Enchanting Pleasures (26 page)

“Wait!” she half shouted.

Quill turned about as his hand reached for the door handle.

“What is it, Gabby? I have a number of arrangements to make.”

She stood up and walked toward him, ignoring her shaky knees and stopping only when she stood a hairbreadth away. Then she put her hands on his chest, spreading her fingers against his warmth.

“I think we should talk further,” she said carefully, ignoring the churning sensation in her stomach. “Not”—she shook her head when he opened his mouth to protest—“Not about when we consummate this marriage. I have no objection to your plans in that regard.”

Gabby’s mouth curved into a faint smile. “I am no siren, Quill, to lure you into bedding me when you are distraught by grief for your papa.” She paused, but Quill said nothing, just stared at her with his shadowed eyes.

“Sometimes grief is easier if one shares it.” Gabby lowered her eyes and twisted one of the silver-plated buttons on the front of Quill’s coat. “I realize that my father is still alive, and so I can have no true understanding of your feelings. But I did lose a dearly beloved friend, in my childhood. His name was Johore, and I loved him very much. And after he died …”

Quill was hardly listening. Gabby’s friend Johore had died of a fever. He heard that. But she was standing too close for rational thought. He could smell drifts of jasmine rising from her perfumed skin, like airy promises of delight.

“You see,” Gabby was saying with sweet earnestness, “we are married, Quill. And I don’t believe it matters when we consummate the marriage. What matters is that we speak without anger to each other.”

Quill gave his head a brutal shake. How the hell did Gabby turn the conversation into a discourse on marriage? “When one is angry, one speaks with anger,” he pointed out.

“It is best to keep that anger where it belongs,” Gabby said. Her beautiful brown eyes were warm with sympathy. “You are not really angry with me, Quill, and yet you sounded enraged, as if I had done something wrong.”

Quill felt like a five-year-old hauled in front of a nurse to admit his shortcomings. Yet common sense agreed with her. “You are likely correct,” he said, breaking the silence. “I should not have spoken angrily to you, Gabby, and I apologize.”

He stepped backward and her hands fell away from his chest, leaving a momentary, and unwelcome, coolness there. He bowed. “Please accept my apologies, madam.”

“Madam? Why do you call me that?” Gabby was worrying her lower lip in confusion, turning it a deep cherry red.

Quill shrugged, trying in vain to regain his self-possession. “You are a madam now. You are Viscountess Dewland.”

“Yes,” Gabby said. “But
you
need not address me so, Quill.”

He shrugged again and backed up, his hand searching behind him for the door handle. “Have we talked sufficiently?”

Gabby faltered. It was still wrong. But she couldn’t
make
him talk, could she? She swallowed. She could try again. Not for nothing had her father called her pigheaded.

“No, we have not talked sufficiently,” she said, turning about and perching on the edge of the bed. She avoided her husband’s eyes, guessing that courtesy would not allow Quill to leave the room without a proper farewell.

Reluctantly, Quill felt a smile tugging at his mouth. She was stubborn, his new wife. She wasn’t going to let him stamp out, full of self-righteous male indignation.

He walked over, the toes of his boots rapping on the wooden floor. For a moment he stood looking down at her, and then he, too, sat on the edge of the bed. His rational self told him loud and clear that sitting on a bed—or near a bed—with Gabby was an extremely foolish action.

Her eyes were liquid with sympathy. Quill smothered a sense of irritation. He hated to be pitied. But this was his wife. Gabby would likely pity him for the rest of his life once she knew the extent of his injuries. And there was nothing he could do about it.

“I don’t like to be pitied,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Gabby blinked. “It’s a natural feeling,” she said. “You loved your father, and he’s dead. How could I not feel sorry that you have lost something so precious?”

Quill didn’t know what to say to that. He was silent.

After a moment, Gabby broke the silence. “Quill, you have to start speaking more frequently, or we’ll spend our married life twiddling our thumbs!”

“Luckily, I like to hear you speak.” His joke fell rather flat.

Gabby snorted. “There’s no point in speaking to oneself. I should like to hear
you
speak. Why are you in such a foul mood?”

Quill said nothing.

“I assume,” Gabby said, with a small edge to her voice, “that you didn’t really mean to make me out to be a wanton seducer and you no more than an innocent lad from the country?”

He turned his head and chuckled, despite himself. “Did I?” he said, with emphatic innocence. “Surely not!”

“You did!” Gabby retorted. “I felt like some sort of a…
très-coquette
who had approached you on the street.”

“What do you know about streetwalkers, Gabby?”

“Very little, and you know it. Since you are aware that I am not experienced in these things, why did you try to make me feel…like that? Indecent? It was not well done of you.”

Ruefulness warred with shock in Quill’s eyes. “Damn it, Gabby,” he managed, “do you always speak whatever is on your mind?”

“Speak the truth and shame the devil,” Gabby said. “As my father maintains.”

“I apologize,” Quill said, feeling his way. “I never wished to make you feel indecent, Gabby. I felt remorseful because…because we will not share a chamber until after my father’s burial.

“Oh, hell and damnation, Gabby, I need to tell you something.” Quill groaned.

Gabby put a hand on his as it lay on the counterpane between them. He stared down for a moment and then interlaced his fingers into hers, holding her hand tightly.

“I can’t make love to you, Gabby,” he said huskily. “I would give the world to fall backward on this bed right now, but I can’t do it.”

There was a pause. And then Gabby said, “Why not?”

Quill laughed shortly. “Why not indeed? I married you under false pretenses, Gabby. You could annul the marriage.” The muscles in his jaw were clenched tight.

Gabby had turned very pale. “Are you unable to…to have relations, Quill?”

“Better that I was,” he said bitterly. “Then it wouldn’t be in front of me, like a carrot before a damned donkey.”

“I don’t understand.”

His fingers were clenched so hard on hers that her hand felt bloodless. “How—
why
can’t you have relations with me, Quill?” She felt hot, her mind groping stupidly for explanations, none of which were pleasant. Could it be that he didn’t desire her enough to perform? She had heard of that from maids as well. Aye, men couldn’t do their part if the woman didn’t appeal to them.

Quill didn’t answer her. Perhaps he didn’t care to hurt her feelings.

She cleared her throat. “Is it something to do with me, Quill? Because you needn’t tell me if—” She wanted to know and she didn’t want to know. She felt as if her heart were breaking right in two, a blinding pain in her chest. It seemed her father was right when he thanked God for giving him a man who would take his daughter to wife sight unseen.

“It has nothing to do with you,” Quill said heavily. “I tried to tell you before we wed, Gabby. When I was injured in that accident, I didn’t completely heal.”

“Oh,” Gabby breathed.

“I am still functional,” he said, his tone bitterly dry. “But there are consequences each time I make love.”

“Consequences?” Gabby echoed. Against all odds, her heart was lightening.

“Have you ever heard of a migraine, Gabby? Some people refer to it as a megrim.”

Gabby thought about it. “No.”

“A migraine is a type of headache,” Quill explained. “A very severe headache, accompanied by nausea and vomiting that lasts three to five days. I am incapacitated during that time.”

“Is there nothing that can be done?” Gabby’s tone was appalled.

“If I stay in a darkened room and eat almost nothing, it goes away more quickly.”

“But is there no medical remedy?”

Quill shook his head.

“I didn’t know …” Gabby whispered. “Were you in pain when we were in the library?” She raised agonized eyes to his. “You should have told me, Quill!”

His mouth took on a sensual, crooked curve. “Did I appear to be in pain?”

“Yes—no?”

At that a chuckle escaped. “I
was
in pain, Gabby. But not that kind of pain.”

A large hand touched her cheek. Gabby pushed it from her face. “Don’t do that, Quill! I can’t think if you start touching me. What kind of pain are you talking about?”

Her eyes were the color of autumn leaves, Quill thought. Nut-brown. Words didn’t seem available to catch the way they changed with the light. He leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue making a ravishing foray into Gabby’s mouth.

She gasped, a small sound, easily silenced. He caught her lip between his teeth, caught a softness that stole his breath and drove a shiver down his body. Then he undid the tie at her waist and pushed the robe off her shoulders. She gasped again.

“Am I in pain, Gabby?” His voice was a husky murmur, low and unsteady. A hand clasped her cheek, fingers tracing the curve of a delicate ear.

“No,” Gabby said. A rose flush crept up her cheekbone, but she twisted away from his hands and mouth. “You are distracting me. If you weren’t in pain in the library, then what causes these headaches? I don’t understand.”

Quill almost reached out, but stopped himself. He was trying to avoid the truth. “I get the headaches after intercourse,” he said flatly.

Gabby blinked uncertainly.

“Connubial relations. Conjugal felicity.” Quill racked his mind for more euphemisms for the event. “Intercourse,” he repeated. But Gabby was twisting her hands together, and Quill grasped the truth. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Of course I do!” Gabby rushed into speech, stung by embarrassment. “I just am not quite certain about the details, perhaps. I have a general idea. And I should like to point out that there are undoubtedly other young women who have exactly my level of knowledge. My mother died when I was born, you know. And one couldn’t expect my father to explain the intimacies of marriage!”

Her father’s advice had been blunt and to the point:
If he doesn’t die of your insipid jabber before marriage, he’ll go to drink after. Better he than I. So for my sake, keep your tongue between your teeth till he’s properly leg-shackled
. That was the sum total of her father’s marital advice.

The memory made her falter. “I don’t know precisely what you are referring to,” she admitted, weaving her fingers together in her lap. She cleared her throat. “Could you explain it to me? I would hate to cause you to have a headache without knowing.” She was so embarrassed that her face had taken on a fevered look.

Quill reached out an arm and pulled her against him. Then he smoothly lifted her into his lap, stifling a groan as enchanting curves, covered only by sheer cotton, settled onto his legs.

Gabby didn’t look up at him. She pressed her fingertips to her cheeks, trying to calm what she knew must be an unattractive ruddy flush.

Quill’s hand wandered from her neck to her breast. Gabby startled and her back instinctively arched, pushing her breast into Quill’s hand. A hoarse noise escaped his throat.

“Are you in pain now? Does that hurt?” She sounded as if she were ready to leap from his lap.

Quill almost laughed. “No.” He couldn’t speak for a moment because he was savoring the way her body trembled as he rubbed a thumb across her nipple. Not to mention what was happening to his body.

“Do you know, Gabby, I’ve never been married before.”

“I do know that,” Gabby choked. Perhaps she should stop him from—from what he was doing. It was hard to think clearly.

As if he heard her thought, he did stop. His fingers stilled, cupped around the weight of Gabby’s breast. Her body quivered like the string of a violin waiting for the gentle sweep of the bow.

“I’ve never been married before, and thus I’ve never made love,” Quill said carefully. “I’ve had relations with women. They say there’s quite a difference.” Actually, the only person with whom he had ever discussed such an intimate topic was an old school friend, Alex Foakes, the earl of Sheffield and Downes. In a fit of mild intoxication one evening, Alex had said making love to one’s wife made intercourse with other women look clay-cold, like being frozen to the bone.

“Oh, quite,” Gabby replied.

He could tell she had no idea what he was talking about. Gabby was leaning against his chest and he couldn’t see her face, but he would bet anything that she was chewing on her lower lip.