Edith Layton (20 page)

Daisy stepped through another doorway in the hedge and stared. The sun shone brightly on the center circle, a clearing of some twenty feet all around. The centerpiece was a larger-than-life-sized statue of a nude Venus being held by an equally nude and obviously passionate Mars. They were ringed and applauded by a host of nude cherubs. It was so grandly presented, it was hard to equate with the fact that it was positively pornographic.

The statue was framed by four curved marble benches placed at equal distances at the side of the circle, the perimeter was solid hedge, and above them, a clear blue sky.

“It is,” Daisy said carefully, “certainly not conservative.” And then she put her hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles.

“Yes,” Leland said, sounding very pleased. “It drove my poor father mad, I understand. He wanted to take it down, but venerated his heritage too much to touch it. Lucky me. I mean, of course, lucky us. Would you care to sit down a while before we go on?”

He led her to a marble bench, waited until she was seated, and then sat beside her. He stretched out his long legs and gazed up at the sky. “The idea behind the centerpiece, of course,” he said casually, “was that it would inspire whatever lovely creature my ancestor brought in here with him to romance, or a reasonable version of it. After all, she couldn’t leave until he told her
how
she
could. So I suppose he made it a forfeit. And I understand, from ancestral memoirs, that this was a very popular place. Well, but they were freer with morals in those days,” he murmured. Then he turned his head and looked down at her. “Inspired?” he asked with interest.

He was so close that one of his lean, well-muscled thighs almost touched hers. She felt he was even closer. She smelled lavender and lemon, and something else, something intangible, something of sunlight and darkness, sweet and thrilling, which was his very essence. Her body thrummed, knowing he was so near.

He wasn’t a handsome man, not remotely so. But he was compelling, which was fascinating. His eyes were truly beautiful, though, she thought irrelevantly: a different, darker, more intense blue than the sky, filled with intelligence and…desire. She’d recognize that anywhere. His skin was clear, his mouth was well shaped, and he was vital and real, and waiting here beside her. And now he was her husband.

She swallowed hard.

He looked at her lips, then her eyes. He hesitated, and then sighed. “No,” he said with sorrow. “You’re
not
inspired. Ah, too bad. I suppose you’re listening to the cautions of the ghosts of too many foolish ladies who were lured here. So am I. It was a bad notion. Forget it and forgive me. I don’t want to remember them, either. Well, rested? Ready to go on?”

“To what?” she asked nervously.

“
Not
to heights of sensual bliss, alas,” he said with such mock sadness, she had to smile. “That’s clear. No, we should go back to the house. The sun is sinking; it will be twilight before long. On the way I’ll show you a lovely brook, and the home wood. There’s a doe that comes to the edge of the wood at sundown; I confess I encourage her to. I carry a small block of salt in my pocket whenever I’m here, and the silly beast thinks it tastes better than anything in the whole wide meadow she grazes in.”

He rose, and so did she. For a moment, standing there, looking up at him, she felt the urge to rise up on her toes and kiss him, so she’d know if what she’d experienced before had been real.

But a kiss could lead to unpleasantness, frustration, and the feeling of captivity she hated, and she found she liked him too much to dislike him so soon. So she simply put her hand on his arm and walked out of the maze with him, head down, watching her steps, thinking she was a coward, and then thinking she wasn’t, she was a realist, and so she said nothing at all. But neither did he.

“Tell Cook she has exceeded herself,” Leland told his butler as he rose from the dinner table. “She was inspired. I’d applaud, but I’m too full to exert myself.”

“She’ll be pleased, my lord,” the butler said, bowing.

Daisy smiled. Dinner had been delicious, but it was just simple, well-cooked English food. Surely a world traveler and sophisticate like Viscount Haye had eaten better.

“I know,” Leland whispered in her ear as they left the room together, “But Cook excels at simple country fare. She does it better than any French chef could. I don’t ask swans to sing, or nightingales to be beautiful: to each his own expertise. A wise man shouldn’t expect more than a person is capable of. The trick is finding that skill and appreciating it.”

“You read my mind,” she said simply. “You do that a lot.”

“Good,” he said. “See you remember that when you sigh over another gentleman, will you?”

“I won’t,” she said. “Sigh over another gentleman, I mean.”

“Don’t be so sure. I don’t mind the sighing. I would, if it were anything more. Now, we could go to the salon, or the library, or wherever you choose. But it is past dinnertime, and our wedding night. I think the staff would be horrified if we didn’t repair to our bed. I didn’t mind one whit what anyone said about me before, but I find I’d be dismayed if we did anything to inspire gossip now. It’s odd how one becomes a slave to one’s servants, isn’t it? Don’t worry, if you’re not sleepy,” he said. “Neither am I. But never fear, I’ll find something for us to do.”

Daisy stiffened. She knew he would. Well, she
thought, better now than later. They could get it done, it wouldn’t take long, and then she could act more naturally with him. It wasn’t as if it was something she hadn’t done hundreds of times before. In fact, she didn’t have to do anything but endure it, and try to remember men were men, and so it shouldn’t change her feelings about him forever. Because she did like him, very much.

It would be best to get it over with. She realized she was too on edge now, waiting for the moment, it made her nervous and her conversation stilted. She missed the way they’d been before they’d married. They’d certainly laughed more.

“Go on up,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stair. “I’ll follow, soon.”

She trudged up the stairs, and then remembering the omnipresent unseen servants, raised her head, pasted on a smile, and went bravely to her bridal chamber.

D
aisy had brushed out her hair and braided it, when her maid, all a-giggle, held up a fine night shift for her to put on. It was made of the sheerest linen, so it was thin and transparent. Daisy hesitated. But she didn’t want to be fully dressed when Leland came to her, because then there’d be the awkwardness of undressing. And she didn’t want to disappoint her maid and cause more talk, because the shift really was quite suitable for a wedding night. So she put it on. She dismissed her maid as soon as she could, climbed up into the huge canopy bed, drew the coverlet up to her chest, and sat, waiting for her new husband to appear.

It was an awkward moment that would become
worse, and so she’d brought a book with her in order to be doing something when Leland arrived. She’d thought about it long and hard. She refused to just lie there like a sacrifice on an altar. Or sit up, rigid, tensing at every creak in the floorboards that might signal his approach. She plumped up pillows behind her back, drew the coverlet up again, and pretended to read while her every sense strained to hear his footsteps.

He came into the room a few minutes later, fully dressed.

She gaped at him. He smiled at her.

“Something amiss with my shirt?” he asked in surprise.

“No,” she said, and couldn’t say more, because she couldn’t tell him she’d expected him to be in his nightclothes.

“Gads!” he said, stretching. “It isn’t really late, but I feel as if I’d been up for hours. I suppose that’s because it isn’t every day that I’m up so early, and out associating with so many people. I might as well get ready for bed, too,” he said, as he shrugged off his jacket. “You look so comfortable, you inspire me,” he said, as he unwound his neck cloth. “Then we can find a pleasant way to while away some hours, because exhausted I may be, but I’m not tired. I never go to bed this early. I’m sure if I did it would be a tremendous shock to my constitution.”

Daisy blinked, and then stared. Because now he pulled his shirt over his head, so his voice was
muffled as he added, “We have some hours before I’m ready to sleep, but I never asked you. How rude. Are you used to such early hours?”

His head emerged; he tossed his shirt to the side, and looked at her.

She was staring.

“Oh that,” he said, looking down at the thin red line on his chest. “My souvenir of London. Don’t fret, it’s just a lingering reminder of that night at the park; it doesn’t hurt.”

But that wasn’t all she was staring at. His naked chest surprised her. He was so slender, she’d never have guessed how well formed he was: He had a broad, well-muscled chest, and his trim torso tapered to lean hips. There was a light fuzz of hair on his chest, and his skin was clear, except for that healing scar too close to where his heart was.

Then, as she stared, he sat, pulled off one boot and then the other. While she sat mesmerized, he bent and stripped off his breeches, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to undress in front of her.

Tanner had never fully undressed in all the years they’d been married, unless he had to take a bath. He always wore a shirt to bed. Tanner had been a chunky man whose fair skin had often been blotched, and he’d added more flesh around his middle with every year that passed. Now Leland stood up, and Daisy’s gazed arrowed to his sex. She glanced away, embarrassed. Leland
looked almost like a different species than Tanner. He was fit and firm and though very large, everything was in pleasing proportion to his long body.

Leland turned his back to her, picked up his discarded clothes, and strolled into the adjoining dressing room. Even his rear was taut and trim.

“I have a problem,” Leland called from the dressing room. “I do hope you can help me with it. Of course, you’re not widely experienced in such matters, but I want your admiration and approval. So I can’t act on my own. I’ve something to show you, and then I’ll ask your opinion.”

Daisy tensed. The moment was almost upon her, even though it was arriving in weird fashion. Tanner never spoke to her when the mood was upon him. But his needs were obvious and simple. Now she wondered what an experienced roué like Leland expected of her.

For the first time, it wasn’t just embarrassment or distaste she worried about. She’d heard about men who liked whips and chains and such. Was her new husband such a one? Was he so jaded that he needed pain or shame? Did he think that just because she’d been a convict she had no sensibilities? That explained much, and would ruin everything. She tensed.

He emerged from the dressing room holding two nightshirts. One was plain and white, the other was cream-colored with embroidery on the neck.

“Now this one,” he said, holding it up in front of him, “is classic. Very simply, very tasteful. But this one,” he said, switching hands and holding up the other, “is the latest word in France, or so I hear. Which do you like?”

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. “Either.”

“Well, to tell the truth I don’t care for either,” he told her. “You see, I don’t like to sleep in anything but my skin, but I am trying to be sensible of your sensibilities. Wait a moment, I think I have just the thing!”

He disappeared into the dressing room, and came out holding his hands out as though he’d just pulled a rabbit from a hat, like a magician on the stage about to take a bow. Now he wore a colorful red silk dressing gown, sashed in gold.
“Voilà!”
he said. He turned for her, head high, nose in the air, like a fashion model at madame’s shop. “What do you think?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I agree,” he said sadly. “Outrageously opulent, not my style at all.”

He turned, very dejected, to go back to the dressing room.

“Wait!” she said. “Do you really think what you wear to sleep is important?”

He looked at her in shock. “My dear,” he said, “a man of taste
never
slacks off, even in his slumbers. And, I remind you, I can’t have you thinking your new husband is careless, can I? It’s obvious this doesn’t impress you, but I have a
blue satin one that I thought was too simple. Now I think perhaps it will be the very thing.”

She just sat and stared at him. That was how she saw his lips quirk. “Good God!” he said. “Your expression!” And then he began to laugh.

She joined in, as relieved as she was amused. He came over to the bed. “Well, I had to think of something to unknot you,” he said with a tender smile. “You looked as though you expected me to come out with whips and chains. You don’t, do you? I’d hate to disappoint, but I wouldn’t care for that at all.”

“Oh my,” she said, between the giggles she’d subsided to. “That’s exactly what I was thinking you meant.”

“Hence the look of a trapped rabbit when I came out of my dressing room,” he said, nodding. “
So
relieved to know it wasn’t just my presence that made you freeze. Now, for some entertainment.”

She stopped laughing.

“Daisy,” he said patiently. “Please believe me. I won’t touch you until you want me to. It’s most unsettling to see you look at me like that. All I meant is that we can play some cards,” he said, extracting a deck of cards from his robe’s pocket. “Or dice, if you wish,” he said, dropping a pair of dice on the bed. “I thought we could while away our hour together that way until it’s time for bed. Is that all right with you?”

She breathed again. “Yes,” she said earnestly.
Then she dropped her head to her hands and bent double. “Oh, Lord!” she moaned, “How can I ever be ready? What have I done? This is terrible, if only because the more I like you, the harder it will be for me to submit.”

He put the pack of cards down on the bed, and came to sit beside her. He placed one large hand on her back; she could feel the warmth of it through her thin gown. “Daisy,” he said softly. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to submit. I want you to enjoy.”

She looked up, and he could see her misery. “I don’t know if I can. I honestly do not know. I’m not a cheat. I never thought this would happen. I thought I could, but when it comes to it, I freeze, as you said.”

He smiled. “We haven’t come to it. Relax. I know your past, and you know mine. What we have here is a rake, and a lady who has been abused. If I can use my knowledge, and you can forget yours, we may yet come to
it,
as you say, and find all is well. I think we will. Now, ecarte, piquet, or whist?”

She sniffed, and dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “Piquet, I think,” she said. “But beware! I’m very good at it.”

“Good!” he said, and drawing his robe around his long legs, he sat on the bed with her.

They played piquet for an hour, and declared it a draw.

Then they played whist, and he won, by a wide margin.

She sat up on her knees, and studied her cards with such seriousness that he teased her for it.

He sat, legs crossed like a tailor, his robe correctly draped to spare her blushes, and himself from stray breezes, or so at least he claimed.

They laughed as they played. He told her the origins of the names of cards, how the jack of clubs was Sir Lancelot, and the queen of hearts was first Helen of Troy, now Queen Elizabeth. He told her how the games were played in gentlemen’s clubs and in secret gaming hells. She told him about incidents at card games back at Botany Bay and the truly cutthroat way the games were played there. She sometimes forgot it was her wedding night, and the fellow beside her was the husband she was depriving of his rights. He didn’t seem to mind.

He couldn’t forget it for a moment. Leland watched his new wife with tender enchantment that made him ache as much with pity as amusement, and thought that if he could tame her and bring her to his hand, his would be the best marriage he’d ever seen, and this, a better relationship with a female than he’d ever dared imagine.

He was almost overcome with the urge to hold her close and tell her she’d nothing to fear from him. But he had to do it with quips and laughter, and hope the rest would follow, in time. She
looked more beautiful than ever to him tonight, in her simple white gown. Her hair, in a night braid, made her seem younger and more vulnerable. Her beautiful firm, rose-tipped breasts, clearly visible in her thin gown, made him more vulnerable still. He yearned for her. And all he could do tonight was try to win her trust.

She looked up, saw his expression, and paused, cards forgotten, and stared at him. He held his breath, and leaning forward, touched her mouth with his. Her mouth was as soft and yielding as he’d hoped. Cards fell from her fingers like leaves in the autumn breeze. He put down his cards, put a hand on her waist, drew her closer, and she yielded, clinging to him as they kissed. He murmured a word to her, and that word was “love,” and ran his free hand lightly down her neck, only letting his fingertips touch her. He felt her shiver. He kissed her neck after his fingertips had grazed there, and then kissed her lips again. She murmured something he couldn’t hear.

He touched her cheek, and then lightly cupped her breast.

She shivered again, and then went rigid.

He stopped and looked his question at her.

She lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said unhappily. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“No,” he said, drawing away. “I don’t think so. It’s like trying not to sneeze. If you can’t help it, you can’t. So,” he said, sitting back. “Was it
anything I did? Or something you thought? You can tell me.”

“I don’t know. What you did was lovely, but then I thought about what we’d do, and it happened.”

“Well, then we won’t do it,” he said. “It’s actually quite late now. Let’s go to sleep, if not to bed.”

He rose from the bed, went to the dressing table, and turned down the lamp. Though it was dark, she could see him in outline as he drew off his robe, and climbed into bed beside her.

“You’re sleeping here?” she asked in surprise.

“Why yes, it
is
my bedchamber,” he said as he laid his head down on a pillow. “I mean,” he corrected himself, “
our
bedchamber now. I’ve always disliked the idea of a man and his wife having separate rooms. It leads to estrangement. Don’t you agree?”

“I never thought about it,” she said, honestly. Tanner would have murdered her if she had demanded a second bed, and anyway, it would have been foolishness in a house the size of the one they’d shared.

“We have this huge bed, and separate dressing rooms, and there are a dozen other bedrooms you can retreat to if I snore,” he said on a yawn. “But I’ve never been told that I do. Excuse me,” he added. “One is not supposed to talk about previous experiences.”

“Oh,” she said, as she lay back and made her
self comfortable beside him, wrapping herself in covers so they wouldn’t touch, even in sleep. “Then I should never speak about Tanner.”

“No,” he said. “You could. I meant that one shouldn’t speak about former lovers. I gather he wasn’t one.”

“Oh no,” she said softly. “That he was not.”

“Never a word of love?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Because he didn’t love me.”

He was still. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his interest as the silence between them grew. The statement clearly required more; she knew he was waiting for her to say it. The darkness made it easier for her to speak, and so she relaxed and spoke into the night, and found she could say things she’d never said before.

“He wanted me, but he didn’t like me. He didn’t even like the way I was with him in bed.”

“I’d imagine even he didn’t want to make love to someone who loathed him and merely put up with his embraces,” Leland said.

He waited for her answer. The more he knew of what she’d endured, the better he could try to change the act of love for her. She wanted him; he knew that. Her past was preventing her. He wished they could have had this talk before. He supposed he’d thought a widow would know more. He scowled; he’d been a blockhead. He’d erred the way that some men who married sheltered virgins did, expecting unrestrained passion to immediately follow marriage vows after a
lifetime of restraint. Enough past lovers had told him about that folly. Now he’d done the same thing, misled because she was a widow. He should have listened more closely to what she said before. He had. It was just that he realized he hadn’t wanted to believe her.