Chapter 5 #2
Perhaps she should be like Scheherazade and tell him a tale to entertain him. And unfortunately, the only tales she knew were of Chavensworth. No doubt her life here was boring to him.
“Have you traveled a great deal?” she asked.
“I have, in the past,” he said. “Of my future, I can’t speak. It has a great deal to do with you.”
“I shouldn’t think that I would be an object of consideration, Mr. Eston,” she said.
She turned to face him, relieved that he was covered by the sheets and the coverlet. His shoulders were bare. The rest of him must be bare as well.
She looked away again.
“Chavensworth may keep you here, Mr. Eston. It’s beautiful, is it not?”
“It’s a building, Lady Sarah. As a building, it’s to be admired. I wouldn’t call it beautiful, however.”
“Are you that prideful a man that you will not admit to admiring anything? Not a structure, not God’s handiwork, nothing that you yourself did not build or cause to be constructed?”
“In other words, am I like the Duke of Herridge?” he asked. “No doubt your father’s arrogance has colored your opinion of all men. I am not like your father.”
She had no rejoinder for him. Only time, and perhaps familiarity, would tell exactly who he was. But at this moment, she wasn’t about to say that. Instead, she only nodded.
A moment later, the lamp was extinguished, and they were in darkness.
“I can smell you,” he said. “Do you think that’s entirely fair?”
“I beg your pardon?” She navigated to her cot and sat down on the edge of it, staring up at the bed on its dais. He was a shadow in the darkness, but she could tell well enough that he was sitting up and looking at her. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see his eyes gleam like a cat’s.
Intentionally ignoring him, she lay down on the cot, grabbing the edge of the sheet with both fists and pulling it up to her chin.
“You smell of roses. Here I am, a celibate bridegroom, and my bride lies in her solitary cot smelling of roses and moonlight.”
“You cannot smell of moonlight,” she said. “Moonlight has no scent.”
“You have evidently never smelled a summer night in Borneo.”
“I have never left Chavensworth,” she admitted. “Other than to London, of course. But the world comes to London. Why should we ever leave?”
“If you have to ask that question, then the answer isn’t important.”
Now she was affronted. She stared up at the darkened ceiling, wondering how she should respond. “I have always been a person who loved knowledge,” she said.
“Some people do not like to travel,” he said. “It’s enough for them to remain in their homes for all of their lives.”
“Are you berating them because that’s a choice they made? Perhaps they don’t have the funds to venture far from home.”
“Which is your excuse? Is it a choice? Or simply because you’ve never been given the opportunity? What faraway land would you see if you had the funds and the time?”
“I could spare the funds from Chavensworth,” she said, lying and disliking that fact intensely. “Up until our marriage, Mr. Eston, I was a single woman. Single women do not travel although it’s encouraged for single men. Besides, I have had other duties to occupy me.”
He didn’t challenge that statement, possibly remembering her mother’s condition.
But neither did he ease her mind by saying something conciliatory, a politeness anyone else might utter.
But he was not anyone else, and these were not the usual circumstances either, were they?
There was nothing in any of the books or periodicals she’d read addressing a marriage like this.
“Shall I sleep on a cot for the rest of my days?” she asked, giving voice to an earlier thought. “Will you aid me in rising as my joints stiffen?”
“Can you see yourself being stubborn until you’re an old woman?”
“Stubborn? Is that what you call it? I call it not being a harlot. I don’t know you, Mr. Eston. Bedding you would be tantamount to acting the part of a loose woman.”
“And you would never act in such a way, would you?”
The question was strange, but not because it was intrusive. She had come to expect that from her new husband. No, it was the way in which he had spoken it, almost kindly, pityingly.
“It has been impressed upon me from a very early age,” she said softly, “that I am the Duke of Herridge’s daughter, and as such, there is a standard of behavior for me.”
“But not for anyone else?”
“Of course there is. Everybody, regardless of his role in life, has a set of standards. The groom is not to polish the silver. The footman is not to curry the horse.”
“And the duke’s daughter is not to feel passion, is that it?”
She sat up and stared at him. “I really do insist that you don’t use that kind of language in front of me, Mr. Eston.”
“Passion?”
“Exactly. I am not a woman of the streets. I do not doubt that you are unaccustomed to associating with my type of woman.”
“And what type of woman would that be? Narrow-minded? Terrified? Tell me, Lady Sarah, do you wear a corset to bed?”
“I have no intention of discussing my undergarments with you, Mr. Eston. Not now, not ever.”
“Do you know that the women in Fiji wear nothing at all but a grass skirt? Their breasts are allowed to hang unbound. They’re quite lovely.”
She lay back on the cot, her arms at her sides, her eyes scrunched shut, and her mind deliberately focusing on something other than his comments.
“I should like to see your breasts unbound, Lady Sarah. I imagine they’re quite large. Are your nipples coral? Or are they the most delicate pink?”
She drew the sheet up over her head, ignoring the fact doing so left her feet bare.
Let him comment upon her naked toes, anything other than her breasts.
She had never even called them breasts to herself.
It was her chest, simply put. She was a woman, and that was one of the things God had granted women.
They had chests. But he was calling attention to the fact that it wasn’t simply a chest. She had breasts, two of them.
If he didn’t cease, she would never be able to sleep. She would lie there in a bright red stew of humiliation long after he had fallen into his dreams, no doubt of a libidinous nature.
“I imagine they’re exquisitely sensitive. Never having seen the light of day, so to speak. Do you allow yourself to bathe them? Or is it done with a far-off gaze, an admonition to feel nothing from your body?”
She drew the sheet down below her eyes. He really must cease now. To speculate on how she bathed was too much, especially since he was excessively close to the mark.
“I imagine your shoulders are beautiful as well. I should like to see you in an evening gown, something frothy and totally unlike you. Something overly feminine, perhaps.”
She was excessively feminine. Who was he to say such a thing to her? Their acquaintance had lasted a matter of hours. What did he know of her?
She shut her eyes and prayed for sleep. Let her be able to ignore him. Let everything he said be nothing more than the drone of an insect, or the sound of water like one of the fountains in the garden. She would simply treat his words like the trickle of water and pay no attention to the meaning.
“Breasts are vastly underrated, Lady Sarah. They are a source of great pleasure for a woman. Did you know that? It is not simply a place for a babe to suckle. A grown man likes to suckle as well.”
Water dripping over the stones, that was all his words were.
In the water garden, there was a tiny little piper, Pan, standing atop a curling leaf, water pouring from his flute.
Or there was a larger statue of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, roaring up from the curved bowl of a large fountain, balancing three voluptuous mermaids on his shoulders.
They were bare-chested as well.
“Cease, Mr. Eston.”
“Douglas.”
“I really must insist,” she said.
“Douglas.”
“I really must insist. Douglas.”
“Sleep well, Lady Sarah.”
She turned her head and frowned toward the bed. Had that been his intent all along? To get her to call him Douglas? Could he be that Machiavellian, that cunning?
She was sleeping on a cot that was anything but comfortable, staring up at her husband, who was a little more than a stranger. Sarah had the distinct feeling that she’d been bested, and that Douglas Eston might be a bit more complicated than she’d once believed.