Only Beloved (9 page)

George handed his bride into the carriage and followed her in. Another shower of multicolored petals rained about their heads. The church bells were ringing out the joyful tidings of a new marriage. The members of the congregation were beginning to spill out through the doors.

The sun was shining.

A hand touched George on the shoulder and squeezed.

“Don't worry,” Percy said for his ears only. “He is gone and will not be reappearing for a while.”

And then the coachman gave the signal for the horses to start, and every other sound was drowned out by the unholy din of the unofficial carriage decorations.

George settled his shoulders across one corner of the seat and took one of his bride's hands in both his own.

“Well, my dear duchess,” he said while she was forced to read his lips in order to hear.

She smiled and then grimaced and laughed at the noise.

He raised her hand to his lips and held it there while the carriage moved out of Hanover Square on its way to Portman Square, Chloe and Ralph having insisted upon hosting the wedding breakfast at Stockwood House.

George had intended to set his arm about her shoulders and kiss her on the lips for everyone outside the church to see. It was what his friends would expect. It would have been the perfect conclusion to a perfect wedding, the perfect start to a happy marriage.

He ought to have done it anyway. But it was too late now.

The day had been irrevocably spoiled.

*   *   *

The day had
not
been spoiled, Dora assured herself throughout the rest of it. What had happened in the church had been unfortunate—oh, what a massive understatement!—but it had been dealt with swiftly and firmly, the man had been removed, and the nuptial service had resumed just as if the unpleasant interruption had not happened at all.

Apart from those brief moments, the wedding service had been perfect. So had the weather. Sunshine and warmth had greeted them when they stepped outside the church, and there had been the delightful surprise of a cheering crowd and the merry, laughing faces of their friends as they showered them with rose petals, just as she remembered their doing at Agnes's wedding last year. Even the deafening noise of the pots and pans they dragged behind the carriage all the way to Stockwood House had been amusing. Her husband had held her hand in both of his all the way there and sat half sideways on the seat, gazing at her with smiling eyes.

Chloe and Ralph's house had been festively decorated for the occasion with ribbons and bows and urns of flowers. The ballroom had looked more like a lavish garden than an indoor room and had quite taken Dora's breath away when she stepped into it on the arm of the duke. It had soon been packed with guests, all of whom had bowed or curtsied and smiled and offered congratulations and best wishes as they passed along the receiving line. The food had been sumptuous, the speeches heartfelt and often laughter-provoking, and the wedding cake such a beautiful work of art that it
had seemed a pity to cut it. And after the breakfast the guests had been in no hurry to leave but had moved into other rooms and out onto the terrace to linger and continue their conversations. But gradually the guests did begin to take their leave and finally only family and close friends remained.

Everything had been perfect.

No one had made any reference at all to what had happened during those five minutes in the church. It was almost as if Dora had imagined it.

At the end of the day what she remembered most were the smiles and laughter and unrelenting cheerfulness of so many people, all celebrating her nuptials. Why had it left her wanting to weep?

There had been those three or four minutes—definitely no longer than four—out of a long and eventful day that had been otherwise joyful and perfect. Like a worm at the heart of a perfect rose.

I can show just cause.

It was surely every bride's nightmare that someone would break that short silence in the nuptial service with just those words.

That man, the Duke of Stanbrook, is a murderer and a villain. He killed his first wife by pushing her off a high cliff on his estate in Cornwall to her death on the jagged rocks below. The Duchess of Stanbrook was my sister and would never under any circumstances have taken her own life. Stanbrook hated her, and he murdered her.

He should hang by the neck until he is dead. . . .The Duke of Stanbrook must not be allowed to take a second wife when he murdered the first.

It was almost incredible that the wedding and the breakfast had proceeded so normally, so merrily, so
perfectly
after those words had been spoken. How could they all have smiled the rest of the day away? How could he have smiled? How could she? Why had nothing been said?

It was unfair. It was so very unfair.

He was calling her “my dear,” she noticed. She was calling him nothing. How could she continue to call him “Your Grace” when she was married to him? But how could she call him “George,” when he had not invited her to do so? Did she need an invitation, though? He was her husband. And they were friends, were they not? A friendship had surely grown between them during the past month. But . . . did she know him? He had done forty-seven years of living before she even met him last year, more than half a lifetime. She really did not know him at all.

Well, of course she did not. They had spent only a month plus those few days last year together. She had felt she knew him, knew his spirit. But the truth was that she did not know him at all. Getting to know each other was what their marriage would be all about.

It was well into the evening when they arrived home. And even the homecoming should have felt perfect. The butler opened the double doors wide with something of a flourish, spilling light out onto the dusk-shaded steps, and bowed low. Behind him all the servants were gathered, standing formally in two lines extending along the hallway, the women on one side, the men on the other. Despite the lateness of the hour they were all smiling,
their heads turned toward the doors. At what must have been a prearranged signal from someone, they all applauded as the Duke of Stanbrook led Dora over the threshold.

Someone must have dashed ahead from Stockwood House to warn the servants that they were on the way.

The butler had a speech to deliver, stiff but also endearing. The duke answered it and introduced Dora as his duchess. More applause followed and more smiles, and she thanked them for the welcome and promised to get to know them all by name in the next few days.

A tea tray was brought up to the drawing room and Dora seated herself to pour—her first duty as a wife in her new home. They sat on either side of the fire, which was welcome in the coolness that had come with the dusk. And they talked about the day, agreeing in effect that it had been perfect.

As it had been.

Except for those few minutes.

Several times Dora thought she would broach the subject but could not steel her nerve. Several times she thought the duke was going to make mention of it, but when he spoke it was of something else, some other fond memory of the day.

He did not stop smiling. Neither, she realized, did she.

“You are tired, my dear,” he said at last. “It has been a long and busy day. A happy one, though, would you not agree?”

“Yes,” she said. “Very happy.”

Oh, dear God, what was the matter with them? How could they allow one deranged man to do this to them?

He was standing before her chair, extending a hand for hers. There was the wedding night to celebrate. Why was she feeling depressed? She set her hand in his, got to her feet, and allowed him to draw her arm through his. She did not even know, she thought, where her bedchamber was, where her trunks were that had been brought here at some time during the day, where she would find what she needed, where she would undress, where . . .

He led her upstairs past wall sconces filled with candles, all cheerfully alight, and along a wide corridor before stopping outside a closed door.

“You are tired, my dear,” he said again, his fingers curving about her hand on his other arm and raising it to his lips. “I will leave you to have a good night's rest and will look forward to seeing you at breakfast in the morning. Though you must not feel obliged to get up early if you wish to sleep on. Good night.”

What?

But Dora had no time either to show or to express her shock. He opened the door to reveal a dressing room lit by candlelight and a maid curtsying and smiling at her. She recognized the fine linen nightgown she had chosen for her wedding night set out over a chair. She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her.

“I am Maisie, Your Grace,” the maid said. “I will be your dresser for the time being until you choose someone else, unless you decide to keep me, which I would like of all things.”

Dora smiled.

Smiles. Perfection. What had happened in a few minutes.
It was how she would remember her wedding day as long as she lived, Dora thought as she gave herself up to the unfamiliar ministrations of her new maid.

Oh, and the absence of a wedding night.

You are tired, my dear.

My dear.

She did not want to be his dear. She wanted to be
Dora
.

G
eorge was standing at the window of his bedchamber, his knuckles braced on the sill, his shoulders hunched. He was gazing out into darkness, though he was scarcely aware that there was nothing to see. He was dressed for bed, his dark blue dressing gown belted over his nightshirt. Behind him the covers of the large canopied bed had been turned down for the night—on both sides.

He could hardly have made more of a mess of the day if he had tried. The appearance of Eastham inside the church and his dramatic pronouncement there had been totally unexpected, it was true, but life was full of the unexpected. In forty-eight years he ought to have learned better how to handle it. Actually, he believed that at the time he had behaved with the proper restraint and dignity, as had the bishop. He had even had the presence of mind to ask his bride if she wished to postpone the wedding.

It was the rest of the day that had been the disaster. And he was the one most to blame, he feared. Everyone else had taken their cue from him.

What he ought to have done was kiss his bride in the carriage, as he had planned to do, while everyone looked on. Then he ought to have spoken to her of what had happened with the promise that they would talk more fully later, when they were alone and not distracted by the din of the hardware they were dragging along.
Then
he ought to have raised the issue quite openly with his guests at the start of the wedding breakfast, explained again that there was absolutely no truth to the charges that the Earl of Eastham had made against him both this morning and immediately after Miriam's death, and invited everyone to put the unfortunate incident behind them if they could and celebrate his wedding day with him and his new duchess. Later, after most of the guests had left and only close family and friends remained, he should have raised the issue again and talked it out with them. And
then,
after returning home with his bride, he should have sat down with her and discussed the matter privately with her, talked the whole thing over with her yet again.

That was what he
ought
to have done. He had nothing to hide, after all, and nothing of which to be ashamed.

He had done none of those things.

Instead, after that brief apology to his bride in the church, he had said nothing at all to anyone, but had behaved just as though that shocking episode had not happened. And apart from Percy's quick word with him before the carriage moved off, everyone had followed his lead. All had been smiling, festive merriment for the rest of the day—the perfect wedding celebration with the perfectly happy couple.

Not a cloud in their sky. Only endless bliss ahead of them.

It had been one giant pretense. All day there had been a loud silence on the very topic that had surely been foremost in everyone's thoughts. Eastham would be delighted if he could know that he had ruined George's wedding day even though he had failed to put a stop to the proceedings.

George changed position to brace his hands on the side frames of the window just above the level of his head. A light was bobbing slowly and rhythmically about the square—the night watchman's lantern. His presence was unnecessary, however. Nothing disturbed the peace. Not out there, anyway.

And then there had been the greatest disaster of all. He had let his bride go to bed alone—on her wedding night. He had done it because she had looked tired and he had thought to do her a kindness.

Balderdash!

Why the devil had he done it, then? Because he could not quite bring himself to face her in the intimacy of the marriage bed? Because he feared that a part of her might believe what she had heard? Because retreating into his own inner world was second nature to him and he had needed to be alone?

On his wedding night?

He curled his hands into fists and pounded them lightly against the window frame. Was he going to allow Eastham to do this to him on top of everything else?

He felt suddenly and painfully like his seventeen-year-old self again, gauche and totally out of control of
his own life and destiny. How could he have sent his bride to bed alone on their wedding night? He fairly squirmed with shame and embarrassment.

It was well after midnight, too late to go to her now. But was it? How likely was it that she was sleeping? Not very, at a guess. How could she be? He had so very much wanted their wedding day to be the happiest day of both their lives. Instead it had turned into perhaps the worst nightmare of a day either of them had ever lived through. Good God, she had been abandoned by her bridegroom on her wedding night—her forty-eight-year-old, oh-so-mature bridegroom, who had allowed himself to be completely overset by the spite of a man who had blighted a large portion of his adult life.

He did not take a candle with him into his dressing room or into hers beyond it. He did not want the light to wake her if by chance she was asleep. Or perhaps he did not want to illumine his own face if she was not. He tapped softly on the door of the duchess's bedchamber—in which he had not intended that the duchess ever sleep except perhaps for afternoon naps—and turned the knob quietly before opening the door and stepping inside.

The bed was untouched. He could see that much in the dim light from the window across which the curtains had not been drawn. For a moment he thought the room was empty. But there was a large, winged armchair beside the window, and he could see that she was curled up within it, her legs drawn up onto the seat and turned sideways, her arms hugging each other by the elbows beneath her bosom, her head against the chair back. She was very still and very quiet. Too still and too quiet to be sleeping.

He crossed the room to stand in front of her chair. She was indeed not sleeping. Her eyes were open and looking up at him.

“I am so sorry, my dear,” he said. The same lame words he had used earlier in the day.

“Don't call me that.” Her voice was quiet and toneless.

He felt a lurching of alarm.

“I have a name,” she told him.

“Dora,” he said softly. He had planned to call her that in the carriage before he kissed her outside the church, had deliberately not asked before their wedding day if he might have the privilege of using it sooner. He had looked forward to hearing her answer him with his own name. There was an intimacy in names, and he had wanted that intimacy within moments of their leaving the church as man and wife. Where the devil had “
my dear
” come from?

“I could not have mismanaged the day more than I have,” he said.

“It was not your fault,” she said, still in that dull monotone.

“Ah, but much of it was,” he said. “A ghastly few minutes might have remained just that—a few minutes—if I had only spoken openly about the incident afterward to our guests, discussed it with our families and friends later, and explained fully to you when we were alone.”

“You did not know it was going to happen,” she said. “You had no chance to prepare an appropriate response. You behaved with dignity nevertheless.”

He stooped down on his haunches before her. He would have taken her hands if she had made them
available, but she continued to hug her elbows. She had not moved at all. She was deeply withdrawn into herself. If she could have disappeared into the chair, he believed she would have done so.

“Dora,” he said, “there is no grain of truth in anything he said. I swear to you there is not.”

“I did not even for a moment believe there was,” she said. “No one did.”

Perhaps not. But at the time there had been those who chose to believe, including a small clique of his neighbors at home who had indulged the deplorable human urge to convert a simple tragedy into a lurid sensation. Being accused of a heinous crime when one had no incontrovertible proof of one's innocence was surely one of the worst feelings in the world. One wanted to go about proclaiming one's innocence, but, knowing that to be futile, one retreated instead into the deepest, darkest core of oneself—and more or less stayed there forever after. That was what he had done, anyway, even though he was convinced that all the more sensible elements of society had long ago absolved him of all suspicion of guilt.

He reached out a hand and cupped it about her cheek. She neither flinched nor moved—even as far as to lean into his hand. He set one knee on the floor, the better to balance himself.

“I wanted our wedding day to be perfect for you,” he said.

She said nothing. But what was there to say?

“Instead,” he said, “it must have been one of worst days of your life.”

He heard her draw breath as if to speak, but she said nothing to deny it.

“It is past midnight,” he said. “A new day. Allow me to start afresh, if you will.”

Did her head tilt a fraction closer to his hand?

“Let me take you to bed,” he said. “To our marital bed in our room. Not here. This is to be your private bedchamber for daytime use. At least, I hope that is all it will be used for. Come to bed with me, Dora. Let me make love to you.”

He could hear her inhaling very slowly. “I am your wife,” she said, still in the same toneless voice.

He got abruptly to his feet and turned to the window. He braced his hands against the outer frames. The night watchman was long gone. There was nothing but darkness out there.

“Please don't,” he said. “Don't make this a matter of duty. You owe me nothing out of duty. Nothing
.
I married you because I wanted a companion and a lover. I thought you wanted the same. If I was mistaken, or if you have changed your mind, then . . . so be it.” There was a short silence. “Was I mistaken? Have you changed your mind?”

“Neither,” she said.

“Forgive me for today,” he said, “and particularly for this evening. I cannot explain even to myself why I said good night to you outside your dressing room. It was certainly not because I did not want you. Please believe that.”

He felt a hand on his back then. He had not heard her getting to her feet.

“I am sorry too, Your Grace,” she said. “We are both old enough to know better than to expect perfection of any day. How foolish we both were to expect it of our wedding day. And yet it was perfect except for those few minutes, which were neither your fault nor mine.”

He swung around. “Your Grace?” He laughed. “Oh, no, please, Dora.”

“George,” she said. His name sounded a little prim on her tongue and altogether alluring.

He set one arm about her shoulders and the other about her waist and drew her against him. She was warm and shapely and womanly and clad in a predictably modest and unadorned nightgown of the finest linen. She smelled of that light floral fragrance he had noticed before. She set her hands against his shoulders and lifted her face. He could not see it clearly. Although she faced the window, she was in the shadow of his body.

He kissed her lips for the first time. She held them stiff and still, and it occurred to him with something of a shock that it was possible she had never been kissed before. Even if she had, it had probably been a long time ago. He drew his head a little way back from hers and turned them slightly so that the faint light of the outdoors was on her face.

“Smile for me,” he murmured.

Perhaps it was surprise that caused her to do so.

He kissed her again, and her lips, still curved upward and slightly parted in a smile, were soft and yielding. He softened his own over them, moved them, touched his tongue to the seam of hers, pressed slightly between. She made a soft sound of alarm, but he had cupped her
elbows with his hands and moved her arms so that they came over his shoulders and about his neck. He drew her against his body again and deepened the kiss without doing anything else that might shock her further.

He was surprised by the sensation of pure pleasure he felt from their almost chaste embrace. The pleasure had nothing to do with sexual desire, though there was that too. It had more to do with the fact that she was his woman, his wife, his companion, his
own
for the rest of their lives as long as they both lived. Some of the joy of the morning—of yesterday morning—returned.

Her head moved back from his then and he could see her face clearly enough to detect some anxiety there. “You do realize,” she asked him, “that I am a virgin?”

He would be willing to wager that her cheeks were aflame.

He wanted to smile, even laugh, for she spoke in the voice she must use to the more careless of her music pupils, but it would have been the wrong thing to do. “I do realize it,” he said gravely. “By the morning it will no longer be so. Come to bed, Dora.”

*   *   *

Goodness, she must have been fathoms deep in sleep, Dora thought as she began to float upward to the surface. She was enveloped in warmth and comfort. The mattress had never felt so soft or the pillow so warm yet firm beneath her neck. She had never felt so totally relaxed or so filled to the brim with a sense of well-being. A clock was ticking steadily somewhere close by. She breathed in a pleasant but unfamiliar fragrance. As well as the rhythmic ticking of the clock, there was another sound,
that of the deep, even breathing of someone asleep beside her. And—the only discordant detail—there was a soreness between her thighs and up inside her. Yet not really discordant after all, for paradoxically the soreness was the most deliciously comforting feeling of all and the origin of her utter contentment.

She had reached the very surface of sleep and broke through into consciousness, remembering. She was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. But the bed was . . . what had he called it? It was their marital bed. And this was their room, whenever they were in London, anyway. That other room where he had come for her was hers only for daytime use. But she had no wish to go back there.

He was lying beside her now, his arm beneath her head, and he was sleeping. He had made love to her before they slept. It had been a very one-sided activity, since she had been hopelessly ignorant and inadequate. But no, no, no,
no,
she would not think that. He had assured her she had not been. He had told her she had been wonderful and, oh, goodness, she had believed him because his voice had been low against her ear, and one of his hands had been stroking her hair, and his weight had been heavy on her, and he had still been . . . inside her. He had made her feel wonderful even though she had not had a clue of an idea what to do to make their lovemaking mutual. He had told her she did not need to do anything, only to
be
and to enjoy if she possibly could. He had apologized for the pain he knew he was causing her and had promised it would be better next time and better still after that.