Suddenly she gasped. “Oh dear, stop, James. This isn’t good anymore.”
“It’s your maidenhead, Jessie.” He was panting, his voice sounding like a creaking door that needed oil. His hands were shaking and he was inside her, but not far enough, not nearly far enough. “Trust me, Jessie. Every woman has one. I don’t mean she has one trust, she has a maidenhead.” He was staring down at himself pushing into her. He knew he wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t, not without dying. And if he did stop and he didn’t die, then he’d kill himself anyway.
He smiled down at her, not moving, until he felt her ease and smile up at him. Then he shoved hard.
She yelled at the top of her lungs. He prayed Mrs. Catsdoor wouldn’t start pounding on the door. He prayed she wouldn’t scream anymore. She was small, he’d hurt her, but it was over, finally, it was over, and he didn’t feel as though he’d violated his damned sister. No, she was his wife and he was touching her womb.
“I’m not moving. Don’t shove at me and please don’t move. I’m a man, and things of the flesh are different for me. All right, Jessie?”
He leaned down and kissed her mouth, her throat, then her breast. He nuzzled her breast with his chin, rubbed his cheek over her. “Is that better? Is the pain lessening?”
“A little bit. The Duchess didn’t tell me about any of this. Is this the normal way of things?”
The Duchess told her something about sex? She moved in that moment, and he knew it was all over for him. He heaved over her, feeling the release wash through him, making him shudder like a man with a violent fever.
“Oh, Jessie,” he said, and fell over her. Her arms were around his back, holding him tightly against her. Her hair was against his cheek. He felt the heat of her drawing at him, and he shuddered with the pleasure of it. He didn’t move until he could finally breathe again. She squeezed him, then thumped him on the back with her fists.
“Is that all, James? Oh dear, you’d best be careful. Your right hand is nearly in the calf brains.”
Calf brains? He was inside Jessie Warfield, the eavesdropping twit who’d fallen through her father’s tack-room ceiling. He managed to pull himself up. He looked down at himself, a part of her, that white flesh of hers and that sinful red hair. He looked up her body, pausing at her breasts before he managed to get up to her face. She was staring at him, looking confused.
“What’s the matter?”
“That’s all there is to it?” she said, then unlocked her ankles. Her legs were sore, the muscles pulling.
He smiled and lightly touched his fingers to her woman’s flesh, soft and swelled and wet with his seed.
“No, but it’s all for you right now. Before I leave you, Jessie, what did the Duchess tell you?”
“She told me to think of her as my older sister and ask her anything about sex. I told her I knew everything. All about mounting, that is. She just said that wasn’t all there was to it, that I knew enough for now and that you’d take care of things. She didn’t tell me it would hurt. She didn’t tell me you’d be so free with my womanly self.”
“It doesn’t hurt so much now, does it?”
She thought about that. “Not so much now.”
“Just lie still and let me clean you up a bit.” As he fastened his breeches again it hit him hard what he’d just done. He’d taken his wife’s virginity on the dining-room table. He closed his eyes a moment. No wooing, no extended time to ease her and to make her really ready for him. But she’d nearly bucked him off her, twice. Surely she’d been ready. He shook his head, poured a glass of water onto a napkin, and pressed it against her. He didn’t think the napkin was as soft and white as her flesh.
As he washed her, he looked up to see that her eyes were tightly closed, her face turned away from him.
“Poor Jessie,” he said. “I’m sorry for being such a clod.”
“I wonder,” she said, not opening her eyes, “if stallions ever apologize to mares.”
“Yes, they do.”
Her eyes flew open. “You’re lying. You have no idea. Oh dear, James, could you help me up, please.” It seemed she realized her breasts were free and she quickly began buttoning her gown only to realize that the bottom part of her was naked as well, and she slapped down her petticoats and skirt.
“Let me help you.”
He began the endless task of fastening those damned buttons. “I don’t like this gown,” he said after he’d managed two of them. “Let me just fasten some of the buttons. Promise me you’ll change your clothes and then toss this miserable garment in the kitchen midden.”
Jessie met James’s dead wife’s father that same afternoon when she was swimming naked in the small pond only fifty yards from the east of the house. It was bordered by water lilies and willow trees and tall water grass.
“Who the devil are you?”
Jessie swallowed a mouthful of water at the sound of the man’s voice, whipped around, hoping the water covered her to her neck, and said, “I’m Jessie. Who are you?”
“You’re James’s new bride?”