One of his brows rose. “I didn’t realize you had such an affection for travel.”
“I don’t. I haven’t. I mean, I haven’t gone anywhere yet, and now…”
“Now you are married to me and imprisoned here in my pile of rocks in the country. I see how that could dampen a lady’s mood.”
“You mock me. Nothing in your life has changed, but I have lost… I’ve lost everything.” Her tears came back, and she wiped them away angrily. “I’m very cross about it all, not that you care.”
He came to stand beside her, his arm coming around her waist when she moved to evade him. “Come here, little crosspatch. Kiss me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Indeed, I see that. I’ve never had a young lady speak to me as you have, with such drama and emotion. You’re not onstage anymore.”
She pushed at him. “I don’t want to be.”
“You don’t want anything, do you, except to flail and complain and bemoan this miserable marriage?”
It was true. She was flailing and making a scene, pushing him away, resisting everything she must submit to. His body felt hard against hers, and overwhelming. He took her face in his hands and made her look into his eyes. How green they were, how intent, like chips of jade.
“For all that you don’t like me,” he said in his fine, haughty voice, “I like you very much. I want to have children with you, children with your beauty and spirit, and your cursed stubbornness.”
“I’m not stubborn.”
He laughed. “Not when you get your way. But the rest of the time, you’re a stubborn, annoying pain in my arse.” She gasped at the insult, but he laughed. “No matter, little crosspatch. We’re a pair now, a couple, whatever we wished for before.”
He indicated his handsome, formal ancestors, looking at them from the portraits on the walls. “I know you don’t want to be married into my august family, but you are. We’re husband and wife forevermore, and we’ll come to know each other and put up with one another’s quirks, like your utter fear of intimacy. I’ll break you of that eventually.”
She would not cry. She would not give in to the crushing guilt she felt about her failure in this quarter.
“You are not natural,” she said, the first excuse she could spout at him. “When it comes to intimacy, you want things no one else wants, things no proper gentleman should enjoy.”
“I don’t believe that’s true, having more knowledge of sexuality than yourself.” He tightened his embrace as she tried to squirm away from him. “Perhaps I’ve been amiss in my tutoring. I can’t expect you to enjoy things you haven’t been taught.”
As he said this, he moved his hips against hers, so she could feel that hard, thick part of him that marked him as male. It sent her into a panic.
“Please, no,” she said. “I don’t want that. I’m still not ready.”
“Very well. Then you must be punished for denying me my husbandly rights.” His expression deepened, his fingers moving up her spine as she tried to escape his embrace. “A bit of erotic punishment seems just the thing, since you’re curious about it.”
She gaped at him. “I’m not at all curious. I’m not.”
“You will be, by the time I’m finished with you.”
With those frightening words, he swept her into his arms and carried her from the room, toward the great stone stairway in the outer hall.
Chapter Ten
Erotic Punishment
Wescott stopped at the door to his room to request some needed items from a footman. A cane, some fragrant oil, a stout ginger plug. The Abbey’s kitchen staff was used to such requests. As for Ophelia, she trembled in his arms.
He would make it bearable for her, and yes, erotic, but there would be an element of punishment too. She must learn to submit to this marriage, and to him. If it took a certain amount of painful training to force her obedience, well, that was her choice.
He set her down in the middle of his bedroom, hoping she wouldn’t make a scene and try to escape by banging on the door or some such nonsense. To his relief, she did nothing more than back away a few steps.
“I don’t know what you mean to do with me, my lord, but I don’t…I don’t want it.”
“You’ve made that clear.” He gave a show of casual control, but her pouting lips had him aroused nearly to a boiling point. “You’ll need to remove your clothes now, Ophelia, all of them. You may do it yourself, or I can call a maid to help you.”
She waited, still trembling. “Why must I remove my clothes?”
“Because it will make it easier to place the ginger fig in your bottom and cane you, as I have planned.”
Her mouth fell open. “But you can’t do such things! What are you speaking of? You can’t mean to—”