Just One Taste (8 page)

J
ack’s face
had lit when she entered the dining room. Delia knew she looked beautiful, even if she’d had to put a great deal of face powder under her eyes to cover up for the sleepless nights. She wore a lilac silk dress which made her irises look purple.

In her first and only Season, poems had been written to her eyes, nonsensical things. Even a music hall song, the lyrics of which were rather racy. She had been mortified, and was greatly relieved when Jack Marbury had asked her to marry him so abruptly.

As a married woman, she’d no longer be the object of such unwanted attention. Delia had done nothing to earn her beauty and found it to be no blessing. People expected so much of her, and she knew herself to be somewhat dull. A disappointment. Her guardian had been strict and she’d been sheltered in the country until she came to London for her Season.

She could go back to Dorset when this was over. The house was hers to do what she wished. She could expand the garden. Do something useful with her days.

She’d go mad without Johnny.

Delia couldn’t stop her lips from trembling, and Jack’s smile faded.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Collapsing in her chair, she signaled to the footmen to hold off dinner. “We must talk.”

“That sounds ominous.” Jack walked around the table and took a seat next to her. She was grateful he didn’t try to touch her. She was going to tell him. Rob Arthur of his advantage. Get all of this over with. Her guilt and confusion might not go away, but she had to be honest.

“I—I only have one earring.”

He looked at her blankly.

“The diamond earrings you wanted me to wear.” She pointed to her bare earlobe.

“You are lovely without diamonds, Delia. Did you misplace it? I think they are insured with Lloyd’s. The policy is in the safe in my study, unless you’ve moved things around.”

“I didn’t even know there was a safe.” She hadn’t known anything about the house for ages. Jack’s Aunt Elizabeth had continued on as its chatelaine, as she’d had the role for almost twenty-five years. Delia couldn’t object, since everything ran like clockwork and the woman was kindness itself. Delia was a seventeen-year-old ignorant nitwit, and soon she was suffering from such ghastly morning sickness she couldn’t get out of bed.

“That’s odd. Arthur should have told you.”

She shut her eyes. When she opened them, she wished Jack didn’t appear so sympathetic. So very handsome. “It’s Arthur I want to talk to you about.”

Jack grinned. “What’s my wretched cousin done now? Stolen the earring?”

“No. But he has it.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t face him, she just couldn’t. She stared at the cutwork on the linen tablecloth, the chased flowers on the heavy silverware. “I went to see him in his rooms.” Surely she didn’t have to spell it out for him. Proper women didn’t visit gentlemen in their homes, even if it was a new century.

Delia had made the biggest mistake of her life. It was bad enough when she thought she was a widow. But then to discover her husband was alive after all—

“Do you love him?”

Startled, Delia looked up to meet his eyes. “No!”

“Good to know,” he murmured. “How long have you been having an affair with him?”

“It isn’t an affair. It was just the once,” she said miserably. “And it was awful. We didn’t even f-finish. I couldn’t bear it—you must believe me! And then the very next day you came home, and I—oh, Jack, I’m so sorry. He plans to tell you a pack of lies, that we were carrying on while he lived here unless I go to him again, but I swear to you on Johnny’s life that isn’t true.”

“Is Johnny my child?”

The fork slipped from her fingers and bounced to the carpet. This was worse than she ever expected. Her throat closed, making words impossible.

“I know he looks like me, the hair anyway,” Jack continued, “but he’s little more than an infant. Children change. Even from the photographs you showed me in the album, he’s changed a great deal already.”

Delia had been meticulous having Johnny’s babyhood professionally recorded. She’d even purchased a Brownie box camera and taken some blurry pictures herself.

“Of course he’s yours,” she whispered.

She had broken her own happiness into a thousand sharp pieces. Delia could have ignored Arthur’s overtures—she’d been rebuffing him for months, pretending not to understand what he wanted while he still lived under her roof. But when his mother died and he moved out, he’d become more insistent on his daily visits “to see if she was all right.”

She hadn’t been—she was lonelier than ever.

Now she’d never have a second chance with her husband.

She rose and smoothed the folds of her lilac gown. “I’m sorry about dinner. I’ll tell Cook to prepare trays for us in our rooms.”

“Sorry about
dinner
?” Jack’s voice was so low she could barely hear him.

“S-sorry about everything. I wish things could have been different.”

“So do I, Delia,” he said, sounding weary. “So do I.”

H
is wife had been unfaithful
.

But he’d been dead, hadn’t he, so perhaps the word was incorrect. You couldn’t cheat on a ghost.

Jack was too exhausted to get up from the dining room chair. Delia had disappeared in a lavender cloud. She’d been stunning, even without diamonds twinkling against her long white neck.

No wonder Arthur had wanted her. Any man would.

What had she said?
It was awful. We couldn’t even finish
. Every inch of her had trembled in revulsion.

Not something Arthur was apt to be bragging about.

His cousin had wanted Jack’s toys when they were children. Now it seemed the stakes had been raised.

There was something off here. Something wrong, beyond the questionable morality of his cousin’s lust for Delia. It went a long way to explain why Arthur had not come to see him, though.

So Arthur wanted Delia to “go to him again,” did he? It was one thing to have an affair with a pretty young widow after months of propinquity and shared sorrow, quite another to cuckold your closest living relative deliberately.

He
was
alive. Jack raked his hair back as if that might make him think more clearly. A divorce would be a tremendous scandal, and wouldn’t help his cause with the newspapers. He planned to use his return to do some good and not be the object of pity.

If it were up to him, no British soldier would ever go to war so ill-prepared again. Jack was going to speak out and give all those dead soldiers a voice. At least they were no longer going to their deaths in scarlet coats—the First Boer War had proven the folly of that.

He’d counted on having Delia at his side. His loyal wife.

The door swung open and a footman seemed as startled to see Jack as Jack was to see him.

“Sorry, my lord. I was told to clear things up in here.”

“Quite right. Lady Marbury and I decided to take dinner in our rooms.” Jack hoped his legs would work under him.

The footman noticed his ungainliness. “May I help you upstairs, Lord Marbury?”

Jack shook his head. “Better get used to doing for myself. But thank you.”

The last thing he wanted to do was eat. In fact, he couldn’t think of a thing he wanted to do.

Untrue. His brain must have burnt to cinders in that prison camp, but, God help him, he wanted to go to bed with his wife.

He mounted the stairs, holding onto the bannister for dear life. He had to pass her doorway. Feeling a little like an old dog who sleeps across his mistress’s threshold, he paused. Listened with both hands on the door to prop him up. Quiet. She was not howling with grief at the end of their marriage.

Jack rapped on the door. “Delia. May I come in?”

After too long, he heard her turn the key. She had locked him and the world out.

She stood there, still in her elegant gown, a scattering of brilliants across the bodice. Her eyes were dry, but there were rivulets in the white powder on her face. He had an urge to get a wash cloth and wipe her clean.

“May I come in?” he repeated.

She stepped back. “Of course. This is your house.”

“And you are my wife.”

Her eyes dropped to the carpet.

“Look at me.” He sounded too stern, and hadn’t meant to frighten her. Her lashes fluttered, and then she met his gaze.

“Arthur knew I was alive.” Suddenly, he was as sure of this as he was his own name.

“But how can that be?” she whispered.

“I cabled him at the War Office.” His cousin was an army officer too, although he served as an attaché on the home front. “He was to break the news of my survival to you gently. I wrote a letter to him too, with an enclosure for you. You never received anything?”

She shook her head, too bewildered to speak.

“Do you mind if I sit down? I’m still useless on my feet.”

She rushed to bring a chair forward, a spindly thing that wouldn’t have held his weight a few years ago.

“He meant to do this, Delia. It was not your fault.” Jack was sure of this too. Although his cousin had once been his closest friend, there had always been competition between them.

Doubtless Arthur thought once he was dead, a smooth path was ahead with Jack’s lovely, rich widow. How inconvenient it must have been to learn he was not dead after all.

“He’d done this sort of thing before.” In truth, Jack and Arthur had done this sort of thing to each other over the years, trying to see who could best whom with various
cher amies
.

But a wife had never been involved. Arthur had taken a step far too far.

“He asked me to marry him,” Delia said, her voice hoarse.

“Well, it’s a good thing I came home in time. At least you aren’t a bigamist.”

“How can you joke over such a thing?” she cried.

“What else am I to do, my love? I’d like to run Arthur through, but that would be messy, and to be honest, I’m not up to it at the moment. His intentions may have been honorable at first. But once he learned I was coming home—” Jack left the rest unsaid. Delia looked guilty enough, poor girl.

She hadn’t really stood a chance. Both he and Arthur could be very persuasive when they made an effort. Jack had convinced her to marry him in less than a month, hadn’t he?

Now all he had to do was convince her to let him take her to bed.

“
I
cannot
.” Delia couldn’t believe he’d even asked the question after what lay between them. “How can you even want to?”

“Delia, I am a man, and you are still my wife. Men, as it happens, are sometimes not fussy about their needs. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been with a woman, and quite frankly, that’s all I can think about.”

There was something very wrong with her. She’d only been made love to twice, and both times had been—

Awful? Embarrassing? She couldn’t even find the words to properly describe how dreadful it had all been. At least she had Johnny to make up for the wedding night.

Delia had sworn to herself she would never marry a man unless the physical intimacy between them was an improvement over what she had shared with Jack. Her fumbling with Arthur had been a hopeless failure, too, not that she had truly wanted it to succeed. If she had, she wouldn’t have worn the diamonds to remind her of her night with Jack.

She had been fond enough of Arthur until his attempt to blackmail her. Might have married him. He’d been at her side for everything she’d endured the past two years. But the
frisson
she’d first felt when Jack courted her was entirely absent.

There was something else missing inside her. She was unwomanly, cursed with beauty but unable to feel.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said.

“I don’t want you to think.”

Perhaps Jack had a point. Her brain had been in an enervated state for the past week and she was past being able to make sense of anything.

Arthur had
known
Jack was still alive? And yet he’d done everything in his power to seduce her. Not that anything worked. She was as cold as marble. Frigid, according to the writings of that Viennese doctor who was getting so much attention.

“I can see the wheels spinning. Just once, forget about being a proper young girl.” He lifted a hand to her.

“I am Johnny’s mother, hardly a young girl,” Delia objected. But she took his hand in her own. It was rough, the skin scored with marks. He hadn’t talked much about what happened and she had been too afraid to ask.

“You’re not even twenty. I haven’t missed
your
birthday, have I?” He gave her hand a squeeze.

“Don’t you hate me?” Delia blurted.

“How could I? Do you think I was faithful while I was away? I’m ashamed to tell you I was not. Until they locked me up, that is. I didn’t have much choice in the prison camp. My celibacy was entirely involuntary.”

For some reason, she was not provoked enough to pull back. His smile was rueful. He was telling her the truth when he needn’t. She would have born all the blame.

“Why are you confessing this to me now?”

“Because I want us to start fresh. Pretend we’ve never made any mistakes.”

“Johnny isn’t a mistake!”

“Indeed, he is not. He’s the only good thing between us, isn’t he? But I want more good things, Delia. We both deserve them, no matter what you think.”

Her face grew hot. Time to tell him this too. “The marital act—I d-don’t like it.”

He nodded, as if she’d said she didn’t like ice cream.

“Do you understand? I can’t—”

He pulled her down into his lap. “There is no such thing as ‘can’t.’ You can. You haven’t had much experience to go by. My fault entirely. I was a brute on our wedding night, and I’m guessing Arthur wasn’t much better. We’ve always been selfish bastards.”

Arthur had been all paws and sloppy tongue. Delia shuddered.

“Give me tonight, Delia. I won’t ask for more. If you want me to move out after—”

“That isn’t right! Marbury House belongs to you.”

“Temporarily. It’s in safekeeping for our son and his son and all the Marburys in the future. Let’s not worry about them. Let’s not worry about anything.” He cupped her cheek and brushed his lips against her throat.

If she turned, she might catch his kiss. She’d always liked Jack’s kisses. It was what had come after that had made her feel so stupid.

His every gentle touch meant he’d forgiven her. Could she forgive herself? It was odd she wasn’t troubled by his infidelity—it was common enough, almost de rigueur, with gentlemen of Jack’s class, she knew. Her guardian had been clear. Men sought their carnal amusements outside of marriage. A wife was meant to be held to a different standard.

“I’d like to carry you to bed, but I don’t think I’m strong enough yet. Let’s walk there together.”

He slid her off his lap, and somehow she took the necessary steps that got her across the room. Jack was shedding his clothes even as he walked, strewing them on the carpet. What would her maid think? How silly she was being—her maid would think Delia was performing her wifely duty.

She gritted her teeth. She could do this if she had to, if it meant Jack wouldn’t turn her out. Delia had married him for better and for worse, and surely the worse would be balanced by the better eventually. She’d stop thinking, as he suggested. Or think about something altogether different than what was happening between them as they sat down on the bed. The sea beyond her Dorset estate’s cliffs. Masses of lilacs in the spring, their lush scent overwhelming. The small dinner party next week that Jack had planned to reintroduce himself to his cronies. She would need to consult with Cook—

Oh, dear God, what was he doing? He’d lifted her skirt above her knee and was stroking the skin above her stocking.

“That tickles,” she said, wishing she’d just kept quiet.

He was unfastening her garters, his scarred hands sure.

“Lie back and I shall tickle you some more,” Jack said, his voice raspy.

She did as requested, feeling uncomfortable. Her maid would have trouble getting the wrinkles out of her dress.

Delia shut her eyes as Jack slipped off her shoes and unrolled her stockings. She could feel his warm breath on her legs, which made her stomach feel very odd.

Then odder still, he bent to kiss her shin, holding her foot aloft and pressing against her arch with a circling thumb. He took turns massaging each foot and calf and she felt herself relax the tiniest bit.

Oysters, of course. Carrot and coriander soup. Prawn and salmon bouchees—

“Oh, what are you doing?” She was sure she’d felt his tongue on the back of her knee.

“Hush, Delia.”

His tongue didn’t stop at her knee, but was slowly slithering up her thigh. She tried to close her legs but Jack’s hands were made of iron. But his mouth was hot and soft and centered over a perfectly ridiculous place. He didn’t mean to kiss her
there
, did he?

Oh! He did. All thoughts of mutton joints with capers and anchovies rolled right out of her head. Jack’s edict not to think became all too easy to obey. The sweet roughness of his tongue, the tug and suckle of something inside her, his insistent fingers at her entrance made thought impossible. Delia was growing embarrassingly wet and twitchy and couldn’t seem to stop. Calm down. She was lifting her bottom up like a hoyden to get closer, hoping Jack would take the hint and do something—something—she wasn’t sure what, but she needed him to do it. All her languor had disappeared and she was rigid to her toes, straining toward—

This. And this. And this.

She screamed in a very improper way. And then she burst into tears.

“What is it, my darling?” Jack asked, moving up to the pillows from his labors.

“This is all wrong.”
This
—whatever it was—couldn’t possibly be what husbands were supposed to do with wives. Jack must think her a courtesan.

A fallen woman.

“It’s not wrong if it brings you pleasure. Did it?”

Delia’s face was on fire. How could she admit it was the most wonderful and confusing thing that had ever happened to her?

“I should have done it two years ago. I’m sorry I was so hasty. But you were so beautiful, I had no self-control. Like now.”

He kissed her lips, and she tasted a dark urgency, and thrillingly, her own essence. This was
so
wrong. It went against everything her guardian and governess ever told her, not that they had told her much.

“I want to see you again. Let me help you out of your dress.”

Of course it wasn’t over. Delia rose reluctantly and sat as Jack made quick work of her buttons and ties and laces. He was even faster divesting himself of his own clothes.

“Look at me.”

Delia’s eyes shifted from the mantel clock to her husband’s broad chest. He was nicked and brown, a smattering of white-blond hair trailing down to his groin. The hair there was a little darker, and jutting from it was an enormous male member.

She’d been to museums in the past two years. Nothing prepared Delia for her own husband.

“It will be better this time. You’ll see,” he murmured, nipping at her naked earlobe.

She wouldn’t think of the missing earring when there was much more to worry about.

“No thinking, remember? Shut your eyes and lie down.”

Did he think he was still in the army giving orders? Nevertheless, she did as he asked.

And he was right. It was better this time, much better. She crested again under the clever ministrations of his fingers as he slid ever so carefully in and out of her. She kissed him back. Kissed him and kissed him, each kiss deeper and more delicious than before. Cried again, but this time her tears were happy ones. Delia didn’t need to think of the ocean or flowers or menus when her husband touched and loved her.

She was normal. Well, perhaps not. She felt awfully naughty, and that couldn’t be right.

But when she looked into Jack’s eyes, she only saw joy and his commitment to their future. No one else would come between them when there wasn’t any space.