“This seems a lovely garden,” said Warren. “I always wanted to come in here when I was a boy. Will you show us around?”
Aidan silently blessed his friend for easing the awkward moment. That was normally his forte, but he did not feel up to it at present. He studied his wife as she walked around the garden between his friends. She seemed nervous but polite. She gave no indication that she’d just written her father a letter of scurrilous accusations about his behavior. She did not know yet that he’d read the letter.
Oh, but he would tell her later, when he punished her for her damnable deceit.
* * * * *
The duke’s friends stayed to tea and then dinner, telling engaging stories and drawing conversation from Gwen in such a natural way that she did not feel self-conscious. They were so easy to get along with, she could barely comprehend that they had grown up together with Arlington. Her husband occasionally gave her looks that made her think he was angry. She supposed she annoyed him with her manners and conversation, and he was unable to chastise her in front of company. In fact, his friends kept him busy the entire night, as the men stayed at drink and conversation long past the time the duke normally visited her rooms.
What a relief, not having to submit to his carnal demands. She wished his friends would stay for a week and distract him from her company, but they left the following day just after luncheon in order to return to their wives.
Gwen prayed she would be leaving soon too. She had given her sealed letter to the housekeeper, beseeching her to send it at once, and the lady had bustled off to do so. That was one benefit of being a duchess—servants listened to you and did what you asked. Now she chewed her finger and paced her sitting room. With luck, the letter would reach Cairwyn and her papa’s hands by week’s end, so he could come to her aid before they removed to London.
A brisk knock sounded at the door. Since she had dismissed her lady’s maid, Gwen answered herself. A footman held out a silver tray with a gilded notecard. Gwen unfolded it and read the bold script.
I require your presence in my chambers at once.
Arlington
She glanced at the footman, her stomach fluttering with a frisson of unease. Was it time for the duke to berate her for all her missteps, now that his friends had left?
“I... Well... I wonder if you would tell him I am not feeling well?” It was not a lie. She didn’t want to face him, not with the curt tone of that note.
The footman bowed and disappeared across the hall. Gwen closed the door and leaned back against it, and let out a long breath. She had just started toward her bed chamber when the door opened and Arlington himself appeared. He said nothing, only took her arm and pulled her from her room, yanking her across the hall to his chambers in full view of the servants.
“Do not drag me about,” she complained as he forced her into his sitting room.
“When I say I require your presence at once, that means I require your presence at once. We have something to discuss.” She watched in horror as he went to his desk and picked up her letter. “Do you recognize this?”
She couldn’t believe he had it, and that it was not on the way to Cairwyn at all. “How did you get that?”
“Nothing goes out of this house that I don’t look at.”
“It was sealed. It wasn’t meant for you to read.”
“That seems patently obvious.” His sharp voice ricocheted off the walls. “Nothing goes out of this house that I don’t look at,” he repeated with irate emphasis. “And thank God for that, because if your father had gotten this letter, there would have been a great deal of trouble for everyone involved. It’s taken me a full day just to believe that you wrote it, that you could have been so reckless as to put these words on the page.”
“Everything in that letter is true,” she cried.
“None of it is true. These are the melodramatic ravings of a spoiled, self-centered child. How dare you write these things, when I have shown you nothing but kindness? When you have wanted for nothing? When I have given you my title and my husbandly care, and pleasure every night? ‘Lewd whims,’ Guinevere?”
She quailed at the cold strength of his fury. “You are lewd to me,” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“That’s a damnable lie. It’s a lie to say I treat you like a savage. It’s a lie to say that I punish you in a brutal and unfeeling manner, or force you to my will. This letter is full of false accusations and disparagement to my character.”
He was not only angry, he was hurt and insulted. She couldn’t bear to look at him, because she knew the letter was full of lies and exaggerations. “I don’t want to be married to you,” she said, the only excuse she had for her actions.
He put his hands aside his head and then threw them out in exasperation. “How many times must I explain this to you? This isn’t a marriage of choice. It’s a state marriage and it has nothing to do with your happiness. You’re not married to me. You’re married to England and Wales, and the goddamned will of the crown.”
“You’re not happy either,” she said, shrinking away from him. “I know you don’t want to be married to me any more than I want to be married to you. We don’t suit one another.”
“And so you write a letter full of false accusations and try to send it behind my back? Do you have any idea what would have happened if this missive had made its way into your father’s hands?” He threw the letter down and advanced on her, his blue eyes glinting like tempered steel. “I’ll tell you what would have happened. I would have cleared my name, darling. There are limits to what honor can take. I would have branded you a liar and shamed you and your family before the king. Your father would have been ruined for challenging me, and you would have become a despised object of scorn. Your family would have lost everything, all because you don’t want to be married to me.”
He spit out these last words as if they disgusted him. Gwen twisted her hands together.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes clouding with tears. “I’m sorry I did it.”
“You’re sorry you did it, or you’re sorry you got caught?”
“I’m sorry I did it. I knew it was wrong, but I... You’re right. I behaved as a spoiled child who wished to have her way.”
He took her arm and leaned down so they were nose to nose. “I have servants who read Welsh, you little deceiver. In case you think to do any such thing again.”
She had thought she had his scorn before, but it was nothing to the scorn he showed her now. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I want so badly to go home.”
He gave her a shake. “You’re not going home. You’re stuck in this hell of a marriage, just as I am.” He turned at a tap on the door and said, “Come.”
The door opened to a servant bearing a silver-lidded tray.
“Put it there,” said Arlington, pointing to a side table.
The servant complied and left. The duke regarded her another moment or two, his hand still gripping her arm.
“I believe you feel remorseful. I also believe you want to go home. But you’re not going home, not now, not ever. You’re married to me and you are going to bear the Arlington heirs. This is your life, no matter how you struggle against it. Tell me you understand that.”
“I understand it,” she said, wiping her cheeks.
“And no matter how much you hate me, no matter how much you abhor my company and my ‘lewd whims,’ I’m going to remain your husband until one of us dies.”
“That’s such a grim way to put it,”
she said miserably.
“Grim or not, it’s the truth. I will reiterate now that I require your respect in this marriage, as well as appropriate, obedient behavior, which you have not displayed.” He pulled her over to the upholstered chair flanking the side table. “You’re going to be punished, not ‘brutally or unfeelingly,’ but as befits a wife who has written a letter sorely defaming her husband’s honor.”
He sat in the chair and forced her down over his lap before she could gather the wherewithal to resist. His arm circled tightly about her waist as he flipped up her skirts.
“Don’t, please,” she begged. “I’m sorry. I know what I did was wrong.”
“Then you know you deserve this spanking. Keep your legs still or I’ll go for the cane.”
Gwen didn’t want to be caned, or even spanked, but she supposed she deserved it. She hadn’t really thought about the trouble her letter might have caused. If it had come to strife between her father and the duke—or her father and the king—she knew who would have ended up on the losing side.
She braced for the spanking to begin, but instead she heard the clink of the tray. He parted her bottom cheeks, and pressed something cool and slick against her nether hole. She squirmed and tried to turn to him.
“No,” he said. “Be still. You’re going to have a peeled root of ginger in your bottom for this spanking.”
“Why?” she cried.
“Because you’ve committed an especially egregious offense. The ginger will intensify your punishment by making your arsehole sting. Bad wives get bad things, if you’ll remember.”
It did not seem correct to do such a thing to one’s wife; it seemed lewd again, and too intimate. She couldn’t help but clench around the intrusion. A few moments later, she began to feel the promised sting. It felt wicked and shameful. She hid her face in her hands, trembling beneath her tossed-up skirts.
“I don’t think you should do this,” she said between her fingers. “It’s wrong.”