3
Jackie’s gown was a rose pink figured silk, simply but elegantly cut. It was embellished with a richly embroidered silk ribbon—one row at the cuffs and neckline, and three rows at her hem. Maman had wound the same ribbon through her hair, taking over from Jackie’s new maid.
The bridal flowers Jackie had chosen had prompted something of a disagreement between her and her mother. Maman thought the flowers were common. “They are vegetable flowers, Jacqueline,” she kept saying. “Why would you want to carry the flower of a vegetable?”
When Maman and Jackie had taken Papa to see the cottage where they had lived, the beans that Maman had thrown out the window had grown, and smothered one side of the house, spreading even up part of the roof. The flowers waved petals of the palest pink on long stems, and a few of the stems already sprouted rows of baby bean pods.
“They are bridal flowers,” Jackie had said. “And they go perfectly with my gown.” Not only were they lovely but carrying them in her bouquet was a sort of poetic justice. Louella’s accusation that she—Jackie—had made up to Oscar to climb from seamstress to the rank of mistress had always been ridiculous, but had smarted a little, nonetheless.
No one she had met since the betrothal was announced had repeated the slur, at least not to Jackie’s face. Human nature being what it was, people were surely thinking it.
So, she carried the bean flowers as a symbol of her climb, and to thumb her nose at her detractors, even if they never knew it.
Only a keen gardener would know, she realized, as she looked at herself in the mirror. And even they may question it. She had been right about them complimenting her gown.
“Jacqueline, ma fifille, said Maman. “ Tres belle. Tres, tres belle .” Clearly too overcome for words, she hugged Jackie instead, being careful not to crush the gown or the flowers.
Gran was next in line. “Your mother is right, dear one,” she murmured. “Very, very beautiful.”
Maman was trying to recover her usual brisk self. “Now, cherie , the carriage awaits to take us to the church, Clara and me.” She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “Go down to Papa after we have gone,” she instructed, her tone scolding. The arrangements had been in place for days, but if it helped Maman to scold, then Jackie would not challenge her. Not today.
“I will, Maman,” she said.
And if she rolled her eyes at Maman’s back, no one saw except Bella Whitely, who giggled, but only after Maman shut the door.
“Me own Ma be the same,” Bella confided. “More like to growl than to hug but loves us summat fierce. You do look right purty, Miss Haricot.”
“Are you coming in the carriage with us to the church, Bella?” Jackie asked. She’d hired the eldest Whitely daughter as a favor to Pete. The girl had the makings of an excellent maid, and the housekeeper had already taken her under her wing, to teach her what was expected of a maid in a peer’s household. Jackie hoped she’d not entirely lose her habit of blurting out her thoughts in Jackie’s presence.
“Nay, Miss,” she said. “It’s nobbut a hop, skip and a jump, and it ain’t—” she caught herself and tried again. “It is not proper.” She even sounded a little like the housekeeper as she repeated what she had obviously been told. Then she, her voice, and her accent relaxed, and she added, “Not today nonewise. Just ye and yer Da, and I’ll be waitin’ for ye at the church, as will ’bout everyone.” She sighed her satisfaction. “And I saw ye first.”
They walked downstairs together, and Papa’s reaction was as satisfying as Ma’s. “ Ma petite Jacqueline,” he kept saying, with a shake of his head as if he could not reconcile the tomboy he had left behind and the bride beside him in the carriage. “ Ma petite jeune fille .”
What would Pol think? She would find out in a moment, for here they were at the gates of the church. The people standing around in the road and in the church grounds gave a cheer. Papa handed her down, and Bella was there to tidy her slight train before hurrying into the church ahead of them. She must have run through the woods like a hare!
She put her hand on her father’s arm, and the men who were waiting by the double doors flung them open. The church was filled to capacity, with the gentry in the pews and every standing place taken by somebody.
Every soul in the neighborhood must be either in the church or outside. But all of them faded from her mind as she looked down the aisle, where Pol waited for her, with his heart in his eyes.
*
Later, the wedding would come back to Pol in flashes, each a sketch of a moment in time.
His first sight of Jackie as she entered the church on her father’s arm, stepping into a sunbeam from one of the side windows, so beautiful that his breath failed him. Her sideways look at him, almost shy, as they faced the minister. Her eyes on his as she repeated her vows, her voice thrilling through him. Her beaming smile as the minister proclaimed them husband and wife. And then afterward, another broad smile when they came outside to the cheers of those who had not been able to fit into the church.
They had paid the innkeeper and the local baker to put on a feast for the villagers and tenants, and they walked around the green for a while, accepting congratulations and best wishes. It still seemed strange to be greeted as “my lord” or as “Lord Riese,” but when people called Jackie “my lady” or “Lady Riese,” his heart seemed to swell in his chest. No one mentioned, or even seemed to be aware, that they had known Pol and Jackie as the viscount’s bastard cousin and the seamstress.
They returned to the carriage to ride to the Hall to find the carriage had been decorated during the service—every available space adorned with ribbons and flowers. Furthermore, it clanked when it pulled away from outside of the church—several iron posts or the like must have been fastened to the back axle.
Jackie laughed and the horses didn’t complain. She was examining her ring. He had had it engraved with another line from Donne’s poem. “Let us live nobly.” The ring didn’t have room for the next bit, but he meant the sentiment—the poem continued, “And live, and add years to our reign.” That was his wish for them—that they would live a long and blessed life together and go at last together to the peace thereafter.
Jackie read the sentiment and kissed the ring. “Here on this earth, we are Kings,” she quoted, from the same poem, and truly, at this minute, Pol felt as if he had been crowned king of all the world, with her as his co-monarch by his side.
Within minutes they were at the Hall, and the racket was over. Now he just had to endure another hour or so of doing the pretty at the reception the ladies of the house had organized for the local gentry, and he and his wife… My wife! How good that sounds ! He and his wife would be able to leave in another hour, he reassured himself.
*
In the late afternoon, Jackie and her new husband arrived at the cottage in Little Tidbury, which Pol had arranged to hire for a week. “His wife said they would provision it,” he told Jackie, as the carriage pulled up outside. “And a maid will come in each afternoon to clean and to prepare dinner.”
The innkeeper’s wife had outdone herself. The cottage was sparkling clean, and the color and scent of vases of flowers brightened the rooms. In the kitchen, several pots simmered on stands over embers. They proved to contain a pot roast, root vegetables, and a steamed pudding. Jackie found fresh bread and sweeter baked goods under a cover on the kitchen table.
A bottle of wine, too, and two glasses. Pol opened the envelope propped against the bottle and read it out loud to Jackie. “To Lord and Lady Riese, with our very best wishes for a happy future.”
“Wine?” he asked Jackie.
Jackie had had several glasses today already. Would more help or hinder?
She was very nervous. Maman had been very vague about what was to happen tonight, saying merely, “Follow Apollo’s lead, cherie , and if you have any questions, ask him. It is a very pleasant activity. I am certain you will enjoy it. After the first.”
The rest of Jackie’s experience came from unwanted advances and from watching bulls and stallions at their work. None of that was reassuring.
On the other hand, Pol’s kisses and caresses had been splendid, but had left her craving… something. Logically, their coupling was that something.
But what did “after the first” mean? After the first act? After the first month? The first year? Maman’s comment was more alarming than helpful.
It was only four of the clock. What time would it be acceptable to go to bed? She wanted the waiting over.
“Would you like a glass of wine, darling?” Pol asked.
She had been fretting instead of answering him. “When can we go to bed?” The question was out of her mouth before she could catch it back. If he laughed, she was going to hit him.
He put his head on one side and regarded her from solemn brown eyes. “You are nervous,” he said, sounding as if he had discovered something surprising.
Of course, she was nervous. “I do not know what to expect,” she grumbled.
“Did your mother explain—?”
“Nothing. She explained nothing. ‘Follow Apollo’s lead. If you have questions, ask him!’ Nothing, Pol. I want to know when it is going to happen, for I think I shall go mad without knowing how long I must wait.”
Pol had taken her hand while she was complaining, and now he wrapped his arms around her. “In that case, let us not wait,” he said, and kissed her.
It was one of the open-mouthed all devouring kisses that melted Jackie’s innards and left her weak at the knees, but she still retained her senses enough to ask, when his mouth left hers to cruise down her neck, “Really? Now? I thought it was a nighttime activity.”
He stopped what he was doing, the beast, and straightened to smile down at her. “It is an ‘anytime we please’ activity, dearest Jackie. Now is an excellent time. The best.”
Jackie glanced at the foodstuffs on the table. “I can wait if you are hungry,” she said, hoping he would not want to wait.
He didn’t. “I am hungry for you, my love. Come upstairs, and I shall show you.”
He led her, holding her hand, to the largest of the bedrooms, where clean sheets were turned down on the bed, and rose petals were scattered. He closed the curtains and lit the candles, then unbuttoned all the buttons, untied all the ties, and unlaced all the laces on her garments, removing each item with ever more fervent kisses and caresses, and not a few muttered curses when one of the fastenings proved recalcitrant.
The garments that had taken Maman and Bella a full thirty minutes to put on her were gone in fewer than five, and he was undressing himself at the same time, unraveling his cravat, shrugging out of his coat and his waistcoat, and dropping his breeches.
Next time, she was going to undress him, she decided. But for now, it was all she could do to stay upright.
By the time she was down to her chemise and stockings, and leaning against the bed, for her knees were too weak to hold her upright on their own, he wore only his smallclothes. He went to lift her chemise, but she shook her head.
“You first,” she ordered.
He unbuttoned his underbreeches and slipped them off, then lifted his shirt over his head. By the time the hem had reached his waist, her eyes were riveted on what lay beneath. So, men have hair on their groin, too . It was a diversionary tactic on the part of her mind. Her true attention was on the shaft that rose out of the brown curls.
So that is what was pressing into me , she thought. And that is never going to fit inside me .
Pol dropped to his knees. “I am going to take off your stockings and then your chemise,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Yes,” she said, and that must have been what he was waiting for. His fingers stroked her inner thigh as he untied her garter and unrolled her stocking, then his hands brushed her sides as he lifted the chemise. He stepped back, after that, stopping two paces away to stare at her body in the way she had gazed at his.
The urge to cover herself was easy to resist when she realized that it was awe she saw on his eyes. Awe, desire, and love.
She took the opportunity to take in the rest of him. Broad shoulders and muscled arms, from assisting in the fields. Slender waist and hips. Powerful thighs. The upright shaft and the color of his flesh, living and breathing, were the only factors that differed from the Greek and Roman statues they had seen in London. He was magnificent.
“You are beautiful,” he said, in a breathy whisper. “So beautiful.”
Had she been able to muster words, she would have returned the compliment.
“Time to get on the bed, darling,” her husband told her.
His sudden indrawn breath when she obeyed had her turning to look over her shoulder. His eyes were wide, his mouth was open, and his gaze was firmly fixed on her bottom. Oh, so that is the way of it ! Stunned as she was by his naked body, he was even more poleaxed by hers.
The sense of feminine power had her hips swaying more than they needed to as she crawled another couple of times into the center of the bed. Before she reached it, he was beside her, drawing her into another embrace.
After that, Jackie could no longer focus on a single sensation. The touch of his hands, his lips, his teeth and his tongue, the press and slide of his skin against hers, the smell of him—a combination of the soap he used and something indefinably Pol—the sound of his whispered words and his groans as her inexperienced touches grew more confident and more daring—all of those combined to drag her into a maelstrom of feelings and responses.
Taste and sight came into it, too. It was as if her body was a harp, her senses the harp strings, and he the maestro creating a symphony that transcended the flesh on which it was played.
By the time he entered her, she was so far beyond wild for him to redeem the promises his body was making to hers that the slight pinch barely registered and had no effect on the crescendo building within her. Building, building, until she screamed his name, desperate for whatever all this was leading up to. Then, as if her scream had been the final push, she peaked and exploded, in a crash of sensation she could only experience and not explain.
The explosion, or the fall, or whatever it was went on and on, and above her, Pol continued to move. But then he stiffened and cried out in his turn. “Jackie!” She felt a warm gush deep within, and then he gathered her in his arms and rolled to his side, taking her with him, kissing her tenderly now, and without urgency.
“My wife,” he said, his voice replete with satisfaction.
“My husband,” she responded.
After all the passion of the afternoon, they were at peace together. After all the drama of the last few months, they had found their way home.
THE END