The Orchid #2
And beneath it, quieter and less admissible: he could not raise the subject without saying aloud his foolishness in believing she was experienced.
His brisk manner with which he took her only to leave her room without a word of comfort.
And then he had spent the night considering an annulment as though she were the one who had committed the injury.
So the anger sat where anger sits.
You hardly touch me either.
He put his hands over his face and sat there.
His first wife had been with child when she died. His second—he had begun staying the night, sleeping beside her, when she was met with an accident. His third, he had started learning what pleased her, and she had begun to answer him, and within the month she was dead.
And he could not touch her. Not the way he wanted to. Every wife he had allowed himself to want had died for it, and whatever logic told him, his body would not forget.
He rolled his shoulders. He could not dwell on this.
He told the coachman to take the long way through the park, and sat through Hyde Park Corner three times, before giving up and naming Iredell House at last.
The footman opened the carriage door. Cold air came in at him, smelling of wet stone and coal smoke. Henry climbed down and went up the steps and Patten opened the front door before he had reached the top of them.
“Your Grace.”
The hat went into one of Patten’s hands and the greatcoat into the other, and Henry stood at the foot of the staircase with the rainwater on the marble around his boots. Patten coughed.
“Her Grace is in the morning room, Your Grace. She has a caller.”
Henry put his hand upon the newel post.
“A caller.”
“Mr Vexley, Your Grace. He has been with Her Grace this past quarter of an hour.”
He turned, and walked the length of the entrance hall, and pushed open the door of the morning room.
The room smelled of rain upon orchids. The fire had been lit and let go low, as Violet had begun to leave it of an afternoon, and the grey of the day stood at the windows.
His wife was on the green settee with her back to the light, in a plain gown of dark blue, the same one she’d worn upon their first meeting.
Her hands were loose in her lap and Edmund Vexley was upon the settee opposite with his elbows on his knees and his face inclined toward her.
Between them on the low table lay a spray of something dark-leaved and white-flowered, the wax of the petals catching what little light there was.
Sarah was at the fireplace with a piece of mending across her lap, and her eyes very firmly upon it.
He caught the end of what Violet was saying. “…not since I was a girl, and then it had not flowered well.”
Her voice was soft and quick and quite unlike the voice she used on him.
Edmund was attentive, half-smiling.
She was laughing.
It went through him like a draught.
She caught sight of him at the door, and the sound stopped.
Edmund rose to his feet. He was thirty this year and the years sat lightly upon him, for he was tall and dark and had the sort of face that forgave its owner a great deal, though his judgment had not always merited the pardon.
“Iredell.”
“Edmund.”
“You will forgive my intrusion. I had business in Bond Street and thought to bring the orchids in person rather than entrust them to a footman. I have not until now had the honour of meeting your duchess.”
Henry did not move from the door.
“So I see.”
“Her Grace tells me she has some knowledge of botany. The Brassavola is a difficult specimen. I had thought she might enjoy the attempt.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
Violet had risen from the settee. She stood with her hands folded before her, but Henry noticed the slight movement of her fingers fidgeting against her skirts.
The colour of her laughter was still high in her cheeks.
He looked at her and could not look anywhere else because the pleasure coaxing the colour was not his.
“Will you not stay for dinner, Mr Vexley?” she said. “Mrs Garrick makes wonderful roast.”
“He shall not.”
Violet turned sharply toward her husband. Edmund’s mouth opened and closed.
“My wife was kept from her rest last night by my own ill conduct,” Henry said, “and is in want of a quiet evening. You will forgive me, Edmund, if I send you on your way.”
“Of course.”
His cousin recovered swiftly and bowed over Violet’s hand.
“Your Grace. The pleasure has been entirely mine. I shall hope to call again when it is more convenient.”
“I shall look forward to it, Mr Vexley.”
“Cousin Edmund, I beg of you. We are family.”
Henry watched the corner of her mouth lift, and watched it stay so for the space of a breath longer than it ought to have done.
“Cousin Edmund.”
His heir presumptive bowed a second time and walked past Henry without offering his hand. The door of the morning room closed behind him. Henry waited until he heard the front door close.
“Sarah.”
His wife did not look at the maid, but the maid was already on her feet and gathering her work into the basket. She curtseyed quickly and went through the door.
“That was very poorly done.” Violet did not look at him. She looked at the orchid.
“He understood.”
“He understood that you are rude. That is what he understood. He came on a kind errand. He was charming, and gracious, and well-mannered, and I had been alone in this house. And you sent him from the room as though he had insulted you.”
“I sent him away hastily out of fear that he may take your smile for an offer.”
“How dare you.”
“I mean it as a compliment. I had not supposed you capable of such charm. You certainly do not waste any of it upon your husband.”
The colour broke back into her face in two hot patches at the cheekbones, high and bright.
“I am as charming to you, Your Grace, as you are to me.”
“Our agreement said nothing about charm.”
“So we understand each other.”
She took leave of the room quietly, unhurried.
Henry stood in the empty room and listened to the rain upon the window. And to the fire eating its way through the last of the coal in the grate. He resisted the temptation to throw the orchid into the fire.
He waited until the house was asleep.
It had become his habit on these nights, this new habit of the married man, to put it off until he could put it off no further.
He undressed alone. He sat in the chair by his own fire in his dressing gown and watched the wood burn down and listened for the small movements through the connecting door to cease.
When he was certain Sarah was off to bed and his duchess in hers, he knocked on the connecting door once. He turned the handle.
The room was dim. A single candle had been left burning on the small table beside the bed, and the fire had been let go low.
She was sitting up against the pillows in the white nightgown that buttoned to the throat. Her hair was down. Her hands lay loose at her sides upon the blanket. She did not clutch the linen this time.
“Your Grace.”
“Violet.”
She did not look at him. He had not expected her to. He moved to the small table in the corner of the room and retrieved the vial from the drawer. He drew the dressing gown off his shoulders and laid it across the chair. He felt the night air upon his back.
He turned to the bed with the vial in his hand and saw that her eyes were on the canopy. Her chin was a little lifted. Her throat showed pale in the candlelight, the small notch at the collar of the nightgown rising and falling more quickly than her stillness elsewhere accounted for.
He set one knee upon the mattress and paused when she spoke.
“Your Grace, will you put out the candle, please?”
He returned to the small table and blew out the candle.
Turning back to the bed, he kneeled. The mattress dipped with his weight.
He took up the vial and uncorked it. The musty scent of the oil came up between them.
He drew the hem of her nightgown up above her knees, and she made no sound, no movements.
The skin of her thigh under his palm was warm.
He put a little of the oil on his fingers and brought them to her, resting his hand there a moment before he moved.
You hardly touch me either.
He set his teeth.
The objective was an heir. It had been an heir from the day they signed the agreement.
He worked the oil longer than he had the other two times. He did not have to examine why.
She let out a breath after a while. It was not a sound of pleasure, but something held. He felt her body relax, the tense thigh muscle beneath his palm loosening slightly.
He moved over her in the dark. He braced one hand on the mattress beside her head. The other hand guided him into her by careful degrees. When she released a small gasp, he stopped. She breathed normally again so he pushed further, the heat and tightness of her closing around him.
A surge of possessiveness came up in him that had no place in his mind. He saw again the picture of her smiling warmly at another man and heard again the laugh she offered so freely before she ever said his name.
He shut his eyes and pushed down the word pulsing in his head now. Mine.
The marriage bed was not a place for boys, and jealousy was not a sentiment for a duke who’d already claimed her.
He did not look at her face. This was an obligation, nothing more. He kept his eyes on his own hand braced beside her head.
He began to move, the pleasure building until it could not be contained. When he came, he gasped against his own teeth while her scent rose around him.
Henry held himself still until the breath came back to him. The gentle touch of her exhale tickled his arm. He eased away and sat back on his heels in the dimness.
He stole a glance.
Her face was turned toward the fireplace. Her eyes were closed. There might have been moisture on her left cheek, or it could have been the illusion of the flickering light.
Henry drew the hem of her nightgown down to her ankles and sat on the edge of the bed. He took up his dressing gown from the chair and left the room without looking back at the bed.