“No. Well, perhaps. But you saved me from a miserable life with Stafford. You listened when I poured out the bleak, awful feelings in my heart. You saved me from loneliness. You can never understand how lonely I was.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes with a faraway sort of gaze, before she really seemed to see him. “I’ll never forget that you saved me. That’s why I love you so, and why I wish… I wish I could be the sort of countess you need.”
“The sort of…?” He hated himself. “I don’t give a damn anymore what sort of countess you are. I love you, Josephine. When I came home and realized you’d left, I barely knew how to go on.”
“I thought you’d be grateful. Last night I humiliated you in front of every one of your friends. I never say or do the right things. I’m not proper or ladylike the way I should be, and I doubt that will ever change.”
He groaned, holding her tighter. “You’re impossible, you really are, but I can’t bear to be away from you. I think I’d rather go about in society with a wife who isn’t quite tame. Eccentricity is occasionally accepted, especially if it is dispensed with the proper élan. I think half the guests at the Parliament dinner admired you for cutting up at Westmoreland. You were so showy about the whole thing.”
A laugh escaped her, a strangled, smothered giggle she buried against his coat. “I’m sorry. It was very bad of me. I hardly remember what I said.”
Then he was laughing too, great belly laughs erupting from the shambles of his soul. “It was terrible of you. And so terribly hilarious. I warrant no one has ever dared give Westmoreland such an earful about anything. They say you scowled at him through every word.”
“I’m afraid I did.”
He couldn’t stop laughing now, and embracing the wild and inappropriate creature in his arms. This wonder, his half-tame wife. He tilted her head up and kissed her, a kiss for acceptance and passion, and merriment, and love. She wound her arms inside his coat and around his back, holding him near. “I didn’t want to leave,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Then why did you, naughty girl?” He grasped her nape to hold her still for more kisses. She moaned as he pulled back and gave her a stern look. “No more running away from me, Josephine. Not for any reason. Do you understand me? No more.”
“No more,” she promised as his grip on her neck tightened.
“You belong with me always, at my side. My countess. My lover. My wife.”
She clung to him, making small, anxious sounds as he whispered kisses down her neck. “But…”
He paused. “But what?”
“But what if I’m never accepted? What if I harm your social standing, and your career?”
“Then we shall carry on as we may, and make the most of things for our children’s sake. I’m sure between the two of us, we can create attractive enough boys and girls that a bit of family eccentricity won’t ruin their chances at a match. If they have even half your beauty…”
Her tears had never fully gone away, and now he saw them start anew, a great gush of guilt and misery. Well, she wouldn’t be cured of her misgivings in a day. He’d spend a lifetime reassuring her if he had to, a lifetime convincing her that she was wonderful and beautiful, and perfect just as she was.
“Don’t cry, dear love.” He stroked her hair for long moments, brushing away her tears, wishing he could brush away all the thoughts that troubled her too. “Shh, all will be well. Who’s to say our children won’t wish to avoid society too? There will be Maitland Glen for them to escape to, and Warren Manor. And that cottage I still intend to build.” He sat straighter and tipped up her chin. “You see, I’ve thought about things last night, and all the long journey here, and I’ve realized that making society happy is not as important to me as taking care of you. What truly matters to me, what I truly wish to do in life, is to make you as content as you’ve made me. Yes, my career has always been important, my friends, my social standing, all that, but they were important before I met you. Since then, you’ve changed me, and you’ve changed my priorities too.”
She reached up and put her hands on his cheeks. “I’ve changed you?”
“Can you doubt it?” His laugh came out thick and clumsy, weighed down with emotion. “You didn’t know me before, but I assure you, I’m quite a new man. And I much prefer the man I am with you. I used to be a devil of a rogue, caring only for myself and my interests. It seemed fun at the time, but looking back, it was a sad sort of existence.” A thought occurred to him, ridiculous but wholly accurate. “You’ve tamed me, Josie, all the while I was trying to tame you.”
It seemed hilarious again, to both of them. Her tears disappeared into one of her ungoverned fits of giggling, the sort he hoped would increase with each week, each month, each year they spent together. This business of taming his wife was a blasted nuisance, and Warren thought he was more than done with it. Let her be wild in her rebellious way, if that was who she really was. He’d be there to look after her and shelter her from the worst consequences, as her tamely domesticated keeper.
Baga lika. She awed him, with her strength, her heart, and her perseverance. At some point, he would have to research the native translation for “tiger wife.” But not now.
Right now, he had to take her someplace private, with a large, comfortable bed.
Chapter Nineteen: Love Like This
They ended up at Warren Manor, because the upstairs rooms at Maitland Glen were not yet finished. The staff at his manor home hadn’t expected them from London for a couple weeks, but they put together a fine dinner anyway, and the rooms were always kept in readiness for unexpected guests.
And, of course, the manor offered certain disciplinary necessities that Maitland Glen lacked.
Josephine waited upon a chair in his bedroom, her knees pressed primly together. Her brows went up when the maid tapped at the door and delivered a covered tray.
“What did you think?” Warren asked with a half-smile. “That you’d escape with no consequences whatsoever?”
“You spanked me once already,” she reminded him. “Quite hard.”
“An over-the-knee spanking, for less than a minute. No, the past two days’ shenanigans deserve a proper consequence to disperse any lingering tensions. You agreed it was necessary. Have you changed your mind?”
She stared up at him. He could see the dread she felt, and the longing also. They both understood these intimate acts of discipline calmed her and brought them closer together. She lowered her face, a blush creeping across her cheeks. “I haven’t changed my mind. I deserve to be punished. I’m sure Westmoreland will want to know that you’ve put me in my place.”
“Westmoreland would probably like to take a sturdy birch rod to your bottom, but luckily for you, it’s my job to discipline you, not his.”
She gave a little shiver as he walked to the corner where he’d secreted a schoolroom cane. Her eyes went wide.
“May I change my mind about the necessity of punishment?”
He tapped it against his palm. “I’m afraid not. I’m sure you believe I’m being too strict, but I don’t think a hand spanking or a hair brush paddling will suffice in this case, with two such outrageous infractions. Even the strap…”
As he named off these implements, her shivers in
creased. “I’ve never been caned. Will it hurt even worse…worse than the strap?”
He looked her up and down, wishing to communicate gentle trust, while simultaneously scaring the tar out of her. “You may inform me afterward which you believe hurts worse.”
Of course he wouldn’t cane her full out, as his schoolmasters used to do when he was a reckless and disobedient pupil. He’d make it hurt just enough that she would feel expiated, and when she felt better, he would too.
“Come along then.” He tapped the high expanse of his bed. He preferred to dole out the stricter punishments in here, rather than the ruffled bower where she slept. It was a mind game of sorts, a way to make her even more anxious. She approached the bed and bent over it in a provocatively reluctant way.
Damn her, he was already hard, solid as a rock within his breeches. He rearranged his surging length and drew up her skirts, placing the cane beside her where she could see it.
She promptly turned her head the other way.
He tsked at her. “No, I put it there intentionally, so that you must look at it and think about what a naughty troublemaker you’ve been. You ruined the Parliament dinner party, didn’t you? And threw two households into upheaval with your overnight flight. Three households, counting this one, where they didn’t expect us for another fortnight. I imagine they know below stairs what the ginger is for.”
She turned back to the cane with a soft, worried sigh, her blush deepening to the back of her neck. So charming, her sensitivity. By the time he’d worked the rather thick plug of ginger into her bottom hole, she was blushing indeed. That done, he set about undoing the back of her gown and divesting her of every stitch of clothing before bending her back over the bed. He took off his own coat and waistcoat next, putting them aside for his valet with slow deliberateness. His cravat came after, the pin set into a jewelry box.