Sweet Temptation by Leigh Greenwood

really blame Gavin for being upset with her complete lack of knowledge? Maybe not, but she could blame him for being drunk and inconsiderate. Maybe you should have been drunk, she thought wildly. At least you might not have acted like a silly idiot. Cod, what a fool he must have thought her. What a fool she was not to have persisted, until someone told her exactly what was going to happen. The mere fact that everyone avoided the subject so assiduously should have warned her there was something very important she didn’t know. She was not used to thinking for herself—no one had ever allowed her to, much less encouraged it—but now she must. It was obvious she couldn’t depend on Betty or anyone else to help her out of this awful mess.
    She sighed and leaned against the windowsill. Assigning blame was not going to do the least bit of good, unless she could fix what was wrong. Besides, last night was behind her now. It would do no good to continue to dwell on it. She had been wrapped up in a daydream, convinced that everything would work out after the wedding, just as magically as it had before.
    “For an intelligent woman, you have just given a convincing imitation of one of those foolish girls at Miss Rachel’s,” Sara castigated herself aloud. “You have a lot to do, and it will take all the intelligence you possess to accomplish it.”
    With energy born of frustration, she turned and strode across the room, only to be brought up short when her eyes fell on her wedding veil. With trembling hands, Sara picked it up. Sadly she looked at the wilted flowers. Yesterday they had been a symbol of joy; today they were as dead as her dreams of the future.
    But one thing was unchanged: she still loved Gavin and wanted to preserve her marriage. She wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about him now—her feelings were so tied in a tight knot she couldn’t separate one from another—but she understood enough to know that her marriage was vitally important to her. Nothing would ever be the same after last night, but it hadn’t changed the basic fact that she wanted to be Gavin’s wife. She didn’t know why that was so, she just knew it was.
    Even though she didn’t want to admit it, Sara knew there was no place for her in society outside of her marriage. If she wanted to be accepted, she had to stay married. If she were to stay married, she had to make their relationship work. And if she were to make it work, she had to have something to build on, even if it were no more than Gavin’s reluctant desire for her body.
    And now that some of the shock had worn off, she could admit that Gavin had not been as rough as she had thought at the time. He certainly had not been gentle, especially when she asked him to leave, but then she didn’t understand much about men. She certainly couldn’t understand what he could have liked about last night that would make him want to repeat the experience. She could vaguely remember some pleasurable sensations, but they came nowhere near compensating for the feelings of disgust and shame. But she would think about that later. Right now she had to figure out how to establish some kind of friendship between them. Nothing was going to work, until they could learn to like each other.
    Sara let her finger caress the smooth silk of the headpiece. All her life she had dreamed of such a veil. It had seemed a symbol of the love her husband would shower on her. Now she realized that without the love it was intended to represent, this symbol was no more than a cold, plain piece of cloth.
    She had to talk to Gavin. She didn’t know what to say to him, but they had to clear away everything and start anew. She wasn’t sure he could do that, she wasn’t entirely sure she could, but there was no other choice, except to spend the rest of their lives blaming and avoiding each other. The picture of Gavin as he stood in the open door of her bedchamber flashed into Sara’s mind, and she knew she couldn’t live