Under A Duke's Hand (20 page)

“Please don’t do this. Let me go,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”

“Who is the master in this marriage,
Guinevere?”

She closed her eyes at his dire tone. “You
are.”

“I warned you the day after our marriage not
to get into a battle of wills with me. Why do you persist?”

She heard him drop his breeches, and turned
at the rattle of a jar. The aromatic oil...

Gwen bit down on her lip as he climbed onto
the bed and turned her on her back. His cock jutted between them,
rigid and daunting. She’d survived this once before, but she’d been
more relaxed then, and he had been patient and gentle.

He seemed a lot less patient and gentle now.
He pulled her legs apart and held them open, and probed between her
bottom cheeks, depositing the slick stuff around her hole. Was this
allowed by law, this sort of punishment? She didn’t think so.

She blinked up at him, her emotions in a
turmoil of confusion. “I’m afraid. Please...”

“Hush.” His voice was low and rough. He held
her gaze as he pressed his cock against her arsehole.
Disciplinary sodomization...an excellent method of teaching
submission to rebellious wives.

She could do nothing to impede him, since her
hands were still fixed to the headboard. It hurt as he pushed in,
and she moaned as if it were unbearable. The truth was, while it
was painful, it also excited her in some shamefully base way. The
bondage, her vulnerability, and his stern admonishments…

“Please, you mustn’t,” she cried in some vain
attempt to push away those feelings.

“On the contrary, I must. You need this,
Guinevere.” He started to move, to take her tender bottom with
steady thrusts. “You’re my wife, my possession. You will obey and
respect me. You will be made to understand.”

She whimpered, gazing up at his hard eyes,
his broad chest. “I understand, I just—”

“You just choose not to behave properly.” His
pace quickened as his fingers dug into her hips. “If you will not
obey and respect me, you will be put in your place by any means
necessary. Spankings, canings, sexual ordeals and sodomizations.
I’ll take great care to make sure none of it feels good.”

What he was doing to her now didn’t feel very
good. She knew he could make it feel good if he wished to...he had
made it feel good the first time, in his Greek temple. But he would
not let her feel good today, because this was a punishment. The
pain of his initial entrance had dulled to an uncomfortable ache as
he used her—punished her—in this debasing way.

“How does this feel?” he asked.

“Bad.”

“Do you like feeling bad like this?”

“No, Sir.”

The sheets, soft as they were, hurt her caned
arse cheeks. She never would have survived the entire caning, but
this… He loomed over her, tightening his grip on her legs whenever
she tried to draw away from him. His lips were parted, his
expression intently focused.
What would your king think of
this?
she wanted to ask.
What if I told him these things
about you?

But she would never dare say such things to
the king. She couldn’t tell anyone about this, or explain the
conflicted way it made her feel.

After long, excruciating minutes of
surrender, her husband’s breath came faster and he pressed deep
inside her bottom. Gwen closed her eyes and wished she could
disappear. He grunted, pumping a few more times, and finished with
a drawn-out, satisfied sigh. How unfair, that he should be allowed
release when this was a punishment. But nothing between them ever
seemed fair.

For a long time afterward she didn’t move,
didn’t say a word. His shaft still impaled her, an intrusive
reminder of his mastery. His hands still grasped her legs. She
wanted to pull away, but she was afraid to do anything that might
irritate him further. At last he withdrew, leaving her empty and
cold.

“Open your eyes,” he said. “Look at me.”

She obeyed, even though she would rather not.
What if he made her admit that she took some sick pleasure in being
used this way? She couldn’t have owned up to it in that moment, not
even under torture. Not even if it was true.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I won’t
embarrass you again.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” he said with
sharp impatience. “But you’ve been punished for this episode, so
we’ll move past it.”

He reached up to the headboard to release her
bonds, and Gwen thought,
I don’t know how to move past it.
She hated him, with his orders and his threats and his lecherous
forms of punishment, but when he released her and took her in his
arms, she clung to him as if she loved him. Maybe it was only that
she had no one else to comfort her and hold her.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m sorry,
please forgive me.”

She began to cry, silent tears that leaked
from beneath her eyelids. He wiped them away and murmured that her
punishment was over. As if that mattered, as if that could calm the
storm in her heart! How pleased he must feel, that she begged his
forgiveness. He would believe that she had learned a lesson, but
the real lesson was that she was a harlot who could not control her
yearnings.

No wonder he demeaned her.

No wonder he punished her.

She didn’t know if she was relieved or
devastated when he finally dismissed her to her room.

Chapter
Twelve: Folly

His duchess did not come down that night to
dinner, and he didn’t order her to attend him. Instead he sat alone
at the head of the table, the silent ruler of his broken, miserable
estate.

Her horse had arrived that
afternoon—lamentable timing. He went to the stable after he’d
punished his wife, and watched the grooms put the mare through her
paces until he was satisfied she had been tamed to bridle and
saddle. He would not get rid of the creature now, as much as he
wished to. He could only hurt his duchess to a certain degree
before he crossed a line.

Perhaps he’d already crossed that line.

Aidan tried to convince himself he’d only
been trying to teach her a lesson. The caning, perhaps. The
buggering, no. He might pretend it was a punishment, but it had
been his own lustful vice, his perverse reaction to the way she
struggled after he bound her to the bed. Gwen knew it too, but she
let him have his way, and then reviled herself for it afterward.
Horrible.

Their relationship was bleak and dishonest,
and broken at the core. He had reduced his wife to tears in some
misguided attempt to soothe his ego, and then sent her away for the
remainder of the afternoon because he couldn’t deal with the guilt.
He’d never imagined he’d be so awful a husband, that he’d be such
an abject failure at nurturing his wife.

But he could give her the horse.

After dinner, he climbed the wide marble
staircase and walked down the echoing corridor to her chambers. She
was curled in a chair in her sitting room. A tray of food sat
beside her, mostly untouched. He crossed to her and stopped a few
feet away.

“How are you?” he asked.

She sat up straighter and clasped her hands
in her lap. “I’m fine.”

She was not fine; nor was he.
I’m sorry,
Gwen. I’m sorry…
He almost wished she would berate him for a
monster and a pervert. Even now, he wanted her. He wanted to be
inside her, inside this beautiful, wild duchess who made his life
such a hell.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, nodding to the
tray.

“No, Sir. I’m not.”

She thought he was here to take her to bed.
He could see it in her resigned expression. It pricked him, that
resignation and dread.

“I know it’s late, but there’s a full moon
and plenty of light,” he said. “Are you too tired to ride?”

She blinked at him. “Ride...now?”

“Eira arrived today. She’s developed fine
manners, but she’s in need of a mistress, if you are up for the
job.”

Gwen stood at once, no longer woebegone but
breathlessly ecstatic. “She’s here now, in the stables?”

“She is. Go put on something for riding. Be
quick.”

She started toward her dressing room, but
then she hurried back and threw her arms around his waist. “Thank
you,” she said. “Oh, Sir. Thank you.”

The exuberant hug shocked him. He raised a
hand to stroke her hair, but then she was off again, calling for
her lady’s maid.

Aidan sat at her desk to wait, and noticed a
half-finished page of Welsh scribblings. Letters had begun to
trickle in from Wales, though she had not done a lot of writing in
return. The letters she did write were carefully lacking in detail.
She didn’t say anything negative, but he could glean her loneliness
and homesickness from the translations his servant provided. The
spidery lines of her writing made him feel very glum.

When he took her down to the stables, Gwen
squealed and stroked and caressed her Eira, and whispered Welsh
words in her ears as they pricked to the sound. What was she
saying?
Thank God you’re here. I’m trapped in this mansion with
this horrid man who ties me to his bed and beats me, and sodomizes
me for his pleasure.

He told the stable hand to saddle Gwen’s
horse, and his stallion. “We can ride on one condition,” he
said.

“Yes?”

“You’re not to kick your heels into her side
and run away into the night. Your mare has been tamed to city
manners. You must stay abreast with me and hold her with a firm
hand.”

“Yes, Sir,” she agreed, and then she turned
to the horse with a sympathetic gaze. “Is it true? Have they tamed
all the life out of you? All your spirit? I still love you, pretty
lass.” She patted her mane and spoke again in Welsh. He wanted to
ask what she said, what she and the horse were plotting. Was she
promising her a wild ride as soon as his back was turned?

“I mean what I say about sedate
horsemanship,” he repeated. “If I learn you’ve been riding her
neck-or-nothing, I’ll leather you
and
your horse.”

But none of his dire warnings could dampen
her joy. She climbed on her mount and took up the reins like a
proper lady, even correcting the horse in Welsh when she danced a
step sideways.

“You ought to speak English to her,” he said
irritably. “She’s an English horse.”

Gwen turned to him as they headed out of the
paddock. “Does it bother you that you can’t understand?”

“It bothers me that you talk more to the
horse than you talk to me.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

Aidan didn’t know. He didn’t know what he
wanted to talk about. Any topic seemed fraught with peril. Her
homeland, her life, their marriage.

“How did you learn to ride so well?” he
asked.

“I’ve ridden since before I could remember. I
grew up a lonely child, with gruff older brothers who found me very
tiresome. Horses were my favorite friends.”

Perhaps that explained her manners. If only
London’s court were made up of horses rather than people. He
allowed himself to picture King George and Queen Charlotte as rough
Welsh mounts with glittering crowns.

“Did you have a pleasant childhood?” she
asked. “A happy family life?”

Had he? Perhaps. “It was just me and my
sister, but we got on well enough. I rarely saw her most days. I
was raised very strictly, and spent a lot of time at lessons.”

“Because you were to be a duke?”

“Yes. I was my parents’ only son. I was a boy
when I inherited the dukedom.”

“I suppose you were sad when your parents
died.”

In truth, he had barely known his parents,
only the grand and glittering aristocrats. His childhood had been
consumed by statecraft and manners, and the occasional paternal
audience, during which he was stringently measured and judged.

The same way you judge your wife now...

They fell into an uncomfortable silence as
they rode deeper into the woods. Gwen was sitting high on her
saddle. Poor, sore bottom. He had done that to her. “Are you cold?”
he asked. “Do you wish to go back?”

“No, Sir. Unless you wish it.”

“How do you like your horse? She is not
completely docile, is she? Her good manners are only for show.”

He spoke about the horse, but he realized he
might as well be talking about his wife. No matter how much he
bullied her into proper behavior, and
yes, Sirs
and
no,
Sirs
, underneath she would always be that wild, lonely girl
from Cairwyn who’d grown up in a dark castle, and seduced him in
that meadow.

Gwen patted the mare’s neck and smiled at
him, and he remembered her abrupt hug up in the room. It seemed she
was always flitting to him, and then flitting away again before he
could capture her in any lasting way. She was not a duchess, not by
nature and especially not by will. Like her horse, she would always
be pretending, waiting for the opportunity to rebel. Perhaps that
was why he plagued her every night with his caresses. That was the
only time she stopped pretending, and rebelling.

The horses had taken them into the garden
clearing, by the temple folly. He stared at the marble edifice and
stone columns, and remembered their encounter there, when he had
made her admit she liked perverse and common pleasures.

“Let’s stop here a while,” he said.

She looked wary. Well, he had given her the
opportunity to return to the house, and she hadn’t taken it. He
would not let her go now. They tethered the horses to a nearby
tree, and then he put a hand at the small of her back and led her
toward the temple. When he took her inside and shut the door on the
moonlight, the space went pitch black. She clutched at his
coat.

“I can’t see,” she said.

“You don’t need to see.”

He found her lips in the darkness and kissed
her, the sort of violent, grasping kiss one only gave in the
absence of light. As he did so, he hiked up her skirts so her arse
was bared. She whimpered as he ran his palms across her cheeks.