The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (26 page)

At night they made love. Only once each night. It seemed somehow distasteful to him to think of doing it more frequently. Perhaps if his appetite for her had been less voracious, he would have allowed himself to have her more often. Or if he had loved her. As it was, he did not wish to use her as he would use a mistress, merely to satisfy his lust. He had too great a respect for her.

Not that she showed any distaste for what they did together in her bed each night, despite his fears that first morning. Quite the contrary. She was a willing and eager participant in what happened. She never spoke her satisfaction, but her actions spoke it for her as well as the little sigh of completion with which her own participation always ended—the signal for him finally to let go of the control he had never lost involuntarily since their wedding night.

They had a good marriage, he decided after three weeks. Far better than he could possibly have expected. They had settled into a comfortable routine at Sidley. They were firm friends. They laughed together frequently. They were good together in bed.

It was a good marriage. What more could a man ask for?

Unfortunately, it was a question he kept asking himself. A question he could not stop asking himself. For there was something—an indefinable something—that prevented them from relaxing into true happiness. Both of them.

From the beginning he had been startlingly aware of Cora’s openness and candor. He could remember thinking that it would be impossible for her to call a spade anything but a spade. And it was still true. She still looked him more directly in the eye when she spoke to him than anyone else he had ever known. And she still spoke to him freely on any topic he cared to introduce. There was no evidence whatsoever that she kept anything from him or harbored any dark secrets.

And yet …

And yet there was something. He could not put a finger on it or even begin to grasp it with his mind. It was nothing he felt he could ask her about. It was nothing.

But he knew it was something. There was
something
.

Just as there was with him, of course. He could not help sometimes looking at her—often at moments of deepest contentment—and remembering that she was not the woman of his choice. He could not help remembering the dream he had had of love and the sort of marriage that would grow out of a mutual love. The dream had gone and he was settling for contentment, it seemed. Was that what happened to most people, if not all? Did dreams always give place to reality?

And yet he
was
content. He had a good life, one about
which it would be wicked to complain. But he felt as if he were waiting. As if there were a completion that had not yet come.

This could not be all, he sometimes thought. And it saddened him to know that he could not be thoroughly happy with contentment. Or with a wife who was good to him.

He kept remembering the dream and wondering if even that was illusory.
Had
it been so very wonderful? Had he loved Samantha as deeply as he had thought? Was she as beautiful and as perfect as he remembered her? Would he have lived happily ever after with her if she had only returned his love, or if she had not met Carew?

He did not want to think of her or of his love for her. He did not want to be disloyal to Cora even in his thoughts. She deserved better. She was a very likable person and she was a very good wife to him.

Contentment could have kept him at home for the rest of their lives. Sidley had never been a more pleasant place to live. And yet contentment itself became suspect. Was he going to settle for this for the rest of his life? Was there nothing more?

And so he stared at his letter at the breakfast table one morning long after he had finished reading it, feeling tempted.

“What is it?” she asked. Her hand came across the table to touch his arm. “Bad news, Francis?”

And he knew that he had hoped she would ask just such questions, and was ashamed of himself.

“No, not at all.” He smiled at her. He always thought her most beautiful in the mornings—if he discounted the nights—when her hair was looped loosely over her ears and knotted simply at her neck. “It is from Gabe.”

“The Earl of Thornhill?” she said. “Your friend from Yorkshire?”

“They want us to come for a few weeks,” he said. “I have been a regular visitor there since their marriage six years ago. They were expecting me this summer.”

She did not respond as he knew he hoped she would. She said nothing at all, but merely looked at him.

“What do you think?” he asked.

He had seen that pale, trapped look a few times before and knew what it meant. “Francis,” she said almost in a whisper, “he is an earl.”

“And so he is.” He could not resist teasing her. “You would be in illustrious company, dear. Going to visit an earl and a countess in company with a duke’s son and brother. As the wife of the said duke’s son and brother.” It always amused him that she had never been terrified of his own title.

“They must disapprove of me,” she said. “They must have been disappointed for you, Francis. They must have thought, as your brother and sisters did, that you married far beneath yourself. And they were right. We should never have married. I would not have done so if I had known …”

He smiled at her confusion and covered her hand with his on the table. “I doubt they think any such thing, Cora,” he said. “And if they do, the problem is theirs. You are my wife and I am not sorry I married you. You are in no way my inferior. In no way that matters even one iota.”

“That is all very well to say as long as we stay here,” she said, drawing her hand from his and getting to her feet. “But as soon as we leave here, you will realize that in everyone else’s eyes I
am
inferior, Francis. I want to stay here, please. I am happy here.”

And yet she looked anything but happy as she hurried from the breakfast parlor, muttering something about an appointment with Cook. Was that the problem? Was that what was between them on her part? She felt that
the social differences between them would cause only problems for them as the future unfolded?

They would stay home, he thought with both regret and relief. She had saved him from temptation. He would stay home and carefully build on the contentment they had found in three weeks of marriage and residence at Sidley.

It was Cora, after all, who came first in his life. Before even himself.

S
HE HURRIED INTO
the scenic walk, the one Francis had introduced her to on the first morning. She pulled her shawl more tightly about her. It had rained during the night and the clouds were still low and threatening. There was a chill breeze. Summer seemed temporarily to have deserted them.

She had just been very selfish.

She had vowed to herself when she married him to devote herself wholly to his contentment, to forget about herself. To deny herself, as the Bible would have it. It was a horridly difficult thing to do.

And now she had disappointed him. The Earl of Thornhill, she understood, was his closest friend but they lived far apart. He must have been very happy to read that invitation this morning. He must have expected that she would be delighted by the prospect of traveling into Yorkshire.

Instead of which she had been peevish and self-pitying and selfish. If truth were known, she did not care the snap of two fingers what people said of her. But she did care what they said of him. She did not want his closest friend to censure or pity him because he had married her. He was probably doing so anyway, but if he saw her it would be worse. She was such a large
lump
.

She sat down on a wrought-iron bench beneath a
beech tree after first making sure that the seat was not wet. She drew her shawl close.

She
wished
she could be attractive for him. It had not mattered so very much when she had believed—she still grew hot and uncomfortable when she remembered that she had believed it—that he was not attracted to women. But it had mattered very much since. If only she could be a little smaller. If only her breasts were not so embarrassingly large. If only her face were pretty. If only her hair were fine and wavy. If only …

She wanted desperately to be beautiful for Francis.

She tried to compensate for her ugliness and her ungainliness by making his life comfortable. When she was busy making his home more cozy and livable, when she was visiting his people, seeing to their contentment, when she was visiting his neighbors or entertaining them, then she was almost happy. She convinced herself that she was being a good wife to him.

She tried to be a good wife in bed. Sometimes—most times—she lost herself in her own pleasure. It was difficult not to. He was so very—beautiful, so very masculine and virile. But she always determined not to lose herself but to lie still and passive for his pleasure. She had never yet succeeded.

She thought he enjoyed being in bed with her. But that was no occasion for pride. Men always enjoyed being in bed with a woman. She had heard that somewhere, though she could not for the life of her remember where—it was not a typical drawing room conversational topic. She had heard that sentiment did not matter to men as it did to women, that physical satisfaction was everything. She satisfied Francis physically, she believed.

But oh, she wished she could be beautiful for him. How he must wish he had a beautiful woman with whom to do that each night.

At first, once she had recovered from her embarrassment at discovering her error—not that she would
ever
fully recover—she had been overjoyed. It was to be a real marriage. She had physical closeness and intimacy to look forward to for a lifetime, or at least until they grew old. She could look forward to having children. She might be a
mother
. But her elation had not lasted long.

All too soon she had realized with cruel clarity exactly what she had done. She had married him and forever deprived him of the chance to marry a woman of his choice. She could not even comfort herself with the realization that he had done the same to her. There was a difference. He had been honor-bound to offer for her. As a gentleman—there was no truer gentleman than Francis—he had had no choice whatsoever. She had. Papa and Edgar had not thought it so imperative for her to marry him. It was unlikely that the scandal would have followed her so ruthlessly into her own world that it would have ruined her life.

He had had to offer for her. She had not had to accept. But she had.

And now he was trapped in a marriage that would never bring him true happiness. Or her either. If she had not loved him so painfully, perhaps she could have concentrated on making him comfortable and could have found contentment for herself. But she did love him.

And she had remembered something she would sooner not have remembered at all. That horrid woman in London—the Honorable Miss Pamela Fletcher—had said that he had loved some other woman who had married earlier in the Season. She had said that he was thought to be nursing a broken heart. Cora had dismissed the idea at the time as rather hilarious. But now …

Was it true? Had Francis loved another woman such a
short while ago? Had she broken his heart? Was it still broken? Cora frowned and bit the inside of her cheek and thought and thought, but she could not remember the woman’s name or the name of the man she had married. Perhaps it was as well. She would always dread meeting the woman and seeing a confirmation in Francis’s eyes that it was all true.

Was the other woman beautiful? she wondered. She would wager a quarter’s allowance that she was.

And he was stuck with her, Cora.

She got to her feet and hurried back to the house. He was with his steward in the office wing, the butler told her after she had asked if his new, wider shoes were helping his bunion.

The steward himself answered her tap on his door, but Francis was visible beyond his shoulder. He came striding toward her and took her hands.

“What is it, dear?” he asked her. “Do you need me?” He stepped outside the door and closed it behind him after she had nodded.

“Francis,” she said, “do reply to the Earl of Thornhill’s letter and say we will come.”

He bent his head to look more closely into her eyes. “But you do not wish to go,” he said. “You want to stay here. Your wishes are mine, Cora.”

She shook her head and smiled determinedly. “It was as you thought,” she said. “I am terrified of his title. But that is ridiculous, is it not? You are better born than he since his father must have been an earl and yours was a duke. And I am not terrified of you. It is something I am determined to fight. I am no cringing creature.”

He chuckled. “I had noticed,” he said.

“Then we will go,” she said briskly. “Write and tell him so.”

“You are sure?” He searched her eyes with his own.

She nodded again. “What is the countess like?” she asked.

“She is very sweet and very amiable,” he said. “You will like her, Cora.”

She very much doubted it. And the countess would not like her either. “Yes,” she said, “of course I will.”

“They have two young children,” he said. She could tell he was pleased, happy. “I always play with them. I like children.”

It was something she had not known about him. Something that made her fall a little deeper still in love with him.

“We will go soon?” she said. “I will give instructions now, without further delay. I am looking forward to it, Francis.”

“Liar,” he said, his expression softening. “But you
will
like them. And thank you, dear.”

She felt a silly rush of tears to her eyes and did what she had never done outside of her bed. She lifted her chin and kissed him on the mouth. And felt herself blush—after three weeks of intimacies at night. What sort of chucklehead would he think her?

He smiled and squeezed her hands.

H
E KNEW THAT
she was very nervous. As was he. Nervous and guilty. He would have wanted to come to visit Gabe and Lady Thornhill even without other inducement. He had always enjoyed visiting them. He would have wanted them to meet Cora, since she was now such an intimate part of his life. He had kept telling himself these things ever since she had come to him in his steward’s office almost a week ago.