Stop it, she told herself. Stop thinking like this. It is not proper! You are a lady!
But thoughts of that kind were not so easily extinguished. “I would have some proof that you really wish to marry me,” she said slowly.
“How am I to prove it to you?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know. But that is that I require.”
“If I can prove that I am sincere, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, far too quickly. She laughed at her own eagerness. “Yes,” she repeated. “If you can prove it.”
The Duke nodded and then rang the service bell. The freckle-faced girl Elizabeth had seen around the Castle walked in. “Katherine,” Harold said.
“Yessir?”
“Have you heard the good news?”
“The good news, sir?”
“Yes! Haven't you heard? Elizabeth and I are getting married.”
The girl’s face lit up and she congratulated the two of them before retrieving the plates. Harold grinned for the first time since Elizabeth had met him. “You see?” he said. “She will tell the other servants, who will tell the messenger boy when he comes in the morning. Before you know it rumors will be all over England. We are, for all intents are purposes, publically engaged. But just to make it more definite…” He rose and walked to a table upon which rested a quill, inkpot, and paper. He scribbled quickly and then handed Elizabeth the paper.
It read:
Mr. Hawk,
I am delighted to inform you that your daughter and I are engaged,
Signed,
Harold Stonewall
He folded the paper and enclosed it in an envelope, which he sealed the Stonewall seal. “I would be a flagrant liar indeed if I denied that I wrote this letter, seeing as it bears my signature and my seal. Now, I will send this off immediately.” He rang the service bell again. A different servant entered this time. She grinned as she collected the plates. “Congratulations, m’lordmm’lady.”
News does travel fast.
“Take this letter to town and have it sent to the Hawk residence immediately,” Harold said. “I wish for England to know of our engagement as soon as possible.”
After the servant had left, Harold returned to his seat and smiled at Elizabeth. “Is that sufficient proof, my lady?”
“Harold, I want to ask something of you, but I fear it may be monstrously un-ladylike.”
“Ask away, Elizabeth. Social mores have never overly interested me.”
“Would you accompany me to my bedroom?”
Her mouth was dry as she said this. She was worried that the Duke might laugh at her, or turn on her utterly. Instead, he rose to his feet and walked around the table. Standing over her, he offered her his arm. “Let us retire for the morning, my lady,” he said.
*****
Harold placed her on the bed as though she weighed nothing and began undressing her. Every part of Elizabeth was alive with anticipated pleasure. Her private area was pulsating with warmth. Harold’s body was strong and firm over hers as he unlaced her bodice and threw it upon the floor. Soon she was naked, laying on her back and looking up at him. He pulled off his own clothes until he, too, was naked.
His body was muscular, rippled with strong, tense muscles. His skin was white and hairless. Scars marked him here and there, but they were faded and did nothing to detract from his attractiveness. “I will be inside you soon, my lady,” he said.
His private area was hard and big. She had never seen a man’s parts before, but as soon as she saw this one, she knew it would be amazing. She reached out, and he walked toward her, and then her hand touched it. “What shall I do?” she said.
“Rub it, my lady,” he said.
She rubbed it up and down, gripping it in her hand and hoping she was doing it right. She was so excited that with her other hand she reached down and began to rub her private parts, that special hot spot on the outside that she sometimes rubbed even though she knew she shouldn’t. Harold began to moan. He reached down and grabbed her breasts, pushing them together, tweaking her nipples with her fingertips.
Then he leaned over her and parted her legs with his knees. “It will hurt at first,” he said. “But then it will feel amazing.”
Slowly, gently, he pushed himself inside of her. He was right. At first, for the first few minutes, the pain was extraordinary. She bit her lip and closed her eyes and waited for the pain to pass. And then, as he began to go quicker, the pain faded and a white-hot pleasure replaced it. It was warm and wet and like nothing she had ever experienced.
She lifted her legs and began to move with the motions of his thrusts, pushing down as he thrust into her. His private went deep inside of her, touching a hot spot that caused pleasure to pulsate through her body. She closed her eyes and bit her lip as something built within her, like water against a dam, building and building. All she knew now was his private entering her, the heat between her legs, the tingles all over her body. She pushed down again and again, and then—
everything released in one rush; the water washed over the dam. Pleasure washed over her body. She let out a loud moan and Harold pushed into her harder and faster, pushing and pushing, thrusting hard and deep. Both of them were moaning now; pleasure had captured the two of them at the same moment.
Harold rolled onto his side when it was over and took Elizabeth in his arms. “That was incredible,” she whispered. “I never knew it would feel like that.”
“I never knew it could be like that,” Harold said. “It was never like that before.”
They lay there in silence until around midday when Elizabeth woke to a kiss on the forehead. Harold was leaning over her, his hands in her hair. “I have an idea, my lady,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Let’s get married today, right now.”
“Harold, are you—”
“Yes, I mean it. If we did not love each other, we would be in a terrible situation now. The only decent thing for me to do would be marry you. Luckily, I want to marry you. I think I love you, Elizabeth. Why should we wait?”
Elizabeth did not need to think about it any longer. The only possible negative was that Father and Mother would not be able to be there. But if Father came he would only ruin it in some way, and Mother would never come without Father. She jumped to her feet, still naked, and threw her arms around him. His hands reached down for her buttocks and began to rub. “Later, we’ll do it twice,” he said into her ear.
She giggled and kissed his neck.
“I will call for the parson,” Harold said. “Dress, and we will be married within the hour.”
He left the room and Elizabeth went to the dresser and sorted through the clothes.
What an odd series of events, she thought, a wide smile on her lips.
*****
She had chosen a simple white gown for the wedding. Harold was dressed in his military garb. The parson gave a traditional speech about the sanctity of marriage, and then asked them both if they wanted the other person. Elizabeth had no problem saying I do, and neither did Harold. Within the hour the two of them truly were married.
Afterwards, they walked the grounds of the Castle hand in hand. It was good to feel his bare hand against her bare hand, skin on skin, and not have to worry about scandal or retribution of any kind. They were man and wife now; it was the most natural thing in the world for man and wife to walk hand in hand together. They walked into the woods and far away from the Castle until they came to an enclosed copse of trees where they could sit and pretend that the greater world did not exist. Sitting on an upturned log, Elizabeth truly felt as though they were the last people alive.
“This is only the start,” Harold said. “My lady, we will have a beautiful life together. I believe that a man and wife can never fully know each other, but I promise to do my best to know you as well as I know myself. I want us to become one, my lady.”
“Where do you think we will be in five years, my love?” Elizabeth wondered
.
#
The Hawk family is no longer spoken of with such vindictiveness. The marriage between the Duke of Summerset and I put an end to that. Soon after our marriage, the Duke paid off our family’s debts in full, and invited Father and Mother to come and live in the Castle (in their own wing, of course). This allowed us to check Father’s gambling before it started. He has not gambled in five years, and he grumbles less, too.
The Duke and I are as one; or, rather, the Duke and our two children are as four. He was everything I wished him to be on that day long ago in the woods, where I rested my head on his shoulder and talked of the future, and he laughed and said he would give us everything. The King has even visited us once or twice, and Charlotte practically begs me to come to some social function or other.
But I am content to lay awake at night in the Duke’s arms, breathing heavy from our love-making and looking to the future which still looks so bright.
Perhaps, Ms. Diary, this proves something. Perhaps this proves that one does not have to conform to cunning and meanness to get along in the world. Perhaps this proves that one need not have a heart of ice. Take the Duke, for example. He used to be cold, but now he has thawed and grows warmer every day.
Perhaps ice often hides the warmest hearts.
The Brigadier’s Wallflower
Miss Eve Somerset was a wallflower. She knew this, and yet it didn’t make it any easier. She was constantly referred to as a wallflower by her mother, Mrs. Mary Somerset, and her aunt, Miss Alice Wilton. Both women were desperate for Eve to marry and yet were constantly and consistently terrible about the whole affair. On her first season, Auntie Alice had trundled over like a four-horse carriage – she was a momentous woman, with huge hands and a thick neck – and proceeded to talk at length about the relevance of revolution. Revolution! At a social gathering! Revolution at a social gathering where the main topic of conversation was tulips over roses, and all that sort of thing! Auntie Alice was also keen on evaluating men, which would have been fine if this wasn’t in front of the men. She would stomp over, look at the man down her pudgy nose, and then sneer with barely constrained distaste and say something like, “So, sir, how does a man of business make a living these days, anyhow?” This interpolated into a conversation about poetry.
Of course, Mother was always at Eve’s side at any social function. Mother wouldn’t dream of allowing Eve to talk to a man alone, but she always did her best to give Eve and a possible suitor as much room as possible, mainly by turning and pretending to inspect the wallpaper. But invariably Mother would grow tired with this distraction, and then she too, would pile into the conversation.
“Oh, to be young!” she would exclaim. “Oh, to be young again! The love and the life and the smell of youth! Oh, how I wish Harold were here!”
Father had died of consumption – it was a family disgrace – and its chief result was that Eve had no dowry to speak of.
Wallflower: the girl who nobody wants to dance with at the party; three seasons and no husband; three-and-twenty and not even engaged. Mother grew less and less optimistic each year, and started to talk about how Eve could help her in her old age. Eve had seen women like this before, women of three-and-five who had never found a husband, and so whose sole purpose in life had been the care of their elder relatives. They walk about with a sort of despondent regret, as though they’d finally realized that they would never attain anything they truly ever wanted. They would look at Eve with wide, jealous eyes. Eve could almost hear them: You must make something of yourself child, before it is too late. Before you become like us!
The problem was, Eve was not the most sociable person. Oh, she had tried. She sometimes even tried hard. But she would get talking with a man, and minutes later she would become unaccountably and rudely bored. She would look at the gentleman, and think about what he had done and who he was, and find nothing at all to interest her. It was almost impudent of her. Here was a girl of three-and-twenty with a dowry that consisted of some hidden jewelry Mother had spirited away from Father, and she was allowing herself to become bored with potential suitors!
But Eve didn’t simply want to fall into a life of emotional numbness. If that was what she longed for, she could simply stay with Auntie and Mother. No, Eve wanted something more. She wanted, for once in her life, to feel something.
It was at a ball hosted by the Duke of Somerset – a man whom Mother would insist time and time again she was related to by third or fourth cousins – that Eve first saw Captain Charles Appleyard.
*****
Eve entered the ballroom with Auntie and Mother. The girls of eighteen were twirling and prancing in graceful circles, causing the lords to tilt their heads and admire them with warm smiles. Nobody noticed Eve’s entrance. She had entered society three seasons ago and she was not yet married. She was, for all intents and purposes, a wallflower, to be glanced at and quickly dismissed. There were three other wallflowers at the party. They were all nearing five-and-twenty, and were dressed in exceptionally fine dresses, having taken extra care to hide their position. It was hard to say what was wrong with these women – or Eve herself – without looking returning again and again to money. This wallflower’s Father had lost his mind, that wallflower’s Father had taken to gambling, this one’s Father was a poor businessman, that wallflower’s Father lived beyond his means. Few men were willing to marry for love alone, and a woman without a dowry was a poor prospect indeed.
Mother took Eve’s arm and escorted her to the circle of wallflowers, all of whom sat with stern-faced older women who gazed around the party like hungry wolves waiting for scraps. All of them were waiting for some dashing lord to ask their daughter to dance, and then the epic romance between their daughter and the lord would commence, wherein their daughter would be proved to be lovely enough to redeem the family, both financially and socially. But reality was nothing like French novels, and the wallflowers sat largely ignored.
Eve seated herself, tucked her ankles under her seat and placed her gloved hands upon her lap. She was the perfect picture of beauty and femininity. Her hair was jet-black and bound up in tight ringlets. Her eyes were blue and sparked with life and intellect. Her skin was cloud-white, and her mouth was small and pursed. She would have looked cynical and supercilious, had her eyes not been kind as well as intellectual.
Mother and Auntie sat either side of her, looking around the party like the other hungry, older women. Eve conversed with the other wallflowers about topics appropriate to a ballroom setting for young ladies looking for husbands, but not wishing to appear too eager. They talked of garb, flowers, housekeeping, children - all topics that bored Eve greatly. She had been taken in by this fellow Napoleon, and the war that had been spreading across Europe. She thought him awfully dreadful and was glad he had finally been beaten and Britain’s men restored to her. But though it was dreadful, it was also wonderfully fascinating. But she knew so little of it; she only knew about it at all by eavesdropping when the vicar visited Mother at home, something he had done twice a week since Father’s death. “Waterloo… Awful business… So many of God’s children taken…”
But Eve was not supposed to be interested in topics of that sort, and she tried her best not to be. She had been at the party for around forty-five minutes when a man entered wearing knee-high black boots, tight white breeches, a long-tailed, black jacket and a shirt whose frills tickled his chin. Though he was dressed in a similar style to the other men at the party, this man had something that made him stand out from the others. An enormous and visible scar ran down his face, starting at the very top of his forehead, moving down his face and across a ruined eye, and ending just shy of his chin. The ruined eye was white and milky, but he did not have it uncovered. Indeed, he seemed confrontational about the lack of eyepatch or some other eye-covering garb. When a lady looked at him, and then involuntarily and instinctively stared, he simply bared his shoulders and stared at her.
The man entered alone, but presently His Grace
, the Duke of Somerset, emerged from a small huddle of men and women and strutted to where the scarred man stood.
“Ladies and gentleman,” His Grace said loudly, quieting the party for a moment. He pointed to the scared man. “This is Brigadier Charles Appleyard, veteran of Waterloo. He is the reason we can stand here and talk in English today (but let us not discard the French tongue entirely!). Brigadier Appleyard, you have our thanks, and I am greatly moved that you accepted my invitation. Please, treat this home as your own, and make yourself comfortable.”
Brigadier Appleyard regarded His Grace for a moment, and then inclined his head awkwardly, with the lilt of a man who had long been out of polite society.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Brigadier Appleyard said.
His Grace beamed and then returned to his group, leaving Brigadier Appleyard stranded in the middle of the ballroom, as though afloat in a sea of social niceties that were utterly perplexing to him. He looked around for a moment, and then his eye settled on the small group of wallflowers. He seemed to shrug to himself, and then he walked toward them. Auntie Alice and Mother sat up straighter, and Eve felt her heart pounding in her chest. But outwardly she was calm and composed.
“Ladies,” Brigadier Appleyard said, bowing stiffly. “May I sit?”
All of them – around ten ladies in all – stood up and curtseyed. A murmur of Brigadier Appleyard arose from the group of wallflowers. Mother shuffled aside, ostentatiously offering up the chair closest to Eve. Brigadier Appleyard regarded the chair for a moment, and then slid into it. He turned and faced Eve. “So, Miss Somerset,” he said, speaking in short syllables, as though speaking was difficult or painful to him. She noticed that each time he spoke, his scar tugged at his lip.
The Duke of Ice Page 3