Devil in Duke's Clothing (Royal Pains Book 1) (2 page)

Most lasses were already married at her age, but who would marry a stick such as herself?

Not a man like the duke, who, like most men, clearly preferred the abigail’s more voluptuous shape. His hands skimmed the maid’s back, seized her fleshy buttocks, and squeezed hard enough to incite a gasp from their owner. By the by, he moved one of his hands round front and into Mistress Honeywell’s private place. Whatever he did there drew moans of a tenor quite unlike pain.

His Grace withdrew, unknotted his cravat, and pulled it from his neck.

The maid held out her hands as if she expected him to strike her knuckles with a tawse. Maggie cringed inside, remembering how much it hurt when the sisters of St. Teresa’s struck her in similar fashion. Just thinking about it made her palms sting and her knuckles throb.

Mistress Honeywell was often derelict in her duties. Had he somehow found her out and meant to punish her?

Rather than strike the maid, as expected, he used his cravat to tie her wrists before unbuckling his belt. Holy Mary. Mistress Honeywell must have done something very wicked indeed to be stripped, bound, and whipped. Last fall, when Mrs. McQueen punished the scullery maid, she did not take off her clothes and tie her hands before taking the lash to her.

And the housekeeper most certainly had not sucked the girl’s paps beforehand.

The duke’s belt came off and down went his kilt. Maggie’s jaw dropped in step with the tartan drape. The hoped-for sight did not manifest, as the shirt fell halfway down his thighs, which were muscular and covered in dark hair.

The evidence she’d sought earlier now presented itself—a tenting on the front of his shirt near his navel. His aroused phallus had to be the cause. ‘Twas the only explanation that made sense.

Maggie’s belly tremored with excited anticipation. Pray, let him take the shirt off as well.

He looped the belt round his hand, confusing Maggie. Though concupiscently stimulated, he still meant to whip Mistress Honeywell. Why? And, more importantly, what wickedness within her own breast made the prospect of watching him do it so thrilling?

Still gripping the belt, he sat upon the chaise, grabbed Mistress Honeywell by her bound wrists, and pulled her down across his lap.

The duke caressed the milky-white mounds of the maid’s posterior before sliding his fingers into her cunny.

This sent Mistress Honeywell into raptures.

Maggie did not like the maid, but still wanted to warn her not to enjoy overmuch whatever His Grace did down there. According to Sister Mary-Gregory, the Lord smote all women who took pleasure in the act He’d devised solely for procreation.

“‘Twas why he took your mother,” the sister had told her with a face like a prune. “As punishment for taking pleasure in the sacrament and for the sin of adultery. Her cuckolded husband brought you here after his sinful wife perished of childbed fever.”

Maggie knew naught else about her parentage.

The crack of leather on flesh brought her back to the room with a jolt.

An angry red welt now blemished the maid’s porcelain posterior. Poor Mistress Honeywell. That had to hurt like the dickens.

The duke must have thought so, too, because he bent over the maid’s backside and dragged his tongue up and down the length of the mark. He still held the belt in one hand whilst the other fiddled with Mistress Honeywell’s cunny.

The blood drained from Maggie’s face when his tongue glided into the crack in the maid’s behind. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints and martyrs! He just licked her anus! How foul. How could he? Surely he knew she defecated from that place.

He must not have a care. About the filth or the plagues he might bring down upon Mistress Honeywell for pleasuring her so mercilessly. Clearly, the duke had no scruples.

He was a rake. Nay, a heathen. And, worse yet, a hypocrite.

Nothing rubbed against Maggie’s grain so much as those who professed beliefs they failed to follow.

His Grace sat up, raised the belt, and brought it down. The crack of the impact sent cold tadpoles swimming though Maggie’s bloodstream. When another welt formed atop Mistress Honeywell’s snowy hillocks, the duke kissed and licked the wound as before.

He repeated this queer ritual twice more, after which he and the maid got to their feet. When he turned toward the closet, Maggie’s heart stopped. If he saw her, he might do to her what he’d done to her maid. Whilst part of her wanted him to—the wicked, sinful part she’d not known dwelled within until now—she nevertheless drew deeper into the shadows.

She held her breath as his fine, long-fingered hands lifted the tails of his shirt. When he unveiled his jutting phallus, tingling warmth blossomed in her womb and spread its petals outward. ‘Twas just as Sister Mary-Gregory described, though she’d failed to mention the thicket of curls surrounding the base or the ruddy purse dangling underneath.

Maggie clutched her chest and swallowed hard. All in all, ‘twas a ghastly thing to behold. Never had she dreamed men hid anything quite so ghastly beneath their plaids.

She nearly coughed when the duke took his hideous appendage in hand and stroked it like a favorite dog.

Astonishment slackened Maggie’s jaw as outrage heated her chest. Did the fiend’s debauchery know no bounds? Self-pleasuring was as mortal a sin as fornication. The body was a temple, an instrument to be used for God’s holy purposes—not a toy to be played with for our own amusement. Leastwise, ‘twas what the sisters oft told her, and she had no cause to doubt their word.

She wanted to look away, sure she’d be condemned to the fiery pit for bearing witness to such flagrant sacrilege—and for the wicked roiling it engendered in her loins and reins—but her gaze remained transfixed.

Yes, the great purple-headed monster rising from his thighs was abominable to behold, but the rest of him was anything but. His arms were muscular, his chest was broad and garnished with manly hair, his belly was flat, and his buttocks were pleasingly taut and globular.

At present, he looked more pirate than duke with his dark hair tumbling around his powerful shoulders and his gray-green eyes smoldering with covetousness. Wicked though he was, he was still far and away the handsomest man she’d ever beheld. High cheekbones, square jaw, strong chin, and a full, pouting mouth.

What might it be like to kiss those angelic lips? Wonderful, probably.

How disappointing he was such a meschant.

Mistress Honeywell set herself upon the sofa and opened her legs, divulging the secrets betwixt them.

The bearded lips and vermillion ruffles mesmerized Maggie. The hole near the base seemed much too small to admit something as large as the duke’s phallus—let alone eject a full-term infant. No wonder so many of their sex perished in childbirth. The sisters said ‘twas the Lord’s punishment for Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, which seemed a terrible injustice to Maggie. Why should all women be made to pay for the evils Eve had done? All men were not punished for the sins of one.

Furthermore, it seemed colossally unfair only men should enjoy the Holy Act of Creation. If only one sex were permitted enjoyment, it should be hers, given what women suffered afterward. What did men suffer in the wake of coition? Naught that Maggie could see. They simply stuck their part in, planted their seed, and went along their merry way, leaving the women to endure the pains of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing.

The duke moved in on Mistress Honeywell, offering the closet an arresting view. Of his buttocks. Though not as plump and smooth as Mistress Honeywell’s, his backside was exceeding pleasing to the eye. The desire to run her hands over them, to pinch and squeeze and slap their taut cheeks, bubbled up inside Maggie like a hot spring.

The maid shifted into a reclining position, raised her bound hands above her head, and, knees open and bent, set her feet upon the sofa cushion. Climbing atop her, the duke pushed his phallus into the maid with a guttural groan of satisfaction.

As Mistress Honeywell answered with a pleasurable moan of her own, he drew back and impaled her again before setting upon her breasts with his mouth.

Under his assault, the maid pitched and heaved like a storm-tossed boat.

His thrusts steadily increased in speed and violence until he became a battering ram.

Mistress Honeywell, meanwhile, seemed carried away to raptures by this brutality.

The breathing of both increased in rapidity and roughness as their rutting reached a fever-pitch. They never kissed, never spoke. Only animalistic grunts, choked curses, and breathless groans of ecstasy passed betwixt the lovers.

Then, the maid cried out, “Och, oy, Your Grace. Oy, oy, oy. Swive me like the horned devil ye are.”

The duke's raptures, though less ardently expressed than his partner’s, appeared equally felt. When he reached what had to be the zenith moment, he made a strangled sound, withdrew from her, and seized his manhood, now empurpled and glistening, and pumped it with zeal. His handsome face was contorted in what looked to be agony. Did he have a cramp? He made a terrible sound just as white liquid spurted from the mouth of the monster in his hand.

Maggie gawked in horror. God in Heaven. Was that the “seed” the sisters said put a babe in a woman’s womb? It looked naught like any seed she’d ever seen.

Presently, the sinners recovered from their fervor, put their clothes back on, and departed the room in opposite directions.

Maggie remained in the closet, bewildered and overwhelmed. Fire burned in her blood, her abdomen ached, and her cunny prickled frightfully. Why had their sinfulness awakened such unsettling longings in her?

She fell back against the wall, called into her mind the image of the duke standing before her, excited phallus in hand.

“This is for you, sweet Maggie,” he whispered as he stroked himself. “Spread your legs and let me put it inside your wee cunny.”

Imaging him mounting her, she lifted her petticoats, parted her curl-covered lips, and let her fingers explore the tender inner pleats. Her womanly area felt the way Mistress Honeywell’s had looked—and oh so sensitive and swollen.

She pushed a finger into her tiny opening, surprised to find it slippery. The salty finger burned the inflamed flesh, so she withdrew it and concentrated on her petals. After a spell, she discovered a bump more responsive than the whole of the rest. She massaged the nub with purpose and, as her pleasure coiled hard and hot at her core, she called the duke to attend her.

“Oh, Your Grace,” she rasped, enraptured. “Swive me like the wicked rake you are. But pray, do not beat me.”

He took possession of her with one deep, forceful push. The coil snapped, unleashing a storm of sensation more sublime than anything she’d known before—or dared imagine.

By the holy face of Lucca! The sisters must be right. Something this glorious had to be a sin worthy of eternal damnation.

Chapter One

Two years hence

Maggie dashed at the tears spilling down her cheeks and peered with self-disgust into the looking glass on her elegant new dressing table. She might now be Margaret Armstrong, Duchess of Dunwoody, but beneath the tight satin bodice, voluminous skirts, and mass of tight curls, she trembled like the motherless child she’d always been.

At any moment, the duke would burst in to demand his due. As his bride, she could not refuse him. Their marriage vows demanded her obedience and made her his chattel—property to treat or dispose of in any manner he might choose. If she denied his lusts, he could toss her out on her ear with as little qualm as his late father had taken her in.

Desperation bloomed in her chest, making breathing difficult. Where would she go? What would she do? Starve on the streets, more than likely. She had no money, no relations, no one to look out for her welfare—not since dear Hugh set off for his Grand Tour of the continent.

Nay, was
driven
off, more like.

If only they’d been able to marry. But alas, their fledgling courtship was no doubt the reason he’d been sent away. She harbored mixed feelings about her favorite’s hasty departure. On the one hand, Hugh was kind to her and oft remarked on the fineness of her pale blue eyes, golden hair, and trim figure. On the other, his compliments were as passionless as his addresses.

“Be wary of my brother,” Hugh warned before setting off “I’ve seen the way he looks at you and his unseemly predilections would shock one so innocent.”

The Armstrong brothers were the proverbial angel and devil on her shoulders. As much as she wanted to listen to the angel’s good council, she found the devil’s enticements much more alluring.

She did not believe Hugh about His Grace’s regard. Yes, the duke looked her way now and again, but only to find fault in her manners or appearance. Mostly, he was cold, critical, and extremely parsimonious with his compliments and smiles.

He’d not called her his wee Rosebud in an age, much to her dismay.

But, as he generously supported her, she could hardly let him sense her discontent. Disguising it required speaking only when spoken to, forcing herself to smile through her wounded feelings, and avoiding the man like the Black Death. As providence would have it, he was rarely at home and, when he was, she gave her guardian a wide berth.