He rose, and so did she. For a moment, standing there, looking up at him, she felt the urge to rise up on her toes and kiss him, so she’d know if what she’d experienced before had been real.

But a kiss could lead to unpleasantness, frustration, and the feeling of captivity she hated, and she found she liked him too much to dislike him so soon. So she simply put her hand on his arm and walked out of the maze with him, head down, watching her steps, thinking she was a coward, and then thinking she wasn’t, she was a realist, and so she said nothing at all. But neither did he.


“Tell Cook she has exceeded herself,” Leland told his butler as he rose from the dinner table. “She was inspired. I’d applaud, but I’m too full to exert myself.”

“She’ll be pleased, my lord,” the butler said, bowing.

Daisy smiled. Dinner had been delicious, but it was just simple, well-cooked English food. Surely a world traveler and sophisticate like Viscount Haye had eaten better.

“I know,” Leland whispered in her ear as they left the room together, “But Cook excels at simple country fare. She does it better than any French chef could. I don’t ask swans to sing, or nightingales to be beautiful: to each his own expertise. A wise man shouldn’t expect more than a person is capable of. The trick is finding that skill and appreciating it.”

“You read my mind,” she said simply. “You do that a lot.”

“Good,” he said. “See you remember that when you sigh over another gentleman, will you?”

“I won’t,” she said. “Sigh over another gentleman, I mean.”

“Don’t be so sure. I don’t mind the sighing. I would, if it were anything more. Now, we could go to the salon, or the library, or wherever you choose. But it is past dinnertime, and our wedding night. I think the staff would be horrified if we didn’t repair to our bed. I didn’t mind one whit what anyone said about me before, but I find I’d be dismayed if we did anything to inspire gossip now. It’s odd how one becomes a slave to one’s servants, isn’t it? Don’t worry, if you’re not sleepy,” he said. “Neither am I. But never fear, I’ll find something for us to do.”

Daisy stiffened. She knew he would. Well, she thought, better now than later. They could get it done, it wouldn’t take long, and then she could act more naturally with him. It wasn’t as if it was something she hadn’t done hundreds of times before. In fact, she didn’t have to do anything but endure it, and try to remember men were men, and so it shouldn’t change her feelings about him forever. Because she did like him, very much.

It would be best to get it over with. She realized she was too on edge now, waiting for the moment, it made her nervous and her conversation stilted. She missed the way they’d been before they’d married. They’d certainly laughed more.

“Go on up,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stair. “I’ll follow, soon.”

She trudged up the stairs, and then remembering the omnipresent unseen servants, raised her head, pasted on a smile, and went bravely to her bridal chamber.

Chapter Twenty

Daisy had brushed out her hair and braided it, when her maid, all a-giggle, held up a fine night shift for her to put on. It was made of the sheerest linen, so it was thin and transparent. Daisy hesitated. But she didn’t want to be fully dressed when Leland came to her, because then there’d be the awkwardness of undressing. And she didn’t want to disappoint her maid and cause more talk, because the shift really was quite suitable for a wedding night. So she put it on. She dismissed her maid as soon as she could, climbed up into the huge canopy bed, drew the coverlet up to her chest, and sat, waiting for her new husband to appear.

It was an awkward moment that would become worse, and so she’d brought a book with her in order to be doing something when Leland arrived. She’d thought about it long and hard. She refused to just lie there like a sacrifice on an altar. Or sit up, rigid, tensing at every creak in the floorboards that might signal his approach. She plumped up pillows behind her back, drew the coverlet up again, and pretended to read while her every sense strained to hear his footsteps.

He came into the room a few minutes later, fully dressed.

She gaped at him. He smiled at her.

“Something amiss with my shirt?” he asked in surprise.

“No,” she said, and couldn’t say more, because she couldn’t tell him she’d expected him to be in his nightclothes.

“Gads!” he said, stretching. “It isn’t really late, but I feel as if I’d been up for hours. I suppose that’s because it isn’t every day that I’m up so early, and out associating with so many people. I might as well get ready for bed, too,” he said, as he shrugged off his jacket. “You look so comfortable, you inspire me,” he said, as he unwound his neck cloth. “Then we can find a pleasant way to while away some hours, because exhausted I may be, but I’m not tired. I never go to bed this early. I’m sure if I did it would be a tremendous shock to my constitution.”

Daisy blinked, and then stared. Because now he pulled his shirt over his head, so his voice was muffled as he added, “We have some hours before I’m ready to sleep, but I never asked you. How rude. Are you used to such early hours?”

His head emerged; he tossed his shirt to the side, and looked at her.

She was staring.

“Oh that,” he said, looking down at the thin red line on his chest. “My souvenir of London. Don’t fret, it’s just a lingering reminder of that night at the park; it doesn’t hurt.”

But that wasn’t all she was staring at. His naked chest surprised her. He was so slender, she’d never have guessed how well formed he was: He had a broad, well-muscled chest, and his trim torso tapered to lean hips. There was a light fuzz of hair on his chest, and his skin was clear, except for that healing scar too close to where his heart was.

Then, as she stared, he sat, pulled off one boot and then the other. While she sat mesmerized, he bent and stripped off his breeches, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to undress in front of her.

Tanner had never fully undressed in all the years they’d been married, unless he had to take a bath. He always wore a shirt to bed. Tanner had been a chunky man whose fair skin had often been blotched, and he’d added more flesh around his middle with every year that passed. Now Leland stood up, and Daisy’s gazed arrowed to his sex. She glanced away, embarrassed. Leland looked almost like a different species than Tanner. He was fit and firm and though very large, everything was in pleasing proportion to his long body.

Leland turned his back to her, picked up his discarded clothes, and strolled into the adjoining dressing room. Even his rear was taut and trim.

“I have a problem,” Leland called from the dressing room. “I do hope you can help me with it. Of course, you’re not widely experienced in such matters, but I want your admiration and approval. So I can’t act on my own. I’ve something to show you, and then I’ll ask your opinion.”

Daisy tensed. The moment was almost upon her, even though it was arriving in weird fashion. Tanner never spoke to her when the mood was upon him. But his needs were obvious and simple. Now she wondered what an experienced roué like Leland expected of her.

For the first time, it wasn’t just embarrassment or distaste she worried about. She’d heard about men who liked whips and chains and such. Was her new husband such a one? Was he so jaded that he needed pain or shame? Did he think that just because she’d been a convict she had no sensibilities? That explained much, and would ruin everything. She tensed.

He emerged from the dressing room holding two nightshirts. One was plain and white, the other was cream-colored with embroidery on the neck.

“Now this one,” he said, holding it up in front of him, “is classic. Very simply, very tasteful. But this one,” he said, switching hands and holding up the other, “is the latest word in France, or so I hear. Which do you like?”

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. “Either.”

“Well, to tell the truth I don’t care for either,” he told her. “You see, I don’t like to sleep in anything but my skin, but I am trying to be sensible of your sensibilities. Wait a moment, I think I have just the thing!”

He disappeared into the dressing room, and came out holding his hands out as though he’d just pulled a rabbit from a hat, like a magician on the stage about to take a bow. Now he wore a colorful red silk dressing gown, sashed in gold. “Voilà!” he said. He turned for her, head high, nose in the air, like a fashion model at madame’s shop. “What do you think?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I agree,” he said sadly. “Outrageously opulent, not my style at all.”

He turned, very dejected, to go back to the dressing room.

“Wait!” she said. “Do you really think what you wear to sleep is important?”

He looked at her in shock. “My dear,” he said, “a man of taste never slacks off, even in his slumbers. And, I remind you, I can’t have you thinking your new husband is careless, can I? It’s obvious this doesn’t impress you, but I have a blue satin one that I thought was too simple. Now I think perhaps it will be the very thing.”

She just sat and stared at him. That was how she saw his lips quirk. “Good God!” he said. “Your expression!” And then he began to laugh.

She joined in, as relieved as she was amused. He came over to the bed. “Well, I had to think of something to unknot you,” he said with a tender smile. “You looked as though you expected me to come out with whips and chains. You don’t, do you? I’d hate to disappoint, but I wouldn’t care for that at all.”

“Oh my,” she said, between the giggles she’d subsided to. “That’s exactly what I was thinking you meant.”