At Last Comes Love (29 page)

She searched his face, but it gave nothing away. There was no smile in his eyes, which looked very black in the candlelight. Perhaps a day that had brought her surprising happiness had been nothing to him but a means of keeping his home so that his son could grow up there.

He was indeed still a stranger.

“Did it for you?” she asked, rather than answer his question and be left feeling foolish if he said nothing in return to match it. She would take her cue from him.

“All of it was … wonderful,” he said, raising his glass. “Down to the last drop.”

She noticed the pause, as if he had found it difficult to say the one word. Had he said it only to reassure her? Would he have volunteered the information if she had not asked?

But such anxieties were pointless now. They had married each other for reasons of their own, none of them to do with any tender feelings for each other. And the deed was done. They were married.

Until death did them part.

He sipped his wine, and she did likewise.

“But you did not answer
my
question,” he said.

“I suppose,” she said, “I have been like every other woman on her wedding day. There is something very special about being a bride, about attracting attention for all the right reasons—for a change. I shamelessly enjoyed every moment of it. I wanted the whole world to look at me and rejoice with me.”

Oh, dear. She wished she could eliminate that final sentence. But it had been spoken, and to emphasize the fact, there was a short silence following it.

She looked rather jerkily down into her glass and took another sip.

“I am not in love with you, of course,” she said firmly. “But I
am
glad I married you. For some time I have wanted to be a married lady, to have a home of my own, perhaps to have—”

She took a sip of wine that actually turned into a gulp.

“I believe I was twenty,” he said, “when I promised my grandfather that I would be married by the time I was thirty and would have a son in the nursery by the time I was thirty-one. I was still young enough then that it seemed safe to promise something for ten years in the future. It was an eternity away. What twenty-year-old can imagine that he will ever be thirty? Or forty? Or eighty? However it was, I have been a little late on the first promise, but there is still time to keep the second. Not that I can guarantee a son, of course. Or any child at all for that matter. But I can try.”

Margaret took another gulp from her glass.

“Wine,” he said, “makes some people sleepy. I hope that is not true of you, Maggie.”

He reached out and took the glass from her hand as she turned her head to look at him. Had he actually just made a
joke
?

And
sleepy
? She had never felt farther from sleep in her life.

“Or of you,” she said.

He half smiled as he set down both their glasses beside him, and it struck her as it had once before that a smile transformed him. Had he smiled a great deal in the past—
before
? Lady Carling's description of him as a carefree, somewhat wild young man suggested that he had.

Would he smile more in the future?

“I am going to see to it,” she said, “that you learn to smile again.”

His smile first froze and then faded.

“Are you?” he said. “Have I forgotten how?”

“I think you have,” she said, “except on the rare occasion when one takes you by surprise. You are very handsome when you smile.”

“And ugly when I do not,” he said. “You have your own interests at heart, then, do you, Maggie? You would prefer to look at a handsome husband than an ugly one?”

“I would prefer to look at a happy husband than a brooding one,”

she said.

“
Am
I unhappy?” he asked her. “Or
brooding
?”

She nodded and lifted a hand to cup his cheek.

“I think,” she said, “you have been unhappy for a long time. I am going to change that.”

Bold, rash words. He did not love her. She was not even sure he liked her. But she was not talking about love. She was talking about affection and companionship and compassion and … well,
love
. But not romantic love. She was going to love him. For her own sake she was going to do it. She had never been able to contemplate living with someone she did not love.

He set his hand over the top of hers and she swallowed.

“Are you?” he said.

She nodded.

Somehow his head had moved closer to hers. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.

“How?” He was almost whispering. It was hardly surprising. Half the air had suddenly disappeared from the room.

He,
of course
, being a man, had immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was talking about the marriage bed.

“Oh,” she said, her voice breathless, “I do not know if I can make you happy in
that
way,Duncan . You may believe I am experienced because of what I told you about my past, but really I am not. It was a long, long time ago, and even then—”

His lips pressed against hers. They were parted, and she instantly tasted warmth and moistness and wine. Her hand trembled against his cheek, and he held it there more firmly. He drew his head back a few inches.

“If I wanted experience, Maggie,” he said, “I would go to a brothel.”

Which was not at all a nice thing to say. She was not sure she had even heard the word spoken aloud before. But—He was not like
Crispin
, was he?

“Have you often been to one?” she asked, and bit her lip at the same moment as his eyes leapt to life and she was surprised to see laughter in their depths.

He
was
like Crispin. Oh …
men
! If she gave him half a chance, he would start babbling on about loneliness and needs, which women were fortunate enough not to feel.

She did not give him a chance to answer her question.

“But you will not go ever again,” she said. “I shall cut up very nasty indeed if you even
try
it.”

His eyes were still laughing—and they were a warm brown now, the color of a cup of hot, rich chocolate. It was really quite disconcerting, especially when they were only inches from her own.

“I will not need to, will I?” he said. “You have promised to make me happy. And if your lack of experience is making you a little anxious, then we had better see about getting you that experience, had we not?

The sooner the better?”

Oh, goodness!

“Yes,” she said, and then she cleared her throat and spoke more firmly. “Oh,Duncan , this is very ridiculous. I am
embarrassed
. I am thirty years old and embarrassed. We ought to have gone upstairs as soon as everyone left. By now it would all be over.”

The laughter in his eyes, far from fading, actually deepened. He turned his head to plant a kiss on her palm before releasing her hand.

“All over?”he said. “As
in forever and ever, amen
?”

“And now I feel stupid as well as embarrassed,” she said, “and I do not like the feeling one bit. I am going to bed whether you are ready or not.”

She got firmly to her feet and shook out the folds of her wedding dress.

“Maggie,” he said, getting up to stand before her. He took both her hands in his and set them against his chest, palm in. “You were not ready when our families left. Neither of us was, actually. We needed some wine and some conversation. We have had both, and now I believe it is time for sex.”

Oh, she
wished
he would not use that word. Did he not know that it was not an everyday part of a lady's vocabulary? She could feel her cheeks grow hot. Her inner thighs were aching, and something was pulsing deep inside her.

And it was all the fault of
that word
.

“Yes,” she said coolly. “Yes, it is.”

And she lifted her face and kissed him on the lips. Open-mouthed and none too swiftly. She darted the tip of her tongue across his lips.

The pulsing became a throbbing.

“Come, then,” he said, and he offered her his arm.

It seemed strange—oh, very strange indeed—to walk upstairs with him, to stop outside her private apartment and have him open the door into her dressing room—her inner sanctum, her private world.

No longer private, though. There would
be
no private space for her ever again. Even her body would no longer be her private sanctuary.

Her wedding day had turned into her wedding night.

“I shall return in fifteen minutes,” he said, stepping back to allow her to enter the room and then closing the door behind her.

Stephen had given him the use of a guest dressing room. His bags had been taken there earlier.

Her apartment already seemed different, Margaret thought as she undressed and her maid unpinned her hair and brushed it out—though nothing in it had changed. There were, of course, her trunks and bags, almost completely packed and standing against the far wall.

This was the last night Merton House would be her home. Yet even tonight her rooms were not her own.

She was waiting for her bridegroom.

For the consummation of their marriage.

For
sex
, to use his disturbingly graphic word.

She dismissed her maid with a few of her fifteen minutes left and went into her bedchamber. Two candles burned on the side tables.

The curtains had been drawn across the window—usually she left them open. The bedcovers had been turned back—on both sides.

Margaret clasped both hands about one of the bedposts at the foot of the bed and rested a cheek against it.

She was a married lady. She was Margaret Pennethorne, Countess of Sheringford. It was quite irrevocable now.

This one day, which had seemed quite wonderful as she lived through it, had changed her life for all time.

Oh,
let
her have done the right thing.

There was a light tap on the bedchamber door and it opened.

18

A WONDERFUL day!

Hadit been?

It had certainly had its high points,Duncan conceded. If it had not restored him to complete favor with the
ton
, at least it had allowed him back into the fold. No one could attend his wedding today and then refuse to receive him tomorrow, after all.

It had certainly delighted his mother. He could not remember seeing her as genuinely happy as she had been today. It had restored the belief he had taken for granted as a boy, before his father died, that she loved him totally and unconditionally. Perhaps he had been right then and wrong more recently to think her merely vain and shallow.

And today had brought his grandfather out of Claverbrook House.

He had looked quite his old self too—older, it was true, and just as fierce as he had ever been, but with that indefinable look in his eyes that was almost, but not quite, a twinkle. He had never used to be a recluse.Duncan wondered suddenly if his running off with Laura and abandoning Caroline had had anything to do with making him into a hermit. Perhaps he had done more than disappoint his grandfather on that occasion—perhaps he had crushed his spirit. Perhaps his grandfather loved him after all.

Perhaps tomorrow morning, his grandfather's birthday, he should tell him at least as much about that elopement as he had told Maggie.

Perhaps he should tell his mother too. A promise made to Laura was one thing. His family—and their bruised love for him—was another.

Make sure you cherish her, his grandfather had said when he was leaving.

… cherish …

And that brought him back to the original thought—
a wonderful
day
. He had not married her in order to cherish her. And of course he felt guilty about that even though he had been almost completely frank with her about his motives. What he had
not
told her—what he had deliberately withheld—did not really matter.

Even so, he felt guilty, for there
was
more to tell. And she was his wife.

I wanted the whole world to look at me and rejoice with me.

Those words had given him a nasty jolt.

And now he was jolted again when Smith cleared his throat.

“Do you want a nightshirt, then, m'lord?” he asked. “Or just your dressing gown?”

Duncangave him a hard look. He supposed he possessed a nightshirt or Smith would not have offered it. But when had his valet ever known him to wear one?

“The dressing gown,” he said.

“The new one, m'lord?” Smith asked.

“Of course the new one,” Duncan said, getting to his feet and checking his jawline to make sure his face was smooth—not that Smith ever left any stubble behind when he shaved him. “Do you think I bought it just to sit in a wardrobe until the moths get at it?”

He was feeling irritable, he realized as he pushed his arms into the sleeves and then slipped out of his breeches and drawers. Irritable and lusty. Irritable
because
he was lusty. It did not seem right somehow.

One ought to feel more than just lust for one's bride.

Didhe? He searched hopefully in his mind for some tender feelings and discovered with something bordering on relief that indeed there was
something
there. He had grown to rather like her as well as admire her. He could perhaps grow fond of her if he tried—and try he must and would.

If the truth were told, he had felt something like a lump in his throat when she had spoken those words earlier—
I wanted the whole world
to look at me and rejoice with me
. He had wanted to gather her up into his arms—rather as he always did whenever Toby, during his insecure moments between play and mayhem, tugged at his breeches and asked him if he really,
really
loved him.

“I'll see you in the morning,” he told his valet, his voice abrupt and still sounding irritable as he left the dressing room and made his way back along the corridor to Maggie's bedchamber.

He was certainly feeling lusty. Guilt had not affected him there. She was delicious even when she did not taste of wine. But when she did—as she had in the drawing room a short while ago—she was quite intoxicating. He did not suppose she realized how close she had come to being tumbled on the drawing room carpet when
she
had kissed
him
and traced the seam of his lips with her tongue.