David gazed back at him and pressed the side of his face against Anne’s shoulder. He looked as if he were considering the prospects and not finding them altogether unpleasing. Sydnam looked into Anne’s face. The wheels of the carriage were rumbling over the Pulteney Bridge.
“Ty Gwyn is yours, then?” she asked him. “The Duke of Bewcastle has sold it to you?”
“Yes,” he told her, “though I have not lived there yet. We will move in together.”
As he held her glance, he knew that she was remembering what had happened at Ty Gwyn. It was there that today had become inevitable.
“We will not be in Bath long enough to hire a dressmaker,” he said. “I hope we will be able to find sufficient ready-made clothes for you in the shops this afternoon.”
“Clothes?” She flushed again. “I do not need to buy any clothes.”
This day and their new relationship were as unreal for her as they were for him, he realized as he saw in her eyes the dawning understanding that now he had every right—and obligation—to clothe her in a manner suited to his wife. But causing her embarrassment or even distress was the farthest thing from his intentions.
“A new wardrobe will be my wedding gift to you, Anne,” he said. “I have looked forward to it.”
“A wedding gift,” she said as the carriage turned onto Milsom Street and proceeded in the direction of the Royal York. “But I have none for you.”
“It is quite unnecessary,” he said.
“No, it is not,” she said firmly. “I shall buy something for you too this afternoon. We will all have gifts.”
They looked at each other. She was the first to smile.
Shedidneed new clothes—quite desperately. It had been perfectly obvious to him during the summer that she had very few, and today she had worn an old evening gown for her wedding. The winter was coming on, and so were the advanced stages of her pregnancy. She needed clothes, and he was going to purchase them for her.
And after the shopping expedition, he thought, they would dine together in their private suite of rooms, the three of them, before David went to bed. And then there would be the wedding night.
He hoped he could do better than he had at Ty Gwyn. He hoped she would grow accustomed to him and find it possible to derive some pleasure from their marriage bed. Hehopedso.
He remembered her as he had first seen her on the cliffs above the beach at Glandwr—like beauty personified stepping out of the dusk and into his dreams. And here she was three months later…
She was Anne Butler.
Mrs. Sydnam Butler.
David was ready for bed soon after the evening meal had been eaten. It had been an emotional day for him, though not without some pleasurable excitement. After they had all arrived back at the hotel from several hours of shopping, he had spread all his new painting supplies over one of the narrow beds in the room assigned to him and touched and examined them all one at a time with reverence and awe. He was going to be very impatient, Anne knew, to reach Ty Gwyn and meet the new art instructor Sydnam had promised to find for him.
But she had been hardly less excited about her own gifts and had spread them over the other bed in the room so that she could admire all the day dresses, the three evening gowns—one of which she was now wearing—the shoes and bonnets and reticules and other garments and accessories that Sydnam had insisted she needed. She had realized anew during the day how wealthy he must be. He had even insisted upon taking her to a jeweler’s, where he had bought her the diamond earrings and gold chain with a diamond pendant that she was also wearing this evening.
She had bought him a new fob for his watch at the same jeweler’s, recklessly spending almost all the money she possessed. He had stood in the doorway of the bedchamber, fingering it as he watched her and David admire their own far more lavish gifts.
Anne had been very aware all evening of the other bedchamber—the one with the large canopied bed—at the other side of the private sitting and dining room, where she would presumably spend her wedding night with her new husband.
Although David had been with them the whole time, something in Sydnam’s manner all afternoon and during dinner had assured her that though this had been a forced marriage, he nevertheless desired her and had no intention of making this a mere marriage of convenience.
She did not want a marriage of convenience either. She wanted to be a normal woman. She wanted to have a normal marriage.
And perhaps, she thought, now that she had been with him once, her body would believe what her mind had told her. Perhaps it would be a magical wedding night.
All day she had been partly terrified, partly excited at the prospect.
She felt the tension again now as she sat on the side of David’s bed telling him a story, as she still did each evening before he settled for sleep. As usual she picked up the narrative from where she had left it the night before, continued it for ten minutes or so, making it up as she went along, and then broke off at a particularly suspenseful moment. As usual she laughed at David’s sleepy protest and bent to kiss him.
“How are we expected to live until tomorrow night before finding out what happens to poor Jim?” Sydnam asked from the doorway, where she knew he had been standing though she had been sitting with her back to him.
“You have no choice,” she said, getting to her feet. “Until tomorrow night I will not know myself what is to be Jim’s fate.”
She turned back to smooth David’s hair away from his brow and saw resentment in his eyes for a moment before he closed them.
