The Gamble (16 page)

Anna immediately went to look at the picture of the dog.

“There is a bedroom and a dressing room as well,” Mrs. Frome said. “Mr. Downs had me change the dressing room into a bedroom for Mrs. Pedigrew.”

She walked to the partially opened door that led off the sitting room, and I went to look in.

The bedroom was as large as the sitting room and was furnished as cozily. The apartment was at the end of the house, and the two tall bedroom windows, which were framed by plain white muslin drapes, looked out on the terrace and the garden.

The view was spectacular.

At the very moment that I looked out the window, the sun came out for the first time all day. It glinted off an ornamental lake in the middle of the park and made the grass sparkle as if a million diamonds were sprinkled among it.

Anna said from behind me, “I like these rooms, Georgie. They’re pretty.”

“They used to belong to Lady Catherine,” Mrs. Frome said.

I swung around, and for the first time I noticed the chest piled with music in the corner of the room.

“Do you think Catherine will mind if I use her rooms?” Anna asked me worriedly.

I shook my head. “It was Catherine who told Philip that you should have them,” I said.

Anna’s brow smoothed out.

I left her gazing out the windows and went to look into the room that was to be Nanny’s bedroom. It, too, was a very decent size and looked very comfortable.

Nanny and I stood together in the sitting-room doorway and regarded Anna’s back. “What do you think?” I asked in a low voice.

“I think these will suit us very well, Miss Georgiana,” Nanny answered decisively. “Anna will be away from the noise and bustle of the second floor if you and his lordship are entertaining, and when you have children, they will be right down the passageway, which she will like very much.”

These images of my future married life seemed utterly foreign to me, but I didn’t dare say that to Nanny.

“That’s true,” I managed to mutter weakly. I forced a smile. “Well, I will leave you to help Anna change her dress,” I said. “His lordship bespoke dinner for seven.”

“It’s your wedding day, Miss Georgiana,” Nanny said bluntly. “Miss Anna can eat her dinner upstairs tonight.” She looked at Mrs. Frome for confirmation.

The housekeeper’s stoic expression never changed. “I can most certainly arrange to have Miss Anna’s dinner brought upstairs,” she said.

I didn’t want Anna to eat her dinner upstairs. I didn’t want to be left alone with my husband. I didn’t have the vaguest notion of what we could talk about.

I also knew that I could hardly admit that this was the case to either Nanny or the housekeeper.

I said weakly, “If you are sure that it will be no trouble, Mrs. Frome.”

The housekeeper looked at me. Her eyes were the color of pewter and she had a large flesh-colored mole on the side of her nose. “It will be no trouble, my lady, I assure you,” she said.

I realized that I was not sounding very much like a countess and I stuck my chin in the air. “Very well. Then perhaps you will show me to my own rooms,” I said.

“Certainly, my lady,” the housekeeper said. She moved toward the door.

“I’m going now, darling,” I called to Anna. “They are going to bring you your dinner up here, and I will see you in the morning.”

She swung around, her face puckered, her mouth open, ready to protest, but before she could say a word, a small King Charles spaniel came racing in the door, yipping hysterically.

“Snowball!” Anna cried, dropping to her knees and holding out her arms. The dog leaped into them.

I looked at the young footman who was standing in the doorway. “His lordship told me to bring him up,” he said to me.

I smiled. “Thank you. What is your name?”

“Alfred, my lady.”

“Thank you, Alfred.”

Nanny said to me in a low voice, “Go now, Miss Georgiana, while she is distracted by the dog.”

I nodded and went quietly out the door with the housekeeper.

We did not return to the main staircase but instead went down a small set of stairs that was just outside of Anna’s apartment. I had thought that the earl’s apartments would be on the second floor with the other bedrooms, like they were at home, but Mrs. Frome took me all the way down to the first floor instead.

The earl’s apartments were at the back of the house, facing the gardens like Anna’s, although they were far bigger and more sumptuous than hers. There was one bedroom, with a four-poster bed and matching chairs that Mrs. Frome told me proudly had been made for the earl who lived during the reign of King James. Three tall windows draped with green-and-gold silk looked out upon the magnificent view. Above the white-marble fireplace hung a landscape of a Venetian canal.

Two doors opened off the bedroom.

“This is the door to your dressing room,” Mrs. Frome told me, moving toward the door on the left wall. “The other door leads to his lordship’s.”

Reluctantly, I followed her into the room that for over twenty years had been the domain of Lady Winterdale. I hadn’t at all minded putting Anna into Catherine’s rooms, but I found that I did mind following in the place of Philip’s aunt.

Betty was waiting for me, and her familiar face helped to cheer me up. I talked to her in an artificially animated way all the time that she helped me to change my clothes.

Talking helped me to keep from dwelling on the fact that this house apparently had only one bedroom for the master and the mistress, not two.

The dressing room had a cheval glass, which I glanced into briefly before I went out into the passageway. I was relieved to see that my inner turmoil did not appear to show on my face.

Nervously, I smoothed down my golden-silk evening dress and prepared to face my husband over the dining-room table.

A footman was waiting outside my apartment to escort me to the drawing room. He told me that a number of the rooms on the ground floor had been put aside for the use of the family, and that dinner was to be served in the place he called the morning room. I was ineffably relieved to hear that I was going to be spared the feeling that I was dining in an Italian palace.

Philip was waiting for me in a small anteroom which was decorated with three gilded mirrors and one yellow-silk sofa and two chairs. He did not smile when he saw me.

“Is Anna joining us?” he asked.

“No. Nanny said that it would be better if she ate her dinner upstairs tonight.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. Then he said, “The morning room is next door.” He came over to me and formally offered me his arm. I rested my hand on it with extreme tentativeness and together we walked into a room that was fully as large as our formal dining room at home in Weldon Hall.

Philip held my chair for me and I took my seat at one end of the polished mahogany table. In the light of the chandelier, Philip’s neckcloth looked as white as snow, his eyes as blue as sapphires, his hair as dark as midnight.

There was a lump in my chest that felt as big as a fist.

The soup came in and was put in front of me. I was terribly conscious of the footmen standing at the sideboard.

We can’t sit through this entire meal in silence
, I thought desperately.
I have to say something
.

I couldn’t think of a thing.

In a perfectly ordinary voice, Philip said, “How on earth did that dog come to be given the name of Snowball?”

I was so surprised by the question, and so relieved by its normality, that I actually managed a little laugh. By the time I had finished recounting the story of Snowball, the lump had subsided from my chest, and I had managed to eat my soup.

After dinner was over, I left Philip to drink his port in correct, masculine solitude. Instead of returning to the small anteroom next to the morning room, however, I was conducted by Mrs. Frome to a room she referred to as the green drawing room. This was a large and magnificent room on the family side of the first floor. The walls of the green drawing room were appropriately hung with green silk and an immense Turkish rug covered its polished wood floor. It had French doors that led out onto a terrace that overlooked one of the flower gardens. The scent of roses came once more to my nostrils.

In spite of all this aforementioned splendor, however, what struck the eye the moment one entered the room were two elegant fragile figures of cranes with gilded feathers that were perched on a satinwood table in the middle of the room. When I commented upon them, Mrs. Frome informed me that they were Chinese pieces imported by the late earl’s father.

“They’re beautiful,” I said reverently.

I actually saw a slight smile on her face as she nodded in agreement. “Would you like me to have some tea brought to you, my lady?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Frome.” I looked around the room once more. It was filled with lovely pieces of furniture, and several more Chinese figures of birds rested on the mantelpiece, but there was no musical instrument.

“Where is Miss Catherine’s pianoforte?” I asked curiously.

“Upstairs, in the blue drawing room,” Mrs. Frome replied.

“My, this certainly is a large house,” I said lightly. “Tomorrow you must give me a tour, Mrs. Frome.”

“I am at your disposal, my lady,” the woman said, her face back to its usual stoic expression.

She left, and I crossed the Turkish carpet to look at the cranes. I was still standing there, staring rather blindly at the beautiful, delicate creatures, when the door opened once more and Philip came in.

I turned to face him. Outside night had begun to fall and one could not see the garden beyond the terrace. I looked at him gravely and said what was in my heart. “I am so sorry that you had to marry me, Philip. I know that I blackmailed you into presenting me, but truly, I did not mean to force you to marry me.” With difficulty, I kept my eyes steady on his face. “It cannot be pleasant for you to be married to a woman you can’t respect, and I am sorry.”

He gave me a look that was infinitely weary. “Georgiana,” he said, and my heart leaped at hearing my name upon his lips, “believe me, it is not I who have been wronged by this marriage. A man like myself has no business marrying an innocent girl like you. I would never have done so if circumstances had not conspired to make it necessary.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“What do you mean,
a man like you?”
I said at last.

“You have no idea of the kind of life that I have led,” he returned somberly. “The tale is far too ugly for your ears, but believe me when I tell you that it amounts to a desecration for me to even contemplate touching you. I want you to know that. I want you to understand that I am giving you a choice. If you wish to accept only the protection of my name and dispense with the other aspects of married life, I will understand completely.”

I was thunderstruck. This was the last thing I had expected to hear. I didn’t know what to say. In truth, I didn’t quite understand what he was proposing.

“Are you suggesting that we could live together like . . . like brother and sister?” I asked carefully.

“Yes. If that is what you want, I shall respect your wishes.” His voice sounded quite calm, but even though he was on the other side of the room from me, I had become so attuned to him that I could feel his tension. He said, “The last thing I want to do is force myself on a girl like you.”

I tried to think clearly, which under the circumstances was extremely difficult. I finally decided that the best approach I could take to this entirely unexpected development was to be practical.

“We cannot do that,” I said. “Whatever you may have been in the past, you are the Earl of Winterdale now, and as such you must have an heir. And to be honest, I want children, too, Philip.” My voice sounded slightly breathless as I concluded, “In order to achieve those things, we cannot live together like brother and sister, can we?”

His face was stark. “No, we cannot.”

“Well then,” I said, trying desperately to sound as if I was merely showing common sense about an essentially trivial matter. “I think that our marriage ought to be a real one.”

I saw his fists open and close at his sides. “Are you certain about this, Georgiana?” he asked harshly.

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as certain as I was saying I was. “I am.”

CHAPTER
sixteen

B
ETTY HELPED ME TO GET READY FOR BED
. M
Y
nightdress was of the finest, thinnest cambric and the scooped neck and long sleeves were trimmed with lace. She brushed my hair vigorously until it hung in a shining pale brown mantle around my shoulders.

When she had finished, I went through the connecting door to my bedroom and got into the big four-poster that had been made during the time of King James.

Earlier, when Philip had offered me my choice about whether or not I wanted to make our marriage a real one, I had not doubted what my reply had to be. Nor was it really the issue of children which had prompted me to answer as I had. It was simply that I had felt in my heart that if I was not close to him in this way, then I would never be close to him in any way at all. And I wanted to be close to him.

All the same, I was definitely apprehensive about what was going to transpire between us on our wedding night.

The bedroom windows had been closed against the chill night air, and the room seemed very quiet. I couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving around in the earl’s dressing room next door. There was a fire going in the fireplace and I stared at the glowing red coals with intense interest, trying to keep my mind blank and my eyes away from that dressing-room door. The vase on the marquetry table between the windows was filled with a mixed bouquet of flowers, and their sweet scent hung in the air, mingling with the smell of the fire. The lamp next to the bed was lit. I sat up against the pillows, smoothed the coverlet over my pristine white lap, stared fixedly at the fire, and waited.

The latch on the dressing-room door rattled slightly, and my eyes swung around in time to see Philip coming in. He was wearing a black dressing gown and as he crossed the floor toward me with those panther-light steps of his, I could feel a mixture of apprehension and excitement flutter in my stomach.

I thought that he would get in on his side of the bed, but he didn’t. Instead he came around to my side, sat down beside me, and took my hands into his. My pulses began to race.

“Do you understand what is going to happen between us tonight, Georgiana?” he asked seriously.

I could feel the hot color flood my face. I had been raised in the country, after all, and I certainly knew the basics of animal reproduction. The picture was not a pretty one, however, and my mind much preferred not to contemplate it. I had been working hard at not contemplating it all week.

My eyes dropped away from his. “I think so,” I said.

“Do you understand that I am likely to hurt you?” he said next.

My eyes flew back upward. “Hurt me?” I echoed. I hadn’t known about that part.

“In order for me to enter you, I am going to have to break through your virginity, and that will hurt,” he said. “I want you to understand this while there is still time for you to change your mind.”

I looked up into his face. It looked taut and hard, as if he were keeping himself under strict control. “Will it always hurt?” I asked.

“No. Just the first time.”

“Oh well,” I said with a mixture of stoicism and bravado, “then I suppose we had better get it over with, hadn’t we?”

For the first time in days, I saw a faint smile touch his lips. “Always so practical,” he murmured.

I looked into his incredibly blue eyes and I didn’t feel practical at all. I felt dizzy.

I nodded helplessly.

He raised his hand and ran his fingers through my loose hair. My scalp tingled. “You have such beautiful hair,” he murmured. His hand tangled in the soft brown fall of it and pulled gently so that my head tilted farther back. He bent his head to mine and began to kiss me.

The power of my own response startled me. I put my arms around his neck and when he slid me from a sitting position to a lying position on the bed, I went without objection. Through the thin cotton of my gown I could feel his fingers begin to caress my breast and I shivered.

It felt so good.

His lips left my mouth and kissed my ear, my throat, the hollow between my breasts.

I was astonished by the sensations that swept through me at his touch. That little
frisson
of awareness that had always leaped in me at his touch was as nothing compared to the feelings that were swamping me now.

He kept kissing me and kissing me until I was so dizzy I couldn’t think at all. I don’t know at what point he shed his dressing gown, but all of a sudden I realized with dim surprise that he was naked. I ran my hands up and down his arms and felt the strength and power of him under my fingers. It was exciting. He kissed my mouth again, his own mouth hard and urgent, and I opened my lips and was shocked to feel his tongue enter and curl against mine.

His hands came up on either side of my head to hold me in place. I shut my eyes and slowly my tongue began to follow the rhythm of his. My nightdress was already rucked up and I could feel his hand creep up under it and slide along my leg.

Then he touched me.

I quivered with a mixture of shock and delight.

He kept kissing me and rubbing gently with his finger, and my quivering increased.

I could feel the hardness of him pressed against my thigh, and part of me was frightened and part of me was thrilled.

Then he said, in a hoarse voice I scarcely recognized, “All right, Georgie. Hold on, this is it.”

The strangest thing was, I wanted him to come into me. I wasn’t even thinking about pain, all I was thinking about was the incredibly pleasurable sensations he had created and that I wanted him to come in. That’s why the pain, when it came, was such a shock.

He had to push hard to enter, and I went rigid with the unexpected, burning discomfort of it. Then I remembered what he had told me.

But I hadn’t expected this. I hadn’t expected to be pierced until I bled. I hadn’t expected to find myself pinned under him while he slammed in and out of me, hurting me every time he moved. He was so much stronger than I. He not only hurt me, he made me afraid.

When it was all over, and he was lying on top of me, sweating and breathing heavily, it took all of my willpower not to cry.

He lifted himself off of me and looked down into my face, which I quickly averted.

“God. I’m sorry, Georgie,” he said. His voice was harsh, and he was still breathing as heavily as if he had been running hard out for half an hour. “I didn’t mean it to happen that way.”

He rolled away from me and lay on his back, one arm flung across his forehead, his eyes on the ceiling.

“
Christ
,” he said.

He sounded so desperate that it pierced through the fog of my own misery. I said in a very small voice, “Did something go wrong?”

“I should have been more gentle,” he said grimly. “It didn’t have to be like that. I’m afraid I got . . . carried away. I’m sorry.”

He should be sorry, I thought miserably.

I shifted away from him slightly and realized that part of my discomfort came from the fact that I was lying in a sticky wet spot on the bed. I put my hand down to investigate the cause, and that was when I found the blood.

“Philip,” I said, my voice panicky, “I’m bleeding!”

His hand closed around my wrist, holding my hand high between us, and we stared together at the bright red stuff that stained my fingers.

“It’s all right,” he said in a very strange voice. “It’s just a sign of your virginity, Georgie. It’s a sign that you have never belonged to any man but me.”

He kept staring at my hand as if he were in a trance, and after a minute I said in a suffocated voice, “I’ll have to change my nightdress, and the sheets will have to be changed, too. We can’t sleep in these.”

He released my wrist and when he spoke his voice sounded normal once again. “I told Betty to wait in your dressing room to help you. Go ahead, I will see to it that the sheets are changed.”

I scrambled out of the bed and tried to walk not run to my dressing-room door.

“Here I am, my lady,” Betty’s comfortable, familiar voice said as I entered my private sanctuary and shut the bedroom door behind me. “You go into the water closet and clean up, then I’ve got a nice clean nightdress for you to put on.”

She didn’t appear to be at all shocked by my bloodstained appearance, so I supposed that Philip had been telling the truth when he had said that this was what happened to all virgins on their wedding nights.

I finished my ablutions in the water closet, and Betty slipped another pretty white cotton nightdress over my head. I wasn’t bleeding any longer, but I was very sore indeed as I walked reluctantly to the door leading back to my bedroom.

The last thing I wanted to do was to meet the chambermaid as she was in the process of changing those disgusting sheets, so I peeked in the door to see if she was finished. The room was empty. I crept quietly in and got back into my marital bed.

I curled myself into a ball facing away from Philip’s side of the bed, shut my eyes tightly and pretended that I was asleep. Sleep was very far away, however, as I lay there in the quiet of the large, elegant room. For some reason, I felt very very sad.

It was then that the tears began to fall.

Ten minutes later, Philip came into the room. I didn’t stir, praying that he would think that I was asleep. He blew out the lamp and got into bed beside me. I held myself very still, trying not to move, trying not to let him know that I was crying.

I know I didn’t make a sound, but all of a sudden he said, “Please don’t cry, Georgie.”

His voice had that same desperate note it had held earlier.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come here,” he said.

I turned around unwillingly and was surprised to find myself gathered close into his arms. At this point I gave up all hope of concealment, buried my face in his shoulder, and wept with abandon.

“I’m sorry, Georgie,” he said. I could feel his lips touching my hair. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s just that it was so so . . . n-nice at first,” I gulped, “and th-then it . . .”

I cried harder.

“I know.” He sounded infinitely weary. “Remember how you once told me that life was unfair to women? Well, this is another example for you. A man’s first time is usually very exciting, but a woman’s hurts.”

My tears were slowing now and the regular beat of his heart under my cheek was very soothing. His nightshirt was soaked where I had cried into it, but I thought that this was a small price for him to pay after what he had done to me.

I yawned, suddenly and horrifically.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” he said. “You must be exhausted.” And his arms began to loosen from around me.

I was exhausted, of course, and it was all his fault, but for some odd reason I didn’t want him to let me go.

I cuddled closer into his warmth, muttered something like, “Hold me,” and dropped like a stone into the depths of healing sleep.

* * *

When I awoke the following morning, bright sunlight was peeking in through the slats of the blinds on the windows. I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and was horrified to discover that it was ten o’clock in the morning.

I was alone in the bed.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept until ten in the morning. I had probably never in my life slept until ten in the morning.

How mortifying, I thought. What a slovenly way to start my new life at Winterdale Park.

And where was Philip?

I got out of bed and went to one of the long windows that looked out on the back of the house. I opened the blinds and found myself facing the beautiful park for which Winterdale was justly famous.

The view in the morning sunlight was breathtaking. A broad grass path led from the stone terrace behind the house to a castellated belvedere to a yew-fringed bowling green. Beyond the bowling green the park was planted with beeches, oaks, chestnuts, and cedars surrounding a rather large ornamental lake with a small island in the middle, which was crowned with a pavilion.

Running along the grassy path near the bowling green, a blue ribbon in her golden hair and her dog at her heels, was Anna. She was laughing.

A lump came into my throat.

“Ah, you’re awake, my lady.” It was Betty, coming into the room with a tray of chocolate and some toast.

I swung around to face her. “I’m so embarrassed, Betty. I’ve never slept this late in my life. You should have awakened me.”

“Well now, you had cause, my lady,” my maid replied comfortably, “and his lordship said to let you sleep, so I did.”

I drank my chocolate, ate my toast, dressed in a pretty pale yellow morning dress and went downstairs to meet the housekeeper.

I spent the rest of the morning with Mrs. Frome being given a tour of the house. To a girl who had lived all her life in a simple brick gentleman’s house, the state apartments of Winterdale Park were intimidatingly magnificent. I don’t believe I had ever seen so much marble in all my life.

Fortunately, the family rooms were more comfortable. The green drawing room downstairs, the one with the Chinese figures, was very formal, but there were two smaller drawing rooms on the second floor that were more comfortable-looking. It was in one of those rooms that I saw Catherine’s pianoforte.

Seventeenth-century Italian landscapes and great gilt mirrors predominated as wall decorations in most of the rooms I viewed.

It was almost lunchtime when I finished my tour, and I thanked Mrs. Frome for her time and went out onto the terrace to see if Anna was still in the park. She and Nanny were just coming in.

“Georgie, Georgie, Georgie!” Anna called to me excitedly. “Do you know what Philip had made for me?”

“No,” I said. “What?”

“A swing!”

My eyes swung to Nanny. “A swing?”

Anna’s nurse nodded. “That is right, Miss Georgiana . . . that is to say,
my lady
.”

“Don’t you dare to call me my lady,” I said fiercely. “I shall always be Miss Georgiana to you, Nanny. Is that clear?”

She smiled at me, her raisinlike eyes twinkling. “Aye. It’s clear.” Her smile grew more radiant. “It’s true. His lordship is having a part of the garden made over especially for Miss Anna’s use. The swing is already there, and there will be a small barn for her donkey, and he has said that if she wants any other animals, he will have housing built for them, too.”