A Marriage of Inconvenience (21 page)

“I see.” To Lucy’s surprise, she didn’t especially want him to do so. His presence was the most comforting thing she had in this strange new life. James was quite simply her closest friend. She wondered if it was odd to think of her husband in such terms, especially after the intimacies they had just shared. Yet even though those intimacies had been as disturbing as they had been pleasurable, she trusted him and felt safer the closer she was to him.

“However,” he continued, his voice strangely diffident, “if it’s agreeable to you, I’d like to stay. I’ve found that sharing sleep with another person—a person one is fond of, at least—is a…a most agreeable experience.”

She glanced toward him and was caught by the look of vulnerability on his face. Never before had she seen James look bashful, as if he needed something from her or anyone else. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll…I’ll try.”

He made room for her on the bed and pulled back the covers in invitation. “If you find you cannot sleep, I’ll be happy to leave you alone in the future. Only—I do hope you like it.”

She hadn’t always slept alone, though this would be very different. “When I was a child, I shared a bed with my sister Margaret,” she said, then wished the words unspoken. She didn’t want to remind James of how poor she had been as a child. He had certainly never had to share a bed with a sibling because his family couldn’t afford beds for everyone, nor been glad of the company because the house was cold and the blankets threadbare.

“And?” he said, looking untroubled by her revelation.

She shrugged. The motion made her self-conscious about her nudity, and she instinctively tried to cover herself with her hands. “I hope you don’t kick and thrash in your sleep the way she always did, but I was always glad to have another person there. I had nightmares, when I was little.”

“But not now?”

“Not very often.”

“Good. But if you have any, I’ll be here.” One corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “We should probably put our nightclothes on. I like you as you are, but the maid who brings our fresh water tomorrow might find us shocking.”

Relieved, Lucy retrieved her nightgown and pulled it over her head and watched out of the corner of her eye as James did the same with his nightshirt. It seemed a shame to cover his slim, muscular form, and she wondered if he would let her sketch him nude…she blushed at her own thoughts and began rebraiding her hair.

“Must you?” he asked. “It’s so beautiful loose.”

“It would be tangled into knots by morning,” she said.

“I understand.” His voice was tinged with regret. “But I shall look forward to taking it down again soon.”

She snuffed out the candles, and they lay down together on the big, comfortable mattress. When Lucy curled onto her side, James rolled behind her and caught her in a loose embrace, one hand resting gently on her abdomen. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It
was
good to sleep together. But she wondered how he knew it.

“James?”

“What is it?” he said, his voice a little drowsy.

“If you don’t mind my asking…” she began tentatively.

“Lucy, you can say anything to me.” Now he sounded firm, awake. “We’re to be honest, remember?”

She did. At least, she meant to be as honest as she possibly could. “How did you know you liked to share a bed with someone else? It’s not as though you ever would’ve needed to share with family. That is—I know it isn’t the first time you’ve done this, but I gather it isn’t customary to stay in the same bed thereafter. At least, not if you can afford separate beds.”

“Ah.” She felt him nuzzle her, kiss the back of her head. “Are you sure you want to know about my past?”

She stiffened slightly. “Is it so very dreadful?”

“Compared to most men’s? Not at all. In fact, I’m sure some of my peers would consider me quite laughably inexperienced, if they knew my whole history.”

“Then why would I not want to know?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “I’ve only ever lain with three women—that is, four. Four, now.” His hand tightened at her waist for a moment, and Lucy had a brief, uncomfortable sensation of being a number noted in his accounts book. “For a man in my position, that’s a very low number. But the third…she was important.”

“You loved her,” Lucy said, then wondered with a stab of sudden envy if she ought to have used present tense.

“Yes.” It was barely more than a whisper.

She had no right to be jealous. It wasn’t as though she loved James. She didn’t think she loved Sebastian anymore, but she certainly had in the past. Of course, she and Sebastian had never—but if she accepted that James had coupled with other women before his marriage, she had no right to complain about his sentiments toward them. Yet she was jealous. She wanted him to speak of
her
with that quiet intensity. She almost regretted her question, but she couldn’t leave her curiosity unsatisfied now.

“Who was she?” Lucy asked.

“Her name was Eleanor Talbot. She’s Lady Langley now. She married a few months ago.”

“Lady Langley,” she repeated. “So—she’s—she’s not a—”

“She is a woman of good family and excellent character, and not a member of the
demimondaine,
” James said, correctly interpreting her stammers. “I was not her keeper, and she was not my mistress. She—when I turned twenty-one and took my seat in the Lords, she was there in Town, recently widowed. Mr. Talbot had been an MP, and Eleanor kept up the salons she’d begun hosting while he was alive. I went, of course. All the Whigs of note were there, and I wanted to build connections. So we met, we talked—and I suppose she took a fancy to me. I would never have had the effrontery to approach
her,
boy that I was.”

Lucy couldn’t help but smile to hear him refer to himself as having been a boy only three years before, but his words immediately suggested another question. “So she was—was she older than you, then?”

“Thirteen years older.”

She quickly worked the sum. “She was thirty-four?” Her voice rose in amazement.

“Hardly an ancient age.” James sounded amused, but a trifle impatient, as well. “No one would remark upon the difference if the man were the elder—it’s not half the difference between your cousin and Lord Almont.”

“The only reason no one is remarking upon their age difference is that he can hardly marry a woman near his own age if he wishes to get an heir.”

“True. But still, you talk as though four-and-thirty is a great age. A woman of thirty-four is still young and beautiful.”

“If my mother were alive today, she’d be thirty-six,” Lucy said. Younger than James’s Eleanor, in fact, who must be thirty-seven now. How could her husband have loved a woman older than her mother? Though Lucy was only six years younger than James, she must seem the veriest child to him.

“Good God—she was eighteen when you were born?”

“Yes, just as I am now.”

“You’re so young,” he said, sounding dismayed.

“So are you,” Lucy pointed out, a little annoyed. She was hardly too young to marry, nor too young for James by any reasonable standard.

“I know. And I’m not saying you’re too young. It’s simply rather startling to realize that your mother wouldn’t yet be forty. My parents were older than most when they met, because my father was well into his forties when he returned from India. Of course, like our dear neighbor, he couldn’t choose a woman his own age if he hoped to pass on his title, but my mother was eight-and-twenty when they married.”

“How did she happen to still be unwed? She was so beautiful, and an earl’s daughter.”

“Because my grandfather, the earl before my uncle, had no money. My mother lacked a dowry, and so she received no suitable offers until my father came along. Even then, I’m not sure my grandfather quite approved of this upstart Sassenach—”

“What’s a Sassenach?”

James chuckled. “A rather impolite Gaelic term for an Englishman.”

“Ah.”

“Not what my grandfather had in mind for my mother, needless to say. But my parents fell in love—it sounds incredible, given how different they were in age and experience, but they did—and my mother pleaded her case. The fact that my father could provide funds enough to restore Dunmalcolm and the Gordons to solvency helped, though.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And it worked out well. My parents were happy. I wish they were still here, but at least they were happy for the time they had.”

“I wish my parents had been happy,” Lucy said softly. “I suppose they must have been, at the beginning, or they never would’ve eloped, but by the time I can remember, they were miserable. My mother would
not
have been young and beautiful at thirty-four. I remember her as…tired and worn. And she was only twenty-seven when she died.”

He clutched her in a closer embrace. “I promise you, that will not be your fate. You won’t die young, and twenty years from now you will still be toasted as the beautiful Lady Selsley.”

She was touched, but she shook her head. “You cannot promise me any such thing. You may be a powerful man, but I don’t think you can control whether I live out the next two decades, nor how I will look at the end of that time.”

James sighed. “I know—though I do wish I could.”

“You wish to be God, then?”

“Not God of the whole world, no. But perhaps a demigod, with power to care for my own. Wouldn’t you, if you could?”

“I suppose. I’d never thought of such a thing before.” Lucy realized that her husband, so powerful already, ached for yet more power, and it troubled her, for his sake. He didn’t seem capable of cruelty, so she couldn’t picture him abusing or exploiting those under his control—including herself. But she worried his hunger to control his world would only make him suffer more when inevitably some tragedy or disaster struck.

“One thing I can promise you,” James said soberly, “is that you will never be so poor, nor so worn out from too much childbearing, as your mother was. Both of which should go a long way toward preserving your health and youth.”

“That’s so.” Lying there with her own new husband, Lucy wondered about her parents and their marriage as she’d never thought to do as a child. “I wonder why my parents had so many children—a baby a year, essentially, and she was increasing again when she died. My parents weren’t happy, not at all. They were always good and kind to us—well, Mother could be short-tempered, but I know she meant to be kind—but they were bitter against each other.”

“And?”

She waved her hands in the darkness, embarrassed by what she was trying to say and looking for the best words. “I cannot imagine doing this—this
coupling
with someone I wasn’t kindly disposed toward. So much intimacy would be…abhorrent.” It was startling enough with James, whom she liked as well as she ever had any man other than Sebastian.

“Ah, well…” His hand twitched restlessly against her stomach, and she got the sense he was looking for the right words on his own account. “It’s a powerful physical urge, and perhaps your parents still desired each other long after the rest of their affection had died. And…to tell the truth, it’s possible to use one’s body as a weapon, almost, and not only in the obvious case of rape. It can be about power, control.”

Lucy shuddered. Her poor parents. She hoped it had been the former, that their bed had contained the last remnants of their affection.

“Don’t worry, Lucy. It’ll never be so, for us. I promise.”

“Has it ever been so, for you?” she asked quietly.

“No.” His voice held the casual assurance of truth.

“Then how do you know it can be?”

“Because some men like to boast of their exploits,” he said, dry and cynical. “Some of them are all too revealing about the ugliness of their motives. There was a set when I was at Oxford…” Lucy felt him shudder. “When I was just seventeen or eighteen and didn’t really know what they were, some of them tried to cultivate me, I suppose because they thought my title and fortune would add a certain cachet to their ranks. They took me to a particular brothel in London—I don’t want to tell you the things I saw there, but suffice it to say I decided I would never lie with a woman unless I was certain she wanted to be there. No prostitutes, no mistresses, no one who took me to her bed because my money obliged her to do so.”

Lucy frowned in the darkness. In a sense, his money had obliged her to marry him—she couldn’t refuse an offer of such obvious benefit to her brothers. She had yielded her body to him because such were the obligations of her marriage vows. No wonder he had been so anxious that she feel pleasure, and so disappointed and hurt by her fears and resistance. But it wasn’t only duty and obligation that bound her here, and she must make him understand that.

“James?” she said softly.

“Yes?”

“I want to be here.” As she spoke she realized there was no place in all the world she’d rather be.

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Of course not,” she said firmly. “I’m with you.” She’d very nearly said
I love you,
and she wondered at herself, because that couldn’t possibly be the case, but then she couldn’t think at all because he had turned her to face him and was kissing her, lingering and deep. She sank her hands into his hair and gave herself up to him, and sore as she was, if he had wanted her again she would’ve given herself gladly, and she was almost angry when he pulled away.

“Lucy?” he murmured, resting his forehead against hers.

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Truly? You don’t wish I were Eleanor?” She wished the words unsaid as soon as they were spoken. She had no right to demand anything of him, and what would she do if the answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear?

He shook his head. “I don’t. Even a fortnight ago I might’ve, but not now. I’ll be honest with you—I promised you that. I wanted to marry her, and I was heartbroken when she refused me. But she was right. It was for the best. I can already tell you’re going to make a wonderful viscountess—I can’t wait to show you London—and I was telling the truth when I called you beautiful. I’m a lucky man.”