Under A Duke's Hand (10 page)

Gwen studied the portrait, thinking what a
handsome couple his parents made. She wondered if the lavender
duchess had loved her drinking, brawling husband, or only pretended
to with her contented smile.

“Why don’t you paint our portrait?” she said,
turning to the duke. “You’re an artist.”

He laughed. “Ah, but it’s very hard to paint
yourself. I’ll leave the portraiture to the masters.” He moved
closer and placed a finger beneath her chin. “I’m not talented
enough to do justice to your beauty. I want someone who’ll capture
the fascinating shade of your eyes, and the perfection of your
lips. And those tiny freckles across your nose.”

“I don’t have freckles.”

“You do.” He brushed a finger across her
cheeks. “I see them very clearly.”

He guided her back into the sitting room, and
led her to a pair of glass doors. They opened onto a stone patio
with carved balusters, overlooking a gorgeous private garden with
box hedges and flowers, and miniature sized trees.

“Would you like to go down?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Please.”

He helped her down the smooth stone stairs
into the garden. How pretty it looked in twilight, how peaceful and
lush.

“This was my mother’s favorite place,” he
said. “She could make anything grow. The servants have preserved it
in her honor, and they plant new flowers every year. Your rooms
used to be her rooms, of course, although no one has lived in them
for years now. The linens and draperies are new, because the old
ones were fusty. I thought you would want to have new things.”

“This is all...very...” Her voice trailed
off. Such luxury, and this beautiful garden just outside her
window. “May I plant things too? May I tend this garden?”

“Of course. It’s yours.” He smiled at her,
that warm smile that sometimes made her forget she hated him. “You
may muck in the dirt all you like, but not this evening. A modiste
is coming to measure you for your wardrobe. No, don’t frown. I
didn’t expect you to come to me in possession of a London
trousseau. It’s good that you waited. We can order things in the
latest fashion and style.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that
she hadn’t waited, that her meager selection of gowns was the best
they had been able to afford. How could he understand that anyway,
here in this house with a thousand candles, and crystal doorknobs,
and a patio leading down to a private garden?

“Come back inside,” he said. “I’ve one more
thing to show you.”

He led her through the bedroom to the
dressing room, an intimate space with mirrors and shelves and
little varnished chests. He lit a lamp and began opening drawers
until he found what he was looking for. He turned to her, his hands
full of glittering gems, a diamond and emerald necklace with
matching ear clips, and a diamond bracelet, and a gaudy diamond
ring. They could not be real, these jewels, or they would have been
worth an entire nation’s fortune. He held the necklace up to her
neck. The ornate design lay heavy against her skin and covered her
entire chest.

“I didn’t want to travel with these, but they
are yours now. I thought you might wear them for our wedding
portrait, with your silver embroidered wedding gown. Or if you’d
like more color...” He turned back to the chests and brought out a
ruby strand, then thought better of it and held out a pale green
one. “This tourmaline bauble would look very well with your eyes. I
don’t know if there are earrings. Your lady’s maid has recorded all
the sets and organized them, so she’ll know.”

Gwen thought her lady’s maid would be
irritated that His Grace had pawed through all the jewelry she’d
organized, and then she thought,
so many jewels.
A king’s
ransom in jewels, right here in her dressing room, and he doubtless
had many more sets of his own.

“Well,” he said, when she didn’t respond to
the proffered choices. “I’m sure Pascale will know the best way to
outfit you for the portrait.”

Oh. Pascale. The frowning, thin-lipped French
woman she had sent away at the inn last night. Pascale would
probably make her look as awful as possible in order to have her
revenge. She stared at the duke as he tucked all the jewelry away,
back into their wooden boxes.

“Your Grace?”

He sighed. “You might call me Arlington now
that we’re married, or Aidan, when we’re alone together.”

“Aidan.” She tested the unfamiliar name on
her lips. “Aidan, why didn’t you marry someone more...suitable...to
your social station?”

“You know why. The same reason you weren’t
married three or four years ago to some honest Welsh lad.” He
closed the last of the drawers and turned to her. “Was there
someone in Cairwyn you loved? Tommy, perhaps?” he added with a note
of mockery.

“There was never a Tommy,” she admitted.

“I know. But was there someone else?”

The mockery dissipated, until he regarded her
with a very serious look. She wished she could answer him yes, that
she had loved someone. She picked at one of her fingernails, then
hid it in the folds of her dress. “I left no one behind,” she said.
“But it would have been nice to marry for love. I always dreamed of
it.”

“Don’t let anyone in London hear you say such
things. They believe it’s the worst thing, to marry for love.”

“Do you believe that too?” She didn’t know
why she asked. She supposed she wanted to hear him admit it, that
he was rich and cold and lofty, and without a heart.

“I’m not sure what love is,” he answered with
a shrug. “Is it intimacy, or familiarity? Is it what I felt when I
saw you in that meadow? Is it what I feel now, that I would kill
someone before I would let you come to harm? That I don’t wish you
to be...”

“To be what?” she asked when his voice
trailed off.

“Ridiculed,” he said. “I don’t want you to be
made fun of, Guinevere. That’s why I correct you and annoy you, and
why I will make you endure a course of finishing lessons with Lady
Langton. I never thought to marry for love, but now that I’m
married, my every care is for your security and happiness. Make of
that what you will.”

That was not what she’d expected him to say.
She felt her heart ease a little as she stood blinking at him, then
she said, “My close friends and family call me Gwen. It’s easier to
say than Guinevere.”

He gazed at her in silence. She flushed red
and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She could never figure out
his expressions, what was in his thoughts when he made those
half-smiles.

“Gwen. I like that. Perhaps I’ll call you
Gwen instead of Guinevere when the situation warrants.”

“Yes, if you wish.” She fidgeted at her
skirts and then forced herself to meet his gaze. “You have a very
beautiful residence, Your Grace. I mean...Aidan. I will try...try
not to bring ridicule upon it.”

“Why don’t you try to be comfortable in it?
That would please me more.” His fingers brushed her cheek, and then
the fleeting touch was gone, replaced by his more familiar
authoritative stare.

“We must head to London in a fortnight or
so,” he said, lifting the lamp and leading her back out to the
bedroom. “It will be a push to have you ready by then, but the king
and queen are eager to meet you.”

Gwen could hardly imagine this. “Why would
the king and queen be eager to meet me?”

“Because you’re the new Duchess of Arlington.
Ah, there is your lady’s maid, right on time. We take dinner at
eight o’clock in the country, if you will come down five minutes
prior.” With those words of dismissal, he made a slight bow and
walked out the door.

* * * * *

Aidan thought their first day at Arlington
Hall had gone rather well. It had been a risk, disciplining his
wife so harshly the night before, but it had notably improved her
behavior. Guinevere still spoke too quickly, and too boldly, and
still exhibited rustic manners, but she didn’t defy him the way she
had before. She showed respect, which was exactly what he’d wanted.
Now that they’d come to an understanding, he was certain things
would proceed more smoothly from here on out.

He readied himself to visit her bed, thinking
there was a certain coziness to married life. A convenient
availability. There was no longer any need to slink out after
dinner to the theater or opera, or Pearl’s parlor of ill repute.
Aidan had only to walk across the hallway and avail himself of his
wife’s charms. He might not have felt so content if she was
prudish, or wilting, or horse-faced, but Guinevere was none of
those things. No, she was beautiful, and more erotically sensitive
than any woman he’d ever known—including his companions at
Pearl’s.

He was glad, for he was a man of voracious
sexual appetites, and eager to tutor his wife in his tastes. Now
that they were home, he wished to keep her naked all day in her
rooms, so he might visit at any time and make use of her in any way
he wanted, only to come back an hour later and do everything all
over again.

But I would have liked to marry for
love...
Poor thing, when she had married into lust.

When Aidan felt he’d given her adequate time
to prepare for his arrival, he tapped at her bedroom door. He
waited a moment but received no answer. When he cracked open the
door, he found her chambers dark, with only moonlight streaming
through the windows. She lay in bed but she could not be asleep.
Dinner had only ended half an hour ago.

He moved closer and gazed down at her. She
was trying very hard to appear asleep. How innocent she looked in
her rumpled linen shift. He would buy her silk and satin ones,
scandalous, lewd garments, and tear them off her. Or perhaps he
would buy her silk and satin shifts exactly like the one she wore,
innocent, ruffled confections she could leave on while he did
outrageous things to her body.

He reached to brush back a lock of her dark
hair, then shrugged out of his dressing gown and slid into bed
beside her. She lay so rigidly. Silly girl, it gave her game away.
He drew her shift up to her waist, tracing lovely curves and
velvet-soft skin. She was so delicious he wanted to eat her.
Mine, mine, mine.

He kissed the base of her neck, a soft brush
of his lips, and then kissed a trail down to her girlish neckline.
He kissed between her breasts, sinking lower into the sheets. She
still feigned sleep, although her breath came faster now. He licked
her nipples right through the gauzy fabric, tracing them with his
tongue until both were hard as little pebbles. Her hips jerked, a
small thrust. He pressed his lips to her belly, which trembled now
with the effort to stay still.

“I know you’re awake,” he said against her
skin. “But play Sleeping Beauty if you wish.”

He ducked lower and pushed her thighs apart.
Funny, how a sleeping woman could struggle so firmly to keep them
closed. At last she gave up and let him hold her open. In the dark
beneath the covers, he bent his head and worshipped her sex,
stroking, kissing, nibbling, exploring her hot slickness with his
lips and tongue. She tasted like heaven, fragrant and female, and
blatantly aroused. “Wake up,” he murmured against her little pearl.
“I have something to give you. Something you didn’t get last
night.”

She deserved pleasure tonight, for learning
her lesson. He grasped her sore bottom as he laved her, eliciting a
strained gasp. A gasp of dismay, or excitement? He remembered her
behavior in the meadow, her flustered reaction to being spanked. He
wondered if she was sexually aroused by pain. He pinched one of her
nipples, and was rewarded with another jerk of her hips. He gazed
at her from between her legs. “Do you like when I hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not.”

Of course not. There must be some other
reason she was making noises he’d never heard before.

After that exchange, he nibbled and pinched
her as much as he licked her, and noted that each burst of pain
made her go hotter still. His arousal grew in concert with hers. A
masochistic wife? It was too wonderful to be believed.

“Yes, darling,” he urged. “Show me how good
it feels when I kiss your pussy.”

Her thighs clamped against his face as she
arched and shuddered. She was no longer feigning sleep. He explored
her, discovering what excited her most, which rhythms and pressures
pushed her nearer to the point of climax. His efforts were finally
rewarded with a groaning gasp. He slipped a finger inside to feel
her body’s undulations of pleasure. Her hips twitched as she gave a
few last squeezes. It must have been a powerful release.

He slid back up in the bed and gave her a
long, lingering kiss. “You see,” he said, “how good wives are
rewarded.”

She gazed back at him, her eyes glistening in
the moonlight. He frowned. “Are you crying?”

“No. It only felt so... I can’t explain.”

“Try.”

Finally she said, in a small voice, “I don’t
understand my feelings toward you.”

He thought a moment, stroking her arm as she
stared into the darkness. “I suppose that’s because we’ve only
recently met. I think marriage takes some getting used to, in just
about every case. The intimacy part, especially. Speaking of
which...” He gave her a reproachful look. “It would be better if
you didn’t feign sleep in order to shirk your marital duties.”

“Are you going to punish me?” She looked very
afraid that he would.

“Not punish you, no. But you’re going to make
it up to me.”

“How?”

“By doing for me what I just did for you. Sit
up please, with your back against the pillows.”

“But—”

He tugged her up and arranged her as he
wished, and knelt with his knees on either side of her, so his cock
was on a level with her face. “You remember how I licked and
caressed your quim?” he asked.

She stared at him. “I
can’t...possibly...”