“Your horse is perfectly well.” He gazed at her in that authoritative manner that made her stomach flutter. “Shall I give your bottom a smack or two, since you’ve been naughty? Then you would know what it feels like, and head home to your Tommy duly punished, with an unburdened conscience.”
Gwen couldn’t imagine why she didn’t run off at that point, except that his eyes and his lips held her with some invisible pull. She felt captured in a spell, so that when he lifted her and rearranged her across his lap, she didn’t protest or even struggle.
“There we are,” he said, as if this were some normal interaction, as if he was merely posing her for art. “I’m sure you’re the type to take a spanking very bravely, with nary a complaint.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with an edge of panic.
He turned up her skirts in the same casual fashion, leaving her shift down to cover her bottom. A small mercy for a foolish girl who had definitely let things go too far. “Please, sir, I’m sure this isn’t proper.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed, stroking his palm over her shift. She wondered how his touch would feel against her bare skin. No. You mustn’t wonder such things, Guinevere. You ought to break from him and run away home.
He began to spank her before she could find the needed words to protest further. The impact startled her, and she squirmed beneath the powerful sting of his palm. How shocking, that he would handle her with such familiarity. How shocking, that the painful spanks made her feel rather...stimulated. She gasped when she realized this. What sort of woman was she, to become aroused at this treatment?
What sort of man was he, to do this to her in the first place?
He had said “a smack or two” but he spanked her six times, firm, resonating blows atop her linen shift. “Well,” she said as he raised his hand for yet another. “I believe I know what it feels like now.” Even if I don’t understand my reaction.
When she tried to get up, he stopped her with a hand pressed to her back. “Do you feel punished enough?”
She looked up and made a conflicted sound of entreaty. She dared not speak the truth to him, and admit that she had never felt so excited and agitated in her life.
“If you don’t feel entirely expiated, perhaps a bare-bottomed spanking is in order after all.” He brushed up her shift, and she did nothing to impede him. “That is the most effective way to get a message across.”
What message was she getting across to him? That she was a wanton village girl who enjoyed this sort of dalliance? From the start, she had realized this was an exercise in seduction, not discipline, and yet she had let him do as he willed. Now he was spanking her steadily, warming her bare, naked cheeks all over. She looked up at him over her shoulder, her emotions in a tangle of confusion. He finally left off and rested his palm beneath the curve of her bottom. “Do you feel punished now?” he asked again.
“Oh, yes, sir. Please, no more.”
He gave a soft chuckle, a raw, enticing sound. As he held her gaze, he slid his palm lower, and used his fingers to part the folds of her quim.
And that went far past any dalliance she could allow.
She jerked and reached back to stay his caresses. “Oh, no. You mustn’t. I’m a good girl, sir.”
He stopped at once, as if he had never meant to do it in the first place. She counted herself fortunate, for she had played a dangerous game.
“Now you’re a good girl,” he teased, helping her up. “Now that you’ve learned not to flirt with strange men in hidden meadows.”
“Yes, sir.” Once she’d straightened her skirts, she bobbed a clumsy curtsy. She was sure her cheeks must be as red and hot as her spanked bottom. “I suppose I really ought to...to be getting back to the village.”
“To see Tommy, I suppose.”
“Yes, and to do my work. I’m not allowed much leisure time.”
“None of us are, my dear. Life is a busy business. But I was happy to make your acquaintance this fine afternoon. I don’t suppose you’ll give me one last kiss?”
She took a step back, and another. “I don’t think that would be wise. I must bid you goodbye.”
She was afraid to look at him, afraid of her weakness, afraid of what he might see. But Gwen forced herself to meet his gaze anyway, because she knew with absolute certainty that she would never see him again. She was getting married in a couple of days to some duke she didn’t know, and that duke was going to take her away to England. Jack would have his sketch of her as a memory, if he even cared. It seemed to her now that he might not. It seemed to her now that he was a commonplace rogue, the type of rogue who might have kissed a thousand women, and pretended they needed spankings.
Gwen felt embarrassed and terribly ashamed, but she forced herself to smile for Jack because he’d given her her first kiss, and done a commendable job of it. He’d made her feel soft and warm and...womanly. It had been good, and bad, and confusing, and really, very embarrassing and sad. All in all, a complicated memory to keep, and she didn’t even have a sketch to remember him by.
She brushed a hand over her skirts to be sure they were modestly arranged, and then turned and hurried to mount her old horse. The last view of her precious meadow was hazy and unfocused because of her rising tears.
You ought to cry, she chided herself. You behaved like an utter strumpet. But she was really crying because she felt silly and used, and because it was so hard to say goodbye.
Chapter Two: First Impressions
Aidan proceeded from the village inn to Lisburne Manor in full ducal splendor, ensconced in his best traveling coach. Not that he’d traveled here in that traveling coach. He’d come from Oxfordshire by horseback, and directed the coaches, baggage carts, and servants to trail behind for his new duchess to utilize afterward, on the journey home. He’d brought a newly hired French maid to attend her, and his favorite valet, of course. He employed four valets altogether, to manage his vast wardrobe and state uniforms, and coronets, and jewels, and all the other nonsense he had to drape himself in because he’d been born the first son of a duke.
Now he would marry this Guinevere and make children on her, and his firstborn son would be a future duke, with an abundance of wealth and property and social connections and duty and headaches to look forward to. What was the point of any of it, except to uphold tradition? He’d been bred to tradition from the cradle. Honor, title, legacy. As soon as things settled down, Aidan would hire an artist to paint their portrait in rich and formal tones: The Eleventh Duke and Duchess of Arlington.
Because as much as he resisted the idea of marriage, he had always looked forward to joining the parade of ancestors in the East Salon, had even practiced regal poses in a mirror, when he was not observed, of course. Taking a wife was a damned nuisance, but somewhere inside, he also craved the civilized dignity of a state marriage and family.
To that end, he had kept himself respectable, waiting for the king to recommend the most appropriate and advantageous match. At social functions, he’d often pondered which high-born daughters might suit him best as a wife. The pool of candidates, in his mind, had been small and exclusive. He and Lady Aurelia might have made an excellent pair, if she had not been promised as an infant to his friend the Marquess of Townsend. Other prospects: Lady Caroline, who was well-bred and refined, and intelligent Lady Hester, upon whom he lavished attention whenever they crossed paths. Lady Frances and Lady Arabella were both dukes’ daughters, and either young lady would have made him a suitable bride.
He sighed, gazing out the window as the dark, squat Lisburne homestead rose into view. His actual bride was not an English aristocrat, or even a titled lady. She was a plain old Miss, being daughter to a common-born baron who was also, unfortunately, Welsh. Aidan tried to think of positives. She would doubtless b
e heathenish, if not an outright hellion. Plenty of opportunity to discipline her, a pastime he very much enjoyed. Furthermore, he imagined she would be of hardy, peasant-like stock. She’d breed well, birth lots of strong children, and bring new vigor to the Arlington line. Best of all, she would be grateful to wed him, being naturally in awe of him as a much more distinguished person.
And he must act like a distinguished person, now that he was marrying. No more dalliances with ebony-haired village girls in quiet meadows. When it came to carnal pleasures, he preferred a skilled courtesan, but there had been something so tempting about that young woman yesterday afternoon. He’d wanted her from the moment she’d drifted into the clearing and taken off her bonnet, and shaken her black hair down her back like some wild fairy queen.
Rose, his fairy queen. He thought of her this morning while his valet shaved him and dressed him in a deep bronze coat with gold embroidery, and tied his cravat just so, until Aidan could barely move his neck. It might have been a noose, the perfect metaphor for marriage. He stuck a finger inside the linen knot but then lowered his hand without loosening it.
Instead he drew on his gloves and checked to be sure his long, thick hair was tamed into its queue at the back of his neck. He often wore it down about his shoulders, his one foible of hedonism in his otherwise dutiful world.
But not today. First impressions were everything, whether one was greeting a scion of English society, or a lowborn Welsh bride.
* * * * *
Gwen almost tripped on her way downstairs to gather with the rest of her family. That would have wreaked havoc on everyone’s agendas, having the pawn, er, bride break her neck in a fall. She stepped more carefully after that, and tried to pull her scattered thoughts together.
She’d wanted one last adventure before the bonds of marriage closed in on her, and she had gotten one. Jack: artist, Viking, traveling Englishman. Flirt. Scoundrel. He had smiled at her and drawn her close, and awakened a new awareness within her, a yearning and need she recognized as desire.