Disciplining the Duchess (26 page)

“Stop chewing your lip,” said the dowager. “Surely you understand your duties. You must make an heir. Several, it is to be hoped.”

“I will try.”

“Does he hurt you?”

The old woman’s abrupt question resounded in the quiet room. Harmony picked at the edge of the letter.

“I don’t know what type of hurt you mean, ma’am.”

She rapped on her tea tray. “Answer the question.”

“He doesn’t break my wrist,” Harmony said. “Nor any of my bones, so he is not as bad a person as me. He is still angry with me for what I did to you. For embarrassing him. He tolerates my company but I don’t believe...”
I don’t believe he loves me.
She swallowed back the words, expecting another sharp reprimand, but when the dowager spoke her voice was sad.

“It is an awful thing to only be tolerated, is it not?”

There was quiet, tragic pain in the old woman’s words. Harmony stared down at her blurring fingers. “Please, ma’am, I had better go.”

“No. Cry if you must, but we will talk together about your disaster of a marriage. You think I do not understand you, but I tell you I cried many tears in my day. I remember what you are feeling, how heavy it sets in your heart to be disapproved of. To be despised. My husband—”

The dowager’s voice cut off and for a moment Harmony feared she would begin to cry too. She didn’t know what she would do if that came to pass, but the old woman marshaled her control and lifted her chin. “In truth, my husband despised me. He told me so daily. He showed me hourly with his cutting glances and sneers. You believe that Courtland is cruel to you, but you don’t know what cruelty is.”

Harmony shook her head, staring at the dowager’s trembling mouth. “No. I don’t— I don’t think he’s cruel,” Harmony said. “Only...”

“Only what? Rigid, unfeeling, inflexible? He was raised to be that way.” The lady pushed out her lower lip. “Thank God I had a son. Otherwise I believe my husband would have divorced me. Or saved the trouble and arranged me a quick and tidy death.”

Harmony gasped. “Oh, no. Surely it wasn’t as bad as all that.”

“It was.” Her words burst out in a croak of agony that propelled Harmony to her feet. She stood beside the dowager’s bed and touched her hand.

“I am so sorry, ma’am.”

The woman swallowed hard. Harmony almost wished she’d release her tears. “So you see,” the dowager choked out, “you are not the first one to suffer in marriage.”

“No, of course not.”

For a brief moment the dowager took her hand and squeezed it. Coming from her, it felt as intimate and shocking as a hug. Just as quickly, she released her hand and jutted out her chin again.

“You do not realize your good fortune, Harmony. My son does not hate you. You are better off than half the women of the
ton
.”

Harmony studied the dowager, feeling as old and tired as the wrinkled woman before her. “Yes, I know he does not hate me. But he married me because he had to. Because you raised him to believe in duty.”

“Foolish girl. Duty is all we have, though you scoff at it.”

Harmony shook her head. “Duty is not all we have, ma’am. People can love. I love your son even though it hurts me. Even though I’m very afraid he will come to—to—” She stopped and traced a rose on the dowager’s bed quilt. “That he will come to despise me in the way your husband did. I’m so afraid of that.” She wiped away a tear and stared into the dowager’s steely gaze. “I’m sure you think I’m an utter ninny. I know you have set your heart against me, with good cause.”

“I have not set my heart against you. But I am a practical woman and you are not. I think you have to let go of this ‘love’ foolishness. It is not the way of our world.”

Harmony touched the dowager’s hand again, and took a very great risk in stating the obvious. “You loved your husband though, didn’t you?”

The old woman took in a sharp breath, as if Harmony had slapped her. A gate came crashing down between them, and any bond Harmony had come to feel with her in the last few moments evaporated in the hardness of her glare. “You may take your leave.”

Harmony stepped back at the ice in her voice. She had heard Court use the exact same tone when he was furiously angry. “I’m sorry. Please—”

“Get out. Leave me,” she said. “Mrs. Lyndon is a less provoking companion. I will have her come and help with my other letters after my nap.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I shall let you know if I require your company tomorrow. I doubt I will.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Harmony curtsied and backed away from her, repelled by the severity in her gaze. Not severity. Misery. The fearful woman was plagued with a broken heart. How sad, for all that heartbreak to be trapped beneath her cold and cutting manners. How sad that she was a widow now, with no hope of reconciliation with her husband, no hope of ever being loved as she ought to have been.

As Harmony left, she caught a last glimpse of her papa’s letter on the desk. Why on earth was the dowager corresponding with her papa? Why would he write to the dowager, and why wouldn’t he have told Harmony he was?

But the least likely people corresponded over the most benign things. She herself had begun an avid correspondence with Mr. Michael Thomas Burgermeister, an author and scholar of ancient history. He too had visited the old Roman wall at Newcastle, and numerous other grand sites in England, Scotland, and Wales. His letters painted vivid pictures of the various locales, and detailed a level of historical knowledge that astonished her. She enjoyed his letters immensely, enjoyed everything about them except that she had to keep them a secret from her husband.

She wasn’t sure she
had
to, but somehow, from the start, she did. Now that they’d exchanged so very many letters she came to realize it was perhaps improper. Not that the man wrote anything impolite. He was a gentleman of advanced years, and starchy as anything. He was working on a new book, a companion to his last work
The Culture of Ancient Greece During the Bronze Age
, and he had asked her, as the Duchess of Courtland, to be a patron of his studies. Or rather, to help finance a research expedition to several ancient Greek sites. At some point she would have to ask Court about it, for the sum of money Mr. Burgermeister asked for, while reasonable, was not one she could disburse without someone noticing.

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.

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.