The Ideal Wife (5 page)

And yet her father had left them all helpless ultimately. His debts, they had discovered after his death, were appallingly huge, his creditors panting like wolves at the door. By the time they had sold the house and all its furnishings and paid off the more pressing of the debts, there had been nothing left for Boris. And nothing for the girls either, of course.

Boris had taken himself off in search of his fortune. Abigail had written a bold letter with trembling hand to the girls’ Great-Aunt Edwina—aunt of the second wife, no relation to her at all. And she had mentally held her breath for all of two weeks until the reply came that the girls could go and live with their great-aunt in Bath until they were old enough to seek employment.

Abigail had packed them off on their way after hugging them hard enough to break every bone in their bodies and crying over them enough salt water to drown them. And then she had gone begging to Vicar Grimes, who had found her a position with the Gills.

Mrs. Gill had frowned at the prospect of “gentlemen callers,” as she had termed possible suitors. Not that there had ever been any gentleman to make those calls. None at all. There had never been the chance to meet any.

She was twenty-four years old, Abigail thought, eyeing the bed again with a lurching of the stomach and licking dry lips, and knew nothing at all about gentlemen except that their bodies and minds could disintegrate with alarming totality under the prolonged influence of liquor and other dissipations. And she knew what those bodies looked like—in their disintegrated state, anyway. She had done everything for her father for the final year of his life.

She straightened up hastily when she heard a door open nearby. She should be doing something. Reading a book? But there were none in the room. Brushing her hair? But it was in a braid.

There was a tap at the other side of her dressing room door and it opened before she could call to him to come in. She found herself stranded five feet from the foot of the bed with empty hands and a blank mind.

“Have I kept you up?” he asked, his eyes passing over her long white cotton nightgown.

He was wearing a dark blue brocaded dressing gown. She had not thought to put one on. She felt suddenly naked and had to resist the urge to lift her hands to cover her breasts.

“No,”she said. “It is quite all right, my lord. I have been busy.”

If she had spent the past half-hour dreaming up the most stupid reply she could make to such a question, she thought, mortified, she could hardly have done better. Busy!

“Oh, Abby,” he said, coming toward her, taking her by the shoulders and turning her, “I thought so. Your hair must be very long, is it? Your braid reaches almost to your waist.”

“I mean to have it cut,” she said. “Mrs. Gill’s maid told me just this morning that there is no way of dressing my hair fashionably when it is so long.”

“Then dress it unfashionably,” he said. “It looked very becoming as it was today. May I?”

He did not wait for an answer, but unwrapped the ribbon from the end of the braid and began to unravel the hair. Abigail stood meekly and swallowed awkwardly. She was going to feel even more naked with her hair all down about her.

“Ah,” he said, his hands passing through the ripples that the braiding had created, “it is quite breathtakingly lovely.” He turned her to face him again, and his eyes were laughing down into hers. “You did promise this morning that you would obey me, did you not? Here is my first command, then. You must never cut your hair. Promise me?”

“I have never wished to,” she said. “What if I did not
like it shorter? I could not stick it back on, could I? And it would take years to grow it back again. But I thought you would wish me to be fashionable, my lord.”

“Miles,” he said.

“Miles.”

“And don’t ever braid it at bedtime,” he said. “I want to see it loose, like this.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair to rest them against the back of her head. And he lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck.

“Oh, goodness,” she said, her voice sounding quite unnaturally loud. “I really don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t need to,” he said, raising his head and looking down at her so that she had the sensation of swimming helplessly in the blue depths of his eyes, a mere few inches from her own. “I shall do the doing, Abby. Are you frightened?”

“No, not at all,” she said, her voice blurting out the lie a moment before his mouth came down to cover hers.

It touched hers lightly, warmly. His lips were not closed, but slightly parted. She recoiled, startled, making an audible smacking sound, as if she were kissing the girls for bed. But one hand stayed behind her head while the other circled her waist, and he kissed her again, lingering on her lips, moving his own, holding her head steady as he brought her loosely against him.

Oh, dear good Lord in heaven!

He was all hard-muscled maleness.

Abigail became aware of her arms hanging loosely at her sides, one of them awkward over his. She did not know quite what she should do with them. Let them dangle? Put them about his shoulders as seemed the sensible thing to do?

“Come,” he was saying, his mouth still brushing hers. “Let us lie down. I shall extinguish the candles. You will be more comfortable in the darkness.”

“Yes,” she said. Actually, she thought, she would be more comfortable behind six locked doors, but she did not say the words aloud. A jest seemed to be inappropriate to the moment. Besides, she doubted that she would be able to get so many words past her teeth without their rattling loudly enough to drown out the sound.

She climbed into bed and moved to the far side of it while he blew out the candles. He was not wearing his dressing gown when he joined her, just a nightshirt.

This could prove to be something of a massacre, she thought, and then clamped her teeth together hard. She had not said that aloud, had she?

“Abby,” he said, one arm coming beneath her shoulders and turning her so that she was instantly aware of his nearness, of the warmth of his body. “I don’t want to hurt you. I would like to spend a little time getting you ready. Shall I? Or would you like to have this over with without further delay?” The sound of his voice suggested that he was smiling.

It was all very well for him to joke, she thought. He was not almost blind with terror and embarrassment. “You are the expert,” she said. “I don’t feel quite capable of making decisions.”

He laughed softly, and Abigail clamped her teeth together again, feeling all her neck muscles grow rigid.

Getting her ready involved some slow kissing until she began to relax and hope that perhaps he would be satisfied with that for one night. He must be quite as tired as she. But his hand was stroking over her shoulder, relaxing the muscles there, and down over her breast. And he was slowly undoing the buttons at the front of her nightgown.

And the gown was being nudged off her shoulder and down her arm and his warm hand was cupping her naked breast, stroking lightly over it. His thumb was rubbing gently at her nipple.

As his mouth moved downward to her throat and her breast, her nightgown was being lifted up her legs, which he was touching with light fingertips, and she was lifting her hips by instinct rather than design so that it could be raised to her waist. His hand stroked between her thighs, a little cooler than the flesh there, strong and firm, and very male. And he was reaching behind himself.

“I am going to put a cloth beneath you,” he told her, and she shifted her hips again while he did so, and turned onto her back.

He was leaning over her, smoothing the fingers of one hand over her cheek, across her forehead.

“Just relax,” he said. “If it hurts, Abby, it will be just briefly.”

“Yes,” she said, and wondered that a voice could shake so badly over the uttering of one word.

He was heavy on her, and his own nightshirt was up about his waist. She felt heat flare as his knees came between hers and pushed them wide on the bed and firm hands came beneath her to raise her.

And then it was happening. But there could not be enough room. There could not possibly be.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Please don’t.”

But he kept coming and coming until he was deeply embedded in her body and the sharp pain had not grown into anything unbearable.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Just relax.”

Just relax! Abigail was waiting to die. But it was possible after all, she thought as terror began to recede. There was indeed room. She was his wife. The wedding-night consummation was no longer in the future, but in the past. She felt an enormous relief.

“No, don’t,” she said when he began to withdraw. She was not ready yet to relinquish her sense of triumph.

And he listened to her. He came back into her.

“Hush,” he said. “Just relax. This is what happens.”

What happened lasted for several minutes and took Abigail completely by surprise. She lay still and quiet, fearing that each withdrawal would be the last, until she felt a developing rhythm and knew that the consummation was not yet complete. And she felt and heard the growing wetness of their coupling, the increased comfort as there was no longer the friction of dryness against dryness.

And an ache—an ache that was both pain and pleasure—spread upward into her womb and tautened her breasts and throbbed in her throat so that she wanted to beg and plead with him. Except that for once in her life she did not know the words. She bit down on her lip instead and concentrated her mind on the thrust of his body into hers.

He had lifted most of his weight onto his forearms. But finally he came down heavily on her again, slid his hands beneath her once more, and thrust slowly and deeply into her once, twice, and a third time, turning his head to sigh against her ear.

And he lay still on her, all the weight of his relaxed body bearing her down into the mattress. She ached and ached for a continuation, but he lay still.

“There,” he said, a couple of minutes later, lifting himself away from her, reaching down to draw the cloth up between her legs. His voice sounded gentle again, as if he talked to a child, and faintly amused. “It is over—the great terror. Did I hurt you very badly?”

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

“Liar,” he said. He drew her into his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder, rubbing a hand up and down one of her arms. “It will not hurt again, Abby. I promise. And you will become accustomed to the act itself. I will return to my own room in a few minutes’ time and you can sleep. Does that sound good?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said. “Miles. If you say so.”

He kissed her on the mouth and she listened to his breathing deepen. He was sleeping.

How could he sleep after an earth-shattering experience like that? Abigail did not think she would ever sleep again.

There was a heavy throbbing between her legs. Her nightgown was still down over one shoulder and bunched up about her waist.

His arm was sheltering and comfortable. He smelled good—warm and sweaty, with that cologne smell lingering on his nightshirt.

5

I
T WAS NOT FAIR OF HIM, THE EARL OF Severn thought, waking at some time during the night, to be still in his wife’s bed. She was surely entitled to privacy and rest following what had been something of an ordeal of terror for her.

And he had told her that he would leave. How many hours ago had that been?

And yet, he thought, listening to her quiet breathing, feeling the silkiness of her hair over his arm and hand, smelling its clean soap fragrance, she was asleep and relaxed. Her head was still pillowed on his shoulder. Her one hand, he could feel, was at his waist, beneath his nightshirt.

The experience had been very new for him too. From the age of nineteen he had always chosen his mistresses on the basis of their reputation as skilled courtesans. He had been taught all he knew about the pleasures of the body from those mistresses, having been a virgin himself when he employed the first.

He had not realized that there could be something erotic and deeply satisfying about making love to an innocent, to a woman who lay still on the bed beneath him and confessed to not knowing what to do.

He smiled as he remembered Abigail admitting just that when he first kissed her.

He lifted his free hand to smooth back the hair from her face. A shaft of light slanted across the bed from a chink in the curtains. There was nothing at all beyond the ordinary about her, except her hair, of course, and her eyes. Her breasts were firm and feminine but not large. Her waist was not unusually tiny or her hips particularly shapely. Her legs, though slim, were not long. There was nothing about her that could be called truly beautiful.

And yet he had found the bedding of her wonderfully satisfying. Perhaps it had been the strange novelty of knowing that no other man had been where he had gone. Or perhaps the even greater strangeness of knowing that she was his wife, that he could allow his seed to spring in her without having to be careful not to impregnate her. Or perhaps the new luxury of being able to bed her in the familiar surroundings of his own home.

He did not know what it was. But he did know that for her sake he must remove himself to his own room. She was his for a lifetime. He must not demand service of her more often than once in a night.

He was up on one elbow, his palm beneath her head, when she opened her eyes and gazed sleepily up at him in the near darkness.

“Was I sleeping?” she said. “I thought I would never sleep again.”

“I hurt you badly?” he asked.

“No.” Her hand was still at his waist. “But it was all very strange. It astonished me that you were able to fall asleep immediately after.”

He smiled. “You should have woken me,” he said. “I promised to leave you to relax and rest alone.”

“I must have fallen asleep before I could think to do so,” she said.

He chuckled and lowered his head to kiss her. Her mouth was relaxed and warm from sleep. He lingered over it, nudging her lips apart with his own.

He should go. She was not a mistress, to be kept awake and busy at all hours of the night or day. She was his wife. But it was their wedding night, a night that could be expected to be different from all others. Perhaps tomorrow night he could set the pattern for the rest of their married life.

“Are you sore?” he asked her.

“Sore?”

“Here.” His hand ran down her side and touched the cloth between her legs.

“Oh,” she said. Her voice sounded breathless. “No.”

He lowered his mouth to hers again and pushed the cloth back against the mattress. She was warm, slightly moist. His hand stroked her, played with her, parted her.

This time when he lowered himself on top of her, she opened her legs for him and even lifted them to twine them about his. She did not wince when he put himself inside her, though she did inhale slowly and deeply.

She lay still and felt comfortable beneath him. She had one hand in his hair, one arm loosely about his waist. He rested his cheek against her temple and felt the soft moist heat of her. He wanted this encounter to last for a good long time, he decided, beginning a slow shallow rhythm that he would quicken and deepen when his need outpaced his control.

She neither moved nor spoke during all the minutes that followed. And yet it was not his own isolated pleasure that pounded with the blood through his body and lodged in his mind. Sexual activity had always been for himself. Much as he had appreciated the beauty and charm of his mistresses, much as he had enjoyed the skill of their performances, it had always been just for himself.

But this time, with his wife, on their wedding night, he was very aware of the woman with whom he coupled, very aware of her warm and supple body, of her quiet surrender. He wanted to give her something in return.

“Abby,” he said, moving his head so that his mouth was against hers. “I am going to make you happy. I am going to make you forget your years of loneliness and servitude.”

And he brought himself swiftly to completion, sorry that he had given in to self-indulgence by taking her for a second time.

“You have a greedy husband, my dear,” he said to her after disengaging himself from her body and sitting up at the side of the bed. He lowered her nightgown to the knees. “Forgive me?” He touched her cheek with light fingers. “Sleep well. I’ll not expect you up before noon. I shall leave word that you are not to be disturbed.”

She said nothing as he raised the blankets up over her shoulders, stooped to pick up his dressing gown from the floor, and let himself into her dressing room and through to his own, closing the doors quietly behind him.

He was going to be very well pleased with his marriage, he thought, yawning and climbing into his own cold and empty bed.

He already was very pleased.

Abigail was just the kind of wife he wanted. And more. A good pleasurable deal more.

F
ORTUNATELY
A
BIGAIL HAD
had the forethought to send a small trunk of clothes to Grosvenor Square the morning before. Otherwise, she thought, descending the stairs and looking about her in search of the breakfast room, she would have been forced to wear her wedding dress again, and a pale blue muslin dress with flounces was hardly suitable attire for breakfast.

“This way, my lady,” a footman said, bowing to her.

“Ah, Alistair,” she said, giving him a big smile. “Is it so obvious that I am lost?”

He grinned at her and opened the door. She was feeling quite comfortable, clad in a brown dress with white trimmings, her hair pinned back in its coiled braids. Well, almost comfortable, she thought, putting a spring in her step and smiling at the butler, who stood at the sideboard. Her husband was at the table, a newspaper spread before him. She felt breathless. He got hastily to his feet.

“Good morning, Mr. Watson,” she said. “Good morning, Miles.” She set her hand in his outstretched one and allowed him to seat her at the table.

“I was not expecting you up for hours,” he said. “Could you not sleep?”

Abigail blushed, very aware of the butler standing at the sideboard behind her.

“I slept like the dead after you left,” she said, and blushed even more hotly.

“Watson,” the earl said, looking up, “you may serve her ladyship and leave. I shall ring when we are finished.”

Abigail nodded her head to the eggs and ham and toast and refused the kidneys and sweet cakes and coffee.

“I am always up early,” she told her husband. “I believe there is a mental clock inside my head that cries ‘Cuckoo’ at a certain time, no matter how late I was to bed. Besides, the morning is the loveliest time of day, though it is not always apparent in town, with its buildings and traffic. In the country there is no time like morning. Unless it is the evening after a day’s work—just when the wind has died down and the dusk has begun to fall. Why is it that the wind always stops blowing when evening comes? Have you noticed?”

Her husband had folded his paper and set it beside his plate. He was smiling at her in some amusement.

“Do you like the country?” he asked. “I intend to take you to Severn Park in Wiltshire for the summer. I believe you will enjoy being there.”

“I have something to tell you,” she said in a rush. “I ought to have told you right at the start, and certainly before you married me. In fact, I should not have called upon you at all. I did so under false pretenses.”

“Ah,” he said, resting one elbow on the table and supporting his chin on a lightly clenched fist. He looked at her very directly from his blue eyes. “Confession time?”

“Don’t smile, Miles,” she said. “You will not be amused when I have told you all. Perhaps you will even cast me off. I am sure you will wish to do so.”

His eyes continued to smile, but he said nothing.

“I am not your relative at all,” she said, and felt her heart pounding up into her throat. She had not planned to tell him. Not yet, in any case. She drew breath to continue.

“Yes, you are,” he said quietly. “You are my wife.”

“But apart from that,” she said. His eyes were disturbingly blue. She wished he would not look at her. And she was very glad that it had been dark during the night when he had . . . She could feel herself flushing. “Well,” she continued lamely, “only very distantly related anyway, Miles. I ought not to have called myself your cousin.”

“And this is your greatest confession?” he said, smiling at her.

No, it was not. That was not it at all. But she had turned craven. And perhaps she need never tell him. No one else knew. When her father had died, she had been the only one left to know. Perhaps she need not tell him? What if no one had ever told her? She would be none the wiser, would she? She would not know that she was deceiving him.

“No,” she said, “there is more. There are more of us.”

“More like you?” he said, reaching across the table for her hand and squeezing it. She had not realized until he touched her that her hands were like blocks of ice. “You are one of triplets? Quadruplets?”

“Oh, heaven save the world,” she said. “No. But there are Boris and Bea and Clara.”

“Tell me about them,” he said. He was using his fatherly voice again, talking to her as if she were a child. He sat back in his chair, rested his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

“Boris is my brother,” she said, and swallowed. That was not quite the truth, but she no longer had the courage to tell him the truth. She should have done it, if she was going to do so, as soon as she had sat down at the table and before looking at him. “Beatrice and Clara are my half-sisters. They are still just children. They are Papa’s and my stepmother’s, but she . . .” She picked up a fork from the table and played absently with it. “She passed on.” That was not a total untruth, she thought.

“Where are these children now?” he asked.

“Bea and Clara?” she said. “They are with a great-aunt in Bath. Their great-aunt, not mine. But they are not happy there. She took them in only because there was no alternative, and she subscribes to the ridiculous notion that children are to be seen and not heard.”

“You are fond of them?” he asked.

She glanced down at her hands and replaced the fork beside her plate. She was surprised to see that the plate was empty of all except a few crumbs.

“They are almost like my own children,” she said. “After their mother lef . . . er, was gone, I had the full care of them because Papa was . . . well, indisposed. It broke my heart when I had to set them on the stage and see them on their way to Bath. They have never had a happy life, but at least I used to be there to love them and to allow them to get dirty and to shout and run once in a while.”

“Your brother inherited,” he said, frowning, “and would not care for either you or your sisters?”

“Oh, there was nothing to inherit,” she said, “except debts. Papa was . . . ill, you know, for a long time and was unable to pay his debts. We sold everything and still did not pay them all. Boris is here in London somewhere—I rarely see him. He is determined to make his fortune the quick way.”

“Gambling?” he asked.

“He wants to pay our debts,” she said. “He always wanted something better than Papa would . . . Well, Papa was ill and Boris did not have a chance to do any of the things he would have liked to do.”

He looked at her without speaking.

“Miles,” she said. She was fidgeting with her fork again and set it down. “I thought . . . When you asked me to marry you, that is, I thought . . . That is, everyone knows that you are as rich as Croesus.” She looked up at him in dismay and flushed. “And that is something else you should know about me. I sometimes do not hear the words I am going to speak until my audience is hearing them too. I did not mean to say that. It is none of my concern.”

“It is,” he said. “You are married to a man whom everyone knows to be as rich as Croesus. What do you want me to do for your brother and your sisters, Abby?”

“Oh,” she said, looking up at him in an agony, “I want them to live with me, Miles. The girls, that is. I want them back with me. Is there a large house at Severn Park? I will wager there is. You need never see them. I will keep them out of your way. And they will not be overly expensive, I promise you. They are not accustomed to wealth and will not be demanding. And I will not expect any expensive schooling for them. Indeed, I would not want them away from home to go to school. I would teach them myself.”