Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 2)

‘Arabella?’ He was looking at her, hair in his eyes, his expression bleak and unguarded. ‘That was not good, was it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bella began, with no more words assembled in her brain to continue.

‘There is nothing to be sorry for,’ Elliott said. But a dry undertone to his voice contradicted his words. She had been right, he was too kind to tell her how disappointed he was in her. He rolled off and tugged until she came against his side, her cheek on his shoulder. ‘Go to sleep now.’

‘But—’

‘We have consummated the marriage, Arabella. That is enough to be going on with.’

Bella looked up so she could see his face. ‘Was…was that how it is supposed to be?’

‘Do you think so?’ He lay watching her, expressionless, not giving her any help at all.

Of course it was not. How disappointed he must be to have been forced into marriage with her. Her shake of the head was so vehement that he laughed. ‘There you are, then. We can work on it. Come back here and sleep, Arabella.’

I amuse him? Is that better than scorn and insults and violence? It has to be. She lay down, her cheek against man-warmed linen and closed her eyes. Perhaps if he would do it again in the morning, before she was properly awake, that would be better. She would be relaxed, it would be over before she had time to be afraid and for it to hurt and he might find it more enjoya

ble.

Chapter Ten

Elliott woke in the early morning light, every muscle tense with arousal. It took a moment to realise where he was and who was lying, relaxed in slumber, against him. His wife. Arabella was about the only relaxed thing in the bed, he thought grimly. She was just where she had fallen asleep last night, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. In the night she must have moved her arm for it now lay across his body, her hand lightly clasping the erect length that ached for her to tighten the lax grip.

Last night had been…frustrating. He had thought her ready for him, willing, but something had gone wrong. Was she associating lovemaking with Rafe’s betrayal afterwards? Or had he simply misread her, failed to see that nerves were overcoming her sensual responses? The temptation was to simply roll over, rip off his nightshirt and take her again before she had the chance to wake up and remember her nerves. No. Elliott tried breathing lightly, controlling the need to move under her palm. No, she had to know what she was doing, be fully involved with it. With him.

It had taken him a long time to get to sleep last night, puzzling over Arabella’s responses to his lovemaking. She reacted as he would expect a virgin to react, not like a woman who had had an affaire with an experienced rake. Perhaps it was the pregnancy. But he was hardly on such terms with any mothers that he could ask them how child-bearing had affected their love lives.

Elliott inched out from under her arm. As he slid out of the bed he saw her face clearly, the track of one dried tear down her cheek. His wife had wept on her wedding night. He had no idea how to comfort her or what to say. You are safe now? I am not like my brother, even if you probably see him every time you look at me? I won’t abandon you and your baby? ‘I promise I will look after you,’ he murmured. But she knew that by now, surely? It seemed she needed something he did not know how to give her.

Elliott closed the door into his dressing room with care, walked through into his own bedchamber and closed that door too. Only, it was not his bedchamber, it was Rafe’s, just as that was not his woman in the pink boudoir that had been decorated for a whore. She was Rafe’s cast-off mistress and, somehow, they had to forget that.

He was not used to sleeping in a nightshirt. Elliott dragged it over his head, hurled the balled-up linen at a wing chair, missed, swore and threw himself on the bed. From the mirror above his reflection, naked, still half-erect, glared back at him.

He looked like a working man compared with his elegant, sleek brother. Rafe would not have dreamed of joining his farm hands in the fields to help in the last push to bring the crops before rain fell. He would not have sat up with the shepherds in the lambing fields in the small hours or found pleasure heaving roof timbers with the carpenters when there was a building to repair.

Rafe would not have enjoyed getting sweaty and battered in the boxing ring, then laughing in some comfortable inn afterwards with the friends who had just been trying to land him a facer. He would certainly not have relished a long hard road race in all weathers, pitting skill and the horseflesh he had chosen and trained against the best the Corinthian set could muster.

Rafe had been going soft, Elliott had thought when their paths had crossed in London. Those meetings had always been in gambling hells or society ballrooms, never in the fencing schools or the boxing salons where Elliott drove himself hard for the strength and stamina he prized.

He got off the bed, shrugged into his robe and yanked the bell pull for coffee. He had never felt himself in competition with his brother and he was not going to start now in the bedchamber. What he was fighting here was nothing as rational as physical appearance or intelligence or charm, but a broken heart and betrayed dreams.

She had shed one tear. He did not want Arabella to cry, he wanted her to smile for him, blush a little. He wanted her to laugh and sigh and moan in his arms. Damn this. He had thought to be rational and clear in his requirements as though he was appointing a new member of staff, not forging a relationship with a wife. He had spelled out what he expected from her in the bedroom and she had forced herself to do her duty, he was sure of that. And he was in here with a severe case of frustration because he did not want to distress her this morning and she was fast asleep in there.

What was the matter with him? He could surely feel compassion for the poor girl without getting himself this wound up about her feelings. He was over-analysing, Elliott decided after another length of the room. She had allowed Rafe to seduce her, she was old enough and intelligent enough to know what she was doing. She had got herself into a mess, he had rescued her from it and now they were stuck with each other. He was not used to women finding anything but satisfaction in his arms, that was the trouble, he thought with a rueful smile.

‘One day at a time,’ he said aloud. ‘One night at a time.’

‘My lord?’ Franklin, his valet, was standing in the dressing-room door looking a trifle bemused.

‘Coffee, Franklin. And then my riding clothes. I want to look at the Hundred Acre Wood first thing.’

‘At what time does his lordship normally take breakfast?’

‘Lord love us! Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but you did give me a start.’ Cook put down the basket of eggs she was holding. ‘At eight, normally, my lady. He comes back in then.’

Arabella walked into the kitchen and surveyed the preparations. ‘Back in? I am sorry, please can you remind me of your name?’

‘Mrs Tarrant, my lady. And that’s Bethan with the coffee grinder and Annie in the scullery.’