“That was self-indulgent of me,” he said then as he moved to her side. “I ought to have ended it sooner. I hope I did not cause you unnecessary pain.”
“No,” she said. There ought to have been more to say, but she could not think of anything.
“You must sleep now, Lady Roath,” he said. “You have done your duty for one day.”
She could not tell from his tone if he was serious or if he wassomehow joking with her. And she could hardly ask. She wished he had kept his arms about her, maybe drawn her against him. She felt suddenly chilly. He leaned down almost as though she had told him so and pulled the covers over them. He did not touch her. But he did not go away to his own bedchamber either. She knew he had one. It was beyond his dressing room, which adjoined hers.
Perhaps duty did not allow him to sleep alone until he had got her with child. But oh dear, it sounded very calculating. Very chilling. As though human emotions and relationships were of no real importance when set against duty.
He was sleeping, she realized after a few minutes. She turned toward him and gazed into his face in the candlelight.
She saw the Marquess of Roath.
Her husband. In every conceivable way.
—
Dawn was graying the room when Lucas awoke. He had slept deeply for a number of hours, he was surprised to discover. This was a strange room and a strange bed. He was unaccustomed to sharing either. Nevertheless, he was totally comfortable. Philippa was still fast asleep beside him, turned slightly away from him, naked and warm, blond hair covering her shoulder and hiding her face.
He thought of last night, of how thoroughly enjoyable it had been. Thoughenjoyablewas rather a tame word to describe just how good it had been. She was a beautiful woman, as lovely without her clothes as she was with them. Lovelier, in fact. They had had satisfactory sex. Though why were words not superlative enough when one wanted them to be? It had been far more than just satisfactory. Best of all, she washis wife.His for the rest of their lives—as he was hers. It made a difference—marriage, that was. What hadhappened had not been just about desire and passion. It had been about commitment and the rest of their lives.
He wondered if it would be selfish to wake her and have her again now, before it was time to get up. Getting her with child was his primary duty as a new husband, after all. Yet it seemed a chilling thought. She had, of course, been a virgin—he had felt her flinch while he was mounting her. Would she be sore this morning? Hadshe alsofound the consummation of their marriageenjoyableandsatisfactory? He really was not sure.
She had not said much at all last night, in fact. Except, that was, when she had asked him if he had mistresses and told him she would not tolerate them if he did. When he had proposed a toast to them, she had said,“To us, Lucas. To loyalty and always doing our best.”
Loyalty.
Always doing our best.
She had said it just after he had spoken of his hope for friendship and affection between them. Ought he to have mentioned love too? But love was not something one mentioned as a future possibility, surely, not when one was speaking to the person one might perhaps love at some future date. Ought he to have said it anyway, as something he already felt for her? He would not have been lying.
It would not have seemed fair, though. She had already been bullied into marrying him—and maybe that was not too strong a word. His grandparents, particularly his grandfather, had pursued her relentlessly—bylikingher, by making her like them. He believed she was genuinely fond of them. It had seemed to him that the evening before last—had it really happened so recently?—she had been as upset by Grandpapa’s heart seizure as his own family had been. She had been bullied by circumstances. The Duke of Wilby was dying. She had it in her power to let him die in peace,knowing that she, His Grace’s own personal choice, would marry his grandson. What Grandpapa had said to her in his bedchamber when he had her summoned there Lucas did not know, but whatever it was, it had persuaded her to say yes without any time for consideration. She had been bullied, benign as the coercion may have been.
Andhe, God damn it, had bullied her too. By agreeing to make her his offer in Grandmama’s sitting room. By throwing the whole weight of the decision upon her shoulders, instead of asserting himself and telling his grandparents for once in his life that no,no,it was not right and he would not put that burden upon her at a time of heightened emotion, which really ought not to concern her at all.
Would sheeverhave listened to a proposal of marriage from him if Grandpapa had not suffered that near-fatal heart seizure at Almack’s? Would she ever have accepted it even if he had tried? She had every reason to keep her distance from him, to want as little to do with him as possible, even though he had told her the whole story and she surely did not think as badly of him as she had done quite justifiably for the past four years.
No, he thought, turning away from her on the bed and staring at the window, she would not have married him in the natural course of events. It was his grandfather who had courted her, but it was he, Lucas, to whom she was married for the rest of her life.
She could have marriedanyone.She seemed largely unaware of the effect she had had upon the male half of theton—married men and single, young, middle-aged, and elderly.Hewas aware of it. She could have held out for love and happily ever after. She would surely have found them. And she would have deserved them after four years of what sounded to him like severe lowness of spirits, believing herself to besoiled goodson account of her father’s transgressions.
Now this was a pretty kettle of fish he found himself holding. He was married and could not go back to do what he surely ought to have done the night before last—refusing to put pressure upon Lady Philippa Ware, that was, when she was away from her own family, embroiled inhisfamily’s drama, and surely unable to think straight. He was married, and nothing could change that.Shewas married, rushed into making a hasty decision because an old man of whom she had grown fond was dying. She would now do her duty as his wife because she had been well brought up and had a strong sense of what was right and proper. She had said it last night.
To loyalty and always doing our best.
But it would not be a passive loyalty. She would not tolerate any misbehavior on his part. His wife was sweet and loyal by nature. She did not, however, lack resolve and firmness of character. Those facts at least made him smile.
He wouldnotwake her, he decided. She was not avessel for reproduction.Nor was she just a convenient female to cater to his lust. The fact that he was feeling lusty both annoyed and shamed him.
He got out of bed as carefully as he could, picked up his dressing gown from the floor, and made his way quietly through her dressing room into his.
Ten minutes later he was in the stables in the mews behind the house, saddling his horse despite the protestations of a sleepy groom, who put in a sudden appearance and was told to go back to bed. Five minutes after that Lucas was riding into Hyde Park and making his way toward Rotten Row, where he could give the horse its head and feel the wind in his face. The fact that it was a chilly morning, which threatened rain at any moment, suited him well.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Philippa was not for a moment disoriented when she awoke. She remembered everything as clearly as the daylight brightening the insides of her eyelids. She smiled and stretched and reached out a tentative hand to touch him.
He was not there. And the mattress where he had lain was cold beneath her hand. She opened her eyes, horribly disappointed, but telling herself not to be. Perhaps he had woken early and, not wanting to disturb her, had eased himself off the bed and out of the room. Maybe he was waiting to tease her for being a sleepyhead.
