silhouetted on the yellowed chinoiserie silk screen. The guttering candlelight caused her image to waver somewhat, but he could see her outline clearly, her stilted movements. She squatted over the chamber pot, then returned the vessel to its discreet hiding place in the bottom of the washstand. She smoothed her long hair with her fingers and shook it so that it streamed unconfined down her back. She poured water into the basin and bathed her face and hands. After a long pause she took the washcloth, and bunching the skirt of her gown with her other hand, bent over to clean her private parts.

Because the shadows cast by the candle oscillated with each flicker of the small flame, Chadwick watched for some time before he realized that Ginevra’s hand had stilled, that she seemed frozen in that awkward hunched position. “Ginevra?” he called uncertainly. She did not answer. He swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and stalked across the room to her. He yanked back the screen. She did not look up. She was staring transfixed at the cloth she held, its rough cotton stained with a sticky mixture of semen and blood. With a quiver of some fierce emotion—guilt? rage? he wasn’t sure what—he pulled the cloth from her unresisting fingers and flung it savagely to the floor. Then he jerked her into his arms. Only when he felt the buttons of her nightgown press into his bare skin did he remember his own nakedness, and he glanced down to find her eyelids tightly and resolutely shut against the sight of him. He shook his head with wry impatience, and his hold on her changed, softened. He cradled her against him, running his hands over her back, rocking her tenderly and crooning in his gravelly baritone. At last she seemed to relax.

He murmured, “It will be better, little Ginnie, you will see. But whatever happens now, you belong to me. No matter where you go or what you do, nothing can ever change that. You understand me, don’t you?”

When he felt her body tense again, he swore silently at his clumsy tactlessness. He caught her chin in his fingertips and tilted her head so that her shimmering gold eyes stared upward into his, round with mute reproach. Her expression stabbed at his heart. His grip tightened brutally. “Don’t look at me like that!” he grated. “Say something. Do something.
Cry!
But for God’s sake, don’t look at me like that.”

She blinked, and moisture beaded on her lashes. “I won’t, m-my lord,” she stammered, biting her lip. Then with a sob she buried her face in the comforting, scratchy warmth of the hair on his chest, and at last the tears came.

7

London alarmed Ginevra. After her near-cloistered life in the country, she was frightened by the vast size of the city, the hordes of people, the noise. The filth appalled her, as well as the sea-coal smoke that hung thick in the streets, and the stench that rose from the polluted waters of the Thames. When she remembered Wordsworth’s paean to the glories of the city—“All bright and glittering in the smokeless air”—she decided that the poet must have been in his altitudes the morning he stumbled across Westminster Bridge.

But here in Mayfair, in Chadwick’s elegant town house of warm red Georgian brick, she would have been indeed hard to satisfy if she did not admit that life was very pleasant. From the moment the marquess had introduced his bride to the household, she had been cosseted and pampered, treated with an indulgent deference so utterly divorced from her former life that she hardly knew how to react. She had always been respected by her servants, but their regard had derived in part from their knowledge that she worked as hard as any of them. Now she discovered she could lie abed until noon, turn her hand at nothing more strenuous than a bit of fancy needlework or the choosing of a wine for their evening meal, and she found all this leisure gratifying, if a little boring.

Ginevra picked up the silver hairbrush from her dressing table and began to brush her hair with long, practiced strokes. On the wall within easy reach hung a bell rope: one tug was all it would take to summon Emma or any of the maids to tend her hair for her, as if she were incapable of performing even that not-very-onerous task for herself. She was wryly aware that she lacked the courage to question the staffs behavior toward her, for they patterned their attitude after that of the marquess, and since that first traumatic night at Dowerwood he had treated her with extreme consideration, a rare gentleness and concern that made her feel almost as if she were convalescent following a long illness. When, the day after her husband’s return, Ginevra had tried to resume the tasks she had given herself, he told her that she needed to rest; with dispatch he summoned a sizable party from Queenshaven, who set about putting the old house to rights, under the supervision of Chadwick himself. He turned Bysshe’s care over to the doctor and forbade Ginevra entry into the sickroom, saying that the boy’s slow recovery would only distress her. Dr. Perrin did request that Emma assist him, and Ginevra was able to monitor Bysshe’s progress through her friend. Several days later the marquess allowed Ginevra a brief courtesy call on the patient, but for some reason the visit had proved stiff and unrewarding; Bysshe seemed unwilling even to look at her.

As her honeymoon passed quietly, with a serenity almost unreal after the stress of the first days, Ginevra slowly realized that her husband had deliberately relieved her of all responsibility so that she need worry about nothing but coming to terms with her marriage. He was trying to alleviate the fear he saw in her-wide gold eyes each time he approached her. After the way he had ridden roughshod over her emotions in the past, his consideration frankly bewildered her, but she knew she was learning to accept if not enjoy her situation. At times only the benign and knowing glances of the servants reminded her that this holiday was different from those she had spent at Dowerwood as a child. She rested, ate Mrs. Harrison’s savory gingerbread, and strolled about the grounds with little Jamie, who had been crowded out of the kitchen now that his grandmother had maids to order about once more. Sometimes, at Emma’s suggestion, Ginevra spent the afternoon teaching the little boy his letters; other days they watched as the workmen began to restore the house to some semblance of order. She laughed along with the child when someone cut loose the thick runners of ivy that clogged the rain gutters, and the whole viny mass fell to earth in an avalanche of green leaves. When she saw her husband throw off his coat and scale a ladder, hard muscles rippling across his back as he helped a carpenter reattach a heavy piece of iron fretwork that had come loose from the eave, she grew silent, blushing as she recalled the strangely pleasant feel of those muscles under her sensitive fingertips when she clung to him in the night.

The evenings at Dowerwood had been spent in the parlor, where, Ginevra remembered vividly, Tom had proposed marriage to her. Looking at the marquess as he conversed quietly with the doctor, she wondered sometimes if he ever thought of that fateful day so long before. If he did, he gave no sign. Whenever his blue eyes surveyed the room, clean now but in dire need of redecoration, they seemed to note nothing but the disintegration of the furnishings. The cherrywood chairs were reasonably sound, but the upholstery was moth-eaten. Moisture had collected behind the glass of the framed engravings, leaving them streaked and mottled. Assuming he would want to discard the lot, Ginevra was surprised when, after she hesitantly mentioned the rusty duelling swords crossed over the mantelpiece, Chadwick said with a smile, “I thought I might have the pair polished and honed, and then we could send them to your father as a gift, if you like. I believe he told me once that the rapiers were a memento of his salad days.” As Ginevra looked up at him from across the card table—they had been playing whist, with Emma as a fourth—she was suddenly captivated by her husband’s grin. Something deep inside her stirred in a most peculiar fashion, and she was hardly aware of the doctor’s wise chuckle when she rose and made her excuses shortly thereafter.

Ginevra glanced at her reflection in the swivel mirror on her dressing table: her image was framed like a Tudor headdress by the canopy of the pleated and draped four-poster behind her, and her cheeks colored as she thought of the nights she had spent there in her husband’s arms. She knew his body as well as her own now, his lean, hard muscles, the deep scar on his hip from his old war wound. She had not slept alone since he returned to Dowerwood for her, and even now that they had come at last to London, each morning she had wakened to find herself snuggled against him in the granite cradle of his embrace. Sometimes he simply held her; more often he touched her with a disarming tenderness that made it increasingly difficult for her to recall the driving passion he had shown her that first night. His caresses were always butterfly soft, controlled even when he was moaning his own pleasure into her bright hair; he treated her as though she were a piece of rare porcelain, and it was hard for her to believe that this was the same man whose body had breached hers so ruthlessly while in the throes of some urgent need she still could not begin to comprehend.

She found herself longing for his touch. Her childhood had been singularly devoid of affection, and she responded hungrily to the cuddling, the gentle stroking—but his passion confused her.

She wished she understood him, she wished she knew what it was he was seeking from her. Despite his kindness, their union seemed at best tenuous, held together only by the desire he felt for her, and she feared that soon even that frail bond would break. Already she was aware of a gulf between them. She had thought at first that he had taken her merely to brand her as his wife, his possession, but now whenever she lay passive under his touch she was aware that he watched her intently for something else, some reaction other than acquiescence—and when he did not find that unknown response, he would fling himself away from her while he still shuddered with his own satisfaction, his muffled groan tinged with disappointment. Ginevra would watch him helplessly. She longed to beg him to explain what he wanted, but she remained silent, unable to frame the words.

She was failing him, as she had always known she must. He had had his pick of seductive, experienced women since before she was born, and there was no way she could hope to match their skill. Soon the novelty of their relationship would fade, and the marquess would abandon her entirely while he returned to those other women, perhaps even to that Madame de Villeneuve. She was sick with dread that soon his tenderness would change to impatience, then disdain, then indifference, and he would resume his old ways, leaving Ginevra, lonelier than ever, to cope with only the shell of a society marriage, a hollow life that would have to be. carried out among strangers, in a city she disliked intensely.

One of her long curls snarled in the stiff bristles of the brush, and Ginevra yanked at it until the pain brought tears to her eyes. Since their arrival in London the signs of their impending breakup had become more distinct. That very morning she had awakened in his arms as usual, and she had nestled closer without opening her eyes, luxuriating in the feel of his hair-roughened skin rubbing intimately against hers. When she slowly lifted her lashes, she had found him staring closely at her with a dark intensity that made her nervous. She murmured, “Good morning, my lord,” and his blue gaze had narrowed into a scowl as he snapped, “For God’s sake, Ginevra, don’t call me ‘my lord’! My name is Richard, and I want you to use it. When you call me by my title, you sound like a servant. I almost expect you to leave my bed and creep furtively back to your quarters in the attic.” Ginevra, still half-asleep and stunned by the suddenness of his attack, could only gape at him, her face pale with shock. He took a deep, rasping breath and continued irritably, “And contrary to what you are probably thinking, I do not make a habit of seducing the housemaids. It has always seemed to me less than a noble act to take advantage of one’s dependents in that fashion. Every woman I have ever been with has had the right to say no.”

Sickened by the images of all those other pliant female bodies that had curled invitingly around his, Ginevra retorted before she could stop herself, “Every woman but me!”

His glare became glacial, and his hard mouth turned up in a smile that had no hint of humor in it. Suddenly apprehensive, Ginevra tried to move away from him, but his arms were a vise trapping her, and his long fingers caught in her burnished hair and pulled it so taut that her eyelids stretched. “As you say, madam wife,” he mocked mildly, too mildly, “every woman but you.” Slowly his face had lowered to hers, and with grinding, irresistible force his lips ravaged hers until she could taste her own blood, salty and metallic. She whimpered with pain. When he lifted his dark head to stare at her, she could see red flecks on his mouth. With a muttered curse he flung her away from him. He slid from beneath the blankets and stalked naked across the room to the communicating door of his own chamber, slamming it behind him so hard that the canopy on Ginevra’s bed swayed.

She set down her hairbrush and regarded her reflection in the mirror. Her lower lip was still slightly swollen, giving her face a sensual cast she had never seen there before. She looked older. She looked ... kissed. She reached for one of the tiny cut-glass pots that adorned the dressing table, and she delicately rubbed a salve of refined and perfumed oil into her aching lip. After she closed the lid she returned the vial neatly to its place on the table, her fingers tracing the graceful G engraved on the silver cap. The marquess had given her the luxurious dresser set the night before they left Surrey for London, handing the fitted case to Ginevra with the dry, offhand comment, “By the way, don’t forget to tell Emma to pack this.” When Ginevra squealed her delight, he had shrugged as if the gift were only a casual one, of little import, yet she knew he must have ordered it for her weeks before, perhaps even prior to the wedding. Ginevra shook her head in bewilderment. How did one reconcile such a thoughtful and tender gesture with the anger that had driven him to hurt her deliberately that morning?

With a sigh she tugged on the bell rope to summon Emma to help her dress. Today the marquess was going to present her to his mother at last, and she wanted to look especially well. She had no time to waste questioning why her husband was moody and unpredictable. Such fluctuations of temper seemed part of the male condition. Certainly Sir Charles had been equally capricious, and young Bysshe showed the signs as well. Ginevra’s eyes narrowed. There was nothing she could do about her husband or father except learn to cope—but it was high time she confronted the boy.

Bysshe’s grumbled “Come in” was barely audible. Ginevra opened the door to his sitting room and found him by the window, hands shoved deep in his pockets as he stared sullenly down at the street. He was fully dressed, except for his coat, and his clothes bore the unmistakable stamp of his father’s tailor. Ginevra was struck again by how tall he had grown. His lanky body retained its adolescent thinness, but he was very nearly a man; only his face, still youthfully round, reminded her of her childhood playmate. She noticed that he had shaved his few whiskers, and someone, perhaps the invaluable Hobbs, had carefully trimmed his straight sandy hair. The one remaining sign of his recent illness was the sickly pallor lingering around the ear that had been bandaged.

Ginevra said lightly, “Good morning, Bysshe—or perhaps I should say good afternoon. I’m not yet accustomed to city hours, I fear. I thought I’d see how you are faring. I’m delighted you’re looking so well.”

The boy turned away from the window, and his brown eyes surveyed her comprehensively. When his glance reached her mouth, his expression hardened. He nodded coldly. Ginevra bristled and said, “I think it’s time you and I had a talk.”

With a sweeping gesture he motioned her to a seat. “As you wish, my lady.”

She sank into the chair, more hurt by his rudeness than she cared to admit. “That’s exactly the sort of thing we need to discuss,” she noted, making a pretense of adjusting her skirt. “I want you to explain why you are being so ... so stiff with me. At first I thought it was your illness, but you’ve recovered now, and still you treat me like a leper. You wouldn’t even ride in the carriage with your father and me when we journeyed from the country.”

Bysshe shrugged. “The doctor wanted me to stay with him, in case I became overtired.”

Ginevra looked steadily at him. “I don’t think that’s it at all. The pair of you could have ridden very comfortably with us, yet you chose not to. You have been deliberately avoiding me, and I don’t understand why. What have I done?”

He scowled down at her, his young face troubled. “You truly don’t understand, do you? You have no idea at all what it does to me to think of you as my ... my stepmother.”

Ginevra shook her head impatiently. “Don’t be silly, Bysshe. No one is asking you to think of me as your stepmother. I’m Ginnie, your old friend, just as I’ve always been.”