Just One Taste Part 9

He'd thought of that night through all the days he'd spent away from her. Now he wondered if she'd been glad he was gone.

Jack and Delia weren't in love when they married, but their match was suitable in every way. They had been equal in looks and fortune and consequence. The love might come yet. Jack was ready for love-he'd earned it under the scorching South African sky.

Chapter 3.

Jack's face had lit when she entered the dining room. Delia knew she looked beautiful, even if she'd had to put a great deal of face powder under her eyes to cover up for the sleepless nights. She wore a lilac silk dress which made her irises look purple.

In her first and only Season, poems had been written to her eyes, nonsensical things. Even a music hall song, the lyrics of which were rather racy. She had been mortified, and was greatly relieved when Jack Marbury had asked her to marry him so abruptly.

As a married woman, she'd no longer be the object of such unwanted attention. Delia had done nothing to earn her beauty and found it to be no blessing. People expected so much of her, and she knew herself to be somewhat dull. A disappointment. Her guardian had been strict and she'd been sheltered in the country until she came to London for her Season.

She could go back to Dorset when this was over. The house was hers to do what she wished. She could expand the garden. Do something useful with her days.

She'd go mad without Johnny.

Delia couldn't stop her lips from trembling, and Jack's smile faded.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Collapsing in her chair, she signaled to the footmen to hold off dinner. "We must talk."

"That sounds ominous." Jack walked around the table and took a seat next to her. She was grateful he didn't try to touch her. She was going to tell him. Rob Arthur of his advantage. Get all of this over with. Her guilt and confusion might not go away, but she had to be honest.

"I-I only have one earring."

He looked at her blankly.

"The diamond earrings you wanted me to wear." She pointed to her bare earlobe.

"You are lovely without diamonds, Delia. Did you misplace it? I think they are insured with Lloyd's. The policy is in the safe in my study, unless you've moved things around."

"I didn't even know there was a safe." She hadn't known anything about the house for ages. Jack's Aunt Elizabeth had continued on as its chatelaine, as she'd had the role for almost twenty-five years. Delia couldn't object, since everything ran like clockwork and the woman was kindness itself. Delia was a seventeen-year-old ignorant nitwit, and soon she was suffering from such ghastly morning sickness she couldn't get out of bed.

"That's odd. Arthur should have told you."

She shut her eyes. When she opened them, she wished Jack didn't appear so sympathetic. So very handsome. "It's Arthur I want to talk to you about."

Jack grinned. "What's my wretched cousin done now? Stolen the earring?"

"No. But he has it."

"Why?"

She couldn't face him, she just couldn't. She stared at the cutwork on the linen tablecloth, the chased flowers on the heavy silverware. "I went to see him in his rooms." Surely she didn't have to spell it out for him. Proper women didn't visit gentlemen in their homes, even if it was a new century.

Delia had made the biggest mistake of her life. It was bad enough when she thought she was a widow. But then to discover her husband was alive after all- "Do you love him?"

Startled, Delia looked up to meet his eyes. "No!"

"Good to know," he murmured. "How long have you been having an affair with him?"

"It isn't an affair. It was just the once," she said miserably. "And it was awful. We didn't even f-finish. I couldn't bear it-you must believe me! And then the very next day you came home, and I-oh, Jack, I'm so sorry. He plans to tell you a pack of lies, that we were carrying on while he lived here unless I go to him again, but I swear to you on Johnny's life that isn't true."

"Is Johnny my child?"

The fork slipped from her fingers and bounced to the carpet. This was worse than she ever expected. Her throat closed, making words impossible.

"I know he looks like me, the hair anyway," Jack continued, "but he's little more than an infant. Children change. Even from the photographs you showed me in the alb.u.m, he's changed a great deal already."

Delia had been meticulous having Johnny's babyhood professionally recorded. She'd even purchased a Brownie box camera and taken some blurry pictures herself.

"Of course he's yours," she whispered.

She had broken her own happiness into a thousand sharp pieces. Delia could have ignored Arthur's overtures-she'd been rebuffing him for months, pretending not to understand what he wanted while he still lived under her roof. But when his mother died and he moved out, he'd become more insistent on his daily visits "to see if she was all right."

She hadn't been-she was lonelier than ever.

Now she'd never have a second chance with her husband.

She rose and smoothed the folds of her lilac gown. "I'm sorry about dinner. I'll tell Cook to prepare trays for us in our rooms."

"Sorry about dinner?" Jack's voice was so low she could barely hear him.

"S-sorry about everything. I wish things could have been different."

"So do I, Delia," he said, sounding weary. "So do I."

Chapter 4.

His wife had been unfaithful.

But he'd been dead, hadn't he, so perhaps the word was incorrect. You couldn't cheat on a ghost.

Jack was too exhausted to get up from the dining room chair. Delia had disappeared in a lavender cloud. She'd been stunning, even without diamonds twinkling against her long white neck.

No wonder Arthur had wanted her. Any man would.

What had she said? It was awful. We couldn't even finish. Every inch of her had trembled in revulsion.

Not something Arthur was apt to be bragging about.

His cousin had wanted Jack's toys when they were children. Now it seemed the stakes had been raised.

There was something off here. Something wrong, beyond the questionable morality of his cousin's l.u.s.t for Delia. It went a long way to explain why Arthur had not come to see him, though.

So Arthur wanted Delia to "go to him again," did he? It was one thing to have an affair with a pretty young widow after months of propinquity and shared sorrow, quite another to cuckold your closest living relative deliberately.

He was alive. Jack raked his hair back as if that might make him think more clearly. A divorce would be a tremendous scandal, and wouldn't help his cause with the newspapers. He planned to use his return to do some good and not be the object of pity.

If it were up to him, no British soldier would ever go to war so ill-prepared again. Jack was going to speak out and give all those dead soldiers a voice. At least they were no longer going to their deaths in scarlet coats-the First Boer War had proven the folly of that.

He'd counted on having Delia at his side. His loyal wife.

The door swung open and a footman seemed as startled to see Jack as Jack was to see him.

"Sorry, my lord. I was told to clear things up in here."

"Quite right. Lady Marbury and I decided to take dinner in our rooms." Jack hoped his legs would work under him.

The footman noticed his ungainliness. "May I help you upstairs, Lord Marbury?"

Jack shook his head. "Better get used to doing for myself. But thank you."

The last thing he wanted to do was eat. In fact, he couldn't think of a thing he wanted to do.

Untrue. His brain must have burnt to cinders in that prison camp, but, G.o.d help him, he wanted to go to bed with his wife.

He mounted the stairs, holding onto the bannister for dear life. He had to pa.s.s her doorway. Feeling a little like an old dog who sleeps across his mistress's threshold, he paused. Listened with both hands on the door to prop him up. Quiet. She was not howling with grief at the end of their marriage.

Jack rapped on the door. "Delia. May I come in?"

After too long, he heard her turn the key. She had locked him and the world out.

She stood there, still in her elegant gown, a scattering of brilliants across the bodice. Her eyes were dry, but there were rivulets in the white powder on her face. He had an urge to get a wash cloth and wipe her clean.

"May I come in?" he repeated.

She stepped back. "Of course. This is your house."

"And you are my wife."

Her eyes dropped to the carpet.

"Look at me." He sounded too stern, and hadn't meant to frighten her. Her lashes fluttered, and then she met his gaze.

"Arthur knew I was alive." Suddenly, he was as sure of this as he was his own name.

"But how can that be?" she whispered.

"I cabled him at the War Office." His cousin was an army officer too, although he served as an attache on the home front. "He was to break the news of my survival to you gently. I wrote a letter to him too, with an enclosure for you. You never received anything?"

She shook her head, too bewildered to speak.

"Do you mind if I sit down? I'm still useless on my feet."

She rushed to bring a chair forward, a spindly thing that wouldn't have held his weight a few years ago.

"He meant to do this, Delia. It was not your fault." Jack was sure of this too. Although his cousin had once been his closest friend, there had always been compet.i.tion between them.

Doubtless Arthur thought once he was dead, a smooth path was ahead with Jack's lovely, rich widow. How inconvenient it must have been to learn he was not dead after all.

"He'd done this sort of thing before." In truth, Jack and Arthur had done this sort of thing to each other over the years, trying to see who could best whom with various cher amies.

But a wife had never been involved. Arthur had taken a step far too far.

"He asked me to marry him," Delia said, her voice hoa.r.s.e.

"Well, it's a good thing I came home in time. At least you aren't a bigamist."

"How can you joke over such a thing?" she cried.

"What else am I to do, my love? I'd like to run Arthur through, but that would be messy, and to be honest, I'm not up to it at the moment. His intentions may have been honorable at first. But once he learned I was coming home-" Jack left the rest unsaid. Delia looked guilty enough, poor girl.

She hadn't really stood a chance. Both he and Arthur could be very persuasive when they made an effort. Jack had convinced her to marry him in less than a month, hadn't he?

Now all he had to do was convince her to let him take her to bed.

Chapter 5.

"I cannot." Delia couldn't believe he'd even asked the question after what lay between them. "How can you even want to?"

"Delia, I am a man, and you are still my wife. Men, as it happens, are sometimes not fussy about their needs. It's been a very long time since I've been with a woman, and quite frankly, that's all I can think about."

There was something very wrong with her. She'd only been made love to twice, and both times had been- Awful? Embarra.s.sing? She couldn't even find the words to properly describe how dreadful it had all been. At least she had Johnny to make up for the wedding night.