"A very proper sentiment," the dowager said. "You have pretty manners. One would scarcely know you for an American."
Did the woman suppose that she was giving a compliment? Once more Sunny bit her tongue.
Yet in spite of her good intentions, she was not to get through the evening peacefully. The gauntlet was thrown down at the end of the lengthy meal, when it was time for the ladies to withdraw and leave the gentlemen to their port. Sunny was about to give the signal when the dowager grandly rose to her feet and beat Sunny to it.
As three women followed the dowager's lead, Sunny's blood went cold. This was a direct challenge to her authority as the new mistress of the household. If she didn't assert herself immediately, her mother-in-law would walk all over her.
The other guests hesitated, glancing between the new duchess and the old. Sunny wanted to whimper that she was too tired for this, but she supposed that crises never happened at convenient times. Though her hands clenched below the table, her voice was even when she asked, "Are you feeling unwell, Duchess?"
"I am in splendid health," her mother-in-law said haughtily. "Where did you get the foolish idea that I might be ailing?"
"I can think of no other reason for you leaving prematurely," Sunny said with the note of gentle implacability that she had often heard in her mother's voice.
For a moment the issue wavered in the balance. Then, one by one, the female guests who had gotten to their feet sank back into their seats with apologetic glances at Sunny. Knowing that she had lost, the dowager returned to the table, her expression stiff with mortification.
As she waited for a decent interval to pass before leading the ladies from the table, Sunny drew in a shaky breath. She had won the first battle-but there would be others.
The evening ended when the first clock struck eleven. Accompanied by the bonging of numerous other clocks, Justin escorted his wife upstairs. When they reached the door of her room, he said, "I'm sorry that it's been such a long day, but everyone was anxious to meet you."
She smiled wearily. "I'll be fine after a night's sleep."
"You were a great success with everyone." After a moment of hesitation, he added, "I'm sorry my mother was so…abrupt. Gavin was her favorite, and she took his death very badly."
"You miss him, too, but it hasn't made you rude." She bit her lip. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound impertinent."
"My mother is a forceful woman, and I don't expect that you'll always agree. Blanche and Charlotte used to have terrible battles with her. Just remember that you are my wife, and the mistress of Swindon."
"I shall attempt to be tactful while establishing myself." She made a rueful face. "But I warn you, I have trouble countenancing unkind remarks about other people."
That sensitivity to others was one of the things he liked best about her. A volatile mix of tenderness and desire moved through him, and he struggled against his yearning to draw her into his arms and soothe her fatigue away.
He might have done so if he hadn't been aware that the desire to comfort would be followed by an even more overwhelming desire to remove her clothing, garment by garment, and make slow, passionate love to her. With the lamps lit, not in the dark.
Innocently she turned her back to him and said, "Could you unfasten my dog collar? It's miserably uncomfortable."
The heavy collar had at least fifteen rows of pearls. As he undid the catch and lifted the necklace away, he saw that the diamond clasp had rubbed her tender skin raw. He frowned. "I don't like seeing you wearing something that hurts you."
She sighed. "Virtually every item a fashionable woman wears is designed to hurt."
He leaned forward and very gently kissed the raw spot on her nape. "Perhaps you should be less stylish."
She tensed, as she did whenever he touched her in a sensual way. "A duchess is supposed to be fashionable. I would be much criticized if I didn't do you credit." Eyes downcast, she turned and took the jeweled collar, then slipped into her room.
He felt the familiar ache as he watched her disappear. Who was it who said that if a man wanted to be truly lonely, he should take a wife? It was true, for he didn't recall feeling lonely before he married.
But now that he had a wife, his life echoed with loneliness. The simple fact was that he wanted more of her. He wanted to hold her in his arms all night while they slept. He wanted her to sigh with pleasure when he made love to her. He wanted to be with her day and night.
He drew a deep breath, then entered his room and began undressing. He had hoped that with time she might come to enjoy intimacy more, but every time he came to her bed, she became rigid. Though she never complained, or spoke at all, for that matter-it was clear that she could scarcely endure his embraces.
Yet she didn't seem to dislike him in other ways. She talked easily and was willing to share her opinions. And she had given him that shy kiss earlier. In her innocence, she had not understood that she set the blood burning through his veins. But even going to her bed would not have quenched the fire, for he had found that quick, furtive coupling was more frustrating than if he had never touched her.
As he slid into his bed, he realized how foolish it was of him to object to a necklace that chafed her neck when his conjugal demands disturbed her far more. He despised himself for taking that which was not willingly given-yet he was not strong enough to prevent himself from going to her again and again. His twice weekly visits were his compromise between guilt and lust.
He stared blindly into the darkness, wondering if he would be able to sleep.
If you would be lonely, take a wife.
Chapter Seven
Swindon
February 1886
Sunny abandoned her letter writing and went to stand at her sitting room window, staring out at the gray landscape. In the distance was a pond where long ago a footman had drowned himself in a fit of melancholy. As the dreary winter months dragged by, she had come to feel a great deal of sympathy for the poor fellow.
The loudest sound was the ticking of the mantel clock. Swindon was full of clocks, all of them counting out the endless hours. She glanced at the dog curled in one of the velvet-covered chairs. "Daisy, how many of the women who envied my glamorous marriage would believe how tedious it is to winter on an English country estate?"
Daisy's floppy-eared head popped up and she gave a sympathetic whimper. Unlike the beautiful but brainless wolfhounds, Daisy, a small black-and-tan dog of indeterminate parentage, was smart as a whip. Sunny liked to think that the dog understood human speech. Certainly she was a good listener.
Sunny's gaze went back to the dismal afternoon. Custom decreed that a bride should live quietly for a time after her wedding, and at Swindon, that was very quietly indeed. Apart from the newlyweds, Alexandra and the dowager were the only inhabitants of the vast palace. There were servants, of course, but the line between upstairs and downstairs was never crossed.
The best part of the daily routine was a morning ride with Justin. Sunny never missed a day, no matter how vile the weather, for she enjoyed spending time with her husband, though she couldn't define the reason. He was simply… comfortable. She only wished that she understood him better. He was like an iceberg, with most of his personality hidden from view.
After their ride, she usually didn't see him again until dinner, for estate work kept him busy. Occasionally he went to London for several days to attend to business. He was gone now, which made the hours seem even longer.
The high point of country social life was making brief calls on neighbors, then receiving calls in turn. Though most of the people Sunny met were pleasant, they lived lives as narrow and caste-ridden as Hindus. Luckily even the most conventional families usually harbored one or two splendid eccentrics in the great British tradition. There was the Trask uncle who wore only purple clothing, for example, and the Howard maiden aunt who had taught her parrot all the basic social responses so that the bird could speak for her. Such characters figured prominently in Sunny's letters home, since little else in her life was amusing.