How to Seduce a Bride

Chapter Twenty

Daisy had brushed out her hair and braided it, when her maid, all a-giggle, held up a fine night shift for her to put on. It was made of the sheerest linen, so it was thin and transparent. Daisy hesitated. But she didn’t want to be fully dressed when Leland came to her, because then there’d be the awkwardness of undressing. And she didn’t want to disappoint her maid and cause more talk, because the shift really was quite suitable for a wedding night. So she put it on. She dismissed her maid as soon as she could, climbed up into the huge canopy bed, drew the coverlet up to her chest, and sat, waiting for her new husband to appear.

It was an awkward moment that would become worse, and so she’d brought a book with her in order to be doing something when Leland arrived. She’d thought about it long and hard. She refused to just lie there like a sacrifice on an altar. Or sit up, rigid, tensing at every creak in the floorboards that might signal his approach. She plumped up pillows behind her back, drew the coverlet up again, and pretended to read while her every sense strained to hear his footsteps.

He came into the room a few minutes later, fully dressed.

She gaped at him. He smiled at her.

“Something amiss with my shirt?” he asked in surprise.

“No,” she said, and couldn’t say more, because she couldn’t tell him she’d expected him to be in his nightclothes.

“Gads!” he said, stretching. “It isn’t really late, but I feel as if I’d been up for hours. I suppose that’s because it isn’t every day that I’m up so early, and out associating with so many people. I might as well get ready for bed, too,” he said, as he shrugged off his jacket. “You look so comfortable, you inspire me,” he said, as he unwound his neck cloth. “Then we can find a pleasant way to while away some hours, because exhausted I may be, but I’m not tired. I never go to bed this early. I’m sure if I did it would be a tremendous shock to my constitution.”

Daisy blinked, and then stared. Because now he pulled his shirt over his head, so his voice was muffled as he added, “We have some hours before I’m ready to sleep, but I never asked you. How rude. Are you used to such early hours?”

His head emerged; he tossed his shirt to the side, and looked at her.

She was staring.

“Oh that,” he said, looking down at the thin red line on his chest. “My souvenir of London. Don’t fret, it’s just a lingering reminder of that night at the park; it doesn’t hurt.”

But that wasn’t all she was staring at. His naked chest surprised her. He was so slender, she’d never have guessed how well formed he was: He had a broad, well-muscled chest, and his trim torso tapered to lean hips. There was a light fuzz of hair on his chest, and his skin was clear, except for that healing scar too close to where his heart was.

Then, as she stared, he sat, pulled off one boot and then the other. While she sat mesmerized, he bent and stripped off his breeches, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to undress in front of her.

Tanner had never fully undressed in all the years they’d been married, unless he had to take a bath. He always wore a shirt to bed. Tanner had been a chunky man whose fair skin had often been blotched, and he’d added more flesh around his middle with every year that passed. Now Leland stood up, and Daisy’s gazed arrowed to his sex. She glanced away, embarrassed. Leland looked almost like a different species than Tanner. He was fit and firm and though very large, everything was in pleasing proportion to his long body.

Leland turned his back to her, picked up his discarded clothes, and strolled into the adjoining dressing room. Even his rear was taut and trim.

“I have a problem,” Leland called from the dressing room. “I do hope you can help me with it. Of course, you’re not widely experienced in such matters, but I want your admiration and approval. So I can’t act on my own. I’ve something to show you, and then I’ll ask your opinion.”

Daisy tensed. The moment was almost upon her, even though it was arriving in weird fashion. Tanner never spoke to her when the mood was upon him. But his needs were obvious and simple. Now she wondered what an experienced roué like Leland expected of her.

For the first time, it wasn’t just embarrassment or distaste she worried about. She’d heard about men who liked whips and chains and such. Was her new husband such a one? Was he so jaded that he needed pain or shame? Did he think that just because she’d been a convict she had no sensibilities? That explained much, and would ruin everything. She tensed.

He emerged from the dressing room holding two nightshirts. One was plain and white, the other was cream-colored with embroidery on the neck.

“Now this one,” he said, holding it up in front of him, “is classic. Very simply, very tasteful. But this one,” he said, switching hands and holding up the other, “is the latest word in France, or so I hear. Which do you like?”

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. “Either.”

“Well, to tell the truth I don’t care for either,” he told her. “You see, I don’t like to sleep in anything but my skin, but I am trying to be sensible of your sensibilities. Wait a moment, I think I have just the thing!”

He disappeared into the dressing room, and came out holding his hands out as though he’d just pulled a rabbit from a hat, like a magician on the stage about to take a bow. Now he wore a colorful red silk dressing gown, sashed in gold. “Voilà!” he said. He turned for her, head high, nose in the air, like a fashion model at madame’s shop. “What do you think?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I agree,” he said sadly. “Outrageously opulent, not my style at all.”

He turned, very dejected, to go back to the dressing room.

“Wait!” she said. “Do you really think what you wear to sleep is important?”

He looked at her in shock. “My dear,” he said, “a man of taste never slacks off, even in his slumbers. And, I remind you, I can’t have you thinking your new husband is careless, can I? It’s obvious this doesn’t impress you, but I have a blue satin one that I thought was too simple. Now I think perhaps it will be the very thing.”

She just sat and stared at him. That was how she saw his lips quirk. “Good God!” he said. “Your expression!” And then he began to laugh.

She joined in, as relieved as she was amused. He came over to the bed. “Well, I had to think of something to unknot you,” he said with a tender smile. “You looked as though you expected me to come out with whips and chains. You don’t, do you? I’d hate to disappoint, but I wouldn’t care for that at all.”

“Oh my,” she said, between the giggles she’d subsided to. “That’s exactly what I was thinking you meant.”

“Hence the look of a trapped rabbit when I came out of my dressing room,” he said, nodding. “So relieved to know it wasn’t just my presence that made you freeze. Now, for some entertainment.”

She stopped laughing.

“Daisy,” he said patiently. “Please believe me. I won’t touch you until you want me to. It’s most unsettling to see you look at me like that. All I meant is that we can play some cards,” he said, extracting a deck of cards from his robe’s pocket. “Or dice, if you wish,” he said, dropping a pair of dice on the bed. “I thought we could while away our hour together that way until it’s time for bed. Is that all right with you?”

She breathed again. “Yes,” she said earnestly.

Then she dropped her head to her hands and bent double. “Oh, Lord!” she moaned, “How can I ever be ready? What have I done? This is terrible, if only because the more I like you, the harder it will be for me to submit.”

He put the pack of cards down on the bed, and came to sit beside her. He placed one large hand on her back; she could feel the warmth of it through her thin gown. “Daisy,” he said softly. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to submit. I want you to enjoy.”

She looked up, and he could see her misery. “I don’t know if I can. I honestly do not know. I’m not a cheat. I never thought this would happen. I thought I could, but when it comes to it, I freeze, as you said.”

He smiled. “We haven’t come to it. Relax. I know your past, and you know mine. What we have here is a rake, and a lady who has been abused. If I can use my knowledge, and you can forget yours, we may yet come to it, as you say, and find all is well. I think we will. Now, ecarte, piquet, or whist?”

She sniffed, and dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “Piquet, I think,” she said. “But beware! I’m very good at it.”

“Good!” he said, and drawing his robe around his long legs, he sat on the bed with her.

They played piquet for an hour, and declared it a draw.

Then they played whist, and he won, by a wide margin.

She sat up on her knees, and studied her cards with such seriousness that he teased her for it.

He sat, legs crossed like a tailor, his robe correctly draped to spare her blushes, and himself from stray breezes, or so at least he claimed.

They laughed as they played. He told her the origins of the names of cards, how the jack of clubs was Sir Lancelot, and the queen of hearts was first Helen of Troy, now Queen Elizabeth. He told her how the games were played in gentlemen’s clubs and in secret gaming hells. She told him about incidents at card games back at Botany Bay and the truly cutthroat way the games were played there. She sometimes forgot it was her wedding night, and the fellow beside her was the husband she was depriving of his rights. He didn’t seem to mind.

He couldn’t forget it for a moment. Leland watched his new wife with tender enchantment that made him ache as much with pity as amusement, and thought that if he could tame her and bring her to his hand, his would be the best marriage he’d ever seen, and this, a better relationship with a female than he’d ever dared imagine.

He was almost overcome with the urge to hold her close and tell her she’d nothing to fear from him. But he had to do it with quips and laughter, and hope the rest would follow, in time. She looked more beautiful than ever to him tonight, in her simple white gown. Her hair, in a night braid, made her seem younger and more vulnerable. Her beautiful firm, rose-tipped breasts, clearly visible in her thin gown, made him more vulnerable still. He yearned for her. And all he could do tonight was try to win her trust.

She looked up, saw his expression, and paused, cards forgotten, and stared at him. He held his breath, and leaning forward, touched her mouth with his. Her mouth was as soft and yielding as he’d hoped. Cards fell from her fingers like leaves in the autumn breeze. He put down his cards, put a hand on her waist, drew her closer, and she yielded, clinging to him as they kissed. He murmured a word to her, and that word was “love,” and ran his free hand lightly down her neck, only letting his fingertips touch her. He felt her shiver. He kissed her neck after his fingertips had grazed there, and then kissed her lips again. She murmured something he couldn’t hear.

He touched her cheek, and then lightly cupped her breast.

She shivered again, and then went rigid.

He stopped and looked his question at her.

She lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said unhappily. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“No,” he said, drawing away. “I don’t think so. It’s like trying not to sneeze. If you can’t help it, you can’t. So,” he said, sitting back. “Was it anything I did? Or something you thought? You can tell me.”

“I don’t know. What you did was lovely, but then I thought about what we’d do, and it happened.”

“Well, then we won’t do it,” he said. “It’s actually quite late now. Let’s go to sleep, if not to bed.”

He rose from the bed, went to the dressing table, and turned down the lamp. Though it was dark, she could see him in outline as he drew off his robe, and climbed into bed beside her.

“You’re sleeping here?” she asked in surprise.

“Why yes, it is my bedchamber,” he said as he laid his head down on a pillow. “I mean,” he corrected himself, “our bedchamber now. I’ve always disliked the idea of a man and his wife having separate rooms. It leads to estrangement. Don’t you agree?”

“I never thought about it,” she said, honestly. Tanner would have murdered her if she had demanded a second bed, and anyway, it would have been foolishness in a house the size of the one they’d shared.

“We have this huge bed, and separate dressing rooms, and there are a dozen other bedrooms you can retreat to if I snore,” he said on a yawn. “But I’ve never been told that I do. Excuse me,” he added. “One is not supposed to talk about previous experiences.”

“Oh,” she said, as she lay back and made herself comfortable beside him, wrapping herself in covers so they wouldn’t touch, even in sleep. “Then I should never speak about Tanner.”

“No,” he said. “You could. I meant that one shouldn’t speak about former lovers. I gather he wasn’t one.”

“Oh no,” she said softly. “That he was not.”

“Never a word of love?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Because he didn’t love me.”

He was still. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his interest as the silence between them grew. The statement clearly required more; she knew he was waiting for her to say it. The darkness made it easier for her to speak, and so she relaxed and spoke into the night, and found she could say things she’d never said before.

“He wanted me, but he didn’t like me. He didn’t even like the way I was with him in bed.”

“I’d imagine even he didn’t want to make love to someone who loathed him and merely put up with his embraces,” Leland said.

He waited for her answer. The more he knew of what she’d endured, the better he could try to change the act of love for her. She wanted him; he knew that. Her past was preventing her. He wished they could have had this talk before. He supposed he’d thought a widow would know more. He scowled; he’d been a blockhead. He’d erred the way that some men who married sheltered virgins did, expecting unrestrained passion to immediately follow marriage vows after a lifetime of restraint. Enough past lovers had told him about that folly. Now he’d done the same thing, misled because she was a widow. He should have listened more closely to what she said before. He had. It was just that he realized he hadn’t wanted to believe her.

“No,” she said, finally answering his question. “Actually it was the other way around. You see, one night when I was asleep he came to me and didn’t bother waking me. I suppose I was still dreaming, or maybe it was because he was drunk and it took him longer than usual, but I began to feel something I never had before, and I moved. He stopped, and slapped my face, hard. He said he didn’t want whore tricks, and that if I thought he did, I could think again. He blamed it on other women in the colony, some of whom had been whores. He didn’t allow me to talk to them after that.”

“I’m very glad that he’s dead,” Leland said. “Or I would have had to kill him.”

She hit the comforter with a balled-up fist. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Oh God, Leland, you made such a mistake in marrying me!”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t. Whores do use those tricks to please men, because women are supposed to move, because passion is moving. Most men think of it as a compliment to their skill.” He sat up, turned, and held open his arms. “May I just hold you?”

She nodded, and buried her face in his neck.

“Don’t worry,” he said, one hand making large circles on her back, the way he would comfort a child. “That’s over and done, it will never happen again.”

In time, he felt her relax. A little while later, she drew back. He had to let her go.

“Good night,” she whispered, and lay back down on the feather tick.

“Good night,” he said, and turned his back to her, so she’d never know how aroused he’d been. He’d had to keep that from her when he’d been comforting her. He stifled a groan, realizing it would be a long time until he got to sleep this night.

This could not go on, he thought, and not just for his sake. He spent the next hour thinking how to end it.

Daisy woke to find herself alone. She closed her eyes as the events of the past night flooded back to her. What had gotten into her, why did she talk about such shameful things? She wondered if Leland was out somewhere trying to find out how to annul this marriage. She couldn’t believe what she’d said and what she hadn’t done because she’d lacked the courage to do it. That shocked her. She knew it had disappointed him. She resolved to try harder. This was no way to keep a bargain. He had every right to be angry with her.

But when she saw him at breakfast, there wasn’t a trace of reproach in his face or a hint of it in his eyes.

“Good morning,” he said calmly as he rose from the table to greet her. “Shall we continue our tour of the grounds today, after breakfast?”

“I’d like that,” she said in a subdued voice.

“We can take a basket with us, and go fishing after,” he said. He eyed her pretty new saffron-colored gown. “But not in that. Let’s go up in the attics, and see if I can find some old waders and breeches for you. I don’t want you enacting the role of Ophelia in the water, drifting away, beautiful, but drowned.”

She laughed. “I can swim, and besides, fish are drawn to women, and if I wear breeches, they won’t recognize me as one.”

“Fish are drawn to women?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“So my father said,” she said, smiling at an old memory. “Or at least so he said when he wanted me to go with him to hold the basket to put his pilfered trout in. No gamekeeper ever suspects a little girl.”

“I’m positive any sane trout would know you were female no matter what you wore,” he said loftily. “They’re my trout, after all.”

They had a wonderful time that day. Less so, that night.

Leland didn’t attempt anything but a brief good night kiss before he turned his back on her-to lie awake half the night knowing the only woman he’d ever desired body and soul was so close, and so distant, and wondering what to do about it. More than his resolve and her coldness separated her from him. There was a cocoon of satin bedcovers keeping her chaste. Still, he could smell her perfume and imagine he could feel her body heat, while he tried to subdue his own. It was a sort of penance, he finally decided, which he supposed he richly deserved for past sins.

Daisy lay equally awake, arguing with herself, wondering if she should just rise up on an elbow, wake him, and try to make love to him without hating him for it. She’d thought she could do that with Geoff, and been proven wrong, but maybe it would be possible with this man who was coming to mean more to her every hour she spent with him. She made up her mind in the middle of the night, and was going to wake him, but fell asleep before she could raise her hand to touch him.

“Now, here we are,” he said the next day, as he helped her down from her horse. “We’ll go into the maze, and you find the way to the center, because I’ve told you the secret.”

“I’m to think of the sonnet you will recite, make out the rhyme scheme, turn to the meter, and that’s how I get to the heart?” Daisy asked.

“Shhh,” Leland said, looking around furtively. “You don’t want anyone overhearing it.”

“There’s no one here but some birds in the sky,” she said crossly. “I can’t do it anyway. I don’t know the sonnet! I mean, I know it but I never memorized it.”

“Oh, that,” he said, as they went in through the dark hedge. “You don’t have to. I only told you that story because it makes it sound so difficult. I’m not even sure it works that way. Listen, now we’re absolutely alone, I’ll tell you the whole truth of it. I’ll sing you a song that I’m sure you do know, and you turn at the end of each rhyme, first right, then left and then left again and then right. If you start off on your right foot and start singing at six paces, you’ll be there in no time.”

He began to sing an old song in a clear pleasant tenor, a song she knew well enough. It was not one any lady would sing in mixed company.

“I don’t believe it!” she cried indignantly, cutting him off. “You yourself said you told Daffyd the Shakespeare sonnet that was the key to this place.”

“So I did. But that’s not the only way. Am I to blame my ancestor’s tastes?” he asked innocently. “They entertained both high and low, as they lived. They were less priggish in those days. Now, step out on your right foot, and at six paces, begin. And all the verses, mind.”

She looked at him skeptically. He looked back, and shrugged. So she started to pace off her steps, and when she got to the sixth, began singing in a small, self-conscious voice, as much muttering as singing, because they were really very naughty lyrics. While she sang, she turned at the appropriate places, but when she’d repeated the song five times, now oblivious of how she sounded, she was still in one of the long dark green tunnels that made up the maze. She scowled and looked at Leland.

He was biting his lip, and his eyes sparkled.

“Wretch!” she cried. “You did that just to amuse yourself at my expense.” She batted at his shoulder. He turned aside, and, laughing, captured her hands in one big hand. And then he looked at her and stopped laughing, as she stopped fighting and looked at him.

He drew her close, and kissed her. Breathless and surprised, she kissed him back, and found she had to have more of the taste of him. His mouth was sweeter than she’d remembered. She felt the strength of his long hard body against her own, and it dazzled her. He held her gently and deepened the embrace. She closed her eyes, leaned in, opened her mouth to his, and drank long and deep of his kiss.

They paused for breath, looked at each other, and he kissed her again. Or she kissed him; she neither knew nor cared. His hand on her breast thrilled her. She felt her nipple rising to the palm of that big warm hand, and the thrill of it was like shivering heat. He bent his head to run a burning kiss from her earlobe down the nape of her neck, causing her bonnet to fall back and away. She wanted to discard her gown the same way, because everywhere he touched felt on fire. She closed her eyes and gave in to the sensations he roused, breathing in the scent of him, of good lavender soap, clean lemony herbs, and Leland Grant.

She wasn’t afraid of disappointing or displeasing him; she couldn’t think to be afraid. His shoulders were hard under her hands; she could feel his heart beating hard against her own. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way and was overwhelmed, yet greedy for more.

But he was the one to stop. “Damnation,” he said on a shaky laugh, as he looked around. “There’s nowhere to go further right now. Why couldn’t we have done this in the middle of the maze? You’ve got us so far from it, it will take time to get there.”

Sense was returning to her, he could see it in how her eyes grew wide. She pulled her bonnet back on and tied its strings with shaking fingers. “You mean you want us to do that here and now?” she asked tremulously.

“No,” he said on a long sigh of defeat. “It would be impossible here; just think of how we’d block the path. We don’t want any wandering hedgehog to fall over us. And I don’t fancy leaning back against the hedges; I doubt they’d support us and I’d think it would be far too prickly in any event. Daisy,” he said in a softer voice, “don’t worry. That was just a good omen of days, and nights, to come.”

She nodded.

He saw her retreat from him as clearly as if she’d struck him. There’d be no further lovemaking now. She was too self-conscious.

“Come,” he said gently. “We’ve been here too long. Let’s go home. Would you like to sing our way out?”

That made her smile and she pretended to bat him, as he laughed and pretended to dance away. They both knew it was pretense, and were glad for the diversion as they walked back to their horses together.

They rode in silence, but as their horses neared the house again, she spoke. “Leland?” she said.

“Yes?” he asked warily, because there was something in her voice that alerted him.

“Can we make love together, today or tonight?”

He stared at her. A slow smile appeared on his lips. “I am your servant,” he said, bowing from the waist. “Anything to please you. Would you like to join me on my horse?” he asked. “He’s really faster, and we can get there straightaway.”