Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 (7 page)

“I want him back in my bed. I want him to hold me like he used to, not as if I’m made of porcelain.” The rest would flow from that. If we never made love again, I could bear it, if he gave me back some of what we had lost recently. “I’m afraid that if we don’t get it back soon, it will become habit, and then it will never return.”

Distress filled her heavenly blue eyes, but she considered, a small frown creasing her brow. “Yes, I see. You need to force him to take that first step, or his careful reserve will remain.”

“You remember how it was when we met?” I swallowed, choking back the tears. “He took that step. One step, in the coach house at Hareton Abbey. That’s all I need, just that, and a willingness to remain. That day he forced through the barrier he’d erected around himself. For me, Lizzie, he did it for me. He told me it was the first time in so many years that he didn’t know if it could be done, but he saw in me his last chance to achieve personal happiness. He’s throwing that away now. I don’t even know precisely why he is keeping his distance, if he wants to preserve me, or if he wants to ensure I’m completely well. I need to know, and I need him to tell me.”

“I can understand him caring for you enough to stay away, enough to ensure you’re perfectly well before he shares a bed with you again.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “I can probably understand it better than you.” She gave a short laugh. “You’re very hot-blooded, my dear.”

Heat rushed to my face, suffused my cheeks, but I couldn’t hide from my sister. It would be a waste of time to try. “Yes I am. It’s an important part of our marriage. It’s part of what we are together. But it’s more than that. We used to talk in bed, about anything, everything. You know, from politics to domestic details. I don’t get that anymore, either.”

I shook my head in despair. “He is afraid of losing me, I know that’s part of it. His mother instilled in him a terror of childbirth. She had a hard time giving birth to Richard and Gervase, and she never allowed them to forget it. She went on to give birth again, but I don’t think she intended to have another child. I don’t think she allowed her husband back into her bed after Georgiana was born. It accounts for her coldness, the way she appears to be solely reason and behaviour, with no inner life.” I paused, and the silence lay heavy on us both. “Richard could get like that. If I let him, if I don’t do something to change his behaviour. But if I try to do too much, too soon, I’ll drive him away.”

She stared at me, frowning. Then the frown disappeared. “I have an idea. You’re staying here tonight. If you can manage two nights, then I’m sure I can arrange something for the
palacio
too. We will pretend that I know nothing of this, that I’ve noticed nothing, if you please.”

So later, we informed our husbands that we needed to stay another night. Lizzie insisted on taking me shopping, to ensure I had the latest clothes and to acquaint me with the most fashionable areas of Lisbon. When her husband laughingly protested that we had only spent a matter of a month or so at sea, she responded, “Fashion can change completely in a month,
meu amor
, surely I’ve taught you that.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I am content. I’ll take Richard to the coffeehouses and introduce him to some people who, they inform me, are aching to meet him.”

“Not all of them respectable, I hope,” Richard added, smiling.

It was indicative of our new relationship that for a bare moment I recalled the ladies of the demimonde who never failed to cast their lures out to Richard. At one time he would have accepted, but recently, more secure in my relationship with him, I had stopped worrying.

Now that had come back. After all, as a red-blooded male, his baser urges wouldn’t disappear overnight because his wife wasn’t available. My husband wasn’t about to turn into a monk.

This had to stop, and quickly, before we became like so many other couples. I was learning that a successful marriage meant hard work. But it was so very worth it.

Chapter Five

The two nights remaining before we traveled to the
palacio
would be the last time I’d have at drawing him back without subterfuge. The door opened almost silently, and I saw his reflection cross the mirror before he walked forwards to where I sat. He’d taken off his formal wig and donned a light banyan instead of his coat. I could see that he’d shed his stock and neckcloth as well. A hint of bare flesh showed at his throat, and I yearned to taste it. I welcomed the informality, but I couldn’t take it as a sign that he’d unbent. Not yet.

Nichols was unfastening my hair, taking the pins out and dropping them in the pretty china dish set on the dressing table. Nichols finished her task and reached for the brush. Her hand hovered over the handle for a telling moment. But no quiet command came, no, “You may go, I’ll take over.” Just silence.

She picked up the brush and began to disentangle my curls. Before the advent of Nichols, I had sometimes ended the day leaving my hair in its tangles, just gathering it back in a straggling bunch so I could sleep. No more. Nichols could turn my hair into a shining sheet of chestnut waves. So could Richard. I loved it when he brushed my hair, but he hadn’t done so for a while. Perhaps because more often than not he would begin by using the brush but would end using his hands. And not only on my hair.

We tended to conclude the business in bed, or somewhere near it, too impatient to take the few steps we needed to get there. Richard had introduced me to making love on chairs, standing up and other delicious variations. Heat blossomed between my thighs at the remembrance, and I lifted my gaze to meet his, reflected in the mirror. He blinked, his eyes opened wider and darkened as the pupils spread. He’d recognised my arousal, and whether he liked it or not, it lay between us now as an unspoken challenge.

I hadn’t meant to approach him before we arrived at the
palacio
, but my instinctive reaction had brought the issues between us into startling focus. I couldn’t ignore it. Neither could he. But I would do my best not to drive him away, to push him into erecting a barrier I had no chance of breaching.

I had seen him do that in the past. Against people who had proved themselves his enemies, but worse, some who had treated me badly. His response had devastated them, and they had found themselves on the outskirts of him and the circle of his influence, which was much larger than some imagined.

I had revelled in his protective attitude in the early days of our marriage. I had needed it then—I knew very few people and stood in awe of persons I was only aware of by reputation. Richard ensured that I entered the centre of society and did it with little disturbance, as if I were entering a place reserved for my use. I was confident enough to find my own way in society, and while I appreciated the shield he and his family provided, I wanted more freedom to make my own choices and stand by them, even if they went wrong.

Until that moment I hadn’t realised how deep our problem lay. But we
could
get past it. Energy returned to me with that decision. Vigour surged through my body, making me feel stronger than I had in months.

I tore my gaze away from his and gave my attention to Nichols. “Leave us, please. I’ll do that.” I took the brush from her unresisting fingers and caught a flash of approval in her gaze before she left the room. Nichols attended me as a good lady’s maid should, in silence when I wished it, but if I asked her, she would give her opinion on more matters than just the way I should wear the latest gown. She had lived an eventful life, one I found myself drawing from indirectly from time to time. Her advice was worth listening to.

Now she left me to my own devices.

“You wish me to act as your lady’s maid again?”

I rose from my seat and turned to face him before I responded. “There’s no need.” Nichols had already helped me off with my gown and into a light robe. Now I shrugged that off, and I kept his gaze while I unhooked my stays—at the front.

To my relief, a slow smile curled his lips. “Witch. Did you wear the same pair the other day?”

I nodded and smiled back. “Sorry.” Perhaps I could charm him into it, but not by applying any false airs and graces, just by being myself and showing him what I required of him. “I wanted you to touch me.”

“I touch you every day.”

“But not like you used to.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “No.” He opened them again. “I can’t. I daren’t.” I saw something I’d never seen in them before my illness. Fear. And I hated it.

“Daren’t?” I needed him to tell me. I needed to hear the words.

“I didn’t leave your side when you were ill.” He glanced away, then back at me. I finished unhooking my stays, not attempting flirtatiousness. This discussion was far too important for any games. We needed honesty. Although perhaps later, we might play. I still hoped, even though our discussion had turned grave. But I had to listen to him. It was what I had asked for, after all, and he had never told me before but left me to guess at the level of his pain.

“I watched you, prayed for you, wept over you. I promised that I’d never allow you to fall pregnant, that I’d never, ever put you in that position again. I can’t bear the thought of you…leaving me.” Even now he couldn’t say the word. He didn’t want me to die. Neither did I, come to that.

“You can’t keep me wrapped up forever, Richard. There are any number of ways I could die. What if I were to slip and fall? What if I’d fallen overboard and drowned?”

“I know that.” He turned away and tunnelled his fingers over his scalp. His short hair stuck up in unruly spikes, so unlike the Lord Strang the world knew. Only I saw him this way. “If you had, I’d have to bear it. I’d have no choice.”

He faced me once more, anguish etching his eyes into blue flames. His expression seared into me, and I wanted to hold him, love him, make that look go away. But I did nothing, just listened to him. “But this I can do something about. This I can affect. If I can care for you without the temptation becoming too much, I can have most of you.”

“Is that what you reasoned while you sat with me when I was ill?”

“It’s what I thought of.” And more, I’d wager.

“Then you’re trying to preserve me rather than keep me. You don’t want what we have, you’re trying to make it into something else. I can be a wife to you, appear at balls and routs, go to the opera and court, and I can be a mother to your children. But I can’t be your lover? I can’t hold you at night? I can never see your body again?” I fought my emotions down. If I shouted, if I grew too upset, he’d leave me alone, I knew it. I couldn’t let him do that now, erect another impenetrable wall for me to break through. One day the wall would prove too well built and he’d be lost to me. And to his children.

His face contorted in grief. “We can do it, Rose. We can learn to live like this. Then, perhaps, some gentle intimacies. Other people do it, other couples.”

It wouldn’t work. “They aren’t us, Richard. We can’t live like that. You taught me to give myself to you with utter abandon, and now I’ve known that, I can’t take it back.”

He winced.

One person stood between us, and I would not, could not, allow her to win. “Your mother has brought you up to believe it’s possible. She has made you afraid of a woman giving birth. You were beside yourself when I had Helen, so now, with the boys, you would have been frantic. You were, I remember that. And then the illness made it worse. But your mother is small, a delicate woman. Bearing twins would be hard on such a female. I’m a country girl, Richard. I’m tall for a woman, comfortably built, or I was, and I had childbearing hips. I gave birth with relative ease, even to triplets. And I bore them all alive.” A point that still made me proud and I refused to deny it. “I didn’t fall ill until a day after they were born. I was perfectly well until then. Wasn’t I?”

“You were weak.”

I laughed, sharp and high. “It would have been a miracle were I not. I’ve heard of women who rise from childbirth a day later, but I had three babies, and I had every intention of obeying my advisors and resting.” I reached for him but dropped my hand by my side. He had to reach for me. I couldn’t bear it if he shook off my touch. “I’m not weak anymore, Richard.”

“Yes you are. A long day pulls at you.”

“In other words I have to be completely myself again before you’ll touch me?”

His teeth grazed his lower lip, in a way I would have done anything to emulate. My teeth, his lip. “Something like that, yes.”

“You could be waiting forever.”

At that, a sign of relief crossed his features. “I don’t mind. I’ll wait.”

“What if I stay like this?” I had no intention of doing so, but I wouldn’t tell him that now because I couldn’t guarantee it. “It’s only a slight weakness. Every other part of me is fine.” I meant one particular area.

“It’s not been long. Have you no patience?” I saw the irritation in his face, the way the muscles tightened around his mouth. Telltale signs he’d have hidden with anyone else. At least I had that. At least he was letting me back in that far.

“The midwife and the
accoucheur
told me that after two months I would be well enough to resume relations. Richard, it’s been nearly four months. I’m not asking for a return to the all-night loving we once engaged in, but—couldn’t you just touch me?”

No longer able to resist, I reached out and laid the tips of my fingers against his right arm. I held my breath. Would he accept me?