By some miracle, Rose managed not to cry.
When he came through the door, he was wearing a dressing gown. Rose hurriedly blew out the candle beside the bed while he undressed. In the dark, mercifully, she could not see him. And he could not see her.
Over the next few minutes, Waite told her what to do, and she obeyed numbly. She felt his hands on her, on her breasts and her hips, but it wasn’t like last time. She couldn’t take pleasure in his ministrations tonight.
After a while, he managed to coax a slight, mechanical response from her with his searching fingers, enough at least to lubricate her against pain. This time though, she was embarrassed by her wetness, mortified that he could cause even that weak physical response in her when she hated him so. She concentrated hard on the hate, managing to drive the hint of incipient pleasure away.
There was little pain when he entered her, although she felt uncomfortably full. She lay perfectly still beneath him while he moved on top of her. His physical invasion of her body felt horribly, hatefully intimate, and she wished with every fibre of her being she had not invited it. She never would again.
Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark now. She risked a glance and saw that Waite’s eyes were closed, his face taut with concentration. She wondered if he was thinking of another woman as he did this to her. That pretty serving maid, perhaps. Well, who could blame him? she thought bleakly. She was ugly. It probably sickened him to look at her.
In a matter of moments, he was finished. She felt the hot flood of his seed into her core and realised that this night might result in her conceiving a child. She hoped it did. Perhaps if she presented him with an heir, they need never do this again.
He rose from her without a word and put his dressing gown on. He walked to the door between their chambers. “Good night, Rose,” he murmured softly. He didn’t open the door, though, and she sensed him looking at her in the silence. She ignored him, merely turning to the wall.
After a moment, she heard the soft click of the door as it opened and closed behind him.
Even then, Rose did not give in to tears. Instead, she turned her misery to hate. She fantasised about how she could punish him. There were physical punishments, of course; throwing something at him would be satisfying, something large and hard. But physical pain wasn’t good enough; she wanted to pay him back in kind. She wanted him to experience the same feeling of cruel rejection that she had just experienced. She wanted to be beautiful and for him to desire her desperately. She wanted him to beg her for a crumb of her precious attention.
She knew she might as well wish for the moon.
Never again, Gil thought as he discarded his dressing gown and got into bed. He didn’t know quite how he had got through that experience. He felt hollow and horror-stricken, as though he’d just been through a battle. The wedding night hadn’t been easy, but at least she had been willing and receptive to his touch. This time—Lord, he felt like a rapist. She had asked him to come to her, then lain beneath him like a martyr, regret and misery pouring off her in waves.
Gil stared at the ceiling, trying to nourish his anger. It was hopeless, though. Instead, he found himself remembering something his mother had said to him at the first ball he had ever attended. She had persuaded him to ask a plump, painfully shy young girl to dance with him. “Don’t make her feel as though you are asking her out of politeness,” his mother had said. “Be kind. Make her feel as though you really want to dance with her.”
Kindness had mattered to his mother.
He had not been kind to Rose tonight. All his anger and resentment about this forced marriage withered in the face of that simple truth. He had been beastly. Cruel. He’d let her know he hadn’t wanted her. And the astonishing fact that he’d easily become hard, easily climaxed didn’t help in the least. In fact, it made it worse somehow.
There was no undoing it, though. And having behaved like such a boor, he couldn’t think what the next day might bring. He wanted to jump on his horse and race back to London.
The rest of his marriage stretched before him, decades of it. An inescapable prison. A life sentence.
He felt wronged by it. By Rose. And now he had wronged her too.
If only he could undo it.
All of it.
Chapter Five
They arrived at Weartham late the following afternoon. The carriages rumbled up the long drive, coming to a dusty halt in front of the house. It was a substantial house built of mellow sandstone, and in the bright afternoon sunshine, it looked warmly welcoming.
During the journey, Harriet had told Rose that, although Weartham was the smallest of the Earl’s estates, it had been Waite’s mother’s favourite. The earl used to take the whole family to Weartham for a month or two every summer. Harriet too. She had spoken fondly of those summers. And perhaps her memories of blackberry picking, village fetes and long walks by the sea had infected Rose. For as soon as she saw the house, it felt oddly familiar. And then she noticed the line of servants waiting outside.