But she didn’t ask yet, for she didn’t want her husband to make her end the correspondence, and there was already too much tension between them of late. She didn’t know what to expect tonight. She thought, with a kind of sick feeling, that she could win her husband’s approval in one area anyway. She could please his physical natures and—oh, she prayed—become pregnant with his heir.
Chapter Seventeen: No Easy Answers
A winter storm arrived during dinner, pelting the windows with fat drops of rain and gusting winds, making a tense meal even more uncomfortable. Harmony could only bring herself to look at her husband twice, and both times the candlelight lent his face a severe air that made her chest go tight. The dowager sat across from her, glaring like a gargoyle.
Perhaps it was the dark storm that made Harmony feel melancholy, or the dowager’s hidden pain, or her husband’s grave looks, but she thought if she stayed at dinner one second more she might never stop crying, or she might run screaming from the house and ruin everything forever. Perhaps that was her fear—that her next mistake, inevitably looming, would be the last straw, the disaster from which there would be no return. Then she would have forevermore a cold marriage, a humiliating existence upon the fringes of life, being merely tolerated by those who moved around her.
She excused herself from the table, hiding the anxiety that choked her. She retreated to her room to wait for her husband, allowing herself to be fussed over by Mrs. Redcliff, who put her into pretty, sheer things His Grace had ordered from Paris. Harmony felt like an imposter in the delicate garments. If only she could give him an heir…
Above all, she must continue to pass muster in his bed, even if it gave her a fraught, uneasy feeling to lie with a man who’d become such a stranger to her. She must be warm and welcoming. Enticing. I will not allow you to lie beneath me and be distant.
Mrs. Redcliff left her in her grand bedroom chamber, the dim space going bright now and again with a flash of lightning. Thunder rumbled the flower vases and the very panes of glass in the windows. She walked to the largest window and looked out at the garden lashed with raindrops, her mind wandering until she heard his knock. He opened the door and entered, imposing as ever in his dressing gown. She remembered the first time she’d seen him this way, in private, a virile male arriving to lie with her. She’d felt the same type of panic she felt now.
His eyes fixed on her, dark in the low light. She jumped at a sudden crack of thunder as he crossed the room.
“Come away from the window,” he chided. “The storm.”
She let him lead her over by the bed. He smelled faintly of after-dinner wine and fresh soap. His hair was mussed as if he’d recently raked his hands through it. A strong pulse beat in the hollow of his neck where the dressing gown crossed into a “v.” Why she noticed these things, she didn’t know. His knuckles felt warm as he drew them down the length of her cheek. Then he cupped her chin and rested his head beside hers, leaving a whisper of a kiss against her ear.
Just like that, her body turned traitor to the warnings in her mind and warmed with an excitement that wasn’t to be controlled. When he touched her with that needful look in his gaze, she melted into nothing for him. Nothing and everything. Whatever he wanted.
“Court…” she whispered. She didn’t know what to say then. How you frighten me. Can you fix things between us? I hope so.
He, too, looked as if he was unsure of what to say, and so he kissed her, sweet loving kisses that progressed to an embrace as intense as the evening’s storm. Through the tumultuous joining of their mouths, she clung to the lapels of his gown until he shed it, and then she clung to the hard planes of his chest, to the familiar shape of him. So much power.
He was all powerful now, his thick male member rising before him. He pushed back her robe, letting it fall to the floor, and regarded her in her sheer nightgown, his gaze hot with hunger. Her nipples tightened beneath the gauzy fabric. His arm came around her, bracing her, while the other traced those wanton peaks. Shooting, tingling desire arced through her body, making her tremble, making her knees go weak. She believed she would have fallen if he hadn’t held her like a trapped, wild creature in his arms.
His jutting length pressed against the front of her, a pulsing reminder of what he would do to her. His magic. His mastery. The place between her thighs where she received him grew wet and ready without conscious thought. She breathed a small sound of lust, of surrender, a sound he answered with a baring of his teeth. He pulled her to the bed and sat on the edge of it, and began to draw her down over his lap. She stiffened, the erotic spell broken. Now she felt scared.
“No,” he said. “Don’t.” He was telling her not to rebel, not to resist him. He looked kind but intent on his purpose. From their very first night as husband and wife he had been clear what he’d require of her. Still, it took all her willpower to bend her frame over his lap and give herself up to his desires. With a soft sound of approval, he pushed up the hem of her gown and bared her bottom. Cool air was replaced by the heat of his stroking, caressing palm. His other hand smoothed over her shoulders and rested there, calming her.
She moaned, and she realized it was from anticipation, not fear. This was not like the trip to his father’s dark study. This was not punishment, but a nurturing interaction they shared. Her hips pressed against the hard foundation of his thighs, seeking she knew not what. Relief. Sexual pleasure. His palm slid down, his fingers exploring her until he found the sensitive button he sought.
“Oh,” Harmony cried. Before his skilled touches could tip her over into that shattering place where the world stood still, he stopped his manipulations and landed a hard spank on her bottom. She jumped at the stinging contact—and arched back for more of it. He spanked her again, and again, leisurely smacks that spoke more of enjoyment than discipline. In between, he would again shift his palm down to torment her in that throbbing spot. She lost all sense of propriety and ladylike behavior and groaned like an animal. He didn’t stop until she felt heated and tingling all over, and eager to receive him between her thighs.
They both jumped at a sharp clap of thunder. She turned up to him, needing to be in his arms. His expression was so fond, his eyes soft, and his lips…
Before she knew what was happening she was pulled up in his lap and kissed with ardent fervor. She could feel his masculine length against her belly as he lifted her gown over her head, tossing it away. They were naked together, hot and wanting. He turned with her, dumped her off his lap and down on the bed, coming over her with his long legs parting hers.
“I want you,” he whispered. “God save me, I want you so badly.”
He mounted her with one great thrust and filled her until she shuddered. She was so wrought up from his touches, his spanking, that this sudden deep possession ignited her. She grasped his arms, spreading her legs wider and begging for him to continue on, harder and faster. With a growl he pulled out of her. Before she could complain, he turned her onto her hands and knees and drove into her again, this time from behind. He pounded into her, and while she was not at all sure this was a polite and natural way of lovemaking, she didn’t care. She felt hot shame and excitement as he reached down and parted the lips of her sex.
His pace slowed and became an almost sinuous perversion while his fingertips moved in accord with the erratic movements of her hips. He exhausted her with pleasure, with the intrusion of his phallus stretching her and leaving her again and again. When she arrived at her long-sought peak, she cried out from the sheer force of it. Rain pounded against the windows, an echo of the tumult shaking her limbs. She contracted around him as he bucked against her, his hands clamped on her shoulders, pushing her down even as her body seemed to hover in waves of pleasure. When she calmed and came back to her senses, he was there, right there, cradling her close against the broad warmth of his chest.
“Beautiful Harmony,” he said against her cheek. “How you please me.”
She ducked her head into the shelter of
his neck. “Court…” She paused, gathering her courage. Please accept me. Please love me as much as I love you. She believed she loved him. At the very least, she needed him, even if everything seemed confused in the light of day.
“What is it you wished to say, my dear?”
“Do you love me?” she blurted out in anxious misery.
He stroked her cheek, once, twice, a fleeting touch that made her lift her head and meet his gaze. “God help me, Harmony. There are times I love you more than I can bear.”
Just like that, he didn’t seem a stranger anymore.
*** *** ***
Court lingered, reluctant to leave her. He held her close until her chest rose and fell in deep sleep, until the storm outside blew over and silence reigned, and still he stayed and watched her. Wretched puzzle, this marriage. How could they be so connected in this way, and so frightfully disconnected in every way else?
He looked around her room in the candlelight. Everything appeared in order as it had always been. There were no clues, no easy answers to the problems between them. He eased from the bed, drew on his dressing gown and went to stand at the window, staring out at the wet grounds of the garden. Spring in England. It would come no matter what, bringing the cursed Courtland ball and the social season. If he couldn’t fix their marriage, he wasn’t sure they’d survive.
He crossed from the bedroom into his wife’s adjoining sitting room, and prowled around and touched her things as if they might give him some idea how to mend their rift. He looked over her book collection, which was growing at an alarming rate. She needed more shelves to hold them all. Very well. He would have more added.
At the very least he could do that. Give her things. Dresses, jewels, bookshelves and books, horses and fancy bonnets and a grand old house around her. Material things. Despite his intentions to the contrary, he could envision his marriage becoming like so many of his friends’. An economic transaction, a lifeless and loveless arrangement only serving to secure the all-important family line. Harmony had not conceived yet, though. Why?
He paused at her desk, seeing a shuffle of papers in a pile. Notes, perhaps, on her most recent historical interests? He sat down to see what she was studying, what had captured her attention after her flurry of interest in Mongol civilizations. He did not find notes in her scrawled hand, however, but a letter.
Dear Michael,
What a pleasure to receive your most recent note. I look forward to them with a fervor you cannot believe. I am glad to hear you are safely returned and with so much of interest to share.
I have given thought to your request for a meeting but I’m not sure it is possible.
The letter ended there, still in progress, a note she had written to another man perhaps moments before he arrived at her bedroom to lie with her. He remembered her pensive, faraway look as she stood at the window. “Not sure it is possible” indeed. With shaking fingers he opened her desk drawers, finding other letters in the top left one. Stacks of letters, all from him, this “Michael.” Mr. Michael Thomas Burgermeister. Why did that name sound familiar?
How busy she had been, to have such packets of letters. I look forward to them with a fervor you cannot believe. When had she begun this acquaintance with her prolific Mr. Burgermeister? Perhaps before she and Court had even wed. He took the entire stack of letters and crossed back into his wife’s bedroom.
“Wake up, Harmony,” he said, nudging her shoulder. How innocent and sweet she could look in sleep, the little deceiver. All this time she’d been withdrawing from him, he’d blamed himself for being an inadequate husband, for being too strict and unbending to suit her, while she’d been writing letters to some mister who lived in Brook Street—the street where she used to live. “Harmony, awaken at once,” he said as she stretched beneath the sheets. In his bed, beneath his sheets.
She blinked and raised her head. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
He threw the pile of letters on the bed before her. She sat up, gathering them before they could slide to the floor. “What on earth?”
Court made a sound that betrayed far too much of his pain. “You won’t pretend you don’t know what these are.”
She looked up at him, her brows gathered in those little thinking lines he used to find so sweet. “I know what they are. I don’t know why you have dumped them on me at this hour of the night.”
“Pardon me for not waiting until morning to confront you about your paramour.”
She burst into laughter. “Mr. Burgermeister? My paramour?”
By God, he did not enjoy being laughed at. “You called him Michael in your letters,” he said, pointing at the messy stack. “The one you were writing mentioned a meeting.”
“You read my letters? What were you doing? Snooping about my desk?”
“Yes,” he snapped, annoyed that she would attack him when she was the one who had behaved—yet again—so poorly. “Yes, I was trying to discover what it is that has so set you against me. Now I understand that another man has secured a place in your affections.”
“My affections? Mr. Burgermeister is a scholar, a historian, not some paramour of mine! And if you wish to know what has set me against you, you are exhibiting a prime example of it right now. Will you always expect the worst of me?”
“A scholar?” Court scowled down at the pile of letters. “He has an exorbitant amount of time to write, for one engrossed in studies.” A confusion of facts in his mind snapped together. “Michael Thomas Burgermeister. That damn book Lightmore brought you.”
“I’d been meaning to explain—”
“Has he been ferrying notes for you two? Is Lightmore involved in this?”
“Involved in what?” Harmony sat up straighter, grasping the sheets to her chest. “We’ve been corresponding by post, and that is the extent of it. I’ve hidden nothing. Well, not intentionally.” Her lips pressed into a sullen line. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to apply to you for permission to write to those of my acquaintance.”
“A man of your acquaintance,” he pointed out. “You cannot imagine it was appropriate to carry on this sort of relationship without my approval.” He gestured to the packets on the bed. “There are fifty or more letters here.”
“Surely, not so many,” she said, looking down at the pile.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever written fifty letters to anybody.”
“Well, you haven’t many friends, so why would you?”
He made a warning sound. “Do not test my patience, Harmony. You should be begging my forgiveness.”
“For writing to a friend? Did you read them? We only spoke of Greece, of ancient history. Mr. Burgermeister is planning an expedition and he hoped I might become a patron of his. You’ve plenty of money. I was going to ask you about it.”
“Ask me to finance this man’s travels?”
“His historical expedition. It’s a worthy endeavor. He is planning to go to Athens and Delphi, and Peloponnesia to study ancient villages and ruins. It is too costly without the aid of charitable patrons. We spoke of nothing inappropriate.”
“If that’s so, why the secrecy? You hid these letters from me.”
“They were not hidden,” she said. “The latest note was on my desk. Before you accuse and shame me, why don’t you read them?” She picked up a handful and flung them at him. “Read them all if you wish, if I’m not to have any privacy or trust.”
“Trust?” He waved a hand at the mess on the floor. “So many letters to a gentleman not even of my acquaintance. Don’t you understand why this discomposes me? Who knows of these letters, of this correspondence between you? Lightmore? He will tell everybody—”
“Is that all you ever care about? What everyone will think? Meanwhile I cannot converse with another person on a topic I’m interested in?”
“This isn’t conversing on a topic. This is a prodigious collection of letters, in which you address him familiarly as Michael!”
“In later notes I did, because we becam
e so…familiar.” She seemed to realize, at last, the impropriety that upset him. The blush deepened across her cheeks. “But we spoke of nothing but history. Niceties and news now and again, perhaps, as friends will do. But nothing torrid or in poor taste. We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of!”
“Haven’t you? How different our morals are. And I daresay you will feel ashamed indeed when Mr. Lightmore and his foppish group spread rumors of your affaire de lettres with this thrice damned ‘historical scholar.’ The truth doesn’t matter, only the gossip. You of all people should realize that.”
“Oh, I realize about gossip, and I don’t care. I am sick of it!” She threw another handful of letters at him. “Burn them, then. Do what you will. I will never speak to him again if it pleases Your Grace, and he shall never go to Greece or anywhere. I hate this. I hate these letters. I hate society and gossips, and your accusations. I hate this horrible house and I hate that I ever met you. I hate being your wife. I hate you! Now get out and let me sleep if you will not let me be happy. At least give me peace.”
He could not say precisely what made him snap. Hurt feelings? Jealousy? How small of him. Perhaps he was only incensed by the boldness of her tirade. “I don’t think I’ll give you peace, Harmony. Not if you will persist in behaving like a disordered child.” He crossed to her and pulled her from the bed, grabbing her nightgown from the nearby chair. “If you cannot be reasoned with, if you cannot behave as a thoughtful and respectable wife, I will not treat you as one.”
She fought him as he worked to pull her garment into place. He felt ridiculous grappling with his wife but if he released her now, she would not respect his authority. He tightened his hand on her arm and gave her a sharp shake.
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