Sweet Temptation (9 page)

“She is no longer able to use it herself. It might as well be yours.”

“I could never accept anything so grand.”

“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t offer it to you,” observed the Earl dryly. He moved toward a chair, and waited until Sara had taken her seat before he took his.

“Will Gavin join us?” she asked nervously. The Earl’s expression did not change, but Sara would have been ready to swear he flinched.

“Gavin has departed for what I fear can best be described as bachelor revels. It is a barbarous custom, but one which has lasted from my day.”

“He will return?” She was barely able to form the words.

“Yes, no doubt in considerably worse condition than when he left, but strive to accustom yourself to it. He will regularly come to your bed the worse for drink.” Sara struggled to keep her countenance. She had not had the courage, even in her own mind, to face the fact that this was her wedding night. The Earl rose.

“I regret that it is not possible for you to visit the Countess again this evening. She finds these interviews extremely fatiguing. I suggest you return to your chamber and prepare yourself to receive your husband.”

Sara looked stricken.

“I shall have a footman escort you.” Sara mumbled her thanks and sat numbed, like a lamb being led to the slaughter, until the servant came to take her to her room.

Chapter 7

Betty made Sara ready for bed, but the relaxed feeling that had always existed between them was absent tonight. This was an experience they could not share, and for the moment it stood between them like a high, stone wall. Sara felt tongue-tied, and she allowed Betty to undress her and brush out her hair in silence. Only when Betty had turned back the bed and was passing the warming pan between the sheets did Sara break the silence.

“Have you ever been with a man?” she asked, turning abruptly to Betty.

“Merciful heavens, Miss, I mean your ladyship,” Betty corrected herself, “how can you ask a respectable girl a thing like that?” She was so startled by the question, she nearly turned the coals in the warming pan out onto the bed. “I’m a decent girl and always have been.”

“That’s what everybody says,” muttered Sara. “The way the girls at Miss Adelaide’s talked, you’d think being with a man was the most awful thing that could happen to a female. If it’s so terrible before you’re married, why is it all right afterwards?”

“It’s all right as long as he’s your husband.”

“But suppose you married him later?”

“Didn’t Miss Rachel tell you
anything?”
inquired Betty.

“Nobody did.”

“I don’t guess she knows,” said Betty half to herself, “and you can bet those flighty young things don’t know any more than fairy tales either. It’s because of having babies.”

“Having babies?” repeated Sara, completely lost.

“Being with a man causes you to have babies, and of course, that’s a thing you wouldn’t want to have happen without you were married.”

“No,” agreed Sara, struck. “But how does it happen?”

“I don’t know,” Betty said rather severely. “And don’t you even think of asking the Countess such a question. It’s not a fit thing for a lady to be talking about.”

“But if it has to happen for me to have a baby …”

“I told you, it’s not a fit thing for a lady to know, much less sit around discussing, like it was a new way to make preserves or pickle a ham. Men always know what to do, so you just leave it to his lordship,” said the city-bred maid who was just as ignorant as her city-bred mistress.

“But will it hurt?” asked Sara, growing more fearful all the time.

“I can’t rightly say, but nobody seems to like it much. Some scream and wail, and others lament over it for days afterwards. Most women just close their eyes and lie rigid until it’s done. My old mistress used to say it was a trial all women had to endure, because somebody had to have the babies, and Cod, being a man himself, wouldn’t think of putting it off on the husbands.”

“If it’s so terrible, why do men like it? The girls at Miss Adelaide’s used to say that’s why a man took a mistress.”

“I can’t say for certain, not being a man myself, but men are made different from females, and some of the things they get up to are downright shameful. They take to all kinds of unaccountable things like cockfighting, bearbaiting, and cutting each other up with those nasty swords. You can’t go judging anything by what a man likes.” She led Sara over to the bed and tucked her in.

“I heard some of the girls talking once,” Sara said, sinking her voice into a low, timorous whisper, “when they thought no one was about. They said some women
like
it.”

“There’s females that will say anything for a new dress or a piece of jewelry,” came Betty’s scathing reply. “I’m happy to say that you’ll have no call to know anything about
that
kind of abandoned hussy. Neither should you be listening to whispered secrets about them. Lordy, whatever will you be doing next?”

“But if some women don’t find it so terrible—”

“Then they should!” said Betty without hesitation. “You’re not to be judging yourself by low-born females. You’re going to be a countess someday, and no countess I ever heard tell of went about talking about being with a man. As for
liking
it! Well, the idea is scandalous. Now, you just stay here all nice and warm, and put your mind to rest. It’ll be over soon enough, and then you won’t have to wonder about it anymore.”

“But if it’s so terrible …” Sara persisted.

Betty hunched an indifferent shoulder, as though the subject was beginning to bore her. “They all complain about it, but they’re never any the worse for it the next morning. I don’t suppose you’ll be any different.”

Sara had to be content with that. Betty finished tucking her in, banked the fire, blew out all the candles except the one by the bed, and left Sara to await her lord.

It was an awful wait. From the moment she had been told she was to marry Gavin, until Betty closed the door to her bedchamber, Sara had been too busy to do much more than try to understand and follow what was happening to her. Not once had she stopped long enough to wonder about her wedding night, but now it was here, and her husband could enter the room at any minute. She knew nothing of what was going to happen, and as the clock ticked inexorably on, she became more and more apprehensive. The difficulties ahead multiplied as the empty minutes piled up, until Sara was sure the ordeal itself could hardly be more awful than this waiting without knowing. Sara found herself picking at her skin, then chewing on her nails. If he doesn’t come soon, she thought, I’ll be nothing but sores and bleeding stubs.

But she did not have very long to wait.

The door was flung open without warning, and Gavin stood framed in the light. A double ripple of excitement made Sara sit straight up in the bed. The moment she’d been waiting for with fear and anticipation had arrived, but now that it was here, she wasn’t at all sure she didn’t want to postpone it a little longer. Yet the sight of Gavin’s body—as he shed his coat and stood revealed in a sheer shirt and skintight pants—caused her own body to tingle in response. Even without understanding why, Sara felt drawn to that mighty, muscled physique. The long, clean lines of his legs and thighs made him seem graceful, the flowing shirt over hard-sinewed arms gave the impression of sinuousness, but his powerful chest and broad shoulders left her in no doubt as to the rugged strength of the man who was about to claim her. She was shaken by a quiver of pleasurable anticipation.

“The bride in her marriage bed,” Gavin mocked as he advanced into the room.

Instinctively Sara drew the covers around her shoulders.

“What, no warm greeting for your new lord? I might get the idea you don’t wish to lie with me.”

“I am somewhat anxious about it,” stammered Sara, holding on to the covers more tightly still, “but I am prepared to do my duty.”

“Yeah, we must all do our duty,” Gavin growled fiercely, as he drew closer to the bed. He had drunk too much, in the hopes it would numb him to the innocence of his bride and the disgust he felt with himself for acting as his father’s pawn. But now that he was face to face with the blameless victim of their struggle, he felt his resolution draining away. With a fiercely muttered oath, he steadied himself against the bedpost. The brandy hadn’t been able to numb him to the shame he felt at the violation of his own principles either. He was preparing to deflower this innocent girl, a rite of passage she believed would truly make her his wife, but one he knew would only deprive her of something else irreplaceable, and he couldn’t stop himself.

Hell, she married me for what she could get, he thought with a surge of rage. She can damned well take the consequences. “You just do your part,” he muttered. “I’ll do the rest.”

“That’s just it,” admitted Sara sheepishly. “I’m not perfectly sure what my part is.”

No man is ever too drunk not to be sobered by that statement, and Gavin directed his penetrating gaze to Sara’s lovely, fearful face.

“Do you mean to tell me neither that Rachel woman, nor any of the dried-up prunes that infest the place, ever told you about laying with a man?”

“No.”

“Goddamnit to hell!” moaned Gavin, swinging on the bedpost so that he dropped onto the bed. “The wench is not only a virgin, she’s an
ignorant
virgin. She’ll probably scream.”

“Scream?” inquired Sara faintheartedly, her fear beginning to assume significant dimensions.

“They all do. Seems to be a law or something, that every gently bred female has to shout down the house.”

“But you don’t want me to scream!”

“Of course not. Puts a man out of the mood quicker than a bucket of cold water. Besides, there’s no call to be afraid. You’ll soon learn to like it.”

“Betty says no lady ever likes it.”

“What would a bean pole like her know about men?” demanded Gavin. At that moment, his gaze focused on Sara for the first time, and he immediately became very still and quiet. He couldn’t describe exactly how he had pictured her as he sat attempting to drink himself into a stupor, but the reality of her presence was a far different thing.

The skin which she stigmatized as freckled was rendered dead white by the deathly fear that filled her. Her long, slender throat, compressed lips, and apprehensive light blue eyes combined to present a picture of bemused innocence which her abundant strawberry blond hair, cascading over flawless shoulders in a riot of curls, did nothing to alter. Gavin suddenly realized that Sara looked damnably attractive, at least she would have if she could stop looking like she expected to be drawn and quartered. What could there be about this virginal girl that appealed so strongly to his jaded tastes?

Gavin quickly discarded his shirt. “Damn, it’s hot in here. How can you stay under those covers? Come on out, so I can get a good look at you.”

Sara didn’t have to wonder what Gavin looked like. The light from the single candle fell directly on his disturbingly masculine body; he was within inches of her now and his aroused state was unmistakable. She wasn’t entirely sure of what she was seeing, or why it should be in that uncharacteristic condition, but she had the distinct impression that it had something to do with what was about to happen to her. She did not let go of the covers, but when Gavin pulled them out of her hands, she sat perfectly still, rather than yield to her initial impulse to scramble to recover them. Her young, firm breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing.

Betty had piled several comforters on the bed to insure that Sara would keep warm, but she had taken care to dress her mistress in a thin nightgown that did very little to hide the outlines of her body. In comparison to Clarice’s opulent charms, Sara looked positively boyish. It was true that her breasts were firm and well raised, but they were demure little globes instead of huge pendulous gourds. And the scared, timorous look was definitely at variance with the coy invitation that characterized Clarice’s approach to their times in bed. This was not what Gavin was accustomed to, and his ardor began to ebb.

But Gavin was honest enough to admit it was not just because she was different. He felt ashamed of himself. He had stormed out of the house and had taken his first drink because he was angry at his father, but he had kept drinking to postpone returning to this room, to blunt the sharp prick of his conscience. He had been able to force himself to marry Sara because he didn’t know anything about her, but the few short hours they had spent together had already changed that. He could still make himself believe that she was marrying him because of his position in society, but he could not ignore the growing suspicion that he was about to destroy something much finer than anything he had ever known.

With a physical effort, he shrugged off his doubts. Pluck up, he told himself. There’ll be plenty of time later to work something out, feed her on double rations maybe, but he had to go through with it tonight. Everybody expected it of him, even Sara.

“Don’t be so standoffish,” he said more kindly, reaching out his hand to her. “It’s not so bad as you think.” Sara couldn’t move. The mere feel of his hand on her skin sent her mind into orbit, her inflamed senses interfering with rational thought. Her body was screaming messages at her brain, but it was speaking a new language, one her brain didn’t know how to translate, so she continued to sit before him, immobile, mute, in a state bordering on shock as he trailed his fingers along her arm and up her shoulder. His touch was a match that ignited a trail of explosive powder that smoldered slowly, irresistibly, toward the powder keg that would soon cause the only existence she had ever known to explode into nothingness, and she was totally unable to do anything to prevent it.