“Consequences?” Gabby echoed. Against all odds, her heart was lightening.
“Have you ever heard of a migraine, Gabby? Some people refer to it as a megrim.”
Gabby thought about it. “No.”
“A migraine is a type of headache,” Quill explained. “A very severe headache, accompanied by nausea and vomiting that lasts three to five days. I am incapacitated during that time.”
“Is there nothing that can be done?” Gabby’s tone was appalled.
“If I stay in a darkened room and eat almost nothing, it goes away more quickly.”
“But is there no medical remedy?”
Quill shook his head.
“I didn’t know …” Gabby whispered. “Were you in pain when we were in the library?” She raised agonized eyes to his. “You should have told me, Quill!”
His mouth took on a sensual, crooked curve. “Did I appear to be in pain?”
“Yes—no?”
At that a chuckle escaped. “I was in pain, Gabby. But not that kind of pain.”
A large hand touched her cheek. Gabby pushed it from her face. “Don’t do that, Quill! I can’t think if you start touching me. What kind of pain are you talking about?”
Her eyes were the color of autumn leaves, Quill thought. Nut-brown. Words didn’t seem available to catch the way they changed with the light. He leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue making a ravishing foray into Gabby’s mouth.
She gasped, a small sound, easily silenced. He caught her lip between his teeth, caught a softness that stole his breath and drove a shiver down his body. Then he undid the tie at her waist and pushed the robe off her shoulders. She gasped again.
“Am I in pain, Gabby?” His voice was a husky murmur, low and unsteady. A hand clasped her cheek, fingers tracing the curve of a delicate ear.
“No,” Gabby said. A rose flush crept up her cheekbone, but she twisted away from his hands and mouth. “You are distracting me. If you weren’t in pain in the library, then what causes these headaches? I don’t understand.”
Quill almost reached out, but stopped himself. He was trying to avoid the truth. “I get the headaches after intercourse,” he said flatly.
Gabby blinked uncertainly.
“Connubial relations. Conjugal felicity.” Quill racked his mind for more euphemisms for the event. “Intercourse,” he repeated. But Gabby was twisting her hands together, and Quill grasped the truth. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Of course I do!” Gabby rushed into speech, stung by embarrassment. “I just am not quite certain about the details, perhaps. I have a general idea. And I should like to point out that there are undoubtedly other young women who have exactly my level of knowledge. My mother died when I was born, you know. And one couldn’t expect my father to explain the intimacies of marriage!”
Her father’s advice had been blunt and to the point: If he doesn’t die of your insipid jabber before marriage, he’ll go to drink after. Better he than I. So for my sake, keep your tongue between your teeth till he’s properly leg-shackled. That was the sum total of her father’s marital advice.
The memory made her falter. “I don’t know precisely what you are referring to,” she admitted, weaving her fingers together in her lap. She cleared her throat. “Could you explain it to me? I would hate to cause you to have a headache without knowing.” She was so embarrassed that her face had taken on a fevered look.
Quill reached out an arm and pulled her against him. Then he smoothly lifted her into his lap, stifling a groan as enchanting curves, covered only by sheer cotton, settled onto his legs.
Gabby didn’t look up at him. She pressed her fingertips to her cheeks, trying to calm what she knew must be an unattractive ruddy flush.
Quill’s hand wandered from her neck to her breast. Gabby startled and her back instinctively arched, pushing her breast into Quill’s hand. A hoarse noise escaped his throat.
“Are you in pain now? Does that hurt?” She sounded as if she were ready to leap from his lap.
Quill almost laughed. “No.” He couldn’t speak for a moment because he was savoring the way her body trembled as he rubbed a thumb across her nipple. Not to mention what was happening to his body.
“Do you know, Gabby, I’ve never been married before.”
“I do know that,” Gabby choked. Perhaps she should stop him from—from what he was doing. It was hard to think clearly.
As if he heard her thought, he did stop. His fingers stilled, cupped around the weight of Gabby’s breast. Her body quivered like the string of a violin waiting for the gentle sweep of the bow.
“I’ve never been married before, and thus I’ve never made love,” Quill said carefully. “I’ve had relations with women. They say there’s quite a difference.” Actually, the only person with whom he had ever discussed such an intimate topic was an old school friend, Alex Foakes, the earl of Sheffield and Downes. In a fit of mild intoxication one evening, Alex had said making love to one’s wife made intercourse with other women look clay-cold, like being frozen to the bone.
“Oh, quite,” Gabby replied.
He could tell she had no idea what he was talking about. Gabby was leaning against his chest and he couldn’t see her face, but he would bet anything that she was chewing on her lower lip.
“When you had intercourse with these women, did the migraine always follow?”
“Yes.” His thumb was moving in idle circles again.
“I find it doubtful that marriage will change the situation,” Gabby noted with a rather surprising use of logic. “I’m afraid that we shall have to expect the migraine, Quill. It sounds to me like a physical reaction. One of my friends in India, Leela, always vomits after eating papaya.”
“Yes,” Quill admitted, giving up the dream that married sex was different. “I wish it was only a question of papaya.”
“Have you spoken to doctors about it?”
“I have,” Quill said rather bitterly. “I have consulted with Sir Thomas Willis himself.”
At Gabby’s raised eyebrow, he continued. “Willis is the leading specialist on migraine headaches. He had the temerity to inform me that I must be wrong in my description, as his theory precluded migraines resulting from head injury.”
“How very annoying! Did you convince him of your symptoms?”
“Yes,” Quill said dryly. “The next time I suffered an attack, I had him brought to the house. Willis had to admit that it looked as if I was suffering a migraine. But since he’s convinced that migraines are caused by swollen vessels in the brain, he declared my case an exception. In the end, it turned out he had no medicine other than laudanum anyway.”
Gabby put her hand over his, stopping his fingers’ lazy movement. But Quill refused to move his hand when she tugged, and just dropped a kiss on her hair.
“Quill, I think we should speak about this rationally. I need you to tell me about the…the marital act.” She said the last bit quickly and then launched into her idea. “We’ll have to figure out exactly what stimulates your headache and then avoid it. That is how Sudhakar discovered why Leela was vomiting and losing weight. She loved papaya and was eating more and more, trying to soothe her stomach.”
“I love your breast,” Quill said silkily. And then, “Who’s Sudhakar?”
Gabby turned her face up to his and scowled. “I shall go sit over there, Quill, if you can’t be reasonable.” She pointed to a chair by the fire.
“I’ll be reasonable.” The arm Quill had wound around her shoulder and hips held her to him like a vise. Somehow Gabby’s warmth and sensual presence made his despair seem overblown. Perhaps he could just bring her to pleasure and ignore his own—
Gabby shifted in his lap, and he gave up that idea.
“All right,” Gabby said, having made herself comfortable. “Sudhakar is the vaidya of the village I grew up in. A vaidya is a kind of doctor who specializes in poisons. Sudhakar explained that Leela was being poisoned, but only b
ecause papaya didn’t agree with her stomach. In fact, why don’t I write to Sudhakar?”
“Absolutely not,” Quill said firmly. “I’m not having my problems discussed in your village. Besides,” he added ruefully, “if the best doctors in London cannot do anything, I’m afraid that it is unlikely that a poison doctor from an Indian village will do much better.”
She opened her mouth and Quill put a finger on it. “I want your promise, Gabby. I do not wish my migraines to be discussed with anyone. They are a private matter.”
Gabby nodded unwillingly. “But, Quill—”
“No.”
“Well, all right,” Gabby said with a sigh. “We’ll have to work it out ourselves. Could you explain about conjugal felicity, or whatever it was you called it? I know you do it at night, and in bed. What are we going to do?”
Quill looked down at his wife in amusement. Her eyes were clear and full of curiosity. She looked like someone inquiring about the road to Bath. Or the proper way to string a bow. He didn’t answer.
Instead, he swooped fiercely onto that curious little mouth, silencing her logic, her thought, her questions—making her into his Gabby. The Gabby who struggled for a moment and then gave in with a little pant. A second later her eyelids drifted shut and her tongue met his, chasing fire down to his groin.
With a deft twist Quill lifted Gabby to the side and placed her on the bed. From there a liquid collapse backward was inevitable. His body followed hers as naturally as wheat stalks bend together in a high wind.
He caressed her lavishly, feverishly, knowing he had to stop. Gabby twisted beneath him, uttering delightful little noises. He backed off and kissed her forehead and her eyelids and her ears.
But the moment he left her mouth, he heard a voice, breathless but insistent, inquiring whether he had a headache coming on. And so he stopped nibbling on the delicate tips of her ears, slid down the smooth planes of her flushed cheeks, allowed himself that agonizing, delirious moment of surrender when her mouth opened to his and he swallowed her words.
He was throbbing all over. Unfortunately, his head was as clear as a bell. It told him that he couldn’t stay in bed all afternoon. It instructed him loudly that he should be arranging a funeral, comforting his mother (although Peter would do that better than he), posting letters hither and yon. He thrust the inner voice away with a groan and bent to Gabby’s breast. He kissed her through the frail cloth of her chemise, watched her nipple rise in a small circle of damp muslin. He listened to her make a small squeak every time he pulled the nipple back into his mouth, felt a delirious tremor in his body that matched the tremor in hers.
But Gabby kept trying to pull away. “Quill! You must stop!”
With one swift and obstinate movement, Quill ran his hand under Gabby’s chemise.
Gabby gasped in surprise as the damp spot over her breast was replaced by the strength of a large male hand. Cool air drifted over her legs and she instinctively tried to jerk her chemise back below her waist. But Quill had rolled so that his hip pinned her down, and her head became confused by his hand on her breast and the roughness of his trousers on her bare thigh. And then his hand—
“Take your hand away!” Gabby was shocked to the core of her being. She twisted her legs together as sharply as possible and rolled away.
Quill, dazed by his fingers’ bold exploration into melting warmth, lost balance and let her go. Long legs flashed as she scrambled sideways.
Gabby ended up kneeling on the bed, still panting slightly, cheeks rosy. She glared at her husband. “You mustn’t do that ever again. I don’t like it. It’s…it’s an imposition. Worse than an imposition.” She couldn’t even think of a word strong enough.
“I wanted to,” Quill said with a wicked grin. “And I want to touch you again.” His hand crept toward her bare knees.
Gabby jerked her chemise down and started wiggling backward. “We will have to discuss this rationally,” she said. “There are certain liberties that I will not allow. That—that are not allowed by the Church!”
To her shock, Quill burst into a snort of laughter. “You sound like a nun,” he laughed. “Or a bishop!”
Gabby scooted off the opposite side of the bed, her brow lowering. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she said, crossing her arms over her bosom. “Whatever making love is, I know it doesn’t include anything as indecent as what you just did, touching me there.”
Quill couldn’t help it. He broke into a huge burst of laughter, letting the gathered tension and grief of the day roll out of him. “Oh, Lord, Gabby, you’ll be the death of me!”
Gabby stalked furiously over to the door and pulled the bell cord. Hopefully Margaret hadn’t gone out for a stroll, because she wished to be dressed immediately. Doing her best to ignore Quill, she walked over to the clothespress and opened the doors. She had nothing black. The darkest color she had was a puce walking costume. Fine. She would go for a walk.
Quill was still sprawled on her bed in an unseemly fashion. Gabby turned around, hands on her hips. “I should like you to leave my chamber now,” she said sharply. She walked to the door. “Margaret will be coming to dress me.” Lord, but he was a good-looking man, she thought unwillingly. He was all muscle and grace lying on her bed, propped up on one elbow.
“What if I told you that such touches were common practice?” he said winningly.
Gabby snorted in her turn. “No decent woman would allow that sort of thing,” she said without a trace of hesitation in her voice. “If my father knew—” She broke off. That was an inconceivable thought. “You’re a reprobate,” she said. “And what is more, you, you looked at me!”
“You’re beautiful,” Quill said, his eyes dark green and narrowed. “I want to look at you again and again, Gabby. Morning and night.”
She gasped. “Never! And it’s no wonder you’re giving yourself headaches, if this is the sort of thing you’ve been up to!”
Quill struggled with himself and managed to choke back his laughter. But Gabby saw the humor in his face and glowered.
Margaret scratched on the door and Gabby snatched it open. “Where have you been?” she demanded unfairly. “I can’t sit around in my chemise all day long!”
Quill lazily got himself to his feet and strolled over to his wife, who still had her arms folded across her chest, presumably hiding the damp cloth from Margaret’s eyes. He bent over and murmured in her ear. “You’re going to love it, you know. You will beg me to continue.”
“I would never do such a thing!” Gabby whispered back furiously.
“Care to make a wager?” said her husband.
“Gambling is the devil’s pastime,” she retorted. “I begin to think that you were raised with no morals!”
“I begin to think that you were raised with too many morals.” Her husband sighed and dropped a kiss onto the tip of her ear.
Margaret was on the other side of the room, pulling undergarments from the press. With one swift glance over his shoulder, Quill gave his inclinations free rein. He held Gabby tightly against the front of his body. Then he ran a hand down her back and cupped her delicious bottom, pulling her even tighter, up and against him.
“Gabby,” he said hoarsely, into her hair. “I am not only going to touch you all over, I’m going to kiss you in the same places.”
Gabby was silenced.
After he left the room and Margaret was lacing her into a corset, the only positive inference Gabby could draw from the whole conversation was that her father would have nothing to say to Quill’s sinfulness. She was absolutely certain such a wicked thought had never crossed his mind, nor that of any other man of God.
She walked numbly along the street, Margaret following behind. He wasn’t going to heed her refusals. She knew that. Quill was silent, but she would never make the mistake of thinking he was pliable. No, Quill was planning to touch her all over and look at her…and kiss her. She felt an unwilling lick of fire.
Oh, God, she was the devil’s child. Her fath
er had been right all along. A chill breeze accounted for the high red in her cheeks. But nothing could justify the spreading warmth she felt in her belly, or the unsteadiness of her knees.
Still, she walked with her head high. After they returned to London, she would become one of the devil’s children in truth. Because whatever her father had said, she always thought privately that the devil didn’t care very much about talkativeness. But even she couldn’t fool herself that behavior of this sort wasn’t wicked.
And yet…And yet…somehow the prospect didn’t alarm her as much as it should have. Gabby sighed. She was well-aware, and had been since age fifteen, that she had far less regard for God’s commandments than she ought to. She had been brought up by Indian servants, who paid lip service to her father’s beliefs, but were Hindu by inclination. And her father himself often forgot that he was chosen by God to be a missionary, particularly after starting a new exporting venture.
After a brisk forty-five-minute walk, Margaret was whimpering and Gabby had regained some calm. One thing her father had preached far more intently than he did religion was the fact that wives and daughters should be subservient to their masters.
And that meant, Gabby thought, ignoring the treacherous pulse of fire in her loins, that it was her duty to submit to whatever sinful practices Quill wished to impose on her.
She entered the inn feeling far too cheerful for such a somber occasion. After supper with the family in a private parlor, Quill escorted her to her chamber and then left. She could tell that Margaret was perplexed to find that she was sleeping alone. But Gabby didn’t feel piqued by Quill’s absence. He had bowed punctiliously at the door.
But then when he straightened up, he had leaned over and said just five words. They burned into Gabby’s heart. His voice was hoarse and utterly belied his gentlemanly demeanor.
“I am burning, Gabby. Perishing.”
CONTRARY TO HER OWN PREDICTION, Gabby did not lie awake that night wishing that her wedding night was less lonely. Instead, she puzzled over Quill’s headaches. Clearly, something had to be done about them. She was not satisfied with the idea that doctors could do nothing. Surely there was some medicine they could try. It was most unfortunate that Quill had expressly told her not to consult Sudhakar.