The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  William got up and slapped the straw from his buckskins. “You’re a worse coward than I ever could have believed, Perry.”

  Peregrin shook his head, but refused to take the bait. “We are different men, William. I live as respectably as I can because I am forever on the edge of being forgotten completely by Society. You have no such fears. That is the difference. And there is the matter of the difference between the ladies to consider, as well — Grainne was ready to flaunt every tradition. Miss Dean is not so unconventional. She is a good girl, who does what she is told. Running away with a man is not in her nature.”

  But William, unwilling to hear, had already stalked away.

  So Peregrin was alone again. He tapped his head back against the stone of the box wall and listened to the sounds of the stable. The snufflings and snorts of horses pulling at their hay. The swishing sounds of their hooves as they paced their boxes. An occasional whinny as a young horse forgot where he was for a moment and called out for reassurance. They all had their place in the world, the carriage horses and the hunters and the work horses and the racehorses. They all stood in their boxes and did what they were told. And so did he, and so did Miss Dean. Lydia. They did what they were supposed to do.

  “Not everyone can flaunt society,” he muttered, flinging a stray wheat-head into the raked clay of the empty box. “Not everyone has enough money to do whatever they like.”

  There was a sudden sound outside, like boots on cobbles, and he froze, shrinking under the manger. The last person he wanted to see now was Sutton, the fellow who had just enough money to do whatever he liked. Including wed Lydia.

  The door whined a little as it opened, and he peeked out from under the manger. He gasped when he saw who was slipping into the box. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “I had to see you,” Lydia whispered softly, closing the door behind her.

  “You’ll be caught,” he warned. She was covered in some rough stuff — probably filched from her maid — and had pulled a black scarf over her head, but there was no doubt from her height and slenderness and proud carriage: this was a young lady of Quality, skulking about in the stable after dark.

  “I’ve already been caught once,” Lydia sighed. “What worse can they do to me?” She came and settled in the straw next to him, pulling her skirts down around her ankles daintily, and her mere presence made Peregrin hot with longing all at once.

  “They’ll be looking for you,” he persisted, though with difficulty. “There’s a dinner in your honor. Yours and Sutton’s.”

  “Why are you trying to quarrel with me?” she asked, turning hurt eyes upon him. “I wanted to be with you, but if you’re already tired of me, I’ll go.”

  “I’ll never be tired of you, you silly girl,” he growled, and pulled her close. Her scent, of lavender soap and tea, intoxicated him. All at once he was tired of smelling horse manure and leather all the time. A man could grow used to this. He nuzzled at her neck, unashamed, and smiled as she leaned back into him. His voice was husky with lust when he spoke again. “I’m in love with you, and well you know it, or you wouldn’t try to get yourself killed every time I’m near you, just so that I can rescue you all over again.” He pressed his lips to her cheek, to her brow, to her sweet mouth. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’ll always love you.”

  She sighed in response, her gilt eyelashes coming to rest on white cheeks. His hothouse flower, always indoors, had one tiny freckle marring her perfect milky complexion. And it was his fault, he thought with sudden amusement. He had taken her outside, shown her the beauty of the world outside the manor walls, the glory of being horseback, and at least he knew that, that he had shown her a little freedom, just for a few days. She opened her eyes again and they were so blue he thought he could drown in them. “I love you, Peregrin Fawkes,” she whispered. “Let’s stay here a little while and pretend nothing has happened. Let’s pretend.”

  With a groan he swept down and took her lips in a deep, possessive kiss. One hand slipped down from her white cheek to cup the fullness of one perfect breast, teasing at the nipple through the thin fabric of her absurd little dinner dress she had hidden beneath her maid’s cloak. She arched her back, moaning into his mouth, seeking his touch as it sank lower, and lower, down the softness of her waist, and further still…

  “Peregrin,” she sighed, coming up for air, her breath coming fast and short. He could not help but smile at how easily she was roused; when their eyes met again in the dimness of the box, her sapphire irises were cloudy with passion. He dropped another persuasive kiss onto her questioning mouth, molding her lips to his, slipping his tongue to meet hers in a heady rhythm. His hands were hot, traveling all over her body; one had found its way between her legs, through her thin skirts he could feel her heat. She was longing for him, he thought with ribald excitement. She wanted him as much as he wanted her — He slid his hand up, feeling her through the filmy skirt and flimsy petticoat beneath. “Ah,” he breathed. “Ah.”

  He had never been so aroused in all his life. And the girl beneath him, wilting, trembling, spreading her legs willingly though she could not have known why, and he was touching her dewiness through her skirts — these silly little dresses the ladies wore these days! His erection was painful against his tight buckskins, and he was nearly ready to open the buttons and fling up her skirt and simply take her, right here in the stables, the way God intended for them to be together, two lovers losing themselves in one another’s skins —

  There was a bang outside that brought them both upright, nearly slamming their skulls together. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her legs closed so quickly he had to wiggle his hand free. The passion of a moment ago had been forgotten in her terror of being discovered. But you’re already compromised, my darling, he nearly joked, but luckily something stilled his tongue. The sound of boots on damp cobbles, just outside the box. And then a soft female voice:

  “He’s looking for you.”

  Lydia closed her eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath, as if willing herself to rejoin a battle. Peregrin looked at her questioningly and she shook her head a little bit. “It’s Mary,” she whispered. “We can trust her.”

  Lydia started to rise, unsteadily, and Peregrin snatched at her hand. “Don’t go!” he hissed. “Stay with me!”

  But the look in Lydia’s eyes, as sorrowful as they were, was determined. “I must go, Peregrin,” she said in a low, even tone, no longer afraid of being overheard. “We both know what we have to do next.”

  Peregrin watched her pull herself up from the straw and brush the stray leaves from her rough cloak. She straightened the dinner gown beneath it, and then, without a farewell look, she left the box, closing the door behind her. He heard her greet Mary and then they were walking away, leaving him there alone.

  He sat there a while longer in the empty stall, wallowing in his unhappiness, cursing himself for his cowardice. And when he had finished hating himself he stood up and slapped at his dirty buckskins and told himself to cheer up, that maybe it wouldn’t happen, that surely it couldn’t happen. Not after the way they had just kissed — hell, they had nearly made love. She wouldn’t leave him after that. It wasn’t his place to take her, he knew that much — but surely she would come to him.

  This marriage couldn’t happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  But it happened.

  Three weeks passed in a flurry of preparations.

  There were letters home, and letters from home. No one back in London, at least on Lydia’s side, was particularly put out at the idea of quick country wedding. After all, the Deans almost certainly told their friends, Lydia was too clever to let a catch like Lord Sutton out of her clutches for more than was absolutely necessary.

  Everyone agreed that the Archwoods were so kind to host the wedding from Tivington, since Sutton’s country estate at Marston Wells was having some sort of work done (a vague mentioning of the drains, and the topic was quickly dropped), and of
course his London townhouse was closed. It would be lovely to have a country wedding, the family all said, nodding at one another over the letters, and smiling, and thinking of what dresses they would order and what ribbons they would wear. The Tivington staff was in a tizzy, setting up guest rooms, ordering provisions, and tending the gardens. Virgil, the old gardener, spent his days with his rose-bushes, whispering encouragingly to the blooms. Walsh, the butler, got into a fearful shouting match with Mrs. Tewks, the housekeeper, nearly every day. In the bedchamber, Mary kept her head down and her mouth and sewed, with ferocious speed, at the creamy satin frock they were making over for a wedding-gown, and Lydia, whenever she could get away from the petting and the preparations, just sat at the other window and sighed.

  And then, in a matter of moments, it happened. They went into the drawing room, a bower of early-summer flowers, to the tune of her mother’s artistic weeping. A few words from the minister of the village church, a proud I will from Lord Sutton, a soft I will from Lydia, and then she was Lydia Sutton — not Miss Dean anymore, but Lady Sutton, and she wiped a few tears from her cheeks before she accepted a rather hard kiss from her new husband, and they all went out to a glorious wedding-breakfast together.

  And that night, she was his amusement.

  She had known something of desire already: the passionate, tender longing for Peregrin’s touch which had nearly come to a head the night of the betrothal, and the white-hot, dizzying arousal that Sutton had stoked into desire with his overwhelming presence. Like a maiden mare tricked into submission by a stallion’s preening, she had wanted him without wanting to. And so, she had at least hoped, the wedding-night would not be a terrible thing.

  But if she had once expected to dissolve into a shower of sparks at his touch, the feeling was quite lost now. She quickly discovered, as a drunk Sutton sat down in the chair by the fire and ordered her to disrobe, that whatever desire she had felt for him was quite overpowered by her newly-found fear and loathing of him.

  And he did not care.

  She stiffened when he told her to take her dress off. It had been a long day of celebrating, and the strain of smiling falsely and laughing with faux delight when she was so close to Peregrin’s drawn, white face had worn her to a frazzle. She wanted only to fall into bed — her own bed, not this bed in the opulent rooms the Archwoods had awarded them as a married couple — and sleep for the rest of her life. Or at least until the sun rose the next morning. She stared blankly at her new husband, who gave her a crooked smile as lecherous as any drunken old lord watching the dancers at Vauxhall.

  “Go on, take it off,” he encouraged, and leaned over to pour himself a glass of brandy from the decanter on the nearby table. “Let’s see what we’ve got ourselves.”

  Lydia shook her head slightly, so horrified she could barely make her tongue obey her. “I cannot,” she managed to choke out at last. “I need my maid.”

  “No maid,” he denied her brusquely. “You are the maid tonight.”

  “Me!”

  “Oh yes.” Sutton smiled dangerously. “Take off your clothes… and then you can tend to me.”

  Lydia didn’t know what tend to him might mean, but she had a few nervous ideas, and she didn’t like any of them. Still, no matter how mad his request, there were still some practicalities standing in the way.

  Like, how on earth she was expected to get out of this dress on her own. “My lord, the buttons… they are on the back. I cannot reach them on my own.”

  Sutton’s smile grew slightly more fixed. He leaned back in his chair and regarded her for a moment. Lydia’s blood was like ice; her heart was thudding in her chest. When he spoke, his single word was dripping with venom.

  “Try.”

  She flushed with shame and embarrassment. There was simply no dignified way to get at the buttons that went from waist to neck; she would have to twist and contort herself to try and get at them, and even then she wouldn’t be able to un-fasten every one. He was deliberately shaming her, she realized. He was going to make her pay, every single day, for choosing Peregrin over him.

  But his face was dangerous, that strange smile somehow the harbinger of a slightly unhinged mind. Blinking back tears of rage and hurt, she lifted her arms above her head and reached back behind her neck, pulling at the delicate buttons that Mary had so carefully done up that morning.

  She had gotten through three pearl buttons before she heard him gasp, and heard the rasp of cloth on cloth. She hazarded a glance from beneath dropped eyelids and saw that his face had changed: his jaw was slackened, his eyes were intense, his breath was coming fast and hard. And his hand had dropped into his breeches. She squeezed her eyes shut again and went on, tugging as the buttons started to fall out of her reach, leaning backwards to reach further, horribly conscious that her breasts and hips were being thrust forwards, and worse, that strange sounds and soft panting was coming from her husband.

  She didn’t know what was happening, and she was too terrified to look. She only knew one thing with certainty.

  She wished she was dead.

  Finally, after wrenching a few pearls right from their stitches, Lydia found that she had to lean forward and lower her arms to reach the buttons below the small of her back. She tilted from the waist, still keeping her eyes tightly shut, and reached back. She felt her breasts spill forward, nearly falling out of the low bodice of the wedding-gown, and then bare seconds later she felt Sutton’s monstrous huge hands upon them, and then something wet and sloppy — his mouth — was upon them, pulling her breasts from the dress, sucking on them, so hard that her nipples pulled and hurt, and she could not help it. She shrieked and slapped at his head, trying to push him away. He was hurting her —

  He slapped her so hard she fell to the floor, and Lydia lay there on the carpet before the fire, her dress hanging from her back, her breasts spilling from a torn bodice, with her hand on her hot stinging cheek, staring at the man she had married. She had not been struck since she was a little child, and never so hard. The shock was nearly as great as the pain. “What?” she gasped, looking at Sutton’s puffy face with terrified eyes. “Why?”

  His lips curled in a feral grin and he took a step forward so that he was standing over her, legs on either side of her waist. His breeches were undone, and the flap was falling forward, something pushing them forward. “Bitch,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t ever deny me my rights. You are mine.”

  Lydia, hand to her cheek, could only stare. Her head was spinning; she felt dizzy with confusion. And then she closed her eyes; he was easing down his breeches and she saw…

  If her eyes were closed, if tears were running down her cheeks, he didn’t care. But he was careful with her, as careful as a man drunk with liquor and power could be. He flung up her skirt and her petticoat, he tugged at her linen, and then, while she seized up every muscle in terror, he teased her. He flicked at her, he stroked at her, he even — Lydia thought she would die — licked her. Down… there, she thought hazily, her eyes squeezed shut. He was licking her down there.

  And something within her stirred, against her will, and she felt herself weakening. Her muscles started to give up their tightness, her very insides started to warm and melt. She felt a strange quivering within, like a tiny flicker compared to the great flame that had erupted within her when Peregrin was touching her, and shifted her pelvis a little, to give that teasing tongue a better angle. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad, she thought hopefully. Maybe things would turn out all right.

  He laughed, and the touch was gone.

  She opened her eyes and saw his face right above hers, his eyes glinting and his smile dangerous. “Like that, little wife?” he asked tauntingly. “You’ll love this.”

  And without warning he lifted up her hips with one great hand and something hard as a rock and hot as a flame ended the brief fantasy.

  ***

  And then they left.

  She hadn’t expected to stay at Tivington, that would have just been odd,
and if no one remarked upon the oddness of having the wedding there, using the aforementioned excuses of renovations and closed houses, still they would certainly have thought it odd that the new couple remained in residence. A wedding tour would have been the thing, especially as the summer was so warm, but Sutton declared he had no interest in Scottish lakes and he would wait until he could return to the Continent to show his wife the world. And so he took her to a hunting lodge of his in a furze-covered northern county where the wind blew wickedly off the Irish Sea, and where she sat at a rocking chair beside the fire, a quilt to her chin, and shivered through the rest of the summer, while Sutton went out with friends and shot animals for amusement.

  She suffered his touch every night for the first few weeks there; he always came home from his blood-letting with a fierce appetite for her body. He loved to tease her, to bring her to the brink, to let her whimper for his touch, but when he finally entered her he was in a rush, shoving and rutting like a boar, and he could not be bothered to last long enough to give her pleasure. Night after night she squeezed her eyes shut against the tears as he heaved atop her, fingers fumbling to open her legs, the hard length of him shoving against her softness, and told herself, in a hypnotic rhythm, that she was doing her duty.

  That knowledge gave her a grim satisfaction, it had to be admitted. Her parents were happy with her. She had done what she was supposed to do, the reason for which she had been brought into the world and reared and educated and dressed and fed: to wed a wealthy man with a good title and good lands. She would be a countess someday. She had everything a woman could want. All she needed to do now was produce a few male children, and perhaps a girl to pet and look at and buy ribbons for, and her life would be a glowing success.

  There were whispers in the lodge, amongst the few staff, that the master was not as kind to the mistress as he might have been, and so they treated her as they might have an invalid. There was always an extra cushion for her back, there was always a cup of hot broth when the wind was shaking the western-facing windows and she felt the cold and damp keenly. She could look out at the sea if she wanted, the waves crashing upon the cliffs just a short distance away, but she usually closed the heavy curtains against the draughts. She never went outside without coercion from her husband, on one of the rare occasions that he was not out shooting or riding with friends, and the lone freckle disappeared from her cheek, as her complexion waned from its milky perfection to something closer to a deathly pallor. She had no horse to ride, and did not ask for one. She gave the staff their directions in a gentle tone, picked up a novel or a bit of fancy-work, and tried not to cry.