Chapter 4
Sybil stared at her bleak reflection in the looking glass and took a deep breath, holding it in her lungs as she struggled to calm the fit of nerves that came to life so swiftly within her.
Her lady’s maid had helped her out of the elegant dress she had worn to dinner and into a night rail that was modest and laden with buttons, an equally circumspect dressing gown buttoned atop the unflattering raiment.
Her hair was plaited into a simple braid.
All the efforts she had made to present herself in an alluring fashion during the earlier days of the house party were at an end. She was no longer attempting to attract a lover, even if the Duke of Kingham had proven a most lively and entertaining dinner partner earlier.
Nor was she committing adultery to obtain a divorce. Which was just as well. She hadn’t the stomach for such nonsense. How the men and women of the house party could hop from one bed to the next with such unabashed abandon was a mystery to her.
But then, she wasn’t certain she possessed the mettle it would require to consummate her marriage either.
Yet, she had agreed to Riverdale’s inglorious demand.
The arrangements had been made. With the house party soon coming to an end, some of the guests had already left.
Riverdale had seen to it that her bedchamber had been moved next to his.
For convenience. A word she disliked almost as much as breeding.
Sybil might have objected, had not the notion of traipsing through the corridors in dishabille been far too shameful to contemplate. So here she was, a wife of three months, about to finally endure the marriage bed with the husband who had married her and left her.
As if on cue in this drama of theirs, a knock sounded at the door.
Riverdale.
Her heart began beating faster.
Sybil smoothed her dressing gown and, with a final look at her reflection, turned toward the adjoining door. “Come.”
The latch opened, and then he crossed the threshold, closing the door at his back. There he stood, the duke she’d married. The man she had fleetingly believed she’d lost her heart to, until he had crushed it beneath his carriage wheels as he left her.
He wore a dressing gown in a somber shade of navy that heightened the brilliance of his eyes. His feet were bare, his hair damp. Had he been swimming in the grotto again, or had he bathed?
She told herself it didn’t matter and then cursed her wicked mind for the images that rose within it of Riverdale emerging, naked and virile, from the pool’s water earlier.
Of his length once more on display. He was shameless.
But then, she already knew that. His reputation was notorious. Only she had chosen to ignore it.
And now, here she was.
“Madam.” He bowed to her formally, as if they weren’t husband and wife about to lie in bed together and perform their marital obligations.
She curtsied. “Riverdale.”
“You were certainly amused by Kingham at dinner.”
There was a hint of bitterness to his words.
She held his gaze, unflinching. “I find him quite droll.”
He inclined his head. “And I find him needlessly meddlesome. But enough about King.” Riverdale paused, considering her in a way that made her heart beat faster. “You are ready?”
“As ready as I am going to be,” she answered truthfully.
Which was to say that she wasn’t ready at all. But then, would she ever be? The answer was a decisive, unfaltering no. This man had her at sixes and sevens. Once, she had believed herself in love with him. And now…well, she didn’t know how she felt about him.
She felt resentment. Anger. Hurt. She felt betrayed herself. There was the question of what he had been doing in his absence and who he had been doing it with. She suspected she would never have the answers, and she wasn’t certain she wanted them anyway. It was a Pandora’s box.
“Perhaps you would like a glass of wine,” he suggested.
“Do you think wine will alter my opinion of you?” she asked sharply.
A small smile played with the corners of his lips. “Perhaps when consumed in a large enough quantity, it might.”
“I am not as convinced.”
“No wine, then,” he allowed. “Would you care to sit by the hearth for a few minutes?”
He was being oddly considerate. She didn’t trust it.
Or him.
“We may as well proceed,” she said, wanting it to be over with so that the anticipation was no longer seizing her in its grip.
“As my duchess wishes,” he said impassively, moving across the chamber to where her bed awaited them both, the counterpane turned down in anticipation of what should have been a peaceful evening’s sleep.
She followed him, arms folded at her waist as if they were a shield that would keep him at bay.
Her mother’s words of advice—issued before Sybil’s marriage—chose that moment to return.
She had explained that Sybil must lie on the bed and receive her husband.
Sybil had been too embarrassed to ask for a more thorough description.
She did know a bit more thanks to her gossiping cousin Amelia, who had married the year before.
Enough to know what Riverdale was meant to do with his manhood.
The thought made a faint rush of dizziness pass through her. It hardly seemed possible. Little wonder cousin Amelia had claimed the marriage bed had been painful. The sheer size of His Grace’s anatomy seemed to render such a deed impossible, if not implausible.
Sybil settled herself on the edge of the bed and then lay back, swinging her legs along with her.
Scowling, Riverdale hovered over her. “What the devil are you doing?”
Had she displeased him so soon? Well, this had been his idea and not hers. She didn’t think she cared if she was the source of his discontent.
“Awaiting your attentions,” she explained.
He stared at her as if she had announced her intention to swim across the ocean to America.
Heat warmed her cheeks. She had never felt more foolish in her life.
“Well?” she demanded. “Pray, carry on with whatever you must do.”
“You need to disrobe, madam.”
She stared up at him, aghast at his proclamation. Sybil didn’t want to be naked with her husband. To be vulnerable to him. To feel things with him and because of him.
“Can it not be done whilst I’m clothed?”
“No.”
“Of course it can,” she burst out, vexed with his contrariness. “My mother told me it’s the way of things, that a lady’s modesty should be a gentleman’s foremost consideration.”
“Well, I’m afraid your mother was wrong.”
The vexing man. Why was he intent upon making this more difficult than it needed to be?
“All you must do is lift my hems.”
“And you’ll lie there as stiff as a bloody corpse?” He sneered. “I think not.”
“I know what I am meant to do,” she countered sternly. “You will take your pleasure, and then I can go to sleep.”
“Madam?”
“I’m not taking off my night rail,” she snapped. “The dressing gown will have to be sufficient.”
With that concession fitfully made, she sat up and began furiously pulling buttons from their moorings before shrugging the robe to the floor. The garment beneath would have to do for her modesty’s sake.
His eyes swept over her, burning and hot, making a prickle of awareness creep across her skin. “Where did you find such a hideous garment?”
It was indeed unsightly, and she knew it. Sybil had chosen the night rail with the intent that he would be thwarted by the double row of tiny buttons firmly keeping her bare skin from his unwanted gaze.
“I bought it myself.” She lay down on her back once more, staring at the ceiling of the bedchamber.
“What the devil are you doing?” he demanded.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
She turned her head to the side, thoroughly nettled as she watched him frowning down at her. “For you to carry out your husbandly duties.”
“No, damn you,” he growled. “The night rail. I want it off.”
“And I wish to keep it on.”
They glared at each other. Riverdale loomed, tall, dark, elegant, and coolly angry.
And handsome. She couldn’t forget how astoundingly lovely his features were, perfectly symmetrical and masculine.
The first time she’d met him, she had been dazzled by him.
Although time had passed and he had proven himself to be an utter cad, his looks hadn’t diminished one whit, curse him.
“Don’t make me tear it to shreds, madam,” he warned.
“You won’t do something so barbaric.”
“No?” He smiled evilly. “Watch me.”
She observed in horror as he reached for her night rail, grasping two handfuls of the loose bodice, and began to rip it in twain. The sound of rending fabric filled the air, punctuated with her own gasp of shock.
Her hands flew instantly to cover her breasts.
“Would you care to remove the rest of it, or shall I continue?” he drawled pleasantly.
“You are mad.”
“Perhaps I am,” he acknowledged agreeably before continuing to rip her poor night rail in two.
When he had finished, she grasped lamely at the sides, trying in vain to cover herself.
The effect would have been comical were she not so embarrassed by the skin she had unceremoniously on display.
When she clutched at the torn bits of silk to cover her legs, the bodice gaped and revealed her breasts.
When she covered her breasts, her legs and the apex of her thighs were bared to his roaming gaze.
“There we are,” he said. “Now slip your arms out, and the monstrosity can be entirely removed.”
She clutched the shreds of her ruined night rail even tighter. “My mother didn’t breathe a word about such a lack of civility. Is this how you enjoy congress with your paramours? Surely any lady would object to the willful destruction of her gown.”
“Sybil?”
His use of her given name instead of his customary, icy madam or his condescending my dear took her by surprise. Her gaze jolted to his.
“Yes?”
“Kindly shut up and let me do what I’m meant to do. I promise you that you will enjoy it and that you won’t have to lie still, fully clothed and gazing prayerfully at the ceiling.”