And yet for all that, for all his arrogant decisions and composure, Quill felt like a drowning man when he walked into Gabby’s bedchamber. Because she was wearing nothing, his wife. Naught more than a scrap of delicate cotton.
The gray sky had parted to reveal scraps of blue. A pale spill of sunlight turned Gabby’s chemise into nothing more than a thin veil between himself and the rounded curves of her hips. He could see the outline of her body as if drawn in ink: the delicate way her waist curved in from her ribs and then blossomed out again, a hint of full breasts between her left arm and her side, the turn of her neck as it blended into delicate collarbone.
He inspected her from head to foot, from the sheen of her glossy hair to the tips of her silk slippers. He surveyed her as if she were a figure made of the finest china, one that he was considering for purchase.
He couldn’t find any words.
“Quill?”
Gabby sounded nervous, to Quill’s mind. She was clutching her hands rather tightly before her.
In the nick of time, his self-possession, gained from six years of crippling injury, abruptly reasserted itself. His body would never rule his mind—even in matters of erotic pleasure rather than acute pain. But he was shocked at how close he came to leaping on Gabby, and to the devil with his headaches.
Instead, he nodded casually and strolled past her to sit down in a chair by the fireplace. He stretched out his boots and stared at them meditatively, quite as if his body wasn’t on fire, straining at every pore to jerk his half-naked wife into his arms. Take her there, without ceremony and without forethought. Take her on the carpet, on the bed, on the chair. Over and over until this intolerable lust was satisfied and he could return to being himself: a calm and rational person. A person whose emotions were mild and composed into neat categories labeled marital duty and filial respect.
Filial respect. He had almost forgotten about the funeral again.
Gabby’s heart was beating so fast that she felt ill. The moment Quill took his eyes off her she rushed over and put on her night-robe. If she wasn’t mistaken, he had seriously considered tumbling her right on the bedchamber floor.
She didn’t mind that he had changed his mind, Gabby told herself. Everyone knew that men and women did those things—tumbled about—in the dark, in their beds, under the covers. Not in the early afternoon. At a decent time, in a decent place.
She tied the cord of her robe firmly about her waist and sat down opposite her husband. He looked dangerously magnificent, relaxed in a chair. Since he was temporarily ignoring her, Gabby let herself stare at him. Quill hadn’t changed into black clothing yet. His thighs were large and muscular in his fawn-colored pantaloons. In the sunlight she could see red tints in his hair as it tumbled forward. Those large hands—they had done amazing things to her in the library, when he asked her to marry him. She felt a delicious tremor in her knees.
Gabby flushed and shifted slightly in her chair. She had a rising sense of confusion interlaced with an uncomfortable wish that Quill would look at her again.
But when he did, there was none of that wicked pleasure with which he sometimes looked at her. His eyes were flat, unspeaking.
“I feel we should discuss our marriage.” He cleared his throat. “We should…make a beginning. Begin as we mean to go on.”
Quill ground his teeth together. He sounded daft. No wonder Gabby looked so bewildered.
“I mean to say that we ought to be frank with each other.”
Gabby nodded. Her stomach was curling into knots. It didn’t sound good, all this talk of frankness. Her mind darted desperately in several directions at once. Perhaps he regretted the marriage. Oh, why was she wearing such a thin shift when he walked into the room! Perhaps he didn’t like her hips. Perhaps …
“There will be times when you will say the same to me, my dear, and I will accept it with equanimity. With luck, after all, we will be married for years.”
Gabby didn’t understand what he was talking about. She knit her brow.
He kept talking, calmly speaking of separate chambers and marital courtesies.
By a moment later she was quite certain that Quill was regretting their marriage. She stared at him, flabbergasted, and then blurted out, “No!”
Quill lifted an eyebrow.
“I had no idea that you were looking forward to this event so eagerly, Gabby. I would prefer to sleep alone, given my father’s impending funeral. But if you insist?”
Gabby felt a hot wash of humiliation. Of course she wasn’t looking forward to it to that degree. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t find words. But she was…she was … Be frank with each other, he’d said. But how can one be frank about things that weren’t spoken out loud?
“I have no objection.” Then she couldn’t think of a single comment to add. Having no experience, she could hardly make a slighting remark about the expendability of the act.
He must not feel the same way she did. She, Gabby, felt as if she might suffocate if Quill didn’t take her in his arms again. She knew without hesitation that she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. The moment Quill said, “with my body, I thee worship,” she had come into a strange sense of her own body. An awakening sense that arrived with a quickened pulse and hummed through her body, a sense that intensified whenever she looked at him, at the masculine perfection of his body and the sense of leashed power about him.
“But I thought—” She stopped, the words choking in her throat. This was just going to embarrass her more than ever. So he didn’t want to consummate their marriage until they returned to London. Where was her sympathy? Her father was still alive. Likely she wouldn’t want to…to do whatever it was either, if she had her father’s funeral to attend.
She bit her lip. “I am so sorry, Quill.” She bent her head. “I did not mean to be disrespectful to your father or to your grief. I am ashamed that I questioned your feelings.”
Tears mounted to her eyes and she scrambled to make amends. “I feel so badly for you and for your family. Please forgive me. I’m afraid that my father and I are not close and so I forgot how very much you must be missing the viscount. It was inexcusable of me to forget your grief. That is, I didn’t forget your grief, it’s just that I …” Her voice trailed off in a near whisper.
Grief? Quill thought likely it was grief he was feeling, watching the pale skin of Gabby’s wrist. He couldn’t risk looking at her face, at her wine-red lips.
He had rarely had such a cruel sense of the world’s injustices. He, Erskine Dewland—no, Viscount Dewland now—couldn’t bed his new wife when and where he pleased. It was manifestly unfair. And the queer pang around his heart had nothing to do with Gabby’s bewildered disappointment.
For disappointed she was, his new wife. He’d already disappointed her, and they had been married less than three hours. Quill savagely pushed the feeling away. He had disappointed his father a thousand times, starting when he could not rise from his bed just after the accident.
“Dewlands don’t malinger!” the viscount had thundered. “Look to your will, man! Rise from that bed!” And he couldn’t. Quill still remembered his catastrophic sense of failure. He’d tried. And tried again, after his father stamped from the room. Couldn’t do it, and fell on the floor—and even more humiliating, had to remain there until his valet arrived, hours later. He’d wet himself while sprawled on the floor, because he was unable to crawl to the chamber pot and unable to reach the bell cord. Twenty-some years old, and as useless as a newborn babe.
The memory made him feel sick, and a wash of useless anger swept over him. His father was dead. And if he did what Gabby, with every embarrassed tremor of her lips, was asking, he would be unable to make arrangements for his father’s funeral.
The thought stiffened his backbone. He could bed Gabby later. She was his and she could wait. But his mother would never forgive him if he succumbed to a migraine attack when she needed him most.
“Probably it is all for the best,” he said cool
ly. “We haven’t known each other for very long, after all.” He shrugged. “And bedding is painful for women at first, Gabby. But I suspect you know that?”
Gabby swallowed, yet another flush following the one that had barely faded. “No, I didn’t know that,” she whispered.
Irritation replaced the ugly memory of his father’s disappointment. By God, Gabby was his possession, and she could damned well wait until he had time to see to her. He wasn’t some sort of stallion, to perform on demand from his wife. After they returned to London, they would share a bed only every few weeks. He had far too much work to suffer migraine attacks more frequently than once a month.
He got up and walked to the other side of the room, fierce indignation in the tilt of his chin, rejoicing in the restoration of his self-possession. Gabby had almost lured him into an indecent intimacy, only hours after his father’s death. He took a quick turn at the end of the chamber, turning on his heel next to the bed Gabby had slept in the night before. Anger made him feel careless and cruel.
“I realize that you are a very passionate woman, Gabby.” He tossed it over his shoulder, not bothering to look. “But since we are being frank, let me say that I will not tolerate it if you make sheep’s eyes at anyone other than myself.”
Gabby could hardly breathe. “I won’t,” she said. She was ready to die of mortification. He obviously thought she was a strumpet. He was treating her as if she couldn’t wait until after the funeral to be bedded.
Quill didn’t hear her. “What did you say?” He was inspecting the mantelpiece, running his finger along the polished mahogany slab.
“I won’t,” Gabby repeated.
“Right. Well, then, I think we have reached an understanding, Gabby.” He turned about and rocked back on his heels. “As I said, it’s best to begin as we mean to go on.”
There was a moment’s pause in the room. Gabby took a deep, unsteady breath. Quill looked as if he was about to leave, and she couldn’t allow it. She might not have known Quill very long, as he had pointed out, but she knew that his unpleasant tone was not normal.
“Wait!” she half shouted.
Quill turned about as his hand reached for the door handle.
“What is it, Gabby? I have a number of arrangements to make.”
She stood up and walked toward him, ignoring her shaky knees and stopping only when she stood a hairbreadth away. Then she put her hands on his chest, spreading her fingers against his warmth.
“I think we should talk further,” she said carefully, ignoring the churning sensation in her stomach. “Not”—she shook her head when he opened his mouth to protest—“Not about when we consummate this marriage. I have no objection to your plans in that regard.”
Gabby’s mouth curved into a faint smile. “I am no siren, Quill, to lure you into bedding me when you are distraught by grief for your papa.” She paused, but Quill said nothing, just stared at her with his shadowed eyes.
“Sometimes grief is easier if one shares it.” Gabby lowered her eyes and twisted one of the silver-plated buttons on the front of Quill’s coat. “I realize that my father is still alive, and so I can have no true understanding of your feelings. But I did lose a dearly beloved friend, in my childhood. His name was Johore, and I loved him very much. And after he died …”
Quill was hardly listening. Gabby’s friend Johore had died of a fever. He heard that. But she was standing too close for rational thought. He could smell drifts of jasmine rising from her perfumed skin, like airy promises of delight.
“You see,” Gabby was saying with sweet earnestness, “we are married, Quill. And I don’t believe it matters when we consummate the marriage. What matters is that we speak without anger to each other.”
Quill gave his head a brutal shake. How the hell did Gabby turn the conversation into a discourse on marriage? “When one is angry, one speaks with anger,” he pointed out.
“It is best to keep that anger where it belongs,” Gabby said. Her beautiful brown eyes were warm with sympathy. “You are not really angry with me, Quill, and yet you sounded enraged, as if I had done something wrong.”
Quill felt like a five-year-old hauled in front of a nurse to admit his shortcomings. Yet common sense agreed with her. “You are likely correct,” he said, breaking the silence. “I should not have spoken angrily to you, Gabby, and I apologize.”
He stepped backward and her hands fell away from his chest, leaving a momentary, and unwelcome, coolness there. He bowed. “Please accept my apologies, madam.”
“Madam? Why do you call me that?” Gabby was worrying her lower lip in confusion, turning it a deep cherry red.
Quill shrugged, trying in vain to regain his self-possession. “You are a madam now. You are Viscountess Dewland.”
“Yes,” Gabby said. “But you need not address me so, Quill.”
He shrugged again and backed up, his hand searching behind him for the door handle. “Have we talked sufficiently?”
Gabby faltered. It was still wrong. But she couldn’t make him talk, could she? She swallowed. She could try again. Not for nothing had her father called her pigheaded.
“No, we have not talked sufficiently,” she said, turning about and perching on the edge of the bed. She avoided her husband’s eyes, guessing that courtesy would not allow Quill to leave the room without a proper farewell.
Reluctantly, Quill felt a smile tugging at his mouth. She was stubborn, his new wife. She wasn’t going to let him stamp out, full of self-righteous male indignation.
He walked over, the toes of his boots rapping on the wooden floor. For a moment he stood looking down at her, and then he, too, sat on the edge of the bed. His rational self told him loud and clear that sitting on a bed—or near a bed—with Gabby was an extremely foolish action.
Her eyes were liquid with sympathy. Quill smothered a sense of irritation. He hated to be pitied. But this was his wife. Gabby would likely pity him for the rest of his life once she knew the extent of his injuries. And there was nothing he could do about it.
“I don’t like to be pitied,” he said, before he could stop himself.
Gabby blinked. “It’s a natural feeling,” she said. “You loved your father, and he’s dead. How could I not feel sorry that you have lost something so precious?”
Quill didn’t know what to say to that. He was silent.
After a moment, Gabby broke the silence. “Quill, you have to start speaking more frequently, or we’ll spend our married life twiddling our thumbs!”
“Luckily, I like to hear you speak.” His joke fell rather flat.
Gabby snorted. “There’s no point in speaking to oneself. I should like to hear you speak. Why are you in such a foul mood?”
Quill said nothing.
“I assume,” Gabby said, with a small edge to her voice, “that you didn’t really mean to make me out to be a wanton seducer and you no more than an innocent lad from the country?”
He turned his head and chuckled, despite himself. “Did I?” he said, with emphatic innocence. “Surely not!”
“You did!” Gabby retorted. “I felt like some sort of a…très-coquette who had approached you on the street.”
“What do you know about streetwalkers, Gabby?”
“Very little, and you know it. Since you are aware that I am not experienced in these things, why did you try to make me feel…like that? Indecent? It was not well done of you.”
Ruefulness warred with shock in Quill’s eyes. “Damn it, Gabby,” he managed, “do you always speak whatever is on your mind?”
“Speak the truth and shame the devil,” Gabby said. “As my father maintains.”
“I apologize,” Quill said, feeling his way. “I never wished to make you feel indecent, Gabby. I felt remorseful because…because we will not share a chamber until after my father’s burial.
“Oh, hell and damnation, Gabby, I need to tell you something.” Quill groaned.
Gabby put a hand on his as it lay on the counterpane between
them. He stared down for a moment and then interlaced his fingers into hers, holding her hand tightly.
“I can’t make love to you, Gabby,” he said huskily. “I would give the world to fall backward on this bed right now, but I can’t do it.”
There was a pause. And then Gabby said, “Why not?”
Quill laughed shortly. “Why not indeed? I married you under false pretenses, Gabby. You could annul the marriage.” The muscles in his jaw were clenched tight.
Gabby had turned very pale. “Are you unable to…to have relations, Quill?”
“Better that I was,” he said bitterly. “Then it wouldn’t be in front of me, like a carrot before a damned donkey.”
“I don’t understand.”
His fingers were clenched so hard on hers that her hand felt bloodless. “How—why can’t you have relations with me, Quill?” She felt hot, her mind groping stupidly for explanations, none of which were pleasant. Could it be that he didn’t desire her enough to perform? She had heard of that from maids as well. Aye, men couldn’t do their part if the woman didn’t appeal to them.
Quill didn’t answer her. Perhaps he didn’t care to hurt her feelings.
She cleared her throat. “Is it something to do with me, Quill? Because you needn’t tell me if—” She wanted to know and she didn’t want to know. She felt as if her heart were breaking right in two, a blinding pain in her chest. It seemed her father was right when he thanked God for giving him a man who would take his daughter to wife sight unseen.
“It has nothing to do with you,” Quill said heavily. “I tried to tell you before we wed, Gabby. When I was injured in that accident, I didn’t completely heal.”
“Oh,” Gabby breathed.
“I am still functional,” he said, his tone bitterly dry. “But there are consequences each time I make love.”