Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Christine Merrill

  ‘Briggs will do just fine. When it is not Your Grace.’ And how easy it was to imagine her calling him that from a position of supplication. On her knees.

  Her pale breasts exposed completely...

  He clenched his teeth.

  ‘And you will call me...’

  ‘Bea,’ he said. ‘Beatrice. As I always have. And I will bring you sweets and we can...’

  ‘And I can go on as I ever was, but with a new lord and master? You rather than Hugh?’

  He did not wish to think of being her lord and master.

  It heated his blood. Brought back that image he’d had of her in that virginal nightgown. His sacrificial virgin.

  His disgust with himself in that moment went so deep as to be in his bones.

  Was he quite so perverse that even knowing how he’d disgusted Serena he could still desire to take Beatrice in hand this way?

  There was a reason he consorted only with prostitutes.

  ‘It is up to you, Beatrice, what you intend to make of this union.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it is not. It is not up to me, it is more up to my brother than it will ever be to me.’

  ‘You were not to have a real marriage with your friend,’ he said, looking at her and ignoring the crackling between them, and it was there. Real. Like a banked flame.

  He did not like it.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  He knew why it was different. He did not have to ask.

  ‘How old is your son?’ she asked, sighing heavily, as if she’d accepted a subject change would be the only way to move forward.

  He did not know why he didn’t wish to speak of William with her.

  She would be in the same residence as William in only a few hours. But he was... He was protective of the boy.

  There were people who would not understand.

  He wanted only to protect him from those who would...who would see his vulnerabilities and use them against him.

  He did not wish for anyone to think unkindly of William. It was a fierce impulse, one that he could not quite make sense of. That, he supposed, was...being a father.

  It was not the way his own had been. His own had seen his weaknesses and stabbed at them without mercy.

  Had used them to devastate and torment.

  ‘He is seven,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have any experience with children,’ she said. ‘I have always... I thought it should be nice to have my own.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your disappointment.’ He did mean it.

  Being a father rooted him to the earth. Without William he wasn’t sure what he would do. Spend his days and nights in brothels likely. Without a wife, a need to earn income or anyone on earth to answer to he would...

  Stop trying.

  He would sink into debauchery and obsession as deep as he could go and never surface.

  William prevented that.

  William was his reason for being a decent man. He had never felt a sense of pride or affection for his own father. He wanted William to feel both for him.

  Whether or not he did was another matter.

  ‘I should think it would be nice to have a child to care for,’ she mused. ‘In that way, I suppose you are preferable to James.’

  ‘That is the only reason?’ He looked at her, trying to ascertain if she truly did not have feelings for the man that went beyond friendship.

  She’d said, but it seemed reasonable to him that she’d been harbouring finer feelings for him in some hidden chamber of her heart.

  ‘No, he...he is easy and kind and I enjoy his company.’

  ‘And I am...?’ Briggs asked, because he could not help himself.

  ‘You are occasionally kind when brandishing sweets, but no one would call you easy.’

  He kicked his legs out forward and leaned back. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘You are too... You are you, Briggs, and I do not know how else to say it.’

  ‘And James,’ he said, ignoring that. ‘Is he in love with you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He...he has his reasons for wishing to marry me, but none of them include the kind of love you mean.’

  There were not many reasons that a man would wish to enter into a sham marriage, but Briggs could think of one quite obvious reason. He wished for her sake she could have married her friend. They could’ve likely had a companionable union.

  More’s the pity for all involved.

  ‘I do not know what I’m supposed to feel,’ she said. ‘For I am a married woman now, but not a married woman. And I am angry, because I think there are many mysteries in the world that will be withheld from me because of this. Because you are intent on treating me as a ward and not a wife.’

  She was edging into dangerous territory, and he knew that she had no real knowledge of that. No real concept.

  It had always been thus with her. She was forceful in her speech and he often wondered if it was due to how she had been treated in her illness. As if she was trying to prove she was not fragile.

  ‘There are some mysteries that you might find are best left that way.’

  ‘So you say,’ she prodded, her cheeks turning a deep shade of rose. From embarrassment or anger he could not say. Though he was nearly certain it was both. ‘Because you are a man and nothing is barred from you. I cannot tell you how infuriating it has been to attempt to divine how to orchestrate my own ruin when I am not entirely certain what it is that ruins a woman. It is being found alone with a man certainly. And being in your embrace. But I do not know what further there is to such an embrace. Or children. I am aware that one must be married to have children. But I’m not aware of what occurs to make it so. Clearly it is something beyond vows, or my brother would not have been so quick to allow me to marry you, no matter how tenuous a state my reputation was in.’

  ‘I will provide you with reading material,’ he said. He had no intention of doing such a thing. If she wished to comb through his library...

  Of course, his library contained reading material of a more graphic nature, rather than informational.

  ‘You are infuriating. The whole of mankind is infuriating.’

  He chuckled. ‘Oh, I do not disagree with you.’

  She leaned back in the seat across from him, and he found he could not take his eyes off her. Her skin was light cream, her curves so much more ample than he had realised. There was something sweet and sulky about her mouth. He had never noticed that before. And the way that she looked at him. It was a particular sort of look. Demure, when he knew she was not. Not really.

  She straightened, and her eyes sharpened. He did not like it. ‘We have all this time. Why not give me an education yourself, rather than referring me to your library?’

  And those words hit him with the strength of a gunpowder keg going off.

  He knew she did not mean to be provocative, for she did not even understand provocation. Did not know why a woman had to take care not to rouse a man’s appetites. Did not understand why men and women could not be alone together without a chaperon.

  Truly.

  She was appallingly uninformed. And somehow, was managing to inflame him almost more because of it.

  ‘You’ve spent most of your life in the country,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He would regret this. But she was his now. That made a strange sensation crystallise inside him.

  A lock turning in a key.

  She was his. Under his care. And he would care for her. She would have the finest of gowns. He would ensure that she wanted for nothing. She would be happier with him. Happier than she had been back at Bybee House.

  And as she belonged to him, it was his decision just how in depth her education was or was not. She wanted freedom. She was a married woman now, whether or not they ever consummated that union.
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  He locked his jaw together at the thought.

  Beatrice.

  She was beautiful. But there was much more to sex than beauty.

  Many women were beautiful.

  He preferred his beauties bought and paid for. A transaction that required no exchange of self, just bodies.

  Yes, Beatrice was beautiful, but that did not mean he could not control himself with her.

  He had always liked Beatrice. Had always felt a measure of pity for her, to be sure. She had been a cloistered girl, and when he’d first met her she had never ventured out of the family drawing room.

  ‘What have you seen of animals?’

  Dear God, he was pushing things where he ought not. And yet, the realisation did not stop him.

  Impulse control had always been a problem.

  Unless he was with a woman or focused on his orchids. Both were singular pursuits that required an intensity of focus he otherwise found impossible.

  ‘Animals?’

  ‘Have you never seen animals engaged in...procreation?’

  She blinked. Rapidly. ‘No,’ she said.

  He was counting on that. He was counting on an amorous hedgehog to have made this easier for him.

  Currently, he felt enraged with the whole of the species.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘I was kept inside most of my childhood. Yes, I did grow up in the country. But in truth, I mostly grew up in Bybee House. I spent a great deal of my childhood in bed in my room.’

  An orchid.

  The thought bloomed in his head and took root.

  Beautiful. Fragile.

  Needing a firm, guiding hand.

  He gritted his teeth. ‘What were your ailments?’

  He had never truly discussed this with Kendal, as it was not his concern. Or, hadn’t been before. ‘I need to know,’ he said. ‘I need to know, so that I understand how best to care for you.’

  ‘I have been just fine these many years, Your Grace.’

  ‘You are in my care,’ he said. ‘And that matters to me. I take care of what is mine.’

  ‘I do not...belong to you.’

  ‘The Church of England would see it differently.’

  ‘My breathing. My throat would become very tight, and it would become nearly impossible to take a breath. And any illness of the lungs always... Progressed. Badly. I would get very hot and... They would have to bleed me.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘It is not so frequent. I have not had a true attack of it in years.’

  ‘That is a terrible way to spend a childhood,’ he said.

  ‘I learned to find ways to appreciate it,’ she said, her expression deathly serious and hard as stone. ‘I hated the bleeding at first. But I would imagine that it was making me stronger. That it was draining away the bad, and that the pain was fortifying me in some way.’ She got a strange, faraway look in her eyes. ‘And I remember the first time I escaped from the house. And I exerted myself in ways I was not permitted to. I ran through a field. My breathing did become quite hard, but I hid it. I enjoyed it, even. For it was a mark of freedom. And while I was running I fell. But the pain that I felt then was the most real thing. The ground biting into my skin. It was my consequence. Mine. And it was... Somehow wonderful.’

  He felt frozen in the moment, not because he was uncertain, no. In these matters Briggs did not traffic in uncertainty.

  No, he wanted to stop and linger in it. In the spark it ignited beneath his skin.

  The way she spoke of pain. As if it transformed her.

  Gave her power.

  He knew that feeling. He was not the one who received, but the one who gave. The feeling of absolute control—so unlike how he’d always felt otherwise.

  The world had felt wrong for him. Everything in it insensible. He’d had little control over his moods. He’d found solace in his obsession with botany, then in growing flowers himself. Cultivating something with his hands that was both delicate and difficult.

  When he’d got older he’d begun to fantasise about women. Controlling their pleasure in the way he controlled the bloom of an orchid.

  He had never considered that Beatrice might be the one who understood, but there she was, explaining the piece of pain she experienced in a way not even he had ever heard.

  And he was held transfixed.

  Of the strange expression on her face, and of the deep, yawning hunger that he could feel it open up inside him.

  ‘And your breathing now?’ he asked, doing his best to move past this moment. ‘How is it?’

  ‘Mostly manageable. I rarely have incidents now. I have not been sick for many years. The doctor does fear that my lungs are weak. Because of that he feels...carrying a child, giving birth...is something I likely cannot survive. That is why. My lungs.’

  ‘And your susceptibility to other illnesses, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice sounding distant. ‘I imagine.’

  ‘And that is why you’ve never seen hedgehogs rut,’ he said.

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Rut. That does not sound pleasant.’

  ‘It is not. To watch hedgehogs do it.’

  He was walking a thin line. And he knew it.

  Like when he’d held her to him last night.

  ‘It is oversimplified,’ he said. ‘To reduce it all to the creation of the child.’

  ‘But they are connected,’ she said, pressing. ‘That does make me feel better as it makes me sense that there are perhaps less things that I do not know about.’

  She had no idea.

  ‘Or so much more,’ he said.

  ‘That is not cheering.’

  ‘You may find none of this cheering in the end. Have you ever kissed a man?’ He sensed that she had not.

  ‘No,’ she said, her cheeks turning pink.

  ‘Not your friend James?’

  She looked away. ‘I told him I was not in love with him.’

  ‘Love does not always matter when it comes to issues of attraction, I’m afraid.’

  ‘All of this is confusing.’

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘Sometimes deliciously so. There are times when you want a person you may despise. When you might want someone who is utterly forbidden to you.’ Treading on the line now, Briggs. ‘Does he make you feel warm?’

  Her eyes went round. ‘Warm?’

  He cursed himself even as he moved to the seat beside her in the carriage. ‘When he is close to you,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Do you feel warm? Flushed?’

  She drew back, her eyes getting wide. ‘No.’

  He was meanly satisfied by that. ‘He is your friend, then.’

  ‘I said,’ she responded, her voice breathless.

  And it was not fair. For he was a terrible rake and he was pressing the limits of it here with her, and of his own self-control.

  Were his tastes in shagging more mainstream he would be an even more incorrigible one. As it was, he had to be selective about his partners. He knew how to make a woman want him. He could make her understand. But what was the purpose of it? What was the purpose when...? This was not what he had been tasked with. Not at all.

  ‘I feel warm sometimes when you’re near me,’ she said.

  Dammit.

  ‘Now?’ he asked.

  ‘Always,’ she whispered, as if it were a revelation.

  And he tried not to think of when he’d had a handful of her buttock. How round and supple it was. How perfectly it fitted his palm.

  How she’d felt leaning against him on the swing.

  How that dress lovingly showed the curve of her bosom.

  ‘If I were to kiss you,’ he said. ‘It would increase. Quite exponentially. And you would understand. You would want to be closer to me. I to you. And it would feel the mos
t natural thing in all the world to remove anything that stood between us.’

  ‘I don’t...’

  ‘Clothes.’ He was torturing himself, and he could not say why.

  He preferred to mete out pain, not be on the receiving end of it.

  ‘I knew that naked nymphs had something to do with it,’ she said, looking up at him, as if in a daze.

  ‘Naked nymphs?’

  ‘I saw a book. In my father’s library. In his collection. There were...’ Her cheeks turned pink. ‘Naked women. Nymphs. Running from men.’

  He bit his own tongue. To remind himself why he needed control. ‘Yes. They were running to preserve their virtue, I have a feeling. For if the men caught them, had their way with them...’

  ‘You speak in more veiled metaphor. Have their way with them. I wish to understand. What it means.’

  ‘You are familiar with the ways in which men and women are different?’

  His wife had been given a basic bit of education from her own mother before they wed. He had not had to explain everything to her. Beatrice... Beatrice would have to have everything explained to her were they to have a true wedding night. And they were not.

  But he had always liked to tease flames. He didn’t know why he was suddenly taking the torture, rather than giving it.

  Though, Beatrice was not untortured.

  ‘I have seen anatomy,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Drawings. In science books. And, of course...statuary.’

  Ah, the naked limp statuary. Which would give her no real idea of men at all. At least, not of him.

  She does not need an idea of you.

  ‘The purpose of the difference is that we fit together,’ he said. ‘And that is the way in which you create a child. But it is more than that. It can be much more than that.’

  Her eyes rounded, her lips going slack. ‘What more?’

  She sounded dazed, and she sounded fascinated, and he truly wished she were neither.

  ‘Pleasure.’ He looked at her, and he did not break her gaze. ‘Pain. Which for some is quite near to the same thing.’

  Her blue eyes glistened with something then, a keen interest he wished to turn away from. But could not. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Briggs...’

  They were saved by the fact that the carriage arrived at Maynard Park. He did not much believe in divine intervention, but he was going to have to give serious consideration to it at this moment.