“Yes,” she said, seizing on his words. “I want to make the best of things. I want you to know I’m completely recovered from our... Well. I want you to know that I won’t shrink from my marital duties.”
A corner of his lip quirked up, not that he looked very mirthful. “Such noble bravery won’t be necessary. You’re doubtless tired after our busy day, and I must finish this correspondence before I leave for London in the morning.”
“We’re going to London in the morning? No one informed me.”
“I’m taking my mother to London,” he said. “You’ll be staying here at Barrymore Park. My father is very ill, you see, and his physician is in London. I won’t be able to spend much time with you until he’s through this latest spell, so it’s better if you stay here in Oxfordshire, near your brother and Josephine. If you like you can even stay at Warren Manor. I leave that up to you.”
Be pleasant. Be amiable. Even if your composure is about to break. “Why would I stay at Warren Manor now that we’re married?” she asked.
“My father is very sick and the London household is in upheaval at the moment.”
His expression was closed, inscrutable. She didn’t understand why he distanced himself from her, even within his house. He’d put her in the far wing, and now he intended to journey hours away from her and stay there for some indeterminate amount of time. “I’m sorry your father is ill,” she said. “Perhaps I might come and help.”
“You’re not coming.”
Now he had said that very rudely, almost in the tone of a scold. “But I should really like to come,” she said.
“And I would really like you to go to bed, so I can finish what I need to finish.”
“But it’s our wedding night.” Her anguished voice rang out in the silence of the library. The tall shelves seemed to tower over her like bleak, dark wraiths. “A groom is supposed to go to bed with the bride on her wedding night. He’s supposed to kiss and romance her, and hold her in his arms.”
“And there are supposed to be swans and flowers and music. I know. But we’ve already established that our marriage is not the conventional sort.” His fingers tightened on his pen. “I’m sorry, Minette. You’re charming and sweet, but I’m not of a mind to bed you. Not tonight.”
“When?”
“Later,” he said evasively. “I have things to do in London, as I’ve told you.” He looked back down at his letter and began to write. Minette realized she’d crumpled great handfuls of her silk robe in her fists. She let it go and smoothed the fabric.
“Do you think you can be rid of me so easily?” she said. “Warren will bring me to London if I ask him.”
“I wouldn’t do that. You’ll be happier staying here.”
“Living on my own in this cavernous manor? For how long?”
“Until things settle down.”
“And what if I don’t agree with this ‘living apart’ plan?”
He threw his pen down on the desk. “It’s not up for discussion.” His voice sounded taut, like the crack of a whip. “Will you go to bed as I asked, or will you stay here and continue to argue with me?”
“I’m going to stay and continue to argue with you,” she said. “I’m going to whine and nag until you agree that I must accompany you to London.”
“Then you’ll be whining and nagging a long while, for I’ve made my decision.”
He picked up his pen and hunched back over the desk. He was in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his handsome gray wedding coat strewn carelessly over a nearby chair. She went over to twitch at it, and straighten the folds lest it wrinkle.
“What are you doing?” he asked after a moment.
“I’m seeing to your coat, in the absence of your valet. I bet you’ll be taking him with you to London.”
“Yes.”
“But not your wife.”
He looked up at her with a dark expression. “I’m going to lose my temper in a moment. I don’t want to, but I will if you keep this up.”
It was really a very scary look he gave her, but if she capitulated now, he’d go away and leave her in this vast, lonely house for God knew how long. “I wish you would put down your correspondence and listen to me for a moment. It’s only that I believe, after many years of reading romantic novels, that there’s a certain way married couples ought to go on. Of course, as a man, you’ve never read a romantic story. Let me tell you, the couples in those books have problems all the time, but over the course of the book, through adventures and misadventures, they come to love one another, you see?” He stared at her as if she was daft. She threw up her hands. “My Lord August, how are we to have our adventures and misadventures and fall in love if you’re miles away in London and I’m back here in Oxfordshire?”
He gave a great sigh. “Come here, if you please. I would like to show you something.”
There, his pen was down. Now he would listen to her. She went to stand beside him at the desk as he reached inside one of the drawers and drew out an oblong white box tied with ribbon. He opened the lid to show her an engraved wooden plaque of some sort resting on a bed of satin.
“What is it?” she asked, picking it up.
“Your brother gave it to me today as a wedding present.”
She tilted her head to inspect the word inscribed into one side. “WAR? Whatever does it mean? What an inappropriate thing to inscribe on a wedding day plaque.”
“They’re your new married initials. W.A.R. Wilhelmina Anne Randolph, and it’s not a plaque, it’s a paddle.”
“A paddle?” She took a step back.
August nodded at her, tight lipped. “A paddle with your initials on it.”
Minette gawped down at the thick, polished thing. Yes, it was long and rectangular, with a perfectly obvious handle she hadn’t noticed before. “Is it...is it a paddle for cooking? For taking tiny loaves of bread out of the oven?”
“It’s not a paddle for tiny loaves of bread.” He took it from her and turned it over in his hand. “I think you know what it’s for.”
Minette narrowed her eyes. “What a despicable present for a brother to give on his sister’s wedding day.”
“I believe he meant it as a lark. Nonetheless, it’s a very fine paddle and I’m very close to using it.” He put it on his desk and drew her close. “Now, my dear, I’m going to give you a kiss good night, and then I’m going to go back to work on my letter and count silently to ten. When I look up, I expect you to have disappeared completely. Are we clear with one another?”
“How quickly are you going to count?”
“Minette.”
“It’s only that I don’t know how quickly I’ll need to walk. You have a big library.”
He cupped her cheek, and when she lifted her lips to his, he kissed her forehead instead. Oh, this whole situation was maddening.
“Are you counting now?” she asked when he released her.
“I’m already nearly to two.”
She took a look at the paddle—damn Warren—and turned for the door. She opened it so forcefully she nearly bowled over a footman. She felt sorry for the man but she was so very angry. She ignored him, took a few steps down the hall, and leaned against the smooth mahogany paneling. This was not how things ought to go at all. She wanted to cry. Well, she began to cry a little, but she quickly realized nothing would come of tears.
Or, rather, nothing would come of quiet tears.
She looked over to be sure the door was still ajar. The footman had been so offended when she knocked into him he hadn’t remembered to shut it. She broke into her best theatrical cry, the one she used when the stakes were highest. They’d never be any higher than they were now. When she got no response, she cried louder. She thought she saw the footman’s eyebrow twitch. When he moved as if to shut the door, she gave him an awful look so he froze where he was and turned to face front.
“Oh, I can’t believe I’m to be left alone here,” she wailed in melodramatic grief. “I can’t bear it. I’ll start sleepwalking all over aga
in. I’ll probably walk off a tower or something, and dash my brains all over the cobblestones below.” She paused, but heard nothing within, so she took a deep breath and began again. “All I want is to be a proper wife. I can’t bear this, when I love my new husband so much.” She wept as if her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t seem to summon real tears in her frustration. At last, August appeared and stood regarding her, one hand on his hip.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” she said. “I’m crying.”
“You’re faking,” he snapped. “Those are false tears. But that can be remedied.” He took her arm and pulled her inside. The footman shut the door behind them with an unsubtle bang as August pulled her across the library to his desk. It was her turn to ask, or rather shriek, “What are you doing?”
He sat in his chair and threw her over his lap. “I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do ever since I woke up a week ago and found you in my arms.”
Oh goodness, this wasn’t the outcome she’d hoped for at all.
“I won’t cry anymore if it upsets you so,” she said, trying to squirm off his thighs. “I can be perfectly quiet if I try. I’ll go up to bed, silent as a mouse.”
“You had your chance to go to bed silent as a mouse. Instead you stood outside my library door and treated the entire household to your ridiculous histrionics.”
He flipped up the skirts of her dressing gown, brushed aside her shift, and brought his palm down hard against her bare bottom. He spanked one cheek and then the other, hot, sharp slaps that made her yelp in alarm. “Oh, please, you can’t spank a bride on her wedding night! I believe it’s against the law.”
But then she remembered that Lord Townsend had spanked Aurelia on her wedding night, and that any man in England might spank his wife whenever he wanted to. “I’m sorry,” she said instead, trying a different tack. “I ought to have gone to bed, but I wanted to tell you—oh—ow!”
The more she talked, the more he increased the intensity of his spanks. She threw a hand back to cover her smarting bottom. “Please! Please stop!”
“Move your hand.”
“I can’t.”
“Move your hand, or I’ll spank you with your paddle and it will feel considerably worse.”
“It’s not my paddle,” she said peevishly.
“It has your initials on it,” he replied. “And I can see why. I asked you very clearly to go up to bed and let me finish my work. Instead you’ve annoyed me until I have no choice but to discipline you. Now answer me. Do you want a paddling or not?”
Tears welled in her eyes at his heartless scolding. His hand rested on her scorched skin, warm and large. It reminded her of his touches, his caresses. He had been happy to caress her when he didn’t know who she was. “I don’t want the paddle,” she said, sniffling.
“Then move your hand. You won’t be warned again.”
The paddle looked evil, but August’s hand was pretty awful too. She jerked and squiggled as he resumed her punishment. No matter how she struggled, he only collected her tighter, spanking her steadily all over her bottom until the whole of it throbbed. The only way she could stop herself throwing her hands behind her was to make them into fists and press them to her mouth. Tears of indignation flowed down her cheeks.
“This is the worst wedding night ever,” she cried as she kicked at an especially smarting blow. “And you are the meanest, most horrible husband in the world.”
“That’s probably so,” said August. “Because I won’t tolerate stubborn and annoying wives.” He paused, and then Minette felt a whoosh and an explosion of fresh, stinging pain from the paddle.
“Nooo,” she screamed. “That hurts too much.”
She looked over her shoulder to see him regarding the implement with admiration. “It does pack a wallop. Do you need any more spanking, or have you finished being naughty for the night?”
“I’ve finished, I promise.”
He put the paddle down and hauled her to her feet. She could still feel the rectangular outline of the paddle across her bottom cheeks. Worse, she couldn’t seem to stop sniffling and crying like an infant. He tipped her face up and made her meet his gaze. “You’ve had that coming to you, young lady.”
It upset her to be lectured like a child. She wasn’t a child. She was his wife, and she wished to be treated as such. She wished he might kiss and embrace her, and fondle her, and do those outrageous things he’d done to her Hallowe’en night. She wasn’t a ‘young lady.’ She was a woman. A woman who didn’t appreciate being spanked on her wedding night.
“I’ll go to bed,” she said in a trembling voice, “if you’ll come with me.”
He stared back at her, his face set in authoritative lines. “I’ll come with you, but I won’t stay.”
“Then I won’t go.”
Something in his gaze flickered. “You are very brave to say that just now.” Before she knew what he was about, he’d swept her up in his arms the way he’d done that day when she was terrified of the dog. She wasn’t terrified of dogs anymore. No. She was more terrified of loveless, sham marriages, where one party stayed in the country while another stayed in the city, and everyone gossiped about them behind their backs. It appeared she had entered into one of those marriages. And when August went to London, he would probably go visit his lady of the night, and pay her to do the things he wouldn’t do with her.
But I’ll do them for you. I would do anything you wanted.
August carried her up the wide staircase and down the series of corridors, while Minette tried to think of the words that might thaw him. She was considered a gifted conversationalist, but she came up empty this night. She felt so very frustrated and tired, and oh, her bottom hurt. She laid her head against his chest, against the soft, fresh-scented silk of his waistcoat, and cried a few more tears before they reached her far-flung room.
A footman—a different one now—opened the door for August to proceed through it. Once inside, he passed through her dressing room to the bedroom and tossed her on the bed. He sat beside her, but not in a fond way. He sat on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees. He also looked very frustrated and tired.
“You must understand...” He paused and ran his fingers through his hair. “This is the way things have to be right now. I need time, Minette. I have a lot of other pressures, a lot of things going on. My father’s very sick and he’s not going to get better. I have duties in London. I have fences to mend and preparations to make.”
“Preparations for what?”
“My father’s death.” He said it in a very hollow way.
She wanted to comfort him, to embrace him, but she was terrified he’d push her away. So she only stroked the side of his arm, up and back, in a tentative gesture. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry your father’s going to die. I never really knew my parents so I don’t know what that feels like. Very bad, I suspect.”
“It does feel very bad, and you needn’t be there in the middle of it, trying to be my new wife with sadness all around. Give me some time to get used to everything that’s happened, please, darling. Give me a little space.”
“If that’s what you want,” she said. “I love you, August. I always have.”
He let out a sharp breath. “Why? Why have you loved me for so long? What do you even know of me, Minette?”
“I know enough. I know that I love you,” she said staunchly. “Please, let me come to London. I won’t addle you, I promise.”
He placed a finger over her lips. “I know you won’t mean to addle me, but you will. I’ll send for you when things have calmed down, all right? I’ll see you at the holidays, at least.”
“The holidays are six weeks away,” she said past his finger. She wanted to bite it, he made her so furious, and if he gave her another of those chaste forehead kisses, she believed she would fly into a rage.
But he didn’t give her a forehead kiss or any sort of kiss. He squeezed her hand and pressed his cheek to hers, then stood
and walked out of the room without so much as a backward glance.
Chapter Six: Inquietude
London was dreary as hell in mid-November. So dreary, in fact, that August occasionally questioned his decision to leave Minette in Oxfordshire, but at the end of it, he had no choice. Barrymore House was already full to bursting with his father’s illness and his mother’s grief. He wasn’t sure the mausoleum walls of their town residence could expand enough to contain Minette’s chatter and liveliness, and if she came here, she would expect him to sleep with her.
Which he couldn’t possibly do.
He tried to imagine it sometimes, tried to move his mind past his childhood memories of Minette, and his brotherly regard for her. If he thought about it enough, perhaps it would wear down those uncomfortable, incestuous barriers, but no. The uncomfortable, incestuous barriers were still there.
Damn him. He had no idea how he’d get heirs on her. The two of them would eventually need to have children, so at some point he’d have to overcome these reservations. Just pick a night with no moon, and have her creep within the bed curtains...
She was easier to spank, because there were so many reasons to spank her. The marriage, first of all. Colton’s censure, for another. Priscilla’s powerful father had sent August a scathing note letting him know exactly what he thought of his manners. Now Priscilla would be out again next season, at every social event, and every time he saw her, she’d heap guilt upon his head. She’d whisper things about Minette, who was too sweet and good-natured to fight back.
He stood and walked out of his study to the back of the house, and the balcony that flanked the entire floor. He needed air. Maybe he needed Minette. He wasn’t sure. He’d been a week now without her, and he hoped she’d gotten over her anger at being left behind. He’d written to her the day he arrived, a polite and cheerful note for his polite and cheerful bride, sending his wishes that she was well. She’d never written back.
He thought he might go see Esme. Warren wasn’t in town to complain about it, and August could easily skulk in through the back door. Esme would take his cares away for precious moments. An entire evening. He’d never gotten his birthday favors, by God. A breeze blew, strangely warm, with only the slightest chill of autumn. Sun shone on his face as he squinted through his lashes. No, he wouldn’t go see Esme. Maybe someday, but not yet. His mind wasn’t in the right place, and his manhood had taken a blow this past week, when he’d mistaken innocent Minette for that serving maid. Blast, but he ought to have known.
My Naughty Minette (Properly Spanked Book 3) Page 6