Romantic Association - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

‘You must sleep in the chair,’ Amanda argued, panic building in her throat as Hugo slipped off his coat and loosened his neck cloth. He seemed so at ease, so confident, so thoroughly in control. It was making her nervous.

He laughed. ‘Have a heart, my sweet! I have lurched over bad roads all day on a wild goose chase. The least you can do is let me share your bed. I am your husband and it is perfectly respectable.’

It felt quite improper to Amanda, unaccustomed to such close proximity with her husband, but he pressed a glass into her hands and she did not argue. The wine had been warmed and it tasted strong and sweet. Amanda felt the colour bloom in her cheeks and delicious warmth spread through her. The knot of tension inside her started slowly to unravel.

The landlady brought a rich beef stew into their private parlour. Amanda was surprised to discover it tasty. She was yawning, which was unforgivably rude, but when she tried to apologise Hugo only laughed and filled her glass again. By the time the meal was over she was almost asleep and her elbow kept sliding off the table. Eventually Hugo scooped her up and carried her through to the bedchamber.

‘You seem to have been sweeping me off my feet all day,’ Amanda whispered, aware that she was now extremely cast away and that the room was spinning slowly. She looked up into his face and could see the shadow of every individual eyelash cast against the hard line of his cheek. She raised a hand and ran her fingers over his cheek, fascinated by the roughness of his stubble. His eyes closed and she saw a muscle tighten beneath her caress, but then he set her down and started to unfasten her gown with brisk, impersonal movements. She felt his fingers against the nape of her neck, then lower, down her back. The gown eased and she stepped out of it, feeling abruptly and overwhelmingly shy. Gently, he sat her on the bed and knelt to remove her shoes and to roll down her stockings. The candlelight was in his blue eyes, his expression intent and serious and Amanda’s stomach dropped with longing and a feeling she identified, with absolute amazement, as lust.

She must have made a small sound, for he looked up and their eyes locked for a long moment. There was a hard, bright light in his that made her feel quite faint and then—she was never sure how it happened and afterwards she did not care—he rolled her on the bed and his hands were in her hair and she was reaching for him with a fever that equalled his own. He kissed her as though he was starving and she kissed him back and her ribbons and laces were wrenched apart and his clothes were thrown on the floor and they came together exultantly, desperately, with love and lust and no thought for propriety until they lay panting and astonished in each other’s arms.

Afterwards, when she had slept for a little and they had made love again more slowly, Amanda smiled to see her three portmanteaux, packed with respectable night clothes, sitting superfluously in the corner of the room.

‘You promised that it would be perfectly proper for you to share my bed,’ she said, ‘but that was decidedly improper.’

She felt Hugo’s chest move as he laughed. ‘I cannot dispute that. Did you like it?’

‘Yes!’ There was a great deal to be said for bursting out of the restraints of propriety. ‘I cannot think why I did not do that before. It was so much more fun when I join in.’

Hugo laughed again. ‘For me, too.’ He shifted so that he could look at her. ‘I am sorry, Manda.’ His affectionate use of her pet name made her smile. ‘I knew that you had been brought up to believe that physical intimacy was to be tolerated rather than enjoyed and I did not make sufficient effort to persuade you to a different point of view.’ He ran a hand over her bare shoulder and she shivered. ‘I was disappointed that you did not seem to want me and so I withdrew from you when I should have talked.’

Amanda snuggled closer. ‘I am sorry, too, Hugo. I was young and foolish and I thought that to catch a husband was the end of the process rather than the beginning.’

Hugo smiled. ‘We have wasted a lot of time.’

‘Yes, but we can make up for it.’ She kissed him. ‘How far is it to Gretna Green?’

‘Too far,’ Hugo said. ‘Rather than trying to prevent my grandmother from marrying again, I would rather return home and invest the time in getting to know my own wife properly.’

Amanda smiled. ‘I would like that extremely.’ She rubbed her fingers gently over his chest. ‘I love you, Hugo. In that respect I am happy to follow my mama’s advice that it is quite appropriate to have an affectionate regard for one’s husband.’

‘I love you, too.’ Hugo rolled over to kiss her properly.

‘Manda,’ Hugo said, as the carriage rolled back through the gates of Marston Hall next day, ‘I have something to confess.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Grandmama has not gone to Gretna. She is marrying Mr Sampson at Bath Abbey on the twenty-third of this month. She would very much like us to be there. She left me a note yesterday, too.’

Amanda stared. ‘But if you knew that, why on earth did you let us set out for Gretna…?’ She stopped.

‘I am sorry,’ Hugo said, smiling so charmingly that Amanda’s indignation started to melt like ice in the sun. ‘If you re-read the note that Grandmama left you, you will see that she never mentioned Gretna at all. When you made that assumption—and when you appeared not indifferent to me—I was determined to take the opportunity to try to mend matters between us.’ He smiled. ‘I would have gone all the way to Scotland if I needed to, Manda. You are that important to me.’

Amanda started to laugh until the tears rolled down her face and her stomach ached with great gales of mirth that her mother would surely have thought most unbecoming. When the coach drew up on the gravel she grabbed Hugo’s hand and dragged him into the hall.

‘You owe me something for that deception,’ she whispered, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. His arms went about her.

‘Anything, my love.’

Then both of them became aware, somewhat belatedly, of the presence of Mrs Duke and Mrs Davy, who had evidently called only a few moments before and were studying their amorous embrace with horrified expressions.

‘Mrs Davy, Mrs Duke!’ Hugo said. ‘I do apologise. Is it visiting time? Alas, Amanda is exhausted from our travels and needs to lie down immediately. As do I.’

And he carried his wife up the sweep of the stair and closed the bedroom door very firmly behind them.

Judy Astley started writing in 1990, following several years of working as a dressmaker, illustrator, painter and parent. Her sixteen novels, the most recent of which are Laying the Ghost and Other People’s Husbands, are all published by Transworld/Black Swan. Judy’s specialist areas, based on many years of hectic personal experience, are domestic disharmony and family chaos with a good mix of love-and-passion and plenty of humour thrown in.

Judy has been a regular columnist on magazines and enjoys writing journalism pieces on just about any subject, usually from a fun viewpoint. She lives in London and Cornwall, loves plants, books, hot sunshine and rock music—all at once, preferably—and would happily claim that listening in to other people’s conversations is both a top hobby and an absolute career-necessity. Visit Judy’s website at www.judyastley.com

X. Ex. At risk of getting a frostbitten bum, I sit on the low wall outside the town hall and look up at the brilliant blue winter sky where the vapour trails from a pair of aircraft have left a big white cross. It looks like a huge celestial kiss—a pair of in-love angels, perhaps? No, too fanciful, get real, Claire, I tell myself. It’s just a couple of distant planes criss-crossing the globe above us. I think—briefly—of the bliss of a kissed X contrasted with the pain implicit in the term ‘Ex’. Sad that these two sound so alike and yet…and yet. But it’s all right. I’m now safely over my own Ex—cheating rat—though maybe not quite ready to hurtle fullon into another relationship. So silly, so hasty, I gave that one a go way too soon, pretty much straight after the break-up. Lovely Max, set up for me by well-meaning friends who embraced the ‘get back on the horse’ philosophy, was a delight—we got on so well and it was obvious there was real romance-potential there…but, oh, please, not yet, I thought at the time, running scared. That suddenness of being ‘with’ someone again so quickly after the drawn-out end to a five-year marriage gave me an out-of-control rushed feeling, a certainty that I’d whizzed from the hurt of loss directly to risking it all happening again without pausing for breath. Good grief, I’d barely got used to losing custody of the wedding present toaster.