The Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh Page B

still living at home, and I heard it from Mrs. Gill and her friends. They would sit for hours conversing about their children and the miserliness of their husbands with money and of how very tedious and unpleasant
that
part of marriage was—always spoken with nodding heads and widened eyes and lowered voices and a significant emphasis on the
that.
One woman actually commented once that she pitied mistresses since they have to perform the duty ten times as often as wives. But she received such a look from the other women present that it is amazing she was not immediately transformed into an icicle.”
    He was laughing softly against her mouth. “Abby!” he said, while his hand moved down between her thighs and his thumb found a part of her and rubbed lightly over it and sent that sharp ache shooting up into her throat again.
    “Ah,” she said. She enjoyed the sensation for a few silent moments and parted her legs slightly to give room to his hand. “I think those women were silly. I don’t find it at all unpleasant, Miles, and certainly not tedious. And it is silly to call it a duty, like dusting the furniture or emptying the chamber pots.”
    He was doing a great deal of laughing, she thought as he brought his weight over on top of her at last and she parted her legs for him, bending her knees and sliding up her feet to rest on the mattress on either side of his hips, lifting her own so that he could slip his hands beneath her.
    “Do you have a mistress?” she asked a moment before gasping as he came into her.
    “Why do you want to know?” he asked, his mouth against her ear.
    “Just idle curiosity, I suppose,” she said. “Though perhaps more than that. I would not like the idea, Miles. And if it is just this that you go to her for, then I would prefer that you do it with me.”
    “Would you?” he said, beginning to move in her as he had the night before and creating that growing physical excitement that had been the only disappointing part then because it had led nowhere and had forced her to spend several minutes after he was finished, imposing relaxation on her body. “Even if I wanted you several times during the day and several times during the night?”
    She thought for a moment and almost lost the trend of her thoughts in the pleasure of what he was doing to her body, though he was moving slowly and without the depth that she had particularly enjoyed the night before.
    “During the day?” she said. “Is it not embarrassing?”
    “Because we would see each other?” he said. His voice sounded amused. “I don’t think either of us has a body we need feel ashamed of.”
    “Well,” she said briskly, “I would rather a little embarrassment, I suppose, than the knowledge that you also did this with a mistress.”
    “Abby,” he said, his mouth finding hers again, “I have no mistress, my dear, and have no intention of doing this with anyone but you for the rest of my life. Can we discuss the other possibilities you have brought up at some other time? I find it somewhat difficult to hold a conversation and make love at the same time. And if one of those activities has to go, I would prefer it to be the conversation.”
    “And so would I,” she said.
    She lay still and quiet with her eyes closed, enjoying the physical sensations of his lovemaking, hoping that it would not end for a long time, not at least until she had reached beyond the achings and yearnings that were quite out of her control.
    But it did not happen. And perhaps it never would, she thought sadly, putting her arms about him as he lay still on her finally, the whole of his weight relaxed on top of her. Perhaps there was nothing else. Perhaps it was that fact that had soured those silly women in Mrs. Gill’s parlor.
    But no. They had spoken with some disgust about the necessary but unwelcome male attentions that were a lamentable part of marriage. Not with regret and longing, but with disgust.
    He moved away from her with a sigh of