Chapter Five #3
While fate had forced him to budge on his resolve to never bind himself to a woman, there would be no budging on his decision to not sire any children; he would continue to take the appropriate measures as he had been, but how was he going to ask his innocent wife to comply?
To be understanding about it? He could not very well hand her a sponge or arrive in her chamber with a sheath; he could not expect her to offer to give him pleasure with her hands or her mouth.
It felt wrong to ask her to consume the vile concoctions some women swore prevented pregnancy.
Performing the act and then finishing outside of her was an imperfect practice—he knew more than enough men with the bastards to prove it.
All he knew was that he was going to have to figure it out quickly, as the night waited for no man.
“How long until we reach Edinburgh?” Clara asked, changing the subject.
“We should arrive tomorrow midday if we leave the coaching inn early enough.”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line, betraying her lack of enthusiasm about spending their wedding night away from the privacy and comforts of a home.
Unfortunately, it was not to be helped. The distance between Coylton Castle and Edinburgh was too great to cross in a single day, especially after the carriages had been loaded and the ceremony completed.
Pearce had already sent word for the carriage with their servants and additional luggage to scout for the best rooms along the route.
That was the best that could be hoped for given the circumstances.
Unwilling to discuss it further, he removed his hat and stretched out his legs, propping one booted foot on the cushion beside Clara’s hip.
“If you don’t mind, I’ve spent the better part of two days running roughshod over Scotland and Northern England to prepare for this marriage.
I need a rest.” Without waiting for a reply, he reclined, crossed his hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes.
He could tell from the shuffling of skirts that his dismissal had needled Clara, but he needed some time to think without being distracted by her eyes and the pale, graceful curve of her throat.
Eventually, the rocking of the well-sprung carriage and his sleepless nights caught up to Pearce, and he drifted off into actual sleep, lulled by the faint scent of Clara’s perfume.
Oranges and vanilla.
Innocent and sultry all at once.
*
Clara watched with a little satisfaction as Brinley startled awake with a rough curse when the carriage hit a particularly deep rut and rocked rather violently.
More than a little disoriented, he sat up, scrubbed his face, and ran a hand through his golden hair.
He quickly spied her sitting across from him, clutching at one of the leather support straps as they trundled along.
Surely, he could feel her narrowed eyes watching him as he set himself to rights.
Though she’d been annoyed by his rude dismissal, leaving her with nothing to occupy herself except for the slowly changing scenery outside the carriage window, Clara had quickly realized the time had afforded her a chance to shamelessly examine her husband.
Her husband.
The notion was still so foreign to her, and she suspected it would be for some time.
Brinley had been a consistent fixture in her life, and his face was particularly familiar, but she’d realized she’d never really looked at him.
She knew his silver eyes and the color of his hair, but the freckle beneath his jaw was new, exposed only when his head lolled to the side in sleep.
The years between them had carved lines beside his eyes and around his mouth, though she’d rarely seen him smile with any real mirth.
He was usually one for sarcastic humor rather than the genuine variety.
A single line creased the skin between his brows.
In sleep, however, the seriousness seemed to abate some, and he resembled the young man she recalled from her childhood.
This was, of course, not to say that Brinley was old.
Though he had more than a decade of life and experiences on Clara, he still seemed young.
The life of drink and excess had taken a toll on him in some ways, like his jaded personality and the exhaustion she often glimpsed in his rare, unguarded expressions, but left parts of him untouched.
He felt so large that he took up most of the space—and the air—in the carriage.
His stomach remained flat, and his deep breathing told her he wore no corset to disguise an unsightly belly.
She remembered Dori telling her that Brinley took his exercise daily at one of the London gentlemen’s clubs, though he did not elaborate as to the nature of it.
Did he fence? Box? What else did men do to hone their physique so they might be as fit as her new husband?
It was a marvel, his body, and she would have been lying had she said it was not a joy to allow her eyes to linger wherever they liked.
Now that he’d awoken once more, Brinley seemed so cynical, worldly, and irreverent.
Asleep, he’d been almost approachable.
“You snore,” she blurted as he straightened his jacket and peered out the window.
He frowned and gave a disbelieving shake of his head, and turned back to the window.
“Yes. You do,” she said adamantly.
“You are the first person to complain of such a thing.”
“Perhaps because your paramours were trying to stay in your good graces. As your wife, I have no need to try,” she said flippantly, ignoring the insinuation that he’d passed his nights with many other women.
She did not wish to examine how that made her stomach lurch.
“You are going to keep me awake all night with that racket.”
“Then it is fortunate that we have separate chambers,” Brinley answered with the same nonchalance. Clara’s surprise must have been evident in her face because he tilted his head with unbearable sympathy. “You did not believe we would share such space, did you?”
Clara’s cheeks burned again, and she felt so na?ve. She’d just assumed that they would.
Her parents had died before she’d been old enough to take notice of such things. Dori and Amelia shared a chamber each night as if it were the most natural arrangement. To her knowledge, most of her married friends all seemed to do the same with their spouses.
She was not entirely ignorant, though; she knew a great many husbands and wives of the ton kept separate chambers. She’d just never imagined such an arrangement for herself.
She stuttered briefly before she could find the words. “I thought—that is…Amelia and Dori share a chamber and I just assumed—”
“Their arrangement is a love match, and we have nothing of the sort. Because of this, I thought you would be amenable to an arrangement where we each had our own space.”
Clara could hear the subtext: “I can spend nights with my mistresses, but not with you.”
She averted her eyes and picked at a loose thread on one of her gloves, gnawing on her lower lip. She’d never felt more like the child he’d claimed her to be, and she hated it.
There really was so much she did not know, so much she did not realize was expected of her.
And it would all begin that night at some remote Scottish inn.