The Dangerous Viscount (27 page)

He was sure the kiss, accompanied by a chorus of cheers, jeers, and whistles, lasted longer than was proper for a public mistletoe kiss.

He wished it could last all night.

Sebastian spent much of his last night as a single man perusing the work of Dr. Denman. He learned things about pregnant females he’d rather forget, such as their tendency to suffer from a variety of unappealing conditions like costiveness, hemorrhoids, and dropsy.

But the good doctor was distressingly, maddeningly, inexplicably silent on the only subject that currently interested Sebastian: Could pregnant woman safely indulge in marital relations?

There was a moment of almost unbearable excitement when he read that they were often prone to
depravity of appetite.

God, he hoped so.

On further reading he learned this promising phrase merely referred to a whimsical desire to consume certain foods.

Dr. Denman,
accoucheur extraordinaire,
had let him down.

But surely, he reasoned, if making love to one’s pregnant wife was inadvisable, the doctor would have said so.

D
iana’s first wedding, performed with maximum pomp at St. George’s Hanover Square, had been very different. So had her feelings on the occasion.

She’d been filled with excitement about becoming a married lady with a title and pin money to buy whatever she wanted. Her bridegroom, though she liked him well enough, seemed almost irrelevant. But what did an eighteen-year-old girl know about marriage, or anything else for that matter?

Today she was too exhausted for an emotion as heightened as excitement. Anxiety and nausea had played havoc with her rest in recent weeks and she’d barely closed her eyes the previous night.

The cause of her sleeplessness stood beside her at the altar, tall and unsmiling. He spoke his vows firmly but without inflexion, and when the time came slipped a gold ring on her third finger. It fit perfectly. Later she learned he’d sent a messenger to Chantal to discover the correct size. And when she had a chance to examine it, she found the ring chased in an exquisite design on the outside and the inner circumference engraved with their names. Not for the first time,
Sebastian revealed himself to be both efficient and thoughtful.

This time the person of her bridegroom filled her thoughts to the exclusion of all else. In many ways he mystified her. She was an open book, standing here in the village where she’d grown up, surrounded by her family and their household staff. She’d attended services in Wallop’s ancient parish church almost every week of her life until she left home. Sebastian was alone, without anyone to stand up with him. He’d declined to invite the Duke and Duchess of Hampton, his uncle and aunt, although they were in residence at Mandeville. (Blakeney, she’d learned with relief, had not joined his family for Christmas.)

Whether he wanted one or not, he had a family now. Not only had her eccentric clan embraced him, he had a wife and would soon become a father. Diana began to hope she and Sebastian might be able to put their various transgressions behind them and make something of their marriage.

But she needed to understand what had made her new husband the man he was. Only then could she truly know him.

Once again Sebastian found himself sharing the breakfast parlor with one other person. The morning after his marriage his companion was not his wife. He’d left her sleeping in their shared bed.

Henry Montrose munched his way through a plate heaped with roast beef and eggs while perusing a book propped against the coffeepot.

“Sorry to disturb you, but may I?”

Henry grunted and tilted his book, replacing it
once Sebastian, who decided he liked his brand-new brother-in-law, had poured himself coffee. Given his mood, the company of a grunting, reading male was about all he could abide. He drank his coffee and brooded, until the subject of Henry’s volume caught his eye: a treatise on diseases of the lung.

“Do you know the work of Dr. Thomas Denman?” he asked.

Henry closed his book, marking his place with a finger, and held it on his lap.
“Introduction to the Practice of Midwifery.
A respected work on the subject. Why do you ask?”

“Just married, you know. Thought I’d better be informed.”

As a student of medicine Henry was likely one of the few men in the world who would find this explanation credible. “Good idea,” he said.

Diana had felt very hot last night. Unfortunately she’d also been unconscious, all night. She was already asleep when he entered the bedroom and his deliberately clumsy preparations had failed to waken her. So he’d lain at her side feeling heat pouring off her body while he tried to quell his lust with a recitation of Dr. Denman’s symptoms: costiveness, hemorrhoids, dropsy, plus diarrhea, vomiting, and blotchy skin. None of these often contradictory ailments did a thing to lessen his burning desire. He didn’t believe he could survive another night like that without either jumping on her like a mad bull or suffering spontaneous combustion.

How could she lie there and sleep when he felt like this? She must, he decided, be unwell.

“According to Denman,” he said, “women often
become feverish because of the way their blood thickens during pregnancy.”

Henry nodded. “A result of the interruption of the menses.”

“Denman advocates bleeding to alleviate the condition.”

Henry frowned. “I’m no expert on the subject, but I’d be careful of that. You know Denman’s daughter married Croft who followed his father-in-law’s precepts.”

“Croft?”

“Princess Charlotte’s physician. He bled her frequently during her pregnancy.”

Sebastian’s heart jolted. He’d been following the advice of a man whose ideas had led to the death in childbirth of the Prince Regent’s daughter, the heiress to the throne of England.

All his life he’d relied on two infallible sources of logic and common sense: good books and his own sound brain. And now, when it really mattered, when it might literally come down to a matter of life or death, they had failed him. He’d promised to take care of his wife, and instead he might have killed her.

When Diana awoke she first assessed the state of her stomach and found it to be good. This was one of the days she didn’t need to hold her head over a basin. A glance at the clock told her she’d slept for almost twelve hours.

She stretched, contemplated rising, and dismissed the notion. Rolling over she noticed a distinct
indentation in the pillow on the other side of the bed and caught a whiff of an alien yet familiar scent among the bed linens. Apparently she had not slept alone.

Poor Sebastian, she thought ruefully. What a wedding night! His bride had remained unconscious throughout.

Of course he had no right to expect otherwise, and he’d only joined her because it was expected. The large spare bedchamber had been lovingly prepared by the housekeeper: the finest sheets, a blazing fire of sweet applewood logs, and arrangements of dried flowers and a bowl of potpourri from the still room. Something told her Sebastian had not greatly enjoyed these humble luxuries.

Perhaps she’d make it up to him later, if she continued to feel as well as she did now.

“Come in!” she called. Not Chantal with tea, alas. Her maid wouldn’t have knocked. The door opened to admit her husband.

While his morning and evening clothes were now always impeccable, Sebastian looked best when dressed for riding. Which was strange in a way because he wasn’t by habit a countryman. His tall, wiry figure in a bottle green coat, buckskins, and top boots made her mouth water.

“How are you this morning?” he asked with the concentrated concern she found touching, though occasionally irksome.

“Excellent. I slept like a top.”

“I noticed.” She was right: he hadn’t appreciated her unbridelike behavior.

She stretched her arms high and gave a little wriggle so the covers fell back, revealing the shape of her breasts beneath her nightgown. “No wonder I slept so well. This is a very soft mattress, don’t you agree?”

Sebastian’s jaw discernibly clenched.

“But perhaps you don’t. You came to bed so late and got up early. Were you uncomfortable?”

She hadn’t heard the sound in weeks but under stress he reverted to the grunt, the grunt tinged with a new quality of desperation. Though it was cruel to torture him so, she wanted to laugh.

She also wanted to invite him to join her. But at this time of day there would be maids going about their business upstairs. She couldn’t face the idea of servants who’d known her as a child overhearing her engage in marital relations.

Besides, she wasn’t quite ready to forgive Sebastian. It was his fault she was in this condition and he deserved to be punished a little more. She wriggled again.

“I have to go to Northumberland,” he said, abruptly. “To Saxton Iverley.”

She stilled her provocative movements. “When?”

“At once. I have business I should have attended to weeks ago but things came up.”

“You might have mentioned this before,” she said, dropping her arms.

He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. “I didn’t think of it.”

“Married people,” she explained patiently, “generally inform their spouses of a few basic facts, like which county they plan to stay in. I assumed
we’d remain here for a week or two then return to London.”

“You can still do that. It’s a long journey and I’ll travel faster alone.”

“You don’t wish me to accompany you to your home?” she asked. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing it.”

“No, you haven’t, believe me. Saxton Iverley is not a place you want to spend the winter, or any other season for that matter.”

She pulled up her covers to her chin then changed her mind. Her mind spinning, she got down from the bed, pulled on a dressing gown and stood to face him, hands on her hips.

“It’s going to look very odd, you going off after the wedding and leaving me behind. I know neither of us would have chosen this, but I thought we were managing to rub along well enough.”

Better than well enough. He wanted her, she wasn’t mistaken about that, but that meant nothing. He was a man and men always wanted to bed her. More important, his solicitude for her health and well-being had moved her, even when the precepts of Dr. Denman drove her to distraction.

Apparently she was wrong: He didn’t care enough to wish for her company.

“You need to see a doctor,” he said.

“They must have doctors in Northumberland.”

“Not good ones.” A feeble excuse.

“I am perfectly healthy, aside from the obvious disadvantages of my condition. I have no doubt that women by the thousand give birth to children in Northumberland every year.”

“I’d rather you stayed safely with your own family. Your father already knows you are with child and you should tell your mother.”

“You told Papa? That was high-handed.”

Sebastian folded his arms defensively. “He is delighted to be expecting a grandchild.”

The sense of well-being that started the day with such promise began to unravel. “I don’t wish to spend the next seven months being weighed by my father every ten minutes and listening to my mother describe the childbirth experiences of foxhounds.”

“He won’t weigh you again …” She cut him off with a glare. “And you could ask Henry for his advice.”

“I’m not going to take medical advice from my little brother.”

“He’s older than you.”

“By
eleven months.
He has barely started to shave.”

Sebastian looked at her in bafflement. “But they love you. And you love them!”

“Of course I love them but that doesn’t mean I want to live with them. I’m a grown-up woman with two houses of my own. If my husband doesn’t want to share his with me, then I shall just have to make my own way.”

“You’re behaving irrationally.”

Diana knew that once a man accused a woman of being irrational there was no point in further argument. The combined reasoning of every great philosopher and scientist in history wouldn’t convince him to change his mind.

“Go!” she said, flinging her arm toward the door.
“Go to Northumberland. Don’t worry about me. I shall stay here a little longer then I’ll decide what to do. I shall keep you informed in which county I am residing.”

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“If you are so concerned, stay with me, or let me come with you.”

He turned away. “You’re better off without me.”

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

The first time Sebastian returned to Saxton Iverley from Winchester after being introduced to the works of Dante, he realized the Italian poet had given voice to his dread. The words might as well have been carved along the frieze of the giant portico.

For weeks he’d received increasingly urgent letters from Northumberland demanding his presence there. His excuse for ignoring them had been his responsibility to his wife. He could no longer justify his absence.

For a few days at Wallop Hall he’d been happy. He’d thought himself so damn clever, learning all there was to know about his future wife’s pregnancy and watching over her. Not only was he keeping his promise to Minerva and Mr. Montrose, he was being a good husband.

What did he know? There was absolutely nothing in his experience that had taught him how to make a woman happy. Diana didn’t want him as a husband, and never had. Now he knew she didn’t need him, either.

As he rode up the drive away from Wallop Hall he felt a chill that owed nothing to the frost in the air.
Compared to the warmth and affection that imbued the Montroses’ house, the massive stone monument of the Iverleys seemed, more than ever, like a section of hell, one of the frozen bits. He’d been brought there at the age of six to fulfill a purpose and for the past few years he’d tried to escape it. Now was the time to embrace his fate.

“A
re you sure this is wise, my love?” Her father’s whiskers quivered as his jaw worked with concern. “Sebastian said you intended to follow him north later.”

That was the polite fiction they’d agreed to use with her parents, who were visibly distressed by the early departure of her bridegroom.