Chapter 15
. . . I cannot believe that you will not tell me more.
As your elder sister (by a full year, I should not have to remind you) I am owed a certain measure of respect, and while I appreciate your informing me that Annie Mavel’s account of married love was correct, I should have liked a few details beyond that brief account.
Surely you are not so wrapped in your own bliss that you cannot spare a few words (adjectives, in particular, would be helpful) for your beloved sister.
—from Eloise Bridgerton to her
sister the Countess of Kilmartin,
two weeks after Francesca’s wedding
One week later, Eloise was sitting in the small parlor that had recently been converted into an office for her, chewing on the end of her pencil as she attempted to go over the household accounts.
She was supposed to be counting funds, and bags of flour, and the servants’ wages, and the like, but in truth all she could count was the number of times she and Phillip had made love.
Thirteen, she thought. No, fourteen. Well, fifteen, actually, if she counted that time when he hadn’t actually gone inside of her, but they’d both . . .
She blushed, even though there wasn’t a soul in the room besides her, and it wasn’t as if anyone would have known what she was thinking, anyway.
But good God, had she really done that? Kissed him there?
She hadn’t even known such a thing was possible. Annie Mavel certainly hadn’t described anything like that when she’d delivered her little lesson to Eloise and Francesca all those years ago.
Eloise scrunched her face as she thought back. She wondered if Annie Mavel had even known such things were possible. It was difficult to imagine Annie doing it, but then, it was difficult to imagine anyone doing it, most especially herself.
It was amazing, she thought, utterly amazing and beyond wonderful to have a husband who was so mad for her.
They didn’t see one another too terribly often during the day—he had his work, after all, and she had hers, of a sort—but at night, after he’d given her five minutes for her toilette (it had started at twenty, but it seemed to be getting progressively shorter, and she could even hear his footsteps pacing outside the door during the scant minutes he now allowed her) . . .
At night, he pounced upon her like a man possessed. A starving man, really. His energy seemed endless, and he was always trying new things, positioning her in new ways, teasing and tormenting until she was screaming and begging, never sure whether it was for him to stop or keep going.
He’d said that he hadn’t felt passion for Marina, but Eloise found that hard to believe. He was a man of hearty appetites (it was a silly word, but she could not think of any other way to describe it), and the things he did with his hands . . .
And his mouth . . .
And his teeth . . .
And his tongue . . .
She blushed again. The things he did—well, a woman would have to be half dead not to respond.
She looked back down at the columns in her ledger.
The numbers hadn’t miraculously added themselves up while she daydreamed, and every time Eloise tried to concentrate they began swimming around before her eyes.
She glanced out the window; she couldn’t see Phillip’s greenhouse from her position, but she knew it was just around the corner, and that he was in it, toiling away, snipping leaves and planting seeds and whatever else it was that he did there all day.
All day.
She frowned. It was actually a very apt phrase.
Phillip did spend the entire day in the greenhouse, often even having his midday meal brought in on a tray.
She knew it wasn’t terribly abnormal for man and wife to lead separate lives during the day (and, for many couples, at night as well), but they had only been married one week.
And in truth, she was in many ways still learning who her new husband was.
The marriage had come about so precipitously; she really knew very little about him.
Oh, she knew he was honest and honorable and would treat her well, and now she knew that he possessed a carnal side that she would never have dreamed lurked beneath his reserved exterior.
But aside from what she had learned about his father, she didn’t know his experiences, his opinions, what had happened in his life to make him the man he now was. She tried, sometimes, to draw him out in conversation, and she sometimes succeeded, but more often than not, her attempts melted away.
Because he never seemed to want to talk when he could kiss. And that, inevitably, led to his nudging her into the bedroom, where words were forgotten.
And on the few occasions when she did manage to engage him in conversation, it proved to be nothing more than an exercise in frustration.
She would ask his opinion on anything relating to the household, for example, and he would just shrug and tell her that she should handle it how she saw fit.
Sometimes she wondered if he’d married her just to gain a housekeeper.
And, of course, a warm body in his bed.
But there could be more. Eloise knew there could be more to a marriage, knew there could be more in a marriage.
She couldn’t recall much of her parents’ union, but she’d seen her siblings with their spouses, and she thought she and Phillip might find the same bliss if they would only spend a little time together outside the bedroom.
She stood abruptly and walked to the door. She should talk to him. There was no reason she couldn’t go to the greenhouse and talk to him. Maybe he’d even appreciate it if she asked about his work.
She wasn’t going to interrogate him, exactly, but surely there could be no harm in a question or two, peppered into the conversation. And if he even hinted that she was bothering him or making it difficult to work, she’d leave immediately.
But then she heard her mother’s voice echoing in her head.
Don’t push, Eloise. Don’t push.
It took willpower she’d never thought she possessed, since it went against her every last natural inclination, but she stopped, turned around, and sat back down.
She’d never known her mother to be wrong about anything truly important, and if Violet had seen fit to give advice on her wedding night, Eloise rather suspected she ought to pay it careful attention.
This, she thought with a grumpy frown, must have been what her mother had meant when she’d said to give it time.
She jammed her hands under her bottom, as if to keep them from reaching forward and leading her back toward the door. She glanced out the window, then had to avert her gaze because even though she couldn’t see the greenhouse, she knew it was right there, just around the corner.
This was not, she thought through clenched teeth, her natural state.
She’d never been the sort who could sit still and smile while she did so.
She was meant to be moving, doing, exploring, questioning.
And if she were to be honest—bothering, pestering, and stating her opinions to anyone who would listen as well.
She frowned, sighing. Put that way, she didn’t sound a terribly attractive person.
She tried to remember her mother’s wedding-night speech. Surely there was something positive in there as well. Her mother loved her, after all. She must have said something good. Hadn’t there been something about her being charming?
She sighed. If she recalled correctly, her mother had said she found her impatience charming, which wasn’t really the same as finding someone’s good temperament charming.
How awful this was. She was eight and twenty, for heaven’s sake. She’d sailed through her entire life feeling perfectly happy with who she was and how she conducted herself.
Well, almost perfectly happy. She knew she talked too much and was perhaps a little too direct at times, and very well, not everybody liked her, but most people did, and she’d long since decided that that was fine with her.
So why now? Why was she suddenly so unsure of herself, so fearful of doing or saying the wrong thing?
She stood. She couldn’t stand this—the indecision, the lack of action. She’d heed her mother’s advice and give Phillip a bit of privacy, but by God, she couldn’t sit here doing nothing one moment longer.
She looked down at the incomplete ledgers. Oh, dear. If she’d been doing what she was supposed to be doing, she wouldn’t have been doing nothing, would she?
With a little huff of irritation, she slammed the ledgers shut. It didn’t really matter if she could be adding her sums, because she knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn’t be adding them, even if she sat here, so she might as well go off and do something else.
The children. That was it. She’d become a wife a week ago, but she’d also become a mother. And if anyone needed interfering in their lives, it was Oliver and Amanda.
Buoyed by her newfound sense of purpose, she strode out the door, feeling once again like her old self. She needed to oversee their lessons, make sure they were learning properly. Oliver was going to need to prepare himself for Eton, where he really ought to enroll in the fall term.
And then there was their clothing. They’d quite outgrown everything in their wardrobes, and Amanda deserved something prettier, and . . .
She sighed with contentment as she hurried up the stairs.
Already she was ticking off her projects on her fingers, mentally planning for the dressmaker and the tailor, not to mention devising the wording for the advertisement she intended to place to secure the services of a few more tutors, because they desperately needed to learn French and the pianoforte, and, of course, sums—and were they too young for long division?
Feeling rather jaunty, she pushed open the door to the nursery, and then . . .
She stopped short, trying to figure out what was going on.