“I’ll try not to. You go fetch the box, or habitat, or whatever the bother it is. Go quietly so it doesn’t fly again.”
He let her slide from under him. By the time she’d crept over to get the mesh cage and return, Townsend had the grasshopper handily cornered beneath a low table. By slow degrees, he corralled it into the box and latched the door shut.
Aurelia clapped and smiled at him. “Oh, well done. You were ever so patient and you got it back into the box where it can be perfectly safe.”
He turned to her and she noted an almost shy pleasure written across his face. “I have prevailed, yes. But I thought you didn’t want it in the box.”
“I don’t, really. May we take it outside and let it go? It was a lovely gift, but...”
He stood, looking rumpled and strikingly handsome for all his disarrangement. “Yes, let’s take it outside.”
He let her carry it. They walked somberly down the halls on their mission of mercy. She knew the grasshopper would be much happier out in the woods where it could be free, and she was grateful that Lord Townsend agreed with her.
He led her across the side lawns to a more wooded area and stopped on the edge. He took the box from Aurelia and peered into it. “I hope this contrary creature doesn’t upset the delicate balance of the manor’s vegetation and start some blasted plague or something.”
A peal of laughter escaped before she realized she ought to chide him for cursing yet again. He smiled back at her.
“It’s nice to hear you laugh sometimes, Aurelia. I know you think it’s crude or uncultured or some such nonsense, but it isn’t. It sounds like angels singing, to me anyway. Not that I’ll ever know how angels sing if I don’t straighten up.”
His beleaguered expression wrested more laughter from her. Now that he’d taught her how to laugh so easily, it seemed she couldn’t stop.
He held out the cage with the grasshopper fluttering inside it. It went still and seemed to look at her, although she didn’t know where its eyes were. But if it was looking at her, she hoped it would not remember her with too much unkindness. “Would you like to do the honors?” Townsend asked.
She handed it back to him. “I’m afraid it will jump on me if I do.”
“I think it shall want nothing further to do with either of us, but I’ll release it if you like.”
He opened the door and set down the cage. The two of them backed away, and within a few moments the grasshopper had availed itself of its glorious freedom and taken a great hop into the nearby foliage.
“It’s better for it to be free, isn’t it?” she said with some satisfaction.
“Until a bird eats it for dinner. Yes.”
She tried to look cross at him, but she couldn’t quite manage it. He looked back at her, feigning irritation.
“So much for my gift. I hope you don’t make a practice of casting off everything I bring you, ungrateful chit.”
“I am not ungrateful, nor a chit. I only believe that insects must be free.”
“You are ungrateful. You have not thanked me yet, not once, for giving you our grasshopper friend.” His arms came around her, pulling her close. She felt frightened and thrilled at the same time. His lips came very close to hers. “You ought to be taught some manners, young lady, and I know precisely how to do it.”
She felt that hot, tingling sensation in her middle as he pinned her with his gaze. “Thank you,” she said through suddenly dry lips. “Thank you for the grasshopper, my lord.”
“Back to ‘my lording’ me, I see. Very pretty sentiments, if a bit late.” His hand moved up and down her arm in a mesmerizing trail. “Perhaps we shall have a lesson tonight on how one shows gratitude, my lady? What do you think?”
He teased her, and yet he didn’t tease. There was some steel beneath his words that left no question what type of “lesson” this would be.
“As you wish, my lord,” she said. And as I wish...
His gaze intensified. He pulled her closer and kissed the side of her neck, then lower, over the tops of her breasts to the plunging neckline of her gown. Again she could feel the hard heat of him against her, even through both their clothes.
“I should return to the house,” she said, stiffening in his embrace.
At first he didn’t let her go, but finally, to her relief, he did. “Yes,” he sighed, smoothing a hand over the bulge in his buff-colored breeches. “I suppose the pillowcases won’t embroider themselves.”
She gave him a questioning look. He took off his coat and handed it to her.
“Take this and deliver it to the butler on your way. I am going to stay outdoors yet awhile. I need to cut some branches for a birch rod which I shall make use of this evening.”
She stared at him a moment, then turned and walked away as fast as her shaky knees could carry her. She thought she heard a chuckle behind her but it might have been the whisper of the leaves. No, it was a chuckle.
Back upstairs in her sitting room, she slid her parents’ letter under some other papers on her desk and tried to calm the erratic pounding of her heart.
Chapter Ten: Gratitude
Hunter awaited his wife with a sense of great contentment. Today had been a good day, not least because he had heard her laugh merrily not once but three or four times. She was changing already, growing more at ease in their home and in their marriage, although she still regarded him with an occasionally wary air.
Of course, she had good reason to be wary. The birch rod lay on the bed, the branches freshly cut and bound. It was not of great weight or length, but similar to a nursery birch. He didn’t want to injure his wife or make it difficult for her to compose herself afterward, for that would not advance his plans at all.
At the appointed hour, the door to his room cracked open and his wife slipped shyly inside. He had instructed her to report in nothing but her dressing gown and shift, and she had obeyed. How lovely she looked with her skin flushed just so, everything in her bearing communicating reluctance and no small amount of anxiety. It ought not to arouse him, but it did.
If he was honest, it was much more thrilling to spank and molest his gently reared wife than to pay a jaded professional to cater to his needs. It made him wonder why he’d resisted the marital state for so long.
Her gaze focused nearly at once on the newly made birch rod.
“Must we begin with a spanking every night?” she asked plaintively. “I have not been bad.”
“Ah, but these spankings have very little to do with whether you’ve been good or bad.”
“What are they to do with, then? Besides your pleasure?” she asked a bit tartly.
“They are to do with making you feel obedient and compliant to my wishes, as any good wife should be. Remove your dressing gown, and your night shift. I enjoy having every inch of your lovely body exposed to me.”
She looked for a moment as if she might argue, but then she stared down at the floor and un
knotted the silk tie of her gown, laying it neatly over a chair.
“Remember how I told you to undress,” he said in the silence of the room. “Slowly, with sensuality. Undress as if you take pleasure in revealing yourself to me.”
He thought this was the most difficult task of all in her esteem. She had not been reared to play the temptress, or seduce randy gentlemen. Her slow moves were clumsier than those of a practiced courtesan, and her expression not exactly one of excited pleasure. If she showed any desire, it was the desire to please him, probably in hopes of avoiding a birching.
But she was not to avoid that fate.
When she was naked and trying very hard to stand tall and not cower upon herself, he beckoned her toward the bed. “Yes, beautiful wife. There is no shame in the way God made us.”
She ran a glance down the length of his body. “You are not as God made you. You are fully dressed.”
“Do you wish me to undress?”
She fought with herself a moment; he could tell by the way she shifted and bit her lip. Finally, she looked him over again and answered, “Yes.”
He smiled and began to work at the buttons of his coat. “While I comply with your wishes, wife, pray climb onto the bed beside the birch rod and face the headboard, positioning yourself on your hands and knees.”
She hesitated, and he allowed her a few moments to collect her courage. By the time he started upon the buttons of his waistcoat, she had managed to take a few steps toward the bed.
“You are not resisting, are you?” he said quietly. “There are a great many degrees of birching a woman might receive, from lightly punitive to horrifyingly painful. I am certain you do not wish to experience the latter one.”
That got her moving. She climbed up and knelt where he’d told her to. “Hands and knees,” he repeated. “With your back straight and your bottom in the proper position.”
“What is the proper position?” she asked in a quivering voice.
“Slightly arched and offered for punishment.”
She could not quite accomplish it by the time he finished undressing, at least not to his exacting standards. He went to the bed and made a great to-do of positioning her correctly, stroking and prodding and rearranging her for maximum exposure. He felt a pang of conscience as she trembled under his hands. This must be wretchedly difficult for her, especially with the instrument of her impending torture resting on the bed beside her. Poor thing.