The Ideal Wife(54)

Abigail raised her chin and stared steadily back at him in the mirror. “Yes,” she said. “I am sorry I embarrassed everyone over tomorrow’s dinner. I shall try to remember to consult you on all issues, Miles.” I will try to fade into the background.

He lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. “I have hurt you?” he said. “Come to bed, Abby. You are tired.”

She wanted to go to her own bed. She wanted to be alone. She did not want him to touch her. But of course there was an heir to be begotten.

She hoped as she allowed him to lead her through his dressing room into his bedchamber that she would have a dozen daughters and no sons at all. She hoped she would be quite barren.

“Don’t be angry with me,” he said after he had blown the candles out and climbed into the bed beside her and taken her into his arms. “We must tell each other, Abby, if there is something about the other we do not quite like, or we will only grow apart and come to resent each other. And I am not really criticizing you. I shall look forward to our dinner party.”

“Who is Jenny?” she asked.

He went very still. “Why do you ask?” he said.

“I overheard some men at the theater saying that she is your mistress,” she said. “They said she is very beautiful and very expensive.”

He swore under his breath. “They used the wrong tense,” he said. “She was my mistress, Abby, and their description was quite accurate. I settled with her after deciding to marry you and before our wedding. I did not lie to you on our wedding night.”

She lay with closed eyes, inhaling deeply.

“Is that what was bothering you?” he asked. “I knew you had something on your mind. Put it from you, Abby. I will be answerable to you for the present and the future, but I cannot answer for the past. And there is nothing in the present that would dishonor you, I swear to you, and will be nothing in the future. Is that all? Do you feel better now?”

“Yes,” she said.

She swallowed and lay still. And when he lifted her nightgown and came over on top of her and entered her without any of the usual kisses and caresses, she bit down on her lower lip and stayed still.

And for the first time there was no excitement, no physical response at all to what he did to her. Just a dispassionate observing of his movements.

But no response was needed. Only her womb was needed to receive his seed, not her mind or her emotions. There was really no need at all for a wife to feel excitement or even pleasure while she was being impregnated with her husband’s heir.

She resisted the pressure of his arm, which would have drawn her onto her side and against him after he had finished with her, and turned away from him. And she pretended to be asleep when he reached a hand over her shoulder and touched one knuckle softly to her cheek.

“Good night, Abby,” he whispered.

She lay awake for a whole hour after his breathing told her that he was asleep. She lay awake until her head spun from so much thinking and every bone in her body ached from lying so still and so tense.

She turned finally and looked at him in the near-darkness, his face relaxed and handsome in sleep, one lock of dark hair fallen across his forehead and over his nose.

She inched closer until finally she gave in altogether to temptation and snuggled up against him and butted her head up under his chin until she could rest it on his shoulder.

He grunted in his sleep and adjusted his arm until it was about her, and moved his head until his cheek was more snug against the top of her head.

He was warm and comfortable, and he smelled of the cologne he always wore and of plain masculine goodness.

She would not think anymore. She was too tired to think. She burrowed one hand up between them to spread against his chest.

And finally she slept.





11



SHALL I SEE TO INVITING MY MOTHER and Pru and Connie?” the Earl of Severn asked his wife at the breakfast table the next morning. “I’ll ask Darlington too, if you don’t mind, to even the numbers a little more. He is a friend of Connie’s.”

“Yes,” Abigail said. “Do that, Miles.”

“Would you like to ask the Beauchamps and the Chartleighs?” he asked. “It is rather short notice, but perhaps they will be free to come. And you like them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will send the invitations immediately after breakfast.”

He looked at her, but she had no more to say. After a minute of silence he set his napkin beside his plate and rose to his feet.

“Will I see you at luncheon?” he asked. “Would you like to visit the Tower this afternoon?”