Only a Duke Will Do

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Why else had he blurted out his plans for Sidmouth? God help her if she spread that among her radical friends. If it got to the press, that would be the end of his political aspirations. He did not have enough support in the Commons yet to unseat Sidmouth, and until he did he must appear not to oppose the man.

  He could only hope that his wife would be discreet.

  At least as discreet as she was in other areas. Like their marital relations, where she was almost too discreet. He paced beside the adjoining door to her bedchamber. She had made it abundantly clear that she preferred privacy when preparing to come to his bed. Until now, he had acquiesced, figuring that she had been a virgin and needed time to adjust to marital intimacies.

  But damn it, he wanted to watch her undress. He wanted to undress her himself. He wanted to make love to her somewhere other than her bed. He wanted to sleep with her at night, wake up with her in his arms. And no matter how much he told himself to be patient, he craved those things to a maddening degree. How was he supposed to bring his obsession under control when she still denied him those intimacies?

  He reached for the door handle. Surely he had given her enough time to grow used to being a wife. What mysterious preparations did she do anyway that he, her own husband, could not watch?

  Opening the adjoining door, he stopped short when he saw her maid standing there alone, his wife nowhere to be seen. Beyond her the dressing room door was closed. It was as if the maid stood guard. That roused his curiosity even more.

  The maid spotted him and started to speak, but he held a finger to his lips to silence her. Although alarm flickered in her face, he knew she dared not disobey. But the fact that she looked as if she wanted to gave him pause.

  With grim purpose he strode to the outer door, opened it so as not to make a sound, and ushered her out. After closing it just as silently, he crossed the room to ease the dressing room door open and look in at his wife.

  The candle upon her dressing table revealed Louisa standing in her unbuttoned nightdress with her back to him. But although she faced a mirror that showed him plainly watching her, she was too engrossed in what she did to notice.

  At first he thought she was cleaning her privates, for she had her linen nightdress hitched up and one leg propped on the stool as she lifted a dripping sponge to her sweet little honeypot. His cock, already half-stiff, instantly thrust itself through the gap in his silk dressing gown.

  Then he saw her insert the sponge far up inside herself. With his stomach sinking, he held his breath to see if it came back out, but her hand came out empty.

  He had visited a brothel often enough to know what she was doing. And he could easily guess why. She had denied him greater intimacy because of this, damn her!

  “How dare you!” he hissed.

  She jumped, and the guilty flush that spread over her cheeks as she met his gaze in the mirror was enough to confirm his suspicions.

  A sense of betrayal sliced into him.

  “It’s not what you think, Simon,” she whispered.

  “No?” Entering the dressing room, he slammed the door behind him. “So you are not trying to keep me from siring my heir?”

  She jerked her leg down. “No…I-I mean…it has nothing to do with—”

  “I spent half my youth in a brothel, Louisa. I recognize a sponge meant to prevent children when I see one.” Stalking up beside her, he dipped his finger in the bowl of liquid that sat on her dressing table, then lifted it to his nose and sniffed. The pungent scent of vinegar assailed his nostrils.

  Angry beyond words, he thrust the finger at her. “This is why you come to my bed with your privates so heavily perfumed. This…this travesty is why you will not let me undress you or make love to you anywhere but in your bed—”

  “You have to let me explain,” she pleaded.

  “What? That you still secretly hate me? That despite every accommodation I make for you, you are determined to plot against me?” The pain boiling up in his throat threatened to choke him. “No wonder you so readily agreed to quit your London Ladies when I got you with child—you planned to make it so I never did.”

  “That’s not true. It was just for a while, until—”

  “You got your radical elected?” he spat, still hardly able to believe she was so cruel as to deprive him of children without his knowledge. “Thus destroying any hope I had of becoming prime minister? Is that how you meant to undermine my authority?” He emptied the vinegar into the chamber pot, then dashed the bowl against the door. “This will not be tolerated!”

  While she still gaped at him, shocked by his sudden burst of violence, he jerked up her nightdress, preparing to remove the sponge himself.

  Then she began to cry. “P-please, Simon,” she blubbered. “I didn’t…it wasn’t…”

  She could hardly speak for her pitiful sobs, and they tore at him, making him curse himself for upsetting her. Then curse himself for paying them any heed.

  Good God, he was pathetically besotted with her. He dropped her nightdress. “I want it out,” he said in a low voice. “Now!”

  She nodded, then propped her foot back up on the stool. “You h-have to understand. I-I wasn’t ready for children, that’s all. I just n-needed some time…to prepare myself…for the blood…and the doctors…”

  The way she said “doctors,” in the same tone one might use in speaking of snakes, arrested him. She’d used that tone in her bedchamber at Draker’s town house when saying how doctors bled and cupped women.

  “I-I wasn’t trying to u-undermine…” She continued sobbing as she removed the sponge. “It really had nothing…”

  She couldn’t finish a sentence for her weeping, and now other things came back to him. How even after his doctor had finally arrived that day, while he and Draker were negotiating the marriage settlement, she’d refused to let the man examine her, no matter how much they’d insisted.

  Then there were the comments she had made at the school—about the prisoners giving birth…about the blood. But why was she so—

  The conversation with his sister about Princess Charlotte leapt to his mind, and he groaned. Damn it all to hell.

  He captured her trembling hand as she dropped the sponge on the table. “You were there, weren’t you?” he said hoarsely. “You were present when the princess died in childbirth.”

  Unable to speak for her tears, she nodded.

  This had all been about fear. Which he would have recognized if he had not been such an idiot.

  Cursing himself for his quick temper, he swept her into his arms. “Shh, sweetheart,” he said against her ear. “It’s all right. Shh.”

  With a strangled cry she threw her arms around him, seeking comfort from her tormentor, and he gave it as best he could, murmuring soothing words, rubbing her back.

  “I-I wasn’t supposed to see the birth,” she choked out, her tears soaking his dressing gown. “They banished nearly…e-everyone from her bedchamber.”

  He stroked her and gentled her, feeling like a tyrannical monster.

  She struggled to gain control of her fierce sobs. “But she was m-my sister. I loved her. So I-I hid in her dr-dressing room.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he said softly.

  “The labor was bad enough,” she whispered against his chest. “She screamed for hours…”

  He could only imagine. He had heard that Princess Charlotte had spent a grueling two and a half days in labor.

  “But then came the birth, with the baby stillborn. He was huge, too big for…and they wouldn’t use the forceps and…” Her voice turned fierce. “There was too much blood, so much…not only then, but before, too.”

  She turned up to him a gaze tinged by outrage. “By the time she went into labor, they’d bled her and bled her, and practically starved her, too. What else did they expect once she came to her childbed? How could any woman bear a child after she’d endured such—”

  She erupted into tears again, and the full extent of her fear clawed at him. He
brushed kisses against her hair, her temple, her damp cheek. His throat was raw with the horror of imagining what it must have been like for her to witness such a thing. She had only been twenty-two, still young enough to let it eat at her. Almost the same age as the princess.

  “You should have told me,” he whispered. “I wish you had.”

  She went still in his arms. “And what would you have done? Told me that…my fear was nothing. That Regina had borne two children with…no trouble.” She swallowed. “I know it’s not always as bad as what I’ve built up in my mind. But every time I think about—”

  When she broke off with a sob, he clutched her head to his chest. She was probably right. With everything that had gone on between them, if she had told him from the beginning, he would have assumed she was refusing to have children to strike back at him.

  Now he understood why she had been so reluctant to marry. It had certainly not been a Joan of Arc determination to be a reforming spinster.

  She lifted her face to his. “I-I do want to have your child. Our children. I want it more than anything. I shall r-resign myself to it. I can do that. I can.”

  Yet she was stiff in his arms, and tears still trembled in her eyes.

  Bloody hell, what was he to do? If he indulged her fear, how long would it last? He had to have an heir. And she would make a wonderful mother.

  But not if she died of fright going to her childbed first.

  He groaned. How could he make love to her, knowing that she so violently dreaded the inevitable result of doing so?

  “Simon, I’m all right now. You can throw the sponges away if you like. I’ll—”

  “Shh,” he whispered. There was only one choice he could make. Cursing himself for being such a weak fool, he reached over and picked up the sponge. “Lift your leg,” he said.

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What?”

  “We will do it your way for a while. Until you…feel more comfortable with the idea of bearing my children.”

  “You don’t have to do this—”

  “Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “I won’t have my wife quaking in fear when she comes to my bed. Now lift your leg.”

  When she did so, he inserted the sponge partway before letting her push it the rest of the way.

  She lifted her face to his, and her expression of relief tore at him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Then she kissed him, and he clung to her lips as he had never clung before, kissing her ardently, desperately. He wanted to blot out everything that had just transpired, to forget that his wife had just convinced him to allow what no other husband in his right mind would.

  Never let a woman’s tears plague you into doing what you shouldn’t, his grandfather’s voice sounded in his head.

  He cursed Monteith, then cursed himself when his cock came to attention with the predictability of Raji spotting a bird. Christ, he was mad. Yet he could not seem to help himself when he was with her.

  Louisa must have felt his arousal, for she broke the kiss, staring up at him with a heavy-lidded gaze. “Shall we go to bed now?” she asked in a throaty murmur.

  He glanced away, only to see their image in the mirror, limbs entwined, him erect and her with her leg still lifted onto the stool. Her nightdress was hitched up to her waist, baring her silky-skinned privates to his gaze.

  His cock swelled, and he was seized by an urgent need to take her here, like this. “Face the mirror,” he commanded her.

  When she started to take her foot off the stool to turn, he said, “No, leave it there. I want to see every part of you. I want to watch me touching you.”

  Though her face flushed, she did as he asked, shifting her body around until she faced the mirror, with one foot propped on the stool and the other on the floor, exposing her tender flesh in all its dewy glory.

  His mouth went dry. He yanked her nightdress off over her head, then shrugged off his dressing gown. Moving behind her, he reached around to fondle her breast with one hand while he fingered the delicate flesh between her legs with the other. Her face turned pink as her privates, yet she let out a moan of pleasure that stiffened his cock to iron.

  “Sometimes, Louisa,” he ground out, “I desire you beyond all reason.” He rubbed his erection up and down the cleft of her buttocks to let her know just how hard she made him.

  Her gaze turning sultry, she reached back as if to fondle his cock.

  “No.” He brushed her hand aside. “Put your hands on the table. I want to take you like this, from behind, while you watch.” With his mouth against her ear, he continued in a harsh whisper, “I want you to see what I see when I drive inside you.” He nipped her earlobe. “I want you to see the intoxicating picture you make, the one that consumes me day and night.”

  Her eyes a smoky black, she did as he said, leaning forward to plant her hands in front of her. Her hair cascaded down before her, hiding her breasts, so he gathered it up and looped it over one shoulder to allow him to look his fill of her.

  God, what it did to him to see her like this in the candle’s dim glow. Her face alive with her blushes and her breasts dangling between her arms like ripe fruit, she looked vulnerable and sweet and so erotic, it nearly drove him mad.

  Never let a woman lead you by the cock.

  He shoved his grandfather’s voice from his head, then roughly pushed her legs farther apart, exulting in her little gasp of surprise. Deliberately he turned that gasp into a groan by reaching around to rub her slick flesh. And when she pressed herself against his finger, craving more of his touch, he felt a swift surge of triumph. Perhaps she did affect him too much, but at least he did the same to her.

  Then her eyes slid closed. “No!” he growled against her neck. “You have to watch me take your beautiful body.”

  Her eyes opened to fix him with a mutinous glance. “I want you inside me.”

  “Not until you cannot bear it anymore,” he said, then tormented her tender little pearl, laving it, stroking it, just the way he knew she liked it. “I want you begging, Louisa.”

  She smiled at him in the mirror. “You will never last that long,” she said, a minxish taunt.

  And when she swiveled her hips back to angle her sweet little derriere against his rigid cock, he feared she might be right. His erection lay painfully heavy in the cradle of her delicious behind.

  But he refused to let her win this round. After his time with the brothel whores paid by his grandfather, he knew how to regain control over his willful cock, and ruthlessly he did so. “I can last as long as it takes, my tempting little Cleopatra.”

  Let her have her sponges if she must, but he would have her begging for him, admitting that he was not the only one in this marriage who was besotted. He would master her—and himself—if it took him hours.

  So he caressed her breasts, first one, then the other, thumbing the nipples to taut peaks, then delicately scraping the smooth pebbles with his thumbnail until she cried out and thrust her breasts against his hand.

  “I am the head of this house, do you hear?” he choked out, the vision of her writhing beneath his hands almost more than he could bear. But the voice of his grandfather haunted him, making his own voice harsh as he added, “You have your sponges only at my indulgence, understood?”

  She groaned, but nodded.

  “No more of these covert rebellions,” he bit out. “I will not have my wife make a fool of me.”

  “I never meant…” she whispered. “I would never—”

  “Swear it,” he demanded as he fondled her repeatedly between the legs. “Swear you will be honest with me from now on.”

  “Yes, Simon, I swear.”

  He dipped his finger inside her, just enough to tantalize, then jerked it out.

  “You belong to me,” he rasped as he pulled her hips farther back. Sliding his cock up between her legs, he caressed her velvety softness with it. “Say it. Your body, your mind, your will…they belong to me.”

  “And you?” Her eyes sudden
ly flashed. “Do you belong to me?”

  “I have always belonged to you,” he said, the admission ripped from him before he could stop it.

  “Then take me now,” she hissed. “I beg you, husband…show me that we belong to each other….”

  So he did. Shifting his angle, he thrust so deeply inside her that she jerked, then released a heartfelt sigh of pure, sweet pleasure.

  That only enflamed him more. He drove into her again and again, stroking her dewy pearl in front as he slid in and out of her slick passage from behind. He sucked at the smooth slope of her shoulder, then nipped at the delicate nape of her neck, wishing he could devour her whole.

  The harder he pounded into her and fondled her, the more her breath quickened and her gaze burned into his in the mirror, until they were both panting, struggling like two wild animals fighting for dominance, each determined to make the other lose control first.

  In the end, they came at almost the same moment. Her body stiffened before she let out a piercing cry and collapsed in his arms. An instant later he reached his own rapture and poured his seed into her.

  His seed that would never take root.

  The errant thought dug into his consciousness even as he strained against her, filling her, his heart beating a frantic cacophony in his ears. He thrust the thought from his mind just as quickly.

  Time. She needed time. He could give her time if he must.

  It took several seconds for his breathing to slow, and several more for his sated cock to slip out of her. But as soon as she felt it, she turned so she could slide her arms about his waist and hold him close.

  He kissed her, plundering first her mouth, then her ear and the hollow of her throat.

  “That was very…interesting,” she murmured as he ravaged her neck. “I never imagined…making love in quite that way.”

  “There are a hundred ways to make love, and I mean to have us try every one.”

  Even as excitement leapt in her face, she eyed him thoughtfully. “Where did you learn this assortment of lovemaking techniques? During the youth you spent in a brothel?”