Under A Duke's Hand
Read Under A Duke's Hand Online
Authors: Annabel Joseph
Tags: #regency romance, #dominance and submission, #spanking romance, #georgian romance, #historical bdsm, #spanking historical, #historical bondage novel, #historical bondage romance, #historical spanking romance, #regency spanking romance
by
Copyright 2015 Annabel Joseph
Smashwords Edition
Cover art by Bad Star Media
www.badstarmedia.com
* * * * *
Smashwords License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other
people. If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you
for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
All characters depicted in this work of
fiction are 18 years of age or older.
* * * * *
For my historical readers, who will never
look at ginger the same way again.
Chapter One: A Handsome Stranger
Chapter Two: First Impressions
Chapter Three: So Awfully Uncivilized
Chapter Ten: Perfectly Matched
Chapter Fourteen: Christmas Dinner
Chapter Seventeen: Right of Possession
Other Historicals by Annabel
Joseph
Chapter
One: A Handsome Stranger
Wales, 1794
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Her
cousin Tilda tucked a bit of ebony hair beneath Gwen’s weathered
bonnet. “If your father sees you sneaking out in these dreadful
clothes, he’ll lock you in your room.”
“They’re not dreadful clothes. They’re riding
clothes, my most comfortable ones.” Gwen twitched at her faded
skirts. “And Papa can’t lock me in my room if I’m to be married the
day after tomorrow. I’m just taking Effie for one last ride around
the village.”
“And how will you get home when that ragged
old nag keels over dead?”
“Don’t say such things, not when I’ll miss
her so. You promised you’d come feed her apples at least twice a
week.”
Her cousin’s eyes softened. “I will, I
promise.”
“Even when you aren’t sweet on Drustan
anymore?” Tilda’s love interest looked after the horses on Gwen’s
father’s estate.
“Even when Dru and I are married,” said Tilda
with a grin. “I swear to you, old Effie shall have all the apples
she desires.”
Gwen pulled at her gown’s ill-fitting bodice.
Since her betrothal to the Duke of Arlington, all Papa’s money had
gone to wedding and court finery, and she dared not wear those
sorts of clothes while she rode along dusty paths. “Thanks for
helping me steal away, Tilly. If I must be given in marriage to
some horrid English aristocrat I’ve never laid eyes on, I would
like one last afternoon all to myself.” She thought a moment.
“Perhaps, while I’m away, a handsome stranger will befriend me and
fall deeply in love with me, and secret me to his hilltop castle so
I needn’t marry the duke after all.”
Tilda giggled. “You and your romantic
dreams.” She turned Gwen around to adjust her stays. “You’d better
not run off with any strangers, or Uncle Alwyn will have my head
for abetting you. I wish you’d take at least one other person
along. Drustan will escort you if you ask.”
“Drustan would rather stay behind with
you.”
Her buxom cousin blushed a furious shade of
red, and her eyes got that glazed, enamored look.
“Why, the two of you intend to steal away for
the afternoon,” Gwen accused. “And here you’ve been scolding me for
going out to ride.”
“Drustan’s officially courting me, you
realize. Papa allows us to spend time together.”
Gwen was so jealous of her cousin. Drustan
was a kind, brawny man, with twinkling eyes and a great laugh. When
he looked at Tilda, anyone could see that he adored her. “Does he
kiss you when you’re together?” Gwen asked shyly.
“You’re a silly girl.”
“Silly girl? I’m older than you.”
“And far more innocent. As you should be,
since you’re a fine lady, and I’m only a common relation.” Tilda
squeezed her hands. “Goodness, you’re going to marry a
duke
in two days. How can you stand the anticipation? What shall you do
until it’s time?”
“I’m going to ride Effie to some pretty
meadow and smell the flowers, and enjoy my last afternoon of
freedom. I’m sure once I’m wed, the ghastly duke will expect me to
sit about in his ghastly castle and act like a ghastly duchess in a
ghastly ruffled gown.”
Tilda, who loved ghastly ruffled gowns,
sighed and hugged herself. “Becoming a duchess is so exciting
though, isn’t it?”
“Would you like to do it? Marry some stranger
you’ve never met, and go with him to London where it’s crowded and
dirty, and everyone speaks with a funny accent?” A wave of nerves
fluttered in Gwen’s stomach. “Papa says I may have to attend an
audience with the king.”
“A duke is practically a king,” said Tilda.
“And you’ll be
married
to him. I wonder what he’ll be
like.”
“I’m certain he’ll be intolerably haughty and
probably very ugly. He’ll have crooked teeth and a big belly
pouring over the front of his trousers. All those old aristocrats
do.”
“Not all, Gwennie. None of your brothers look
like that.”
“They aren’t that old.” Elrick was the eldest
of the seven, and he had no belly at all. “Maybe the duke won’t
have a belly. I don’t know. But something will be wrong with him.”
She sat to pull on her scuffed riding boots. “Otherwise he could
have taken some wife in England, some fine lady with a royal
pedigree.”
“It’s because of your father,” Tilda reminded
her. “He asked the king to...”
To order some poor man to marry you.
It stung her pride, that it had come to that. Gwen was twenty-two,
long past an age to be married, but she had never managed to
attract any acceptable candidates. Not one suitor had asked for her
hand.
And the Duke of Arlington hadn’t either.
“He’s probably no more excited to marry me,”
she said. “What a disaster for everyone.”
She walked with Tilda toward the stables,
wondering why she was so repellent to men. She was tall, it was
true, but not shockingly so. She had a bit of a temper, but she
mostly kept it in check. She did not whine, or wilt, or put on airs
like some of the other gentry’s daughters. Perhaps it was her
unusual green eyes that unsettled them. But she’d inherited those
pale eyes from her mother, who was considered a great beauty before
the fever took her.
If only Mama was still here. She would never
have allowed her daughter to be married to an Englishman, and a
stranger. “I’m terrified the duke won’t be kind,” Gwen said.
“That’s my greatest fear.”
Her cousin took her hand. “I’m sure he’s a
very kind man. In a couple of days you’ll be on your way to a grand
adventure, experiencing all sorts of majestic things.”
Gwen and Tilda parted as Drustan sauntered
over to greet his beloved. Gwen bid them farewell and climbed onto
Effie’s swayed back. It was a beautiful October day, warm and
bright, with barely a chill in the air. Gwen skirted around the
village, leading Effie through the open field beyond the miller’s
property. The leaves were turning orange, brown, and gold, and
rustled underfoot as they plodded along the path. They cut through
a copse of trees and around an overgrown hedge, and followed a
crumbling stone wall until it opened into a half-shaded clearing.
The nag took up her usual spot in the shade, and immediately set to
grazing.
Gwen climbed down from the saddle and walked
into the meadow with a sigh. If this wasn’t the most picturesque,
bewitching place in the world, she’d like to see its better. She
couldn’t remember when she’d first found this place. She’d stumbled
upon it in her wanderings and been struck at once by its beauty. It
was private and fragrant with wildflowers, bordered by a shady spot
of lake. There was a peaceful feeling here, like one was in a dream
or fairy tale.
I’ve come to say goodbye to this
meadow
, she thought.
Just as I must say goodbye to
everything else.
She pulled off her bonnet and turned her face
to the sun. Her hair tumbled down her back, blowing in the breeze.
She’d miss the Welsh countryside, even if she was only moving a
couple days’ journey east. She’d be leaving her entire life, her
father and brothers and sisters-in-law, and nieces and nephews and
cousins.
Gwen had always wished to be married, so she
ought to be happy, but she hadn’t expected to be married quite like
this. Elrick and Papa had argued for some time about the betrothal.
Elrick shouted that Papa was using her as a pawn, but in the end,
it was her father’s choice. It was her father’s war heroics that
had earned this opportunity from the king, and he chose to sign the
contracts which sealed her fate.
Aidan Francis Samuel Drake, His Grace the
Duke of Arlington.
Gwen felt misgivings about marrying a
stranger with ten words in his name. She had no idea if she would
make him a good wife, or how she would cope with the intimacies of
marriage. Unlike Tilda, Gwen knew nothing of love. She’d never been
courted or kissed. Now it appeared her first kiss would come from
some aged blueblood with the longest name in Christendom. Maybe the
duke wouldn’t even kiss her. Perhaps he would think a Welsh baron’s
daughter too common, too far beneath him. He’d certainly think so
if he saw her now, in her faded riding gown.
Gwen picked her way through the flowers to
the line of ancient boulders bordering the lake, and kicked off her
boots. Her stockings went next, tossed upon the grass alongside her
bonnet. She climbed atop her favorite rock and dangled her feet
down into the water, and wondered how it could feel so chilly when
the air was so warm. She closed her eyes and clasped her hands in
her lap, and began to pray, something her mother had taught her to
do when she was a young child.
Ask the heavens for what your
heart wants
, she would say.
Ask the flowers and wind and
sky. You are never alone; the earth knows your prayers.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please let him be
at least a little bit handsome. And patient, and gentle.” Often
when she prayed like this, she pictured her mother’s face, smiling
and nodding at her. It brought her comfort, even if she was
whispering to nothing but the wind. “Please let him have an
understanding heart, and a kind manner.” She thought a moment. “If
I had to make a choice between the handsomeness and the kindness, I
suppose I would prefer to have kindness, although a middling dose
of both qualities would be best. And if it’s not too much to ask, I
wish...perhaps...someday he might come to love me, if he’s the sort
of duke who’s not too lofty to fall in love.”
“Am I in Wales, or am I in Paradise? An angel
has flown into my wood.”
The deep voice drew her from her whispered
prayers. Someone had discovered her secret meadow! Gwen turned to
find the source of the voice, and nearly fell off her rock.
It was her handsome stranger, not twenty
yards away.
The gorgeous man sat upon a stump, one leg
crossed lazily over the other. He was older than her, but still fit
and vital. His long, golden hair framed a starkly attractive face.
Not a pretty face. He was no pretty man with those gold locks, but
more like a Viking, with a strong jawline and prominent features.
Just like a Viking, he was sun-bronzed and able-bodied. She could
not remember knowing any man with such wide shoulders, or such a
muscular chest. Despite his showy physique, he was dressed plainly
in doeskins and a buff vest. He balanced a sketch book on his knee,
and a smudge of charcoal sullied his cheek.
This Viking had called her an angel, which
was perhaps not entirely proper of him. In fact, he gazed at her so
intently her cheeks began to flush.
