Training Lady Townsend

by Joseph, Annabel

  “You like it,” he whispered against her ear. “You naughty, wondrous girl. You like to be fucked in the arse.”

  His obscenity ought to have disturbed her. Instead, it brought the lustful arousal inside her to a throbbing peak.

  “Say that you like it. Tell me. Say that you will wish me to do this again.”

  “I—I like it,” she stammered, not sure if she meant it or if he had only taken over her body and her mind through some unnatural skill.

  “Say that you like my cock in your arse. Say it.”

  “I like your cock in my arse,” she whispered. “I like it. Please...please don’t stop touching me there. It feels so good.”

  “Yes, your pussy is hot and wet with wanting. You shall have your reward.” The fondness in his voice combined with the dancing of his fingertips, and the very firm buggering of her narrow channel, so that she felt quite transported and outside of herself. She was not Aurelia, proper wife and daughter, but a wild thing like the birds and rustling creatures of the woods. She saw his hand grasp the oak bark beside her, and then he reached forward to pinch her nipples, first one and then the other. He pressed his chin against her hair as he plucked the taut, aroused points.

  “I love you. My wife. My beautiful, sensual wife.”

  She could only sob in surrender as the teasing pain of her nipples released the last of her hold on civility. Her climax built to a roaring peak, and then a shuddering, gasping release. As if from far away, she heard his shout of completion as he drove her hard against the oak trunk, his fingers twisted in her hair. But she was not there beneath him. She was flying free, still shivering in the throes of magnificent bliss.

  Slowly, she came back to awareness of the forest. He was stroking her hair and occasionally the crown of her forehead, a steady, soothing touch.

  “Do you love me too?” he asked her quietly. “But you must, to surrender to me so completely. Aurelia, how I love you.”

  She reached to cradle his head beside hers. “Of course I love you. Well, most of the time,” she joked. When had she ever joked before she met him? Never.

  He laughed so that his still-hard cock bucked inside her. Now that the ecstasy had ebbed away, it was back to feeling rather tender and uneasy there. He pulled away from her carefully, then helped her stand upright and rearrange her dress and her curls where he’d mussed them. He tilted her head back and kissed her for long moments while she readjusted to the reality of her world.

  She was a fallen sort of woman, surely, but she didn’t think that was so bad anymore. He loved her, and she was very sure she was coming to love him, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t. He kissed her with passionate tenderness, his arms holding her safe, his lips caressing and soothing her misgivings away. She loved him for this, for his tenderness and humor, and his wildness. She loved him for the pleasure he’d brought to her life.

  She loved him.

  All of a sudden, he broke the kiss and turned toward a group of shrubs.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  Aurelia tilted her head, listening for what he might hear, then a smile spread across her face. A robust chirp-chirp repeated amongst the other sounds of the forest, a few yards away at most.

  “I believe our pet grasshopper has been a voyeur to our little scene.”

  She narrowed her eyes in confusion. “What does that mean? A voyeur?”

  “Voyeurs take pleasure from watching others’ private interactions.”

  “Sexual interactions?”

  “Often, yes.” He arched a brow at her. “I am so terribly evil, my dear, that I know all these things, and then teach them to you.”

  “Have you been a voyeur to other’s sexual interactions? Perhaps in your previous adventures?”

  He gave her one of his piratical looks and then pretended great interest in searching for the grasshopper. But it had gone quiet, unwilling to be found. They went to a nearby brook to wash up, a practical errand that soon degraded into reckless chasing and splashing. It seemed the perfect conclusion to their bawdy afternoon. He pulled on his breeches and his coat, and ran a hand through his hair, straightening it where she’d tugged upon it.

  “I suppose we must go back and gather up our tea things, and return to the house before the servants come looking for us.” He turned to her and took her hands in his. “Thank you, my dear, for giving so much to me. It has been a special sort of afternoon.”

  She could think of nothing to say to that. In fact, the depth of his gaze made her feel raw and vulnerable. She wished she was upstairs in her rooms, near to the window seat so she might hide. Finally she managed to say, “You’re welcome,” and they set off back down the walk hand in hand, toward servants and manicured lawns and well-appointed rooms, and all the other things that gave a civil veneer to their private depravities.

  But when they came out of the wilderness where they had left their blanket and tea, they found three smiling, immaculately attired gentlemen reclining on the lawn, helping themselves, in fact, to some of the cook’s cakes.

  “Bother,” he muttered. “Company.”

  She looked up at him sharply, but he didn’t really seem displeased, only a bit surprised as the three friends noticed them and got to their feet. He dropped her hand and went ahead of her, calling out in greeting to Lord Augustine, and the Duke of Arlington.

  And the Earl of Warren, who looked quite as striking and blond and admirable as he ever had been.

  Chapter Thirteen: Visitors

  Aurelia walked ahead of him on the way back to the house, having quite properly offered her arm to the most distinguished of their guests. Arlington inclined his head to hers, nodding politely to her comments about this and that. Hunter couldn’t hear their conversation, but he was sure it was starchily polite and appropriate. His wife had been raised, after all, to show respect to dukes.

  Hunter showed no such respect to August and Warren. “You might have sent a message first,” he said.

  “Sent a message?” August snorted. “Why? Would you have told us not to come?”

  No, Hunter wouldn’t have. In truth, he was pleased to see his friends, but he wished they hadn’t shown up this particular afternoon. He had never before felt self-conscious among these men, his closest friends, but now he did. He worried they might somehow divine the way he and his wife had spent the last hour.

  “Did you come into the woods in search of us?” Hunter asked with a carefully casual air.

  “No, we were too busy ravishing your tea basket.” Warren laughed, then turned a speculative gaze back on him. “Why? What were you getting up to in the woods?”

  There was a time in his life when Hunter would have happily related every lurid detail of the past hour’s activity to his friends, from the tenor and duration of his victim’s screams during the switching, to how long it had taken to work his cock into the lady’s arsehole, to the details of how she’d reacted when he did. Warren and August would have had a jolly laugh about it and boasted of their own recent, similar encounters. But now, since the victim in question was his wife, he had absolutely no desire to do so.

  “Aurelia and I were taking a walk. We often walk and...and picnic together. She was never allowed to participate in picnics and such when Lansing had a hold of her, so I try to take her on scads of them.” He was babbling like an idiot. Warren and August stared at him. “She likes them,” he persisted. “And it’s good for her to take the fresh air.”

  August slid a look at Warren. “I don’t think I want to know what he was doing to her back in those woods, do you, Warren?”

  Warren returned a grimace. “It was obviously something really reprehensible.” He turned back to Hunter. “Yes, old chap, it’s very good of you to ‘take her on picnics’ so she can ‘have some fresh air.’”

  August erupted into laughter. They were joking, both of them. If they only knew... But he didn’t want them to know.

  He was ashamed of the things he did to his wife.

  The thought
struck him like a punch to the gut. Yes, he was ashamed to admit that he used his wife in such a fashion, that he demanded sordid acts of her nearly every day. He had been so content with the way they were rubbing along in this marriage that he hadn’t even stopped to think about whether he was behaving in a gentlemanly fashion.

  He most certainly was not.

  It wasn’t only his shame that kept his lips pressed in a thin line. There was his wife’s honor to protect. He hadn’t cared before he’d come to love her, but oh, he cared now. He stared at her back as she walked on the Duke of Arlington’s arm, the perfect, proper lady in her perfect, fashionable gown. She would suffer utter annihilation, not to mention public repulsion, if anyone were to discover the nature of their marital dealings. Even his friends, if they knew, would think less of her. They might even believe her a fair target for their amorous wiles.

  No, not his friends. They would never disrespect his wife or betray him...would they?

  He wondered if these uncomfortable misgivings were related to his newfound feelings of love for Aurelia. All at once there were three more gentlemen in her vicinity, one of whom escorted her upon his arm. Of course, it was Arlington, who was a stick of a stickler when it came to manners around respectable ladies. He wondered how Aurelia felt, if she was fighting the same nervous anxieties he was. He didn’t doubt she was, doubly so. He tried to put such troubling thoughts away and exchange pleasantries with Warren and August so they didn’t become any more suspicious than they already were.

  “How long will you stay?” he asked them.

  “As long as you’ll have us,” said August. “But not so long that we wear out our welcome.”

  Warren glanced at Aurelia. “We’ll try to behave, Towns. We know you’re a married chap now, and newly fond of picnics and sitting home by the fire. Lady Townsend looks well.”

  “She is well. We’ve both adjusted to our new life, and become close to one another.”

  There, that was as much as he need say. His friends would take away from it that any disparaging language or behavior toward her would be out of bounds.

  “I’m happy to hear you are both happy,” said August with typical amiability.

  “I’m happy to hear it too,” echoed Warren in an even tone that nonetheless pricked him. Hunter pursed his lips. Why did it feel like, in a mere three months’ time, a vast chasm had opened between him and his unmarried friends?

  “Anyway, I’m not the only one fond of picnics,” he said, falling back on the comfortable act of mockery. “I noticed the three of you ate every one of my wife’s favorite cakes.”

  *** *** ***

  Aurelia sat to her husband’s right at dinner, with Lord Augustine at her right side, and Arlington and Warren across from her. His friends were the most congenial sort, well-spoken and polite to a fault. They smiled at her often and went to great lengths to include her in sundry conversation, and never made her feel the least bit uncomfortable.

  But she felt uncomfortable all the same. She couldn’t shake her memories of that afternoon in the forest, when she’d abandoned all sense of decorum and coupled with her husband in a coarsely animalistic way. Even after a long soak in the bath and some quiet time stitching at linens in her sheltered window seat, she felt sullied and not like a lady at all.

  She feared Hunter’s friends would realize this about her, that she was not a respectable lady. Now and again her husband caught her gaze, even touching her hand beneath the table, as if to reassure her, but he couldn’t really understand. Here she was, seated directly across from Lord Warren, a man she once idolized, feeling like the cheapest, most whorish woman in the world.

  Did she still idolize Lord Warren? She was afraid to ask herself that question. She tried to behave naturally toward him, as if his comments and questions were no more clever than those of the other men, but she thought perhaps her smiles at him were too wide, her replies to him a touch too high pitched.

  She tried not looking at him at all, but then some implacable impulse would draw her gaze his way and she would remember why she had loved him so, why she had called so often on her friend Minette in hopes of catching a glimpse of her brother. He was incredibly handsome.

  So is your husband, she reminded herself sternly. She looked over to find Hunter staring back at her with a darkly assessing expression. An unwelcome flush heated her cheeks and spread down the front of her neck. She placed a hand there, as if that might hide her disgrace. Hunter knew she used to have a tendre for Lord Warren. She had flung the fact in his face on more than one occasion, and wished now that she hadn’t.

  “Lady Townsend, have you met many of the neighboring families?” asked Lord Augustine beside her.

  “Yes, I have. They came to call soon after we arrived. They don’t live nearby so we don’t often have callers, but when we do, it’s a very pleasant experience. All of them have been particularly welcoming.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Speaking of callers,” said Lord Warren, “Minette sends her warmest regards. She asks that you call on her the very moment you return to London, Lady Townsend. That is a direct quote, by the way,” he said, poking his spoon in the air. “The very moment. She said so quite emphatically.”

  “I shall be happy to call on your sister when we are back in London,” Aurelia replied. “I wish you had brought her here with you. It would have given me the greatest pleasure to visit with her.”

  She saw, or rather sensed, the glances that passed between the gentlemen. Lord Warren nodded. “I’ll tell her you said so. She was not able to accompany us this time.”

  “Oh. But you left her well?”

  “Yes, very well,” he said quickly. “And very busy. You know how my sister is, always flitting and fluttering about town, and getting into mischief.”

  Aurelia smiled, remembering many amusing scenes she’d witnessed between Minette and Lord Warren. The past few years, he’d been more like a father than brother to her friend, despairing at her many scrapes while always offering her affection and warmth. It was part of the reason she thought he was so wonderful. Her smile faded as she realized she was gazing at him too long again. She could feel more than see her husband’s regard at her left, even though she didn’t dare turn to meet it. She looked instead at His Grace the Duke of Arlington, then down at her plate.

  “When will Minette make her come out?” asked Lord Augustine, who could always be counted on to fill any awkward silences.

  “She’s eighteen now,” said Lord Warren. “I suppose I must consider her eligible, but she still seems such a child to me.” He made a grimace. “Whoever takes her will have his hands full, poor devil. Pardon my language, ma’am,” he said to Aurelia.

  “Come now,” said the duke, his angular face softening into a smile. “Minette is a charming young lady who shall make some lucky gentleman very happy.”

  After a beat, everyone at the table burst into laughter, even Aurelia, who knew her friend too well.

  “I’m glad I had the good sense to only have older sisters,” joked Lord Augustine. “All of whom are happily married off.”

  “Why, you’re the only one who hasn’t any siblings at all,” Aurelia said, turning to her husband. “Were you lonely growing up?”

  “Somewhat.” He paused, looking around at the other gentlemen. “When I grew older, I had my friends for company. None of us had brothers, you see. All of us are only sons.”

  She had never realized that either. “I suppose that resulted in a lot of familial pressure for all of you,” she said sympathetically.

  Arlington was the only one to speak. “I’m sure we all want a handful of sons to our names, eventually. It’s what I would prefer, if I had my choice. Being an only son is a dreary thing. But daughters are a blessing too.” The men concurred in polite tones.

  Aurelia looked sideways at her husband, and then, without meaning to, she looked at Lord Warren, with whom she had always imagined having a houseful of blond, curly-haired sons and daughte
rs. It was a horrible, regrettable lapse of behavior, but it was too late to go back a few seconds in time and not do so. Worse, Lord Warren was looking back at her, so both of them were obliged to guiltily drop their gazes.

  “The pudding is so sweet tonight,” she said, touching her forehead and putting down her spoon. “I don’t know what cook was about. I can hardly think your friends find it pleasing. I’m very sorry.”

  The gentlemen all insisted that of course they found it delicious and that they were simply too full to eat any more of the graciously appointed fare, and so on and so forth. Aurelia’s face burned. She must not remember her old feelings for Lord Warren, or give any sign that she still admired him. She didn’t want to.

  But she was afraid she did.

  Hunter took her hand, and she felt the tension in his grip all the way to her fingertips. “Perhaps you should retire, my dear. No doubt we shall be tedious and linger far too long over our port.”

  “Of course.” The gentlemen would want to drink and relax together, and catch up on their personal news without her hovering about. She stood to take her leave, and all the gentlemen stood along with her. She acknowledged their kind regards and thought she did very well not staring at Lord Warren. In fact, she avoided his gaze altogether, tucked her head down, and went as quickly as she could from the room.

  *** *** ***

  As two servants poured wine for the gentlemen, Arlington relaxed back in his seat and nodded to Hunter. “I hope I won’t offend you by saying this, but I perceive Lady Townsend has blossomed. She’s not so shy and retiring as she once was.”

  “No more Lady Dormouse,” concurred August.

  “Yes, she must be quite happy in this marriage,” said Warren.

  Hunter eyed his rival with something less than a smile. “I’m not offended in the least, as I have noticed the same thing. I’ve tried to be a positive influence. I’ve tried to bring some adventure to her previously drab and sheltered life.”