Disciplining the Duchess

by Annabel Joseph

  The heir, of course. This would continue, this charade, until she gave him what he needed—an heir to carry on his name.

  She took one last sip of tea and rose, going to the bed as if to battle. He still watched her, an unfathomable look on his face. She discarded her robe and stopped with her hands on the ribbons of her nightgown. “Do you wish it on or off?” she asked curtly.

  “I prefer off, but the choice is yours. And you don’t have to lie with me. That is also your choice.”

  She looked around in confusion. “Where else would I lie?”

  He made a huff of a sound and held out a hand. “Come here. Leave it on for now.” Once she climbed into the bed, he drew her into his arms. She held herself stiffly, unsure of his mood. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I understand you haven’t the fondest regard for me at the moment. If you cannot endure my caresses, we will merely sleep together.”

  “You will not…?” Her voice trailed off in a question.

  “Force you? I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I’d do such a thing.”

  “What about the heir?”

  Court snorted and rolled away from her. “This confounded heir. He’s a third person in our marriage. Or rather a fifth, after my mother and the specter of my late father. How crowded our bed has become.”

  Harmony stared down at the embroidered sheets. “Well…”

  He turned toward her again. “I imagine you rode uncomfortably in the carriage. Turn around if you please, so I can see how the marks look today.”

  She felt sharp, hot shame as he moved her onto her stomach and drew up the skirt of her nightgown. His fingers brushed the tender stripes, raised by his own hand. “I am sorry,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His apology meant the world to her but what did it really change? Silent tears dropped onto her pillow, creating a spreading ivory stain. His hand slid higher to touch her hips, her waist, her back and shoulders beneath the whisper-soft gown. She wished she understood her feelings. She wished she understood how he could be so threatening and yet so tender to her.

  “Poor Harmony,” he said against her ear. “What a beast I’ve been.”

  She shook her head. “Not a beast, exactly. I should not have screamed at you, or written so many letters to Mr. Burgermeister. I deserved to be punished.”

  “But I disciplined you in anger. I broke a promise to you.”

  She slid her hand across the pillow and sighed. “In some way it comforts me to know that I’m not the only one in this marriage who makes impulsive mistakes.”

  He made a small, choked sound like a laugh, but it wasn’t quite a laugh. “You are certainly not the only one. I am deeply ashamed.”

  She turned to him, meeting his tortured gaze. “I did warn you. I told you I’d be the very devil to live with. You married me anyway.”

  “I had to marry you. How couldn’t I, after you spoke to me so passionately of Joan of Arc? After I saw you almost cuff Sheffield in the Darlingtons’ garden? How couldn’t I, once I saw you walking that damn road to Newcastle with your back stiff as a poker? I wonder if I didn’t want you from the time I found you under Darlington’s desk. I’m sorry, but I’m going to stay married to you forever, devil or not.”

  Harmony stared at her husband. Her lover. She did believe that he loved her. His gaze spoke of longing, fear, regret. His fingers traced over her tear-dampened face. “You told me once to make a wish. I think I did, Harmony. Now we have to make it come true.”

  “We need an eyelash,” she whispered through the tightness in her throat.

  “No, we need each other.” He brushed away her tears and kissed her, then nudged his face into the curve of her neck with a groan. “Curse you for all the turmoil you’ve brought me. Your name, my darling…it’s such a lie.”

  Harmony half-chuckled and half-sobbed. “My playmates always made fun of my name. I wanted so much to be Arabella, or Caroline or Jane. I asked my father once why he called me Harmony and he said it was because I brought harmony to his heart. That after Stephen, he had hoped for a little daughter, and there I was.” She took a shuddery, miserable breath. “And I think I was never the daughter he wanted. And you…” She hid her face against his hair, fresh sobs pouring out of her. “I shall never be the wife you want either. I’m terribly afraid I won’t be, no matter how hard I try.”

  Court could only hear one thing over the clamor of his wife’s tears, and that was his own heart breaking in half. “Good Lord,” he said. “This has gone on far enough.” He shushed her and drew her right against the shelter of his body. “You are overwrought, I fear, and it’s my fault. But all shall be well now.”

  “How?” she cried against his shoulder. “You should have let me go home. You should have made me go long before now.”

  He grasped her, this wild, puzzling woman that had become so necessary to his happiness. He smoothed his hands over her bottom, over the fading welts he’d put there in jealous outrage, welts that had taught them both a lesson. “You cannot go,” he told her. “I don’t want to let you go!”

  His palm slid between her thighs, over her secret wet curls, teasing and playing there until her sobs weakened into moans. He pressed her down to the bed, the soft gathers of her gown bunching between them. In a tangle of limbs and fabric, he stripped off the ruffled confection so he could lie with her as he wished, skin to skin with nothing between them. He suckled at her breasts and traced their generous shape with his tongue, and was rewarded with greedy thrusts of her hips.

  He couldn’t rule such passion, he realized now. He could only stoke and nurture it, taking his own pleasure as reward. When he slipped inside her tight warmth, everything broken in the world seemed right again. “My beautiful love,” he whispered. “My Harmony.” They moved together with an intensity matched only by the risk of this reconnection. If he lost her now, he thought the pain of it would kill him.

  Long after they tired of lovemaking and fell into an exhausted huddle on the bed, he stayed awake whispering promises to her—promises he meant to keep.

  *** *** ***

  Harmony awakened alone, exhausted and emotionally wrung out from the night before. Where was Court?

  Sunlight poured through the high windows of the bedroom, illuminating heavy and ancient furniture and wall hangings, and the expanse of her curtained bed. Seven generations of Courtlands had lived in this imposing castle. Her husband was the eighth duke, and she must bear the ninth, or bring the long and honorable line to a close.

  Was that why he’d brought her here? To show her what was at stake, what necessitated her cooperation and courage? This land, with its properties and tenants, was a great part of his purpose, and she realized now it must be her purpose too.

  A servant knocked at the door and helped her dress. Harmony worried for poor Mrs. Redcliff back at St. James Square. Her maid had been frantic about their overnight flight to Hertfordshire, perhaps fearing the duke planned retribution. Last night hadn’t been about retribution at all. The memories of their passion had her blushing to her toes.

  A footman led her to a breakfast room, a parlor with a great table and chairs and more sunshine in the windows. Her husband stood staring out one of them, and she recalled the time she’d opened the door to Lady Darlington’s parlor to find him silhouetted in a similar window, a tall, proper man of great nobility. He’d been His Grace then, as untouchable to her as the stars, telling her gently and apologetically that she must marry him. He looked very much like that man today.

  “Sit and have some breakfast,” he said, coming to her. His hand touched hers, a reminder of his tenderness last night. “There are eggs and ham, and cakes.”

  He knew she loved cakes and pressed them on her unforgivably. There were buns and coffee too, and tea and a salad of fruit and sweetmeats.

  “Your home is beautiful,” she said once she’d seated herself with a laden plate. “Truly, it amazes me.”

  “It is your home now too.” He sat across from
her, gazing fixedly into a half-filled cup of tea. “I should have brought you here before now. I stay in town too much. When we have children…” His voice trailed off.

  “This would make a fine place for children,” Harmony said. Her neck and cheeks heated in a flush as she thought about the night before, the way he’d held her and caressed her, and whispered of better times to come for them. Please, she thought, pondering magic and wishes. Please let me give him an entire castle full of children…and at least two sons.

  Breakfast was delicious and Courtland Manor not as forbidding in the daytime. He explained that there were two wings, each with sixty to eighty rooms, all of them serviced by scores of maids and footmen. There were outbuildings too: stables, servants’ quarters, a carriage house as large as entire streets back in town. She asked questions only to hear the measured pride in his answers. He told her the year the windows were installed, the origin of the intricately carved molding, the number of candles in each jeweled chandelier. When Harmony could not eat another bite, her husband asked if she would like to walk with him.

  “I could use a walk,” she said. “After so much breakfast.”

  “Feeling bloated, are you?”

  She gave him a sheepish look. “Must you remind me of that?”

  “If you hadn’t told Lord Monmouth you were bloated, we might never have met.” He took her arm and led her toward the double front doors. “That was the night I lured you alone to the Darlingtons’ ballroom and spoke with you of Romans and an ancient northern wall.”

  It had been the first time in her life that any gentleman besides her father had encouraged her to speak of her interests. As they moved into the sun of the front lawn her eyes grew wet and hazy from the glare. “I liked that painting in the ballroom very much. I think I will always remember it.”

  He gave her a long and enigmatic look. “You enjoy history,” he said. “Let us talk of history. Courtland Manor’s and my own.”

  He took her first to the gardens and surrounding woods. Court seemed in his element here, seeking out long-unused paths and stomping about in his dust-covered boots. He showed her where he played as a boy with his beloved dog Mercury. He described everything about his childhood pet, from his glossy amber eyes to his coarse red fur. His tales were so vivid she almost expected old Mercury to come bounding from the surrounding trees. He showed her where he hid as a child and played forest games with one of the servants’ boys, at least until they were found out and forbidden to speak to one another again.

  From there they went to the stables where she learned of his boyhood mounts and extensive riding instruction. He’d only been allowed the gentlest sort of horses as a child, lest he meet with disaster. One old nag was still there, cosseted and sheltered in her old age. His miniature-sized tack was there, his initials engraved on the fine leather. They went into the house then, shed hats and cloaks and ventured into musty, dark rooms where he told more tales of his childhood. So many of them were sad. Stark lessons learned, harsh discipline meted out for one thing or another. She’d understood he had an unusually rigorous childhood. It was something else altogether to hear about his everyday experiences within these walls.

  He told her of servants dismissed for being too kind to him, relating the exact places where they were sacked as he looked on in horror. He showed her the places he’d hidden when his parents fought, great screaming fights that terrified him, fights about his father’s extramarital affairs and many, many fights about him, Courtland’s sole heir. “And here,” he said, leading her to the middle of the great room just inside the door, “here is the first and last place I ever cried in public. I was six years old. My dog died…Mercury, you remember.”

  Harmony nodded with a hot, tight feeling in her throat.

  He stared at the parquet floor as if he could see his own self in the gleaming tiles. “I was looking for my mother, to tell her, and my father found me crying and knocked me to the ground. ‘A gentleman never cries in public. Especially a future duke.’ And so it was.” He looked up at her and touched her cheek. “And I have never cried since, not like you, who cries so gustily and sweetly whenever it moves you to do so.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I shall cry now, unless this tour is at an end. I can’t bear much more of this.”

  He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. “I love that you cry. I pray you will never stop.” He made a face, rocking back on his heels as she dabbed at her tears. “Well, I don’t mean that in a literal sense, of course.”

  She giggled through sobs. “I didn’t think you did.” She fluttered his wet hanky in frustration. “There has got to be some middle ground, hasn’t there? Something between never crying at all and always making a scene. And you, and this childhood… There has to be some center ground where one can be disciplined and mannerly, and yet enjoy the fullness of life’s pleasures. There must be a balance between joy and duty. There must be.”

  Her husband brushed away her tears and looked intently into her eyes. “When we return to town we shall dismiss your tutors and instructors and find this middle ground so we can both be at peace. We shall endeavor to make our marriage as harmonious as your name.”

  “Do you believe that’s possible?”

  “We’ll find a way.” He sobered, stroking a ringlet of her hair drawn askew by her bonnet. “For one thing,” he said, lowering his voice, “I don’t intend to spank you anymore.”

  Harmony couldn’t say why, but the idea troubled her. “Why have you decided that?”

  “I don’t want you to get the idea that you are not good enough as you are. That you need improving. Because you don’t.”

  She made a face. “Sometimes I do.”

  “You don’t.”

  “What if I am terribly stubborn and start calling you Benedict even though you hate it? Or Benny?” she persisted. “What if I started calling you Benny from this moment forward?”

  His lips twitched in a shadow of a smile. “It is not worth a spanking.”

  “What if I put pepper in the dowager’s unmentionables? That is surely worth a spanking.”

  “You would not.”

  “I might, to get what I wanted. I am terribly headstrong and reckless when it suits my needs.”

  “Harmony.”

  “What if I stuff bits of odiferous leaves and grass into Mrs. Lyndon’s hats where she cannot see them? She’ll be sniffing about everywhere, trying to discover who smells so bad, and the whole time, it shall be her. What if I publish my own book about Mongol hordes and pass it about at the Courtland ball with my name emblazoned on the cover?”

  Court cupped her chin, stifling laughter at her wild examples. “Why must you plague me? You have, you know, from the very first. I am not a man who can be comfortable with women hiding under desks, or conversing of hordes, or sponsoring historical expeditions. How on earth have you ended up in my life?”

  “Fate.”

  “Chance,” he countered.

  “Magic,” they both laughed at once. She threw her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest and breathing in his reassuring, familiar scent. “But if I am good enough as I am, so are you. I don’t want you to change to suit me. If I earn a spanking I wish you would give it to me. Otherwise I shouldn’t know what to do with myself. I’ll be an utter mess.”

  “And what of the sulking afterward?” he asked, leaning in so she was on level with his raised eyebrows and teasing gaze. “How shall I deal with that? And your petulant moods?”

  She melted against him, feeling the evidence of his burgeoning desire thick and hard against her middle. “I think you will find a way to bring me out of them.”

  He held her tightly, brushing his lips across hers. The kiss deepened, a celebration of closeness and acceptance, of divisive problems solved, at least for the moment. She sighed against his mouth as he embraced her without the least of gentlemanly manners. “Oh, Court,” she whispered.

  “Courtland!” Her father’s loud voice carried across the soa
ring room.

  Court released her with a jolt, and Harmony turned to find her papa stalking toward them, the tutting dowager at his heels.

  “They are perfectly fine, Harry, you see?” said the dowager. “I told you they only needed a little time away.”

  Harmony’s eyes went wide. “Did your mother just call my father ‘Harry?’” she whispered to her husband.

  “I believe so,” he muttered back. “What the devil’s going on?” He addressed her father, holding out a hand to greet him. “Welcome to Courtland Manor, Lord Morrow.”

  “I’ll speak to my daughter before I accept your ‘welcome,’” her father snapped.

  “Papa!” Harmony shot Court an apologetic look.

  “Come with me, dear,” the old man said. “We’ll have some words in private. I got a letter yesterday eve that deeply unsettled me.”

  “It was not from me,” the dowager protested to her scowling son as Harmony’s father pulled her from the room into a smaller, adjoining parlor.

  “Well, you have made an entrance,” Harmony said to him once the door closed. “But I am happy to see you anyway.” Was it only yesterday she’d so desperately wanted to seek shelter in his arms? She hugged him, thinking how much everything had changed in the meantime. Then she drew away and frowned. “Now, tell me. What on earth has got you in such a temper?”

  “What has he done to you, poppet? I got this letter yesterday at the house. No signature or direction, but I’m sure it came from St. James Square. Here.”

  He held out the note. Harmony recognized Mrs. Redcliff’s hand in the hastily scrawled missive. She hadn’t the heart to read it, thinking of what her protective lady’s maid might write to her father after the uproar of the past couple days. “Papa,” she began. “Well, we have had some recent difficulties…but…”

  Her father threw himself down on a yellow chintz sofa, beckoning Harmony to sit at his side. “I tell you true, I figured the duke for a fine man. I trusted he’d make you happy, but even before you married I’d heard things about him that didn’t sit well with me.”