“Perhaps,” he murmured. “A momentary death.”
She stared down at his glossy dark hair, the breadth of his shoulders holding her open and vulnerable, as vulnerable as she’d been during the birching, but now he was tormenting her with pleasure, not pain. Her hips moved, seeking more. “Courtland. Court. My love…” She was begging now.
He made a rough, wanton sound. His lips and tongue left her, replaced by a groping hand. One finger, then two slipped inside her, his large hands priming her as she pressed her “pearl” against his palm. His gaze raked over her, over her heaving breasts and her arms cinched above her.
“Did you really want me?” she asked. “That first day you saw me? You wanted me like this?”
“Dear girl,” he said through gritted teeth. “If I knew about you then what I know now, I would have laid siege to you there in the drawing room. Stripped you bare and taken you in front of everyone.”
Harmony laughed as he withdrew his fingers and pressed his lips to her neck. “That would have been terribly impolite.”
He growled. “You do not inspire politeness in me.”
She tensed as he drew her legs over his shoulders and positioned himself at her entrance. He looked down at her, her conqueror, her master in this. She wrapped her fingers in her hair to keep her hands where he’d told her to—otherwise she would have clutched him to draw him inside. She was still aroused from his earlier lovemaking, his miraculous mouth. Now, as his length pressed into her, she shuddered from the fullness and satisfaction of accommodating him. At her groan, he began to move, clasping her thighs and holding her firmly for his ever-deepening thrusts. She felt her powerlessness…and his power. A restless tightening built in her middle, and between her legs where he took her as hard and fast as he pleased.
Her wrists strained against their bonds, her whole body stretching and opening to encompass him. She was his captive, pleasured and now given to his use. She let go as he’d taught her to, let go of politeness and manners and ladylike behavior and snapped her hips against his. She heard a cry as if from a distance, her own cry of release buried in the side of his neck. His hands were on her wrists again, bearing them down, grasping them in a spasmodic grip as she lost herself to all else in the world.
Her husband collapsed atop her with a groan, his scent and the weight of his chest so familiar now. The tension in his body slowly dissipated. He let go of her wrists and she lay beneath him feeling exhausted and very, very safe. He kissed her, deeply, sweetly, then nuzzled her face with a sigh. “I suppose I should untie you. Give me your hands.”
He rolled away and she offered her wrists, watching as he unwrapped them as tenderly as they’d been wrapped. She studied his face at the same time, mesmerized by the combination of his stern “duke” expression and the softer emotion underneath. She hadn’t recognized the emotion before, had never expected it to be there. It was subtle, another mysterious layer to the man she’d married. When her hands were free she held his face between her palms, staring, feeling a connection to him that went beyond marriage and propriety and titles.
He gazed back at her, his lips curved in an ironic smile. “To think—you worried you would not bring me happiness.”
She smiled too, letting go of his stubble-roughened face to hug him close. “I’m glad if I do. You are deserving of it.”
“I hope you will always believe that.” He drew back and dropped a line of kisses down her neck. “There will be difficult times between us. Times you will wish me to the devil.”
She shook her head, but he remained pensive. With one last kiss, he released her and reached to retrieve his now-wrinkled neckcloth.
“I didn’t damage it, did I?” she asked.
“If you had, I would have forgiven you after such a delicious tryst. But it seems to have survived.” He stared down at it, worrying the trim in the palm of his hand.
“What’s the matter?” asked Harmony.
“Nothing,” he sighed after a moment. “The rest of them be damned.”
“Is this about…those…those drawings in the paper?”
He grimaced. “I did not mean for you to see them.”
“I’m sorry I cause you such embarrassment. I’m so sorry.”
He silenced her with a kiss, then leaned back and cupped her cheek. “I am not concerned. The ton will eventually move on to new scandals and gossip. Spring will bring a new season with plenty of fodder for idle tongues.”
“I am glad to be married now,” said Harmony. “I’m glad I won’t have to participate in all that society nonsense.”
One brow rose as he looked at her. “You’ll still have to participate, but yes, you won’t have to be courted any longer, or seek a match.” His face softened as he drew her back into his arms. “You’ve already made a stunning one.”
She giggled as he nibbled beneath her ear. “I won the hand of society’s most eligible bachelor, didn’t I?”
“The most eligible bachelor no one wanted. Yes. Aren’t you fortunate?”
He was jesting, but she could sense the hurt underneath. She thought of beautiful Lady Wembley, how she had jilted him and hurt his feelings. Harmony could tell he had wanted the lady very much, although she was sure he’d deny it if she asked. She stroked his neck and threaded her fingers through his hair.
“Yes, I am fortunate,” she whispered. “Because the most eligible bachelor was also the most wicked.”
He let out a soft breath, gripping his neckcloth in tense fingers. “I think I am not the only wicked one in this union. What shall I do with you?” He shook his head, as if to bring himself from a stupor. Harmony could see the dutiful duke emerge, pushing the lover aside as he sat up on the side of the bed. “Speaking of the season, there is a huge rout of a ball here every year in the spring. It is a great tradition of the ton, a bash to kick off the social whirl. My mother wishes to cancel it this year.”
“Because of me?” Harmony’s heart fell to some place near her feet. “Because she believes I’ll ruin it,” she realized.
He shook his head and waved a careless hand. “It won’t be cancelled, of course. I told her the ball would go on as planned, and that you would be an unprecedented success. A perfect hostess for the event.”
Sadness and embarrassment were replaced by sputters of alarm. “Unprecedented? A hostess? Me?”
“You are the duchess now. It will be your ball in name at least, not my mother’s. I told her you could very well handle it, and you shall.”
Harmony felt out of breath. Panicked. She flinched as her husband touched her brow.
“I will help you,” he said. “My mother and the household staff will help you. I know you will make me proud.”
He could not have used more intimidating words. She must not only succeed at a bare minimum, but she must make him proud. “I will not be able to do it.”
He waved the folded-up neckcloth at her. “Words like that will only find you tied to the bedpost again. You can do it, and you will. You must do it, for I’ve entered into a battle of wills with my mother over it. I should dearly love to show her up, and I think you would too.”
All the relaxed happiness of their intimate encounter bled away with talk of this ball. The cursed thing would be hanging over her head from now until April. She didn’t know what upset her more, her inevitable failure as a hostess or the dowager’s enduring disdain.
“I wish she did not despise me so,” Harmony said. “I can change my behavior if I try but I cannot change my origins, my ‘low’ birth. She will always keep me at arm’s length, won’t she?”
“Perhaps,” said Court. “It is impossible to know how time will change things. She is an old, bitter woman in some ways. Perhaps you are not meant to be close.”
“But she is your mother.” And until I win her over, I can’t make you proud. Perhaps he didn’t realize that but she did. Without the dowager on her side, any attempt to fix her notoriety was useless.
Her husband kissed her again, stroking he
r bottom cheeks in a tender, possessive way. “So, what did you think of your first birching? It was your first, was it not?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if you’d been routinely birched as a child, you wouldn’t be so incorrigible now.”
There, he was doing it again, joking and teasing her with the driest expression on his face. She swatted his chest. “Yes, it was my first, if you must know. And it hurt. I should not like to endure a more severe birching.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then, my dearest Harmony, you must endeavor to be very, very good.”
Chapter Fourteen: Spectacular
She was impossible. Absolutely impossible.
The holidays came and went, and his Miss Chaos…now Duchess Chaos…showed little progress in the way of refinement. At her brother’s wedding to Lady Meredith, she made a cake of herself by…well…knocking over the wedding cake as she was staring up at the frescoes on Needham’s ceiling. At the Hawthorne family’s intimate Christmas dinner, Harmony managed to both spill wine on his cousin, the fastidious Lady Runnenbarth, and bring up Mongol hordes, this time before the entire group.
It was not that she did not try. She did, but there were a regrettable number of lapses, all of which she paid for upended over his knee.
“But one cannot rightfully discuss the history of the Jin Dynasty without bringing up the Mongols and Genghis Khan,” she’d wailed as Court turned up the skirt of her gown.
“A lady does not discuss hordes of any type at the dinner table, nor Genghis Khan. Ever,” Court had replied firmly as he meted out a spanking commensurate with the degree of her crime. Afterward she’d apologized very prettily and tearfully, and sworn up and down that she would never, ever utter the word “Mongol” again, and then she’d gone to the library and buried her nose in a book about the Mongol Empire like the stubborn, obsessive creature she was.
Mere months to the ball, and all he had to show by way of progress were a surfeit of spankings that accomplished nothing aside from inflaming him to greater and greater heights of lust. In the short, dark days of winter, Court called reinforcements to the house. Lady Renfrew-Burress, to improve Harmony’s deportment. Lady Archleigh, to teach Harmony how to properly converse in company of all kinds. A dance teacher, Mr. Lightmore, to develop her poor ballroom talent. The foppish young gentleman was a friend of his wife’s brother, but Court hired him anyway because he was reputed to be the best.
After these lessons Harmony would be cross and withdraw from him, and retreat to the library, losing herself in her books, shrugging off any sheen of cultured finesse her tutors had managed to impress upon her in their limited time. He was heading there to see her now, just after her lesson with Lady Archleigh. She had books in her rooms but she often used his library and he liked having her nearby. She was quiet when he needed quiet and sweet when he needed sweetness. And after her lessons, well…she was a bit of a shrew, but he still loved her more than any sane man ought to.
He arrived at the library, sailing through doors silently opened by liveried footmen. A glance around the room revealed a pair of shapely legs propped over the arm of a chair in the corner.
He cleared his throat as he approached, causing the legs to disappear. By the time he faced her, she sat as primly as any English rose.
“We have discussed that duchesses don’t sit with legs strewn over armchairs.”
She gave him a who, me? look that dissipated into a guilty grimace. “I’m sorry. It’s only that Lady Archleigh exhausts me so. After our time together I just want to—” Words escaped her. She drew up and shuddered her whole body in an adequate representation of what she was trying to express. She peered up at him with one eye closed. “Are you going to spank me?”
“No,” he said. “Well, not yet. But stop that please. You look like a pirate.”
“Arrgh.”
“You do not amuse me when you behave so.”
Even as he said it, the corners of his lips started to twitch. Damn her. “What are you reading?” he asked.
She flipped over the book in her lap and held it out to him. “The Culture of Ancient Greece During the Bronze Age, by Michael Thomas Burgermeister.”
“Oh? I do not remember having that in my library, nor buying it for you.”
“Mr. Lightmore brought it. He is an acquaintance of Mr. Burgermeister and thought I might like it. Honestly, it is terribly academic, but it was kind of him to think of me, wasn’t it?”
Court didn’t answer for a moment, shocked by the young man’s cheek. How dare he present his wife with a present of a history book? Court could tell from Harmony’s guileless expression that she hadn’t the slightest idea how inappropriate it was to have accepted it. If Lightmore were an old bewigged nodder with creaking corsets, maybe, but he was not. Decidedly not. He was of an age with her brother, with all the dandies of Barrett’s set.
“From now on, if Mr. Lightmore brings gifts to you, you are not to accept them.”
Her lips drew into a pout. “Did I flub up again? But what should I have done? Refused it?”
“Mr. Lightmore knew it was inappropriate to offer a gift to a married lady. When any gentleman offers you a present, you must tell him you cannot accept it, and let me know about it at once. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, not without frustration. “But I thought it was very nice of him. You will not tell him off on my account, and make me have some new teacher? Mr. Lightmore is patient, and he makes it easy for me to remember the steps.”
Jealousy flared at the way she defended her teacher. Yes, Court wanted to tell Lightmore off. Yes, he wanted to send him to hell with a boot to his arse. But he wouldn’t, not if the man could actually inspire Harmony to enjoy dancing. “I won’t confront your teacher this time. But remember what I said. No more gifts.”
“Yes, sir. May— May I keep the book?”
“Do you want to keep the book?”
“It does contain a wealth of information.”
He shrugged. “Very well. But will you put it away and accompany me on a walk? I’m restless indoors and it’s not too cold a day. The rain has gone off and I should like to see my flower in the sunshine.”
That brought a smile to her face. “Shall I be your flower? Opening my showy petals?”
No! Well, yes, but only for me. What were these feelings of anxiety, of jealousy? For five seasons, no gentleman would go near Miss Harmony Barrett, not to dance or even converse with her. Now Court felt she might be snatched away at any moment by an interloper. But she was different now, more fetching somehow, and not just because he knew her in a carnal sense. Her face was brighter and she was more aware of her feminine power. She used these wiles on him regularly and he knew it.
What if she decided to use them on someone else?
From now on, he thought as he drew on his walking coat, he would be there while she and Lightmore were together at dancing lessons. Then there would be no question that proprieties were being observed. That decided, he gave himself up to the fresh English weather, to a walk with his wife in the bracing and only slightly chilly air of a winter’s day. The sun kept the temperatures from offending; in fact, as they sauntered about the impeccably landscaped garden behind the house, Court grew warm and Harmony developed a comely blush in her cheeks. He wanted to kiss those cheeks, and her lips too, but it was not polite to go about making love in broad daylight, even in a private garden.
He talked about the weather instead, pointed out the robins in the trees, anything to stop himself dragging her to some sheltered place and mauling her for the next three hours. “How different the garden looks in winter than in spring,” he extemporized at one point.
“Why, yes,” Harmony answered. “I imagine it does look different. But why are you conversing like such a stick?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “It is rude to accuse one’s companion of being a stick.”
“Arrgh,” she said, winking.
“Harmony.” His voi
ce held a warning note.
“Well, you looked like a pirate just then, with your eyebrow all scrunched up above your eye. Tell me, did you only ask me for a walk so you might test my conversational prowess? Gauge my progress with Lady Archleigh?”
“If I were, you would be failing miserably. You mustn’t be confrontational.”
“You told me once I must stick up for myself. You remember, in the Darlingtons’ garden?”
“I remember, but that was a different case.”
“You also called me stupid.”
“I never did such a thing.” He took her hand, squeezing it, bringing her palm to his mouth for a kiss. “If you do not learn to converse with more subtlety, the lessons with Lady Archleigh shall continue.”
His wife pulled her hand from his. “I don’t know why people can’t talk to one another normally. Why they must mull over and weigh every word before they utter it. It seems false.”
“Most people don’t need to weigh their words. But you do, because you have an unusually busy and complicated mind.” He put an arm around her and squeezed her for a moment in the waning afternoon light. “It is one of the things I like most about you.”
“Then why do you try so hard to change me? If you like me as I am?”
Court frowned. “I am not trying to change you, only improve you. The world is not only me,” he said in his defense. “It’s not only me you must please.”
She looked up at him with the full force of her dissecting blue eyes. “Why not? Why can I not just please you and myself? And our children, if we have them someday?”
She always asked the most difficult questions, and Court disliked being argued with.
“It will please me for you to become more socially adept,” he said with an air of finality. “For you to be accepted by our contemporaries. I would like the satiric drawings and gossip of our marriage to cease, and so would the dowager.” He took her hand, disturbed by her troubled expression. He wished sometimes the world was only her and him. “Tell me what happened at Almack’s. Why you were forbidden to waltz.”
Disciplining the Duchess Page 17
