Edith Layton Read Online Free Page B

but he didn’t want to keep mistresses for the rest of his life.
    She was clever and witty, very up to snuff. She must know what being a wife entailed. He’d been content to wait until she could have no objections to his physical attentions. That was now.
    He bent closer—and heard her gasp. He pulled back, struck by several terrible notions. He’d thought her coolness toward him part of her general affect. What if it was specific? Could she have mistaken the reason for his politeness and thought him less than masculine? Or had he been wrong on several counts? Had she been forced to marry him? By her father—or her own anatomy—or, rather, the consequences of being too free with that anatomy?
    Neither thought appealed. Nor did the sudden unsettling notion that it might simply be that she didn’t like to be touched. Had that been the reason she’d never married; was she the sort of woman who preferred to be worshipped, and to worship, from afar?
    “Annabelle,” he said slowly, “is there anything I should know?”
    “Like what?’ she asked, looking genuinely puzzled.
    “Is it me? The idea of making love to me? Or the idea of making love to anyone? Damme,” he muttered when she just stared at him, “are you a virgin, my dear?”
    She nodded.
    He relaxed. Unless there was some impending miraculous birth, he was spared at least one dire possibility. It wasn’t that he especially looked forward to bedding a virgin; in fact he’d heard initiating a female was more trouble than it was worth. But at least his wife had played fair and wasn’t carrying anyone else’s child. He resolved to go on. He had to know where the difficulty lay. Besides, everything had to have a beginning, and he definitely wanted lovemaking to be a part of this marriage.
    “Do you dislike the thought of physical intimacy?”
    “No, or I wouldn’t have married, would I?” she snapped, looking edgy and defiant.
    “Do I repel you?”
    “I said you did not,” she said with some of her old asperity.
    “Is there someone else?” he asked more gently.
    She looked down at the bedcovers. “No. Nothing like that. It’s only that you startled me. You were disinterested in the past. Or so it seemed. I mean, I didn’t think it would be a priority with you. And so I wasn’t quite ready.”
    “Oh well,” he said with relief as he shucked off his dressing gown, “that’s something I can do something about.”
    She closed her eyes.

Chapter 3
    M iles climbed into the bed beside his bride. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
    “Very proper,” he said, close to her ear. “My mistake. I suppose I ought to have crawled into bed, pulled the covers up over my ears, and then wriggled out of my dressing gown. But I thought that might be even more alarming.”
    She giggled. He cocked his head to the side. It was a strange sound coming from her. A giggle? From this worldly lady? There was, he realized, much he didn’t know about his bride.
    What he did know, he liked. Apart from her looks, he appreciated her wit, and she had the social skill and standing he needed in a wife. All surfaces, he knew. He’d never asked for more. Nor had she. They didn’t need to know more, strictlyspeaking. Not for marriage, and certainly not for what they were about to do. But it made things a bit difficult for him, this, their first time.
    He wasn’t a cold man, as his sister, Camille, accused him of being. Or heartless, as she’d insisted. He was practical, or at least he’d been harried to practicality by his little family. He returned to England with his pockets full, only to find he had his hands full as well. He needed someone to manage Camille and find her a place in society before she ruined herself as his mother had done. He needed someone to help his mother regain her place in society, and someone for his brother, Bernard, that wretch, to aspire to, so he’d get on with becoming civilized.
    But it was true that he’d only thought himself in love twice.