A Marriage of Inconvenience (22 page)

Lucy wished she could be honest with him, and tell James all that had happened between her and Sebastian. His openness deserved a return. But it was impossible. She could not break her word to Sebastian, nor could she be so selfish as to ruin his and Anna’s happiness.

James kissed her again. “We really should try to sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

“Yes,” she agreed, rather relieved. She couldn’t tell him the whole truth, and so she regretted having heard so many of his confidences.

He fell asleep quickly. Lulled by the steady rhythm of his breathing, Lucy drifted off, too. Her last coherent thought was relief that he hadn’t yet noticed the scar.

James slept later than he had meant to that morning, lulled, he supposed, by the gray sky. He sighed regretfully; he had meant to love his wife again and, he hoped, bring her to a climax now that she knew what to expect and would no longer be ruled by her fears of the unknown. But bedsport would have to wait for the evening, because they both needed to rise and dress if they were to be at the church on time for her cursed cousin’s wedding to Lord Almont.

Lucy slept curled against him spoon-fashion, her face peaceful and lovely in repose, thick dark brown lashes fringing the creamy gold of her cheeks. Much as he hated to disturb such beauty, he needed to awaken her so she would have ample time to dress.

Her nightdress had ridden up in her sleep, such that his hand, resting lightly on her hip, touched bare skin rather than white lawn. He was
so
tempted to wake her with kisses and passion, but there was no time, so he leaned over her to gently shake her awake. His hand brushed across her back and found—what the devil?—scar tissue.

He drew back until he could see what he touched—a raised scar, some four inches long, running diagonally across the right side of her lower back, not far above the curve of her buttock. He’d seen such scars before—many more of them, but the same type of mark—on the backs of men who had been flogged. Angry and grieved, he traced Lucy’s scar with his finger.

She startled awake and looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes full of anguish and shame. “You found it,” she said.

He continued to measure the mark’s contours with his fingertips. “Is it from the workhouse?”

“Yes,” she replied in a tight voice. “From the time I told you about, when I was whipped because they thought I was lying about my family.”

He supposed it was a good thing it
was
the workhouse; if it had been her family, he would have had his revenge, no matter how much it grieved Lucy or angered Anna.

He bent down until his head was at the small of her back and kissed along the length of the scar, slowly tracing it with lips and tongue.

Lucy shuddered and dragged in a breath, her back arching. “James…dear God.”

Quickly he nuzzled his way up her spine, then turned her onto her back and gazed down at her. Worry and shame still lingered on her face, but desire had almost driven them away. Her eyes were so glorious and dark, and her lips were parted and kissable.

“You’re so beautiful, Lucy,” he told her. “Every inch of you.”

She closed her eyes and trembled in his arms, and a pair of tears trickled from beneath her eyelids. He kissed them away, tasting their salt, and then kissed her on the mouth, hard.

Her arms wound around his shoulders, clutching at him, and James couldn’t remember when he’d ever experienced a kiss so wild and so
meaningful.
Damn Portia Arrington and her wedding anyway.
Surely
they had time—

A soft knock sounded on the inner door to the connecting dressing rooms. “My lord, my lady, are you awake?”

It was Higgins, his valet. James broke the kiss and swore under his breath. “
Now
we are,” he said.

“I beg your pardon for disturbing you, but your aunt and uncle were sure Lady Selsley wouldn’t wish to miss her cousin’s wedding.”

“I suppose it
is
late,” Lucy murmured.

“Quite right, Higgins,” James called. “I’ll be in my dressing room in a moment, and please send her ladyship’s abigail to her directly.”

“Of course, my lord.”

James sighed and got out of bed. “We’ll take up where we left off tonight.”

Lucy smiled, though she looked distracted and preoccupied.

James left her to dress and didn’t see her again until both of them joined Anna, Uncle Robert and Aunt Lilias and climbed into the waiting carriage. As James helped Lucy into the rear-facing seat, Aunt Lilias gave them both a searching look. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she nodded.

Lord Almont’s wedding to Portia Arrington had all the pomp and ceremony James and Lucy’s had lacked. The church was crowded with all the local nobility and gentry, along with Almont relations who had journeyed from all across the country to see the head of the family marry his third wife. James wondered how the second cousin, due to inherit the title and estates should the marquess die without a son, felt about the marriage.

After an interminable wedding breakfast followed by a lengthy discussion of Anna and Lieutenant Arrington’s plans, they returned to Orchard Park. James took Lucy to bed again as soon as he felt they could decently retire upstairs. Again he loved her as patiently and tenderly as he knew how, applying the most reliable of the arts he had learned in his three years in Eleanor’s bed. But while Lucy was more relaxed this time, he still couldn’t bring her to a climax. Just as she had the night before, she seemed to almost panic as her arousal grew, calming herself with what was obviously an effort of will.

James kept his frustrations to himself as they lay in each other’s arms afterward. He was tempted to chastise or blame her, but he knew it would only make the problem worse, so he held his peace, stroking her hair as she fell asleep. But he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t think Lucy was truly frigid; it was clear from her body’s response and her pleasure in the early kisses and caresses that she did desire him. But she was actively fighting her arousal, so he didn’t think finding mutual pleasure in the marriage bed would be as simple as trying a different position or caressing her a little more firmly or softly.

He knew himself well enough to acknowledge that a large part of his frustration and annoyance stemmed from wounded vanity. He prided himself on a certain degree of prowess in bed, on being the kind of man who had applied himself to pleasing his partners. It was galling to find himself married to a woman who rejected what he had to offer. What if he never found a way to convince Lucy to relax and accept pleasure? But then he shook his head. It was much too early to fear such a dire fate after only two nights.

But another two nights passed with no better result. The fourth night of their marriage followed a busy day. Anna and Lieutenant Arrington had married in the Orchard Park parlor that morning and driven off to spend a fortnight of newly wedded bliss in the Almont dower cottage. Lord Almont had lent them the cottage for their honeymoon as a wedding gift so that the couple could enjoy some privacy before the lieutenant sailed to rejoin his regiment.

James was glad of it, for Lord and Lady Dunmalcolm were to begin their journey home to Scotland at first light the next morning, and he and Lucy would at last have some privacy of their own. Perhaps that was why he let his frustration show that night. After yet another session where she lay beneath him in her bed, watching him with unnerving calm, rather than gathering her into his arms he leaned back on one elbow and snapped at her. “Lucy,
why
can you not relax? I’m doing everything I know to please you, so I wish you would let yourself be pleased.”

She burst into tears.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to speak gently. “Lucy, don’t cry. I’m not angry with you.”

She wiped her eyes, though the tears still flowed, and blinked furiously at him. “I think you are,” she asserted.

He took a deep breath. “Perhaps I am, a little. But I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.”

“I’m sure it’s not you. It’s me. I—I try, but I can’t.”

“What is it that you can’t do?”

“What you said—relax. I try, I want to make you happy, but—” she turned away, burying her face in her pillow, “—I’m so afraid.”

“Afraid of
me?
” he asked, incredulous. Surely he had treated her with tenderness and every possible consideration, not only in bed but from the first day they had met.

She shook her head, still not looking at him. “Not of you. Of myself.”

“You’re afraid of yourself,” he repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either!” she said with sudden passion. “All I know is that when we—when we come together, I feel like I’m about to lose all control of myself, and I cannot allow that to happen.”

He blinked. “But you’re supposed to lose all control. That’s precisely the point.”

“I can’t.”

He tamped down his anger and frustration. It would never do to turn this into a shouting match. “But it’s so delightful when you do. Of course, I don’t truly know what it feels like for a woman,” he allowed, “but I don’t think it’s so very different from what a man experiences.”

She frowned at him, her eyes now dry. “You lose control?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“You seem so…so expert and assured.”

“Maybe at the beginning, but by the end I’m not controlling anything, believe me.” He tugged her into his arms, and she rolled against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Why are you so afraid of losing control?” he asked. “I promise, nothing bad will happen—only pleasure.”

She considered his question in silence for a moment. “I’m not certain,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose—I’ve never been able to control anything but myself. And…when I was a child, after my family died, I had to learn so much self-control, to…to survive, and to please those who must be pleased.”

Damn that workhouse, damn its overseer and damn all Arringtons. But he sensed that if there was a solution for Lucy’s problem, she needed to talk her way to it herself. “How so?” he asked.

Her eyes grew distant, and she didn’t answer at once. “You may find this difficult to believe,” she said at last, “but I wasn’t so quiet and reserved as a child. If anything, I was boisterous, and I used to order my brothers and sisters about. I was the eldest, after all, so I thought they should listen to me.”

As she spoke the last few words she quirked her eyebrows in the expression of gentle mockery James was beginning to find inexpressibly endearing. “Are you suggesting any resemblance to anyone else in this room?” he asked mildly.

“Perhaps a domineering nature is a common trait of eldest children,” she said, with the ghost of a smile. “In any case, Papa was often sickly and Mama tired and sad, so
someone
had to look after the younger ones and keep them in good cheer.”

He stroked her hair. As far as he could tell, Lucy had never truly had the chance to be a child. For all her life, she had carried the weight of the world on her slim young shoulders. “You had to be the strong one,” he said.

She shrugged. “I didn’t mind. I loved them, they needed me and I enjoyed being important.”

“Everyone does, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“But then so many of them died.”

“Yes, and suddenly I wasn’t important at all. In the workhouse I learned very quickly never to draw attention to myself.” He stroked the scar on her back, and she flinched for a moment before relaxing against him with a nod. “Even when I went to Swallowfield, they were all kind, more or less—well, except for Portia—but I was never allowed to forget that I was the least of the family, and not a daughter of the house.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy. If I knew a way to undo it, or to make those who hurt you pay…”

“But there isn’t,” she said patiently, “and I’m not sure my family was in the wrong. After all, I
wasn’t
as well-born as Portia, and I had no dowry at all, so it would’ve raised false expectations to treat me as her equal. But—I had to learn to control myself, you see. I thought of it as protecting my brothers. Since I was the one there at Swallowfield, I wanted to be good and quiet and never in the way, so my aunt and uncle would never regret helping all three of us. But it was to protect myself, too. I can see that now. The better I could control myself, the less reason anyone would have to rebuke me, or to interfere with me at all.”

“So you learned to control yourself so that no one else could control you.”

“Exactly, only I never realized it fully until now. It’s such a strong habit now that I don’t know how to stop. I can’t lose control, even when I try.”

“Perhaps trying so hard is making it worse,” he said. “Now that I understand, I won’t push you so much. You—you
do
enjoy it, don’t you, even if you can’t quite give in to it?”

She smiled shyly. “I do. It’s…most pleasant.”

“Well, it’s a beginning.” He paused and shifted to a more comfortable position. “You realize that you’re not powerless anymore, don’t you? You can control more than just yourself.”

“I suppose,” she said doubtingly.

“You suppose? Lucy, you’re mistress of this estate. You have a great deal of power, if only you’ll learn how to exercise it.”

She frowned. “
You
have a great deal of power. Any power I have only comes through you.”

He sighed. “It’s still power, and your case is no different than any other married lady’s—though I like to hope I’m an agreeable husband.”

“You are,” she said earnestly.

“Though you
will
have power in your own right if I should happen to predecease you,” he said thoughtfully. “No one would ever control you again.”

“Don’t talk so! I don’t want you to die.”

“Well, it’s not my intention, but I’m merely pointing out that if I were to meet with some untimely accident or illness, you’d be a very rich and independent woman.”

“Don’t talk so,” she repeated, her voice low and firm. “I don’t even want to contemplate it.”