Tangled (16 page)

There was a lengthy silence, during which he felt some of the tension drain away from her. "No," she said at last. "There was no pain. I am sorry, David. I am determined to be a good wife. It is just—difficult. I do not know what pleases you or displeases you."

"You knew," he said, "that the marriage was to be a real one. I do not wish to hurt you or overexert you. But this part of our marriage is important to me, Rebecca."

"Yes, I know," she said. "It always is to men."

He frowned. Yes, he understood that it was true. Men wanted it while women did not. He wondered when moral standards and accepted patterns of behavior had dictated that it be so. When had it become a necessary requirement of being a lady to find sex distasteful? And yet, to be fair, it was only sex without love that was an ordeal to Rebecca. Things must have been vastly different with Julian—a thought he had no wish to pursue.

"You will please me," he said, "by relaxing and not worrying about pleasing me. Is it very abhorrent to you?"

116Mary Balogh

"No," she said, her voice shocked.

"Would you tell me if it were?" he smiled rather ruefully into the darkness. Of course she would not.

"How could it be?" she said. "You are my husband, David."

Ah, yes, a shield. He began to have a glimmering of an understanding of what life with Rebecca was going to be like. He would have the perfect wife. He had no doubt about that. Her behavior would be above reproach. But he would never get beyond that. He would never know her.

But her body was against his now and they were both naked from the waist down. She had relaxed again. Even her mouth was relaxed when he kissed her. She would make sure that she learned fast what pleased him. She had learned earlier that he liked tongue play. He slid his tongue inside her mouth briefly, but her own lay still beneath it.

God, but he wanted her. Her body, yes. Oh, yes, he wanted her body and would have it too. She knew that and had accepted it and he was past stopping. But he wanted more. He wanted her—all there was of her. He wanted to be inside her body, inside her mind, inside her soul. But all he could ever have of her was her body and her dutiful loyalty. It might perhaps have been different. If she had known as they were growing up ... If she had known three months before her wedding to Julian that Flora ... If she had known what had gone on even after her marriage and in Malta and the Crimea . . .

But she had never known and never would. Only over his dead body. Julian had been the love of her life and still was. And she, David thought, gentling his kisses, which had become fierce, was the love of his life. Nothing was going to destroy her memories. Nothing.

Certainly not his needs.

He lifted her top leg and brought it snugly up over his hip, easing her into position against him before pushing slowly and firmly into her. He held her steady with one hand spread behind her.

"You see?" he murmured to her. "The wetness makes it easier for both of us."

"Yes." He heard her swallow.

Tangled 117

"It is the way a woman's body prepares for and adjusts to what is to happen to it," he said. It seemed strange to be giving instruction to a woman about her own body, especially to a woman who had known love and passion for more than two years. But then passion would have made the act of sex an instinctive thing for those two years. She would not have noticed then what embarrassed her now.

"Yes," she said.

He loved her slowly and gently, not turning her onto her back so that he might drive more forcefully into her. He let himself revel in the feel of her, the soft heat that sheathed him without clenching around him. Her inner muscles were relaxed. She was relaxed and quiet.

"You please me, Rebecca," he said, setting his mouth against hers again. "Never doubt that you please me."

"David," she said, "it is not abhorrent to me. I don't want you thinking that. It is not."

He could feel himself coming. He just wished that there were something to share. He wished that she could meet him there in the world of shared ecstasy beyond passion. But it had never been part of the bargain or part of his expectations. He would receive sexual satiety; she would receive his seed. There would be no real sharing at all.

But he was coming, pushing more slowly and deeply into her until the blessed moment when he felt the gush of release and sighed against the side of her face. She lay pressed against him, her leg hugging his hip, quiet and still.

When he had recovered from the spasms of his release, he straightened her leg down beside the other again and held her close, allowing the delicious relaxation that was the aftermath of sex to pull him downward toward sleep. He should release her, he thought drowsily. He should remove himself from her body and ease his arm out from beneath her head so that she would be free to move and find a comfortable position in which to sleep.

But she felt so very good where she was. And he was very close to sleep. Perhaps he would sleep the rest of the night away without waking and without dreams. It would be a rare luxury. He did not want to move and perhaps push sleep away altogether.

118Mary Balogh

She smelled so very good. Better than the most expensive and alluring of perfumes.

He slept.

******************************************************************

Rebecca spent her first morning at Stedwell inside the house.She was so busy that there was not a spare moment in which to set foot outside to appreciate the warm sunshine. But it was not an unhappy morning.

She spent a short while after breakfast conferring with the chef on the day's menu. He was dissatisfied, it seemed, with the lack of variety of foods that could be obtained from the kitchen garden and from the village. He was equally dissatisfied with the help he had in the kitchen, declaring that he must have more professional assistance from London if he was to do justice to his culinary arts. Rebecca smiled and made soothing noises and assured him that both she and his lordship would be happy with plain foods well prepared. She was aware as she left the kitchen behind that she had ruffled the man's professional pride.

Mrs. Matthews spent the following hour with her, showing her from room to room of the house until she felt familiar with it. Every room and corridor gave the same impression of faded splendor, shabbiness, and damp neglect. The task of restoring it to a cozy home seemed daunting indeed.

And yet the very hugeness of the task made Rebecca feel thoroughly invigorated. She could make a difference here. She really could. She could be busy for a year and there would still be more to do. She would transform David's house—and her own—into a home, and she would watch the pleasure her efforts gave him.

David. The lower part of her body still throbbed with a feeling that was not quite pain. Last night she had learned the differences there could be between two men. Oh, not just the physical differences.

Most of those had been obvious enough and they were relatively unimportant anyway. But differences in what they expected in the marriage bed and what they did there. She felt all over again this morning like a young bride who had just learned the secrets of physical intimacy.

But she would not think of such things. There was

Tangled119

quite enough and more to think about in what she saw around her.

David was master in their marriage bed as he was in every other aspect of their life. She would grow accustomed to her duties there just as she had before, though the circumstances were so vastly different.

She had never had a real home with Julian. She felt a moment's regret but put it firmly from her. Perhaps it was just as well. At least her treacherous mind could make no comparisons in that direction.

She dismissed the housekeeper, choosing to revisit each room alone and at her leisure so that she could stand quietly looking about her and assessing what needed to be done.

There was so much to be done—in every single room. Ceilings and walls needed to be regilded and repainted; carpets needed to be replaced as did curtains and some furnishings; other furniture needed to be reupholstered; paintings needed to be cleaned. Fires needed to be lit daily in almost every room,to get rid of the general feeling of dampness. The list could go on and on. She ended up in the morning room, seated at an escritoire with one leg slightly shorter than the other three, making lists— dauntingly long lists of what she would like to do with every part of the house.

It would cost a fortune, she thought, looking back through her lists when they were made. A huge fortune. But David was a wealthy man.

She would have to compile estimates for his approval. And then they would have to bring in workmen.

She smiled when the luncheon bell rang, and tapped the pile of papers into a neat stack. She had not even been outside yet. She would be able to spend a second fortune in the garden, she was sure.

She wanted flower gardens, a rose arbor as at Craybourne, a lake. . . .

There was an excitement in her, a sense of energy that she had not felt for years. Perhaps ever. There had been very little really to occupy her even during her first marriage. They had always lived in military billets, she and Julian. She had longed for more—for a home. She had forgotten until now the disappointment she had felt when he had announced his intention of buying a commission just before their marriage. And she had forgotten the boredom

120 Mary Balogh
she had often felt during the long days while he was away, living for the moment when he would be back with her.

She shook her head. It had been a perfect marriage. But this one need not be a disaster. Indeed she was quite determined that it would not be. She was mistress of Stedwell, a dreadfully shabby and neglected house and park with all the potential for beauty and splendor. She would make it beautiful and splendid. She and David together.

She got to her feet. David had spent the morning with his steward in the main office downstairs—the only room that Rebecca had not visited. They had been closeted there all morning. She did not doubt that her husband had been as busy as she.

Her husband. Her stomach lurched a little as she made her way from the morning room to the dining room. Yes, her husband, she told herself firmly. That was the way it was. She glanced down at the unfamiliar green of her dress and twisted the shiny, unfamiliar ring on her finger. And she felt again the unmistakable physical awareness that she had been with him the night before.

Strange, she thought. She still half expected to wake up and find it all a dream. But then she had felt the same way for months after the news of Julian's death had reached her. This was real just as that had been. It was more than time that she anchored herself in reality.

David was in the dining room before her and stood to help her seat herself. It was a strange feeling looking at the man with whom she had been intimate for the first time the night before. He was looking so very correct and handsome and elegant.

"Have you had a good morning, David?" she asked, straightening her shoulders so that she would not slouch against the back of her chair. A governess had once made her sit absolutely still and silent in the schoolroom for two whole hours with her arms about a backboard because she had rested her back against her chair during a reading lesson.

"An enlightening one," he said. "My property has been in good hands with Quigley. He has managed it well and it has prospered. I knew that, of course, from the brief reports he had always sent me, but this morning I

Tangled 121

could examine the books and see for myself. It seems that my task here will be an easy one."

"You will just allow Mr. Quigley to continue as before?" she said.

He nodded. "Though I intend to make everything much more personal. Tomorrow I shall start paying calls on my tenants and all those dependent upon me in any way. And how about you, Rebecca?

You have been busy?"

"I wish there had been someone as efficient looking after the house over the years," she said. "Or perhaps I don't either. There would be less for me to do. It is indeed shabby, David, just as we expected and just as we saw last night from the few rooms we were in."

"You have seen everything?" he asked.

She nodded. "I have long lists of what needs to be done. I shall show them to you when you have a moment. You must decide whether we are to go ahead and do everything at once or whether we should do a little at a time."

"Everything at once, I would think," he said. "We might as well have one great upheaval and get it over with. What about the garden?"

"I have not had a chance to go out there yet," she said. "I want some flower beds, David. Apart from the daisies, everything looked very bare as we approached yesterday."

"Those trees must be cut back from the west side of the house," he said. "They are dangerous during a storm, and they must cut out a great deal of light from the rooms in that wing. Perhaps we can step outside together for a while after we have finished eating if you have no other plans."

"Only to go outside and look around," she said. "We might as well do it together. I shall hear your ideas and then try to draw up some plans. I can present them to you with those for the house some time tomorrow or whenever you have a free hour.''

Her marriage was little more than twenty-four hours old, Rebecca thought as she came back downstairs some time later, ready for the outdoors, and yet already she was beginning to feel that perhaps after all she had done

122Mary Balogh

the right thing. She had enjoyed the morning almost as a child enjoys a new toy, and she had enjoyed the thoroughly businesslike conversation she had had with David at luncheon. There was going to be so much to do over the coming months and even years that there would be little time to brood.