The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (53 page)

“Yes.” She wanted suddenly to reach out with one hand to cup his cheek. But it was not the sort of thing one did with the Duke of Bridgwater. Even if he was her husband.

“Come, then.” He reached out a hand for hers, his eyes probing hers at the same time. “Come to bed, Stephanie.”

“Yes,” she said. She moved too fast toward it and deliberately slowed her pace. She was perhaps a little nervous, after all. Since it was his mother who had instructed her, she had not liked to ask questions. Perhaps she would not have anyway. Should she raise her nightgown herself or wait for him to do it? Should she touch him with her hands or rest them on the bed? Should she say anything afterward or keep quiet? It was embarrassing at her age to know so little.

She decided on total passivity. At least she could do no real wrong that way. Perhaps he would tell her what he wanted. She learned fast; she had proved that to him in
the past month. Soon enough she would learn what was expected of her in their marriage bed. At least she knew what he did
not
want. She had not forgotten the lesson learned in Elizabeth’s conservatory.

He blew out the candles after she had lain down. She was glad of that. She was a little embarrassed as well as nervous. Her body had been so very much her own private property all her life. Even the presence of a maid during the last month had embarrassed her. But a maid was at least her own gender.

He lay down beside her, leaned over her, and kissed her. In the way he had kissed her twice before—she did not even want to remember that last kiss against the oak in Richmond Park. She should have been prepared for the same results. Her breasts tightened almost instantly, and she felt a rush of raw aching pain to her womb. She had disgusted him at Elizabeth’s ball by giving in to her passion. She reminded herself of the fact, deliberately verbalizing it more than once in her mind. Not again. It would not happen again. She pressed her palms against the mattress and fought her body’s needs.

Should she part her lips? His tongue pressed through, and the decision was taken out of her hands. Should she open her mouth?
Tell me what to do
, she pleaded silently. She opened her mouth.

She had never had a nightgown that buttoned down the front. Both her mother-in-law and her modiste had guided her to ones that did for her wedding clothes. In her naivete she had not realized why until her husband began to undo the buttons while he kissed her. The front opening was a long one.

His hand came inside against her bare flesh. He brushed his palm and his fingers over her very lightly. He touched her breasts. They already felt swollen and sore. She bit her bottom lip hard when his thumb touched and pressed lightly upon her hardened nipple.
The ache that had been in her womb and between her thighs had become an insistent throbbing.

And then his hand was there too, and his fingers were probing—very gently. She could not have borne the pain of a firm touch. She shut her eyes very tightly and pressed her fingertips hard into the mattress. She wanted to squirm and cry out. She wanted to throw her arms about him and beg him to stop or to—But she did not know what. She held her breath. And through it all she felt embarrassment and humiliation. She could both feel and hear wetness.

“Let your breath out,” he said quietly against her ear. “Relax. You will soon grow accustomed to it.”

She felt so ashamed. That she had had to be told! Her breath shuddered out of her quite audibly. But he had moved over her and was lowering himself onto her body. It was almost a relief to feel his knees between her own. She did not resist as he pushed her legs wide. Her nightgown, she realized, was already up about her waist. She need not have worried about that either. There had been no awkward moment.

Despite herself, she drew in her breath and held it again. His hands were beneath her. She could feel him position himself.

And then he came into her. She had prepared herself for pain. But pain did not come immediately. She had not expected the incredible stretching sensation, the sense of being invaded, of having her body taken over by someone else. Then came the pain, the momentary panic. And the hard deep occupation of her secret depths.

She let out her breath slowly. This was it, then. What she had yearned for for so long. The completion of her femininity. The uniting with man. The hope of being fruitful. The pain had gone and the panic and the strange, unexpected outrage at being violated. Wonder
replaced them all. Wonder that such a thing could be. Wonder that she held him so much deeper inside than she had expected. Wonder that there was no sense of embarrassment or humiliation. She relaxed completely.

It felt wonderful.

She knew what was to come. Or had thought she knew. She lay still, allowing it to happen, holding herself open to his pleasure, taking to herself as much secret pleasure as she dared without losing herself in passion as she had in Elizabeth’s conservatory. She wanted to tighten inside muscles as she had during that embrace. She wanted to tighten about him and feel her pleasure. She lay relaxed and still as he pumped firmly and repeatedly into her. She could feel the heat of him—all over her, inside her. She could hear his labored breathing against her hair. She could smell his cologne and his heat and his sweat.

She wanted to lift her legs and press her inner thighs hard against his lean hips. She wanted to tilt herself so that she could bring him deeper. She wanted to wrap her arms about the firm muscles of his chest and waist. She lay still, spread-eagled beneath him, giving herself in marriage.

When his pace quickened and deepened and then he sighed and relaxed and she felt the heat of his seed inside her, she swallowed and fought tears. She lay very still. She had been told that she might find it unpleasant. She had been told that she might in time find it pleasant. She had not been told that it would be the most wonderful feeling in this world. And she had not been told that she would want to cry when it was over because she would want it to go on and on until … Oh, she did not know until when.

She felt cold when he moved away to lie beside her. She felt his hand lower her nightgown and raise the bedcovers.
She felt his hand take her own; his was very warm and damp. He was still breathing rather heavily.

“Did I hurt you very badly, my dear?” he asked her.

“No.” Her voice sounded high-pitched. She brought it back to normal. “Hardly at all, Alistair. I hope I pleased you.” She was pleased with the calm, matter-of-fact tone she had achieved.

He did not answer for a few moments. “You pleased me,” he said at last. “I thank you. You will find it less painful tomorrow and perhaps a little less … overwhelming.”

“I was not overwhelmed,” she said quickly, turning her head toward him. But she could not see him clearly in the darkness. “I tried. I … I liked it.” Perhaps she ought not to have said that. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say. “I hope I can bear you an heir within the year, Alistair.”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his back to her. His back seemed hunched. She guessed that his elbows were resting on his knees. She could see his fingers pushing through his hair. And then he was on his feet and bending over her. She felt the backs of his fingers light beneath her jaw.

“I will leave you to your sleep,” he said. “You have had a busy day, and tomorrow we will be traveling all day. Thank you for today, Stephanie—for marrying me, for entertaining our guests, for … this. I shall try to be a good husband. Good night.”

“Alistair—” she said as he moved away. But when he stopped and turned back to her, she could not think what to say.
Please come back to bed? Please let me admit to you how wonderful it was for me? Please let me love you?
“I will try too. All my life I will try.”

“Good night, my dear,” he said.

“Good night, Alistair.”
Good night, my love
.

She could feel the soreness and the discomfort that the
consummation of their marriage had left behind. She felt cold with his body heat removed. She could smell him on her pillow and on herself.

At first the sound of a noisy sob startled her. Then she turned her face into the pillow and indulged in a good self-pitying weep.

There was no one to see her loss of dignity and control, after all. She was tired to death of dignity and control.

She wondered how an act of such unbelievable intimacy could leave her just a few minutes later feeling lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.

HEY WERE TRAVELING IN THE SAME CARRIAGE AS
they had during that other journey. He tried to feel the sameness. He tried to feel relaxed, amused, totally in control of the situation as he had felt then.

Of course, she had sat on the seat opposite him during those three days. He had been able to watch her the whole time—the accomplished actress, fully aware of the lure of her beauty and charm. Spinning him a tale that was so unbelievable and yet so full of predictable clichés that he had enjoyed vastly the exercise of anticipating what she was about to say—and being right almost every time.

He had fallen in love with her as far back as then, he thought now in some surprise. Though there was nothing profound about falling in love, of course. Loving was a different matter altogether. He wondered which applied to him now. Was he merely in love with her? Or did he love her?

He half turned his head to look at her. She was dressed all in light spring green, even down to her slippers and gloves, which were lying on the seat opposite. She looked quiet and composed. She had been a bride just yesterday, he thought. She had lost her virginity last night. There was no sign in her bearing that such momentous events in her life had happened so recently. She
smiled calmly back at him. She met his eyes, but did not blush.

He had hoped for blushes this morning, for lowered eyes, for some sign that she remembered their intimacy of the night before. But she had arrived at breakfast only moments after him. And she had sat and conversed easily with him and had eaten a breakfast of respectable size. There had not been even a tremor in her hands.

Of course she had behaved much the same way in bed. There had been none of the passion he had hoped he might rekindle, though her body had responded at least sufficiently to minimize the pain of his entry. There had been only the slight nervousness, which had caused her to tense just before she had been mounted for the first time—and the dignified, unresisting acquiescence in the performance of the marriage act.

He, of course, had been fiercely aroused by her tall, shapely slimness. By the almost athletic firmness of her body—a strange word to think of in connection with a woman.

“Tell me about your friends,” he said. “The Reaveses, that is.” Perhaps somehow he could recapture the charm of that other journey. He almost wished, absurdly, that she were wearing the flamboyant plumed bonnet again—and sitting opposite him.

“There are seven of them,” she said. “Six girls and Tom. I am closest in age to Miriam and so was most friendly with her. And with Tom.”

She had sat with Thomas Reaves and his wife for almost fifteen minutes yesterday, talking animatedly with them before moving away to mingle with their other guests.

“I was encouraged to be friendly with them,” she said. “Mrs. Reaves said it was because only I could keep peace among the girls. Mama said it was because I was better born than they and Mrs. Reaves had social ambitions.
But I think not. They were far wealthier than we were. None of that mattered to us when we were children, anyway. We played and played. We used to climb trees and swim in the stream and dive in the lake—all forbidden activities. I was … Mama once called me a hoyden. I am afraid she was right.”

“Anyone who plays cricket as well as you must have been a hoyden,” he said. Absurdly, he wished he had known her then. In the month of their acquaintance he had had only a few tantalizing glimpses of the daring, exuberant girl she must have been.

“When I grew older,” she said, spreading her hands in her lap and looking down at them—her wedding ring looked startlingly new and bright—“Papa suggested that I redirect my energies. And so I worked with Mama for as long as she lived and then alone in performing parish duties. But I did not mind. I loved the life.”

She had talked about all this during that other journey, but he had listened in a different way then. He had thought then that she was spinning an amusing yarn.

“And the friendships faded?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “They matured. The hardest thing to accustom myself to when I took employment with the Burnabys was the loss of those friendships. I was not allowed to receive personal letters at the Burnabys more than two or three times a year. I missed them, my friends. I missed Miriam.”

“And Tom?” he said. “Was there never a romantic attachment between the two of you?” Surely, there must have been. They must be close in age. They were both handsome people. He wished then he had not asked the question.

“Not really,” she said. “We had been friends all our lives. It would have been difficult to see each other differently. Of course it was hard saying good-bye and knowing that we would probably never meet again. And
he felt bad about my having to become a governess—they all felt bad.”