To Pleasure a Prince (20 page)

He knew he’d said the wrong thing when she flinched and drew back. “I swore to be faithful to you. And you said at the breakfast that you trusted me.”

“It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s the other dragons.”

“I did not marry any of those other dragons. I married you.”

“Because you were forced,” he said, voicing one of his misgivings.

“I had other choices. I did not take them.”

“None of them were good choices,” he bit out.

“True. But I am happy with the one I made.”

“Are you?”

“I’m sitting here on your lap, aren’t I?”

“Dressed in the most diabolical gown ever to grace the female form.”

She chuckled. “I shall never wear it again.”

“You most certainly will—whenever you’re around one of those other dragons, and I’m not nearby. I’ll put it on you myself.”

Eyes gleaming, she cupped his jaw. “You are perfectly adorable when you’re jealous.”

He glared at her. “I’m not joking. I won’t share you with anyone.”

“Neither shall I. Share
you
with anyone, I mean.”

He gaped at her. “You can’t seriously think that would be a problem.”

“Did you not see how the women at Almack’s were flirting with you?”

“Perhaps a few,” he muttered, mollified that she’d noticed. And cared. “But only because I was a curiosity. Given the choice between their handsome suitors and a man with my hideous disfigurement—”

“It is
not
a hideous disfigurement,” she said fiercely. She ran her fingers along the length of it. “I think it’s rather dashing.”

She was only trying to jolly him out of his bad mood. Oddly enough, it was working. “Dashing. Right.”

Her hand caressed his cheek. “Now that we are married, will you tell me how you came by it?”

“Great God, why would you want to know that?”

“Because I am your wife. I want to know
everything
about you.” She straightened on his lap. “If you do not tell me, I shall poke at you with my ruff.”

A reluctant smile touched his lips. “All right. I don’t need any more scars, thank you.”

“You did not get it in a riding accident, did you?” she prodded.

With a sigh, he settled her more comfortably on his lap. “No. You were right at Almack’s—it’s a burn. From a hot poker.”

A frown marred her pretty brow. “There? On your face?”

“The person wielding it didn’t mean to strike me on the face. If it had struck my broad back as intended, it probably would only have singed my coat and stunned me, but I turned as it came down, and it hit me full across the cheek.”

“Oh, my poor darling.” Her face filled with pity. She ran her fingers over his scar as if to erase it with her tender touch. “How you must have suffered.”

Darling. She’d called him “darling.” He should have told her about his damned scar ages ago. “It hurt for a while, yes,” he said gruffly. “But it would have been much worse if not for my precocious sister. The poor mite insisted on dressing it every day with some newfangled remedy she’d read about in the
Lady’s Magazine
. Whatever it was, it helped heal it quickly.”

“Louisa was there?”

“She didn’t see it happen, no, and I never told her the full circumstances. But she was home with me at the time, yes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “This happened at Castlemaine? What horrible person dared to do such a thing to you in your own home?”

“You don’t want to know this.” Shame engulfed him. He shuddered to think what she would make of it.

“I do want to know. I’m your wife. You can tell me anything, darling.”

Darling.
There was that wonderful word again. He’d never expected to hear it from any woman’s lips, much less hers. It dissolved all his reluctance to answer. “My mother did it.”

For a moment she just gaped at him. Now she would realize how appalling the family she’d married into was, and regret her hasty act.

But the only expression on her face was outrage. “Your mother? Your
mother
did this to you? How dare she! I swear, if she were here right now, I’d…I’d…well, I’d do something truly awful to her. Strike her own son with a poker indeed—what was wrong with the woman? Was she deranged?”

Her outrage on his behalf took him aback. “Not exactly. She did it in a fit of temper. She wasn’t thinking rationally.”

“I don’t care.
Nothing
justifies a woman’s striking her son with a hot poker.”

He found himself in the unprecedented position of having to defend his mother. “She was stoking up the fire when I told her and Prinny I wanted them gone from Castlemaine, now that I was lord. That so infuriated her that when Prinny protested, and I gave him a piece of my mind, about—” He wasn’t about to go into that, not on his wedding night. “Anyway, she went mad. She came at me with the poker, Prinny called out a warning, I turned, and
voilà.
I got this scar.”

“She should have been shot for marring your handsome face,” she said fervently.

Handsome face?
His wife thought him handsome? Astonishing. “She got her just reward. Prinny was none too happy about it—or about being thrown off the estate publicly. That was the beginning of the end of their liaison. Why do you think she spread those vile rumors about all the wicked things I’d supposedly done to her, cutting her out of the will and beating her and all that nonsense? She never forgave me for ruining her relationship with Prinny.”

“She
was the one who ruined it! Why didn’t you tell people that?”

He shuddered. “Tell them that my own mother despised me so much she struck me with a hot poker? I didn’t want anyone hearing that. Besides, she would simply have told them I’d been beating her and she was forced to defend herself, or some other nonsense.”

“But the prince—”

“—would have supported her claims. He wasn’t about to have it known that his mistress was so awful a woman.” He gritted his teeth. “When it came to her treatment of me, he always condoned her behavior.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Nothing. My point is that if I had told the truth about her, she would have engineered greater lies about me.” His shame returned full force. “And it was easy enough for her to make me out to be a monster. I’d just thrown a royal prince from my home. Besides, at twenty-two, I was as inept, surly, and disinclined to suffer fools as I am now. I was already well on my way to making myself the bane of good society. I’d been getting into fights for years over the names the schoolboys called me.” The bile in his gut rose to choke him. “And Father.”

“The prince?”

“The viscount,” he bit out.

“But the prince
is
your natural father, isn’t he? I heard that the viscount returned from a six-month trip to Italy to find your mother newly enceinte.”

He scowled. “Yes, the eternal mortification of my life is that everyone knows I am really a bastard. My mother could not wait until she bore the requisite heir and a spare, oh no. Her husband merely turns his back, and all it takes to have her in the young prince’s bed is a few compliments and a gift or two.”

“Turns his back? For six months? How long had they been married?”

“Two years.”

“And he abandoned her for so long?”

“He did not abandon her,” Marcus snapped. “He wanted to please her by redoing Castlemaine so that it was fitting for a woman of her rank and beauty.” His mother had been from a very old family, one that had spent its later years digging itself into a deep financial hole. A hole the viscount had filled with his own wealth. “So he went to Italy to select marble and see the villas, that sort of thing.”

“For six months? Without his wife?”

When she eyed him askance, he realized for the first time how odd that sounded. “She could have gone with him.” He scrambled for a defense of Father that made sense. “But she preferred to be in England. In London.”

“I don’t know any woman who’d enjoy having her husband gone for six months, no matter what he meant to do to their castle.”

“So you think she was justified in her affair,” he said in a cold voice.

“Of course not.” Her eyes burned into his. “But if
my
husband found my company so onerous that he preferred traveling about Italy to being with me, I would hound him until I learned why. I’d let no man get away with ignoring
me
.”

Oddly enough, that soothed him. “I don’t imagine you would.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead. “And I don’t mean to test that assertion, either.”

A grudging smile touched her lips. “You’d better not.”

He kissed her, the kiss rapidly turning searing. After several scorching kisses that led only to frustrating caresses through the thick fabric of her formidable gown, he was just on the verge of tearing the damned thing off her when the carriage shuddered abruptly to a halt, making them break apart.

He looked out, astonished to find that they’d already reached their destination. A slow grin curved up his lips. “We’re here, dearling.”

Instruct your charge always to be honest with her husband. It will ease her married life considerably.

—Miss Cicely Tremaine,
The Ideal Chaperone

R
egina scrambled off Marcus’s lap and peered out the window, but all she could see on her side of the coach was a copse of oak and beech. “Where is here?” she asked, growing more curious by the moment.

He threaded his fingers through hers. “My estate. Just not the main house.”

She shot him a bemused look as she straightened her gown, then touched her hand to her mussed hair. “We’re spending our honeymoon in a hunting cabin on your estate?”

“Not exactly. Come see.”

A groom had already scurried to open the carriage door. As they disembarked she looked around, unable to believe her eyes. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Marcus had spirited them right out of England only to drop them in the midst of India or Turkey. An onion dome rose into the sky, flanked by two eastern-looking minarets. The whole was embellished with golden fretwork and curvy windows and columns carved in the shape of palm trees.

“Lord, this is quite a hunting cabin,” she exclaimed.

He chuckled. “My father had eclectic tastes in architecture. After a trip to India, he decided to build a miniature Oriental palace to go with his castle. We call it Illyria.”

“Peculiar name.”

“It’s from Shakespeare.” He slanted a glance at her. “I don’t suppose you read many plays.”

“None at all, I’m afraid,” she said ironically. The servants scurried about, unloading luggage to carry inside while she gazed up at the imposing building. “How far are we from the main house?”

“A couple of miles.”

What a vast estate he must have. At least they were close enough to the house that Cicely could summon her back to London if need be. Then again, giving Cicely her direction might not be easy. Regina had planned to bribe an innkeeper’s servant to write and read letters for her wherever they ended up. But bribing one of Marcus’s servants was unacceptable. Oh dear, she’d have to think of something else. But what?

“Father built Illyria as his retreat,” Marcus explained, “so he and Louisa and I would have somewhere to go when…certain guests were in residence.”

“Ah.” She stood marveling at Marcus’s Oriental palace. “It’s amazing. Has the prince ever seen it?”

“No,” he bit out. “Neither he nor my mother was ever allowed here.”

“Are you sure? It looks very much like a renovation design he’s been considering for his house in Brighton.” She shot him a side glance. “And if I remember correctly, that design contains a number of dragons.”

He stiffened. “Father would not have let them within a mile of this place, I promise you.”

Them.
The resentment in his voice saddened her. Not that she blamed him, after what he’d told her on their ride.

“In any case,” he went on, “I thought spending our honeymoon here would ease you into life at Castlemaine. When we want to visit the main house and other parts of the estate we can, but if we want to stay here alone, we can do that, too.” He slid his arm around her waist, his voice growing husky. “For myself, I would rather be alone with you for a while.”

He kissed her right in front of the servants, and her heart leaped into her throat.
How long is a while?
she wanted to ask, but he would misunderstand her reason for the question. She could hardly tell him she was worried about Louisa.

She could only pray that Cicely would succeed in befriending Louisa and holding Simon at bay. Or that Simon didn’t find a way to twist Cicely’s arm, too.

Given Marcus’s dreadful mother, he had good reason for being suspicious of Regina’s own motives for marrying him. But she didn’t know how to reassure him. Telling him about Simon would only make everything worse.

And telling him about the other…No, she couldn’t, not yet. Until they shared a bed, he could conceivably get their marriage annulled. Her damaged mind would give him ample cause, and what a humiliation that would be.

She would wait until after their wedding night. Then if he demanded retribution for her not telling him of her defect until it was too late, she would give him whatever he demanded, no matter what it was.

She would leave the decision about children to him, too. Perhaps he wouldn’t care. He might not mind having an heir who could not read. Who was feebleminded or worse.

But
he
was fine, so perhaps their children would be fine. His sturdy breeding might make up for the weakness in hers.

Yes, that’s what she would pray for. Surely after all that Marcus had suffered in his life, God would not make him suffer with his children, too.

She drew back from Marcus, forcing a bright smile for his benefit. “Why don’t you show me the house? I’m dying to see the inside.”

“Certainly.” With a knowing smile, he slid his arm about her waist. “Shall I show you the bedchamber first?”

“Now?” she asked. “I mean—”

“It’s all right,” he murmured, amusement in his voice. “I won’t rush you. We have the whole night.”

The thought stayed with her as he showed her into a neat foyer sparkling with Oriental greens and golds, and then an adorable sitting room furnished entirely with items of black lacquer and mother-of-pearl. She oohed and aahed on cue, but her mind raced with everything her married friends had told her this week about
their
wedding nights.

They’d used words like “awkward” and “mortifying.” They’d said that “the first bit is nice, but the end is awful” and had reassured her that it was “over quickly, thank heavens.” And every tale had ended with “But at least he gives you jewels after it’s done, so it’s all right.”

As if that would make up for what sounded like an awful experience. Besides, she couldn’t even imagine Marcus giving her flowers, much less jewels. He wasn’t the flowers and jewels sort.

But he did seem very good at the kissing and fondling part. So perhaps the act itself would not be
too
awful with him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have any experience at it, after all. There were all those “beauties” he could buy at any brothel. Perhaps her friends’ husbands just hadn’t been very experienced.

Then again…she stole a glance at Marcus’s broad shoulders and great height. Compared to her friends’ husbands, Marcus was downright brutish in size. And he was lustier, too. She couldn’t imagine a single one of her friends’ husbands dragging his wife onto his lap. Or trying to seduce her in a carriage.

But Marcus would be demanding and forceful and…big. Dear Lord.

“Here’s the kitchen,” he was saying as he ushered her into a tidy little room about the size of the kitchen in most London town houses. “Are you hungry?”

Somehow she managed a smile. “After all that food I ate at our wedding breakfast? You must be joking.”

“Good.” His eyes gleamed as he took her in his arms. “I told the servants to leave a cold repast just in case, but I want something else for dinner.”

He kissed her, and since there were no servants nearby, his kiss was searingly blatant. Yet she could not relax in his arms. Sitting on his lap in the carriage had been one thing—she had known he could do nothing to her there. Perhaps she
had
even chosen her gown with that in the back of her mind.

But there was nothing to delay their union now.

When she felt his fingers untying her carriage gown, she jerked back, blushing. “What about the servants? What if they see us here in the kitchen—”

“I dismissed them for the night. They’ll return in the morning to take care of us, but I figured we could see to our own comfort on our wedding night.” He searched her face. “Still nervous?”

“Only a bit,” she said gamely, swallowing her anxiety.

With a decidedly dragonly smile, he took her arm. “Let’s go upstairs. I have just the thing to relax you.”

When he led her toward the stairs, her heart began to pound. The bedroom. They were going to the bedroom now. “Is it too late to eat that cold repast?”

His gaze burned down at her. “I tell you what. After I show you the surprise I have for you upstairs, if you still want to eat, we’ll come back down. All right?”

She lifted one eyebrow. “The surprise doesn’t have anything to do with…er…you know…”

He laughed. “No. Not directly, anyway.”

That roused her curiosity enough that she made no further protests as he led her upstairs and into a large bedchamber with a roaring fire. She gazed around, momentarily dazzled by the wall coverings of patterned red silk and the brilliant gold-and-scarlet-hued Oriental carpet.

And then she saw it. The most amazing harp she’d ever encountered. Keeping its nose in the air like a queen offended by its slightly vulgar surroundings, the heavy walnut instrument sat beside the Chinese Chippendale bed. “Ohh, Marcus,” she whispered, then added inanely, “it’s for me?”

“Of course it’s for you. Can you imagine me, with my oafish hands, playing it?”

Her delight spilled out of her in a long laugh, and she ran to examine it, feeling like a five-year-old at Christmas. The neck was ornately carved in the shape of a dragon with its long tail. Clearly the instrument had been built to order, although how he’d managed it in so short a time she could not imagine. She fingered the strings, smiling at the exquisite sound. He’d even had it tuned.

He came up behind her. “Do you like it? I confess to not knowing much about harps, but Louisa helped me instruct the fellow who made it—”

“It’s wonderful.” She turned to plant a kiss squarely on his mouth. “Absolutely wonderful! I love it!”

He tugged her back for another kiss so bold and hot it seared her clear to her toes. When he drew back, his eyes were gleaming. “Did you read the inscription?”

All her pleasure faltered. “T-The inscription?”

“On the harp. I had it inscribed especially for you.”

“I didn’t see it. But I’ll look at it later.” She flung her arms about his neck and lifted her mouth for another kiss. Given the choice between the marriage bed and revealing her defect to him right off, she would take the marriage bed any day.

But he pulled away. “No, I want you to read it. Come on.”

Her heart sank as he tugged her over to the harp and pointed to some words engraved on a little gold plate set into the sound box. “You see?”

She nodded and pretended to examine it. “Yes. It’s very nice.”

His smile faded. “Nice? You think it’s
nice?”

She kept nodding, frantically trying to guess what he might have written.

“Nice,” he repeated, a sudden bitterness in his tone. “Right. In other words, the less said about such a scandalous inscription the better.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

“Don’t play dumb, Regina, it doesn’t suit you.” He whirled away from her with a curse. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? The gown, your anxiousness, your desire to have your cousin live with us…Clearly, the thought of being alone with me, being intimate with me, appalls you.”

“I didn’t say that!” she cried, alarmed by the bitterness pouring out of him.

“You didn’t have to.”

Lord, she’d really stumbled into it now. “Please, what does the inscription say?” she ventured, hoping he’d just tell her. “I couldn’t make out the words.”

He snorted.

“Just tell me what it says,” she whispered.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “You’d like hearing me say the words, wouldn’t you? You could gloat over me, then.” He scrubbed at his chin with his hand, then groaned as if missing his beard. “How do you always manage to make me forget? You lull me into letting my guard down with your sweetness, then your true nature rears its ugly head—”

“What
true nature?” Sweet heaven, what did he mean?

“That you’re La Belle Dame Sans Merci, that you live to humiliate men for desiring you. Well, don’t worry, madam, I won’t inflict myself on you tonight.”

He turned toward the door, but she grabbed his arm to stay him.

“Tell me what it says, drat you!” Tears welled in her eyes. “Please tell me.”

Her panic seemed to reach him, because he pinned her with an exasperated look. “Stop this pretense. I know you read it. I made sure they didn’t use one of those silly furbelow fonts that—”

“I didn’t read it,” she interrupted. “I didn’t.”

“Then read it now.”

“I can’t.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Of course you can.” He took her by the arm as if to lead her back to the harp. “Here, just look at it again.”

“I can’t read it!” She wrenched her arm free. “Drat it, Marcus, I can’t read anything!” She collapsed on the bed in a fit of sobs. “I can’t
read
…I can’t read.”

Marcus just stood there, unable to assimilate her words. What did she mean, she couldn’t read? Of course she could read. She was a duke’s daughter, for God’s sake, not some poor scullery maid. He’d seen her read things.

Hadn’t he?

Come to think of it, she’d refused to read that note from Louisa. And she’d always seemed to hate his obsession with books. What had Foxmoor said?
I’ve never even seen her crack a book open.

But she’d signed her name to the marriage license this very day.

His throat tightened. Yes, she’d signed it with an illegible scrawl. Not at all the ladylike penmanship he would have expected. And when he’d teased her about it, she had swiftly changed the subject.

“I meant…to tell you before…” she choked out between heart-wrenching sobs. “I should have…I’m
so
sorry—”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said, belatedly hurrying to reassure her, though his mind still reeled. Taking a seat next to her, he gathered her in his arms. “Hush, dearling,” he murmured, clasping her head to his chest. “Don’t go on so.”

Her tears tore at him. He’d never seen her cry, and to think he’d brought her to this with his stupid fit of temper—

“You’re such a great reader,” she whispered, lifting her tear-stained face. “I’ve been living in mortal terror of when you found out. Cicely usually reads for me, but with her in London—”

“Oh, God,” he groaned, clutching her tightly as so many things fell into place. Why she wanted Cicely to live with them. Why she liked parties better than books. Why she’d refused to sing with him at the soiree. Because she really
hadn’t
known the song. And she couldn’t read it.