Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady (11 page)

‘Your father?’

‘Yes. I really cannot delay it any longer.’

‘I have already written, setting out the provision I am making for you,’ he said. ‘Even though you are of age, I felt I should put his mind at rest. You could enclose your letter in mine.’

‘You have not told him—’

‘That he is to be a grandfather? No. I have also been rather vague on how we met. If he makes enquiries he will find that Viscount Hadleigh was staying in the neighbourhood in February and he can draw his own conclusions.’

‘Thank you.’ Arabella returned to taking small forkfuls of food. ‘I will write this afternoon.’

‘You are feeling more like eating today?’ The bacon was delicious. Elliott cleared his plate and got up to explore the other dishes. Fat sausages, mushrooms—he dug in.

‘A little. I know I must make the effort to eat properly.’

‘Would you like me to show you around the house?’ It had not been his intention, but he had a sudden interest
in how Arabella would deal with this rambling mansion. It must seem daunting after a country vicarage.

‘You will be busy,’ she demurred. But he saw her eyes. It would please her if he did this. ‘Cook said that you did not normally eat much breakfast because you have so much to do and I have already delayed you.’

‘You are more important.’ Elliott found he meant it.

‘Where are we going?’ The stairs seemed endless. Elliott had ignored the ground-floor reception rooms, the main bedroom floor, and just kept climbing as the shallow treads of the old staircase got narrower and narrower.

Bella glanced to either side as they passed landings and glimpsed more steps, doors, changes in floor level. The house rambled, she realized; it would take time to learn it.

‘Do you want to rest?’ Elliott paused at last. There were no more steps, only a dusty landing with corridors to either side. Toby, who had been trotting behind them all the way up, took off down one, nose to the floor, stumpy tail wagging.

‘No, the exercise is good.’ It was invigorating to stretch her legs again. She worried fleetingly if it was all right for the baby, then decided it must be better than sitting around.

‘Just one more flight, then.’ Elliott opened a door to reveal steep stairs. ‘I’ll go first.’

Bella followed, telling herself that it was only natural to admire the long legs climbing in front of her. Elliott had muscles she did not recall Rafe possessing, but then, she had spent most of her time with him looking into his eyes, not staring immodestly at his nether limbs.

‘Do you mind heights?’ Elliott called back as he reached up and threw back a trap door. Light flooded down the stairs.

‘No, not at all. I always enjoyed raising the flag on the church tower.’

He climbed out and stretched down his hands to help her out through the low door into the sunshine. Bella found herself, still handfast with Elliott, on the flat leads between the slope of the stone-tiled roof and the edge of the waist-high parapet.

‘How lovely!’ The view stretched for miles across the Vale of Evesham, off into the distance to the misty bulk of hills that must almost be in the Welsh Marches.

Elliott moved to be between her and the edge. ‘Keep hold of me.’

It seemed very right to do so, somehow. He was strong and solid and steady, Bella thought, freeing one hand, but leaving the other one in his warm grip. He would make a reliable father, she was certain.

As she looked out over what had been Rafe’s land until so recently she realised that she could never tell the child who its real father had been. To do that would be to betray Elliott, and Rafe certainly did not deserve any posthumous devotion from the child he had so carelessly created. But should a child not know its own parentage?

‘What is wrong?’ How alert Elliott was to her mood, to her physical reactions.

‘I feel a little melancholy. I am sorry, that is the last thing I should be saying the day after we were married.’

‘It is hardly surprising. Did you expect to feel better once you had a husband?’ When she stared at him,
startled, Elliott was looking out over the view. The thumb of the hand that held hers brushed gently against her wrist. He must have felt her pulse jump at his frankness.

‘I wish…I should wish I had not lain with Rafe, but I do not regret the child,’ she said. ‘But I am ashamed at what I did, what I felt. I should have known better, I should not have allowed passion and my desire for escape to overcome everything I had been brought up to believe was right.’
But surely needing to love cannot be wrong?
It was all so muddling. ‘I am ashamed at putting you in this position. I thought it would be better when I did not have to agonise about providing for the baby, but there is so much else to worry about that I know I am not behaving as I ought. I will do my best to be a good viscountess, Elliott.’
And a good wife. Somehow.

‘So you feel a sense of duty?’ The thumb stilled its soft caress.

‘To you? Of course. And gratitude. And liking,’ she added, looking up, shy at what she would see on Elliott’s face.

‘That is something, then.’ He turned so his back was against the parapet and she was standing in front of him, toe to toe, his body shielding her from the breeze.

‘Last night…’ she managed, her eyes fixed on the simple knot of his neckcloth.

‘Yes?’

‘You…I did not satisfy you.’
Lord, but this was difficult.

‘I did not say that.’ But he did not smile. ‘Rather, you were the one who was unsatisfied, I think.’

‘That is my fault,’ she confessed. He shook his head,
opened his mouth, but she stumbled on. ‘I will try my best, truly I will. Tonight will be different.’

‘Tonight will be no different unless you can convince us both that you
want
me to make love to you.’

Bella jerked up her head and stared at him. ‘Convince you? But how do I do that? I submit—is that not what you want?’

‘No, it is not.’

Her heart sank. She even had that wrong. Now he would tell her just how unsatisfactory she was. Kindly, no doubt, for this was Elliott, not his brother. ‘When you want to make love, then you will know how,’ Elliott said.

H
e is smiling, but he is not amused
, Bella thought, looking into the blue eyes that held no trace of laughter in them.
Is he angry?
But he did not
feel
angry, not with her. ‘I like it when you kiss me,’ she admitted, offering the thought as if to mitigate her failings.
How can I ask him to show me what to do? A
proper
woman knows it instinctively.

‘So I should hope.’ Now his eyes were smiling and she smiled back. This was a different Elliott, the one she had seen glimpses of before. This one was light-hearted and flirtatious and ready to laugh at himself. ‘Without wishing to brag, I am considered an accomplished kisser.’

‘Do you practise much?’ she asked, greatly daring.

‘I have been known to,’ Elliott admitted. ‘But now I must perfect my technique with only you to help me.’

That was encouraging. Did he mean he would not go back to his mistress? She thought about his words and saw the amusement in his eyes at her all-too-obvious thought processes. But the laughter was not unkind.

‘But I do not have any technique at all,’ she said at last. This all sounded very complicated. Arabella had assumed that a kiss was a simple placing of lips together. Rafe had felt almost…brutal. He had apologised so charmingly, she remembered, when she had pulled back, shaking, her fingertips pressed to her bruised lips. It was the uncontrollable passion she aroused in him, he had explained, leaving her feeling guiltily that it had been her own fault.

And now it was her duty to learn to kiss her new husband properly. Only, it did not feel much like a duty, more like a pleasure. This was so confusing and the fact that she was standing between Elliott’s braced legs—how had she moved that close?—made it oddly difficult to think through the tangle of shame and need and fear.

‘I can assure you, Arabella, that when you stand there, so close, with the tip of your tongue just touching your upper lip like that,’ he said, his voice husky, ‘you need no technique whatsoever.’

My tongue?
She whipped it back in and closed her mouth, but too late. Elliott leaned forwards and kissed her. Arabella let herself go, gave herself up to the sensation, stopped thinking. Things seemed to happen quite without any conscious thought. Her lips knew how to part, her tongue knew how to touch his, to explore the heat of his mouth, slide over teeth, caress the delicate inner flesh.
Oh, I can do this!
Her hands knew how to move up his chest until she could feel his heart beat under her palm…

Elliott shifted, pulling her in closer between his thighs. Bella felt the heat of him pressing against her belly and her breath hitched. That was what it was all about, not this drugging, sensual kissing. It was all about
that.

Kissing she could learn, it seemed. But
that
was different. How did she learn to do something that hurt so much? She flinched like a child expecting a cuff around the head.

‘What is it?’ He freed her mouth and his hands slid down to cup her buttocks as he leaned back a little to see her face. The movement brought her tight against his erection and unexpected sensation, a hot, molten, desperate urge to rub herself against him, flared through her. Desire hit like a big wave on the beach, knocking her off balance with the shocking force of the need. She struggled against it, knowing she would be clumsy and inept, and jerked back just as Toby erupted on to the roof, sending the pigeons into the air in a panic of flapping wings.

‘Bad dog!’ Bella turned, twisting out of Elliott’s arms. ‘The silly creature—as though he could catch one. My goodness, he did make me jump. Toby, come back here!’

‘Was that what was wrong?’ Elliott asked, straightening up.

‘Of course. I think I would like to go down now.’ Quite deliberately Bella let her hand rest on her stomach for a moment and saw Elliott’s eyes follow the gesture. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her other than the shameful effects of Elliott’s kiss and her own fears and she felt a pang of guilt. She was deceiving him for the first time. Lying, in effect, to extract herself from a situation she had no idea how to handle.

The guilt tightened its grip as she saw the concern on his face. ‘I should not have dragged you up all those stairs.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘I am much better today.’

‘Then let us go down,’ Elliott said, getting through the door first to help her. ‘And you must go and rest.’

But that was not what she wanted. She wanted to continue exploring the house with Elliott, not resting with nothing to think about but that kiss and her body’s reaction to it. Bella negotiated the steep steps with care, wrestling with her feelings.

She had lain with Rafe because she thought she loved him and—she could see now—he had blackmailed her into it, not because she had felt uncontrollable carnal desire. Now here she was with his brother, whom she hardly knew, and every time he touched her, her whole body ached for his caresses. That was wrong, surely? What was happening to her? She had no idea, except that the fear was still there, the knowledge that she could not willingly do more than surrender her body to Elliott.

But if she let him keep kissing her—would that help? Only it was not fair to him to arouse him and then be such a disappointment in bed; she understood enough now about the male body and its needs to know that.

Elliott was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hand held out to her. ‘I am fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ It was easier when they did not touch.

‘If we go this way…’ he gestured down the right hand passage ‘…we come to the stairs that lead directly to your suite. You can rest; I will have tea sent up.’

‘I do not want to rest.’ Bella made her way down the uncarpeted passage in front of him.

‘But you will, won’t you?’ His tone did not encourage discussion.

Bella firmed her lips. It was almost more comfortable
to bicker than to kiss. Only, she was the one doing the bickering, Elliott was simply laying down the law. An alarming hint of rebellion stirred inside her. After years of obeying one man’s every order, she found herself prepared to argue with this one, which was disconcerting. A woman was supposed to obey first her father, then her husband, in all things. But one did not choose one’s father, whilst a marriage was a partnership, was it not?

A door stood slightly ajar, a distraction from her troubling thoughts. ‘What is in here?’ Without waiting for Elliott’s reply she pushed it open and went in. The room was large and would be airy and light if the windows were cleaned and opened wide, Bella thought as she turned slowly to look at it. There were two little beds on either side, a wooden horse, a drum, a shelf with a line of red-coated soldiers marching to do battle with dust and spiders, and something shrouded in a dust cloth.

‘A nursery! But so far away from the main floors.’

‘It was ours until we reached six,’ Elliott said from the doorway as she went to peek into the room leading off. It was obviously the nurse’s room, with adult-sized furniture. ‘There’s a scullery on the other side where the nursery maid would make our meals and do the washing. It is quite self-contained.’

‘But—did your mother not want you with her?’ ‘We would be taken down for an hour before bath time to see Mama in her room.’

‘Oh.’
How cold.
‘And you and Rafe both lived up here?’

‘He went down to a suite on the floor below when he was six, so I was by myself after that. He had his own
room and there was a chamber for his tutor, and a school-room. When I joined him I had my room there as well.’

‘Poor little boy,’ she exclaimed. ‘How lonely you must have been up here.’

Elliott still had not moved from the doorway. He shrugged. ‘It is what I was used to. It is normal in big houses.’

‘Well, it is not going to be normal here any longer,’ Bella said. Tradition was all very well, but this isolated room made her uneasy—it was as if children were banished for the crime of being young. ‘I must have the baby close. What is this?’ She flicked back the dustsheet. ‘Oh, a cradle—how lovely. Is it very old?’ Under her hand the dark oak was tactile, almost a living thing. Her touch sent it rocking gently. She peeped under the high gabled hood and smiled, imagining her baby lying safe inside smiling up at her.

‘That is the heir’s cradle,’ Elliott said. ‘It is Tudor, I think. You’ll see it in several of the portraits in the Long Gallery. See the coat of arms on the back of the hood?’

Bella shifted round to see. The carving was strong and bold and she could read it easily. A falcon held an arrow in its grip, its head turned arrogantly to face the watcher.
‘I hold what is mine,’
she read. ‘I will have it taken downstairs and polished.’

‘If the child is a boy, that will be his. If it is a girl, she will have another cradle.’ It seemed Elliott held fast to tradition.

‘Of course.’ A cradle was not worth fighting over, but the location of the nursery was. ‘I will have a look at the rooms close to mine and decide on a nursery.’

‘This is suitable. It will be cleaned and repainted and you can choose new furnishings,’ Elliott said.

‘No, you do not understand.’ Bella straightened up and faced him. ‘It is too far away.’

‘We will employ a competent nurse. You will need your rest, not a crying child.’ His face showed no sign of any sympathy.

‘Elliott,’ Bella said, keeping her voice even with an effort, ‘either the nursery is downstairs or I will move up here.’

‘An ultimatum?’ One eyebrow rose. Bella fought the urge to edge away. It was not that she was frightened of him, but there was something else going on here, something more than a disagreement over the position of a nursery and she did not understand it. What she did understand was that she was feeling extremely emotional all of a sudden. It was not grief, it seemed to come from nowhere, filling her with an overwhelming desire to weep.

‘If you like,’ she said. ‘I am sorry, Elliott, but I feel very strongly about this and I am afraid that if we have to stand here arguing about this any longer I am going to cry. I don’t know why. I just feel very…very…’ She gulped.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ he said, striding into the room and scooping her up in his arms. Toby, who had followed them into the room, let out a volley of barks.

‘Put me down!’

‘No.’ He smiled at her ruefully. ‘I expect it is your condition making you feel weepy. I tell you, Arabella, pointer bitches in pup are a lot less trouble than women.’

‘Really, Elliott!’ She tried to struggle, then gave it up
as futile as he walked along the corridor and down the winding flight of stairs at the end, the terrier skirmishing around his feet and making him swear under his breath. It was rather pleasant to be held in his arms as though she weighed next to nothing and the shift of muscles as he moved was intriguing. There was something about being carried that made her feel extremely feminine and her head rested against his shoulder in a most satisfactory way.

It was weakening to the will and the constitution of course, being carried about like a child. She must assert herself. ‘About the nursery,’ she began as Elliott reached her bedchamber door.

‘Yes?’ He set her on her feet and regarded her with what looked like resignation.

‘It will be down here.’ They watched each other in silence. He looked unyielding, but he did not actually refuse. ‘Please.’

‘I wondered how long it would take,’ he said enigmatically. ‘Very well—but out of my earshot, mind.’

‘Yes, Elliott.’ Bella felt smug, then saw the shadows in his eyes as he turned away. No, this wasn’t a game, this learning the boundaries of a marriage.

‘And rest,’ he tossed back over his shoulder. ‘Can you do as you are told in that respect at least?’

‘I am going in now,’ Bella said. She opened the door and stepped into the room. Toby shot in before she could prevent him.

‘Good.’

She shut the door and leaned on it. She had said she was entering her room, not that she would rest there. Elliott
would be riding out soon, she was sure, and then she was going to explore on her own and find her perfect nursery.

Elliott had wished that Arabella was less compliant; it seemed he was getting his desire. Whether this would prove to be a good thing remained to be seen. One could not dismiss an argumentative wife as one could a demanding mistress.

Elliott swung up into the saddle of his bay cover hack and turned its head towards the Home Farm. Turner was going to wonder what had happened to him today. He had been spending virtually every morning with the estate manager since he had come here, trying to get the land and the tenants’ cottages back into the state they had been in when Rafe had inherited. His brother had shown not the slightest interest in the property that earned him the bulk of his revenues, but neither would he delegate sufficient power and resources to his steward to allow him to do what was necessary in his stead. It seemed he was as unwilling to yield any authority to an employee as he had been to his brother.

Even when Elliott had dealt with the lack of investment and neglect it would still be a long way behind Fosse Warren where he was experimenting with the latest techniques and had been spending heavily for several years. At least Turner was happy now, with authority to lay out money and an employer who was taking an intelligent interest.

Elliott held the bay back to a walk despite its fidgeting. He was in no hurry to discuss the value of turnips in crop rotation or whether they should buy some
orchards down in the Vale as Turner was suggesting. Thinking about Arabella was more absorbing and thinking about Arabella and sex kept the other, darker, more difficult thoughts at bay.

She was naturally sensuous, he was certain of that, although after last night, it was hard to see why he was so certain. Elliott shifted in the saddle as he thought. She enjoyed kissing, he could feel her body’s response to him, her innocently provocative exploration.
His
body was in no doubt what it wanted, uncomfortably so, and whenever he touched her it seemed that this time he was going to have her yielding, completely. But as soon as things became more intense, she either recoiled, or, as she had last night, passively submitted.