“No doubt they’ll hear more. They had better take themselves out of the stables altogether for the next fifteen minutes or so,” Caroline said, her fingers moving with skill against his breeches.
She had his clothes unfastened in a trice, but any thought he had harbored of finding a nice bed of sweet-smelling straw in which to ravish her was banished as soon as her fingers touched him. He swelled in her tiny palm, and she ran her hand over him even as he lifted her skirts.
“There is no blanket here,” Anthony said.
“We don’t need one,” she gasped. “This wall is sound and will serve.”
Anthony laughed under his breath, and then she squeezed him in both hands. He shuddered, his laughter dying even as his tongue sought hers, his lips ravishing hers.
She moaned as his hand trailed up her thigh, past her garters to the soft inner flesh above them. Anthony fought his body and hers, trying not to rush headlong into oblivion. He wanted to linger over her, to draw out their pleasure. He feared he might hurt her in his desperate need.
She clutched his shoulder with one hand as she milked his manhood with the other. He drew her hands away, raising them above her head as he pressed her back against the wall. She moaned in protest, but his lips sealed hers, silencing her with his tongue.
“I am the one wearing trousers here,” he said. “I am the one in control of this encounter.”
“Are you really?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
She lifted one leg and wrapped it around his waist, pressing the heat of her core against him. He moaned, and she wriggled against him, swirling her hips to show him he was not in charge after all.
Anthony raised her other leg then, both hands on her bottom. When he entered her, she stopped circling her hips and moaned long and loud. She seemed to forget who was challenging whom as pleasure began to consume her.
Anthony lost himself in the warm, tight feel of her flesh as she clasped him. He raised her higher and thrust into her again, unable to speak, able only to focus on what he was doing. The pleasure filled him like a flash tide, swelling higher and higher as he moved.
Caroline gasped beneath his lips, her hands caught in his hair. She clutched him close, all thought of control gone. Anthony saw her eyes glaze over with passion, and he began to move harder, faster, watching her face all the while. When he saw her eyes close and felt her center tighten around him like a vise, he held her still, letting her convulsions rise before driving himself into her again, making her pleasure last.
Caroline sobbed his name at the last, and that was what finally broke his control. He thrust one last time and lost himself in her, shuddering with his own release. He breathed her name, his lips in her hair. He felt the ground shake and realized it was his legs that were trembling. He withdrew from her and drew her down onto a bench with him, holding her on his lap as his limbs slowly began to stop shaking.
“My God,” Caroline said. “We must visit the stables together more often.”
Anthony laughed as she leaned against him, her small hand pressed to his chest directly over his heart.
Act III
“A woman may be made a fool,
if she has not a spirit to resist.”
The Taming of the Shrew
Act 3, Scene 2
Chapter 21
Ravensbrook, Shropshire
December 1816
“She is a tigress,” Anthony said. “It happened three months ago, but I cannot get the image out of my mind. I have never known another woman like her.”
He finished relating the story of Caroline’s fight with the attacker in the barley field as he sat in his study with Pembroke, smoking cigarillos. December had arrived, and soon Anthony’s friends would flock to London for the Prince Regent’s Twelfth Night ball. The time had come for Anthony to decide whether to take his wife into the city or stay at home with her.
He had not left her often in the last few months. They had ridden out together the times his schedule would permit it, though they never visited the saddle room, after scandalizing the head groom with their last visit. Caroline rode out with a young groom when Anthony could not go with her.
They had shared time on her archery range. Anthony had bought his own bow, and neither was able to best the other in their ongoing contest of wills. Caroline no longer seemed to feel the need to resist his strictures set up to protect her. Anthony was not certain he truly knew her in spite of the relative peace of the last months, in spite of the pleasure he found in her arms. Her brown eyes were as fathomless as they had been on the day they first met.
His wife had introduced him to his tenants, some of whom he had never before bothered to meet, though he had lived at Ravensbrook for almost all his youth. Anthony had not realized that, while he was abroad fighting for the king off and on for more than a decade, life in Shropshire had gone on, babies being born and old folks dying. Caroline bridged the gap between him and his tenants, reintroducing him to each family in turn, making certain each tenant knew their value. She had arranged a festival at harvest time, with dancing and feasting and cider for all from the extra pressings from the apple orchard.
She ran his household with such calm skill, with such unflappable coolness, he almost did not recognize the fiery woman who came to his bed in the dark reaches of the night. She was a tigress there, learning every trick he taught her and coming up with more. He had sampled women in London and on the Continent, but no woman had ever fascinated him as much as his lovely wife.
Pembroke blew smoke in rings to the ceiling as his friend watched him from his perch beside the window. “I have never known a woman who could fight with a knife.”
“Neither have I,” Anthony said.
Both men sat in silence, contemplating the smoke above their heads. Anthony found his thoughts drifting to the supple length of his wife’s arm and the deceptive appearance of her frailty until she drew her dagger. “I have forbidden her to do it again,” Anthony said. “But she is an incredible woman.”
“And she obeys you in this?” Pembroke asked, his eyebrow rising.
Anthony’s dark eyes grew hard. “She does,” he answered. “She has learned obedience.”
Anthony saw the speculative gleam in his friend’s gaze, but he did not answer it. He knew as well as Pembroke that three months was too short a time to be certain his errant wife had been tamed of her wild ways. He had not taken her knives from her, but they had disappeared as if they had never been. He had even searched her trunks for evidence of them and found only the pressed rose petals and jasmine soap she favored in her baths.
“That is good news,” Pembroke said, a circle of smoke rising above his head. “Not all men would sleep well, knowing a knife lay just steps from the pillow.”
“She has no need of knives. She has me to protect her.”
“But who will protect you?”
Anthony gave his friend a wry smile. “In spite of her newfound calm, I hesitate to bring her to London.”
Anthony was hoping his friend would offer his opinion. Pembroke did not speak at once but put out his cigarillo, as if giving the matter some thought.
“Carlyle will be there,” Anthony said. “And so will my aunt.”
Pembroke knew the elderly Lady Westwood was still a favorite of Anthony’s. As one of his last living relatives, the old lady got on rather well with Anthony. It was Victor who concerned him.
“You are afraid Victor will see how much you value her,” Pembroke said. He was careful not use the word love. “You’re afraid he will interfere with her in some way.”
Anthony’s mouth grew tight and grim. “He might try.”
“Did the Prince Regent specifically request her presence?” Pembroke asked.
“I had a messenger from him today, inviting us to his Twelfth Night ball.”
Pembroke leaned back against the cushions of his chair and faced his friend. “Then you have no choice. You must bring her.”
“There is always a choice.”
Caroline raised the knife she had just taken from her opponent.
“You must learn to wield any blade as an extension of your arm,” Ralph Higgins said. “You will use it to extend the reach of your hand.”
She had been working with Ralph for two months, and each day as they began her training, he always said the same thing. He taught her even greater speed than she learned from her father’s men. Ralph was small, barely taller than she was, and almost as slight. He lived by speed and his wits, as her father’s men had taught her to do.
Ralph worked with her with rapiers, as well, so her fencing skills would not leave her completely. Though Ralph was not as deft with a rapier as she was, his skill with a short blade was unmatched. He taught her tricks a small person could use easily against a larger opponent, and how to win a fight as quickly as possible. He reminded her that it was her wits that would serve her best in any fight, so long as she kept hold of her temper.
Caroline wondered if she would finally get the chance to use her wits among the ton of London. She would not enter into combat in the city, but she had no doubt there were many among the nobility who would challenge her right to be there. Though she was a baron’s daughter, her family never spent time in the capital. As an outsider, she would need to keep her cool when surrounded by the aristocratic elite.
She had met some of those people at her father’s house party and had little desire to see them again. But the thought of seeing London, where ships from all over the world brought people and goods to the heart of the empire, thrilled her as almost nothing else had. She knew Anthony was considering whether or not he should bring her to the city, though he had not yet brought up the subject.
Since a journey to London was what she wanted above all things, she knew better than to ask for it. She would make Anthony believe such a trip to be his own idea, so he would not fight her every step of the way on the road to town.
She cursed herself for her idle thoughts, for Ralph pressed her hard, with no quarter given for the fact that she was his employer, with no intention of shielding her or making her way an easy one. She thanked him silently even as she gained her footing and pressed back against him, blade to blade. If he was soft with her, a real opponent would not be.
They fought, and for once he could not regain his advantage. Though he weighed more and had faced men in hand-to-hand combat, he could not move faster than she did. That day, in the dim lamp light of Viscount Carlyle’s rented cottage, he gave way before her. Caroline smiled but did not lower her guard until she heard the stamping of booted feet and a shrill whistle pierced the air.
Ralph nodded to her and stepped back, no longer her opponent but her teacher. Caroline saluted him and lowered her weapon, turning toward the noise by the door.
Her groom, Jonathan, clapped enthusiastically. He followed her everywhere, when she went into the gardens at home and whenever she rode out on horseback.
Anthony had relented and let this one youth accompany her instead of two grooms. Her husband knew the seventeen-year-old boy was devoted to her. She confided in Jonathan that she worked with a blade as a surprise for her husband, that one day she hoped to thrill the earl with her prowess.
Caroline felt a sting of remorse at that fiction, but she wished it was true. In her deepest heart, she hoped that someday Anthony would accept her as she was. Until that day, if it ever came, it was not her fault she had to sneak around to protect herself. Anthony had brought her to that.
She sheathed her blade and nodded to Ralph as he put his away. Jonathan left to saddle the horses, but someone else watched her from the doorway.
“Is there no end to your talents, Lady Ravensbrook?”
She smiled, straightening the skirt of her riding habit. She no longer fought in breeches since the day Ralph pointed out that if she were truly under attack, she would very likely be wearing a riding habit or a gown.
“You flatter me, my lord Carlyle.”
“Indeed, I do not. You are highly skilled.”
“That may be, but my skills remain a secret. My husband would not approve.”
“Perhaps he has not seen your prowess with a blade. If he did, surely he would be proud of you.”
Caroline frowned. “No,” she said. “My husband is not proud of me.”
Victor’s blue gaze was steady on hers. “Then he is a fool.”
Caroline thanked Ralph for his work, handing him a gold sovereign. He bowed to her and pocketed the coin. “And now I leave you to speak with your other employer,” Caroline said.
“One of them,” Victor remarked.
She mounted Hercules unassisted, drawing the reins tight so her mount danced in a circle as she waited for Jonathan to join her. She and her horse were both impatient to be gone.
“Was that Viscount Carlyle, my lady?”
“It was.”
Jonathan did not mount his horse. “Lord Ravensbrook loathes that man, my lady, though I have never been told why.”
“Neither have I, Jonathan.”
“You should not speak to him, my lady. I think Lord Carlyle is a bad man.”
Caroline smiled. “I am sure I have known better, but there seems little harm in him.”
“I think he is a bad man,” Jonathan said again.
Caroline saw in the implacable expression in his eyes. From the set of his jaw, she was suddenly certain he would tell someone of her outings if she did not concede now. She had learned much in the two months she’d been working with Ralph Higgins. That would have to do for now. In future, she would find another way to practice.
“Do not trouble yourself, Jonathan. We will not come here again.”
The boy looked relieved. “Very good, my lady.”
Jonathan mounted then, and Victor bowed to her from where he was standing in the cottage door. If he had heard it all, he did not look surprised. Caroline still did not know why Anthony loathed that man, and she no longer cared. She knew only that Victor had helped her when her own husband would not.
***
Caroline rode home in time to greet Anthony and Pembroke over tea in her sitting room. The sun had long since set, and the fire was warm in the hearth. She poured tea for both the gentlemen first, preparing Anthony’s as he liked it, with a touch of cream and no sugar. Pembroke prepared his own, his eyes on her. Anthony sat on the settee beside her, content as always to sip his tea and leave most of the talking to his friend.
Watching Caroline, Pembroke turned to Anthony. “There is no way you cannot bring this woman to meet the prince. He will love her on sight.”
Perhaps this was the moment she might press her suit. She hungered to see London the way she hungered for her husband’s body.
As much as Anthony irritated her and as much as she wished her husband would communicate with her in some way other than issuing orders, she still wanted him. And a delicate tenderness had grown between them, a bit like a hothouse flower. Something lovely and very fragile. As she sat staring at her beautiful husband, she wished it was enough.
Had she asked to go to London, Anthony might have refused outright, stating yet again how he wanted only to keep her safe. Perhaps if he thought the journey Pembroke’s idea, he might give his consent.
She kept her eyes on Anthony. “Yes, Husband. Will you take me to London for the holidays?”
She leaned close to him as if to offer more tea, but as she poured and pressed one breast against his arm, Anthony stirred next to her restlessly. Caroline saw the smile in his eyes and reveled in the desire that simmered between them. Had they been alone, he would have reached for her. As it was, Anthony kept his hands on his cup and saucer.
“The Prince Regent has asked to meet you, Caroline. Of course, we will go.”
Chapter 22
London
They came to London almost three weeks before the holidays, and Caroline began to realize there was more to her husband than the autocratic man she had come to know over the past months.
; While he tried to keep a close watch on her in Shropshire, he did not keep her from the excitement of London. On hearing that Caroline had never seen a play, Anthony took her at once to Drury Lane. She loved it so much they returned each night for a new production.
They watched plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe and a modern farce neither of them liked. Caroline even found herself enjoying a production of The Taming of the Shrew. The actress who played Katherine, a woman named Titania, breathed life into the old language, as did her fellow players.
At the end of the play, when Katherine admonished wives to obedience, tamed at last, Anthony seemed to miss the heavy irony with which Titania infused the scene. He leaned close and whispered in Caroline’s ear, “An example to live by, Wife.”
Caroline laughed under her breath and turned her head to whisper back, “Husband, you are mistaken. It is I who will tame you.”
He took her hand and led her out of the theatre. He did not wait until they got home that night but had her in the closed carriage on the short ride back to their town house.
On most days, Anthony went out on business with his colleagues in Parliament and to care for his shipping interests with the East India Company. On one of those days, Caroline took advantage of his absence to go out and buy herself a sword.
It was a fencing rapier meant for a boy, but it had a decent weight for her arm, and its hilt was coated in a layer of fine leather. She purchased it and the box it came in as Tabby looked on in consternation.
“What his lordship does not know will hurt no one,” Caroline said. She had a rapier already, but she had been forced to leave it behind in Shropshire after her lessons with Ralph Higgins had ended. Though it was winter, she saw no reason why she could not practice her fencing alone indoors. She would drill herself in the motions, though of course she could not spar.
She took herself home to Ravensbrook House and skipped luncheon, climbing instead straight to the ballroom on the third floor of the house, where she drew her new rapier from its box. The blade gleamed in the sunlight from the high windows, and she waved the blade with a flourish, not minding that its edges and tip were blunted. It was useless in combat, but that made it no less a work of art.
How to Tame a Willful Wife Page 16