“Your body has gone as taut as a bowstring,” Devon said drowsily over her head. “And after all the work I just did to relax you.” A chuckle escaped him at her mortified silence. His hand came to her back, caressing the length of her spine. “Has that never happened to you before?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know it was possible for women.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, low and languid.

“No one told you before your wedding night?”

“Lady Berwick did, but I’m sure she didn’t know anything about it. Or perhaps…” She paused as a discomfiting thought occurred to her. “Perhaps it’s not something that happens to respectable women.”

His hand continued its slow, reassuring glide up and down her back. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t.” His head lowered, and he whispered near her ear, “But I won’t tell.”

Timidly she let her fingers trace the edge of the great spreading bruise on his side. “Do other men know how to do… that?”

“Pleasure a woman, you mean? Yes, all it takes is patience.” He played with a few locks of hair that had come loose from her braid. “But it’s well worth the effort. A woman’s enjoyment makes the act more satisfying.”

“Does it? Why?”

“It flatters a man’s pride to know that he can make a woman desire him. Also…” His hand drifted to the soft cove between her thighs, and stroked through the layer of her nightgown. “… the way you tightened around my fingers… that’s pleasurable for a man when he’s inside you.”

Kathleen hid her face against his shoulder. “Lady Berwick made it all sound very simple. But I’m beginning to think that she left out some important details.”

He let out a quiet laugh. “Anyone who says the sexual act is simple has never done it properly.”

They lay together, listening to the sounds beyond the bedroom. Outside, groundskeepers began to push wheeled mowers and edgers across the lawn, the bladed cylinders whirring smoothly. The sky was the color of steel, a strong wind chafing at the last few bleached brown leaves of an oak tree near the window.

Devon pressed a kiss into her hair. “Kathleen… you told me that the last time Theo spoke to you, he said, ‘You’re not my wife.’”

She froze, alarm stinging the insides of her veins as she realized what he was going to ask.

His voice was gentle. “Was it true?”

She tried to move away, but he kept her firmly against him.

“It doesn’t matter how you answer,” he said. “I just want to understand what happened.”

She would risk everything by telling him. She had far too much to lose. But part of her longed to admit the truth. “Yes,” she forced herself to say, her voice thin. “It was true. The marriage was never consummated.”

Chapter 20

“So that was what you argued about,” Devon murmured, his hand moving over her back in slow strokes.

“Yes. Because I wouldn’t let Theo…” She paused with a shaking sigh. “I have no right to be called Lady Trenear. I shouldn’t have stayed at Eversby Priory afterward, except… I didn’t know if I would be allowed to keep my dowry, and I didn’t want to go back to live with Lord and Lady Berwick, and besides all that, it was shameful. So I lied about being Theo’s wife.”

“Did someone actually ask if you’d slept with him?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

“No, but I lied by omission. Which is just as bad as the other kind of lying. The deplorable truth is that I’m a virgin. A fraud.” She was stunned to feel a rustle of suppressed laughter in his chest. “I don’t see how you can find cause for humor in that!”

“I’m sorry.” But a smile lingered in his voice. “I was just thinking, with the tenants’ drainage concerns, the plumbers, the estate’s debt, and the hundred other issues I’m facing… finally there’s a problem around here I can do something about.”

She gave him a reproachful glance, and he grinned. He kissed her before moving to find a more comfortable position, levering himself higher. Reaching for the pillows, Kathleen propped them behind his shoulders. She sat to face him with her legs half curled beneath her, and refastened her nightgown.

One of Devon’s hands came to rest on her thigh. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”

It was impossible to hold anything back now. She looked away from him, her fingers gripped around the placket of her bodice. “You must understand… I had never been alone with Theo until our wedding night. Lady Berwick chaperoned us every minute, until after the wedding. We were married at the estate chapel. It was a very grand wedding, a week-long affair, and…” She paused as a new thought occurred to her. “You and West should have been invited. I’m so sorry that you weren’t.”

“I’m not,” Devon said. “I don’t know what I would have done, had I met you before the wedding.”

At first she thought he was joking, but his gaze was deadly serious.

“Go on,” he said.

“After the ceremony, Theo went to a tavern with his friends, and he stayed away all afternoon and evening. I was obliged to remain in my room because… it’s very awkward for the bride, you see. It’s unseemly to linger and talk to people before the wedding night. So I bathed, and Clara curled my hair with hot tongs, and I dressed in a white lace nightgown, and then I sat alone to wait… and wait… and wait… I was too nervous to eat anything, and there was nothing to do. I went to bed at midnight. I couldn’t sleep, I just lay there stewing.”