He reached out a hand and cupped it about her cheek. She neither flinched nor moved—even as far as to lean into his hand. He set one knee on the floor, the better to balance himself.
“I wanted our wedding day to be perfect for you,” he said.
She said nothing. But what was there to say?
“Instead,” he said, “it must have been one of worst days of your life.”
He heard her draw breath as if to speak, but she said nothing to deny it.
“It is past midnight,” he said. “A new day. Allow me to start afresh, if you will.”
Did her head tilt a fraction closer to his hand?
“Let me take you to bed,” he said. “To our marital bed in our room. Not here. This is to be your private bedchamber for daytime use. At least, I hope that is all it will be used for. Come to bed with me, Dora. Let me make love to you.”
He could hear her inhaling very slowly. “I am your wife,” she said, still in the same toneless voice.
He got abruptly to his feet and turned to the window. He braced his hands against the outer frames. The night watchman was long gone. There was nothing but darkness out there.
“Please don’t,” he said. “Don’t make this a matter of duty. You owe me nothing out of duty. Nothing. I married you because I wanted a companion and a lover. I thought you wanted the same. If I was mistaken, or if you have changed your mind, then . . . so be it.” There was a short silence. “Was I mistaken? Have you changed your mind?”
“Neither,” she said.
“Forgive me for today,” he said, “and particularly for this evening. I cannot explain even to myself why I said good night to you outside your dressing room. It was certainly not because I did not want you. Please believe that.”
He felt a hand on his back then. He had not heard her getting to her feet.
“I am sorry too, Your Grace,” she said. “We are both old enough to know better than to expect perfection of any day. How foolish we both were to expect it of our wedding day. And yet it was perfect except for those few minutes, which were neither your fault nor mine.”
He swung around. “Your Grace?” He laughed. “Oh, no, please, Dora.”
“George,” she said. His name sounded a little prim on her tongue and altogether alluring.
He set one arm about her shoulders and the other about her waist and drew her against him. She was warm and shapely and womanly and clad in a predictably modest and unadorned nightgown of the finest linen. She smelled of that light floral fragrance he had noticed before. She set her hands against his shoulders and lifted her face. He could not see it clearly. Although she faced the window, she was in the shadow of his body.
He kissed her lips for the first time. She held them stiff and still, and it occurred to him with something of a shock that it was possible she had never been kissed before. Even if she had, it had probably been a long time ago. He drew his head a little way back from hers and turned them slightly so that the faint light of the outdoors was on her face.
“Smile for me,” he murmured.
Perhaps it was surprise that caused her to do so.
He kissed her again, and her lips, still curved upward and slightly parted in a smile, were soft and yielding. He softened his own over them, moved them, touched his tongue to the seam of hers, pressed slightly between. She made a soft sound of alarm, but he had cupped her elbows with his hands and moved her arms so that they came over his shoulders and about his neck. He drew her against his body again and deepened the kiss without doing anything else that might shock her further.
He was surprised by the sensation of pure pleasure he felt from their almost chaste embrace. The pleasure had nothing to do with sexual desire, though there was that too. It had more to do with the fact that she was his woman, his wife, his companion, his own for the rest of their lives as long as they both lived. Some of the joy of the morning—of yesterday morning—returned.
Her head moved back from his then and he could see her face clearly enough to detect some anxiety there. “You do realize,” she asked him, “that I am a virgin?”
He would be willing to wager that her cheeks were aflame.
He wanted to smile, even laugh, for she spoke in the voice she must use to the more careless of her music pupils, but it would have been the wrong thing to do. “I do realize it,” he said gravely. “By the morning it will no longer be so. Come to bed, Dora.”
* * *
Goodness, she must have been fathoms deep in sleep, Dora thought as she began to float upward to the surface. She was enveloped in warmth and comfort. The mattress had never felt so soft or the pillow so warm yet firm beneath her neck. She had never felt so totally relaxed or so filled to the brim with a sense of well-being. A clock was ticking steadily somewhere close by. She breathed in a pleasant but unfamiliar fragrance. As well as the rhythmic ticking of the clock, there was another sound, that of the deep, even breathing of someone asleep beside her. And—the only discordant detail—there was a soreness between her thighs and up inside her. Yet not really discordant after all, for paradoxically the soreness was the most deliciously comforting feeling of all and the origin of her utter contentment.
She had reached the very surface of sleep and broke through into consciousness, remembering. She was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. But the bed was . . . what had he called it? It was their marital bed. And this was their room, whenever they were in London, anyway. That other room where he had come for her was hers only for daytime use. But she had no wish to go back there.