How to Seduce a Bride

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 roue 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. “Voila!” 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.