Athena's Ordeal

by Sue London

  The duke set her on her feet, cradling her face and tipping her chin up. She could see his concern and worry. “Sabre, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. You acted as though… I didn’t think you were a virgin.”

  For some reason that made her want to cry all the more. She turned her face away and smoothed her skirts down. “If I may be excused, your grace,” she said in a toneless voice.

  “Quince,” he corrected miserably.

  She nodded and slipped through the door out into the hallway.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Quince leaned his head on the wall. He felt like crying. This was like the duel, but worse. He had hurt her. Again. He had no excuse for allowing her to incite him. Again. If his intention were to marry her then he could at least feel that this was some challenge on the road to their happy union. But he could not ally himself with Blaise Bittlesworth any more than he could fly. Every fiber of his being rebelled at the thought. He had been clear with her that there would be no marriage and she had offered herself freely. But it would always be a weight on his soul now, knowing that he had ruined her. And hurt her while doing so. If she had experienced some pleasure in the joining it might have been a balm, but it was clear she had not. Standing straight again he set to putting himself to rights and buttoning his breeches. A sticky wetness made him look at his hand. The blood he saw made him dizzy.

  “Sabrina,” he choked out. He turned to the door to find her, to soothe her somehow, though he didn’t know how. Then he realized that his first order of business was to clean himself so that he didn’t terrorize her by being a bloody mess.

  Sabre let herself into the sunny, rose-colored room she had been assigned at the estate and closed the door. The day seemed too bright and she went from window to window, drawing the curtains closed. Even with the dimmer light the room felt too open, too exposed. She went into the dressing room. It was better here. Darker. Quieter. She sat in the corner, pressing her forehead into her drawn up knees. She didn’t cry or keen, even though she wanted to. She didn’t even think. Just breathed and tried to let her body settle. She wasn’t sure how long she had been there when she heard the duke’s voice calling her name. She lifted her head to listen. It sounded as though he was opening all the doors in the hallway calling for her. She heard the door to the Rose Room open.

  “Sabrina?”

  He sounded worried. She wanted to call out to him, to go to him, but she found herself still immobilized and huddled into the corner. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t even have the energy to be angry with herself for being such a wilting flower. Something in the room must have hinted of her residence and she heard him walk inside.

  “Sabrina?” he called more softly.

  She whimpered. Quietly, involuntarily. But he heard it because his footsteps came towards her more quickly. He pushed the door to the dressing room the rest of the way open.

  “Sabrina?” he said again, this time his voice choked with emotion. Something in his voice, his presence, broke the spell holding her trapped and, standing, she launched herself into his arms. He held her close.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  She shook her head. He had done no more than she had asked. She burrowed into his warmth. Even if she didn’t enjoy joining with him, his touch did more to feed her soul than anything she had ever known. His scent gave her comfort. When she had come to his room to show him the papers he had been freshly shaved and perfect, from his artfully tousled hair to his brown top boots. She wasn’t sure which she preferred, the perfectly turned out duke, the lazy man who could lounge in bed for all hours and make her want to join him, or the sword master who seemed made of concentration, talent, and sweat.

  She pulled his face down for a kiss. She felt empty and she needed him to fill her. He was hesitant at first, but surrendered to her avid lips. She moved her hands down to curl in the silk of his vest, holding herself tight against him.

  Quince had felt his heart break to find her huddled in the corner of what was essentially a closet. And now she was wrapped against him like a vine. It was a more extreme version of the hug she had given him yesterday after her horse had gone lame. He was unreasonably pleased that he could offer her comfort, even if dismayed that the comfort she needed was for his treatment of her. If what she wanted was his kiss, his touch, he would give them to her gladly. After some time her desperation eased and she laid her head against his shoulder. He caressed her back and waited to see if she had anything to say. She was silent so long that he felt sure the sun was setting.

  “Shall I send up a bath?” he asked gently.

  She gave a gusty sigh and nodded.

  “Will you need help cleaning up?”

  She looked up at him, confused. “Why?”

  Quince found himself too embarrassed to speak of it. “I’ll send up a maid. And supper.”

  “Will you stay?”

  “I…”

  “You’ve already seen me at my bath,” she pressed. He found that she didn’t seem inclined to let him go even though he was trying to extricate himself in order to ring for the maid. He finally gave up and instead pulled her to his side to walk across the room with him. After the maids came and the footmen carried up the bath he was finally able to convince her to let him leave to attend to some things before they ate. He managed to escape while a table and chairs were brought in. The servants fluttered around her, paying more attention to her than they ever had to him.

  Sabre was still terribly sore. When she removed her dress she discovered why Quince had asked her if she needed help cleaning up. There was blood on her dress and on her thighs. She had supposed the wetness to be the same as the night before, a clear, slick liquid her body produced as part of her attraction to him, but it hadn’t been. It was like having her menses. Women had told her that losing her virginity could make her bleed a bit, but this was far more blood than she had expected. She washed carefully and prepared for further bleeding just in case.

  When she returned to her room she found that Quince was already seated at the impromptu table with a glass of red wine. He rose when he saw her, setting the wine aside.

  “Miss Bittlesworth.”

  She raised up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Sabre.”

  He smiled and kissed her again. “Sabre.” He tasted of wine and lazy afternoons. She thought she could happily kiss him forever. Drawing back he ran a finger over her cheek and looked at her keenly. “Are you feeling better?”

  She nodded. She could tell he wanted to apologize again and set her finger against his lips. “Shh. You only did what I asked. What I wanted.”

  That earned her one of his wry grins. “You did say that what you wanted was me.” He leaned in to nuzzle at her ear. “And that you always get what you want.”

  She laughed. “It would do well for you to remember that.”

  “Then I can’t say you didn’t warn me.”

  “No you can’t.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How can you not be sure?”

  “My thinking gets muddled when you’re touching me.”

  “Interesting. Noted. Then let me assure you that you are hungry.”

  “How can I argue with a duke?”

  “Generally not recommended, but you seem quite good at it.” He kissed the top of her head and pulled her chair out for her.

  She seated herself gingerly and waited for him to settle in. He poured more wine for both of them and made sure that she had what she wanted on her plate. “You sent the staff away?” she asked.

  “I thought that we might need to discuss tomorrow’s meeting.”

  She nodded. “Did you look at the papers I brought upstairs?”

  “I was otherwise occupied,” he said drily. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”

  “There are three items. The first is from some investments that your father executed in 1810, which I think was shortly before he died.”

  Quince nodded, his eyes n
arrowed in thought. “Yes, he passed in early ’eleven. Why were those investments relevant?”

  “I think they were false.”

  He sat back in surprise. “What makes you think that?”

  She thought back to the quick assessment she had made as she flipped through the papers in the study. It had been evident that many of the older ducal papers were housed here at Belle Fleur, which she found odd. Why not at the London townhouse? Or at the ducal seat? Had the elder duke spent the majority of his time at Belle Fleur? “All of the other investments over the years had gone through a man of business in London, but there was a series of investments directly with a private company over five years. The first four years showed incredible returns, at least on paper. Rather than being paid out, those returns were being reinvested and your father was putting in even more funds. Then in the fifth year, when your father doubled his original investment in this company and it was almost his sole financial commitment, the company dissolved and he received a statement that all funds had been lost.”

  Quince gave her a startled look. “How did you find that in an afternoon? Gideon never mentioned anything like that.”

  Sabre felt herself smile smugly. “The papers were not well organized but I am excellent at seeing patterns. At any rate, the first item is that final statement. I made a copy of the information so that we still have documentation. But it occurred to me that one of his cronies might have recommended the investment, supposedly objectively, when in actuality it was a front for draining the ducal coffers. Perhaps one of The Four.”

  “I see,” Quince said, somber while considering that the losses to the duchy might have been by design. “What is the second item?”

  “The second item, also potentially damning, is a letter that mentioned ‘ursine cuckoos’ and suggested they might be useful. The letter was addressed to your father, dated in early ‘eleven, and unsigned. He may never have seen it.”

  “Ursine cuckoos?”

  “A suggestion that the Bear may have cuckolded someone, though why those children could be useful I have no idea.”

  “Perhaps for blackmail?”

  “Perhaps. But it suggests that the letter writer was either Draco or Cygnus.”

  “What else did the letter say?”

  “Everything else was pleasantry.”

  “And the handwriting didn’t match the note that I received?”

  “No, but I did recognize it. That letter is from my father.”

  Quince set down his wine. “So you strike your father from the list of suspects for this blackmail since my note is not in his handwriting?”

  “Not necessarily. If the history of The Four is as unsavory as you suspect then it may be that more than one of them involved. Most likely all of them have something to lose.”

  The duke nodded and looked down at his folded hands. Sabre’s heart ached to see him despondent. He had barely touched his supper. She reached a hand out to him across the table and waited until he stirred himself to join hands with her. “We’ll get through this,” she promised. “All will be well.”

  His grip was strong and the look he gave her was full of grief and pain. She felt an instinct to soothe him. Care for him. Not sure what else to do she stood to move towards him. Courtesy made the duke rise as well, though he looked confused. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed gently, encouraging him to sit again. Once he had she seated herself on his lap, one arm curled around his shoulders. They began kissing as though it were something they did every night. A combination of desire and familiarity. His hand stroked down to her hip and anchored there. She felt a tension low in her belly, an ache. She regretted that joining was so painful and knew that it would be some time before she wanted to try it again. But if her heart was treacherous then her body was doubly so, yearning for a greater intimacy with this man. She pulled her lips away and tried to change her focus to the other reason she had come to sit in his lap. Picking up his fork she speared a bite of fish and offered it to him.

  “Sabre,” he said in a warning tone.

  “Eat,” she insisted.

  After a few bites he relaxed back into the chair and seemed to enjoy her ministering to him. He was stroking over her hip, which she found terribly distracting, and the ache in her belly had progressed to a throb. She felt overheated and awkward.

  “What are thinking?” he asked.

  “Nothing, why?”

  “You have a blush that has started here,” he traced a finger in the valley between her breasts in the low décolletage of her dress, “and I assume travels to some interesting places.” Sabre felt her cheeks heat and the duke chuckled. “Now it travels up as well as down.”

  She wasn’t sure what to do. Her breasts felt tight and heavy. She wanted him to caress them, squeeze them. Better yet, to kiss the bare flesh. But if she encouraged him to do so it was tantamount to inviting another joining and that she could not do. Suddenly she remembered advice on what could be done when one didn’t want to join. She slid off his lap to her knees on the floor.

  The duke looked surprised. “I am beginning to wonder about your education.”

  Sabre smiled and began unbuttoning the front flap of his trousers. “I will warn you that I haven’t done this before, either. Hopefully it will go better.”

  “Were you raised in a whore house?”

  She laughed. “If you ever talked to your servants they would obviously shock you.”

  “You learned this here?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I’m sure that there are one or two who have a great deal of knowledge. There always are.”

  Removing the last button, she revealed his manhood, the first time she had seen one erect or so close. Wrapping her hand at the base she heard him groan and smiled to herself. It felt like silk wrapped steel. She licked the tip and the duke hissed, his hips bucking slightly toward her. Encouraged, she closed her mouth over him and his fingers dug into her shoulders.

  He called her name in a choked whisper, “Sabre.”

  After a few moments they found a rhythm with his shallow hip thrusts, her stroking hand, and her mouth. She felt his shaft grow even larger, thicker, as his breathing became harsher. She used her other hand to stroke under his sack as one serving girl had advised and heard him shout. Her mouth filled with his hot, salty seed as she had been warned and she swallowed as quickly as she could.

  He pulled her back up into his lap and hugged her tightly, his face buried against her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair as she waited for him to settle.

  By the gods, Quince thought, how had she managed that? It had been the most intense pleasure of his life. Yet he was already growing hard again, his cock wanting desperately to be inside her. He would need to wait a few days considering how badly she had bled with her first joining. But oh, how he wanted her. She was his Venus. His Helen of Troy. He would gladly fight a nation to lie with her. He ran a palm over her breast, the ripe curve and turgid tip, and heard her soft moan of pleasure. Needing no other encouragement he pulled her dress down to expose the globe and suckled on her velvet skin.

  “Quince!” she cried, gasping and writhing. He lifted her in his arms, knocking the chair over in his haste. In a few short steps he laid her on the bed. She bit her lip and looked up at him. “Quince, I can’t…”

  “Shh, I know.” He lay down half on top of her and set to laving her nipple again, his hand caressing her other breast still covered by muslin.

  “Oh, Quince…” She ploughed her fingers into his hair, gripping handfuls as she gasped in pleasure. He thought he might spill his seed again just listening to her exclamations of passion. He would do anything to make her feel as he had felt with her mouth closed around him during his release.

  Sabre ran her fingers lightly over the duke’s shoulder. She had convinced him to shed his jacket, vest, and shirt to lie with her flesh to flesh. After a lifetime of excellent ideas she felt this had been one of her best. Feeling his skin against her own was both thrill
ing and comforting. He had wrapped his arms around her and after some time drifted off to sleep and now snored softly in her ear. The last candle in her room had almost burned down and flickered with the dancing light that often came before guttering. She took those remaining minutes of light to study his face. The curve of his jaw, the straight line of his nose. If she had to choose between time like this with him and being a duchess she thought she would choose him. But he needn’t know that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Sabre awoke in the morning she was covered by a light blanket and found a note on the pillow next to her.

  No, you are not going to London.

  - Q

  She laughed. He had expected her to argue about it but that had been the furthest thing from her mind. Running into her friends or family in London and having to explain herself would just be a complication. Hopefully he would return soon. But until then she could continue her mission to set Belle Fleur to rights. The staff did as well as they could, but certain things required decisions that no servant would feel comfortable taking upon themselves. And Sabre had never had any difficulty making decisions for others.

  Quince hoped Robert would be in residence. Ten in the morning was something of an awkward time in the ton. Most of the beau monde wouldn’t even be up yet, while others such as Robert, who had more productive lives, might already be downtown in their office. Having waited so long to open the second letter he had hardly given time for Robert to be involved in thinking through strategies. At last Robert’s doorman opened to his knock and, seeing who it was, waved him in. “If you could wait in the study, please, sir. Mr. Bittlesworth is otherwise engaged for the moment but will want to see you.”

  The doorman led him to the study where he and Robert had met before, offered him a drink, which he declined, and left him to his own devices for the nonce. Although he was near vibrating with impatience no one who looked upon him would have guessed. He studied the hunting prints in Robert’s office as though he had all the time in the world. Finally, at what he would guess was better than a quarter hour later, the door opened and Robert appeared.