How to Seduce a Bride

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.”