by Fiona Monroe
"Indeed, sir, I shall show you as much respect as you afford me, and that should certainly include honouring the promise you made me, to allow me to live as I please!"
She did not at all like the way he was looking at her, as if she had disappointed him already. She clenched her fists and hardened her resolve, looking away so that she should not see that disapproving glare.
The bedsprings creaked, and she felt the mattress depress beside her.
Her stomach swooped with excitement and alarm. It was about to begin. The argument about the house would be swept into irrelevance. She turned to look at him with a shy but inviting smile and found herself seized bodily about the waist.
She gave a small yelp of surprise, because this was not what she had been expecting. A first, tender kiss leading to deeper, hungry kisses, and perhaps a hand caressing her breast had been the first moves she had imagined. Instead, before she knew what was happening, he had turned her face forward and upside down over his lap.
She struggled furiously as soon as she realised the position she was in, but it was too late. He had, with two or three strenuous, determined physical efforts, thrown her over one knee and was now fighting to lift up her skirts while holding her there. The strength in his arms and upper body was intense, unyielding, masculine. She tried to kick her legs and twist her body and bat at him with her fists, but he overpowered her.
"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "Let me go!"
"No, by God." He sounded a little out of breath but grimly resolute. "You will not talk to me like that. We start as we mean to go on."
"You can't do this! I won't let you!"
"I can do this. I'm your husband. And I need to do this, or you'll never learn. Hold still, you little minx!"
"No!" she cried again and somehow managed to twist her head round and up and sink her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand.
She had the momentary satisfaction of hearing him swear, but it did not give her the opportunity to escape. It seemed to imbue him with added resolve, and he succeeded with a single final yank in pulling all her skirts high above her waist then trapping her legs hard between his thighs.
Now, she really could not move. She hung over one knee with her head almost to the floor, her hair coming undone into her eyes and her fingers scrabbling helplessly at the carpet. She felt cold air upon her backside and legs and knew that all must be exposed to his view. He laid one arm across her back, unyielding as an iron bar, to pin her down against his leg, and then with no further ado, he lifted his other arm high to bring his open palm down hard on her bare bottom.
She had no idea that a hand, on its own, could hurt so much. She scarce had time to shriek in surprise before he struck her unprotected backside again, and again, an excruciating, relentless volley of blows that soon had her bucking and twisting not in indignation but in real desperation to escape.
"Oh! No! Please! Stop! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please stop!" she pleaded, screaming to be heard above the pistol-shot cracks of hard hand on soft flesh.
He did not even pause. "Sorry, are you?" His hand came down harder than ever, punctuating each word with a slow, deliberate, agonising slap on alternate buttocks. "Let's—see—how—sorry—we—can—make—you."
She howled, and he stopped. She hung there, sobbing and panting, waiting. "Please no more," she whimpered. Oh, please let him be finished. She had not thought that anything could hurt as much as her aunt and the hairbrush, but a proper hiding from her husband's hard hand had been worse. Her bottom felt scalded.
He drew in a breath. "This is for biting me, you little hellcat," he said and slapped the backs of her thighs with all his might. Half a dozen rapid smacks across each leg, and Margaret was screaming again.
When he had finished, he tipped her off his knee and she fell to the floor, sobbing.
"All right, Margaret," he said, in a much gentler tone. He held out his hand—the same hand that he had just been applying to her bottom and thighs with such painful effect—and she grasped it gladly and allowed him to help her to her feet.
She stood before him, rubbing her stinging backside and still weeping.
"Now come, dry those tears. You will not speak impudently to me again?"
"N-no, sir. I will not. A-and I am very sorry for biting you."
He looked ruefully at his hand, where the marks of her teeth were still visible. "I should think so. Do anything like that again, and I swear I'll take my riding crop to you. Now sit down, and listen to me."
Anxious to obey him now, Margaret wiped at her face and sat carefully down on the bed. The fiery sting in her backside and legs was subsiding into a warm glow, which tingled and prickled as she put pressure on that region.
"I promised to let you live as you pleased, but only so far as that does not bring disgrace on me or involve disrespect or impudence or other bad behaviour. Do you see? I have been informed that you were a spoiled child, and I do not want to be responsible for a spoiled young lady. Now, any more displays of bad temper or insolence, I won't hesitate to turn you over my knee again. And next time, I might find a belt. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you do understand that it is my right, indeed, my duty as your husband, to correct you?"
"Y-yes, sir." Her hand stole once again to rub where it was sore.
"All right, then. I shall say goodnight, Margaret." He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
She gaped at him in confusion and consternation. "Lord John, are we not to—have I angered you so much?"
He had stood up. The movement enabled Margaret to see, quite plainly, the bulge straining at the front of his breeches.
He rubbed his hand over his face, and then, without looking at her, he said, "Even if you had angered me, it would not stop me wanting to make you mine, as my wife—do you see? But as it is, the anger is over, forgotten. Please understand that."
"Yes, so shall we?"
"But, Margaret, there are reasons—there is a very good reason why this is not something which can happen yet."
"What reason?"
"I cannot tell you. You must not ask."
"I cannot help but want to ask, sir."
"Then curb your damned curiosity!" he snapped.
Margaret shrank back.
He sighed and sat beside her again. "I apologise. I did not mean to—but damn it, Margaret, if I tell you to do something, as a fundamental principle of our marriage, I want you to do it. I don't want to spend the next three decades, or however long we have on this earth between us, arguing this over again. If I tell you that there is a good reason, but I cannot tell you it yet and you must not ask, then take me at my word. Or, you know, we can do all that over again."
"No, please do not do that."
"All right then. Trust me. There is time enough, I promise. When the time is right, we will do everything a man and wife should do together. In the meantime, just be a good girl and trust me. It's for your own good, too, I promise you. Goodnight, Margaret."
This time, he kissed her hand, bowed, and made a rapid departure, leaving Margaret alone, saddened, and very bewildered.
"What? He put you over his knee, and then he would not bed you?" Emmeline compressed this into a scandalised whisper as she pressed Margaret's hand against her side.
They were walking arm-in-arm along a lane through the meadow behind Charlotte Square that Margaret now knew belonged to the Earl of Moray, although she had never given a thought to the landowner before. She had not been entirely sure whether she ought to have contacted her friend—she knew that, indeed, she ought to give Emmeline Douglas up as a friend—but she had woken on her first morning as a married woman feeling so totally unlike how she had anticipated that she would, that she had to have someone to discuss her situation with. It had passed through her mind over breakfast that Lady Buccleuch might be her confidante—Lady Buccleuch did seem a very pleasant girl—but Margaret was put off both by a disinclination to explain all the embarrassing circumstances and
by a feeling that her hostess did not much approve of Lord John. She also wondered, with mortification, whether her cries the night before had been audible throughout the house.
If she landed herself another punishment in future, she determined she would do her best to endure it in silence. She had not been prepared, although she intended to behave herself as far as possible and not get into trouble again.
So, having considered and then dismissed the notion of confiding in her hostess, and upon Lord John declaring that he was going out for the day on business, she wrote a note to Emmeline. She gave the boot boy a halfpenny to take it round to Hanover Street, and within an hour, Emmeline's carriage came rattling along Queen Street. Margaret had been watching for it from her bedroom window and ran out to meet Emmeline in the street. She was mindful of what Lord John had said, that Lady Buccleuch would not appreciate Mrs. Douglas calling at the house.
They had driven a little way out into the country, at Margaret's request, because she was now eager to see the place where she was still determined her new house should be. There was a lane through fields, where cows grazed, and a row of small farm cottages, and in the middle distance—its roofs and chimneys peering over a band of tress—a gentleman's house, which she believed was called Drumsleugh Hall. She glanced behind and saw the tall back of Charlotte Square, like a limestone cliff, which destroyed the illusion that they were in the country. All before her, she supposed, was to be demolished and swept away under cobbles, pleasure gardens and grand townhouses.
"He said there were good reasons," Margaret said. "What reasons could those possibly be?"
"Well, my dear, I hardly know." Mrs. Douglas was silent for a moment, as if thinking. "I hesitate to suggest the obvious."
"Why? Whatever is it?"
"Oh, Margaret, surely it must have occurred to you."
"No! That is why I ask!"
"Ah. You really are still young in the ways of the world."
Margaret scowled. That might be true enough, but that was exactly why she was consulting her all too worldly friend. "Well?" she demanded shortly.
"Perhaps he is diseased."
"Oh no!"
"It is very likely. He knows he has a disease, caught from some foreign lady of easy virtue, and does not wish to pass it on to you. If he said you had to wait—well, he may expect a cure. But I'm sorry to say, there is rarely any recovering from such an affliction."
"I do not think he is ill! He seems very healthy."
"These diseases do not always manifest themselves outwardly, at least to begin with, at least in ways that can be seen without—you did not get a look at his private parts?" She lowered her voice to a whisper, even though their only eavesdroppers were likely to be the cows in the field they were passing.
"No! I told you. He kept all his clothes on. I could see, you know, that perhaps he wanted to—"
"Oh! And yet he did not. How very curious indeed."
"And he must… oh, Emmeline, he must have seen me."
"He lifted your skirts?"
"Yes. I was quite bare."
"Clearly, then, he means to act as your husband in that respect. It seems most unfair that he should chastise you and yet not give you pleasure afterward."
"Did Mr. Douglas ever punish you, Emmeline?"
"Oh, no! I should not have stood for such a thing. Oh, well. Maybe there was that one time. Yes. I had behaved rather badly, I admit it now. We were at a party, and I was angry with him for some stupid reason and flirted deliberately with a friend of his, someone I knew he was jealous of, just to annoy him. Unfortunately, the friend took the invitation too seriously and kissed me. When we got home, Mr. Douglas took his shoe off and gave me what-for with the leather sole. I tried to fight back, but he overpowered me and pinned me down and did give me quite a walloping. I was very sorry, and he made sure I felt it. But afterward, we went to bed and—oh, dear." Emmeline stopped suddenly by the gate to the field, as if to examine the cow more closely. "Poor Mr. Douglas. You must take care, Margaret, to appreciate your husband, for you do not know what will happen."
"But you married Mr. Douglas for love." She gave her friend some privacy in her moment of weakness, by looking back again at the now-distant rooftops of Charlotte Square. Over there, her uncle was continuing his life without her. Charity was mourning the wreckage of her hopes of Mr. Obidiah Carluke. Her aunt was, presumably, rejoicing over her dominion of a house now free from Margaret's polluting presence. Seen from here, it all looked very far away.
"I married Mr. Douglas because he had a gold pocket-watch and he asked me," said Emmeline, and there were tears in her voice. "When you are eighteen, those are weighty factors. Then, of course, I did love him, but all too late! My dear friend, do not let it be too late for you."
"But if he will not even consummate our marriage, what will I do?"
Emmeline took her arm again and they carried on along the lane. "You must find out why."
"He admonished me not to ask. On pain of another—you know. He said he would find a belt!" The thought of that, in particular, frightened her.
"You must take your chance on that!" Emmeline said urgently. She was pausing before talking, as if thinking deeply. "Because it is certainly a very curious situation—a very curious circumstance indeed. It is necessary for your present and future happiness. Marriage is a serious thing. You may be very happy and content or quite wretched, depending entirely on how you and your husband live together. I would say if he does not seem afflicted with illness, and I have to say, he does not look like he is ill, then I wonder if there is another woman, whom he has to arrange matters with before he can consummate his marriage?"
"Another woman!" A dart of dark pain shot through her breast. She was surprised at how powerful, how evil the feeling was. How could she feel so strongly, when this was a man of whose existence she had been in ignorance a week before? Yet that very fact—the fact that she knew next to nothing about him—made her feel all the more vulnerable and anxious. She turned the wedding ring on her finger and pulled in breaths over the sudden ache in her chest.
"Yes, I think so!" Emmeline continued, somewhat heartlessly. "That would be very likely. Perhaps a paid mistress, perhaps a girl from the lower orders who has his child, maybe. Someone he made a promise to and might bring an action?"
"But, Emmeline, you arranged this match for me! Did not you ascertain whether there was an impediment of that nature?"
"I did not arrange it for you, my dear. Sir Duncan Buccleuch did that. I was merely an intermediary. At any rate, Sir Duncan said that Lord John was free to marry, and I do not know why I should have questioned that. The two seem intimate enough."
"Did he say why Lord John had not married up until now, though? He is past thirty, I believe."
"Oh! Dissolute youth or some such," said Emmeline carelessly, with continued disregard for Margaret's feelings. "Which is why I wondered whether he might have a little problem, my dear, down there."
Margaret bit her lip.
"You must turn detective," Emmeline said with renewed energy. "Perhaps, no, you cannot ask him outright, but could you make enquiries of Sir Duncan?"
"Sir Duncan scares me. I do not like him."
"Pff. His wife, then?"
"Perhaps. But we will be moving into the rooms in Princes Street by the end of the week."
"You had better get to it then, my dear! Or—if you are to move—all your belongings will be moved, too. Does Lord John have papers? Does he get much correspondence?"
"I do not know."
"You might try searching his papers. The confusion of the move might afford an opportunity. Perhaps there would be a clue there."
"Oh! No. Read his private correspondence? That would be shocking."
"My dear, far more shocking to have your husband keep an important secret from you. You must protect yourself."
"Perhaps, I should make myself alluring? How might I do that?"
Emmeline gave her a long look. "I cannot imagine you co
uld look any more alluring, truly, than you must have seemed to him last night. Indeed, you might entice him—men are weak—but it would be better to find out why he thinks that you ought not to consummate your marriage yet. That is my advice, at any rate."
They walked on, mostly in silence, until they reached the lodge cottage that served Drumsleugh Hall, which, at that point in the road, was not visible. The gateposts, the little house, and the gravel driveway had a neglected air. An elderly lodge keeper lounged in the tiny garden adjacent to the house, a cap pulled over his forehead, smoking a pipe. He exuded the lazy indifference of a servant whose master was not at home and would probably never be at home again. Margaret wondered what would happen to the man when his own little home and the great house he had perhaps served for decades of his life would be demolished to make way for the new development.
"Good man!" she called. "Where is the Water of Leith?"
The lodge keeper squinted at her against the spring sunshine, creaked to his feet, removed his cap, and pointed with his pipe across the field, in the direction of a band of trees. "Way ower yonder, madam. Behind thae trees."
"There, Emmeline," Margaret said. "More or less there, that must be where my house will be. The agent said its back windows would have a view of the river."
They both listened to the harsh calls of corncrakes and the slow buzzing of a nearby bee. They could no longer see the edge of New Town. It might have been the deepest part of the unchanging Scottish countryside, but everything around them might never see another spring.
Another night passed. Margaret had been a married woman for two whole days and was yet a maid. Lord John had said goodnight to her on the landing outside her bedroom, very courteously, and gone on further up their stairs to, she presumed, some separate bedroom of his own. She had to endure Sir Duncan's indelicate remarks at breakfast, and as night approached after dinner, without any compensation. It was clear, at least, that their hosts did not know of the situation. Sir Duncan at least assumed that all was proceeding normally in their married life.