by Starla Kaye
He nodded and she glanced away, her mind returning to what had happened. “After the rehashing of what I had done wrong, Father held the cold leather strop against my bottom. I tensed, held my breath for that first horrible lash.” She trembled, remembering exactly how it had felt. “It came down hard, as the first one always does. I tried not to, but I screamed out.”
As he’d done before, Blaine took up the telling. “He applied the strop repeatedly, firmly over and over. You tried to squirm away from the lashes, probably wiggled your sweet ass all over the place. The strikes stung fiercely. I imagine you couldn’t keep from crying out. And you danced on your toes, did you not? Maybe even arched backward and moaned in misery.”
Once more his tone had turned husky and she met his impassioned gaze. Instead of stopping this revelation like she should, she held his attention and quivered with a strange desire. Not for being punished harshly by this man, but for sharing such an intimate act with him. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remain in position. He was so upset with me and was determined that I would not behave in such a manner again. He wanted to make sure I remembered the lesson.”
She shifted uncomfortably on the chair, still feeling the results of that lesson. “Afterward, my throat was raw from crying out. Tears streamed down my face when I was finally allowed to stand once more.” She wanted to reach back and touch her still tender bottom but resisted. “My backside was on fire. He did not leave an inch untouched. Then he gave me a disappointed look and left the room with his awful strop.”
“You slept on your stomach, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
He studied her for a couple of minutes and she wondered why she had given him the explanation he’d requested. Even more, she wondered what he was thinking now. How could he possibly want a marriage with a woman who he knew was frequently disciplined? Why wouldn’t he want a more biddable woman like Abigail for his wife? As much as she detested being punished, she knew her nature would never change. She would always struggle to follow society’s rules, resist obeying any man she married. Except Gerald, but then she was much stronger willed than him. He was nothing like this man.
“Thank you for telling me.” Blaine sat up straighter and held out a hand to her. “Come here.”
Nerves fluttered in her stomach. Go to him? Uncertainty had her hesitating, but then she rose uneasily to her feet and made her way over to him. Curious.
He looked up at her and varying emotions seemed to tumble around in his eyes but the one that touched her most was the desire firing there. This man who could no doubt have almost any woman in England wanted her.
“May I cup your buttocks now?” he asked in a thickened voice.
“I…I…” She should refuse to allow such a brazen act. Instead she stepped between his spread legs and waited breathlessly.
His arms moved around her and his large hands covered her quivering bottom. Even through the layers of clothing she felt his touch. “This is indecent, Your Grace,” she offered quietly, but didn’t move away.
He held her in place. “Quite indecent.” He grinned crookedly up at her. “Yet you do not resist me.”
What could she say? She hadn’t refused his request, had even basically given herself to him.
He squeezed her tender bottom just a bit, enough to have her draw in a breath of surprise and discomfort. “While I do not necessarily enjoy thrashing a woman, I will do so when needed. I do not take pleasure in hearing cries of pain, but I will tune them out if the discipline must be harsh enough for her to cry out.”
Her woman’s place was pulsing and she felt that strange wetness between her legs again. How odd, considering he was talking about delivering a painful punishment.
He drew in a breath, his wide chest shuddering. “I have no qualms about painting a woman’s ass dark red, watching her wriggle and kick up her legs. Demands and pleas for me to stop fall on my deaf ears. I will end the discipline when I believe the woman fully understands why she is being punished.”
No, life with this man would not be easy. She stepped back and he let her. “I do not think I can be that woman.” She shook her head. “I cannot marry you.”
“There will be much more between us than discipline sessions.” Again he looked at her with heated eyes. “I am a passionate man. You are a passionate woman.”
“How do you know that?” she asked warily. She had no doubt in her mind that Blaine was passionate, but how could he think that of her? They had only shared a couple of kisses.
That cocky grin appeared once more. “Everything you do is done with passion. You react with fervor to anything you oppose. Including the idea of marrying me.” He held her gaze. “But you will do so in exactly one month from today.”
With that, he stood and headed toward the closed door. “We will attend Lord Amhurst’s ball tomorrow night. I will call for you at precisely seven o’clock.”
Ashlynn finally came out of the bizarre daze she’d apparently been in and countered, “No.”
He didn’t even glance back at her before he opened the door and left the room. Evidently her refusal mattered not to him. But she wasn’t going anywhere ever again with him. She absolutely was not!
Chapter Two
Ashlynn wasn’t ready to go downstairs and join her siblings for breakfast, even though they may already be finished by now. Good. She wasn’t particularly interested in talking with any of them…or anyone else. She had many matters on her mind, complicated ones that had kept her tossing and turning in bed most of the night.
With a weighty sigh, she walked over to the window that overlooked the front lawn and drew back the heavy draperies. Where the day before had been dreary and the sky thick with blue-gray bruised looking clouds, today the sun shown brightly. It should be enough to lighten her spirits…but it wasn’t.
She looked across the lawn toward Park Lane where a number of landaus carried London’s elite toward Hyde Park for what she had learned was their daily showing. She thought the idea ridiculous, as she did so many of the English customs. This world was so unfamiliar to her and she doubted she could ever become accustomed to it. At the moment, though, she had no choice but to endure. That didn’t mean she would give up on finding a way out of the foolish marriage her father had agreed to, or finding a way to return home to Virginia.
A sharp rap on the bedroom door drew her attention and pulled her from her unhappy musings. Her heart raced as Abigail called out, “Ashlynn? Are you up and about? Ashlynn.”
Annoyance flickered through her. As always her twin sounded disapproving. They were such opposites in many ways. Abigail rose long before dawn and was beyond peppy from the moment she climbed out of bed until she faded somewhat by late afternoon. She preferred to lay abed until mid-morning and then became fully awake by evening, not getting tired again until near the midnight hour. Abigail worked hard at pleasing their father, keeping any thoughts of disagreement to herself, determined to learn and master all of these new rules. She, in contrast, loved her father but had trouble with not freely speaking her mind. And she certainly found fault with most of London society’s staggering guidelines on behavior.
Abigail rapped harder. “Ashlynn! A Lady Burlington has arrived to act as our chaperone while we remain in London. She waits in the drawing room to go over the basic etiquette rules with you and I.”
Ashlynn blew out a breath of frustration and strode over to open the door. Looking at her sister, she protested, “But we have already heard them a ‘nauseum over and over from Father.”
Giving a small shrug, Abigail turned toward the stairway. “Your fiancé, the Duke of Ashcroft, is actually who sent the Lady Burlington to us.” She stopped to glance back. “Apparently he felt a need for us to go over them again, after your behavior at Lady Pendergast’s, and so instructed her to do so.”
Heat crept up Ashlynn’s face just at the thought of him. What they had talked about the day before…scandalous. How he had touched her…even more scandalous. And now
he was insisting that she again be instructed in the proprieties of the English ways! How ironic.
For once she kept her displeasure inside her rather than voicing it. She silently followed Abigail down to the drawing room. Even though she was not supposed to do much more than speak casually to him, she would find a way to be somewhat alone with him, and then she would burn his ears about this matter. And, of course, tell him again for the hundredth time—well, perhaps that was a slight exaggeration—that she had no intention of marrying him.
Twenty minutes later seated on one of the red velvet settees and sipping tea, Ashlynn struggled to not nod off in boredom. Abigail, however, appeared to be soaking up every word of advice given by the middle-aged widow of Blaine’s uncle.
Lady Burlington focused on Ashlynn, her expression pinched in irritation. “You have not been listening to anything I have said, have you?”
Abigail shot her a pointed look and yet didn’t speak her mind.
“These are rules of etiquette I have heard before…and before…and before.” She set her teacup on the side table next to her. What she wanted to do was go outside and walk down to the park. An activity that was forbidden, of course. It was improper for a woman to walk alone in a public place. Silly, silly rule.
“And yet you go against them time and again,” Lady Burlington chastised, although Ashlynn thought she noted a hint of amusement in her eyes. “My dear nephew, His Grace, wants to be very sure you understand what is right and what is considered wrong within the ton. It is imperative you do, because of his position with the peers of the realm.”
Ashlynn huffed. She had heard this, too, many times from Blaine, her father, and even from Daniel, who frowned on many of the English ways. “What of his behavior? Why isn’t he taken to task when he goes against those rules?”
“Ashlynn!” Abigail gasped in dismay.
Lady Burlington’s lips twitched and she clearly fought down the urge to laugh. Instead she gained control of her emotions and said, “In a manner he can be ‘taken to task,’ as you put it. His peers can shun him for poor behavior. But most of them wouldn’t dare. He holds more power and rank than almost any other duke in the kingdom. Your father is similar in ranking.”
She already knew this about both her father and about Blaine. English peerage and ranking of precedence still meant little to her. “I wouldn’t need to know any of these rules if Father would simply let me return home.”
Sadness softened the older woman’s expression. “While I do not wish my nephew to suffer unhappiness in a marriage, he was chosen you for his next wife. Why I am not altogether certain. It is enough that he has done so and made agreeable arrangements with your father. The wedding will happen in a month’s time. The first reading of the banns was last Sunday.”
Ashlynn stiffened, her stomach knotting at the reminder. The public announcement in church of the plans to be wed was made on three consecutive Sundays before the wedding. She had barely born hearing them read, realizing how very serious her situation was getting. “What about me? Why does no one consider my wishes?” she asked, feeling panic spreading through her.
Abigail, again, didn’t say anything, but her disapproval was obvious in her tightened posture.
“Do you truly find His Grace so repulsive that you could not wed him? He will do right by you; I can assure you of that.” Lady Burlington met her eye to eye in challenge.
Repulsive? Hardly! While she tried to keep Gerald in her mind’s eye, he was becoming harder and harder to envision. Blaine’s warm brown eyes, the chiseled handsomeness of his face, the too-kissable lips…they all drew her. She refused to think more about him, refused to weaken her resolve. She could not give up her dream of marrying Gerald. He was a good, solid young man near her same ten and nine years. He was quiet, but loyal to his family and friends. He would inherit a plantation before long and he would need a wife. She had planned to be that wife. Blaine was nothing like dear sweet Gerald.
“My heart belongs to another,” she stated boldly.
“You are thinking about Gerald Smythe again, are you not?” Abigail heaved a displeased sigh. “He has not offered for you, nor would Father have granted him permission to marry you if he had. You know this. He wanted someone more worthy for you, someone as confident and set in his life as the Duke of Ashcroft.”
“There is nothing wrong with making an honest living working the land,” Ashlynn said in defense of Gerald. She and her father had argued about this before, even before he had insisted on bringing she, Abigail and Daniel to England. She knew he didn’t really think less of a man who wasn’t afraid of hard work. He didn’t look down on merchants or farmers or other laborers like most of the nobility she had met seemed to do. Her own mother had spent a lot of time over a lot of years working the gardens and anything else necessary on their small farm in Virginia. He had loved her with all of his heart and had wanted desperately to bring her back to England and give her a better life. But Bethene Yardley had refused until the day she had died.
“We are not suitable,” she stated bluntly, glaring back at Abigail. “I can never be the quiet, sedate wife his position in society requires. You would—”
“No!” Abigail snapped on a horrified gasp. “I might be biddable in comparison to you, but His Grace and I are absolutely not compatible. He is too intimidating for me. Too bold. Too…too everything.”
All of what her sister had said was true. He would overpower gentle Abigail without even giving a real try. In truth, she thought he needed someone who might go against him now and then, who would not let him have his way in everything. Maybe he would take his hand to the woman’s bottom for blatant misbehavior on occasion, but he would be unhappy with a wife with a milk-toast temperament. And she knew from his brief stolen kisses and the heated way he had looked at her that his wife might suffer a sore bottom at times but she would also be well loved at other times. An idea that had her growing warm low in her body and shifting awkwardly on the settee.
Lady Burlington gave her a knowing look, a small smile, and changed the subject once more. “Let’s go over some of those rules one more time.”
Ashlynn inwardly groaned and picked up her cup of now cold tea. She half-listened to the drone of the widow’s words.
“As I have stated before, it is indecent for an unmarried lady to appear in public without a chaperone. A proper chaperone being a much older woman, a married woman, or a widow, such as myself.” Her voice choked a bit as she reminded them of her widow status.
“Even back home in America a chaperone was often required,” Abigail inserted.
Ashlynn didn’t mention that both she and her sister usually managed to get around that. When their father hadn’t been present— which had been most of the time as they had grown up—their mother had been less restrictive. Thinking of her mother again made her heart pinch. She so missed her. Her death six months ago had hit all of them hard, Ashlynn more than the others because she and her mother were so much alike.
“It is also scandalous for an unmarried lady to openly express interest in a gentleman. She must wait for the prospective suitor to express his admiration of her and show interest.” Lady Burlington looked directly at Ashlynn. “That difficult situation is beyond you at this point, since His Grace has already asked for your hand in marriage.”
“Which I would have refused had he asked me instead of my father,” Ashlynn said in irritation. “But, again, my wishes weren’t even considered.”
“Maybe that was so at first, Lady Ashlynn Remington, but I have seen the way you look at him when you think no one else is watching.”
Before Ashlynn could even think of countering what the woman had said, Lady Burlington went on with her rehashing of the rules. “There is to be no intimate touching, not even a shaking of hands with a male acquaintance. Certainly no kissing while courting. There is a tad more leniency allowed between an engaged couple.”
She and Blaine had already gone so far beyond what society allowed. They
hadn’t been “intimate” exactly, but he had touched her bare skin. He had dared to turn her three times over his knee, bared her bottom, and planted his hard hand far too many times on it. Scandalous? Far more than that! As for the “kissing”…they had broken that rule, too. But she wasn’t about to tell either her saintly sister or Blaine’s aunt about any of that.
Lady Burlington’s eyes studied her curiously and once more she seemed to fight back amusement. She clearly suspected they had misbehaved in some manner. She went back to the subject at hand. “A gentleman and a lady are required to address each other formally, never using their Christian names. Using first names is reserved for members of the family and close acquaintances.”
She smiled gently at Ashlynn. “Now that you and His Grace are engaged, you are allowed to use first names when in private. But whether engaged or married, when you are in public, you are expected to refer to each other formally.”
“That’s an absolutely silly rule,” Ashlynn said, puffing up in irritation.
Abigail once more shot her a chastising look. “You think all of these rules ‘silly.’”
“I will admit that they can seem that way,” Lady Burlington interrupted and then continued. “Now on to more about engagements or betrothals, however you wish to refer to it.”
Ashlynn didn’t want to hear more and was tempted to get up and leave the room. But the older woman shook her head and she kept her seat.
“In these times, marriages are not arranged…at least rarely. Love matches are more common.”
Ashlynn snorted but kept her tongue at Abigail’s glower. Still, hers was not a love match. Oh, Blaine had once told her that he had fallen in love with her on first sight. Outrageous! She didn’t believe in such a fanciful notion. He might lust after her, as the men in her forbidden books lusted after their various women. But he could not love her, when he didn’t even really know her.
