A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant

have done so, I’m sure. Even young men of fashion. It’s a fashionable pursuit these days, isn’t it? The study of agriculture?”
    “I should certainly hope so.” Now he was smiling, unmistakably, his whole face newly awash with that light a woman’s faith and fostering could kindle. “Go on.”
    “At all events a sense of duty is a commendable beginning. Even without you know how to improve the land, duty might lead you to make a difference in your laborers’ lives just by calling on them, and knowing their names, and paying those other routine attentions that tell a person of humbler station how he …” Her speech broke off. As she spoke he had suddenly sunk out of his chair to kneel before her. Now he caught her clasped hands and gently prised them apart, turning the palms up and stroking his thumbs over the inner sides of her wrists.
    Oh. Not a new light, after all. Just the usual one. Disappointment plummeted through her like a stone, with chagrin at her own foolishness chasing it all the way.
    “Go on,” he said, though from the vector of his attention anyone would think he was bidding her wrists to do something or other.
    “I don’t believe you’re listening.” Her voice dropped a good dozen degrees in warmth.
    “Not to the words.” He bent his head to brush his lips over the thin, blue-veined skin. “But you’re rather lovely when you speak so. All ardent and crusading.”
    Could any woman on earth really welcome such a remark? Maybe a woman with susceptible wrists could. Probably he was used to women who gave themselves so thoroughly up to pleasure that they’d welcome any thoughtless thing he said.
    She let her hands go heavy in his grip. It was easy. She felt heavy all over. “I’ve finished speaking,” she said. “We may as well go to bed, if you’re ready.”
    H E INSPECTED this room, too, as he removed his clothes. Taking in the blue brocaded drapes, the pattern of the wallpaper, the enormous bed, his reflection in the room’s several mirrors. When he appeared to have catalogued it all, he came to bed.
    He was quick. One must credit him with that. Comparatively tidy, too. He did not, at least, perspire heavily and shower her with his thrashing about, as had been Mr. Russell’s unfortunate habit. He managed his business with purpose and dispatch, just as she’d like him to, and in future she must remember to be grateful for this, and not waste time wishing for him to be better.
*  *  *
    B UT HE could be worse. On the fourth day he insisted she not ring for Sheridan, that he might undress her himself.
    To protest that this was an unearned intimacy should have been absurd, everything considered. So she submitted, with the same silent stoicism that had borne her through Mr. Russell’s occasional like whims.
    He must have taken that for encouragement because the next day he wanted to undress her again. This time he worked with deliberate leisure, as though he believed himself to be whetting her anticipation. And he spoke, incessantly, while he worked. Once more her skin was said to resemble silk, and her limbs and other parts were praised for their shape and proportion. Then, as though she could not have come to the conclusion on her own, he held it necessary to inform her of the exact effects her bodily charms had upon him.
    Thus did he like to unburden himself to her. When he might have confided cares and nascent ideas, and been rewarded with that warm, steadying support she would gladly give in return, he chose instead to say trite things such as any man could say, and take as his prize that congress in which only her body need be present. She could have been any other woman, lying beneath him with her legs apart, and his enjoyment should surely have been just the same.
    Not that it mattered, she thought afterward, resting on the pillow. As long as he brought the seed, she could bear whatever he brought with it. Whatever further indignities he might feel moved to propose, she