The room was dark. The sheets were turned down on her great, tall bed, but it was empty. He scanned the room, and discovered a faint glow of candlelight shining from within the curtained window seat. He ducked under the pleated silk panels concealing the recessed space. Aurelia curled in the furthermost corner of the right bench, her knees pulled up to her chest. A lace-edged dressing gown pooled around her on the pillows. Its bright, floral-patterned embroidery contrasted with her miserable expression. As she turned to look at him, her gaze communicated dread.
“I see you’ve found yourself a little mouse hole,” he said. He sounded crueler than he meant to.
She didn’t answer, only drew her arms more tightly around her knees. He sat on the left bench, across from her, the gilt silver dinner tray balanced on his knees. His gaze strayed up to the curtains, then past the flickering candle on the sill to the black night outside.
“I’m happy if you like this place,” he said with careful softness, to make up for his earlier tone. “I used to hide in here as a child, when I visited my great-aunt Emma. In the daytime you could see the neighbor’s park, with intersecting paths and diamond shaped topiaries. I wonder if they’re still there.”
“They are,” she murmured.
“I’ve brought you some food. Have you eaten today?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Aurelia.”
She seemed to shrink within herself, a miserable, fragile huddle in his window seat. In his house. His wife...and she wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t smile or even attempt to make basic conversation.
He deserved it.
“I suppose we’ll learn to tolerate one another eventually,” he said. “I expected no more from this marriage.”
“I don’t want to be married at all.” She shifted, leaning her forehead against the smooth, leaded glass. “I want to go home.”
“This is your home now. You’re married to me, and after last night, possibly pregnant with my child. We’re bound forever, whether you wish to be or not.” He sounded petty, pedantic, like some blasted schoolmaster. So tedious, this being-a-husband nonsense. “I want you to eat something,” he said. “And before you say no, pray remember the consequences of disobedience. I won’t hesitate to spank you again.”
She gave him a look of such burning hatred it might have singed the wool off a sheep, but she unfolded herself from her protective huddle and sat up across from him, pulling her dressing gown tighter across the curve of her breasts. He nudged the tray closer.
“It’s only...” She stared down at the artfully arranged dishes on the tray’s lace doily. “I’m not well. Perhaps you ought to call a physician.”
He felt a frisson of alarm. “A physician? Whatever is the matter?”
“Last night, after you coupled with me, there was...blood.”
The anxious pounding in his temples diminished. “There’s supposed to be blood. You were a virgin, weren’t you? It’s an unpleasant business, but I’m told most virgins bleed.” He sighed. “Eat something, whether you’re hungry or not. Even if you starve yourself to a skeleton, I’ll still take you to bed. I have no other choice. There must be an heir.”
He sounded like a scold but he didn’t know how else to go on. She set him on edge, this listless mouse hiding in his home. She feared him, and he wasn’t sure that was a good thing anymore. She began to eat, the tiniest bites that could still qualify as actual consumption of food. Her hair was half up, half down, a disarranged style that made her appear more luscious than she probably wished to.
“Coupled with you,” he muttered under his breath. “You make it sound so dispassionate. So stiff and cold.”
She continued to eat, not glancing up from her plate. He’d spoken low enough that she could pretend she hadn’t heard him, but he said the next words loudly enough to be clear.
“I want you to know that if you continue to bar the servants from your rooms, I’ll have your doors removed. That would make it interesting when we coupled, wouldn’t it?”
Her fingers tightened on her silverware. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“Am I to have no privacy then?”
“If I wish it.”
She took another miniscule bite of pheasant, chewing it for so long it must have turned to liquid in her mouth. She had magnificent lips. Fine, straight teeth. He wanted to put something quite a bit larger than a bite of pheasant into her mouth. Eventually, he’d try it.
Of course, she’d fight against him and refuse, and take to her bed in a fit of vapors like any well-bred lady would. Perhaps he wouldn’t bother to try. He doubted it would be worth all the outraged whining and crying he’d endure in return. There were a dozen ladies at Pearl’s who could perform exotic miracles with their tongues and lips, for a generous enough fee.
He looked away when he realized he’d been staring at her mouth. He was rigid, aching to push her back on the cushions and fuck her right here in her private, velvet-cushioned mouse hole. Perhaps she realized the bent of his thoughts, for she began to eat with greater intent. Pheasant, potatoes, roasted vegetables, and occasionally, a great drink of wine. Anything to delay the impending bedding, he thought drily. This marriage would kill him within the week.
He had no idea how he’d manage to live with her. He could send her to his country estate, leave her there and go on about life as if she didn’t exist, but that wasn’t an option until he had at least two sons in the nursery.
“Are you finished?” he asked as she picked at the assortment of cakes. She took a little taste of each, although she appeared to crave more. Why demolish the entire plate of pheasant and vegetables in self-preservation, and then leave the cakes? “You may eat all of them if you like.”
She glanced up at him guiltily. “A lady mustn’t overindulge in sweets.”
“Or she’ll be too fat to land a husband? Well, you’ve got a husband, so you needn’t worry about that anymore.” He wanted her to eat the cakes because he thought it would make her happy, and she was so unhappy about everything else. But she didn’t, and after she wiped her lips and hands, he put the tray aside on the bench.
“Before I take you to bed, Aurelia, I think I’d better inspect your bottom and make sure there’s no lingering damage from last night’s spanking.”
As he expected, she went beet red and pulled her dressing gown more tightly closed. “There’s no lingering damage. None at all.”
“I wouldn’t be a very good husband if I didn’t make sure. I doubt you can inspect yourself as closely as I can.” He put a hand on her arm and drew her resisting figure over his lap. “Come now. Don’t make a fuss or I’ll be forced to give you another spanking, and we’ll be right back where we began, won’t we?”
“It’s only—”
“It’s only what? That you didn’t learn your lesson about resisting me last night?”
She went still across his lap. While she let him draw up her dressing gown to bare her bottom, she vibrated with tension. Fury? Fear? Her reluctance aroused him, as did her ample, porcelain bottom cheeks dappled with two or three scattered bruises from the night before.
“You’re not fat, you know,” he said as she trembled beneath his fingers. “You’re perfect as you are. A man wants curves for pleasure. Nothing worse than a skinny, bony derrière.”
Aurelia lay tense and silent over his lap as he ran his palm over the sensitive skin of her bottom. Horrible, to know he stared at her nakedness. He handled her as boldly as he pleased, his full staff straining against his breeches. She could feel it against her hip. Was it true that he found her “perfect”? She’d always imagined herself plump beyond measure, and not attractive at all. She certainly didn’t have a bony derrière. If she had, she wouldn’t have had any padding at all when he walloped away at her.
Oh, she didn’t ever want that to happen again.
He kept her splayed over his lap for three minutes or more, groping and fondling her under the pretense of “inspecting for damage.” T
he only thing damaged was her dignity, because her husband had spanked her last night, and now forced her to submit to this lewd inspection. Now and then the edge of his thumb drifted between her bottom cheeks, and she jerked away from him. He only pulled her back and resumed his task.
At last, when her face flamed with humiliation, he released her. “Your bottom looks fine. It’s nice to know you can take a decent spanking if the situation warrants. Although I trust we’ll not have an encore performance tonight?” He raised an eyebrow as he took up the candle and gestured her to go out. “To the bed, my dear. Heirs don’t make themselves.”
She preceded him, thinking how terribly awkward and businesslike this was. If she’d wed Lord Warren, she was sure there would have been tenderness, even romance, between them.
But she hadn’t wed Lord Warren.
Lord Townsend lit a few more candles as she climbed into the bed. The sheets had been changed, the bloody evidence of their marriage’s consummation whisked away by a blushing maid as Clement clucked in a soft, pleased voice about honor and becoming a woman.
There was nothing pleasing about it, although Aurelia tried hard not to do anything tonight that Lord Townsend might interpret as “resisting.” He wanted to spank her again. She understood that, even if she couldn’t understand the reason. She didn’t want to give him any excuse to fulfill his wish.
She stared at the delicate floral pattern on the bed linens as her husband disrobed. What she’d seen of him the night before had thoroughly terrified her. He was made so differently from her. Well, of course he was, but he was even different from other men. He was larger, more physical somehow. She’d felt the hard muscles of his thighs last night as he’d laid her over them. She’d experienced the strength of his arms as he spanked her, and when he’d pushed her back on the bed and...mounted her... Well, then she’d felt an entire array of sensations that set her on edge. She had felt weak and fragile, and overtaken.
Her breath came shorter as he climbed onto the bed beside her. She stared at his face because it was easier than looking at the rest of his body. She felt his hard maleness poke her belly as he nudged her back on the pillows.
“There now, my little mouse,” he said. “It won’t hurt as much tonight, I promise.”
She blinked up at him. “Please don’t call me a mouse.”
“What shall I call you then?” He dipped his head, pressing his warm lips to her trembling ones. “Something more scandalous? More erotic?”
The way he kissed her...it scrambled her brain. “You may call me Lady Townsend,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so, little Aurelia.” He said her name in a low, breathless rasp. When she turned her face away, he grasped her chin and brought it back again. “I’ll call you ma petite chatte instead. Do you speak French, my little pussy?”
She startled as his fingers parted the lips of her sex. “I—I don’t think I speak the same kind of French you do.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And French nicknames seem a bit scandalous.”
“How difficult you are to please. I might call you anything and you’d find fault with it.” He slid his fingers to a hidden, sensitive place between her legs, a button of flesh that warmed in a very pleasant way and made her jerk against him. He smiled and stroked her again, and again. “My little grasshopper. There.”
Her eyes widened. “Grasshopper?”
“Yes, because you’re jumpy, and because you chirp when I touch you. A disapproving type of chirp, and very soft, but there you go.”
Aurelia didn’t think she chirped, but it was possible. The more he fondled her, the less her utterances remained in her control.
“I don’t know if I like being called a type of insect,” she said, shifting to give him better access to that marvelous bit of flesh.
He chuckled and delved his fingers downward, into the shameful, hot wetness that had developed there. She tried not to resist but he was handling her so freely. “Please...that hurts,” she lied.
“It doesn’t. It feels wonderful, and your body wants more. Let me bring you pleasure, Aurelia.”
He did find the most effective places to touch her. The tips of her breasts, the curve of her neck, and that aching, hot place between her legs. She stared up into his dark eyes, thinking that he smelled very good, like cinnamon and sandalwood, and other things she didn’t recognize. An unfamiliar tingling crept up to her breasts and down between her thighs. It wasn’t a civilized feeling, but something very uncontrolled and disturbing. The more he touched her, the more the feeling grew. She grasped his arms, struggling to maintain her composure.
“It would be okay for you to...to do things quickly,” she said. “You don’t need to take the time to p-pleasure me.”
His caresses stopped. He looked down at her and sighed. “I do need to take the time. It’s difficult to accomplish this properly if I don’t.”
“If only you understood how uncomfortable this makes me. I don’t wish to resist you, but...”
She cringed as he drew away. She expected a slap or a scolding, but he only lay back and rested his head on his arm. He stared at her a long time, his expression impossible to read.
“I’m not like you,” she whispered. She sounded cowardly, like the mouse everyone called her.
“You could be like me,” he said, moving closer again. “You could be exactly like me, and feel all the pleasure I feel, if you’d only allow yourself to do it. But they’ve drummed you so full of lessons on primness and propriety, and goddamned ladylike restraint.” He added a few more swear words that made her face burn. “They’ve raised you to be ‘good,’ to be cold and ashamed, and I’m the one who suffers for it.”
“I’m sorry.” He was so impassioned, so very angry with her. “Perhaps you could do what you must to get me with child, and then find your necessary pleasures elsewhere. I wouldn’t mind.”
His expression darkened even further. “Am I that awful? Honestly?”
He looked so irritated, she feared he would spank her again. “I’m trying to be a good wife. Since I can’t meet your needs—”
“Since you won’t meet my needs, you mean.”
She rested a hand on his shoulder. It was a pure act of courage, to touch him when he was in this mercurial mood. “I want to bear children for you. I mean to do it, but the rest of it...”
“It’s not your fault that you’re this way.” He sat upright and barked this out in a singularly frightening fashion. “It’s not your fault you’ve been raised to behave like some pure and precious vessel. All your cloying little friends are the same. It’s a damned shame, to my mind. A bloody damn waste of everyone’s happiness.”
“I agree,” she said quickly, to mollify him. His cursing disturbed her, but not as much as the thought of another spanking. What did he mean by a pure and precious vessel? She was being a lady, a creditable wife. She was in bed with him, wasn’t she?
He made a sound halfway between a mutter and a growl and climbed atop her, nudging open her legs. She felt his heavy, hard thing probing at her entrance and braced for pain, but he didn’t thrust inside. He kissed her instead, a soft, tender kiss that stole her breath and made the throbbing start again.
“My lord,” she said against his lips. He moved inside her a little bit, and her body tensed to accommodate him. A small plea escaped.
“Remember, I said it won’t hurt as much today,” he muttered. “And if you truly wish it, I’ll be quick about things.”
She nodded, her heart and her head full of too many conflicting impulses to form words. As uncomfortable as this act made her, there was something fascinating about it too, something that made her want to pull him close and cling to his shoulders. She supposed it was the very fact that they were joined together in such a close and intimate way. When else did this happen in life?
Her husband entered her, sliding in until their hips met, and then he went still inside her, staring down at her. As he promised, there was no pain like yesterday
, only the nagging, stretching ache. She wished she could like this joining, but it was so strange. She held onto his shoulders and lay very still as he moved in her repetitively, in and out, cradling her beneath him. His body seemed a hard, dangerous thing, but his kisses and caresses were so gentle.
As she pondered duty, and marriage, and babies, he tensed above her, and his breathing changed. He let out a ragged gasp and went still, shuddering as he propped himself over her. His organ pressed all the way inside her, holding her pinned to the bed.
Tears formed in her eyes. She was very afraid she would never come to like this. It didn’t hurt, and he was careful, but it seemed violent and uncivilized all the same. She was made to be a mother, a pillar of society, not a wanton in the bedroom. She knew it would be best to let him satisfy his needs elsewhere, as much as that offended her sense of decorum. Other husbands did so, in a discreet fashion, although her father disapproved of the practice.
Lord Townsend was nothing like her father.
After a moment her husband drew back, withdrawing from her body. The space inside her felt empty and cold. So did her soul. I’m sorry, she wanted to say. I’m sorry that I’m not warmer to you. This is just the way I am.
He pressed his cheek against hers and the threatening tears nearly overflowed. Then he rose without a word, gathered up his clothes, and crossed to the door. He turned back to her before he left. “Good night, grasshopper,” he said. “Sleep well.”
Chapter Five: Hemmed In
Aurelia tried to act as if everything was perfectly fine as she took tea in Townsend House’s parlor. Her mother and sister-in-law had come to call, and her mother’s friend, the Dowager Countess Overbrook, who happened to be the aunt of the man she loved. Lord Warren’s sister Minette had come too.
But not Lord Warren.
Aurelia had learned months ago, through Minette, that the Earl of Warren’s given name was Idylwild. His sister called him Wild sometimes, and if Aurelia had been fortunate enough to have him for her husband, she supposed she would have called him Wild too. Instead she had a husband named Hunter. Taken together the names amounted to Wild Hunter, which was rather off-putting when one thought about it. Such savage names for two refined, titled gentlemen. The thought of savagery brought other memories. A spanking. Rasping words. A hard, probing invasion...
Training Lady Townsend Page 6