It frightened her, the lingering strength of that desire. She was passionate about many things: horses, birds, weather, gardening, most things to do with nature, but she had not realized her own earthy nature until her handsome stranger had taken her in his arms. He’d elicited powerful responses in her body, tightenings and dampness and urges that made her cry into her pillow when her maid finally left her alone. He’d overcome her reason, at the same time appealing to her basest instincts. She had let him spank her, and it had only made her eager for more...
You’ll have nothing more, she scolded herself. The Duke of Arlington was on his way to meet her, and dine with her family and some other local gentry. She could barely breathe in the fitted constriction of her formal blue gown, and her scalp ached because her hair was so tightly braided and pinned against her head. Her lady’s maid had brushed it nearly an hour to achieve the requisite shine, then placed a slim gold coronet on top which had been her mother’s. Her father had brought her mama’s diamond-drop necklace too, although Gwen’s wrists and fingers were bare.
There was a great sense of trying to impress this duke, when they did not have the necessary affluence to do so. They’d scrimped and saved for this dinner for weeks now. The gown she wore had been procured along with four others when the marriage contract had been finalized. Shoes, gloves, fans, hats had been ordered which they could not afford. Gwen possessed these things already, in reasonable variety, but her Aunt Meredith had insisted they were not fine enough, and would humiliate them before the duke.
Because of this, Gwen had come to despise her future husband before she even met him, as she noticed her father drinking less wine, selling off horses, and quietly letting go a few servants in order to buy things fine enough to impress this kingly envoy, who would only grace their presence for a couple of days. The gown she wore this evening was the finest thing she’d ever owned, aside from her ivory and silver wedding gown, which hung upstairs for tomorrow’s ceremony. Even with the effort and sacrifice, Gwen feared the duke would look upon them and sneer.
So she waited with great trepidation beside her father and her brothers and their wives, all of them dressed in unaccustomed finery. The duke’s gilded, crested coach came gleaming down the rutted pathway to the courtyard. It was drawn by a team of four, all of them midnight black, in the same crested livery. She heard her brothers murmuring about fancy horseflesh and heard a few titters from her sisters-in-law.
Gwen stood rigid, hands clasped at her waist, wondering if she ought to smile or look serious, or run away screaming the way she wanted to. Her father would get money and land from this match, and a tenuous link to the monarchy. The duke too would be gifted lands in Wales, for future sons or daughters to inherit. This had all been explained to Gwen, that this fine and laudable match was important because it would secure the future of the Lisburne dynasty. So running away screaming was not an option, as much as she wished it were.
The carriage came to a stop, and a set of grooms jumped down in their gilded uniforms to let down the gilded stairs and open the gilded door. When the duke emerged in his gold-embroidered coat and breeches, she thought, my word, he is gilded too. The man was uncommonly tall, with formal buckled shoes and a gleaming black hat, and a gold-tipped cane. She noted these first details quickly, that he did not appear old or stooped, or fat about the belly. Finally, she summoned the courage to look at his face.
The handsome stranger of the meadow—the artist and rogue—stared back at her.
Gwen felt a flailing sense of disequilibrium. They could not be the same man. They were not dressed the same. They did not have the same hair, or clothes, or the same manner. She would not have believed they were the same man if she had not noted the shocked recognition in his gaze. He quickly shuttered his expression to one of polite hauteur.
“Lord Lisburne, I presume,” he said to her father. The men shook hands and exchanged formal greetings. All Gwen heard was the rush of panic in her ears. Were they to pretend not to know one another, then? Because this man—this duke!—had flirted with her, and kissed her, and handled her in a most inappropriate fashion. And she had let him, because he was charming and beautiful, and because she knew she must be married to some stodgy old aristocrat soon.
She could barely raise her face when he approached. His Viking hair was tied back, which granted him a more dignified appearance. She saw a muscle twitch in his jaw as her father led him over.
“I’m honored to introduce my daughter, Miss Guinevere Vaughn.”
“Miss Vaughn.” The duke bowed over her hand. “How pleased I am to make your acquaintance.”
He looked up and his eyes bored into hers. He was so close she could smell the scent of his shaving soap and starched linen, but all she could think of was the meadow, the smell of the flowers, and the lake, and his lips upon hers. She lowered her gaze and sank into a curtsy. Please, oh, please don’t say anything. Humiliation made her flush with agonizing heat.
She prayed everyone would think it nervousness, or shyness. Must he stare at her so? He was every bit as guilty as she. He was the one who had asked to sketch her, and then pulled her into his lap in that carelessly flirtatious manner. Oh yes, she was aware what sort of man he was, and he knew it.
But he knew her secrets too. God help her, she had spouted lies and behaved like a common harlot, even allowing him to spank her bare bottom. Would she be the ruination of all her father’s plans? Would the duke reject her? She thought she might faint, waiting to hear his next words. I don’t think I want her after all, or some other more subtle and political words that would invalidate their betrothal. It seemed an hour before he raised her from her curtsy and released her hand.
Then he smiled at her, a smile that said a thousand things. A smile that said no, I won’t tell, at the same time it said, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
And oh, she was mortally ashamed.
* * * * *
Aidan offered Miss Guinevere Vaughn his arm as Lord Lisburne invited the company in to dinner, the company being the brawny old war hero and his seven hulking, dark-haired sons with their plump country wives. And Rose, of course, his luscious village maiden.
She trembled, perhaps afraid of some reprisal, even though he was the one who had seduced her in the meadow. Who had preyed upon her, to put a finer point on it. He was ashamed to have done so, now that he knew who she was, then more ashamed that he thought it all right to do such things to a nobody with pretty hair and an alluring figure, but not all right to do to his future wife.
I’m a good girl, she had cried. Thank God he’d taken her at her word, and not tupped her on the grass the way he’d wanted to. When he glanced down, he could still see the blush upon her chest and the tops of her breasts.
Don’t gawk at her breasts, you monster.
Aidan had behaved monstrously toward her in that meadow. He knew it, but it was one of those things a duke was privileged enough to forget, unless the victim in question turned out to be one’s future wife. She had only to say a word of their illicit dalliance, and he’d be skewered into a thousand pieces by her hoary father and brothers for insulting her honor.
“They mustn’t know,” he said to her in a quiet voice.
She raised her head. Her gaze met his, those otherworldly green eyes that had haunted his dreams the night before. “Why didn’t you say who you were?” she asked in her musical Welsh accent. “Why didn’t you tell me your real name?”
“Why didn’t you tell me your real name?” he retorted. “And why were you wandering about that meadow?”
“I wasn’t ‘wandering about.’ I went there for solitude and privacy. You’re the one who intruded on my peace, and accosted me.”
“I hardly accosted you. You behaved like a trollop.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If I did, then so did you.”
Oh, to spank this Guinevere Vaughn. A real spanking, not the playful smacks he’d dealt her in the meadow. She deserved it. She had been unfaithful to him...with hi
m... Which, come to think of it, made everything rather difficult to sort out. He had no moral high ground from which to reproach her, but he did so anyway.
“I hope it’s not your general habit to dress as a servant and go about flirting with strange men,” he said.
Her mouth fell open. “I wasn’t dressed like a servant. Those were my riding clothes.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you weren’t in disguise? Why, that ill-fitting bonnet, and that decrepit horse—”
“That horse is beloved to me. Do not disparage her, and do not insult me because you found my clothing too poor for your ducal sensibilities. We can’t all ride about in gilded carriages.”
Her sharp scolding pricked him. This was the worst possible beginning to a marriage. He would not be a henpecked husband; this snippety girl would show him respect or she’d receive a spanking in earnest, one she would be hard-pressed to forget. He looked about to see who was near, then leaned closer and spoke in her ear.
“I care nothing for your clothes, or your damned horse. I wish to know if it’s your regular habit to dally with unknown men. Because if it is—”
“It’s not,” she said. “I had never... Before... It was your fault. You shouldn’t have been there. That meadow was my special, private place to be alone, and spend time in meditation.”
The heartbroken tenor of her voice confounded him. He wanted to be angry. If only this entire debacle was not his fault. If only he’d stayed silent and crept from the clearing, rather than play with the pretty toy dangled before his eyes. She’d gone straight to the lake and sat upon her rock, and he should have left her there to her musings.
He hadn’t. His fault.
They exchanged no more words as they went in to dinner, both of them fuming and trying not to show it. The baron’s manor seemed as shabby and old as his betrothed’s pitiful horse. Was the structure fourteenth century? Thirteenth? The floor was cracked, the walls crumbling with centuries of wear. The dining room was a true medieval great hall with scorched and pocked walls from past skirmishes, probably with the English. God help him.
He and Miss Vaughn were placed next to one another at the roughhewn table, in the midst of overflowing trays and gauche candelabras. The seating was so crowded their elbows touched. The Lisburne family, whose names he could not keep straight, smiled and frowned and stared, and occasionally murmured to one another behind their fingers. Neighbors arrived in the middle of the meal, unannounced, and squeezed onto benches wherever they pleased. Aidan was introduced more times than he could remember. He finally stopped standing, as it was not a very courteous company.
Wine flowed, and noisy conversations took place in a mish-mash of English and Welsh. Whenever those around him lapsed into the unfamiliar tongue, Aidan assumed they were talking about him. Every so often, someone asked him a question about London politics, or the king’s business, or some other uncomfortable topic. As soon as he answered in as vague a way as possible, they went back to bantering back and forth in Welsh. Miss Vaughn sat stiff and silent beside him, barely touching a bite of the celebratory offerings.
It was a painfully awkward dinner, but in the midst of the bedlam, a lovely thought occurred to him: I get to marry the fairy queen.
Crumbling castle, dripping candles, scowling brothers, rough-edged guests. So be it. At some point in the very near future, he would have the right to take her hair down from those braids and kiss her, and play with her, and turn her from a good girl to a bad girl. He looked down at her breasts again and, this time, he allowed his gaze to linger. Those would be his, those delectable globes, along with the rest of her body. In the meadow, she’d displayed a smoldering sensuality that he couldn’t wait to explore. The way she had looked up at him as he spanked her, with that longing, and confusion—
“Your Grace?”
Her father looked at him expectantly. Blast. Had everyone at the table seen him slavering over Guinevere’s breasts? “I beg your pardon,” he said, to indicate he hadn’t heard the question.
A few muffled guffaws drifted down the table. Lord Lisburne flashed a gap-toothed smile. “I said that you’re welcome to start the toasts, sir, as our guest of honor.”
The servants streamed in with more wine. Was this to devolve into a drunken rout, then? He finally understood why their wedding was to take place tomorrow afternoon, rather than the customary morning—because all these soused peasants would still be abed. He stood with his best aristocratic air and smiled down at his future bride.
“I must disagree, Lord Lisburne. I’m not the guest of honor. That title must surely go to my betrothed, who graces all of us with her purity and beauty on this happy day.”
The lady in question pressed her lips together and stared up at him as if he must be daft, but he was only getting started. Public speaking was a particular talent of his. He picked up his wine and gazed for a moment into its crimson depths. “It was a long journey’s ride from my holdings in England, and I spent the whole of it wondering about my bride-to-be. Would she be short or tall? Pleasant or shrewish? Would she be pock-marked, or buck-toothed?”
There was a soft rumbling of protest before the slower among them realized he made a joke. “Then I arrived...” he said. He paused and gazed down at Miss Vaughn. Guinevere. His fairy of the meadow. He made a show of touching her cheek, and perceived a tremble in her lower lip. “Then I arrived and discovered an Angel of Paradise, a Welsh rose I shall be honored to make my wife.” He looked around the table and raised his glass. “I propose a toast to my future bride, and this rugged Welsh homeland which has nurtured and sheltered her until now.”
The table erupted in approving shouts at this courtly speech. Her father surged to his feet and followed with rambling toasts to his daughter, his late wife, his homeland, his king, and numerous other entities, until the table was adrift in wine and Welsh exclamations. Aidan ought to have made a study of Welsh language as soon as he knew his fate, as soon as the king told him about his border bride. Too late now. Perhaps Guinevere could tutor him in the most important words, words like pretty and obedient and mine.
He reached under the table to take her hand. Before she could pull away, his fingers curled about hers. Mine. You’re mine now, or you soon will be. A duke could do worse than a fairy queen, he reasoned. While their acquaintance had not begun in the most traditional fashion, he had high hopes for a life with Guinevere Vaughn. If he could only weather these endless toasts, this drunken dinner and the wedding tomorrow, he could bundle his exotic bride back to England, where he could start transforming her into the duchess of his dreams.
Chapter Three: So Awfully Uncivilized
The wedding went about the way Aidan expected. Flowery, country-shabby, overly emotional. Lots of tears.
His bride wept openly through their vows, wept so hard she could barely get the words out. Aidan felt some sympathy, but a greater impulse to shake her and tell her to stop. Did she think he was overjoyed to be here? He might have had a London wedding with all his friends and contemporaries in attendance. He might have wed a blueblood, a diamond of the first water, and had an elegant breakfast reception at his Berkeley Square home, rather than a drunken dinner in a dark, sooty medieval hall which still stank of the previous night’s wine.
But he did not shake his bride. He was not the shaking type. He was the proper, refined type, and so he gazed at her steadily, allowing nothing in his expression to betray his disgust at her histrionics. Thank goodness none of his friends had made the journey to witness these nuptials; they would have mocked him forever. By the time the ceremony ended and they signed the marriage papers, Aidan felt in need of a very strong drink.
But he didn’t partake in any strong drink. As scores of Lisburne guests grew drunker and drunker, Aidan sipped brandy and stayed close to his bride. Now that they were legally and officially wed, she had ceased crying, but she still looked miserable. Nary a smile, and very little conversation. This marriage was good for her father and her family, so they celebrat
ed, but his bride clearly did not think it good for her.
And there was more to come, of course. A wedding night, and Aidan’s first foray between a virgin’s thighs. Another reason not to overindulge.
Finally, the ladies took his bride off to the “nuptial chamber,” which was doubtless another grimy, chilly room. Aidan attempted to have words with her father, about the fine wedding and his intention to honor his daughter. The baron squinted back at him, hazy and sloppily drunk. More toasts, more wine. The men called out to each other in Welsh, bawdy sallies they were happy to translate.
Then, remarkably, all the males in the room swept him up in a mob of laughter and song and bore him toward the stairs. Aidan thought of medieval wedding night customs, beddings and shivarees. He was a duke of the realm, for God’s sake. His friends would never believe this. Never. He could hardly believe it himself. So then they carried me upstairs and crowded into the bedroom, and threw rosemary sprigs onto the bed.
His new duchess awaited him there, shivering pitifully under the sheets as fifty or more people entered the chamber. Aidan wondered, with dark humor, whether they’d stay to witness the consummation in true medieval fashion.
When it seemed they intended just that, he reached the limits of his patience and ordered the drunken mob downstairs. Their retreat left behind a heavy silence. He rubbed his neck and muttered, “What a singular display.”
“They only meant to wish us well,” said his bride. “It is the local tradition, to see newlyweds to bed.”
“Would you have preferred them to remain?”
She shook her head, regarding him from under her lashes. He shouldn’t grouse at her, or frighten her any more than she already was. He tried to smile but imagined it came out more of a grimace. She paled. Was he so terrifying? Christ, this marriage nonsense. Best to get this unpleasant duty done.
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