Simply Love (21 page)

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 TÅ· Gwyn. He hoped she would grow accustomed to him and find it possible to derive some pleasure from their marriage bed. He
hoped
so.

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 TÅ· 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.

Oh, David,
she told him silently,
give him a chance. Please give him a chance.

“Good night, David,” Sydnam said, not advancing farther into the room.

“Good night, sir,” David said—and then, after a brief pause, “Thank you again for my paints.”

Anne followed Sydnam back into the private sitting room a few moments later, closing the door of the bedchamber behind her.

“He will be wanting to get to TÅ· Gwyn as quickly as the carriage wheels can turn,” she said, “so that he may use his new paints. You could not possibly have given him a more welcome gift.”

“I think we will not go there immediately,” he said. “We are relatively close to Alvesley. I would like to have my parents meet my new wife. I believe we will go there for a few days.”

Anne froze as she sat again at the cleared dining table and Sydnam sat opposite and picked up his wineglass. It was strange that in all the time she had waited for him to come to marry her, it had not once occurred to her that she would also be marrying into the family of the Earl of Redfield. Whatever would they think of her? The answer did not bear contemplating.

“Do they know about me?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

And for the first time she realized what an awkward position she had put him in with his family. Though she must not begin to think that way. He was as much to blame for what had happened as she was—if
blame
was the right word.

“We must indeed go to Alvesley, then,” she said.

There was a twinkle in his eye suddenly and he smiled his lopsided grin.

“You sound as if you are agreeing to attend your own execution,” he said. “You will like them, Anne, and they will love you.”

She doubted that very much indeed. Even though she might continue to reassure herself with the knowledge that they were equally responsible for having conceived a child and thus having been precipitated into an unplanned marriage, she did not doubt that his family would see matters quite otherwise.

“Will we tell them…everything?” she asked.

He set down his glass, though his fingers played with the stem.

“I want them to know,” he said, smiling again, “that I am to be a father. But for your sake we will say nothing at present. I will let them know in a letter after we have gone home to TÅ· Gwyn, and they may draw whatever conclusions they wish when the child is born sooner than expected.”

His gaze slipped downward to her abdomen, and Anne resisted the urge to spread her hand there. It seemed strangely unreal that they had created life together in her womb. She felt an unexpected but very welcome surge of desire between her thighs and in the passage within.

“Kit and Lauren have three children,” he said. “They are all considerably younger than David, but even so he may enjoy having some cousins to meet.”

“He loves playing with young children,” she said. “I think it is a natural reaction to having spent the last few years with older girls. Young children make him feel important.”

“We will leave for Alvesley in the morning, then,” he said.

They fell into a short silence that might have been comfortable if it had not been so charged with sexual tension. But the discomfort, Anne thought, feeling her breath quicken and her nipples harden, was very pleasurable. They were man and wife, and tonight and for the rest of their lives they would share a marital bed, and they would make love whenever they wished.

Dread receded to be replaced by hope. She remembered the desire, the need, the pleasure with which she had approached their lovemaking last time. It had all been perfectly wonderful until the moment when he came inside her. But the memory of him there had surely replaced the other memory. All would be well. They had not married under the best of circumstances, it was true—she knew that he had not really wanted her as his wife—but she knew equally that he would make the best of those circumstances just as she would.

“Anne,” he said, “after going to Alvesley we ought to go into Gloucestershire so that I may meet your family.”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“It would be a fitting time to do it,” he said. “Any embarrassment they may have felt over your unmarried state while you had a child will be soothed by the knowledge of your recent marriage. And we will be able to assure them that I look upon David as my son just as if he had been born of my seed. It is time—”

“It is
not
time,” she cried, getting to her feet and crossing to the fireplace, where she stood with her back to him, looking into the glowing coals, “and never will be. I have no family.”

“You do,” he said with quiet persistence. “You have a husband and son. You have in-laws and nephews and a niece at Alvesley. And you have parents and siblings in Gloucestershire—
my
in-laws and David's grandparents and aunts and uncles. Perhaps cousins too. You have never given me full details.”

“Deliberately so,” she told him, “because I do not know the details myself. My family was not there to comfort and support me when I needed comfort and support, and so I managed without them and discovered that in fact I did not need them at all and would never need them again.”

“We always need family,” he said. “Some poor souls literally have none, and they are much to be pitied. Other people turn away from the family they do have and are perhaps more to be pitied. But at least they always have the chance to turn back again.”

“I was not the one who turned away,” she told him, angry and upset that he should bring up this topic now when she had told him her feelings on it while they were in Wales. “I have no turning back to do.”

“I disagree with you, Anne,” he said. “I know you are not a happy person. I do not believe you ever will be happy until you have at least tried to reconcile with your family and to make your son—and your husband—known to them.”

“And I suppose,” she said, turning on him, “my new child too, who will be very legitimate indeed and very respectable—the grandson or granddaughter of the Earl of Redfield no less. And then there will be David Jewell, still illegitimate, still a bastard.”

She had never seen him angry before. The left side of his face looked pale and chiseled and more handsome than ever. The right side of his face looked more immobile in contrast, the black eye patch almost sinister.

“That is an ugly word,” he said, “and unworthy of you, Anne. David is my stepson. I intend to take measures to adopt him fully. I will even give him my name if he can be persuaded to take it.”

“David is
my son
.” She glared back at him, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “He is not yours or anyone else's. He is
David Jewell
. And he does not need anyone but me.”

They stared tensely at each other for several moments until he looked away and pushed his empty wineglass farther to the center of the table.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I wanted to avoid being the autocrat, the domineering partner in our marriage, the sort of husband who either demands obedience of his wife or expects it as his right. I thought to inform you of my wish to take you to Alvesley to introduce you to my family and then give you the equal chance to take me to your own family. But I have only succeeded in hurting and angering you. I am sorry.”

The anger drained out of her, leaving her shaken. She was not often given to anger. And she had liked Sydnam—she still did, she hoped. But here they were on their wedding day, quarreling quite bitterly. He had all but called her a coward. He had called her unhappy, implying that she was not whole, that she was incapable of wholeness and healing unless she turned back to people who had turned from
her
and from her son, who was guilty of nothing except being born of the ugliness of rape. He had scolded her for calling David by a name she knew some people used to describe him.

And he had claimed not to wish to be an autocrat, yet he had spoken of adopting David and giving him his name just as if all the care she had given her son in almost ten years and the Jewell name were nothing. Just as if both she and David needed to be saved from something, lifted up to respectability.

She knew she was being unfair to him—and that fact did not help restore her mood to tranquillity.

“I am sorry too,” she said. “I did not mean to quarrel with you today of all days—or any day for that matter. I suppose I am just tired. The last few weeks have been rather stressful.”

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you would like to sleep in the other bed in David's room tonight.”

The suggestion was so unexpected that all she could do was stare at him, trying not to show the dismay she felt. It was not what she would like at all—she had wanted to take a determined step toward normality tonight. And she did not believe it was what he wanted either—she could not be the only one who had felt the sexual tension all afternoon and evening. But something had been ruined and she found herself answering in kind when she wanted—and perhaps he wanted it too—to deny his suggestion.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. Perhaps that would be a good idea. And if David wakes up in a strange place, he will be reassured to find me close by.”

Oh, stupid, stupid,
she thought.

“Yes, of course.” He got to his feet and came toward her, reaching out a hand formally for hers and carrying it to his lips. It was her left hand. She could see her new wedding ring gleaming in the candlelight and willed him to lift his head and kiss her on the lips and end this madness so that the night could proceed as they must both have expected it to.

Instead he smiled kindly at her.

“Good night, Anne. I hope you both sleep well. Shall we plan to make an early start in the morning?”

“Yes,” she said, sliding her hand from his and smiling back. “Good night, Sydnam.”

Ten minutes later she was lying in the narrow bed close to David, staring up at the canopy over her head and ignoring the hot tears that were trickling diagonally across her cheeks and dripping onto the pillow on either side of her head.

It did not help at all that she recognized the absurdity of the situation—and of both their behavior.

It was her wedding night and a whole private sitting and dining room separated her bedchamber from that of her new husband.