Andrew Lord of Despair(20)
The twin demons of widowhood and impending motherhood haunted a woman sorely, and thus Andrew’s desire was doubly reassuring: he could still desire her.
“Perishing hell,” he muttered. Then he slogged his way out of the stream, leaving Astrid unbalanced and more than a little puzzled.
She tottered after him up the bank, and sat on the blanket beside him while he tried to pull his stockings on over his wet feet. “What are you doing, Andrew?”
“Getting us the hell back up to the house.”
“Why?”
He shot her an exasperated look. “Because I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
“God’s holy bones, Astrid.” He threw his stocking at his boots. “I can’t keep spending so much time with you alone, acting the perfect gentleman, stepping and fetching, and behaving as if I don’t desire you.”
The ire seemed to go out of him when his last words hung for long moments in the ensuing silence.
“I am making hash of this,” he said quietly. “Look, Astrid, we both know you are entitled to more than what I have to offer, and if I were half the man you deserve—”
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. She didn’t move otherwise, which left her sitting partly turned away from him. When she spoke, she adopted a quiet, dispassionate tone that she intended to land like so many hammer blows for all its calm.
“I was married for two years to the esteemed Herbert, Viscount Amery, an affable man much admired by his peers for his seat when riding to hounds and his ability to hold strong drink in great quantities. He never held his wife, however, but rather, visited her three Sunday evenings a month. His valet would inquire of her maid if such a thing were appropriate, women’s bodies having inconvenient tendencies at times.”
She hunched in on herself, lest she give in to the inconvenient temptation to shout, and kept speaking in the same prosaic tones because, by God’s holy ears, somebody was going to hear this from her.
“When he came to my bed, he would creep into my room in complete darkness and raise the hem of my nightgown only so far. At least I assume it was he—I never saw his face when he attended to his conjugal duties. He would arrive fully aroused, and insert only the tip of his member into my body, expel his seed with something like a grunt, kiss my forehead, and take himself very considerately off to his room. He never attempted to arouse me, and when, early in the marriage, I tried to encourage a more participative approach to our relations, he had his mother—his mother—discreetly explain that passion in a gently bred lady was a vulgar and unappealing trait.”
This recitation made her feel smaller, like a seed ready to drift aloft on the autumn breeze, light and insubstantial. Because Andrew hadn’t tromped away on his wet, bare, horrified feet, she took a steadying breath and went on. “A proper husband would never be so gauche as to inflict passion on his wife, but would limit such behaviors to the base vessels toward whom it was appropriate. My failure to grasp this fundamental truth could be attributed to the absence of a mother to guide me. My dear husband was willing to overlook my unfortunate behavior.”
She was shaking, and not with cold. “Amery was being considerate, you see, by keeping a mistress, whom he visited several times a week, and for whom he paid every expense, while my pin money barely covered necessities for our household. He was being considerate by never once touching my breasts, by never kissing my mouth, by never allowing me the pleasure you gave me once long ago.”
She was brittle with anger, nigh fracturing with it, and yet her voice remained calm. Maybe her marriage had taught her something of value after all. Another steadying breath, and she hefted her verbal hammer again.
“With equal consideration, his efforts were apparently adequate to get me with child, which situation curtails most of my options and a good deal of my health as well.”
A taut silence stretched when Astrid finished speaking, and she wondered if she’d destroyed the friendship Andrew had extended to her. A husband’s loss she was learning to bear, but to lose Andrew…
“That miserable, arrogant, ignorant, inexcusably inept little prick,” Andrew expostulated, seizing her by the shoulders and pressing her down to the blanket. “At least I won’t get you pregnant.”
To her immense, profound, immeasurable relief, he was all over her, his tongue tracing her lips and thrusting inside with lazy eroticism. He blanketed her with his body, letting the ridge of his erection rest along her belly. His fingers brushed at her face, her hair, her neck, and then his hand wandered up along her ribs, to settle—finally, finally—over one ripe, sensitive breast.