She was afraid of him.
She was afraid he would hurt her again.
Could he be sure that he would not?
He loved her. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to love her and love her until she cried out with pleasure.
Would he hurt her instead?
He smiled down at her and kissed her gently on the lips again. "I am keeping you from your sleep," he said. "Thank you, Georgiana, for this evening. You are a good wife, and you have shown me tonight an example of courage that I will try to emulate. Good night, dear."
Georgiana's jaw had dropped when he came into her room. It dropped as he left. A full minute passed before she recovered herself sufficiently to pick up her evening slippers one at a time and hurl them furiously at the dressing-room door through which he had disappeared. A few choice epithets, learned from some of her male London friends, followed the slippers.
How dared he? How dared he...play with her like that! She hated him. Unfeeling, cowardly, self-righteous, spineless...boy! She hated him. Just let him try to climb into her bed at any time in the future. She would tell him a thing or two. She wanted a man in her bed, not a stupid boy who had probably not even realized what a fool she had just made of herself, surrendering her body to him, almost begging him to pick her up and carry her to the bed and ravish her. Good night, indeed! She hated him.
Georgiana strode over to her dressing table, picked up her ivory-backed hairbrush, and hurled that too at the dressing-room door.
She burst into tears.
Five days later the Chartleigh traveling carriage was on its way back to London. For much of the journey very little sound came from inside, though there were three occupants. Each seemed more content to be left with private thoughts than to indulge in conversation.
Gloria had said a final farewell to her betrothed when the carriage passed the vicarage. She did not find this parting as painful as she had the last, because it was likely that it would not last so long. Even so, it is a dreary business to be leaving a loved one behind. And the future was not as full of certainties as the previous few days had lulled her into believing. There was still her mother to face.
Ralph was finding it difficult to shake off the mood of depression that had oppressed him since the night of the dinner party. He had made an effort to be cheerful and to carry on with his daily living as before, but he seemed to be permanently blue-deviled. His opinion of himself was at a very low ebb. His marriage was in a mess. And he did not know how to turn things around.
He had been so happy just two weeks before when he married Georgiana, and so full of hope. He had offered for her to please his mother and to fulfill a sense of duty. But he had discovered that he loved his bride. She had seemed to be the perfect wife for him. She shared his extreme youth, his quietness. And she had added to those qualities a sweetness and an air of innocence that had made him feel older than his years, that had given him a determination to protect her. And he had looked forward to two weeks with her at Chartleigh, alone except for the unthreatening presence of Gloria. It had seemed like a fairy-tale beginning to a happy marriage.
Yet somehow nothing had worked out as he had imagined. And none of it was Georgiana's fault. She was everything he could wish for, and more. She was different from what he had expected, it was true. She had a liveliness of manner and a forthrightness of address that denoted a strong character. And he would never have suspected that she would be capable of showing so much courage. But he had not been mistaken about her basic sweetness of character. She had shown an affection for his family that could not have been expected after less than two weeks of marriage. He still marveled at the way in which she had laid herself open to all kinds of censure on the night of the dinner party in her determination to help his sister.
No, it was entirely his fault that the marriage had gone wrong. He had married a sweet and loving young girl and he had made her afraid of him. He loved her, and he could not come near her. He had resolved after their wedding night to be patient, to win her trust and her affection before trying again to consummate the marriage. Yet his own selfishness and uncontrolled desires had prevailed. He had not been able to resist his need for her when he had been foolish enough to visit her in her bedchamber. He had tried to make love to her long before she was ready for such intimacy, and he had frightened her again. She had told him so as delicately as she could.
He knew that he had to begin all over again to become her friend, to win her confidence. He had to renew his hope that eventually she would trust him sufficiently to allow him to touch her and to make her his wife. But it would be a long process. He did not think he had the patience, not, that is, unless he could feel confident that all would turn out well in the end. But he was not convinced. Perhaps the time would never come. Perhaps the rift between them would only widen with time. Perhaps she already felt a distaste for him that would turn to revulsion.
Ralph turned his head to look at his wife. She was sitting quietly beside him, her hands folded in her lap, her face turned toward the window. So small and so fragile-looking. So lovely. And so courageous. Except about that one thing. She was afraid of his touch. And he could do nothing about it. He wanted to take her hand in his and smile reassuringly at her when she turned. But how could he be sure that she would not cringe at even that much contact? He had not touched her since that night. He had been afraid to do so.
And now they were on their way back to London, where they would be joining Mama at Middleton House. Her family would wish to spend time with her. Her friends and his would take some of their time. They would have less chance now to get to know each other. They would surely drift apart until only a name held them together. Ralph turned back to his window as he felt panic catch at his breathing.
Georgiana was feeling very tense. She was conscious of Ralph beside her with every nerve ending in her body. She was aware that he turned and looked at her for perhaps two minutes. The urge to look back at him turned her neck muscles so rigid that finally she did not think she could have moved if she had tried. She could not look him in the eye. She could not speak to him. She would have to do both if she turned her head. She was just too close to him. It would be too intimate a moment. Gloria, on the seat opposite, was asleep.
The last few days had been dreadful. They had hardly spoken. They had hardly looked at each other. At least, she had not looked at him. She could not speak for him because she had not been looking to observe if he looked at her. They had not touched. Even this morning, it was a footman who had handed her into the carriage. If the lack of contact had been caused by absence of interest, it would have been bearable. But the air between them positively bristled with tension and unspoken words.
If this state of affairs lasted much longer she would positively scream and start throwing things again. She hated him. She despised him. The words had been repeated to herself so many times that they had become like a sort of catechism, words without meaning droning away somewhere in the back of her mind. The truth was that she did care. Ralph was rather a sweet boy. She had had much evidence in the last two weeks that he was kind and considerate.
And he was unhappy. Of that there could not be any doubt. And there could be only one reason. It could not be that she had treated him badly or made him feel unwanted. Heaven knew, she had made her availability mortifyingly obvious to him a few nights before. No, it must be that he just could not consummate their marriage. Georgiana knew that such things happened to men. Someone must have told her so, though she could not remember who it was or how that person had come to confide such a shocking fact to a girl of such tender age. Anyway, the fact remained that Ralph must be incapable of making love to her. It had not been so on their wedding night. Clumsy as he had been, he could have done so if she had only kept her infernal mouth shut.
And so the whole thing came back to her again. It was her fault. She had destroyed his confidence to such a degree on that night that she had made him impotent. Yes, that was the word. And what a shocking burden it was to have on one's conscience. Poor Ralph. She wished he would touch her. She would like to curl up against him and try to make him feel protective and manly again. And her motives were not entirely selfless, she admitted. She was finding Ralph increasingly attractive and really quite handsome. It must be that eternal human tendency to want what we know we cannot have, she decided. Georgiana was starting to feel annoying physical frustrations at being close to her husband, married to him, yet unable to enjoy his embraces.
She should, of course, just turn to him, take his hand and draw it around her shoulders, lay her head against him, and tell him right out that she was disappointed that he did not come to her bed. The old Georgiana would have done that. Why on earth was she suddenly a new Georgiana just at the time when she needed all her courage and brazenness? Somehow she found that she could not take the initiative.
But she would have to do so if she were not going to go mad, she decided. As it was, she was not looking forward at all to returning to London. She dreaded meeting Ralph's mother again. She would be living in the same house as the woman. And her mother-in-law did not yet know about her terrible interference in Gloria's betrothal. She had really been very fortunate so far, but the worst was yet to come. As it happened, Gloria had been almost pathetically grateful to Ralph for taking such a firm and public stand in favor of her marriage. And the Reverend Boscome had been delighted that finally the head of the family had put a stop to the endless delays. Ralph had taken full responsibility for what had happened, of course. It was just like him to show such quiet courage. If there was to be any accusation of interference or impropriety, he would bear the blame and protect the name of his wife.
Something would have to be done. The closer they got to London, the more determined Georgiana became not to tolerate the present state of her marriage with quiet resignation. Ralph had to regain his confidence. He had to have his sense of manhood restored. She had destroyed it. She must see that it was rebuilt.
But how?
How could an eighteen-year-old girl, and a rather pitifully ignorant virgin at that, go about restoring to a man his ability to make love? It was a daunting task even for her. Perhaps Dennis Vaughan or Ben Creeley or Warren Haines could help her? She suddenly had an appalling vision of herself seated at the edge of a ballroom with one of them, or waltzing around a room confiding with a bright smile the fascinating news that her husband was impotent, and she still unbedded, and what was she to do about it, please? The vision was too horrifying even to be amusing.
She would have to devise some plan, some way of getting satisfactory answers without divulging to a living soul the mortifying truth of her husband's disability and her own unsatisfied yearnings.
