Then Comes Seduction

though different ones from this morning. She had changed into traveling clothes before leaving. Her hands were set quietly one atop the other in her lap. She looked relaxed.

A little too relaxed.

He wondered if she was looking forward to the coming night.

Their wedding night.

There were compensations for some of life’s unpleasant experiences.

He reached out and took one of her hands in his. He peeled off her glove, one finger at a time, and tossed it onto the seat opposite to join his hat. He set her hand palm-down on top of his. It was slender and pale-skinned and warm. Her palm was smaller than his, her fingers not quite as long.

She did not move it though she had turned her head to look down at it.

He eased his fingers between hers and moved their clasped hands to rest on his thigh.

She did not resist. Neither did she cooperate.

Of course she was not looking forward to tonight. Marriage was not about sex to her, was it? She had said so the day he proposed to her. Women were funny that way, and Katherine seemed funnier than most. She dreamed of love and hearts of hearts and souls of souls.

She was like an alien creature.

She was also, dash it all, his wife.

And she had admitted that she wanted him.

He hated the remorse he always felt in relation to her. He was not a man given to guilt and conscience. He was who he was, he did what he did, and anyone who did not like it-or him-could go hang for all he cared.

But on one infamous occasion several years ago he had crossed an invisible but very real line from recklessness into depravity, and though he had crossed back over that line before irreparable harm had been done, nevertheless… Well, irreparable harm had been done anyway. The fact that they were sitting here in this carriage together, man and wife, but without a word to say to each other, was proof enough.

And he would, he supposed, have to carry remorse with him to the grave. Not remorse for himself, for the fact that he had been forced to take on a leg shackle today. That he could and would live with. He was a gentleman, after all, and he had always known that sooner or later he must marry and produce an heir.

But the point was that she had taken on a leg shackle too today. And for that fact he would always feel guilty. For it really was a shackle. She would not have chosen him in a million years if she had been given a free choice. Sexual desire alone was not enough for idealistic, romantic ladies like Katherine Huxtable-or, rather, Katherine Finley, Baroness Montford.

He almost hated her.

A fact that made him feel even more guilty.

He wanted his wedding night, nonetheless. He could scarcely wait for Reading and their hotel room and the consummation of their marriage. He had come to realize lately that slim, curvaceous ladies were far more to his taste than more obviously voluptuous ones.

And these thoughts brought with them more guilt again. He ought not to be thinking of his own sexual pleasures but of how he could make her happy.

He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English language-happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more… well, pleasant.

“You know,” he said, “it may not be as bad as you think.”

Had he not said that to her on another occasion? When he proposed marriage to her, perhaps?

“It?” She turned her head and looked at him with raised eyebrows. “My marriage?”

“Actually,” he said, “it is ours, is it not? Our marriage. It may not be so bad.”

“Or,” she said, “it may.”

He pursed his lips and considered.

“Or it may,” he agreed. “I suppose we get to decide. Will we be happy or will we not? It will be one or the other, I suppose.”

“Is life all black and white to you, then?” she asked him.

“As opposed to varying shades of gray?” He thought again. “I do believe it is. Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery? What are your thoughts on the matter?”

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “you can turn any topic into a convoluted maze.”

“Did you expect me, then,” he said, “to tell you simply that I prefer gray to either black or white? I would abhor a gray life. No real misery but no joy either, only endless placidity and dreary depression. Indeed, I must absolutely banish gray from my own particular palette. Never tell me you are a gray person, Katherine. I will not believe it.”

She smiled slowly-and he guessed unwillingly-at him.

“Ah,” he said, “this is better.”

“Will we ever have a sensible conversation?” she asked him.

He raised his eyebrows.

“That,” he said, “is for you to decide. I have tried to provoke a discussion on one of life’s deepest mysteries-the necessity of darkness in our lives as well as light-and you accuse me of having a convoluted maze for a mind. If you would prefer to discuss the weather, by all means let us do so. There are endless possibilities in that particular topic. If I should snore in the middle of the discussion, you may nudge me awake.”

She laughed.

“Better and better,” he said, half closing his eyes as he gazed at her.

If his eternal punishment was a beach to be cleared, he thought, perhaps one grain of its sand would be lifted every time he made her laugh in what remained of both their lives. But it would still take a million years.

Perhaps even a billion.

Perhaps it would be impossible.

But the thought brightened him. Nothing was impossible.

15

THEY stopped for the night at the Crown Inn, the best hotel in Reading, and took the best apartments there. Katherine could not fault either the private dining and sitting room or the spacious bedchamber adjoining it, with its wide, canopied bed.

They ate dinner-she even forced down some food-and talked at great length about the weather. At least, he did. She did not do much talking herself, but she did a great deal of laughing, despite herself, while he regarded her with those lazy, half-closed eyes of his and pursed lips.

He could be utterly absurd and vastly amusing. But she had always known that. It had always been a part of his appeal. Those facts did not make him into the man to whom she would have wished to find herself married, though. She had pictured someone altogether more serious, more romantic, more… loving.

She was afraid for the future and tried not to think of it. The future would come soon enough.

She was alone now in the bedchamber. He had told her that he was about to make an ingenious excuse to go downstairs for a while so that she might have some privacy in which to prepare for bed. Then he had proceeded to do just that-he thought he had detected a spot of fluff on the rump of one of the horses during the journey and would not be able to settle for the night until he had gone down to the stables to check and to remove the fluff if it turned out that he was correct. And off he had gone, the absurd man, after she had laughed at him again.