Something she would never have with Holyoake.
Mari sat back on her heels, looking up at him with a puzzled expression, until he crouched down and lifted her onto her feet, pulling her close, as close to him as she could possibly get. "I'm sorry for not having been here more over the past weeks and for treating you the way I have. I promised you that I would always tell you the truth, so that is what I'm going to do now. I love you. I love you the way you love Holyoake, and the combination of you putting yourself in danger the way you did just for the possibility of seeing him made me very angry, but I knew you had strong feelings for him when I married you, and I'm sorry that I took my anger out on you. I'm sorry for my jealousy. I thought I was better than that, but apparently, I'm more human than I thought I was. I'll do better about that, I promise." He almost chuckled. "When it comes down to it, I just want to be your husband, to take care of you and love you and discipline you—which I consider to be love, also, although I don't imagine you quite agree with that."
At her silence, he quickly found himself embarrassed by what he had revealed about himself.
"Tomorrow, we'll go out together and do the town up right—anything you'd like. We can go anywhere you want—the theatre, out to dinner, take in any museums you haven't seen yet." He looked almost sheepish, which made him look quite endearing. "You won't have to be alone so much—I do still have business meetings to attend, but perhaps you might like to accompany me to them, just to get out. It's up to you. I just...want to say I'm sorry."
Mari was dumbstruck. She never expected to hear him apologize to her for anything.
"But…" he said, lifting her into his arms to carry her bridal style to the bed, "Although I am sorry to have neglected you these past weeks, I am afraid that I did tell you not to leave our room. And what did you do today?" he asked, watching her cheeks pinken brightly.
Mari automatically tried to twist out of his hold, but—as always—got nowhere. This time, she tried something else and pressed her face against his neck. "But I was so bored—I had to do something!"
Con did his best not to be moved by how she was turning to him rather than away from him. "I understand that, and I'm sorry. But you're still going to have to be spanked for disobeying me, I'm afraid."
He sounded genuinely regretful, which was something she had never heard from him, at least not about punishing her.
Not that his guilt mitigated her correction in the least.
But it did add something—or rather, he added something.
Con laid her out, over his lap, while he leaned back against the headboard of the bed. She was already, by now, much too familiar with this position and had reached out to grab a pillow to hold on to or he'd gather her hands on her back and render her even more susceptible to him than she already was. Sometimes he corralled them there anyway, but she liked to try to retain control of her hands, although she knew he'd never let her get away with interfering with her punishment in any way.
She'd learned that lesson the hard way and had no interest in experiencing a repeat of it.
This time, though, instead of encouraging her to keep her legs open as he swatted her, he deliberately pried them open, forcing them wide apart while he spanked her. Mari had to wonder what he was doing, and she soon got her answer.
"Were you naughty, Mari? Did you misbehave?" he asked.
He'd surprised her, so it took her a moment to respond. "Uh, yes."
"And how were you naughty?" he asked, delivering a particularly powerful smack that had her yelping.
"Ah—ow—I-I left the room without permission."
"Yes, you did." His hand moved to cup her there, where it most liked to live. "You disobeyed me, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did."
As soon as she said those words, that big hand came crashing down onto her most vulnerable area, and tears flooded Mari's eyes at the stark sting it caused. She lost her breath for a long moment, her mind and body stunned, barely able to recover. She'd only ever felt either nothing there—as she had until she'd married him—or unbelievable pleasure. She'd never considered that part of her body might also be used to correct her.
But he had, apparently.
And so her behind wasn't the only target he chastised over the next few minutes, and by the time he paused, he had left both areas red and sore and swollen and his lovely wife in abject tears. But then, he brought his hand back to the very place it had devastated to press a finger up inside her.
She was sopping wet.
Con left his fingers there, draped over her clit, while he continued to spank her all over—even down the backs of her thighs—all the while tickling that impudent little nub, creating a war within her body that she couldn't win. Sometimes he allowed her pleasure to come to the fore, sometimes he eased off that and made her remember that he was punishing her.
The two sides cancelled each other out while they became more and more sensitized. Each stroke or each swat became just that much more powerful, until he settled into a rhythm that he didn't let up on at all. Spanking her frequently, crisply, intending to create maximum sting while his fingers slipped and slid over her, prying her lips apart and exposing every bit of her to their eager manipulations, guided by her involuntary movements and the sighs or cries and moans she was making at his behest.
When she finally came—after a long while of being held to account on both sides—she issued a full-throated scream that was music to his ears and went directly to his cock, and it didn't die down for quite some time since he didn't stop spanking or stroking her until he thought she'd had enough.
He left her just after that—quickly hopping off the bed to grab her gown and slip it over her head, then bringing the covers up over them, snuggling her hot little bottom up against him, and before he'd gotten them both comfortable, he knew by the weight of her in his arms that she was fast asleep.
The next weeks were bliss for the both of them. They rambled around Paris, acting like the lovers they were, feeding each other tidbits from their own plates. Walking arm in arm down the Champs Elysees, stopping to buy artwork from street artists, one of whom Con was so taken with that he insisted that the man do a quick portrait of his wife, which he intended to hang in his study at home to remind him of what a wonderful time they were having.
She was blossoming before his eyes, and he couldn't believe his luck. There were, of course, occasions when he saw the more spoiled brat parts of her personality, when she'd try to put her foot down over his when she wanted something, especially if it was something that he had decided wasn't good for her. She had wanted to go to a famous psychic for some reason she couldn't really even explain to him, and he had told her flat out that he refused to throw their money away supporting charlatans.
And she had proceeded to throw as close to a temper tantrum as he'd ever seen any woman give, which, of course, he'd subdued by taking her over his knee, then loving her out of her bad mood. Both methods of dealing with that kind of behavior seemed to work nicely, although, if pressed, he would have to say that spanking her—regularly and firmly—yielded the best overall results.
She knew where she stood with him, he set clear limits and enforced them when she overstepped, and, if he was any judge, she seemed happier, calmer than she'd been since he'd known her.
He did bring her to the business meetings he found he couldn't worm his way out of, and she charmed everyone there. In truth, she was so distracting that he thought he got much better deals out of his suppliers than he might have if she hadn't been there.
He couldn't keep his hands—or his eyes off her. It seemed to him that she was happy, although she never said she was. She hadn't returned his profession of love to her, but then he hadn't really expected that she would. He was finding that it would be enough for him to be with her and do his best to make her as happy as he could.
Perhaps love would come in time.
He only knew that he was ecstatic most of the time—even when they weren't in bed.
They attended the opera, which he liked but she was less interested in, which balanced out the theatre, which she was very keen to see but he was lukewarm about.
One night, while they were watching from their box, as Polaire, who was all the rage in Paris, starred in a play that was getting wonderful reviews, for some reason, Mari couldn't seem to get into the story line. Instead, she found herself somewhat bored, as she usually was in the opera, and her gaze began to wander around the audience rather than the stage.
A familiar head of almost white gold hair caught her eye. There was no doubt in her mind as to who it was, and he was no apparition this time. She immediately wished she hadn't looked, tucking the glasses away that she had borrowed from Con and forcing herself to pay strict attention to the play, while her mind wondered at her reaction to actually seeing Evan.
It was quite a different one from when they'd arrived in France. It hadn't been that long—had she changed that much? Why didn't she want to run down there and boost that little tramp, Lucinda Windsor-Rutland, right out of the seat she was sitting in, right next to him? The diamond on the ring finger of her left hand was unmistakable, even at this range. But she couldn't possibly be Evan's fiancé—that's what she was!
"Was," being the operative word, but she wasn't anyone's fiancé any more. She wasn't an innocent little girl with her head full of nothing but romantic dreams about a future with a man her family wasn't going to allow her to marry. She was a wife and the Duchess of Whitford, at that.
Had married life wrought such a stunning change in her? Or was it Con himself?
Life had been wonderful with him over the past nearly month and a half. She'd gone from an ignored wife, whose husband drove her to fits of ecstasy against her will in the darkest recesses of the night, to a woman who understood she was loved. And by a very complicated man with whom she was so in tune that he could make her insane with lust, simply by talking to her from across the room.
She understood that there would be no divorce. It simply was not an option. She was his forever, and, for the first time since she'd set eyes on him that night at the ball, the thought of such a future didn't strike fear and loathing into her heart.
Changes, indeed.
On a whim, Mari reached out and took Con's hand. He looked startled for a moment, then wrapped his big fingers around hers, enveloping her much smaller hand in his and bringing the back of it to his lips, as he had that first time.
Mari managed to dismiss her sighting of the man she...used to love out of her mind and not give it another thought. After all, her husband kept her quite busy. But that wasn't enough to keep trouble from finding her.
She was having tea by herself in a little shop they'd found one rainy afternoon, several days later, while Con conducted business he had said she would find dreadfully dull, and suddenly, she wasn't alone.
But it wasn't Evan, as she feared it might be.
It was Lucinda.
Mari made to rise and slip into her coat, but Lucinda laid her hand on Mari's arm. "I'm so sorry to intrude like this, but I must speak to you."
She knew she should simply walk away, but she couldn't. She slowly sank back down into her chair, although she kept her coat on. "Yes, what is it?" she asked in her most businesslike voice.
"You have to see Evan and tell him face to face that it's over between you two. He's got some stupid notion that you want him to rescue you, that it's his duty to take you away from your husband."
Mari bit her lip, realizing just how close the daydreams she used to harbor were to what Lucinda described.
"That's ridiculous. Why would I need rescuing?"
Lucinda looked puzzled. "I don't know. But he says that you told him you would die if you had to marry that man—the duke, your husband—and he's beside himself with worry and jealousy. He barely tolerates me, and yet I'm supposed to marry him when he only wants you."
That certainly sounded like the reaction she'd had at first to being told that she was going to marry Con, rather than the man she'd set her heart on.
The extremely unpleasant underside of how she had been acting was suddenly exposed to her. She had very nearly ruined her own life as well as Evan's and Lucinda's with her selfish wants.
"I'd like to help, but I don't know what I could do."
"You could agree to see him and tell him that you no longer love him, that he has to come to his senses and let you go."
"Miss Windsor-Rutland, I don't think I can do that. My husband would not approve at all of me seeing Evan—in fact he'd be quite cross, I can assure you. I'm sure you understand."
"But you have to, or he'll never marry me! I love him, you see. I just want to be his wife. That's all I want in the world."
Her little speech sounded uncomfortably close to what Con had said that night, and she realized that she wasn't at all interested in doing anything that might upset the happiness they'd just begun to discover with each other.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that. I'd like to help, but that's something I cannot do."
Lucinda looked heartbroken, and Mari almost gave in. Then she girded her loins a bit and stood. "I have to leave and meet my husband. I'm sorry I wasn't more help to you. I…" she paused, searching for the right words. "I hope things work out between you and Evan. You seem to be just the right girl for him, even if he doesn't quite know it yet."
Later that afternoon, they were getting ready to attend the ball that the U.S. Ambassador was throwing. Con had even bought her a new dress for the occasion. He had scandalized Danvers by saying he'd dress his wife himself this evening. Ushering her out of their room with the teasing suggestion that—since he intended to see to her when they got home, too—she could consider that she had the night off and that perhaps she might like to visit a dance hall and see the can-can performed.
Mari had never seen Danvers blush as much as she did around her husband. "Stop teasing her, Con! Danvers, you do have the night off. Go and do something you'll enjoy."
"Thank you, milady, master," she said, which was downright gushing for her.
Not long after she'd left, someone rapped on their door.
Mari assumed it was Danvers looking in on her one more time before she went out. That woman didn't think she could exist without her—and before Con, she would have been dead right.
"You don't have to worry about me, Danvers," she said as she made her way to the door, donning the emeralds her husband gave her the night before, on their three-month anniversary. "The duke will take care of me…"
But when she opened the door, it most definitely wasn't Danvers.
It was Evan, and he looked as if he was spoiling for a fight.
He didn't wait for Mari to invite him in, but bullied his way into the room, herding her behind him as if he thought she needed protection from her husband. Then he walked up to Con and slapped him across the face with what Mari knew was a kid leather glove—soft as butter. It was the only kind Evan wore.
"You, sir, are a cad. I demand satisfaction."
To his credit, Con didn't immediately knock the younger man to his knees as he certainly could have, but instead, stood there contemplating him, the look on his face saying that he definitely found something lacking there.
Instead, he calmly grabbed Mari's robe and, ignoring Evan's presence entirely, he proceeded to drape it over his wife's shoulders.
Mari couldn't help but make comparisons, and Evan came up short in every category. Not for the first time lately, she found herself wondering just what she'd seen in Evan, besides the comfort of long acquaintance.
Then he turned to the younger man, asking, "Why would you think that I would give you the satisfaction, Holyoake, is it?"
"It is a matter of honor, sir." Evan's tone suggested that he couldn't believe the older man would question him.
"Well, since my honor has been in doubt since I learned to lie at about the age of five, and then, through much more serious causes when I was essentially a pirate—if one sanctioned by my
government—I have serious doubts as to whether I have any left that I'd be willing to squander on the likes of you."
"Is your wife's honor, then, also in serious question, sir?"
A bold question for a smaller man to ask someone who, when he drew himself up to his full height, as he did then, stood a full head taller than he did. "My wife's honor, Mister Holyoake, is above reproach."
"Your wife's honor is impugned by her association with you, sir, and as one of her longest friends and her former fiancé, I will have satisfaction from you."
Con's eyes slid from the little man in front of him to his wife, who looked absolutely horrified at the proceedings, although he couldn't determine if that was because she was worried about him or Holyoake or her own misbehavior in this situation.
On impulse, he said, "And so you shall have it. Choose your weapon, sir—swords or pistols."
"I believe I'll choose swords."
"No!" Mari spoke for the first time since she'd mistaken him for Danvers. "You can't duel. It's against the law."
"There are ways around that," Con drawled, watching her closely.
"Mari, the challenge has been issued and accepted. I'll have my second contact yours, if that arrangement is agreeable to you."
"It is."
Evan bowed to Mari and said, "Milady." Then he left, leaving a narrow-eyed, eerily relaxed duke closely contemplating his wife and that man's wife on the verge of begging her husband not to kill her former fiancé.
Chapter 8
"So he was in Paris after all, hmm?"
Mari couldn't believe what was happening, or Con's strangely calm reaction to it. She wished he would rage, scream, and yell at her—something, anything but this unnatural silence.
She took a step towards him, then rethought and remained where she was, answering his question in much the same subdued tone as he was using. "I guess so."
Man and Wife: A Sweet Historical Love Story Page 8