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‘You were fine with the metaphor when it brought you pleasure,’ he bit out.
‘And it is a fine metaphor for pleasure,’ she said. ‘But not for my life. I ache for you. All night long. I want to be held by you, skin to skin. I wish to have you inside me. Are we not past these games? That I am an innocent and I must be protected from you. I am not an innocent. I cannot be a convenient release for your demons, and yet never receive any relief of mine.
‘Do not treat me like a child,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘Do you not see? This is not treating you like a child, this is treating you as if you are mine, as if you matter. When I was a child I was not treated with such care. My father destroyed the flowers I spent years on. Everything. I was thirteen. He delighted in destroying my obsessions, but only after I had put enough work into them that the loss would be deeply felt. Nothing in that house was mine. Not really. I would hear my name. Echoing off the halls with rage every time he decided I had fallen short.’
His name.
His flowers.
His father had made every part of him into something he hated.
She put her hand on his face. ‘I do not pity you because of the way your father treated you. I pity him. I pity that he did not know you. And what a great tragedy it would be if I did not know you either. Can you let someone know you? Just know you?’
‘He knew more than anyone.’
‘I should know more than anyone. I am your wife.’
‘That is not what being a wife is, little one,’ he said, touching her chin. Reflexively, she looked down. ‘Serena did not wish to know every aspect of who I was. She wished only to be kept comfortable, to have her child...’
‘You would deny me a child.’
‘I am not the one who is denying you.’
‘Can we not speak to physicians? Must we take the word of a man who has cared for me since I was a child, who made endless amounts of money from treating me? There must be someone else that we can speak to. At least try.’ Her eyes met his, and suddenly her stomach went tight. ‘Unless you do not wish to have a child with me.’
‘Beatrice...’
‘Is that it?’ Her breath released on a jagged note. ‘You do not wish to have a child with me.’
‘I never intended to marry again. And my intent was to take you as my wife and never touch you. So perhaps you should just give me a moment to contend with the changes that have occurred since we initially took vows.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Can we speak to a doctor?’
‘Beatrice...’
‘Will you take me to bed then? Take me to bed. Spill your seed outside of my body. But be with me.’
The look on his face was like torture. ‘Please don’t ever touch another woman.’
He picked her up from the table, then grabbed his coat that had been draped over another one. He wrapped it over her body, and carried her from the room. And then he took her into the house, up the stairs, and for the first time, into his bedchamber.
He laid her down in the centre of the bed and began to strip his clothes from his body. And she realised that she had never seen him fully naked. He never undressed entirely for their sessions.
She removed her own clothes, and lay back. Waiting. Then he joined her on the bed, the length of his naked body pressed to hers. And she thought she might weep. From how wonderful it felt. From how much it was... Everything. Everything that she needed. And then, for the first time, they slept together.
Chapter Sixteen
Beatrice felt something like a tentative happiness over the next few days. Briggs had made love to her the same as he had done in the greenhouse several times now. She found it thrilling each and every time. It was a revelation. Having him inside her. And while she wished that he did not have to withdraw when he found his own pleasure, she was determined to continue working on him regarding a second opinion.
But today, Hugh and Eleanor were arriving in London, and while Hugh was seeing about business with Briggs at the House of Lords, she and Eleanor would take tea.
She was very excited. To play lady of the house and dress for her friend.
She wasn’t even playing. She really was the lady of the house. And properly now. She was truly Briggs’s wife now.
Truly.
