Nicola Cornick - The Undoing Of A Lady

Afterward, when he had recovered a modicum of strength, Nat wrapped her in the tattered remnants of her gown and carried her into the house. Her body felt soft and compliant in his arms, her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed. The edge had gone off Nat’s anger now but he felt bruised and tired yet still unsatisfied. He hunted that satisfaction and fulfilment all night long, seeking oblivion in Lizzie’s body, driving her to wild peaks of pleasure, making her climax again and again until she was spent. He woke her simply so that he could touch her at will and do whatever he wished with her pale, tantalizing body. She did not refuse him once. He lay with his shaft buried deep within her, hard and hot, for several hours, not moving, resisting the twitch and spasm of her body about him as though determined to show he could resist the power she held over him. He felt as though he was in a dream in which he pursued something so elusive that it was forever within reach and yet it slipped away from him just when he thought he had captured it. Even when he took her for the final time the pleasure overwhelmed him only to ebb away and leave him exhausted and empty, deprived of whatever it was he sought.

Nat fell asleep trying to puzzle out what it was that he was searching for and awoke as the summer dawn broke into the room in all its shimmering golden glory. He turned instinctively to search for Lizzie’s warmth and found the bed empty. The corresponding barrenness inside him seemed to deepen and grow. He felt at the same time scoured clean of the anger of the previous night and yet even more hollow and lonely than he had before. And he felt shocked. Shocked with himself and appalled at what he had done. He could not escape the thought that his marriage, for all its extremes of physical pleasure, was a complete disaster in other respects and he did not know what to do to put it right. He did not even know where to start.

Where was Lizzie?

Nat’s apprehension started to increase. Last night…Last night he had been intolerably angry with his new wife, so furious and possessive and distraught that he had taken her and used her. He had probably frightened her or given her a disgust of him. Lizzie was wild, his perfect physical match; she aroused in him emotions that he had never dreamed he possessed and that made him forget to be gentle. He had been so incensed that he had made no allowances for her relative youth and lack of experience.

Guilt twisted his gut. She had run from him now just as she had after that first night in the folly. On the thought he got up, grabbed his dressing robe and went to the door that connected their rooms. It was locked.

“Lizzie?” He rattled the handle. “Lizzie!”

He went out into the corridor and was about to try the other door into Lizzie’s room when he heard a step behind him.

“May I be of assistance, Lord Waterhouse?”

Mrs. Alibone was standing in the corridor behind him, wearing a long black dressing gown of formidable respectability, a candle in one hand. “If it is locked I could fetch the spare set of keys,” she continued. Her eyes were bright with prurient excitement and suddenly Nat felt sick.

“No,” he said. “Thank you.” He was not having the housekeeper intruding into Lizzie’s room and perhaps finding her distraught, in floods of tears. It was bad enough that the entire household knew that Lizzie had ridden out naked the night before-and that when they returned he had ravished her in the stables. There would be plenty of talk without providing a sequel. Suddenly, despite his anger the previous night, he felt desperately, feverishly protective of Lizzie.

“Thank you, Mrs. Alibone,” he said pointedly, when the housekeeper made no attempt to leave, “you can go now.”

Only when Mrs. Alibone had slid silently away did he turn the handle. By now he was shaking. The door was not locked, but Lizzie’s bed was neat, turned down for the night but untouched.

Nat snatched his clothes, dressing haphazardly in shirt and pantaloons, and managing-just-to drag on his boots without the assistance of his valet. He ran down the stairs, through the waking house and out into the garden.

Where was Lizzie? Where would she run?

Almost as soon as the words formed in his mind he saw her, sitting on the wooden swing under the wide spreading branches of an ancient apple tree. She was swinging very slowly backward and forward. Her head was bent and the early-morning sun burnished the deep auburn strands of her hair, setting them alight. She wore a bright yellow gown that looked fresh and pretty. Nat felt some strange sensation squeeze his heart as though it were clenched tight inside a fist.

She had not run from him after all. Despite everything she was still here. The relief overwhelmed him.

He moved toward her across the dew-drenched grass. A blackbird sang in the tree above her head. The scent of roses was on the air. Then Lizzie looked up and the misery he saw in her green eyes made Nat’s heart clench again, this time in shock, for it was stark and painful to witness.

“Lizzie,” he said. “Sweetheart-”

She stood up and let the rope of the swing slip from her hand.

“This has to stop, Nat,” she said. “I cannot bear it any longer.”

LIZZIE HAD WOKEN before the dawn, when the very first call of the birds had broken the quiet of the night and the very first rays of the sun had barely started to lighten the eastern sky. She had been profoundly glad that Nat had not stirred when she slipped from the bed. She had known she had to get out of the house, into the fresh air, to breathe, to think.

In the peace of the early morning she had sat in the garden and thought about the disaster that was her marriage. She had been so angry with Nat last night for his mercenary acceptance of Gregory Scarlet’s bribe and even more so because he had not told her about it, and he had been equally angry with her for her wildness and her outrageous behavior. They had been pushed as far apart as the poles. That such mutual fury had erupted into equally mutual desire had not surprised her in the least. That was the way that it was between herself and Nat.

That was the only thing there was between herself and Nat.

And it was not enough for her.

Oh, she knew that sex without love was possible. Hundreds, thousands of people had sex without being in love with one another and evidently Nat was one of those people who had no difficulty in separating out the two things. She was not. And now, finally, it had broken her heart and she knew she could never do it again.

She looked at Nat now as he approached her across the grass. He was in no more than shirt and breeches and he looked casual and disheveled, as though he had pulled on his clothes carelessly. The breeze flattened his shirt against his muscular torso and ruffled his dark hair. He looked troubled and harried, and the love she had for him pounded through Lizzie with every beat of her pulse. She knew it was a catastrophe to feel like this but she could not help herself. She could not deny her love or fall out of love with Nat simply because he was unable to return her feelings.

Last night she had wanted to be able to provoke him and to know that she could rouse a response from him. She had done so. But this morning she faced the hard truth that it was not the response she wanted. She wanted to know him properly, to feel as close to him emotionally as she was physically. She wanted his love, and he could not give that to her. Each time they made love it became more difficult for her to hold back her feelings because although she could respond to him and take pleasure-great pleasure, she admitted-in the act, it left her feeling cheated and desolate, more acutely aware than ever that outside their bedroom they barely spoke.

“This has to stop, Nat,” she said. “I cannot bear it any longer.”

She saw the expression of bewilderment deepen on his face. “I don’t understand,” he said.

No. And she could not explain to him, not completely, because in doing so she would lay her feelings beneath his feet and he would crush them, not deliberately, for she was sure that he would never seek to hurt her on purpose, but simply because he could not match her love for him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am sorry about last night. I was very angry and upset to discover that you had taken money from Cousin Gregory to marry me. It made me behave very badly.”

Nat rubbed his forehead. “I am sorry, too,” he said. “I treated you very badly. Your anger seems to fuel mine and then it is madness between us.”

Lizzie chose her words with care. “I think that we need to get to know one another better,” she said. “We have barely spoken since we wed. It feels as though we are strangers to one another now. And until we have resolved our difficulties I feel we should not sleep with each other again.”

The look of bewilderment on Nat’s face was replaced by a rather comical look of horror. If Lizzie had not felt so wretched she might even have laughed.

“Not sleep with one another?” he repeated.

Trust a man to pick up on that point first, Lizzie thought. “Not have sex with one another,” she elaborated. “A sex ban,” she said, warming to her theme, “like the Lysistrata in Ancient Greece. No touching, no kissing until we know one another better.” Her classical education had been somewhat neglected-in fact, her entire education had been somewhat neglected since governesses had not stayed long at Scarlet Park and even less time at Fortune Hall-but she had a vague recollection of a play in which the women had withdrawn their sexual favors.

“Lizzie, we have known one another for nine years,” Nat said. “It is not as though we are strangers to each other.”