She had rested peaceably every night of that trip. Unlike now.
On the return journey, Nate kept her awake and occupied into the long hours of the night. There was nothing peaceable about that. Not that she was complaining about their carnal activities. And yet as they drew closer to Brambledon, Marian dozed off to sleep.
She supposed she should have expected for Nate to bring her Haverston Hall. It was his home. She was his wife. He wouldn’t deposit her at her house—her former home, she mentally amended. As his wife, she would live with him.
“Come, Marian.” He shook her shoulder lightly.
“I’m awake,” she said groggily, rising and permitting him to lift her down onto the ground.
She blinked and noticed several staff members standing very correctly by the front of the door, watching her avidly as though she might break into song or dance or perform a neat trick for them. She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat, fighting against the irrational urge to cry.
She was no duchess.
They all knew. They saw that at once. They saw through her for what she was—an imposter. A common woman without any rightful claim to this role thrust upon her. What’s more . . . she didn’t want it. She had never wanted to be a member of the nobility. Not after living in their world as a servant—even if an upstairs servant.
An elegant, well-dressed young man stepped forward. She recognized him from her previous visit. Her face heated, aware that he knew of her late night visits with the duke. Likely all of his staff did.
Misery swallowed her whole.
She forced a smile as Nate introduced her to the waiting staff.
Once they entered the foyer, she gave his sleeve a tug and pulled him aside to whisper, “I need to go home to my sisters.”
He frowned at her. “This is your home now.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but the words never came. Not when she heard—
“Marian! You’re back!”
She turned just as her sisters excitedly rushed down the stairs toward her. She looked from them to Nate in bewilderment. “They are here?” she murmured.
He gave a single stiff nod.
Her heart swelled a little. “Thank you.”
He shrugged just as she was surrounded and embraced by her sisters. From over Charlotte’s head, she watched him silently slip away as though uncomfortable with the emotional display.
“We’re so glad you’re back! We can’t wait to tell you everything you’ve missed. The entire village is aflutter over news of your elopement.”
She’d been gone only four days, but staring at her sisters’ animated faces, it felt so much longer. Likely because her world had changed so dramatically since she’d gone and returned. Life as they knew it had vanished and was replaced with something else, something new and exciting and a little terrifying in its strangeness.
Her sisters started rattling off names of people and their various reactions.
“. . . the Pembrokes are in quite the shock. They’ve called on us here twice since you—”
Her gaze swung to Charlotte. “Is this true?” Hope tightened inside her chest. “The Pembrokes called on you?”
Charlotte smiled rather vaguely. “Yes,” she murmured. “Billy and I took a stroll about the gardens.”
Marian studied Charlotte’s face, trying to gauge how she felt about this, but as usual Charlotte revealed nothing. She was that way—the opposite of Nora. She kept her emotions in check, carefully tucked away and out of sight.
“And this is . . . good, yes?” Marian wanted confirmation that Charlotte was happy. She had her suitor back . . . perhaps even her fiancé again.
“The ol’ Pembroke dragon insisted on it.” Nora snorted. “She was practically throwing William at Charlotte. Predictable, is it not? We are kin to a duke now and suddenly deemed worthy.”
Marian continued to gaze at Charlotte, waiting for her reaction to all of this.
She finally nodded in agreement. “Yes. It’s good.”
Not exactly an exuberant affirmation of joy, but Marian accepted it. Charlotte had her suitor back. Her sister’s life was returning to how it had been before Papa died.
Everything Marian had done would be worth it, after all.
“Come.” Charlotte led her from the foyer and up the stairs. “You must be weary from your travels. We’ll show you to your room.”
They chattered all the way up the stairs, still very excited over their change in circumstances.
Halfway down the corridor, Marian stopped and looked at each of her sisters. “Wait. What of Mr. Lawrence? Have you heard from him?” How could she have forgotten him? When she last left Brambledon she was still betrothed to him. She winced.
Nora and Charlotte exchanged uneasy glances.
“What?” she pressed.
“Well, we weren’t there to witness . . .”
“What happened?”
Charlotte moistened her lips. “Billy was at the draper’s with his mother when the news came through the village. Mr. Lawrence happened to be there, too.”
Marian nodded, dread pooling in her stomach. She wanted to believe he wasn’t so terribly offended at being jilted. At least, not so offended that he would make her life difficult. The despicable man had bullied her into a betrothal. A humiliating jilting was the least of what he deserved.
“Billy said Mr. Lawrence did not take it well.”
Even though Marian was free of him, safe forever from all his ugly threats, a little tremor ran through her. “What did he do?”
“Oh, there was some jeering and mocking. A crowd gathered. It was not nice. Well, not nice for Mr. Lawrence. People laughed. He smashed a jar and stormed out. No one has seen him since.”
“Oh, he deserved it.” Nora shrugged. “Now, let’s help you get settled in and you can tell us all about your trip. How was your wedding? Was it romantic?”
“We eloped to a border town,” Marian said dryly.
“Oh, la!” Nora clasped her hands together. “I hope someone sweeps me off my feet like that some day.”
Shaking her head, Marian followed her sisters down the corridor.
Nate found Lawrence at his house.
There had been no question ever in his mind that he would call on the brute and take him to task for all his misdeeds. Marian was his wife now. He could not let insults against her go unpunished.
And yet it was more than that—more than Nate doing what he ought to do. There was a whole host of emotions churning and simmering through him. Feelings he’d never experienced before.
Even if Marian had not been his wife, someone should thrash the lout for what he had done to her—what he had attempted to do. He deserved no less.
He deserved to bleed.
Never far in the back of Nate’s mind was the thought—the fear. What if he had never come to know Marian? If she’d never hid herself beneath his table? If she’d never knocked on his door and offered herself to him in such a bold and tempting manner?
She would have married the blacksmith. She would belong to him. She would have spent her days trapped, broken, miserable, crushed beneath the boot of a man with no measure of empathy for her.
Nate knew a bit about the hell of living among bullies. Only his hell had come to an end. He’d finished school and escaped them. He’d grown into a man who could defend himself.
There would never have been an end for Marian. Never an escape.
And that fed his rage, carrying him to the blacksmith’s door, intent on collecting reprisal, to mete out justice.
When he knocked at the door, a servant answered. “Mr. Lawrence is not at home,” she informed him, but her shifting, nervous gaze told Nate a much different story.
Nate stepped back off the stoop to assess the house with a critical eye and noticed a second floor window with parted drapes. He caught a glimpse of a man there before the figure quickly stepped back into the shadows.
“Pardon me.” Nate pushed the door open wider and
stepped past the woman.
“Wh-what are you . . . you cannot barge in here even if you are a grand lord,” she sputtered.
Nate ignored her and took to the stairs, quickly locating the room abovestairs that faced out to the front lawn where he had seen the man in the window.
The door was ajar and he strode inside, stopping to sweep his gaze over the room.
The bastard was waiting for him, his face splotchy red, his hands opening and curling into fists at his sides. He was panting like a bull, a veritable giant, each of his hands reminiscent of anvils.
Lawrence might own a successful smithy with several men working under him doing the day-to-day labor, but the man was a blacksmith by trade, and here was the evidence of that. He was thick, his hands work-scarred and ready to bring abuse, and he was apparently undeterred by Nate’s title or position.
The hulk of a man charged him with a roar, which was fine with Nate. He detested bullies. He had that on his side—a lifelong aversion to bullies. And one could not discount his rage. It was powerful fuel.
This man’s treatment of Marian filled him with such anger that he was only too ready to unleash it and meet the charge.
Lawrence ducked low and rammed hard into Nate’s torso, wrapping his thick arms around his waist and lifting him off his feet with the howl of a wounded bear.
Nate’s vision darkened for a moment as he was slammed against the wall. Every dirty trick Nate had ever learned from school rushed to the front of his mind, instinct awakened.
He lifted his arms above his head, locked his hands together and brought them down hard on top of Lawrence’s skull.
Immediately Nate was free. The blacksmith fell to the floor with a moan. Nate wasted no time. Hesitation marked the difference between triumph and pain.
Nate kicked him. Once. Twice.
This was brute battle. There was no fairness, no holding back.
Before he could land a third kick, Lawrence twisted surprisingly swiftly for a man of his size and grabbed Nate’s foot, yanking up so that Nate landed on the floor on his back. Lawrence delivered a fist to Nate’s ribs that had him gasping for breath.
With another roar, Lawrence jumped and came down, on the verge of dropping all his considerable weight on Nate.
Nate rolled at the last moment, saving his body from being crushed by the bigger man.
Lawrence cried out when he crashed down on the floor, clutching his arm, which took the brunt of the force. The rug offered thin cushion, but that gave him little pause. He grunted like an animal as he got up on his knees and kept coming. He was unstoppable.
But so was Nate.
A quick glance around and Nate snatched a vase from a nearby table and brought it crashing down on the man’s head.
Lawrence fell, rolling onto his back amid shards of vase. His dark, small eyes glazed over in pain, staring straight up at the ceiling, seeing nothing, Nate suspected. Feeling only pain.
Panting, Nate loomed over him. “Stay clear of my wife. I don’t ever want to have to come here again.”
Lawrence released a low groan, and those beady eyes rolled back in his head before his lids drifted shut.
With a satisfied grunt, Nate held his sore middle and gingerly walked from the room and out of the house.
Chapter 24
Marian wasn’t sure what to expect, but she had thought perhaps she would share a bedchamber with Nate.
Her husband certainly had no hesitation when it came to indulging in the perks of the marriage—at least, he had since the day of their marriage. There might be things lacking in their union, certainly, but physical intimacy was not one of them.
She brushed out her hair at the dressing table. She had just started plaiting the long strands when a knock sounded. Her gaze flew to the door of her bedchamber.
Another knock and this time her gaze moved to another door along the wall of her room. She had not given it much thought when she was first shown to her chamber, but now she called out, “You may enter.”
Nate stood on the other side. She looked beyond his shoulder and noted the lavish room with its own bed behind him. “We have adjoining rooms?” she asked. She had assumed a maid was knocking.
“You were not aware?” He lifted an eyebrow.
She shook her head.
She supposed that was how it was done for those of the upper echelons of Society, but she knew that wasn’t the case for Clara. She shared a room with her husband. In fact, she believed the Duke of Autenberry shared the same bedchamber with his wife, too. Separate rooms weren’t a necessary standard.
She glanced at her reflection in her dressing mirror and tried not to visibly pout.
“It makes matters more convenient,” he elaborated.
Rubbish. She’d thought marriage might bring them closer. Despite his warning of no warmth and affection, she had hoped it might feel . . . special. So far it didn’t feel very different from when she was his paramour. Not that she had a great deal of experience being his kept woman prior to marrying him. However brief it had been, she understood how it was to have worked.
It was just to have been shagging. A physical exchange.
Intimacy without intimacy.
So far that described her marriage accurately. No wonder he had been so agreeable to marrying her if this was to be the way of it.
He stepped inside, shut the door and strode over to her. He tugged her up from the bench and hauled her into his arms.
All thoughts fled then.
He kissed her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck because that’s the kind of weak creature she was. They kissed until they were both panting. She slid her hands down his chest, reveling in his broad chest, in the firmness of his body beneath his robe. Marian dipped her fingers inside his robe, eager for his warm skin. She brushed her hand over his ribs.
He jerked and hissed out a breath.
She pulled back in alarm. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He attempted to kiss her again, but she parted his robe, searching, unsure what she was looking for—
She gasped. “Nate! What happened?”
Ugly bruises of varying shades of blue marred the skin of his torso.
“Nothing.”
“It does not look like nothing.” Her alarm twisted into real fear. He was injured. Hurt. It had never occurred to her that something could happen to him, but now that the realization was there, she could not chase away the fear. “Tell me. I demand to know—”
“I got into a bit of a scuffle.”
She stilled. He was a duke. Who engaged in fisticuffs with a duke? “A scuffle? With whom?”
He sighed, avoiding her gaze, clearly resistant.
“Who?” she pressed sharply.
“Lawrence.”
“Mr. Lawrence?” she echoed. Then she felt her eyes widen as understanding washed over her. “For me? You went after him?”
Nate gave a single hard nod, his expression resolute.
“Are you mad? He’s a giant.”
He shrugged. “You know what they say. The bigger the man, the harder the fall.”
She looked back to his torso. “Are you hurt badly?”
“It’s just a bruise. He got in one good punch. I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.”
She returned her gaze to his face, gaping. “You have? But you’re a . . . duke!”
His lips twisted. “Dukes can get in fights.”
And get hurt . . . they could get hurt. She did not like that.
She brushed her fingers gingerly over his battered flesh. “You should not have done that,” she scolded.
“You’re my wife,” he said gruffly, his breath rustling the tiny hairs at her temple. “He threatened you. That could not go unanswered.”
So it was the principle. She was his wife . . . his property, in a sense.
And yet as his gaze traveled hotly over her face, she did not feel like a mere possession. She felt like something more. He brought his hand up to her face a
nd brushed a tendril back off her cheek. She felt like something cherished. He stroked a thumb against her bottom lip. She felt wanted. Needed. She felt as though he would go to battle for her again and again because of this . . . because of what there was between them.
They were so close now their breaths collided and mingled into one fusion of air. “I would gladly take a thousand beatings, if it kept you from harm,” he whispered thickly.
She slid her hand down from his battered ribs, parting his robe wider, seeking the hot length of him. When she found him, she wrapped her hand around his already stiff member and squeezed. He pulsed and swelled in her grasp.
With a groan and a curse, he bent and picked her up, starting for her nearby bed.
“You’re injured!” she cried out in alarm.
“The only thing hurting right now is my cock. It needs to be inside you.”
Instantly, she was breathless, aroused. They came down together on the bed, and her hands shoved his dressing robe fully off him.
Sighing in pleasure at the sight of him, her hands skimmed his male form, so strong and warm. Her belly quivered, knowing the pleasure to come, the pleasure his body could give.
He lifted her nightgown, stroked over her thighs and touched her between the legs.
His fingers slid against her, inside her, filling her. She arched with a moan.
He kissed her. “You’re already wet for me.”
She moaned into his mouth as he thrust his manhood inside her.
He drove into her and she rose up to meet every thrust, spiraling closer and closer—
Suddenly he was gone.
She whimpered in disappointment.
Groaning, he moved away.
She lifted up on her elbows, watching as he spilled his seed on the bedding.
Her arousal faded away as confusion filled her. What was he doing?
His gaze met hers. “Sorry. You didn’t finish, did you?” He reached for her. “I can—”
“What did you do that for?” she asked. No, she demanded.
“Do what?”
She paused, thinking how to say it. When it came to matters of intimacy, she still had a lot to learn, it seemed. “At the end . . . you curtailed yourself.”
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