A Baron for Becky

by Jude Knight

  Sarah’s fingertip traced the gemstones. “It is so pretty, Mama.”

  Very pretty, the two dark heads, so alike.

  “Your papa chose well.” She blushed when she said papa, and looked more beautiful than ever. How long would the duchess expect them to stay and be polite before she would let them escape to these promised guest chambers?

  Mercifully, it was no more than an interminable hour before Aldridge took pity. “Now, Mama, we must leave the newlyweds to themselves. Hugh has barely eaten a bite of this lovely tea, and Becky even less. Send them off to their suite and let them sort themselves out.”

  The duchess looked at them doubtfully. “I’d like to invite you to come down to dinner, only Haverford will be here, and he might be... I’m not sure...”

  “Send up a collation, Mama,” Aldridge advised, giving Hugh a broad wink behind his mother’s back.

  Sarah clung a little when Becky said goodnight.

  Aldridge had expected it, and planned a surprise to ease the moment. “Princess, say goodnight to Mama and Papa. I have a surprise for you, and we must not keep the horses waiting.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes at him, exactly as Becky did when he promised to surprise her, and she wasn’t sure she’d like it. His heart lurched.

  “Quickly, now,” he commanded, forcing a grin.

  Sarah’s eyes lit. “I know! You are taking me to Lady Daisy’s! In the curricle, Uncle Lord Aldridge? With Prince and Brown Beauty?”

  “In the curricle,” Aldridge confirmed, and she tucked her hand into his.

  “Goodnight, Mama,” she said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  The temptation of the treat carried her downstairs, and through greeting the horses she loved.

  Tucked up beside him with a rug to protect her from the September chill, she turned sober again.

  “What is it, sweetling? Are you worried about your new papa? He is a good man, Sarah, else I would not let you go to him.”

  To his dismay, she began to cry.

  Aldridge pulled the horses to a stop and sent the groom to their heads. If the whole of London wished to look on, let them. He took the little girl in his arms.

  “Princess? What is it? How can I fix it?”

  She burrowed into his shoulder, but shook her head. “You cannot. It is too late.” The words were muffled by his coat, but he heard them clearly enough. Too late for what?

  “Tell me, Sarah?” he coaxed.

  She pulled her head away enough to meet his eyes, her own brimming with tears. The violence of her hug had knocked her bonnet off her head, and he freed one hand to untie the ribbon that threatened to choke her. When he brushed her chin with his hand, it seemed to spur her into speech. “Why could you not keep us, Uncle Lord Aldridge? Do you not love us anymore?”

  Ah.

  “I love you very much, Sarah. I will always love you.”

  He tucked her back under his chin, rubbing his cheek against the silk of her hair, so like her mother’s.

  “Lord Overton will keep you safe, you and your mother, in a way I cannot, Princess.”

  “But you are a Great Man, Uncle Lord Aldridge. You can do anything,” the child protested.

  Not this. For his mother’s sake, for the sake of the duchy, even for the sake of Becky and Sarah, he could not have done what the child wanted. And now it was too late. Hugh and Becky were married.

  “I will make you two promises, Sarah. First, I will always love you. For my whole life, you will be my Princess Sarah, and I shall be your Uncle Lord Aldridge”

  “But I am going far away and will not see you,” Sarah protested.

  “Then you shall write to me, and I to you. That is my second promise, Sarah. Lord Overton is my friend, and he will be a good papa for you and a good husband for your mother. But if he makes you unhappy, either one of you, send for me, and I will come. I will always come, Princess, and I will take you away. I promise.”

  “Come. Let me dry your eyes and tie your bonnet. Lady Daisy will be waiting.”

  His promises seemed to reassure her. She trotted into Chirbury House willingly enough, and Rede and Anne escorted them up to the nursery floor. Sarah greeted her friend with smiles and hugs. Aldridge and his cousin watched from the door as Daisy showed off the treasures of the playroom, and Sarah, at Anne’s prompting, described her mother’s wedding.

  She would be content enough for tonight, and Becky and Hugh would soothe her fears in the coming weeks.

  He had been planning to dine at his club, but it lacked appeal.

  “Blue-devilled, cousin?” Rede asked. The man was too perceptive by half.

  Tonight, though, he could not, would not, be the Merry Marquis. Or perhaps he would. After all, legend had it, he always pleased himself.

  “Anne?” he asked, “Do you think I might stay for nursery tea?” Anne agreed with the friendliest smile his disapproving cousin-by-marriage had ever given.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I could fit my entire town-house in here,” said Becky, in a small awed voice that echoed in the palatial suite.

  “And a fair part of Overton Park into the space left over,” Hugh told her. “The Grenford family don’t do things by halves, do they?”

  She smiled, clearly cheered by the casual attitude he’d assumed for her benefit. They walked through the suite together, exploring the two bedchambers off a central sitting room, each with an adjoining dressing room. Most of the furniture was in the modern style: turned and gilded legs, damask upholstery in shades of green, inlays of marquetry in a dozen different woods with highlights of ivory and jet.

  The draperies were also green, brocade on the windows and figured velvet for the hangings on the huge beds, the only old-fashioned note. Undoubtedly, the beds had stayed because they were too big to shift without cutting into pieces. Even so, they were dwarfed in the huge rooms.

  Becky’s night attire had been laid out on one bed —a fetchingly virginal nightrail in white linen with a bodice of sheer muslin trimmed with lace and ribbons a deep flounce of lace at the hem. His cock twitched. She wouldn’t need that.

  Wait. Yes. Yes, she would, for he’d take great pleasure in removing it. His smile must have hinted at his thoughts, because Becky blushed.

  His bag had been unpacked in the other chamber. They’d see about that.

  “Your chamber or mine? And I warn you now, Becky, we will not have separate chambers at Overton Park. I intend we shall spend every night in the same bed.” No repeat of the debacle of his first marriage.

  “You choose,” she said, so he instructed the servants to move his things to Becky’s room.

  The servants fussed around, putting out food and drink, making sure the fire was stoked, plumping cushions, until Hugh chased them all out of the suite, and he and Becky were alone at last.

  She stood in the middle of the vast expanse, lost and alone, till he crossed to her and took both her hands.

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  She shook her head. “You go ahead, Hugh. I am not hungry.”

  “I am not hungry for food.”

  She smiled and nodded, looking up at him from under her lashes, her colour rising again. Who knew that a woman of her experience could be shy? No. He had to stop thinking that way. This was Becky. Rebecca Overton. His wife. His baroness.

  She followed without comment when he led her by hand through to their bedchamber.

  There he hesitated. “Becky, it is still daylight, but if I pull the curtains...”

  “No need, Hugh. Unless... I am not too large and ugly yet, Hugh, truly.”

  He shook his head, grimacing. “I was thinking of my scars. They’re not pretty, my dear. My first wife...”

  She put her finger on his lips. “Shall we agree, husband, that our pasts will not enter our bedchamber? You gained those scars fighting for king and country. They are nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He kissed the finger, then sucked it into his mouth, and she took a sharp breath. “Hugh.” A br
eathy gasp. A trained response?

  No. He mustn’t think like that. She was right; no pasts in their bedchamber.

  He took her into his arms then, and kissed her as he had wished all week, burying all doubts and questions in sheer sensation.

  When his hands fumbled at her sash, she drew away. “You first, Hugh. I want to see. Keep still.” He shook his head, but made no further protest, not moving while she tugged off his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat. She slipped her hands under the edges and ran them up his chest to his shoulders, pushing the waistcoat so it slipped backwards.

  She could feel his warmth through the fine linen of his shirt, and her own heat rose. His breath shortened, but he continued to obey her command to keep still, letting her slide the waistcoat off, then circle him, pulling the shirt from his waistband.

  She ran her hands up under the fabric, revelling in the feel of his hot, bare skin, but when she started to gather the material to lift the shirt off, Hugh trapped her wrists against his firm torso, caging her in a gentle, but inexorable, grip. He swooped in for another searing kiss.

  This time, it was Hugh who drew back, reluctantly, pulling her lower lip gently between his teeth and echoing her sigh.

  “Turnabout is fair play, Becky. My shirt stays until your gown goes.”

  She nodded, turning obediently so he could undo the sash. “You will need scissors, Hugh. The gown was a little large, and Her Grace’s maid sewed it to fit after I put it on.”

  In a rosewood box on a side table they found a vanity set with a set of sharp-bladed scissors. The maid had used fine, almost-invisible seaming to shape the cloth over Becky’s breasts, but Hugh quickly found the long tacks that reduced the diameter of the gown at the sides, and sundered them with eager snips.

  She trembled when he drew the gown over her head, his hands brushing her sides and her arms. He threw the expensive garment over the back of a chair, never taking his eyes from hers, and reached for her stays, but she stepped back.

  “The shirt,” she croaked.

  He obeyed, standing still while she slipped the braces over his shoulders then pulled the shirt gently, tenderly, until it slid from the pantaloons and she could lift it up and over his head.

  She was prepared, or she would have gasped. As with his face, smooth skin on one side contrasted with seared and puckered scars on the other. Show no disgust. Nothing but polite interest. In truth, she was not disgusted, but compassion would not be welcomed, either. He would take it for pity.

  His eyes were wary, the lust banked embers for the moment.

  “Your breeches?” she suggested.

  “Your stays first.”

  Fastened loosely at the base to accommodate her spreading belly, they were so tightly tied at the top that he cursed and retrieved the scissors to cut the laces. He tossed the stays after the gown, and stood for a moment, stroking her breasts through the chemise, running his thumbs over the hard nubs of her responding nipples.

  “The breeches,” she insisted.

  “You do it.” His body quivered slightly, like a hound waiting the command to course the hare.

  Her own hands fumbling, she undid the buttons on one side, very conscious of the fabric that strained over the evidence of his arousal. Her own breath was shuddering in her throat as she undid the other side. His fall dropped, and what was underneath sprang free, straining upwards, hard and ready. She swallowed.

  Her passage was readying for him: heat, swelling, liquid. Almost, she touched the proud jut, but she diverted her hands to unbutton the waist and the breeches dropped. He kicked them off, not looking down.

  The scars covered his left side from his cheek to his knee, pitting and knotting his shoulder and upper arm, his torso, hip and thigh. Becky traced them with both hands, her fingers exploring the ridges and hollows.

  “A cannon shot. Is that right?”

  “Yes. A ball designed to break apart on impact. I was lucky to survive.”

  “I am lucky you survived, Hugh. Very lucky.” Her exploring hands had reached his hip. She let one drift around to cup his firm buttock, and the other cross to brush against his shaft.

  “They don’t disgust you?”

  Focused as she was on his arousal and hers, she took a moment to understand him. “The scars? No. They do not. Your one-eyed soldier there? Decidedly not!”

  Hugh caught Becky to him again, another insistent kiss, his hard length pressed into the swell of her belly, then demanded, “The chemise.”

  He helped her draw the garment over her head and sent it after her stays and gown. He sank to his knees then, smoothing reverent palms over the swell of her belly.

  “Beautiful,” he said. One hand tended lower, and she pressed against it urgently as he slid practiced fingers in exactly the right places. “Beautiful,” he said again.

  Then he surged to his feet, and lifted her in his arms, carrying her to the bed. “We will take our time, Becky.” His calm voice was at odds with his wild, intent eyes. “With my body, I thee worship.” The words of the vow he had made scant hours ago.

  “Worship me quickly, Hugh. We’ll go slowly next time.”

  Afterward, as they lay in one another’s arms, she returned to the topic of his injury, tracing the scars that decorated one hip.

  “Is that what... Is that why...”

  “Why I can’t father children? No, nothing so heroic. I had mumps.” He’d never talked about it before, but somehow, it was natural to tell her.

  “A confounded illness I should have had in childhood. Dear Lord, it hurt. My cods swelled up like pumpkins. My throat too, and under my arms. But my cods were the worst. I wanted to die. But slowly everything went back to normal. The doctors said I’d never be able to... rise to the occasion again. And if I could, I would certainly never be a father.”

  Becky snuggled closer, one hand tucked under his shoulder, and the other running soothingly back and forth across his hip.

  “I was 21; well 22, by then. I bought my commission, and went off to kill myself for king and country. I can’t tell you how grateful I was when the little fellow first poked his head up again.”

  “He’s doing so now,” his wife observed, chuckling. His wife. The first time had been a little rushed; they had not even removed their stockings! This time, he would make sure he took his time. Ladies first. That lesson had served him well all these many years.

  “Shall I show you worship, Lady Overton? Shall I pay due reverence to every inch of my wife’s beautiful body?”

  “It means ‘worthy,’” Becky said. “I find you worthy to be my wife.” At his quizzical look, she flushed slightly. “My father’s scholarly interest was the medieval church. Sometimes he would set bits from the ancient prayer books for my Latin translation exercises.”

  “With my body, I find you worthy,” Hugh agreed. He found her breasts worthy for quite some minutes, then shifted to find her thighs worthy, and then her nether lips and the sweet bud between them, until she stiffened, her high-pitched, wordless cry becoming a long ululation. She lay limp, exhausted, but as he entered her and began to move, she roused again to return thrust for thrust.

  Later, much later, while they ate a cold supper, still cuddling, feeding one another a bit at a time, he finished the story.

  “I never expected to be baron. My family are not prolific, but my grandfather had two sons, and my father the younger. I am an only child, but my uncle had two sons and a daughter. Then, five deaths in the family in one year, and suddenly, I am Baron Overton.”

  “So you married,” she prompted.

  “I hoped the doctors were wrong, though none of my mistresses had ‘taken,’ but to increase my chances, I married a widow who already had children. She had a daughter, and she was with child again.” He was silent, then. Had Aldridge told her how Polyphemia had died? Probably not; he seemed to have kept his counsel about everything else. It wasn’t important. No pasts, she said. He did not need to tell her.

  “I was married four years. With
all the women I have bedded since my illness, four years of marriage, and more women in the three years since, my seed has not taken root once.” He felt inside the loose robe she had donned to cup her rounded belly. “This is my one chance to give the barony a future. Thank you.” The kiss of gratitude he gave her deepened, and they abandoned their supper.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They were married on Friday, and spent Saturday quietly at home in the apartment with Sarah, except for a walk in the park in the afternoon, where several of Hugh’s friends were delighted to be presented to the new Lady Overton.

  Sarah was cautious at first, but by late afternoon, sat on the parlour rug with him, laughing as they played at spillikins. Becky, who had begun to fall in love with him during their week of courtship, tumbled a little deeper as she watched him with her daughter. Particularly after last night.

  Aldridge had been kind, courteous, and skilled. Hugh was those things, but also grateful. He treated her with respect, and not just in bed. He took her out in public and proudly introduced her to the wives of his friends. He needed her—not just the baby, but her, Becky, as chatelaine and mother to his children, to reassure him when he felt ugly or off-balance, to give him an heir to save the title.

  The vows they’d exchanged thrilled her. To love and to cherish, forsaking all other as long as they both shall live. She repeated them silently to herself over and over through the day. And ‘Rebecca, Lady Overton.’

  She reminded herself again and again, love was not part of their bargain. He would give her and Sarah a home and respectability. She would give his daughters a mother and him the child in her womb. If she were foolish enough to fall in love with him, she would not burden him with that knowledge.

  Aldridge had given Becky the deed to her daughter’s apartment to her as a wedding present. “I promised you the town-house,” he apologised, “but questions would be asked if you owned the town-house where The Rose of Frampton lived.” The solicitor that Aldridge hired secured the apartment and a substantial sum of money to her name, persuading Hugh, at Aldridge’s direction, that her marriage settlement should give her the atypical right to continue to own property.