She was Georgiana's size. Just thus Georgiana would feel, if she could ever overcome her fear of him sufficiently to cling to him so trustingly. He closed his eyes and laid his cheek against the soft curls of the dancer and imagined that they were dark, glossy curls instead of garish red ones. It would be so easy to fantasize, to imagine that it was his wife with whom he had just made love.
The girl had stopped trembling. She had relaxed against him. Her breathing had become deep and even. She was sleeping, Ralph realized in surprise. Somehow he had not expected a paid whore to sleep after such an encounter. He would have expected her to be eager to be gone, her work done for another night. Perhaps she was really tired? What must it be like to be forced to work on after a night of dancing in order to earn enough money to make a living?
He was glad she was sleeping. He did not feel like leaving yet. He did not want to lose contact with her and know that several more days must pass before he could hold her again. He remembered the way she had offered herself to him with something like urgency just before he entered her. He remembered the sounds she had made as he moved in her. Did she feel she must be an actress in bed as well as on the stage? She surely could not have been feeling the eagerness her actions had suggested.
He was so inexperienced, Ralph thought ruefully. Not that he was really sorry. He did not think he would crave contact with the muslin company once this particular liaison was at an end. If only his marriage to Georgiana could be set right, he would be perfectly content to explore the world of sexual delights with her and to learn further pleasures with her.
The girl woke suddenly with a start and Ralph hugged her to him, knowing that however disappointed she might be, and however unfair to her he was being, he must have her again before he left. He rolled with her on the bed and was relieved to find that she accepted this new duty without objection or hesitation.
He took her quickly and deeply, his eyes tightly closed, seeing and feeling his wife beneath him. And she lay submissively beneath him, this girl, perhaps living out her own fantasies.
Chapter 14
Seven weeks passed with amazing rapidity. Georgiana lived them almost in a dream. She knew that her life was not a satisfactory one, that there would have to be many changes before she could feel that there was stability and true contentment in her home. But this knowledge was of the head. With her heart she was happy, almost deliriously so. Perhaps the present state of affairs could not continue indefinitely, but she would not think of that. She would enjoy the present for what it was worth.
She was in love with Ralph, deeply, headlong, passionately, head over heels in love. And she felt that the fact must show on her face. She could not feel as she did and show no outer sign, surely. She tried hot to look or behave differently from usual. She went about her day to day activities as if nothing had changed in her life. But she was convinced that one day Ralph must look at her and know the truth.
The wonderful thing was that she had fallen in love with him in his two persons. She was in love with the lover who came to her and bedded her twice each week. She was equally in love with the husband who showed no physical sign of attachment, but whose behavior toward her suggested a growing affection.
She had not expected that physical love could become a craving for her. She had looked forward to marriage as a means of being independent of her parents and becoming someone of consequence in society. She had thought of the physical side of it with some misgiving, as something she must get used to, since men appeared to need it and it was necessary anyway for the begetting of children. She had been prepared to endure.
But Ralph could rouse her body to unimagined delights. She did not know how he did it. He had no more experience than she. Less, in fact. He had never even kissed before his marriage. His skill must be instinctive, a part of his natural gentleness of manner probably. He could do things to her with his hands and his mouth that reduced her to raw sensation. And his driving presence inside her body could lift her beyond feeling, over the edge into blissful nothingness. And he was always there afterward with warm arms and body to cradle her back into this world and back into her body.
It was not always like that with him. Sometimes he took her without first using his hands to excite her. But she found that she enjoyed these encounters equally. Perhaps even more. When she was aroused she forgot everything except her body's need. She forgot Ralph and even herself. On the other occasions she could remain fully aware of what was happening and could enjoy thoroughly the knowledge that it was her husband embracing her, occupying her body, moving in her, making those low sounds of pleasure that he always made against her hair as he climaxed. One did not need an earth-shattering experience to enjoy the marriage act, she found.
She almost lived for those nights. And she willed time to slowness when they were together. With the exception of the first time he had come to her, he always took her twice. And she found herself loving more than anything the time between, when she could cuddle against his body, warm and relaxed, knowing that soon, but not too soon, he would turn her onto her back again or lift her astride his body and they would be one again. She always smiled into the darkness when he apologized for needing her more than once. If he just knew! Just for the luxury of spending a whole night with him she would have let him take her ten times!
It had been an agony to her to have to tell him one night that she would be unable to keep their next regular appointment. A whole week had passed with no more than a chance touch of his hand at home. But she might have avoided the frustration. Nothing had happened in its regular monthly pattern, and nothing had happened in the more than three weeks since.
Her newness to sexual activity must have upset her system, Georgiana decided. She could not be with child. It could not happen that quickly or that easily, surely. Besides, would she not know if she were pregnant? Surely one could not have one's husband's child in one's womb without feeling it there. And did not women vomit and have the vapors all over the place when they were in such a delicate situation? No, she was not with child.
She hoped she was not! As it was, she was beginning to realize that she had trapped herself into one of her hopeless tangles, except that this one was worse than any of the others had ever been. Life was wonderful at the moment. But sooner or later she was going to have to reveal the truth to Ralph. And how would he feel about it? He would feel a fool, probably, to discover that he had been sneaking away at night to make love to the wife who slept nightly a few feet away from him. And she could not afford to make Ralph feel foolish. He had very little self-confidence as it was.
Soon now she was going to have to find a tactful way to tell him. She certainly did not need to be pressured by the presence of a baby pushing her out of shape. How quickly did one develop a bulge, anyway?
But it would be wonderful to have a baby with Ralph, she thought despite herself. As soon as he knew the truth and their marriage had become a normal one; she would ask him if she might have one. Though she supposed that she need not ask. Once he was making love to her nightly in her own bed, it would happen in its own good time, she rather suspected. Oh dear, she was so inexperienced, so woefully ignorant. She, who had thought just a few short months ago that she knew everything there was to know!
But her love for Ralph was developing not only through their clandestine meetings. She was getting to know him in an everyday setting and growing to love the person he was. She could not imagine why she felt as she did. He was not at all the sort of man she had always admired and associated with. She had always liked men who were strong and confident and physically very active. She had liked daring men, ones who were willing to take a risk and accept a wager for the sheer fun of doing something out of the ordinary. Warren Haines had once wagered a great deal of money on his ability to outdrink a notorious heavy drinker. He had won the bet and spent three days in bed violently ill. And Georgiana had admired him tremendously.
She had not liked Ralph at first because he was not a "manly" man. Whatever that description meant. Whatever was manly about being able to outdrink a fellow fool and half-killing oneself into the bargain?
Ralph was incredibly gentle. Somehow he managed to keep the peace at home, even though the atmosphere between her and her mother-in-law was frequently tense. She had noticed that he somehow succeeded in making both women feel as if they had his support. And she could not be offended at his not turning against his mother. She could see that he genuinely loved the dowager, whom she found it extremely difficult even to tolerate. She had heard about his plans to give his mother the dower house at Chartleigh for a Christmas present. And she marveled at the way he had made his mother enthusiastic for a move that should have upset her dreadfully.
They bad been driving to the lending library one afternoon when Ralph drew the phaeton to a sharp halt and handed her the ribbons. He vaulted down into a crowded street and reappeared with a scruffy little dog in his arms. She had half-noticed the dog being beaten with a stick as they approached but had thought very little of it. Such sights were quite common. Ralph deposited the mutt in her lap before climbing to his seat again, and she gave a little shriek as she noticed the grime of its fur and the blood on one side that immediately stained her pelisse.
Ralph apologized and moved to take the dog into his own arms again. But first he took a linen handkerchief from his pocket and laid it gently against the creature's injured side. And she felt ashamed of her concern for her own appearance and tender toward the man who had noticed the suffering even of a small animal in the crowded streets of London. The mutt, now clean and healed of its wound, spent its days in the kitchen, where the cook constantly threatened to do away with it for being always under her feet and just as constantly fed it the choicest scraps of food from her store.
And Ralph was educating her, though she thought he would be surprised if he realized that she put the matter that way to herself. She was learning to enjoy reading when he was in the same room. One of the greatest pleasures of her days came when they sat together and shared a book, discussing some poem. She talked and gave her views, but she loved to listen to him interpret a passage that had seemed to her to have a very obvious meaning. He could see depths of thought that had completely passed over her head. And yet there was no intellectual conceit in him. She doubted that he even realized that his ideas were of such greater value than her own. He always listened to her attentively.
He took her to art galleries and museums, places she had always shunned as dry gatherers of dust and worthless junk. She would still not have enjoyed the visits greatly, she admitted, if Ralph were not there to explain things to her and bring to life an object that was just that to her and no more . She started for the first time to believe that it would be a pleasurable experience to travel to Florence and Milan and Rome and all those other places that many travelers visited out of a sense of duty only.
With Ralph she was learning that one did not need to be constantly out and doing in order to bring meaning and enjoyment to life. Not that they shunned the brighter entertainments. Now that more and more members of the ton were returning to the capital for the winter, there were frequent invitations. And they refused only those they genuinely could not keep. They attended parties, musical evenings, theater parties, even one ball.
Ralph did not shine at such entertainments. He was not naturally sociable. But he did not shun contact with others. He could be relied upon to seek out someone—usually a female—who was isolated from the company for one reason or another. And he would sit quietly conversing with these people-aging spinsters, young girls without either looks or fortune, even chaperones, who were usually beneath the notice of theton. If some of his friends from the House of Lords were present, of course, he would be engrossed in serious conversation.
Georgiana loved to keep an eye on him while she danced or chatted with gayer companions. She was inordinately proud of him and came very close to quarreling loudly with Dennis Vaughan one evening when he joked that Ralph blended in quite well with the row of chaperones amongst whom he sat for one particular set.
One afternoon Ralph took her to visit the Broomes. They did not live in the most fashionable part of London. Georgiana felt apprehensive. The school would be in progress. Were they to expect noise and chaos and dirt?
