“Ah yes, the dutiful wife…and you’ll be a dutiful mother, too.” His breath was hot on her cheek as he slid his hands up her thighs. “If you’re not already with child, my dear, it won’t be for want of trying.” His hand cupped her sex, and he grunted his displeasure, no doubt at finding little to indicate her interest in the act for which he’d regained enthusiasm. Phoebe slanted her gaze from the ceiling to the unwelcome man beside her. In the faint glow of the single candle upon the carved kist at the end of the bed, she could see his member straining against his breeches. Turning her head to the side, she tried not to cry as his words floated over her.
Was it a carnal sin to sleep with her husband’s cousin when her actions were as much motivated by Ulrick’s wishes as her own self-preservation?
“We just have to keep Ulrick alive long enough to fill his nursery with my seed,” Wentworth panted as he divested himself of his breeches. “You’re healthy, and my ability to sire a child is proven.” He lay back down next to her, his fingers probing her while he stroked himself. Phoebe turned away from the sight, trying to block her mind to what was happening; and what would happen, while she imagined a different life.
“Only then will I feel my duty discharged to my cousin—a
nd to you, my dear.” He narrowed his eyes. “No need to remind you what a miserable widowhood you look forward to if you’re not mother to Ulrick’s heir. His legal and official heir, at any rate, which means we have to succeed at this before he breathes his last. Or at least within a fortnight of the sad event.”
It was pointless pretending she had any means of preventing what Wentworth intended, for all that the thought of being possessed by him made her body and mind close in on itself.
She loathed herself for that fact that upon Ulrick’s directions, she’d encouraged him all those months before, though initially she’d refused Wentworth’s overtures with genuine outrage.
Wentworth, aware of what he had to gain now that Ulrick had drawn him into his perverse plan, had wooed Phoebe with all the charm of the Casanova he was, reminding her that begetting an heir was the primary responsibility of the dutiful wife, and in this instance demanded by Ulrick, who could no longer perform the deed.
A dutiful wife? For years, Ulrick had mocked her with her inability to provide him with a son, though they both knew it was the fact Ulrick had rarely been able to sustain an erection long enough to even possibly impregnate her that made him so bitter toward her.
She felt sick at the memories. A dutiful wife would fill the nursery, not make her husband a laughing stock. Ulrick’s eyes had reminded her of raisins in his pallid pasty face as he’d spat the words; little black dots of malice.
A dutiful wife would use any means to ensure her husband’s self-respect.
Even if that meant being impregnated by her husband’s cousin.
Quickly, Phoebe sat up. She could not simply allow Wentworth to treat her any way he chose. She had her self-respect. Just because Wentworth had visited Blinley Hall every fortnight for the past six months with one objective didn’t mean it had to continue.
“I will not submit like a harlot in an unmade bed and in a room as bitter cold as the grave.” In the gloom, she could see her breath misting.
Beside her, Wentworth sat up. “You’re right,” he conceded. “I’ll prove as poor a stallion as your pathetic husband unless we go where the fire’s lit.”
It was not what Phoebe had intended. Emotion churned in her gut as Wentworth hustled her along the corridor toward the west wing. The maids she passed dipped a curtsy, respectful as always. She knew what they were thinking, and it made her feel ill and ashamed. While she had always received due deference from the staff, she knew the untruths Ulrick spread about her. The master was a man to be feared, and the mistress was a slut.
2
As soon as they reached her private apartments and the door closed behind them, he was on her, his breath hot in her ear, his hands, urgent and clammy, unlacing her, tugging, pulling, removing her clothes, so that within seconds rather than minutes she was beneath him, naked, her white limbs wrapped about his muscled, hairy, hard body while he thrust into her with no more preliminaries. But then, that’s how it was with men. Ownership was very different to love though that’s what she’d imagined—once, briefly—she had with Wentworth, illicit and shaming though though that was. Love. She’d thought disgracing herself would be worth it, when she had her husband’s sanction.
As ever was the case during the unpleasant act of procreation, she transported her mind; this time, to the unhappy prelude of her current dismal situation.
She’d been an easy target. Wentworth had wooed her with honeyed words and she, a wife starved of kindness for five long years, imagined Wentworth saw her as she really was: a woman of hidden passions who longed for affection.
He’d made her forget her misery as an unloved wife with the courtly, urbane, and respectful attitude he adopted to coax her out of the silence, which had become, for her, habit following her marriage. Ulrick was not a man who’d appreciated her opinions.
Or anything she had to say, for that matter.
Wentworth, by contrast, appeared entranced with her opinions, her desires.
For at least three visits, he’d elicited her thoughts on everything from what music she liked to what amused her. He’d hung upon her words during dinner, and then, as his visits increased in regularity, an enigmatic glance, a seemingly accidental brush of the hand, had suggested that his heart had been engaged.
Tormented, Phoebe had not known whether it was right even to go walking with him alone. She was a married woman, and the more she felt her own heart engaged, the more she feared the consequences. She belonged to Ulrick and would for as long as her frustrated, angry husband remained alive.
What torture it had been to say her demure goodnights to Wentworth, and then to have to submit to her husband’s futile efforts to make love to her. Like the dutiful wife she was, she’d tried every trick she could dream up in order that he might harden sufficiently to pierce her. Dancing naked, she’d imagined her display was for Wentworth’s benefit. When Ulrick forced himself into her mouth, she’d again withdraw into her own thoughts, feeling nothing but revulsion for her unkind husband.
She wondered, if it were Wentworth, would she summon the necessary enthusiasm. For then, wouldn’t her heart be engaged?
It was not long before she found out. Ulrick became ill almost overnight. A loss of appetite, cramping in his gut, and then suddenly all physical activity was beyond him. Even the act of procreation.
When Wentworth had stepped forward to undertake the role her husband had forced upon her, and which Phoebe had found so distasteful for so many years, of course Phoebe had offered outrage, though it shamed her now to recall that her fragile heart beat wildly at the thought of being held by a desirable man.
But commit adultery?