The Duke's Bedeviled Bride (Royal Pains Book 2) (7 page)

With coin in his pocket and an axe to grind against the Almighty, Robert soon fell in with the king’s “Merry Band”—a gang of likeminded young courtiers who scandalized London with their debauched capers.

When his father died, Robert returned to Scotland to claim his inheritance—the small but thriving duchy of Dunwoody—along with his father’s ward. His beloved Rosebud, whose devotion he’d so stupidly risked through the king’s disfavor and his own selfishness.

Propelled by a powerful blast of desperation, he fell down on his knees before her, joined his hands as if in prayer, and lowered his head. “Please, dearest, I can endure aught but your excommunication.”

A seed of hope germinated in his heart when she stroked his hair. Please let the gesture signify her heart was softening toward him.

“Do you truly mean that, husband?”

Lifting his gaze to her bewitching eyes, he said, “I do indeed. Most sincerely. Beat me, humiliate me, and make me your slave, if you would. But, I beseech you, do not shut me out with mute indifference.”

She offered him a pacifying smile and brushed an errant strand of hair from his face. “Very well. I shall not punish you through silence. But know I fully intend to extract my pound of flesh in ways meant to afford you the least pleasure possible.”

Lathed by relief, he sprang to his feet and planted what he meant to be a swift, sweet kiss on her lips. Clearly, she had other ideas, for the next thing he knew, her arms were locked round his neck and their tongues were engaged in a passionate
pas de deux
.

As the kiss deepened, so did his regrets. Why had he agreed to the threesome? To salve his jealousy? To bolster his ego? To soothe his self-loathing? To reduce his feelings of impotence over the position he’d put her in with the king? Or, like some beasts, had he simply run wild for too long to be tamed? He could not comprehend his own reasons, let alone defend them. He only knew he’d not done what he’d done to give her pain.

He loved her with all his heart and soul. The way he’d loved his mother. Yet, once again, he’d allowed selfishness and thoughtlessness to hurt someone he cared about and endanger his own felicity.

What the devil was wrong with him?

A tug on his hair brought him back to the chamber, where Maggie regarded him with a disapproving scowl. The kiss had ended, but he’d been too lost in thought to feel her pull away.

He offered her a conciliatory smile. “What is the matter, dearest? Why did you pull my hair? Why do you look so cross? Have I done something to further displease you?”

“Have you lost your taste for my kisses already?” Her frown deepened and her eyes blazed. “Or do you find my lips lacking when compared to Lord Hardwick’s?”

He flinched at the accusation. He had kissed Lord Hardwick because the courtesan asked him to, and he’d never been one to back down from a dare. Nor, when in his cups, was he particular about where he stuck his cock. A nod being as good as a wink to a blind horse and all. When sober, however, he much preferred the virtues of the fairer sex to his own.

“I assure you, such is not the case,” he said in all sincerity. “Your kisses are the sweetest ever I have tasted.”

“So you claim,” she returned, nose in the air. “Though I cannot help but wonder if your warnings about Hugh are not a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

“I give you my vow,” he said, growing desperate. “I vastly prefer female flesh. Your flesh, that is to say.”

She appeared unconvinced—and not a little missish. “Is there a word for persons who take equal pleasure from intimate relations with both sexes?”

“There is, as it happens.” Her implication annoyed him, as he did not consider himself bi-sexual. “But, rest assured, ’tis not a name I apply to myself.”

“No? Well, I get to differ, having seen evidence to the contrary with my own two eyes.”

“What you witnessed was more drunken lark than force of habit, I promise you.”

“Was it? Forgive me if I am unwilling to take the word of a notorious libertine as final proof.”

With a bruised ego and a sigh of resignation, he withdrew from her and went to lie upon the bed. Clasping his hands behind his head, he closed his eyes and called to mind the first time he clapped eyes on Maggie. She’d been but two and ten at the time—more long-limbed whelp than soft woman—but he saw through her girlish disguise to the truth. She was an angel sent down from Heaven to bring about his redemption.

How could he help but be besotted?

And now, his stubbornness and sinful ways had nearly cost him the only woman he’d ever truly loved.

He’d not lost her yet, but he’d lost her regard. Though only temporarily, he hoped. Opening his eyes, he found her standing at the foot of the bed, looking at him. “If it helps,” he offered with all the contrition he could muster, “I do regret what happened at court.”

“Which part?”

“The whole of it.”

Her alabaster cheeks blushed pink. “Then why did you put me through the anguish?”

“Because I had no other option.”

“You had a choice about the tryst in your bedchamber,” she pointed out with eyes as hard as sapphires.

“True,” he acknowledged. “But, in my own defense, I believed you to be in bed with the king at the time—and only sought to ease my bereavement.”

Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “What are you saying, Robert? That, by your reasoning, two wrongs of your own doing somehow cancel each other out?”

“No.” He shook his head, more in frustration than negation. This conversation was getting him nowhere fast. If only she’d take him over her knee and spank him the way his mother used to do. He always felt cleaner afterward. Like a dirty shirt freshly laundered. “I believe no such thing.”

He hated the way she looked at him now—as though he were wicked and irredeemable. Perhaps she was right. He meant well, but as the saying went, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He did not deserve someone like Maggie. She was all good and he all bad. He’d married her hoping her light would lift him up, but now feared his darkness would only drag her down.

“Tell me what I must do,” she said, looking woeful.

The sudden change in her puzzled him exceedingly. “Do? About what?”

“To keep you faithful,” she said. “Teach me to be what you need to be the kind of husband my happiness requires.”

He arched an eyebrow. “And what kind of husband is that?”

“The kind who will feel so satisfied by his wife he will never again feel the urge to stray.”

Chapter Four

“The goal of the dominant partner,” Robert was saying, “is to achieve total compliance in the submissive partner. Thus, the establishment of trust at the outset is crucial. For who can give themselves over completely to someone they cannot depend upon to have their best interests at heart?”

Maggie was none-too-thrilled he’d adopted the teacherly tone he used to impart her academic lessons or that he’d slipped on a banyan to cover his body, but at least he’d agreed to instruct her in the nuances of
le vice anglais—
another new French phrase.

“The English Vice,” to her continued bewilderment, was how the French referred to the practice of erotic flagellation.
 

“Why do the French call it
le vice anglais
? Do only Englishmen enjoy being whipped?”

He met her gaze. “Obviously not, as I am a Scotsman.”

“Though a highly Anglicized one, I daresay.”

His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared. Oh, dear. She hoped she had not given offense.
 

“Mistake not annunciation for Anglicization,” he said tersely. “I can assure you, I am as Scottish as any other residing on this side of Hadrian’s Wall.”

Hadrian’s Wall, he’d told her in an earlier lesson about the Roman occupation of Great Britain, was built in ancient times as a defensive fortification dividing England and Scotland. Apparently, the invading forces found Scotland’s inclement weather and rocky landscape as inhospitable to their imperial goals as were its uncivilized inhabitants.
 

“I did not mean the Scots,” she said, striving to restore the peace. “I meant the French. Do none of them derive erotic pleasure from being whipped?”

“Having spent little time in France, I could not tell you.” He heaved a sigh. “Now, if you have no more questions, may I continue the lesson?”

“But I do have more questions,” she told him. “Just now you said the goal is compliance, but in the carriage you said the goal was orgasm. So, which is it?”
 

“The two go hand-in-glove in the power exchange,” he said, gray-green eyes twinkling. “If you are convinced pleasure rather than punishment is my true objective, will you not find it easier to surrender your will?”

She would. Obviously. But pleasure had not been her aim this evening, which he knew. “Why did you submit to me earlier knowing I sought retribution?”

“Because I felt ashamed of myself for what I put you through at court—and a good whipping usually mitigates my guilt.”

“So, by inflicting pain, I was helping to relieve your feelings?”

He nodded. “As well as your own—both of which were needed to set us back on the path to marital felicity.”

She released a deprecating snort. “Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but happiness seems a long way off yet.”

He gave her one of his bone-melting smiles. “Every journey, even the longest of them, begins with a single step, Rosebud. And we’ve now taken that step and will soon take the next.”

“By spanking me?”

“You asked me to teach you to be my sexual everything, did you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“How do you expect to learn except through demonstration?”

“But I do not enjoy pain—unlike you.”

“I do not
enjoy
pain,” he said, frowning. “I simply understand its transformative power, which you fail to do. Thus far, leastwise. What you fail to understand is that suffering and ecstasy are but two sides of the same coin. The saints understood this better than the laity. Why else did they flog themselves bloody? Why else are the words martyrdom and passion interchangeable?”

What he said made sense, but she was still afraid. She’d played the submissive all her life—first as orphan, then as ward, and now as woman and wife—and detested the powerlessness precipitated by the roles thrust upon her.

“Rosebud, I swear to you on all I hold sacred, I will do naught without your consent,” he said, looking exceedingly earnest. “As I explained earlier, my aim as your Lord and Master is not to compel your obedience, but to win your willing surrender by instilling confidence in me. You must trust me implicitly, knowing I will take you beyond your limits, but never beyond what you can bear.”

Maggie remained skeptical, despite having a safe word.

“I can see you are yet conflicted, dearest.” His tone was annoyingly condescending, as if he sought to soothe a frightened horse. “So, let us begin with something nonthreatening. A simple spanking. Over my knee. The flesh of my hand to the flesh of your bottom. What do you say to that?”

She swallowed. “Will it hurt?”

“Only enough to call the blood that shall heighten the finale.”

“All right,” she said, setting aside her apprehension. “I consent to be spanked. But only if you cup your hand to begin with so the blows do not smart overmuch.”

“Very well.” He claimed the seat beside her on the edge of the bed. “If using a cupped hand will put you at ease enough to submit, I shall happily conform to your wishes.”
 

“Lay across my lap,” he instructed. “I shall be as gentle as a kitten.”

Her mind flashed to a feral kitten she’d once come across hunting for mice in the courtyard of the convent. When at last she’d captured the wee thing, the cat clawed her hands and arms to ribbons.

As the word “no” formed on her lips, her imagination served her another picture. Her handsome husband rolling betwixt the sheets with another woman—the phantom future mistress who would willingly, joyfully sate his dark hungers. As the acid of jealousy ate away her fear, she stepped closer, her insides clenched and quaking.
 

“Have no fear, Rosebud.” He held out his hand. “I shall talk you through the process step by step to avoid any undesirable surprises.”

Heart racing, throat tight, she put her hand in his. He pulled her forward and arranged her across his lap, head down and bottom up. She shivered as his big, warm hands caressed the goose-pimpled flesh of her posterior and thighs.

“I am going to spank you,” he told her with soothing softness. “After which I will give you a set of commands to help cultivate your submission.”

Her heart was a hummingbird in her throat. She swallowed hard. “What kind of commands?”

“Things you will do to my person.”

“Sexual things?”

“Aye.”

He went on rubbing her backside with sensual slowness. The soft friction generated heat and arousal. The anticipation became almost unbearable. Would his slaps give her pain, pleasure, or a combination of the two?

“I will start with a few gentle swats and then gradually increase the force of the blows.” His voice was as tender as his caresses. “The flesh will sting at first and grow fevered, but the sensations should be manageable. Betwixt the spankings, I shall take steps to soothe your flesh and enflame your libido.”