“Thank you, sir,” Frances said as he took her arm and led her back onto the terrace.
Chapter 16
ARABELLA sent her maid away as soon as she was in her nightgown and had had her curls brushed out for the night. She paced restlessly to the window and back to the bed. Would he come soon? Or would he stay up for most of the night as he had half-promised, talking to Lord Farraday and Mr. Hubbard?
The four-poster bed with its domed canopy and heavy velvet hangings suddenly looked very narrow. She and her husband were to share that bed, sleep together side by side. They had not been together as man and wife for more than two weeks. They had never spent a night together.
It seemed to Arabella impossible to climb into that bed and address herself to sleep. She would not be able even to close her eyes. She would be as stiff as a board.
She did eventually climb in on the side farthest from the window and then wondered if she should move over to the other side. Which side would he prefer? She stayed where she was, as close to the edge as possible, clinging to the side with both hands.
She closed her eyes and then opened them wide again. The candles were still burning. Should she leave them so or should she snuff them? She jumped out of bed, snuffed the candles hastily, and almost ran back to the bed. It seemed to be far safer to be hidden beneath the covers than to be caught standing in the middle of the room.
Arabella tried to coax her mind into thinking of pleasant things: the conversations she had had at the garden party during the afternoon; the friendly exchanges she had had with her neighbors at the dinner table; the hilarity of the charades, in which she had acquitted herself not at all well; the good fellowship afterward. She tried not to think of the depression that was waiting to oppress her.
Her husband had tried to patch up their quarrel earlier that afternoon. He had suggested that they start all over again, put the first month of their marriage behind them, try to become friends. He wanted to take her to his home in Norfolk so that they could be alone together.
And she had rejected him. She had pointed out that the past was forever with them, that there was no way now to make something pleasant of their marriage.
And she was right, was she not? Even if he was sorry for what he had done—and he had never said that he was—how could she ever trust him again? If he had needed a mistress when he first married her, would the need not return? After all, she had no great attractions either of person or of character with which to hold his interest.
How could she forget? How could she become his friend? A friend was someone one trusted.
She was right. It was too late for them.
But she did not want to be right. She wanted to trust him and admire him as she had at the start of their marriage. She wanted to be able to depend upon him as a wife should upon her husband. She wanted to obey him from inclination and not merely because her marriage vows dictated that she must.
She wanted ... She did not know what she wanted, but she knew that if she did not think of something else very quickly and concentrate her whole mind on it, she would cry.
She would not cry. If she did, her nose would get stuffed up and she would have to breathe through her mouth. And she would snore when she slept. If she slept! How very humiliating that would be.
Much later, Lord Astor lay awake, his head turned to one side, watching his wife. She was curled up on her side of the bed, facing away from him, so close to the edge that he wondered that she had not fallen off. She was sleeping. He had his hands clasped behind his head. He had resisted the temptation to touch her. It was a strong temptation. She looked like a child, positioned as she was. But he knew that she felt very much like a woman. And he had not had her for more than two weeks.
She turned suddenly, making a great to-do about the matter, wriggling into a comfortable position, burrowing her nose into the pillow, pulling the blankets up to her chin. Her curls brushed against his arm. Lord Astor smiled.
And then he knew that she had awoken. There was an unnatural stillness about her body. She opened her eyes and looked at him without moving. She stared at him for a long time. The faint light from the window was behind him. He realized that she could not see that his eyes were open.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” he said.
She still did not move. “I was sleeping,” she said. She sounded surprised.
“Did you think you would not?” he said. “Because I would be coming?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Arabella!” he said softly. He took his hands away from behind his head and turned onto his side, facing her. “I am not quite a monster, you know. I am a man, the same one you trusted just a few weeks ago. The only difference is that at that time I was unfaithful to you and now I am not.” He touched her cheek lightly with-his fingertips.
She lifted her hand and unexpectedly caught at his. She pressed it against her cheek and then turned her head so that her lips were against his palm.
“Arabella.” He kissed her temple, her cheek, and—when she turned her head—her lips. “Let me make love to you. Don’t freeze me out. Don’t just be dutiful. Love me. Please. Love me, Arabella.”
He feathered kisses on her lips and cheeks until she took his face in her hands and offered her mouth to him. She whimpered when he kissed her more deeply. He pushed an arm beneath her pillow and brought her warm, tiny body against his. He teased her lips with tongue and teeth until she opened her mouth and allowed him entrance. She grew hot in his arms.
Arabella had lost herself. She had been sleepy and quite without defenses. Now there was no possible way of fighting. Indeed, there was not even any thought of putting an end to what had begun. Her husband’s arms were about her, she was pressed to the heat of him, his mouth was over hers, his tongue creating erotic aches and arousing a desire that totally precluded thought. She wanted him, all of him. Now. There could be no holding back, no waiting.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she gasped when his mouth left hers and began to blaze a hot trail along her throat. She twined her fingers in his hair. “Yes. Love me. Oh, please, love me.”
Then she was helping him unbutton the front of her nightgown. Hindering him, rather, in her impatience, her hands plucking at his. And then she gasped as strong hands lifted the fabric right away from her shoulders and down her arms and returned to touch her breasts, to explore them lightly, to touch her nipples, to tease them, to arouse them so that she cried out with the pain of her longing.
