The Lies of Lord John (Bonnie Brides Book 5)

by Fiona Monroe

  He had not particularly treasured the lock, she thought. It had been wrapped in the envelope and bundled in a box along with letters from his ill-tempered younger sister, not mounted in a ring and worn on a chain next to his heart.

  There was no date on the letter, which was infuriating. The reference to the canal—she thought it was probably a canal—suggested that the letter had been written in Venice, or at least referred to a planned assignation in Venice. The words that might mean promise or vow filled her with trepidation. Had Lord John sworn an oath to this girl never to marry or never to give his heart to another woman?

  In the darkness, in the stillness, in the dead time of night, it all seemed very likely. Suddenly, Margaret felt that she could not bear it. She had to find out more.

  She found a stump of candle in one of the built-in mounts on the dressing table and managed to bring it to life with the last flicker of flame in her reading-candle. She had no holder, so she grasped the candle itself in her hand and crept by its fluttering, dancing light through the as yet-unfamiliar hall. She had the Latin letter in her other hand, for she had thoughts to replace it.

  The stillness was profound. There was a noisy standing clock in the narrow bit of hallway, the ticking of which made the silence seem all the louder. She could hear ragged snoring coming from the direction of the staff quarters. No doubt it was the snuffling Paterson.

  Her bare feet were freezing against the floorboards, and she curled her toes as she turned the handle of the study door. Fortunately, the building was new and everything was still in good order. The handle did not catch or squeak, the hinges did not creak. She was able to slip into the study and close the door noiselessly behind her, without waking anyone.

  She found an empty candleholder on the desk, jammed the candle into it before its wax dribbled over her hand, and lit another from it as security. There was just enough light now to read by and to find the boxes on the floor.

  But they were not where she had left them that morning. Margaret dropped to her knees to investigate, feeling a swoop of alarm. One box had been pushed under the desk, and the other had been put against the wall. What if her earlier tampering had been evident? She thought she had pressed the nails back into the lids, but she could not be sure. And Lord John might decide in the morning to unpack his belongings and look through them, and he would notice the absence of the letter from L. She was profoundly thankful that she had thought to return it. It had really been an afterthought; her overriding idea had been to search through the box of papers again, more carefully, looking for anything else that might give her a clue about the Venetian girl.

  With great care, she eased the box under the desk back out onto the rug, and set about levering the lid off. It gave her some trouble, and when at last the slat snapped back, it made a crack that sounded, in the dead, dark silence, as loud as a pistol shot.

  Her efforts, too, had been in vain. For when she put her hand in to start withdrawing the documents, her fingers encountered leather, not paper. To her dismay, the first thing she pulled out was the French picture-book. She had opened the wrong box.

  "What in God's name are you about?"

  Margaret leapt to her feet, and accidentally let her candle fall. Lord John was looming over the back of the winged chair against the tiny, empty fireplace.

  She cursed her own stupidity. How could she have forgotten that he had made his bed there?

  "I am—I could not sleep and—"

  "Good God, you are intent on burning the house down."

  The candle had not gone out, when it tumbled from her hand, but looked likely to set the rug on fire. As Lord John launched himself forward to beat out the flame with his slipper, Margaret affected to jump back in alarm and took the opportunity to drop the letter down behind the desk.

  "I could not sleep," she repeated. "Because I could not stop thinking about this book, and at last I had to get up and look at it again."

  "What book?" He snatched it from her, and his eyebrows shot up. "Les Arts de l'Amour! This is hardly proper reading for any young lady, let alone my wife."

  "Then why is it in your possession, sir?" she countered boldly.

  "That is my business. I had no intention of putting it out on a shelf for you or anyone else to see. You must have gone looking for it."

  "I thought I would finish unpacking in this room, so I opened this crate. When I saw what manner of books were within it, I closed it up again."

  "Did I not tell you that these were my private papers? Did you open the other box?"

  "N-no."

  "Did you read the whole of this?" He waved the book.

  "I-I looked at some of the pictures. Most of the pictures." She hung her head, her cheeks flaming. She did not know why she felt so ashamed. He was the one who had brought the book into the house, after all.

  "And you wished to look at them again, eh?"

  "Y-yes, sir."

  "I'm disappointed, Margaret, to find you so immodest."

  "I am not immodest! I was just—curious."

  "Curious, curious." He seized her arm and frogmarched her out of the room, across the dark hallway, and into the bedroom. "Did I not tell you to curb your curiosity?"

  "Yes, sir, but—oh!"

  She gave a small scream of surprise as he threw her face down onto the bed. Her face landed with a soft thump into the pillow, and she felt his hand pressing down in the small of her back. Then she yelled as something struck the upper side of her leg with a tremendous sting and a whacking sound that was incredibly loud in the stillness of the night.

  She twisted her upper body round in time to see that he was wielding his slipper, which had a tartan upper and a thick, flexible, leather sole, before the impromptu instrument of correction came down hard once more, right across the top of her bottom.

  "No!" she cried. "Stop it!" She tried to squirm away.

  "Hold still, damn it. The more you struggle, the worse you make it, because I am going to teach you not to look at dirty pictures, young lady."

  "I won't! I won't! I won't again!"

  It was no good. He was far too strong for her. He put his knee into her back, held her wrists together with one hand, and used the other arm to lay into her backside with the slipper. Even through the thick cotton of her nightgown, the hard leather sole landed with a searing crack of pain that made her gasp and kick her legs at each stroke.

  "Be still!" he grunted at last.

  She squirmed desperately out from under him and tumbled off the bed, crying now. She stood before him, rubbing at her backside through the nightgown. "I am sorry, I am sorry. I promise I'll never look at anything like that again. Truly, I won't."

  "Well, maybe you won't, but Margaret—"

  "Y-yes, sir?" she said, in as small and humble a voice as she could, sniffing and hoping that if she presented as pathetic a picture as she could, he would put that slipper back on his foot. He had shifted to sit on the edge of the bed and was sitting up with his legs apart, the slipper still held ominously in one hand.

  "You do understand, don't you, that as your husband, it is my duty to make sure you behave?"

  "Y-yes, sir, but I promise I will, you don't have to punish me any more—"

  "And it is your duty to submit to correction with a good will and not make such a damnable fuss."

  "But it hurts!" she cried and burst into tears.

  "It's supposed to hurt. Now, I haven't finished with you; there's the matter of you interfering with my private belongings when I told you not to. Come here, and let's get it over with."

  He waited, staring at her and tapping the slipper ominously against his knee.

  She swallowed her tears, since they were doing no good, and rubbed furiously at a couple of the many smarting spots on her backside and thighs, trying to draw out the sting. A buzzing pain, like furious bees under the skin, was building up where the slipper had struck already; now he was going to do it some more, and she was going to have to submit herself to it. The longer sh
e stood there, the heavier the dread of anticipation became.

  Finally, with a whimper, she stepped quickly toward him.

  She had expected him to grab her, but he made no move to touch her. Instead, he said with grim calm, "Come on. Over my knee."

  Clumsily, hesitatingly, she knelt before him and draped herself across his lap. He was still wearing his breeches, though he had on only an open shirt and nothing on his feet but his one remaining slipper. She felt the toughness of his thigh muscles against her stomach as she leaned forward.

  Then, at last, he put his arm around her waist and drew her further forward so that her backside was pushed high up by his knee. With one swift tug, he caught the hem of her nightdress and whipped it up to bare her from waist to ankles.

  "No!" she gasped and began to wriggle again. "Oh please, Lord John, not bare!"

  "You won't learn your lesson through an inch of cotton."

  "I will! I promise I'll hold still and I won't cry too much, but oh, please let me have some protection—oooh!" Her pleas were cut short by the slipper landing squarely across the top of both buttocks, with a merciless crack of hard leather on soft, naked flesh.

  She had not thought the material of the nightgown so very effective a barrier to so unexpectedly cruel an implement of chastisement, but now she learned that a slipper applied hard and long to a bared, defenceless backside was well-nigh unendurable. Yet she had no choice but to endure it, as her husband had no intention of letting her go until he had tanned her rosy-red from the top of her nether cheeks to the back of her knees. Shouting, tears and pleading had no effect.

  At last, breathing heavily, he lifted her up and put her back on her feet. "Now then. Are you truly sorry?"

  "Yes!" she sobbed, clutching a nether cheek in each hand under the skirt of her nightdress. All modesty was burned away.

  "That was a child's punishment, Margaret. You make an awful fuss. A wee slippering?"

  "You don't know how much it hurts!" she cried out. "My b-bottom feels like it's on fire!"

  "It will wear off presently. You deserved it. I hope I never have to take that riding crop to you, then you'll know all about it."

  "Please, please never do that."

  "Well, then, never do anything to deserve it. Obey me, behave respectfully, and be a good girl." He hooked the dreaded slipper back onto his foot, then he took hold of her hands and drew her close against him. He did not stand up but embraced her legs from his sitting position and kissed her bosom. "My God, you are beautiful with your hair undone like this. Even with your nose and eyes red and running, you are beautiful." He tugged at her and pulled her down to sit this time on his lap.

  She winced as her stinging bottom and thighs rubbed against the rough material of his breeches, but she made no objection to this new position. Nor did she protest when, after a long thoughtful look into her eyes, he kissed her on the mouth.

  It was by no means her first kiss, but it was certainly her most exciting. None of the other men she had kissed before had also run their long-fingered hands over the tender, tingling parts of her body, igniting her inside. She forgot her smarting bottom as Lord John gently cupped her breast, by sliding his hand into the front of her nightgown, and teased the nipple until hot tingling sensations shot through her whole body.

  He scooped her up in his arms and threw her backward onto the bed, then he knelt over her.

  "I cannot resist you," he growled. "Heaven help me, I tried. It is impossible."

  She dared not say a thing, in case it deflected his purpose. She was burning with questions, but she was also burning with a longing that was more acute than physical hunger.

  So she did nothing but close her eyes and let the sweetest sensations she had never even imagined overwhelm her as she surrendered herself entirely to her husband.

  John lay awake for far longer than Margaret did. Exhausted as he had thought himself from the stress and worry of the last couple of days, the exhilaration of consummating his marriage—after what felt like far longer than scarcely a week—coursed through his veins like the strongest wine and energised him beyond the possibility of sleep. He knew that he ought not to have done it, not really. He had been fighting with himself, fighting both his fears and his fidelity to the vow he had made, since Monday night.

  She was so completely trusting and so completely his own. He marvelled at it as he stroked her satin skin and glossy curls and played with the sleep-softened fingers of her little, unblemished hand. No work callouses on those fingers, no smell of lye lingering in her hair, no roughened pads on her bare feet, no split, damaged nails. She gave off a scent of powder, clean and sweet.

  It was the first time he had ever held the naked body of a gentleman's daughter in his arms. With the exception of a couple of French tarts and an abhorrent encounter with a Venetian courtesan, his every lover had been a girl from the lower orders.

  Until Buccleuch had pointed it out, John had never thought about what that meant. He had always merely assumed that it was because he could not afford to marry, so he had never courted a woman of his own class, or near to it. Now, he realised, he had been afraid. He had not really believed that a respectable girl would want anything to do with him. Servants and innkeepers' daughters were easy, because they would not refuse him.

  And though he had thought, when Buccleuch first set it out, that taking on responsibility for his wife's behaviour sounded like a great deal of tedious effort, he had found that buckling down to the duty had been actually enjoyable; it had enabled him to make Margaret his own, to know that she was submitting to his will and direction as a wife ought. When she was fully dressed in a smart evening gown, tossing her delightful chestnut curls and giving him saucy answers, he was in danger of being intimidated by her. When he was holding her across his lap, bunching those filmy muslin skirts high above her waist to bare her charming plump bottom, and turning those nether cheeks redder and sorer with every well-deserved stroke while she squirmed and cried, then he knew she was his own, in every sense.

  He stirred anew at the memory, but he let her sleep on. He had no idea what would happen now. The King of Swabia was dead, according to The Scotsman at any rate. Even though he had been unable to confirm it through official sources, it did not seem unlikely. His Majesty had been known to be in poor health, even two years ago.

  What did that mean for him? Would he be released from his wretched vow soon, or would he be obliged to continue in the lie forever—to confirm it to the world? Then, what would happen to Margaret?

  When he had been contemplating taking this step, to marry a stranger for her fortune, he had been desperate and the girl had been a mere abstraction to him. Now, he had twenty thousand in bonds in the bank, which had cleared his head remarkably, and she was a warm, breathing, loving reality in his arms. He cared far more than he had imagined he would.

  He cared a great deal.

  He lay awake all the rest of the night, until the pale light of dawn crept around the edge of the shutters.

  Chapter 16

  "I must go out again this morning, my dear," Lord John said over breakfast, after scrutinising The Scotsman. "But when I return, perhaps we could go for a drive. It looks like a fine day."

  "I should like that," said Margaret very happily. She was content just to be sitting here in her own parlour, with the spring sunshine streaming in upon the breakfast table, feeling pleasantly sore both inside and out. She could still feel the after-effects of the slipper in her nether regions, and she could also feel a tenderness within. He had not been particularly gentle in the end, when breaking through her maidenhead. That single sharp pain had been succeeded by such intense transports of delight, however, that even the ache remaining made her smile in memory.

  Perhaps, she thought, they could find someplace secluded and enjoy the open air like a pair of peasants.

  "Downie can make us a picnic," she said. "I shall give instructions."

  "Which one is Downie? The cook?"

  "I shou
ld not ask the scullery maid to prepare a picnic. Yes, Downie is the cook."

  "Please do not ask me to remember all the names."

  "We have only three servants, Lord John. It should not be beyond your intellect."

  They had to cease talking then as Paterson bumbled in, banged against the table, and tipped more toasted bread half onto a plate. She poured tea, but half of it missed the cup and went into the saucer, because she was looking between Margaret and Lord John and smirking.

  Margaret coloured. She reflected that the noise they had made in the middle of the night must have roused the servants, who, after all, slept only two rooms away; they must have heard the crack of leather sole on flesh, her every cry and plea, and doubtless also her later groans of pleasure.

  Well, there was no need to be discomfited. She was a married woman, and she had no need to be ashamed either of doing what married women did in bed with their husbands, or of submitting to correction. Again, though, she resolved to endure any future punishments in stoic silence.

  He kissed her tenderly on the head before going out. "Again, be careful. Don't let that girl admit anyone you don't know."

  "Why should I do that, sir?"

  "No reason at all." He took a quick glance out of the window, across Princes Street, and then was gone.

  Margaret thought she would spend the time waiting for his return in writing some letters. She had not asked Lord John whether she may, formally, continue her friendship with Emmeline Douglas, but she thought that if she promised to be discreet about it, she might at least be permitted to meet with her in private. She understood that she could never receive Mrs. Douglas openly in their house, but she thought that she might at least obtain permission to visit her in Hanover Street. She wrote a quick note first:

  Dearest Emmeline,

  What we discussed the other day, has been resolved most happily. I took your advice in part and looked through his papers in search of anything compromising. I did find two letters from former lovers (one written in Latin, no less!), but what gentleman of any age, and indeed what scion of the aristocracy in particular, has not had a lover or two? Well, he found me out, and I paid for it with another hiding, but after that, we did everything that a man and wife ought to. I am so happy! He is certainly not diseased, or incapable, or anything else like that. We are to go on a drive and a picnic later this morning, and I will ask him then whether I may visit you. I do not want to give up our friendship, but I must, of course, obey my husband.