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‘Considering what, exactly?’ Her lack of experience? Her lack of allure? She cringed to recall the way she’d writhed with pleasure when he’d sucked at her breasts—her tiny, almost non-existent breasts. In comparison with women like Betsy Woodly, that was, whose bosom resembled a cow’s udders.
‘Considering your so-called virtue.’
‘My so-called…’
‘Yes,’ he said, disengaging and rolling to one side. ‘I had half-expected you to lie there with your eyes closed as rigid as a board. Instead of participating with such enthusiasm.’
He might as well have slapped her. It hurt so much, to hear him speak so mockingly of an experience that had been so sublime that she very nearly slapped him back.
‘Oh, don’t take it like that,’ he said, running one forefinger over the fist she’d made in her effort to prevent her wedding night from descending into another fight. ‘I am pleased with you for responding so beautifully.’ He sat up and turned his back on her. Which was covered in claw marks. Which she’d made. And worse, she was able to see them clearly because it was still light.
‘My delight in you will be reflected by the generosity of my morning gift,’ he said, reaching for his shirt.
‘Your…what?’
‘A tradition in my family. The groom always gives his bride a gift after their first night together, to signify his approval. Or gratitude, or whatever you wish to call it,’ he said with an insouciant half-shrug. ‘I think your response, just now, deserves something very special.’ He stood up, and went in search of his breeches. ‘The traditional gift of a diamond parure seems a little inappropriate, considering your views. I shall keep the set I bought yesterday, for the birth of our first son. In the meantime…’
He got no further. From somewhere she gained the energy, and the agility, to roll across the bed and seize a water jug she hadn’t been aware of until she’d started needing to have something to throw at him.
He must have caught sight of her movement because he dodged to one side, so that the jug shattered harmlessly against the wall.
‘You don’t want to wait until the birth of our first son for the diamonds,’ he said, with raised eyebrows. ‘Really, Clare, you only had to say…’
With a shriek, she seized the basin and hurled that after the jug.
He raised his hands as if in surrender. ‘My presence is obviously unsettling you. I shall withdraw and leave you to calm…’
There was a candlestick and a set of brushes, and a small porcelain soap dish on the wash stand, all of which went the same way as the jug and basin.
None of which actually hit him. Her aim grew steadily more erratic in direct proportion to her fury.
He was actually smiling, in a maddeningly superior manner by the time he shut the door firmly behind him. At the very same moment she ran out of missiles.
Clare sank to her knees on the floor beside the bed, surveying in turn the wreckage strewn across the floor and the rumpled bedding, and the blood smeared down the inside of her leg. And couldn’t stand the sight of any of it. So she buried her face in her hands, but that only made it worse, somehow. Because she could still feel his hands all over her body. And the echoes of the glorious state he’d induced with them, before bringing her crashing back down to earth with those few cutting, callous remarks.
Oh, lord, how was she going to survive being married to him, if he could toss her from one extreme to the other with such ease? If he could walk away from her with a smile on his face when she was…distraught?
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the cool silk of the counterpane. And prayed the prayer so many wives had done, she reckoned, since the beginning of time.
Lord, give me strength…
CHAPTER TWELVE
She was sitting up in bed, taking breakfast, when Rawcliffe strolled into the room next morning wearing only, as far as she could see, an oriental-looking sort of dressing gown.
He was her husband, she reminded herself as he approached the bed, barefoot. And this was his house. Of course he thought he could go wherever he liked, dressed however he wished.
‘I trust you slept well,’ he said, then bent over to give her a kiss on the cheek. As though nothing untoward had occurred.
