Lady Dearing's Masquerade (30 page)

“Wicked man! Perhaps
I
should do all the undressing tonight.”

“I should like that.” He grinned.

Her cheeks heated, just as he must have intended.
Wicked, wicked man!

He cleared his throat. “I asked Thurlow to summon the vicar for about five o’clock. Let us sit down; there’s something I must tell you.”

Blinking at his altered tone, she followed him to the sofa.

“What is it?” she asked, nestling against him.

“It concerns Cecilia. Some things I learned about her this week.”

She sucked in a breath.

“When you broke off our engagement last week, I returned to Fairhill, like a wounded beast—”

“Oh, Jeremy—”

Fondly, he pressed a gloved finger against her lips. “I wandered around that hateful place, trying to make sense of things. Perhaps in some corner of my mind I already realized that children—the ones we could not have and the ones from the Hospital—were the heart of the matter, for I found myself in the nursery. There I found a sampler Cecilia had worked when she was a girl. The sanctimonious verse on it seemed to epitomize everything that had been wrong about our marriage.”

She gasped.

“Did you think, like everyone else, that ours was the perfect union?” His mouth twisted. “It was calm and peaceful certainly, and Cecilia was the most dutiful of wives. But I never really knew her. Perhaps the only time she expressed herself with true candor was on her deathbed, when she begged me to care for Mary. Now I know why.”

“Dear God . . . you can’t mean . . .”

“I discovered the truth when I hurled that sampler against the wall. It broke apart, and out fluttered half of a lace collar. I could not mistake it; it was an exact match to the one at the Foundling Hospital. I questioned Cecilia’s father and finally learned the truth.

“When she was sixteen, Cecilia was seduced by a soldier from a regiment stationed in her village. My guess is that she fell in love with him and he’d taken advantage. I’ll never know for certain. In any case, she was sent away to have her child in secret. A servant delivered Mary to the Hospital with the hundred pound fee.”

He frowned. “Her father was too proud to admit he was palming off what he would have considered damaged goods on me, and I, in my ignorance, believed her story about having had a riding accident in her youth. But Mary’s birth left Cecilia with more than a broken maidenhead.”

“No . . .”

“Denman said that sometimes women who have had a difficult first birth are so injured they cannot carry another child. Now I know why Cecilia seemed to blame herself for her miscarriages. Her father, who is a harsh, unforgiving man, must have forbidden her to tell me. I wish she had. Her guilt cankered every moment of our marriage.”

He lowered his gaze, and memories beset her. How he’d made love to her in the folly with such eagerness . . . his delighted look after he had brought her to rapture . . .

“Jeremy.” She paused, wondering if she dared ask. But he had bared so many wounds to her already. She took a deep breath, and the words started coming in a torrent. “Jeremy, before my wedding night my aunt warned me that the marital act would be an ordeal. She said it was best done as quickly as possible, in darkness and silence. I did not believe her. No matter how wretched things were with Walter, I still believed something better was possible. But I know there are women who do not.”

His face was still shadowed. Bitterness leached out in his voice. “I married Cecilia because she was good and virtuous; I thought that with her I could enjoy the pleasures of the marriage bed without risk of repeating the dramas that made Fairhill Abbey such a hellish place in my parents’ day. But early in our marriage, when I tried some of the things I’d heard women liked, it was clear Cecilia found my efforts to please her disgusting. She never complained, but I knew she preferred . . . darkness and silence, as you said. I resigned myself to it. When our hopes for conceiving a child were finally dashed, it was a relief to both of us.”

A spurt of indignation mingled with her pity for his dead Cecilia. Though wounded, could she not have realized that Jeremy would treat her with kindness and understanding? And to be married to such a dear, beautiful man, and not take advantage of his desire to please her . . .

She put her arms around Jeremy and hugged him fiercely. “I wish she had been honest with you. Instead, she punished you as well as herself, by not allowing you to make things right.”

“I cannot blame her too much; she could not help her upbringing.” He cleared his throat. “Do you think we should tell Mary?”

“Not yet, I think. But when she is older, I think she will like to know the truth.”

He kissed her cheek. “She could not ask for a better mother.”

“Or a better father, now.”

She sighed.

“What is it, Livvy?”

“I do still wish I could—”

“Bear us a child? Don’t let it trouble you. We have each other, and four children already.”

“Yes, I know. We are blessed.”

“More like four hundred, actually,” he murmured. “If you count those at the Foundling Hospital!”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep, but he put an end to her dilemma with a long, smoldering kiss.

A loud cough interrupted them.

Thurlow stood in the doorway, his eyes twinkling.

“Sir. Ma’am. The vicar has arrived.”

Chapter 23

The evening sun slanted in through the French doors of the drawing room, deepening the colors of the flowers spilling out of every vase: larkspur, carnations, snapdragons, pinks. Livvy stood beside Jeremy, serenely aware of the well-wishers surrounding them.

To one side stood Jane and the vicar’s wife, beaming. On the other, near Jeremy, stood his relations who had arrived not a quarter of an hour before: his short, plump Aunt Louisa, smiling and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief at the same time, his cousin Thomas, tall and dark like Jeremy, head fondly bent over that of his pretty, fair-haired wife Charlotte, whose belly proclaimed her to be very much in the family way.

All listened quietly as the vicar enumerated the purposes of holy matrimony.

“First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord . . .”

Philippa and Mary looked solemn and adorable in their best gowns, ribbons in their hair. Ben stood quietly, his stance an imitation of Jeremy’s, his eyes still shining from the compliments he’d received on his flower arrangements. Robbie was picking his nose.

Livvy turned her head slightly and gave him a stern look. Instantly, he pulled the finger out of his nose and assumed the mien of an angel.

She turned her attention back to the vicar, who continued to enumerate the reasons for matrimony.

“ . . . mutual society, help, and comfort . . .”

A lump came to her throat as she glanced toward Jeremy, admiring the broad, noble forehead, the determined lines of mouth and jaw.

A moment later the vicar asked, perfunctorily, about impediments, and went on to prompt Jeremy in making his vows.

“Jeremy Edward Fairhill, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, as long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” he replied, turning down at her, eyes bright with love and a deep awareness of the vow he was making.

The vicar turned to her.

“Olivia Anne Dearing . . .”

She listened carefully to the words she’d given scant attention at the foolish age of seventeen, much like the ones the vicar had directed to Jeremy. She also heard the differences.
Obey him. Serve him.
And a glow spread through her, for here was one man she could trust with such promises.

“I will,” she said, in a voice that rang throughout the room.

As Jeremy took her hand tenderly in his bandaged and gloved one and they pledged their troth to each other as prompted by the vicar, her joy deepened. Finally, he slipped a gold band on her finger, and his voice struck the same deep chord within her as it had on their first meeting.

“With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship . . .”

* * *

Livvy set the candle down on the nightstand as Jeremy shut the door of her bedchamber.
Their
bedchamber now.

As he came to her, she feasted her eyes on him: her handsome husband, who’d worked so hard and waited so patiently for this day, this moment.

She vowed he’d be properly rewarded.

“Nervous, Livvy?”

The dear man! He was still worrying about
her.

She shook her head, put her arms around him and lifted her face for a kiss that tasted of cake and champagne.

A moment later, she slid out of his arms.

“What is wrong? What are you doing?”

“Unmasking,” she said, flashing him a wicked smile as she went to light the branch of candles on her nightstand.

She did the same with the candles on her commode, until the light flickered over the birds and flowers painted on the walls, the exotic bed hangings, the eccentric mix of furniture, the bowls of freshly cut pinks that filled the room with their spicy-sweet fragrance.

“I always thought your bedchamber would be paradise.” Jeremy took her back into his arms. “I did not know it would look like it, too. It suits you.”

She kissed him, then broke free again to sit down by her dressing table. Quickly, she removed her pearl necklet and earrings and set them into her open jewel case. Then she began to unpin her hair.

“Let me help.”

She looked up at Jeremy with a saucy smile, and shook her hair out onto her shoulders. “Did we not agree that
I
was going to do all the undressing tonight?”

“I was joking.”

“I was not, and I would be backward in my duties as a wife if I permitted you to injure your hands!”

He looked adorably aroused and confused all at once.

“Jeremy . . . my love. There’s no need to treat me like a Dresden shepherdess anymore. I left those fears behind the day you made love to me in the folly. Now you see me as I am: a brazen, wanton woman. Are you shocked?”

“I shall accustom myself,” he said gruffly.

“Tonight, let me seduce
you
.”

“Is that what you truly wish?” He sounded strangled.

“Yes. Let me undress you and touch you and make love to you.
Please
.”

He released a ragged breath. “A man would have to be mad to refuse such an offer.”

She chuckled, then bent over to remove her slippers. Her hair fell over her shoulders but—she realized from Jeremy’s sudden intake of breath—did not block a most indecorous view of her breasts.

Delightedly, she drew up the hem of her gown on one side to untie her garter, then slid the stocking off that leg. Jeremy leaned back against the high edge of the bed, eyes riveted on her as she removed the other stocking.

She arched to unfasten the mother-of-pearl buttons on the back of her gown, then stood up, allowing it to swish to the floor. She removed her petticoat, undid her stay laces, deliciously aware of his rapt gaze, until finally she stood, clad only in her shift.

“Livvy . . .”

She smiled at having rendered her eloquent husband speechless.

Shrugging, she allowed the shift to float to the floor.

Jeremy’s gaze devoured her from head to toe, then returned to her face.

She licked her lips. “What do you see, Jeremy?”

“I see
you
, Livvy. The most beautiful, desirable and the very bravest woman I know.”

She put her arms around him, and he pressed a searing kiss to her lips. Her body tingled, pressed against the wool and silk of his coat and waistcoat. She withdrew to remove them, one by one, relishing his frenzied expression.

“I rather enjoy being your valet,” she jested softly.

He let out a low chuckle. “I shall have to dismiss Haye.”

She knelt at his feet, ignoring his protests, and removed his shoes and socks, delighting in the size of his feet, the hard angles, the muscles of ankles and calves. She rose up and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, careful of his bandages, then untied his cravat and pulled it away. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple catching her eye as she undid the buttons at his neck.

Now he was as he was when she’d admired him in the garden.

She tugged his shirt free from his pantaloons and drew it up slowly with one hand, passing the other lightly over his ribs, chest and shoulder and stopping to kiss his chest. He groaned, his entire body tightening.

She pulled the shirt over his head and he continued to lean motionless against the bed, his bandaged hands on either side of him, watching her like a starving man.

“I’ve been longing to do this, you know,” she said. “Ever since I saw you working in the garden the first time. Do you know I watched you from that very window?”

He shook his head. “I would have thought you would find me . . . crude . . . and repulsive.”

She laughed, tracing the bulge of muscles from his upper arms down to his wrists. “Yes, I was so repulsed that I could not help but come into the garden the next day for a closer look.”

“Yes, that was the day . . .” He paused, as she flicked a finger over his chest. “That was the day I began to hope.”

She stroked the light growth of hair down the center of his chest, then traced its ridges and contours. He closed his eyes, allowing her to touch and admire every muscle, and moving not one of them. Rigid with desire but holding back so she could safely explore him.

She decided she’d tormented him enough.

She pressed herself up against him, savoring the smoothness of his warm skin over the hardness of his muscles, then lowered her hands to the buttons on either side of his pantaloons.

His hand stilled hers.

“Livvy . . . I don’t know if I can bear much more.”

“Did I do wrong?”

“No! But I have wanted you for so long. This first time, if you touch me, it will be over . . . too soon.”