by Ingrid Hahn
Besides, he had a history of certain behavior at inns, a history which he was not keen to be haunted by when the time came to consummate his marriage. There was a reason he never traveled from home without half a dozen packets of sheaths.
In truth, he stung with shame for all those times he had set aside what was right and given in to his very worst self—that was to say, when he’d bought a dark-haired wench for the simple price of a few coins. It had been transactional. Pleasure for gold. Nothing simpler.
Or so he had told himself.
After that all-too-chaste kiss that had been anything but innocent, it seemed vile to think he ever could have succumbed to such abhorrent behavior. It seemed disloyal to Eliza. His wife.
True, she hadn’t been his wife then. But she was now, and he was a stronger man than that. He could have kept his so-called needs in check. In retrospect, he’d fed himself lies as a poor excuse for a break in morality.
But it was still difficult to retire alone tonight. Was his wife on the other side of the wall fretting as to why he hadn’t wanted to visit her bed tonight? Perhaps he should have explained himself so as to avoid the risk of offending her.
Or perhaps she was relieved, believing that he’d married her but had no intention of ever coming to her bed.
No, she’d know he needed an heir.
Jeremy checked the lock on his door and went to sit on his own bed. He took out a handkerchief and undid his falls, freeing his erection at long last. He might not have his wife to make love to, but if he didn’t take matters in hand, so to speak, he’d be in danger of going mad before they reached Idlewood.
Grasping himself, he began to stroke—slowly at first, imagining what it would be like to take off his wife’s clothing one piece at a time. He was ready to go and could have had himself off in a second. But it would have been bad form. It was going to be difficult enough restraining himself the first time they were pressed against one another, bare skin against bare skin, as he worked himself inside her.
Imagined scenes of them together spun through his mind. Eliza’s dark hair down about her shoulders. His lips plying kisses upon the length of her neck. His wife’s breathy moans as he used his fingers to pleasure her—Oh!
In a hard burst of powerful throbs, he came…all over his hand.
Bloody nuisance, that.
…
Jeremy never tired of the moment when Idlewood came into view. The house rose from the land, stately and serene amid the wild countryside she inhabited. He inhaled the scents of fresh earth and new greenery. They had to travel a fair bit of the estate before the house itself became visible from the road. The downy world, lush with springtime, split to reveal her hidden secrets. Only wait until he could explore Eliza and revel in her beauty the same way.
When he’d first arrived at the place, it had been neglected and overrun. Fields worked past capacity, the house emptied of anything of value and left to fall to ruin.
That had been his legacy. But by God, it would not be the legacy for the next generation.
Years of doing nothing but rebuilding and restoring had brought Idlewood back from certain destruction. He’d lured tenants back with new cottages—for which he’d had to take on more debt than he would have liked—and exceptionally good terms for rent.
It was paying off beautifully. The chances he’d taken, his tenacity, and his abject refusal to give up. The land was healing, returning from fallow neglect to bountiful fertility.
Today, sitting tall on horseback next to the carriage in which his wife rode—today was the first day real pride swelled to fill Jeremy’s chest. She represented a new beginning, too. For the family. For the estate. For himself.
He’d run through a dozen different scenarios to welcome his new bride home. Most of them involved emptying the house of servants and entirely forgetting they’d been born to so-called Polite Society. They also involved quite a lot of nudity.
In the end, he had to admit that perhaps they were less scenarios and more outright fantasies. For one thing, where would the servants who lived at Idlewood go? For another, he and Eliza were still strangers to each other.
All this time, he’d thought of nothing more than the stain his late uncle had left upon the family. Now it was time to look to the future. To the next generation.
How long would it take him to conceive a child with his wife?
If the erection he sported at the thought was any indication, he could only hope it wouldn’t happen too quickly.
The best remedy for a long couple of days of riding was to be ridden. But he and his wife didn’t know each other. Oh, he’d been ridden by strangers before, plenty of times. Women whose names he couldn’t remember—names he might not have learned to begin with.
This was different. It was a lot to expect from a virgin raised to be a lady. He had to get to know her first. That seemed like a reasonable first step. But how?
It was up to him to make her satisfactorily confident in the marital bed. Would it be possible to bring her up to scratch? Or would she be shocked and pull away from him, believing that the act was a necessary evil to be endured?
Jeremy turned at the sound of a shout. One of his tenants, Mr. Boden, was chasing a small flock of runaway lambs—that were headed directly for a rocky slope. No dogs were in sight.
Without thinking, Jeremy was off his horse in an instant. He tied the reins to a post, tossed his hat aside, and shucked his damnably tight jacket, then hopped the partially constructed fence.
These were not the small, newborn lambs of January and February, those creatures little more than skin, bones, a panicked bleat, and an instinct to suckle with all their might. These were the lambs that had, these past three or four months, grown fat and strong—and fast—on their mothers’ milk. They would not be easy to wrangle.
Catching each of the creatures alone without a net—and a rather large net, at that—would have been impossible. If there were two or three, he might have stood a chance. But there were nine or ten. They were going to fall and be injured, or worse, unless he could divert them. Even one was too valuable to lose. They each meant meat, wool, or breeding. The perfect ewe meant all three.
He charged at them, yelling and waving his hands. The small grouping divided. Several ran right past him, heedless of the threat he posed. Several more turned toward the enclosure where they could be herded into a safe space, as he’d hoped they would, while the last remaining made a mad dash for the road.
It was not going well.
Jeremy’s blood pounded in his ears, his heart clawing the inside of his chest in desperation. At the back of his mind was the thought that this wasn’t how he wanted his bride to see either him or Idlewood on the first day.
In fact, this fiasco was something of a personal nightmare. It represented everything he fought each and every day to avoid.
Loss of control.
Chapter Six
Eliza stood in the road outside the carriage with Christiana on one side and Margaret on the other as an unimaginable scene played out before them.
A man in his shirtsleeves. Not a sight she was accustomed to seeing. It was, however, a sight not soon forgotten.
Lord Bennington—an earl, of all people—was in the derelict field going after the runaway lambs. The billowing sleeves of his white linen undershirt emphasized the way the waistcoat hugged the lean taper of his torso. His quick and decisive movements displayed a strong and confident athleticism.
Whatever that was worth, for his abilities didn’t seem to be helping him with the lambs. What had been one group divided into three.
Eliza tore her gaze from the earl and grasped her cousin’s arm. She had to take charge. “We must do something.”
Christiana’s face set in resolute determination. She nodded. Then her expression shifted, her brows going up, her mouth softening out of its hard line of conviction. “But what?”
Margaret touched her arm. “My lady, it wouldn’t be safe.”
“What
are lambs going to do to me, Margaret?” Confidence rang in the easy words. Or bravado, more like. She’d spent her life under a domineering and disagreeable mother. Compared to Lady Rushworth, what damage could lambs do? They couldn’t crush a spirit.
True, animals were unpredictable and often much stronger than they looked, even when they weren’t frightened out of their slender wits. But standing by and doing nothing—well, that would have been wrong.
The servant’s eyes begged her to see reason. “Please let the men—”
There was a shout. Lord Bennington was signaling to the farmer.
Three of the lambs were charging for the road—directly toward them.
One of the chestnut horses whinnied and tried to shy away. The second horse responded to his companion’s nervousness with a shake of his head.
She had to trust the coachman to keep them under control. The last thing they needed in this mayhem was the horses to bolt.
“Quickly, quickly.” Eliza motioned to her cousin. The lambs were fast approaching. They had precious little time. “We’ll cage them inside the carriage.”
“The carriage? How in the world are we supposed to get them into the carriage?”
The coachman jumped down from his seat. He was small and hunched from a lifetime perched on the seat and sported bluish-gray pouches below each eye. “My lady, I wouldn’t dream of interfering…” His dark expression betrayed the lie behind his words. It seemed very much as if he wanted to give Eliza a piece of his mind, whether or not she was the new countess.
But she was the countess. So she ignored him. “Margaret, you go to the other side and hold the door shut so they can’t escape that way.”
The maid rushed away without arguing.
The coachman stepped forward, more insistent this time. “My lady—”
“You see to the horses, my good man—go now.”
His teeth set, but he followed the order. To do otherwise would have been an affront.
Eliza’s attention whipped back to her cousin. “Christiana, you go to that side and be threatening so they don’t go that way, and I’ll go to that side so they don’t go that way. They’ll have no choice but to go into the carriage, and then we’ll shut the door on them.”
Her heart pounded. Every sense was on high alert.
It wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d ever done. No, on a strictly linear scale that prize was reserved for having married the earl under false pretenses. But this wasn’t far behind.
Before she knew what was happening, the lambs bounded one way. Christiana yelled. Then they bounded the other way. Eliza yelled.
And then they bounded right up into the carriage.
“Go! Go!” Eliza dashed for the door and reached it at the same time as Christiana.
They slammed the carriage shut. Christiana pinned herself against the door so they couldn’t escape, and Eliza followed suit.
The trapped animals bleated and cried. In their panicked state, they threw themselves around the confined space with such ferocity that the entire conveyance shook back and forth on its springs.
A pair of hooved feet beat against the glass, cracking the delicate pane. Then shards flew everywhere.
“I don’t know how long we can hold them.” In her haste to help, Eliza hadn’t considered that penning the lambs might exacerbate their excitement.
Her bonnet was askew, partially obscuring her vision. Christiana’s had vanished entirely, and the seam of her sleeve had split around the elbow.
On the other side of the carriage, Margaret screamed. There was the sound of cracking wood, and suddenly the lambs were free again, racing down the road, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake.
Watching them go, Eliza’s shoulders sank.
Margaret came from around the other side, an unusual display of shock on her features. “Forgive me, my lady. I couldn’t hold them.”
The maid was such a small creature, Eliza should have gone around to help her instead of staying with Christiana.
“There is nothing to forgive. You did your best.”
Eliza turned to the carriage and winced. In a matter of seconds, three frightened lambs had done considerable damage. The seats and curtains were in tatters, the wood beaten and broken, the glass shattered. Clumps of hard mud from their hooves littered the floor, and the door on Margaret’s side hung from one hinge.
She leaned inside the door and sniffed. No hint of sheep smell, though. In light of the destruction, that was something small for which to be grateful.
Every thought vanished as Lord Bennington approached, a storm of epic proportions written on his features. His brows were low, his jewel-toned gaze dangerous as his dark stare mentally sliced her to pieces.
It seemed there would be consequences for her, too.
Eliza’s insides trembled. It had been a very, very long time since even her mother’s wrath had had an effect upon her—any at all, never mind one so profound.
Her mother, however, could never be pleased. The earl, by contrast, seemed as if he could be. There was no small pang of desperation in Eliza’s innermost heart that she would someday make him proud of her. An absurd thought, considering her deception. The most she could dare hope for was that he didn’t despise her for the whole remainder of their lives.
Not about to let him guess at what he might be inflicting upon her, intensity of his glower or no, she planted her feet firmly on the dirt. She’d stand the ground she had every right to defend. She’d tried to help. It hadn’t gone as planned. Nothing more to say.
It was miserably unfair that he be in such a state of disarray and still look so impossibly beautiful. Suddenly awash in self-consciousness, she brushed at her skirts and set her bonnet to rights.
“We’ll talk about this later.” His voice was low and lethal. Lord Bennington took the reins of his horse and swung himself upon the mount, leaving Eliza in agony to guess what was to come.
Chapter Seven
In the house, Eliza allowed Margaret to set her to rights and called for a bath.
The servants proved eager to bring the buckets required. That boded well for a staff working under a master they respected. They filed in and out, clothing clean and pressed, hair and caps neat, posture excellent. Bright inquisitiveness sparkled from their eyes, but none of them addressed her, except to show their deference. If they were half so curious about Eliza as she was about them and her new life, they were managing themselves magnificently.
The polished tin tub was enormous. Bigger than anything Eliza had imagined could exist. Specially made for the earl himself, the housekeeper had explained.
Sinking into the steaming-hot water was akin to resigning her bone-weary self to the care of an angel’s soft wing.
A thought stirred her as she soaked. She was naked in the same tub where the earl, too, had been naked. Was it wrong that she wanted to imagine him without clothing? Remembering the display of raw masculinity when he’d torn away his jacket and run to corral the lambs stirred her in places she had no business being stirred. They might be married, but they had a long road ahead when she revealed the truth about herself. Matters were muddled enough as it was. Then there was the business with the lambs and the carriage to muck it up all the more.
Eliza was by the fire running a comb through her damp hair to dry it when Christiana slipped in. Her cousin, well groomed and properly attired in a rosy afternoon dress, gaped. She blinked through her spectacles. “What a room!”
The words brought a stinging heat to Eliza’s cheeks. Indeed, she had been well used to fine things in life. She was the daughter of an earl herself, after all, but she was not the least bit ignorant of the privilege of her birth and position. Although it seemed she lived in a world where everyone had the best of everything, that was an illusion. The accident of birth had made her one of the select few to be sheltered in finery and endless comforts.
The accident of marriage was bringing her deeper into that world. The mistress’s bedchamber at Idlewood h
ad not been made with a countess in mind. It had been made for a princess.
The room was done in a dusky blue, and the centerpiece was the large bed, carved with intricate designs and scrollwork and hung with rich velvets and gold cord. The walls were silk, the ornamentation gilded, the rugs unthinkably plush, and the fireplace where she now sat an exquisite copper-yellow marble that outright glowed in the firelight.
This line of the Landon family might have been ruined once, but it appeared to have recovered rather well. Which, considering the earl’s afternoon display, made all the sense in the world. Any man who did what he’d done was full of rigid determination and not afraid to go to any lengths.
Eliza couldn’t think of any response to the exclamation, so she changed the subject. “How are you, cousin?”
“My nerves are a jumble.” Christiana took a chair and placed it opposite Eliza, letting out a sigh before speaking. By the fire, her flame-colored hair assumed a new dimension. “I keep doubting myself. I was heartbroken when I thought I’d have to marry Lord Bennington. But then you did, and I’m consumed by fear and guilt. I’m beginning to think it will be impossible for me to be happy because of what you did, which increases my guilt tremendously. And I keep thinking about what is going to happen when he discovers the truth. Or worse—when my aunt realizes what you’ve done.”
“My mother can’t change anything any more than we can.” It was the same bitter lesson she’d learned upon giving away her virginity. Foolish child she’d been, thinking herself to be in love with an oily scoundrel. His careful seduction started, she realized in retrospect, when he’d discovered she’d liked cherries. He’d used it as an excuse to pick them and bring her pretty little baskets filled with the fruit.
To this day, the taste and feel of cherries in her mouth made her gag.
“I’m sorry I called him a horrid old earl, cousin. He’s not quite so horrid as all that. Or so old.”
