The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (25 page)

Why had she married him, then? He thought now of the impression he had once had that she loved him. It was an amusing memory, considering what she had believed of him, or would have been amusing if he were
still in the mood to be amused. Obviously
that
had not been the reason.

There could be only one. She had wanted a home of her own, a world of her own in which she was mistress. She had wanted companionship with him, some conversation, some laughter. She had been content to enter a marriage that she had expected not to be a marriage at all.

She did not really want him. Not in that way. And yet she had thanked him for what had happened last night, fumbling and gauche a performance as it had been. He wondered if she
wanted
it again. Perhaps not. Perhaps her assurances that she really did not mind the situation as it was—or as she had perceived it to be—also expressed her preference.

But it was out of the question. He did not love her and she was not the bride of his choice. But she was his wife and he had discovered last night the full power of his sexual attraction to her. He had not wanted to marry her, but the fact was that he
was
married to her. She would have to grow accustomed to a marriage far different from the one she had expected. Even if she did not like it.

It was a chilling thought to have less than twenty-four hours after they had been irrevocably bound together for life.

I
T WAS AN
extremely busy day. She had scarcely a moment to herself. After coming back into the house from her walk with Francis, she went down to the kitchen and chatted with the cook. Her first impression that Cook was not pleased to see her quickly dissolved as she listened to the woman’s plans for the day’s menu and showed admiring interest in the recipes for various dishes and told Cook about some of her favorite recipes
and offered to write them out and bring them down one day. She found herself within half an hour seated at the large wooden work table, eating a hearty cooked breakfast merely because she had breathed in deeply and made appreciative comments on the appetizing smells.

By the time she left the kitchen, having discussed at satisfying length all the various herbs known to man and all the familiar and unfamiliar remedies for every ailment either of them had ever encountered or treated, Cora had the impression that she had won the approval of her cook.

And then she spent several hours with the housekeeper, looking at every room in the house, commenting on how neat and clean everything appeared even though Lord Francis was not a great deal at home. She pored over the household accounts and commended the housekeeper on her management and bookkeeping skills. She gave her approval of the purchase of new bed linens, which was apparently long overdue. She checked carefully first in the books to see that the housekeeping budget would stretch to such an expense.

Then she went walking with her maid into the village of Sidley Bank, having discovered with some relief that her husband was busy with his steward. She went to look at the church and there met the rector, who bowed and rubbed his hands together as if washing them and murmured about the honor her ladyship was doing him and his humble church. He took her into the rectory to meet his wife and she stayed to take tea with the two of them. Then the rector’s wife took her to call on the late rector’s widow and on two spinster sisters, who were clearly gentlewomen living on limited means. She took more tea at each visit.

It was only at a late dinner that she was finally forced to be with Francis again. She recounted at tedious length every minute detail of her day for his entertainment and
was quite prepared to begin all over again if necessary. She did not allow even the smallest moment of silence. She did not once look him in the eye.

She looked regretfully at the pianoforte when they retired to the drawing room, but even Miss Graham, who had been the most patient and persistent governess ever to be born, had been forced to admit many years ago that Cora had been gifted with ten thumbs instead of only the usual two and eight nimble fingers. It seemed that conversation must be engaged in again. But she made the amazing discovery that
Francis
played. He played very well. He played all evening at her request and sang too with a very pleasing tenor voice. She joined him in a few songs since the musical ineptness of her fingers did not extend to her voice as well.

Finally the day was over. She had lived through it without having to do any thinking at all. Though that was a lie, she thought as she got into bed and raised the bedclothes up over her head and hoped that she could be alone with her shame until tomorrow. Of course it was a lie. The truth was she had done nothing but think all day.

She wished she could die.

How could she
possibly
have made such a ghastly, ghastly error? And how could she have let him
know
what she suspected? She admitted, now that it was far too late, that she had had no evidence at all—none whatsoever—for thinking what she had thought except for the pathetically unconvincing fact that he wore pretty coats. There had been nothing in his behavior, nothing in the behavior of anyone else toward him. Only that silly fact that she had seen him at her first ball dressed in turquoise and had immediately thought of peacocks. Her mind had been made up and firmly closed from that moment on.

Oh, the humiliation was too much to bear. She burrowed farther beneath the bedclothes.

She cringed into total immobility when she heard the same tap on the door she had heard last night and the door opened.

And now to cap everything she had been caught hiding beneath the bedclothes. She was too mortified to come out. She listened to the silence until she felt a weight depress the mattress close to her head and felt a hand come to rest on her rump.

“Cora,” he said quietly, “it is just me, dear.”

Which was an extremely foolish thing for an intelligent man to say. Did he not realize that that was the whole trouble?

“There is no need to hide from me,” he said. “I am not going to ridicule you or tell anyone else about your error. It really does not matter. I am sorry I laughed. It struck me as funny, but I know it was humiliating for you.”

“I am not hiding,” she said. “I am cold.” On a night so warm that all the windows had been left wide open in the hope of catching some cooling breeze.

“Then come out and let me warm you,” he said.

She felt a stabbing of longing, of desire. But she wished he would go away and never come back.

“Cora.” He was patting his hand on her derrière. “Come, my dear. We cannot go on like this for the next forty or fifty years.”

There was laughter in his voice again. Oh, how dare he! She threw back the covers and looked deliberately into his eyes. It was, she thought, as difficult to do as it must be to persuade oneself to jump off a cliff. His blue eyes were twinkling.

“Well, it was all your fault,” she said, glaring at him. “Turquoise coat, lace everywhere, a work of art at your neck, a sapphire ring on your finger, sapphires all over
your quizzing glass, such elegant manners. What was I
supposed
to think?”

“That is the spirit,” he said. “Rip up at me if doing so will make you feel better.” He bent his head and kissed her.

She turned to jelly all the way down to her toes. His lips were not even
closed
. “And leather pantaloons,” she said when she had her mouth back to herself, “and a dark pink coat.”

“Quite so.” He had stood up to remove his dressing gown, and then he sat down again and was opening the buttons at the front of her nightgown. With the candles still burning. And he was looking at what he was doing.

Her insides were performing intricate acrobatic feats.

“And a blue-and-yellow phaeton,” she said. “What kind of man drives around in a blue-and-yellow phaeton?”

“This kind, apparently,” he said. He opened back her gown so that she was exposed to below the waist. He looked at her and then he lowered his head to feather kisses over her breasts. He opened his mouth over the peak of one of them, licked at it, and then closed his lips over it and sucked.

There was such an ache in the place he had been last night that it was indistinguishable from pain. And then his hand was down there, inside her nightgown, and his fingers were doing something that should have been horribly embarrassing. But the ache and the pain and the sharp longing drowned out the embarrassment.

“You dressed soberly for Papa and Edgar,” she said. “That was not fair. Not fair at all. Ooh!”

“Life is not always fair,” he said. He had taken her nightgown by the shoulders and was stripping it right off her, down over her feet. And the bedclothes were right off her too. And the candles were still burning.

“You should have
told
me,” she said. “You might
have guessed what I thought. But you kept quiet. Just so that I would make a thorough cake of myself and you could laugh your head off.”

He grinned at her as he stood again to pull his nightshirt off over his head. Now if only she had
seen
him, she thought, gulping, she would surely have known herself. Though she had always known that he had a magnificent body. She had fallen against it, had she not, that very first evening?

“Francis,” she said, “do not
laugh
at me. I cannot abide being laughed at when I am feeling so very mortified. Especially when it is all your fault.”

He was coming on top of her as he had last night. He was pushing her legs wide as he had then. She looked down and marveled anew that there was room enough inside her. It was going to happen again, she thought. Oh, she was so
glad
it was going to happen again.

“It is all my fault,” he said. “Let me see if I can do better than last night, dear. Let me see if I can prevent it ending too soon for you.”

She closed her eyes and bit hard on her lower lip as he came inside. There was no pain tonight. There was all the marvelous stretching and all the deep penetration, but none of the pain.

Let there be time
, she thought as he began to move—slowly, quite unlike the hurried pounding of last night.
Please let there be time
.

There was all the time in the world. It was gloriously, deliriously wonderful. She twined herself about him, lifted herself against him, moved with him, experimented with muscles she had not known she had, ached her way toward what must surely be unbearable pain, and then eased her way beyond it to total pleasure and relaxation.

When she finally relaxed, she felt him quicken as he had at the start last night. And she felt again that increased
heat deep within just before he relaxed his weight on top of her.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you
.

Thank you, Francis
, she told him silently when he had moved off her and was tucking the upper sheet about her.

Don’t leave. Please don’t leave
.

He had got out of bed, but he was just blowing out the candles. He climbed in beside her again and took her hand in his.

Good night, Francis. Thank you
.

“You are so very beautiful,” he said softly to her. “Thank you, dear.”

But she was fast asleep.

E NEED NOT HAVE WORRIED, AS HE HAD DONE BRIEFLY
that first morning in the stables, that she would turn out to be such a managing female that she would try to run the estate for him. She did not.

She turned out to be an extremely busy and efficient mistress of Sidley. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind after the first two or three days who was in charge of the household. And yet she was surprisingly well-liked. One might have expected that servants who had run the house without any interference for years would resent a mistress who insisted on having a finger in every pie. But they did not.

His wife had a way about her, Lord Francis discovered. She was never overfamiliar with the servants—there was never any doubt that she was the mistress and they were the employees. And yet she talked with them, smiled with them, joked with them, advised them, listened to their advice. He was amazed one day when he sent his compliments to the cook on the new and delicious dessert that had been served to discover that it had been made from a recipe given Cook by Cora.

Cook had allowed his wife to supply her with a recipe?
And had used it?

His wife never trespassed on his domain—with the possible exception of that morning in the stables. But
she took charge of her own with a competence that could only have come from training and long experience.

Lord Francis began to feel very comfortable in his home.

She spent almost all of every afternoon visiting or being visited. She visited laborers’ cottages and tenants’ homes alone. He usually accompanied her when she called upon the neighboring gentry and attended her in the drawing room when she was entertaining them. She was at ease and friendly without being in any way vulgar. Not that he looked for vulgarity in her. He had never seen any.

In the evenings they often visited or entertained. Sometimes they stayed home alone and whiled away the time with music or with reading. She liked to have him read aloud to her while she stitched away at her embroidery. She was not a particularly skilled needlewoman, but as she herself said, she could hardly sit and twiddle her thumbs when she was at leisure, could she?