by Mason, Nina
Maggie clutched her chest and swallowed hard. All in all, ‘twas a ghastly thing to behold. Never had she dreamed men hid anything quite so ghastly beneath their plaids.
She nearly coughed when the duke took his hideous appendage in hand and stroked it like a favorite dog.
Astonishment slackened Maggie’s jaw as outrage heated her chest. Did the fiend’s debauchery know no bounds? Self-pleasuring was as mortal a sin as fornication. The body was a temple, an instrument to be used for God’s holy purposes—not a toy to be played with for our own amusement. Leastwise, ‘twas what the sisters oft told her, and she had no cause to doubt their word.
She wanted to look away, sure she’d be condemned to the fiery pit for bearing witness to such flagrant sacrilege—and for the wicked roiling it engendered in her loins and reins—but her gaze remained transfixed.
Yes, the great purple-headed monster rising from his thighs was abominable to behold, but the rest of him was anything but. His arms were muscular, his chest was broad and garnished with manly hair, his belly was flat, and his buttocks were pleasingly taut and globular.
At present, he looked more pirate than duke with his dark hair tumbling around his powerful shoulders and his gray-green eyes smoldering with covetousness. Wicked though he was, he was still far and away the handsomest man she’d ever beheld. High cheekbones, square jaw, strong chin, and a full, pouting mouth.
What might it be like to kiss those angelic lips? Wonderful, probably.
How disappointing he was such a meschant.
Mistress Honeywell set herself upon the sofa and opened her legs, divulging the secrets betwixt them.
The bearded lips and vermillion ruffles mesmerized Maggie. The hole near the base seemed much too small to admit something as large as the duke’s phallus—let alone eject a full-term infant. No wonder so many of their sex perished in childbirth. The sisters said ‘twas the Lord’s punishment for Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, which seemed a terrible injustice to Maggie. Why should all women be made to pay for the evils Eve had done? All men were not punished for the sins of one.
Furthermore, it seemed colossally unfair only men should enjoy the Holy Act of Creation. If only one sex were permitted enjoyment, it should be hers, given what women suffered afterward. What did men suffer in the wake of coition? Naught that Maggie could see. They simply stuck their part in, planted their seed, and went along their merry way, leaving the women to endure the pains of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing.
The duke moved in on Mistress Honeywell, offering the closet an arresting view. Of his buttocks. Though not as plump and smooth as Mistress Honeywell’s, his backside was exceeding pleasing to the eye. The desire to run her hands over them, to pinch and squeeze and slap their taut cheeks, bubbled up inside Maggie like a hot spring.
The maid shifted into a reclining position, raised her bound hands above her head, and, knees open and bent, set her feet upon the sofa cushion. Climbing atop her, the duke pushed his phallus into the maid with a guttural groan of satisfaction.
As Mistress Honeywell answered with a pleasurable moan of her own, he drew back and impaled her again before setting upon her breasts with his mouth.
Under his assault, the maid pitched and heaved like a storm-tossed boat.
His thrusts steadily increased in speed and violence until he became a battering ram.
Mistress Honeywell, meanwhile, seemed carried away to raptures by this brutality.
The breathing of both increased in rapidity and roughness as their rutting reached a fever-pitch. They never kissed, never spoke. Only animalistic grunts, choked curses, and breathless groans of ecstasy passed betwixt the lovers.
Then, the maid cried out, “Och, oy, Your Grace. Oy, oy, oy. Swive me like the horned devil ye are.”
The duke's raptures, though less ardently expressed than his partner’s, appeared equally felt. When he reached what had to be the zenith moment, he made a strangled sound, withdrew from her, and seized his manhood, now empurpled and glistening, and pumped it with zeal. His handsome face was contorted in what looked to be agony. Did he have a cramp? He made a terrible sound just as white liquid spurted from the mouth of the monster in his hand.
Maggie gawked in horror. God in Heaven. Was that the “seed” the sisters said put a babe in a woman’s womb? It looked naught like any seed she’d ever seen.
Presently, the sinners recovered from their fervor, put their clothes back on, and departed the room in opposite directions.
Maggie remained in the closet, bewildered and overwhelmed. Fire burned in her blood, her abdomen ached, and her cunny prickled frightfully. Why had their sinfulness awakened such unsettling longings in her?
She fell back against the wall, called into her mind the image of the duke standing before her, excited phallus in hand.
“This is for you, sweet Maggie,” he whispered as he stroked himself. “Spread your legs and let me put it inside your wee cunny.”
Imaging him mounting her, she lifted her petticoats, parted her curl-covered lips, and let her fingers explore the tender inner pleats. Her womanly area felt the way Mistress Honeywell’s had looked—and oh so sensitive and swollen.
She pushed a finger into her tiny opening, surprised to find it slippery. The salty finger burned the inflamed flesh, so she withdrew it and concentrated on her petals. After a spell, she discovered a bump more responsive than the whole of the rest. She massaged the nub with purpose and, as her pleasure coiled hard and hot at her core, she called the duke to attend her.
“Oh, Your Grace,” she rasped, enraptured. “Swive me like the wicked rake you are. But pray, do not beat me.”
He took possession of her with one deep, forceful push. The coil snapped, unleashing a storm of sensation more sublime than anything she’d known before—or dared imagine.
By the holy face of Lucca! The sisters must be right. Something this glorious had to be a sin worthy of eternal damnation.
Chapter One
Two years hence
Maggie dashed at the tears spilling down her cheeks and peered with self-disgust into the looking glass on her elegant new dressing table. She might now be Margaret Armstrong, Duchess of Dunwoody, but beneath the tight satin bodice, voluminous skirts, and mass of tight curls, she trembled like the motherless child she’d always been.
At any moment, the duke would burst in to demand his due. As his bride, she could not refuse him. Their marriage vows demanded her obedience and made her his chattel—property to treat or dispose of in any manner he might choose. If she denied his lusts, he could toss her out on her ear with as little qualm as his late father had taken her in.
Desperation bloomed in her chest, making breathing difficult. Where would she go? What would she do? Starve on the streets, more than likely. She had no money, no relations, no one to look out for her welfare—not since dear Hugh set off for his Grand Tour of the continent.
Nay, was driven off, more like.
If only they’d been able to marry. But alas, their fledgling courtship was no doubt the reason he’d been sent away. She harbored mixed feelings about her favorite’s hasty departure. On the one hand, Hugh was kind to her and oft remarked on the fineness of her pale blue eyes, golden hair, and trim figure. On the other, his compliments were as passionless as his addresses.
“Be wary of my brother,” Hugh warned before setting off “I’ve seen the way he looks at you and his unseemly predilections would shock one so innocent.”
The Armstrong brothers were the proverbial angel and devil on her shoulders. As much as she wanted to listen to the angel’s good council, she found the devil’s enticements much more alluring.
She did not believe Hugh about His Grace’s regard. Yes, the duke looked her way now and again, but only to find fault in her manners or appearance. Mostly, he was cold, critical, and extremely parsimonious with his compliments and smiles.
He’d not called her his wee Rosebud in an age, much to her dismay.
But
, as he generously supported her, she could hardly let him sense her discontent. Disguising it required speaking only when spoken to, forcing herself to smile through her wounded feelings, and avoiding the man like the Black Death. As providence would have it, he was rarely at home and, when he was, she gave her guardian a wide berth.
Except at meals, of course, but even then, they sat at opposite ends of a long table and exchanged only occasional glances and essential pleasantries.
Then, last week, without hint or warning, he’d up and dismissed Mistress Honeywell. Maggie could not fault him for sacking the maid, who was lazy and of loose morals. She also was a rival for the duke’s attentions, which, as his bride, Maggie could not abide. Yes, she lived in mortal terror of his passions, but, oddly enough, she craved them just as violently.
How two such contradictory emotions could coexist within one bosom Maggie could not comprehend. And yet, they did—in hers. Truth be known, the wicked part of her coveted the duke even as the pious part condemned his licentiousness. Ever since that day in the housekeeper’s rooms, she’d fantasized about him swiving her the way he’d swived Mistress Honeywell—though without the belting.
Between stolen glances at dinner, she imagined him bending her over the table. In the evening parlor where they quietly read to themselves, she longed for him to make a move. In her lonely bed at night, she brought herself to raptures dreaming of him atop her, thrusting like a demon.
‘Twas not love that gave rise to such sensations. That could not be so. Love came from God and these cravings definitely had unholy origins. Every night before retiring, she fell on her knees and prayed for the strength to resist the devil’s pull on her soul.
Woe is me! Why do I find so wicked a man so irresistibly beguiling?
The duke’s proposal of marriage had shocked her senseless. It also thrilled and terrified her. As much as she wanted him, she also knew her covetousness where he was concerned would bring about her moral downfall.
After accepting him, she wrote to Hugh in Paris, half hoping her angel might rescue her from the devil’s clutches. “Tell me what you know about your brother’s perversions,” she’d written.
His elder brother, Hugh reported in reply, was a scandalous libertine whose days at the king’s court in London had been squandered on drunkenness and whoring. Even now, at Balloch Castle, Robert maintained a secret chamber where he carried out his debaucheries.
“Whatever you do, Maggie, do not marry my brother.”
She did not see where she had a choice. She was Persephone in the clutches of Hades and she had no Demeter to negotiate for her release.
Left to shift for herself, she searched in secret day after day for the duke’s hidden den of iniquity. Unable to find any trace, she scoured the library for corroborating evidence. Surely, if His Grace had dark fetishes he’d have books delineating them.
She found several erotic novels, most in French, and a handful of books illustrating postures of sexual intercourse. All of these she smuggled back to her bedchamber for further study. They proved at once shocking and instructional. They also described more perversions than her virgin mind could have ever conceived.
* * * *
Precisely how innocent was his new bride? Robert stood at the door betwixt their bedchambers, fingers poised on the knob. That her maidenhead remained intact, he was almost certain. Before his father brought her to Balloch Castle, she’d lived at a convent. The only one with opportunity, besides himself, had been Hugh—and Maggie, if Robert’s suspicions were correct, was not his younger brother’s type. Besides which, Hugh, honorable to a fault, would never dream of defiling one of the servants, let alone an innocent under the protection of the duchy.
So, Maggie must be a virgin. Robert would place a sizeable wager on the fact. ‘Twas the state of her mind, given what the maids discovered earlier today whilst moving her belongings to the bedchamber adjoining his.
He’d noticed the books had gone missing, of course, but never suspected Maggie might be the thief.
Releasing the knob, he dragged a hand down his face. Since the day he found her weeping in the woods with a sprained ankle, his feelings had put down roots despite his best efforts to cut them out. She was but four and ten at the time. Marriageable under the law, but still too much of a bud to suit his tastes. His passions required a mature rose. Besides, he still had more wildflowers to pluck before settling down.
The fight to overcome his desire for her had been constant, demanding, exhausting. He kept his distance, withheld kindnesses, stopped calling her Rosebud. Then, Hugh began to court her. That, Robert could not allow. She deserved a passionate marriage with a husband who could appreciate all she had to offer. If she rejected him, then let it be someone else—someone to whom she could give herself with abandon—but not Hugh.
Maggie was too special to be placed upon a shelf like a fragile doll, never to be enjoyed.
He pictured her inside, still in her white satin wedding gown and his mother’s pearls, trembling with a mixture of nerves and anticipation. He’d told her new abigail not to attend her this evening. He wanted the pleasure of unwrapping his bride like a present.
In marrying Maggie, he had fulfilled his father’s deathbed request.
Keep Maggie on as your ward, my son. Look after her. Marry her if she’ll have you. She is better than you know.
He’d also fulfilled his heart’s desire.
Robert turned the knob.
The time to make the marriage official was at hand. He’d denied himself for too long already. Now to discover if the bride his heart had chosen was equal to his other desires.
* * * *
The click of the latch snapped Maggie back to the dressing table. So, the devil had come for her soul at last. Time to lie in the bed she’d made for herself—quite literally.
She took a breath, licked her lips, and checked her reflection. Her make-up was a mess, but her eyes were no longer swollen and tearful. In the candlelight, the fact she’d been crying might well escape his notice. She pinched her cheeks, straightened her back, and rose from the chair.
Swallowing to dislodge the lump in her throat, she raised her gaze to her dashing yet dangerous bridegroom.
He’d shed his sword and plumed velvet cap, but otherwise still wore his wedding costume: a belted plaid, the tail of which fell nearly to his ankles; a slit doublet so heavily embroidered in silver and gold it might have been armor; knee-high hose in a garish checkered pattern; and leather slippers. His dark hair fell in curls over his wide shoulders to the middle of his back.
He looked resplendent. He also looked like Beelzebub come to claim her soul. In one hand, he gripped a sweating flacon of champagne, still corked.
The smile he gave her almost banished her apprehension.
Almost.
His confident posture sagged ever-so-slightly when he saw her expression. “You do not look happy to see me, my wee Rosebud.”
The endearment further eroded her distress. She swallowed hard and smiled at her handsome husband. He looked so harmless, so noble, so respectable.
But then, as the sisters of St. Teresa’s so persistently drummed into her brain, even Satan could come disguised as an angel of light.
Would he tie her hands? Belt her bottom? Slap her breasts? Bite her nipples? Invite his mistresses into their marital bed? Would he share his bed with them in the adjoining room?
The possibility cut like a knife. She clenched her teeth against the sharp stab of pain and then chided herself for being thus affected. If she had any sense, she’d encourage him to take mistresses, not grieve over it, as ‘twould likely spare her the brunt of his debauchery.
She shifted her gaze to the painting over the bed. It depicted a nude woman—a French courtesan, probably—on a settee with her bottom in the air and her legs parted. Would he arrange his bride like that doxy so he could take her like a dog? Would he bugger her up the bum? Did he bed men as well as women? Given the things she’d heard, and read, she
would not put it past him.
“Is the party winding down?” She turned back to him with a pasted-on smile.
His gaze skittered over her, raising gooseflesh in its wake. “Nay, ‘tis still going strong.”
Her brow flinched. “So late?”
From his sporran—a great hairy thing sporting a bone closure and multiple tassels—he drew a watch on a chain and opened the decorative enameled cover. As he checked the time, he said, “The night is young, Rosebud. ‘Tis only half eleven.”
Her heart became a honeypot. Why did he undo her so? She swallowed to fortify her courage. “When will the guests start to away?”
“Not until we’ve done the deed, I’m afraid. Or when the wine has run out. Whichever occurs first.” He lifted the flacon he’d brought. “I procured this for us. Thought it might take the edge off your maidenly jitters.”
The comment startled her. Was her unease so obvious? Even if it were, she could not believe he’d picked up on her distress. He’d been so busy with the wedding plans, she’d wondered if the party meant more to him than the marriage. Not that she believed for one moment their vows mattered a jot to him.
She met his gaze head-on. “Why did you marry me?”
Surprise flitted across his face and then vanished. “For the usual reasons.”
“Which are?”
“I need an heir to carry on my bloodline and the duchy, and you needed a husband who appreciated all you could bring to a marriage.”
His words stung like an insult. “Surely, Hugh appreciated my merits.”
“You would have discovered very quickly my brother puts little stock in the virtues of the fairer sex.”
A blush scorched her cheeks, but she doubted he could see it in the soft glow of the candles. “Of what virtues do you speak?”
“Hunting for compliments?” He stepped closer with a teasing grin that threatened to turn her battlements to custard. “Well, I suppose ‘twould not hurt to indulge you this once—it being our wedding night and all. But do not make a habit of it or you shall be sorely disappointed.” He came still closer, lifted her chin, and gazed into her eyes. “You’re lovely and modest and virtuous, Margaret. A budding rose covered in morning dew. Another man would pluck you too soon to wear in his buttonhole.”
