The Dangerous Viscount (33 page)

“What are you going to do about it?”

He crossed his arms and looked down at her
sternly. “I’m afraid,” he said, “I shall have to punish you.”

She clasped her hands to her bosom. “Oh no! Please! Remember my condition!”

“You just told me you were in excellent condition.”

“Be gentle!”

“Be quiet!” he ordered with a straight face. “And remove your drawers.”

Diana was dressed for February by the sea in the northernmost part of England, but when it came to underclothes she abided by certain immutable principles. She hiked up her woolen skirts, untied the tapes and shook the garment to the floor. Neatly stepping out from the pool of lace-trimmed French lawn, she scooped it up and handed it to him with a pert curtsey.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, raising it to his lips for a salute before tossing it aside. “Now, it’s time to revisit the scene of the crime.”

With a hand on her shoulder he marched the prisoner to the chaise and indicated the velvet seat with its gilt piping. “Kneel there with your back to me.”

The soft nap caressed her silk-clad knees while she arranged her skirts neatly about her. Her racing heart and a blossoming heat between her legs fought her inclination to laugh, and won.

“Hold on to the back of the sofa.” She obeyed immediately and without question. “Lean forward and rest your head between your hands.”

The anticipation was almost unbearable. An age seemed to pass before he touched her and, with agonizing leisure, caressed her bottom through her
clothing. She pushed back into his hands.

“Be still,” he said sternly. “Move only when I say so. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes who?”

“Yes, Sebastian.”

“Yes,
master.”

“Yes, master,” she said, shaking with silent mirth.

“And don’t laugh or you’ll get extra punishment.”

She laughed out loud.

Then drew in her breath as one by one he lifted her skirts. First the gown of slate blue woven wool, followed by two fine linen petticoats, one at a time. Each layer he neatly folded over and rested on her arched back.

Cool air on her flesh enhanced her sense of exposure and vulnerability. She ached with desire and despite his admonition, strained backward in yearning invitation. In comparison Sebastian’s hands were warm as he ran them over the globes of her behind, then down to her inner thighs. He pushed her legs farther apart, leaving her open and quivering with lust.
Touch me,
she begged silently and knew what would happen.

Seconds later she was proven right. A single long finger, three strokes back, forward, and back again along the length of her wet gaping sex and she came, just a little bit, a small preliminary shudder of relief that left her ready for more.

“Now,” he said, “it’s time for the Sacred Rod of Chastisement.”

She responded with an incoherent noise: one part
excitement, one part apprehension, and one part giggle. She wasn’t really afraid. She trusted Sebastian not to hurt her.

“Hush!”

She heard the rustle of his garments. Then she felt the “rod,” long and hard, beating against her backside, sliding up and down the ridge of her arse.

She giggled again. And gasped.

“Quiet, wench!” But he was as amused as she, also as aroused. Grasping her hips he entered her, plunging into her damp passage. He’d taken her from behind in bed, but the pretense of domination gave the posture a new edge of excitement. Even the fact that they were both almost fully clothed and in a supposedly public place (thanks be for a shortage of servants) added to her stimulation. It wasn’t long before she exploded, ripples of sensation shooting from her groin through her torso and the length of every limb. And when he reached his climax she joined him again.

Somehow they ended up entwined in a heap, half on the chaise and half on the floor. The expression of smug satiation he always wore at such moments made her smile all over.

“Well, master,” she said softly, nipping at an ear-lobe that happened to be nearby, “what’s my next punishment?”

“I’ve decided to grant a full pardon.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You’ve exhausted me.”

“I feel sure you have hidden reserves of strength.” She groped between them and found that he was indeed depleted. “The sacred rod of chastisement?”
she asked with a chuckle. “Where did you get the idea for such nonsense?”

“I read it in one of Tarquin’s books. In the story the rod was exercised by a French priest on a penitent lady of impeccable virtue. She didn’t understand what happened to her.”

“I must not be a lady of impeccable virtue.”

“Thankfully, no.”

“I understood exactly what was happening.” “And are you successfully chastised?”

“Oh yes.”

In one sense the afternoon had been a failure. She’d failed to engage Sebastian’s interest in the decoration of their future drawing room and the position they’d negotiated was not that of the furniture. But while her husband might not be willing to talk much, his actions were most eloquent and that counted for a great deal, surely. Never in her life had she felt more physically content.

Except for one thing.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Me too.”

“What’s for dinner?” They spoke in unison and Diana mechanically uttered the usual words.

“Aristotle’s Beard!” Another thing Sebastian had learned. He was only half a syllable behind her.

“I won!” she boasted and he graciously conceded victory.

The next day Diana received a letter.

T
hanks to the efficiencies of the Post Office, Diana maintained a regular correspondence with family, friends, and a widening circle of purveyors of the kind of expensive goods appropriate to the embellishment of a large house. That morning her desk bore but a single oblong of folded paper.

She expected a diatribe from Minerva, who wrote almost daily, begging Diana to return to London so her sister could be released from the rural tedium of Mandeville Wallop. But it was addressed in an unknown hand, an untidy masculine sprawl. In her experience only an Etonian education gave a man such abysmal penmanship and the arrogance to use it without shame. She broke the seal and glanced at the second page to check the signature: Blakeney.

My dear Diana.

Diana lowered the letter to ponder the acts of propriety visited on her by Lord Sobersides on the chaise longue in the drawing room. Given the dispassionate, not to say unromantic nature of the marquis’s proposal, she doubted life would have been
less
dreary as Lady Blakeney.

Repressing a tendency to drift into a daydream, she resumed her reading.

She had to smile about how extraordinarily
un
abject Blakeney managed to make his purported grovel. As for the sum of money he asked for, she’d have whistled if she knew how.

Nevertheless, it was well within her means and she had no quarrel with Blake. A residue of her old fondness lingered and she admired the sheer nerve of his petition. Besides, when it came down to it, she had treated him shabbily.

She wrote a draft on her bank and, since Blakeney
said the matter was urgent, asked a servant to take it into Newcastle to catch that day’s mail coach.

All was right with the world.

Sebastian leaned back in his uncle’s ancient leather chair, never minding the stuffing that spewed from cracks in the cushions and would coat his buckskins with fuzz. A couple more weeks of work and he could leave the Saxton estate and colliery in the hands of his deputies for a few months, and return to civilization. In the meantime, the library was quiet and warm. A small crate of books had been delivered from London the previous day and awaited his perusal. And his wife, who was somewhere in the house, would willingly participate in whatever amorous game his fervid imagination could devise.

Cautiously he poked at various tender spots in his soul, or rather, because he wasn’t fond of that word, what the Greeks and Sir Thomas Browne (in
Hydriotaphia,
first edition 1658 which just happened to reside in this very library) termed the psyche.

He was married. To a woman. Who lived in the same house as him.

Once upon a time even one of these facts would have caused him acute distress. Today, nothing but pleasure.

She was expecting a child, possibly another female who would have to share his house.

A little alarming but why look for trouble? Diana could just as easily have a boy.

She might leave him. Uncle Iverley’s betrothed had left him, for a future duke no less.

But Diana had left the future duke for him. And
she’d wed him. She appeared to like him. Still, this line of thinking made him uneasy. He needed to bind her to him so she’d never leave. But while binding Diana in the literal sense had major appeal and gave him an idea for later, he had a notion that something was required on a more spiritual level. Sebastian, not being a stupid man, knew that his avoidance of certain subjects vexed her. But it was bad enough having to examine his own psyche; he didn’t want anyone else doing it.

So he had to find a way to let Diana know how much he appreciated her, and not just physically.

The days studying the business of coalmining had required such extensive memoranda he was halfway through a new notebook. The old one was on his desk among his correspondence. He leafed back to what he mentally dubbed The Seduction List.

Sapphires.

A job for Cain, he decided. In the past Lord Chase had bought jewelry for some very expensive ladybirds. And giving him the commission might help Sebastian win his forgiveness. Once he announced the wedding, Tarquin had relinquished his disapproval. But relations with Cain, thanks to the influence of that diminutive blonde she-devil he’d married, remained frosty.

He dashed off a letter and took it out to the hall where George was on duty.

“Send to the stable for a mount. I need to reach Newcastle in time to get a letter in today’s mail.”

“I’m waiting for one of the grooms to take one for Her Ladyship.”

“I’ll take it. I have affairs in town anyway.”

The footman pulled a letter from his pocket and handed it to Sebastian.

Diana was dozing when he joined her in bed. She awoke to his weight on top of her and the taste of brandy in a ferocious and rather sloppy kiss. After what was, for her, an unsatisfying sexual encounter, he immediately fell asleep on his back, emitting the occasional porcine snore.

When not showing their better sides, she reflected philosophically, men could be quite dreadful.

She might have expected him to sleep off his excesses late into the morning, but he left before she awoke. When she joined him for breakfast he was a little pale, but in better condition than she’d seen her older brothers after a night’s carousing.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully, pouring herself some tea. “You forgot to tell me you were dining out.”

He grunted.

“What was it? The Association of Mine Owners or the Literary Society?”

This time it was more like a growl. Although determined not to be a nagging wife, she deserved better than that.

“I hadn’t the impression either was a particularly intemperate group,” she said, with difficulty keeping her tone light, “so I assume the occasion was a festive one.”

He snarled. “I’ll thank you to attend to your own affairs and not mine. Just because we were obliged to wed, it doesn’t mean you own me, body and soul.”

Biting back a retort she turned to the attendant
footman. “George. Please go to the kitchen and ask for some fresh tea. This is a little stewed.”

As soon as they were alone she gave up all pretense of complacency and glared at her husband. “What unbelievable arrogance to assume that I’m interested in owning your soul! As for your body, after last night I’m not sure that’s such a great catch, either.”

“I have no doubt of that, my lady. You are just making do with me until you can get back to town and resume your affair with my cousin.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” At least she now knew what had set off this unwarranted attack. “You have no right to read my letters.”

“Have no fear. I got your billet-doux to the mail coach in time, and I didn’t read it. I, at least, am not without honor.”

“Twaddle! What you call honor I call stupidity. If you had read it, you’d know there was nothing improper between me and Blakeney. Or you could have just asked me instead of falling into the sullens and going out to get drunk.”

“I’m not in the sullens.”

She raised skeptical eyebrows.

“And I wasn’t drunk.”

“If you say so.”

They glared at each other. He was the first to look away.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he muttered. “Was it very bad?”

“I know you can do better. Much better.”

“I will,” he said. “Later. Or as soon as you like.”

She was not, however, in the mood to be dragged off to bed or the nearest piece of furniture. Too
many questions needed answers, and this might be a moment to get some.

“Why do you continue to hate Blakeney so much?” she asked.

“I don’t. He’s nothing to me.”

“He’s your cousin. And while you may have little in common, there’s no reason to go on feeling bitter about childhood quarrels.”

“I know everyone else finds him so handsome and charming. I just don’t happen to agree. And I am not bitter.”