Ten O’Clock
Chapter five
Ten O’Clock
Henry
The wedding had taken twenty-three minutes.
The chapel had been small. The witnesses had been few.
The breakfast had been a single dish in the small dining room at Cavendish Square.
By three in the afternoon, he had walked his wife up the steps of Iredell House and into the entrance hall and presented her, by her new name, to the staff arranged in a row.
They had curtsied. They had bowed. Mrs Greer had said, Welcome home, Your Grace, and Violet had said, Th-thank you, Mrs Greer in a voice that Henry could barely hear.
By five she had been taken upstairs to her rooms by Mrs Greer and Sarah Baker.
By seven a small supper had been laid for her there.
By eight he had asked Greer whether his wife had eaten.
The reply had been A little, Your Grace.
By nine he had bathed. By a quarter to ten he had dismissed his man and was in his shirt in his own dressing room with one connecting door closed.
He sat on the small chair beside the washstand and he listened.
In the room beyond the connecting door, he could hear the small movements of two women. Water was being wrung. Then the sound of water falling repeatedly. Then voices again until a door opened and closed, and he understood that Sarah had withdrawn.
A quarter of an hour passed. He did not know what he was waiting for.
This was his fourth wedding night. The protocol was not mysterious.
The husband goes through the connecting door.
The wife is in bed. The thing is done. He had managed it once with shaking hands and once with steady ones and once with no feeling he bothered to label, and he would manage it again tonight.
He stood and took the small candle from the washstand. Once he crossed to the connecting door, he knocked once with the back of one knuckle.
“Yes,” she replied.
The door opened without a sound.
The room was as the staff had left it. Stripped, empty, polished. A small bed had been brought in for her until she chose her own furnishings, and it had been made up with white linen. The candles on the small table and the fire in the grate lit the room.
She sat upright against the pillows in a white nightgown that buttoned to the throat. Her hair was down. Her hands were clutching the blanket up to her collarbone, and the knuckles were white.
Their shared door closed behind him without a sound.
With his back to her, he removed his shirt and folded it over the chair beside the table. The trousers followed. The cold of the room met his bare skin, and he did not turn to learn whether she was watching. From the drawer, he took a glass vial of sweet oil.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I shall be brief.”
Her breathing was audible from where he stood—shallow, nervous. Without looking at her, he drew back the linen.
She lay flat on her back without being asked, her hands still grasping the blanket. Her nightgown covered her ankles. She kept her eyes upon the canopy.
The thought arrived, unwelcome, that he ought to say something to his new wife.
It would be his first. Margaret had been the most experienced out of the three women.
He had not seen the necessity for tender words.
Catherine had been vocal, had asked for it, and he had said what he could, which had been barely more than a grunt.
Elizabeth, his first, had known his heart and had not needed it.
They were both young and stupid with love.
Henry took the vial, uncorked it. The oil had a musty scent to it. He lifted the hem of her nightgown to her knees. He lightly stroked her thigh, announcing his presence. Her legs closed together briefly then opened again. He set his palm upon her knees to part them.
He had not touched a woman in almost two years.
He poured oil on his fingers and reached between her thighs. She gasped but stayed open for him. Her hands came to her sides, gripping the sheet.
Using two fingers, he spread the oil between her legs. The softness of her skin beneath his hand was a thing he had not been prepared for despite being familiar with it, and he held still until he could proceed without losing control.
Without looking at her, he told her to open more for him. She did. The trembling in her thighs was constant against his hands.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Her voice was barely a sound.
At her opening, he positioned himself, already hard with the need of two years pressing against her entrance. When he pushed into her, she cried out, sharp and involuntary, her eyes flying open.
He registered it, had expected it from someone less experienced. She tightened around him and the sensation wiped out any thought. It had been too long, and his body, which had not forgotten what this was, threatened to take over from whatever remained of his mind.
Henry forced himself to stop and wait for her to adjust while fighting the urge to take her fully. When she exhaled and her breathing returned to normal, he rasped, “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I am ready.”
He pushed. There was a resistance he had not expected, and then a give, and a cry came out of her, a short sharp sound she had clearly tried to hold behind her teeth and could not.
He stopped, lifted himself up onto his hands and looked at where they were joined. Blood on the draw-sheet. The sight of it held him still, and in the space of a single breath, he understood what it meant.
He began to pull back. Her hands caught his forearms.
“Please.” Her fingers tightened around him.
He did not move. She could have told him the truth without jeopardising their agreement but had chosen not to.
“Please,” she repeated and began shifting against him.
A jolt of pleasure went through him, wiping out any thoughts. He leaned over her and finished. It did not take long. He then sat back on his heels without looking at her.
She had not moved. Her hands were flat on the sheet. Her breathing had gone very quiet.
The cleaning and dressing took him less than a minute. He left the shirt unbuttoned and took up the candle from the table. “You lied to me.”
He did not wait for her answer. He went through the door and closed it behind him.
In his own dressing room, he set the candle on the washstand and did not move for several minutes.
She had lied to him, had sat across from him in a freezing drawing room and proposed a marriage built upon a deception.
He could have their marriage annulled.
The thought arrived and stayed. Fraud upon material misrepresentation was a doctrine in the ecclesiastical courts more often invoked than granted, but a duke who could afford the proceeding could afford the outcome.
He could put her on a coach to Thornwick within ten days.
Her family would keep what they had been given.
She herself would return to her mother’s house with whatever social standing she still possessed.
The option sat with him for some time. But the fact remained: he wanted an heir, a child of his own, a family.
The annulment could wait until she conceived, or it could wait until he decided, or it could wait until the anger subsided enough for him to think clearly. That was not going to be tonight.
The sound of her cry came back to him without permission. Then Please. And beneath it, the silence that followed. The silence of a woman who was determined not to show her pain.
He went to the washstand and splashed cold water on his face. With his hands flat on the marble, he let the water run down his chest.
The anger was considerable. At the lie. At himself for not seeing the truth. At the blood on the linen and the cry because he felt as though he had stolen her virtue.
Beneath the anger was also the memory of her warmth, her breath, and the way her body had tightened around him.
He waited for anger or desire to yield to the other. Neither did.