Chapter 15
A part of Beth’s body reacted to the question like a child offered sugar plums, but her mind balked.
If he had carried her to the bed then and taken her, she would not have resisted, but she could not, at that moment, consent.
She was too overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all.
Having regained a degree of sanity she was afraid to return to that wild disintegration.
She shook her head against his shoulder.
He sighed and released her. But then he slipped his fingers to twine with hers and pulled her into her bedroom. Beth could feel the thudding of her heart as he studied her. A part of her still wanted him to persuade her.
But in the end he let her go. “Ring for your maid. We’ll speak to the duke and duchess and set off. Don’t dally.”
With that he left for his own rooms and Beth collapsed down on a bench, not at all sure she was grateful for his restraint.
An hour later, armored in a new walking dress of sage green crepe, Beth rejoined her husband. He was safely conventional in blue and buff and that moment of uninhibited passion seemed like a fevered dream. Together they went to find the duke and duchess.
The duchess kissed Beth on the cheek. “How smart you look, my dear. I understand Lucien is wafting you off to Hartwell. The duke and I spent part of our honeymoon there.”
Beth noticed the duchess flash a look at the duke and saw that austere gentleman smile. For some reason she felt embarrassed, as if she had witnessed an intimacy.
The duke also gave Beth a kiss. “Welcome to the de Vaux family,” he said with a degree of complacency which Beth longed to disturb. He obviously thought his stratagem was working perfectly. Beth was sourly pleased he would have to wait longer than nine months for his pure-blooded grandchildren.
In fact, she was surprised at how vinegary she felt.
The worst was over and she had not been subjected to intimate assault.
It appeared that the marquess was willing to wait until she was ready to consummate the marriage.
They were going off to some peace and quiet in a small house in the country. She should be feeling sweet, not sour.
She determined to be sweet, not sour.
As soon as she was in the luxurious chariot, this time with the marquess beside her, she set herself to be pleasant. The weather certainly contributed to good humor, for the late spring countryside was at its very best.
“Tell me more about this estate, Hartwell,” she said.
He was lounged at his ease and showed no sign of amorousness, thank heavens.
“As I said, it’s a cottage ornée. Quite pretty, I think, with charming rustic gardens.
” His lips twitched into a grin. “Deceptive simplicity sums it up. It takes a great deal of work and money to preserve its bucolic charms, but it’s charming all the same.
There’s a stream at the end of the garden and an orchard and a dovecot. ”
“Should I have brought my silk and lace shepherdess outfit?” Beth teased.
“Like Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon? Definitely not. But the real charm of Hartwell is that we may wear exactly what we wish.” He reached up and unknotted his cravat, unwound it, and tossed it onto the opposite seat. “Voila! Freedom.”
Beth undid the strings of her high straw bonnet, pulled it off, and tossed it to lie over his neckcloth.
His eyes sparkled and he undid the buttons of his shirt.
Beth eyed him warily. “This is not a competition I am willing to engage in, my lord.”
He smiled. “Lucien—or I’ll strip naked here and now.”
“Lucien,” Beth said hurriedly.
“Lucien, my darling?” he suggested.
“Just Lucien,” she replied. “I call your bluff. You would not strip naked here.”
“You really must learn not to challenge me, my lady,” he said softly, echoing the words she had used earlier. But then he laughed. “I’ll not take you up now. You did, after all, fulfill my condition. And I want no forced endearments.”
Beth looked down for a moment to gather her thoughts. “I want to thank you,” she said. “You are being very kind.”
“You needn’t sound so damned surprised.” When she looked up in alarm she saw he was mostly teasing.
“I’m not a candidate for sainthood,” he said.
“Love, sex, marital duties,” he grimaced at the term, “call it what you will. It should at least be pleasant for both parties. I refuse to settle for less. We have the rest of our lives.”
“Not quite that if I am to bear the heir to Belcraven,” Beth pointed out, amazed that she was having this calm discussion on such a subject.
He flashed her a look of exasperation. “If you continue to be such a pedant, the rest of your life is likely to be a very short period of time.”
Beth frowned at him. “You are constantly threatening me with violence.”
“Oh, come now,” he drawled. “There must have been a moment or two when I was less than bloodthirsty.”
“Now who’s being the pedant?”
“What’s good for the goose….” he said.
“That,” she retorted, “sounds remarkably like another challenge.”
He didn’t deny it.
“‘What dire offense from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things?”
“Pope. Rape of the Lock,” she said promptly. “Trivial,” she mused, then offered, “‘Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.’”
“Must be the divine Mary,” he sighed, but there was still humor in his eyes. He thought for a moment then countered with, “‘Friendship does not admit of assumptions of superiority.’”
Beth frowned. “I don’t think I know that. It sounds like an excellent sentiment, though, and one Mary Wollstonecraft would have endorsed.”
“I confess, I don’t know where it comes from either. I think it was something Nicholas Delaney once quoted to me.” He took her hand. “Last night we pledged friendship, Beth. Can I hope it still holds?”
She was alarmingly sensitive to his slightest touch but struggled not to show it. “We seem destined to squabble. It’s a strange kind of friendship.”
“The only kind,” he said with a grin. “I don’t have a friend whose eye I’ve not blacked.”
“Violence again,” she protested, but lightly.
He laughed. “I promise never to black your eye.”
“Not even if I top your best quotation?”
“Not even then.”
“Very well.” Beth grinned at him. “‘Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.’ Oliver Goldsmith.”
With a shake of his head he gave her the victory. His thumb rubbed absently against the back of her hand and he considered his words. “Would it make any difference, I wonder, who was the tyrant, who the slave?”
“Not to me. I have no desire to be either.”
He kissed her hand and let it go. “Then we must work at friendship. I don’t suppose,” he said dryly, “it will be particularly easy. Idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est.”
“You fear our tastes are too different?” she said. “How then do you suppose we recognize each other’s quotations? And I do like your friends.”
“That gives me hope,” he said with a grin. “You obviously have a taste for rogues.”
They arrived at Hartwell in excellent humor and it proved to be as unalarming as he had promised.
It was a small house of two stories boasting only four modest bedrooms. It sat comfortably in pleasant gardens bordered along one edge by a stream.
Beyond the walls the rest of the marquess’ estate was given over to farming.
The staff proved to be only five, and Beth felt she could manage that well enough.
She was relieved to find that she and the marquess were to have separate bedrooms, but was aware that there was no lock on the linking door and that she could not use one if there were.
She had been coerced into this marriage, but she had agreed, agreed to a marriage in full.
To be acting a farce over it at this point would be ridiculous.
Beth was disconcerted by her mental confusion about the intimacies of marriage, for she had always considered herself a practical woman.
Despite their new harmony, any thought of the marquess and the marriage bed plunged her into a morass of fascination and fear.
She hated the turmoil of it. She would much rather postpone the whole business until she could approach it in a calm and rational way.
But would he wait? Despite his strange words about waiting for her to seduce him, about waiting for pleasure, she did not expect much patience from such a man. Would his resolve last even the day? And would she perhaps not be better to get it over with?
There was no amorousness in his manner as he took her on a tour of the house, the gardens, and the outbuildings.
In the stables they once more discussed riding lessons but this time without heat.
She was touched to discover he had carefully selected a horse for her and had it sent to Hartwell to await them.
The dappled gelding which carried the feminine name, Stella, seemed quiet and had a friendly look in its eye.
At six o’clock they ate a well-prepared but simple meal in the small dining room.
The maid brought in all the dishes, including the cold desserts, and then left them to serve themselves.
Beth felt it was the first normal meal she’d eaten since leaving Cheltenham but thought it wiser not to say so.
Wiser not to raise any kind of controversy.
They talked mainly of poetry, contrasting Ben Jonson’s statement that a good poet is made as much as born with Socrates’s statement that poets work not by wisdom but by inspiration and an almost magical gift.
Beth was surprised at how much she had to stretch her mind to hold her own.
Hal Beaumont had obviously been telling the truth about the marquess’ intellectual abilities.
Beth was rather alarmed. She had once anticipated facing a fribble on this marital battlefield.