Your loving beau,
Marlow
Rosalind frowned at his reply. How dare he? Truly, how dare he write back to her in such a way? She took a new sheet of paper and wrote quickly.
Dear Marlow,
In that case, I must decline to marry you. I don’t wish to spend the rest of my life bent over your lap having my bottom walloped.
Rosalind
His response slid beneath their adjoining door with equal alacrity.
Dear Rosalind,
Due to your own actions, you have no choice but to marry me. Somehow or other, you’ll survive.
Your loving fiancé,
Marlow
She let out a smothered shriek of frustration. Her loving fiancé now? When he’d behaved so abominably toward her? And he was not sorry for it in the least.
What’s more, he was terrible at courtship. He might embrace her, kiss her, and whisper love poems to her each hour of every day on their tedious journey and instead he chose distance and propriety, telling her they must wait to express themselves fully.
Until he spanked her, of course. Then he was all passionate kisses and embraces.
She crumpled up his unsatisfying notes and took up more paper…oh, she was tearing through her supply, but what choice did she have?
Lord Marlow,
I feel you are not taking my concerns, or my emotions, very seriously. I’m sure you’ll understand if I choose not to spend time in your company when you’re being soirritating.
Rosalind
She wrote the word irritating very dark and had to blow on the ink to make it dry. She folded the note and kicked it under Lord Marlow’s door in a rather unladylike fashion. What would he do? Spank her for it? Not if she kept the door locked and avoided him. Perhaps the absence of her company might make him reconsider his unappealing views on a proper marital relationship.
She heard a crisp knock upon their adjoining door. Why, she’d just told the impossible man that she did not wish his company.
“I’m resting,” she said through the crack.
“You are not. You’re writing letters, which are frankly becoming silly. May I come in?”
“I’ve just said I don’t want to spend time with you.” She used her harshest, most annoyed voice, which still sounded a little polite. If only she hadn’t been trained to such docile manners. She was not feeling docile inside.
“I understand you’re emotional at the moment, darling.” He gave a short, sharp rap at the door. “But if you don’t let me in to speak to you reasonably, face to face, I shall turn you over my lap once again.”
“How, if I won’t admit you to my room?”
She heard his sigh all the way through the door. Then, with a neat pop, the door came open, the seemingly solid lock between them hanging ineffectually from some broken splinters of wood.
He glanced at the mangled fixture as he entered. “That’s a shame.”
She backed away, half afraid he’d make good on his threat and commence to spanking her. “You broke it,” she cried.
“You gave me little choice.” He moved past her into her room. “They can fix it when we arrive in India.”
“I’ll ask them to fix it now. This hour.”