“Enough. Your behavior alarms me.”
“Then don’t pull at me.” She gazed up at him with tears in her eyes. “Why are you always so angry with me?”
“I’m not angry,” he lied. “Just resigned. Come.”
She clung to the bedpost. “Where are we going?”
“To the place where misbehaving wives learn lessons. Your screaming and tantruming has pushed me beyond my limit.” He kicked at the letters covering the floor. “Beyond my limit of patience and far beyond my limit of understanding.”
“No,” she wailed. “Please, no.”
“Yes,” he said, peeling her fingers from the bedpost. “And this time, hopefully, I will teach you a lesson you won’t forget.”
*** *** ***
Harmony thought if she fought him hard enough, someone would intervene on her behalf. She cried out for the dowager when he dragged her past her rooms. She cried out to the footmen and servants they passed, but each and every one of them pretended not to hear her. At last, tired of her struggles, he lifted her and carried her in the bands of his arms. “The more you fight me,” he said through gritted teeth, “the greater your penalty.”
By the time he crashed through the study doors and released her, he seemed in a fury indeed. If she could have gone back then and done things differently, she would have. He was going to punish her, probably more harshly than he would have, because she’d so infuriated him. Now she’d also embarrassed him in front of the dowager and his servants. She’d behaved horribly.
As usual.
She couldn’t help it. That must be clear to him now. Nothing he could do to her here would change the fact that she was impossible. “Just leave me alone,” she said, turning on him and backing away. “You can’t fix me. I don’t want you to fix me.” Her voice rose to a scream.
“I can fix you, and I am going to fix you,” he returned in a stern and cool voice. “By whatever method it takes. Come with me.”
He took her by the arm and dragged her over to the rack of rattan canes. “If you are so fond of being punished, choose one.”
“I am not fond of being punished, and I will not choose one,” she cried.
“Very well.”
He promptly chose the stoutest one when she might have chosen a less threatening option. Stupid, stupid girl. As he walked her back over toward the desk, she broke away from him and ran. The cane clattered to the floor behind her as she bolted for the door, but he caught her long before she reached it, hauling her back against his front. He put a hand at her neck, not to choke her but to immobilize her. His voice was low and intent at her ear.
“Listen to me, dearest. You will submit to this punishment, willing or not. If you will not submit under your own power, I shall enlist the help of two strong footmen to hold you until I’m done. Which would you prefer?”
She shook her head against his palm. “You wouldn’t.”
With a violent sound of anger, he dragged her toward the door. “Once I call them,” he warned, “I will not give you the chance to reconsider.”
Harmony could not bear the ignominy of witnesses. It was bad enough to be punished again like this, but to be held down by servants? She dragged her heels, shaking her head. “No, please. I will… I will submit. Please don’t call for anyone.”
He hauled her back toward the desk. Harmony fought him, only because she was tired of being dragged around. “Release me, then. Stop it! I will walk.”
“You had your chance to obey me with dignity earlier. Now you’ll be treated like the headstrong termagant you are.”
Moments later, she found herself bent over the horrible desk, gripping the hard edge of it. Her skirts were swept up, Court’s hand braced at her back.
“I hate you,” she screamed.
“I’m sure you do.”
Whack! The pain was so much worse than she’d remembered, so hot and cruel.
“No,” she wailed, arching off the desk. She must escape this. She must...
“Shall I fetch the footmen?” he asked.
He would. His voice communicated complete and utter inflexibility. He was angry and cold. “No, but...please...” she whimpered. “Please, I can’t bear this.”
“You will hold the edge of the desk. Each time you let go I will add five additional strokes to your punishment.”
“But…” She could barely speak through her sobs. “How… How many will there be?”
“As many as you need.”
What did that mean? His arm lifted again and Harmony braced for the pain. Whack! She held onto the desk for dear life. How was she to survive this? Each stroke was followed by an awful pause during which her bottom continued to throb in agony. Then another would come, and another. She wished she could go numb but the pain got worse, not better.
“Stop it!” she finally screamed, kicking back at him.
“If you do not keep your legs down and in position, you will be caned on the backs of your calves and the bottoms of your feet.”
She went limp again and sobbed into the dusty desktop. Another stroke, and another, as she cried out in helpless agony. “You are killing me.”
“I am disciplining you,” he said, tapping the cane against the heated pain of her cheeks. “I’m trying to, at any rate.”
“I’ll write to my father. He will come for me.”
“It’s my right as your husband to discipline you. The fact that you aren’t yet understanding the connection between your actions and this punishment compels me to continue.”
“I understand.” She jerked at a particularly vicious stripe. “I understand, but this is too much.”
“On the contrary, I sense it is not enough.”
Three more strokes, four. Oh, when would he stop? Think, Harmony, how to make him stop? “I’m sorry,” she said over and over. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you simply wish this painful punishment at an end.” Whack! “By tomorrow you will be back to your usual behavior, doing as you please with no thought to propriety or discipline.”
In her hysteria, in her panic to escape, some glimmer of understanding penetrated her brain. The only way to make him stop would be to accept his discipline, whether it was fair or not. Perhaps the letters weren’t enough to warrant this type of whipping, but the way she’d screamed at him was.
She truly cried then, cathartic, heartbroken tears for mistakes made and for the bleak future of her life. She couldn’t change who she was, couldn’t change her impulsive nature. Therefore, this pain and suffering would become all too familiar in weeks and years to come. She sobbed until she choked from it, but she held herself still beneath the fire of her husband’s discipline, enduring the pain of each blow. She felt the hand on her back lose some of its tension. After one more measured stroke to her burning posterior, the cane ceased to fall.
Harmony waited, frozen, dreading more but resigned to it. She’d learned her lesson. The lesson was that each time she earned it, she would experience another session like this. Her husband’s discipline would rule her life, and she had better get used to it.
“Stand up.”
She wrenched herself upright, letting her skirts fall down of their own accord. She was afraid to rub her aching bottom or adjust herself or do anything without his permission for fear of angering him again. His steady gaze prompted the abject apology she knew she was supposed to deliver.
“I am sorry for my disrespectful and outrageous behavior. I will not… I will not…”
“I will not challenge your authority again,” he suggested curtly when she got stuck. “I will not write to gentlemen without your knowledge. Repeat it.”
“I will not challenge your authority again. I will not write to gentlemen without your knowledge,” she parroted, not quite able to keep the bitterness from her voice.
He stood for long moments staring at her. “I hope you meant the things you just said. I hope they were not empty promises because I will hold you to them. You will be punished i
f you engage in these behaviors again.”
She bit hard on her tongue. “Yes, sir.”
“Why do I punish you, Harmony?”
“To instill discipline in me, Your Grace.”
His face hardened at the terse honorific, but he let it pass without comment. He lashed her with cold words instead. “If this marriage cannot be based on trust and respect, wife, it will be based on discipline.”
He said nothing whatsoever about love.
Chapter Eighteen: Rescue
Harmony fought nightmares, sobbing into her pillow. Nightmares of Court’s angry words and reproachful stare. Nightmares of his father’s study, of being bent over the desk again and caned on her bottom while being lectured in the most cool and biting way.
Standing still for the strikes of the cane was not even the worst thing. Having her bottom—and her soul—bared for punishment, the humiliation of his hand forcing her down when she tried to struggle away. No, those were not the most heartbreaking things. The most heartbreaking thing was his contempt for her, and her reciprocal contempt for him. She hated what had become of their marriage. She hated that study. She hated that desk. She hated her husband for not trusting her and loving her.
She slept late the next day and kept to her bed, reading and occasionally repositioning herself so she couldn’t feel the soreness of her bottom. There weren’t many marks but there were enough to make her feel a continual shame.
Mrs. Redcliff knocked on the door and entered, dropping a curtsy. “Your Grace, will you dress for dinner?”
Harmony shook her head after a moment. She could not make it through dinner, not tonight. She could not sit across the table from him and respond to his small talk. She could not tolerate an hour of his mother’s arch looks and Mrs. Lyndon’s vicious prattle. “Kindly tell His Grace that I’m not feeling well enough for dinner.”
The lady’s maid flicked a glance over at the side table. “You haven’t touched your tea tray. Is there anything I can bring that would be more appetizing?”
Harmony looked back at her book. “I am not hungry.”
The kindly woman flushed and busied herself straightening things that didn’t really need to be straightened. A few minutes later she returned to Harmony in entreaty. “If you do not eat, you will not fit in your lovely dresses.”
Harmony shrugged. “He will buy me more.”
“Shall I help you into your nightclothes then?”
Harmony forced a smile to bring her some ease. “I am still in my nightclothes from yesterday, since I am so lazy.”
Mrs. Redcliff’s hands shook as she trimmed the candles at the bedside. “Your Grace, if you don’t wish to undress in front of me for fear I will see… For fear… I have already seen the marks, Your Grace. Forgive me, but—”
Harmony held out a hand, silencing the maid’s words. “Don’t fret, Redcliff. He believed I deserved it. He is my husband and…” She made a face. “I suppose it is within his rights to punish me if he feels it’s warranted.”
The woman set her mouth in a hard, firm line, letting her expression tell Harmony exactly how she felt about that.
“Perhaps you should send word downstairs that I will not be at dinner,” Harmony suggested, to give the hovering woman something constructive to do. She bustled off muttering, and Harmony sighed in exhaustion. It was bad enough to deal with her own frayed emotions without Mrs. Redcliff storming about.
Harmony wished she had her mother.
She even wished she had her father or her brother. Anyone to accept her and love her unconditionally, just as she was. Awkward, impulsive Harmony Barrett. The merest thought of her childhood home across town in Brook Street nearly brought her to tears.
Mrs. Redcliff returned with a tray of milk and sandwiches, and Harmony ate a little to placate her. She was just finishing when a sharp knock sounded. Without waiting for an invitation, her husband entered and stopped inside the door, dressed for dinner in his usual starched finery. She sat up a little straighter, waiting to see what he would say, waiting to see whether his present mood was as prickly as hers.
He looked at Mrs. Redcliff. “Leave us.”
Yes, prickly. The maid’s spine snapped to stiffness as she faced him, and for a moment Harmony feared she would redress him. To her vast relief, she drew up her skirts instead and took her leave. As she exited through the dressing room, she shot Harmony a fortifying look.
Brave Mrs. Redcliff. If her husband were to dismiss her for such insolence, there would be nothing Harmony could do to stay his hand. That was the main lesson he had driven home the night before—that he had all the power in this marriage, and she had none of it. What she intended by her words and actions had no meaning to him. Everything she did or did not do would be reflected through the lens of his will, and the lens of the greater society.
Oh, she had warned the man, warned him clearly so many months ago. She had told him what a trial she would make of their marriage. Now he surely understood what she’d meant, but it was too late for both of them. She had begged him not to marry her but he had insisted. Now it had come to this. She was his prisoner. His burden. A wife he could not fix and could not love.
He turned from the dressing room door, regarding her with the full force of his gaze. “How long are you planning to hide here and sulk?”
Harmony closed her hands on the edge of the sheets. She would not let him goad her into more misbehavior. “I am not sulking,” she said without rancor. “I do not feel well.”
“It is time for dinner.”
She didn’t move from her place in the bed, not even when he crossed the room at a brisk pace to pick up the book on her nightstand and look at the cover. Great Disasters in the Age of Modern Politics. He sighed and put it back down.
“You have a new interest in politics?”
“I have a new interest in the inability of people to get along,” she said.
His gaze snapped to hers, then traveled down to the bodice of her nightgown. “Did you even dress today? Did you rise once from your bed?”
She yanked the sheets up to her neck, feeling bared by his stare. “I told you, I am not well.”
He crossed to her, making a show of feeling her brow. “You are not well, or your pride has been injured?” He put his fingers beneath her chin and raised her face to meet his. “Did you learn nothing last night? This immature, self-centered behavior greatly disturbs me. I will not tolerate it.”
“Will you take me to the study again?” She flung the question at him with false bravado, pushing his hand away.
“Perhaps,” he said. “If I think you need it. In this battle of wills, you shall come out the loser. That, at least, I hope you understand.”
I hate you. She had screamed it at him last night, and his hard, cold authority only exacerbated the feeling. I hate you. I hate you. Where is the Court I love?
“You can take me to the study a thousand times,” she said, “and I will still be me.”
“And I will still be me,” he replied. “You behaved badly and I punished you.”
“You were unjust. I did nothing wrong.”
“I read the letters, Harmony. Every one of them. They were not lurid but they were inappropriate. You are a married woman and he is a man.”
“He is an old man fixed on history and travel. How silly you are.”
Court drew himself up tight, as if he were restraining some very unpleasant words. He let out his breath and spoke in a steady voice. “If you cannot recognize the fault in your actions, I fear you may be beyond redemption.” His eyes left her, looked past her with a new indifference that devastated her. “Stay here in your rooms if you like.” He made a dismissive gesture and started toward the door.
“I want to go home.” She didn’t yell the words, or sob them—although she felt like sobbing. She spoke them with the same quiet and cool tone he used. When his back stiffened and he turned to her, she said again, “I want to go home. Right now.”
“Right now? Impul
sive as ever. You are truly beyond the pale.”
“I want to go home,” she repeated stubbornly.
“To Hampshire? I don’t think so.”
“To Brook Street. Father is still in town. He will take me in.” She had no idea if that was true, but she said it anyway. “I will go there this very night.”
His gaze was glacial. “Will you? I hope you are prepared to walk.”
She shivered under his regard, remembering another time and place when she felt helpless, furious and thwarted. When she had indeed been desperate enough to walk. She could tell from the look on his face that he remembered too. “This time,” he said, “rest assured I will not rescue you from your folly.”
She sat straighter in the bed, blinking back tears. “It is not so far to Brook Street as it was to Newcastle.”
His expression frightened her. “Do not attempt it,” he bit out. The door slammed behind him, the starkly echoing bang hurting her heart much more than her ears.
*** *** ***
Court arrived to dinner a short while later with his wife’s words still echoing in his head. How silly you are. How silly.
Silly indeed, to have such bruised pride over the words of a sulking wife. If she had called him brutal or unfeeling, or horrid or mean or cruel, he could have coped with it, but silly cut him too close to the bone. Since the day he met her, he had had a sinking feeling of becoming ever more ridiculous. To be called a silly man by Harmony, the silliest, most unreasonable creature in the world, was very nearly an unbearable blow.
Even more unbearable—she wanted to go home.
She would not go home. He’d sent a man to alert the gatehouse that she was not to call up carriage nor horse for her own use without his permission. It was petty, yes, and the servants undoubtedly thought him a tyrant. He was becoming a tyrant, because of her. Not just a tyrant, but a jealous, abusive husband.
Oh, God.
He had abused his wife.
He could try to excuse his behavior the night before by saying it was his right, by saying she deserved it for being disrespectful to him and corresponding with another gentleman behind his back. None of those excuses rang true to him though, not in his heart. He had lashed out at Harmony because his feelings were hurt and because he feared losing her. Now he wondered if he’d lost her for good.
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