She looked ready to burst into tears. Rafael sat back in his chair and studied her. “What’s wrong? Please, Victoria, there is no reason for you to be afraid of me or what we are going to do. It’s enjoyable, you know, truly. I venture to say that practically all husbands and wives indulge in lovemaking quite regularly.” He didn’t add that once he touched her he hoped she would forget all about her nervousness in any case. Unless, his thinking continued, they were back again to her lack of virginity. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” he asked again, this time his impatience showing through.
She flinched. “Nothing.”
“All right, have it your way. Why don’t you go upstairs now and bathe. I will put our kitchen battlefield to rights.”
She nodded, not looking at him. As she walked from the kitchen, he thought he heard her curse. A man’s curse that sounded very odd coming from her. He very nearly laughed.
After she’d gone, he found himself reverting once again to old thoughts, and his jaw knotted. Perhaps he should toss her a vial of chicken blood when he went to her.
It was close to an hour later when Rafael, garbed only in a blue brocade dressing gown, his thick hair still damp from his own bath, knocked lightly on the adjoining bedchamber door, then opened it quietly.
He stopped short. The room was dark. He blinked to adjust his eyes and saw that Victoria had closed all the draperies, tying them together so there were no gaps.
“My God,” he said aloud, torn between annoyance and amusement, “will you put a sack over my head as well?”
13
I am ready to give you satisfaction . . .
—JOHN GAY
“Victoria?”
“I’m here.”
He followed the sound of her low voice and saw her finally huddled behind a wing chair in the far corner of the bedchamber. “I wondered if you wished me to cover my head. If not with a sack, perhaps a pillow cover?”
“No, please, Rafael, I want the lights out.”
“Why?”
He wished he could see her expression but her head was lowered. She was wearing a filmy sort of negligee and it fired his imagination and his body. He’d wanted her forever, it seemed to him now as he stood in the near-dark with his wife behind a chair, unwilling to talk to him.
“Why, Victoria?” he said again.
“Modesty. Yes, that’s it.”
He said in his most reasonable voice, “There should be no embarrassment or shame between a husband and wife. There’s no reason for you to fear me. I won’t hurt you. Do you believe me?”
“It’s not that, truly.”
He f
elt baffled and was becoming a bit impatient with her. He strode toward her, nearly knocking over a small chair. “This is bloody ridiculous.” He drew up on the other side of the chair. “Victoria,” he said, “talk to me. Tell me what is wrong. I am your husband, you know.”
“There is nothing wrong, Rafael. Please, can’t we just get it done?”
Some way to talk about lovemaking, he thought. “Why, Victoria?”
She was fretting with some loose threads on the back of the chair. He wasn’t going to give up, and she wondered what she should do now. He looked perfectly lovely; at least she thought he did. It wasn’t so dark that she couldn’t make out his blue brocade dressing gown. She imagined that he had nothing at all under that blue dressing gown and it excited her unbearably.
She blurted out “Oh, all right, I’m ugly.”
“Ugly?” he repeated blankly. He remembered quite clearly his reaction the first time he had seen her breasts in the cream silk ball gown, her shoulders, slender and creamy as the creation she was wearing, a temptation to any man except perhaps a blind one. And her ankles, he thought, that time he had assisted her into Lucia’s carriage, gave great promise to the shapeliness of her legs.
“Where?”