"Oh," Theo said, taking a drink. "Well, it's something I should have mentioned earlier."

"Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to enjoy this?" Sylvester mused, picking up the brown bottle and holding it to the light.

"It's a potion that will prevent conception," she said. "I got it from a herbalist in Lulworth."

"What." Sylvester stared at her, trying to understand what she'd said. Women didn't make those choices, they weren't theirs to make. He turned the bottle over in his hands, gazing at her in stunned disbelief. "Are you telling me you've been taking this since our marriage."

"Yes," Theo said. "Didn't you wonder why I hadn't conceived?"

"It did cross my mind," he said grimly. "Dear God in heaven, Theo! Why didn't you discuss this with me?"

"Well, at the beginning you said you wanted to set up your nursery without delay, and I didn't feel ready, and I thought if you refused to listen to me -"

"I'm not a brute, Theo," he interrupted. "I wouldn't force you to carry my child."

"Well, I didn't know that then." She plaited the sheet with restless fingers. "From what I understand about these matters, men don't expect their wives to have an opinion, let alone a way of enforcing that opinion. But I did."

Sylvester ran a hand through his disheveled locks, struggling with a melange of disbelief, resentment, and hurt. Of course, he'd expected her to do as other women did in these matters and simply accept the realities of the marriage bed.

"Why don't you want to bear my children?" he asked finally.

His wounded feelings were clear in his voice and his eyes as they rested gravely on her face, and Theo chewed her bottom lip, trying to think of how to assuage his hurt.

"It isn't that I don't want to," she said. "I just don't want to now. It's what Dame Merriweather said: It's best to look after the loving before you start breeding." She offered a tentative smile.

Sylvester looked down at the bottle he still held. "Do you have any idea what's in this? Have you the slightest idea what damage this kind of stuff can do you? It may well have prevented pregnancy, but what other effects was it having?"

"Dame Merriweather wouldn't give me anything that would harm me," she said with conviction.

"A country herbalist! What the devil does she know?" He put the bottle down and came over to the bed. "Listen, these medicines can do incalculable harm, I've heard horror stories aplenty." Not, however, among the kind of women Theo spent her time with. He kept the wry thought to himself.

Theo frowned. It was true the potion played havoc with her monthly cycle. "So what do you suggest?"

"There's a perfectly simple precaution I can take that involves no dangerous substances," he said, bending to extinguish the bedside candle. "So we'll leave it up to me from now on." Sliding a hand beneath her, he lifted her body so that he could pull down the coverlet. "Get in." Theo wriggled between the sheets, sliding over to make room for him. "Just until I'm ready," she said. "Yes," he agreed with a mock sigh. "Until then." "Perhaps we could try your method now." Her hand moved seductively over his body as he came in beside her. "I'd really like to see how it works…"

Chapter Twenty-five

Theo awoke to bright sunshine. Sleepily, she hitched herself on her elbows to look at the clock. It was almost ten. How could she ever have slept so late? But then she remembered. She lay back on the pillows, her hands drifting over her naked form, reminding her skin of the touches that had brought so much pleasure during those joyous hours before dawn.

She turned her head and frowned at the empty space beside her. When had Sylvester left her? Presumably he'd woken long ago; he rarely slept after the sun came up. She closed her eyes again, running her hand over the sheet where he'd lain, over the pillow that still bore the indentation of his head.

He claimed to care for her, yet he demanded that she keep her distance from him in all but passion. What kind of love was that? But, then, perhaps no one had ever loved him, so he didn't know how to express such an emotion.

She thought of Lavinia Gilbraith, mean-spirited, carping witch that she was. It was impossible to imagine her loving anyone, even her son.

She would just have to teach her husband herself… by example.

On that energetic determination Theo sprang from bed, guiltily thinking of her mother-in-law, who was presumably waiting for her hostess's attention. She hoped the cabbage roses in the pink bedroom hadn't upset Mary's delicate digestion. After pulling on her dressing gown she reached for the bellpull to ring for Dora.

She heard Henry's voice in Sylvester's room next door. It was pitched very low. Then she heard a sound that sent chills down her spine, and her hand dropped from the bellpull. It was an inarticulate, animal-like moan of pain, interspersed with the dreadful sounds of helpless dry retching.

She crept to the wall and pressed her ear against it. What was happening? Was Sylvester ill? The dreadful moan came again, a sound that chilled her blood, it was so filled with despairing endurance.

Sylvester had that headache again. That other part of his past – his precious privacy – that was forbidden to her.

She went out into the corridor and tried to lift the latch on Sylvester's door. The door was locked. In the name of goodness, she thought with a surge of exasperation, how could he expect to spend a lifetime with her, to grow old with her, all the while keeping the most vulnerable parts of himself secret from her? And most particularly this hideous curse?

Back in her own room, she stood thinking for a minute, then went to the window. There was a narrow iron balcony, little more than a foothold outside. Its twin was outside Sylvester's room, a large sideways footstep away. Curzon Street was two floors below. A barouche bowled down it at a fast clip as she leaned out. She craned her neck and saw a scrap of curtain at Sylvester's window flutter in the wind. The long window was cracked open.

Without conscious decision she ran to the armoire, pulled out her riding habit with the divided skirt, and dressed rapidly. She braided her hair, slipped a pair of light, soft-soled slippers on her feet, and returned to the window.

Heights had never bothered her. For years she and Edward had clambered over the cliff face at Lulworth Cove searching out gull rookeries without once considering the crashing surf and jagged rocks beneath them. But a busy London street below was unnerving in a way surf and rocks had never been.

Theo turned her back on the street, faced the wall, and threw her leg over the low ornate railing, feeling for the brick ledge that ran between the two balconies. Her foot found it, and she straddled the railing, taking a deep, steadying breath. She'd have to bring her other foot over, and for a minute she'd be standing on this narrow ledge that would accommodate only her toes. But her hand could reach the other balcony. She stretched her arm, and her fingers closed over the iron. She would have a firm grip on both balconies while her feet were in no-man's-land. Once she'd got her left foot onto Sylvester's balcony, she'd be home and dry.

It was pure craziness. It was exhilarating. More than anything, though, it was necessary. Sylvester needed her. She had opened herself to him. He must open himself to her.

With a swift prayer to the gods, who certainly owed her something, Theo swung her other foot to the ledge and for a terrifying second was poised above the street, her toes clinging to the ledge, her hands, white-knuckled, gripping the balcony on either side. Her heart thudded in her throat as she gingerly raised her left foot Now she was held by five toes and ten fingers. She swung her left leg sideways, over the rail behind her left hand, and as the cold metal touched her calf she heaved a sigh of relief. The rest was easy.