He wanted the jam tart. He wanted to eat his wife over and over, make her throw back her head like that until she was dizzy with it. Until he could rear up and pull her small body under his and pound into it.
He leaned against the stable wall, trying to force his mind elsewhere. The sky was pale blue and far away, and a hawk circled far above, below a single cloud. He rearranged his breeches again, trying to make room for a body part that no longer fit in his smalls.
He ached all over, his body telling him that there was only one thing he wanted.
Mia.
Thanks to his being an ass, he had exactly three nights in the rest of the year to enjoy her.
One would have to be tonight. Tonight . . . the promise of it sang in his blood. She was angry, but she would get over it.
He would tell her the truth: if she was greedy, he was as starving as a man who not only had been at sea for months on end, but at sea without food.
Surely she would understand. And they did have three nights left.
A slow smile curled his lips. That would be enough to take the edge off this frantic lust. He’d never slept with a woman for more than two nights in a row. He got bored.
Tonight should do it.
The second night would break the spell.
Chapter Twenty-four
NOTES ON CASTLE PLUM
~ After Frederic continues on his fruitless quest, the Evil Lord Plum discovers Flora unconscious amongst the poppies and takes her to his castle.
“The dark air hovering around Castle Plum drew attention to the ravages of time, visible in some parts of the building. The massy gate of the castle was opened by a tall, dark-haired old man who screeched, ‘Who goeth?’”
~ Conscious of approaching death, Flora begs Plum to send her beloved Frederic a lock of her hair.
~ Lord Plum keeps the hair and nurses her back to health instructs his housekeeper to nurse her to health. Yes! Very Bluebeard.
~ Lord Plum: “How improbable that any man who had once viewed the Ethereal Graces, the Matchless Beauty of this maiden, should quit her side?” (Flora cheers up.)
~ A ruse, because he has a wife in the attic. Or somewhere.
~ Her youth and innocence not proof against the dangerous combination of male beauty and sleek artifice. This is good!
Mia made her way back to her bedchamber and closed the door, which reminded her that locks had been installed on the bathing chamber door, but not on the door leading to the corridor. Vander would follow her to apologize, and she would be unable to keep him out.
She went straight into the bathing chamber, put the hook on both doors, and looked about for a place to sit. There were two alternatives: the bathtub or on the floor. She chose the floor.
She sank down, so devastated that for some seconds she didn’t even breathe, let alone cry.
Their marriage was only two days old and already a pattern was being established: Vander would blurt out the truth about how he felt.
Afterward, he would apologize and pay her false compliments . . . until the next time he let slip just how little respect he had for her.
Even worse—and she hated this truth—he hadn’t been wrong: she was greedy for him.
She had written that poem all those years ago. She had created the moonbeam, even if she hadn’t known what she was talking about. She had dreamed he entered her bedchamber. Somehow, just by being around him, that side of her sprang back to life.
She had allowed him to pull up her skirts and take her against a wall. It didn’t matter that he was her husband. In a way, it was worse.
Real ladies were never treated that way. He had seduced her without a single compliment or an adoring glance, no matter how insincere. How could she blame him?
She had agreed, if tacitly, to being demeaned. She had opened her legs and let him do what he willed.
If at any point she had said “no,” Vander would have stopped.
That was what hurt the most. She didn’t want to be a woman like that. Words knocked around in her head, ugly words: greedy, cock, pearls . . . jam tart. They brought on tears that streamed down her face until she had her head on her knees, sobbing.
Sure enough, after a while, there was a knock on the door leading to Vander’s bedchamber.
“No,” she said, taking a shuddering breath. “Please go away.”
A moment of silence, followed by the sound of retreating footsteps. Seconds later, the door to her bedchamber rattled.
“They are both locked,” she said, choking. “Just leave me alone, please.”
“No.”
It would seem that dukes expected to get their way all the time, even when their duchesses were desperate to be alone.
“Go away!”
“I want to talk to you. I must apologize.”
Mia heard a floorboard squeak as Vander shifted his weight. She had known that apology was coming. Did she care to hear it? Not particularly.
He had already made clear what he thought. And he’d said it in the heat of passion, when a man couldn’t lie if he tried. What he’d said was real. It was no great surprise he was now sorry he’d blurted that out. He was a decent man, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
But that didn’t make it any less truthful.
She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I accept your apology,” she said, clearing her throat and raising her voice. “I shall be out in an hour or so. Please give me some privacy.”
She began pulling herself back together. After all, she wasn’t sluttish all the time. Only around him. Her poem had been innocently desirous.
Not that she was innocent any longer. She had taken one look at his unbuttoned breeches, and she would have done anything to have him thrust inside her. Lie down on the ground, on the gravel, probably.
Another tear slid down her cheek.
Up against the stable wall.
She shuddered at the memory. If she could just get away from Vander, she could regain her self-respect. She wasn’t like this with other men. She knew with absolute certainty that she would never have behaved like this with Edward.
They would have had an affectionate marital life, intimacies conducted under the bedcovers, with respect.
Love would have come in time. She had already loved him a bit. Or, at least, she had been tremendously fond of him.
“Duchess!” It seemed that her husband was growing annoyed. Her thoughts darkened. Vander ought to shoulder some blame as well. He had treated her like a hired harlot, even though she was his duchess.
The door rattled in its frame, more forcefully now. “Open this door!”
Did he really think that roaring at her would make any difference? He was far too used to getting his own way. Women had probably melted in front of him from the time he was . . . oh . . . fourteen. Thirteen, she thought, remembering what he looked like at that age.
The door rattled some more and he began ranting about something or other, but she had stopped listening.
Hadn’t he said something about a race tomorrow or the next day? A pulse of relief went through her. He would be gone soon.
Suddenly she heard Susan’s voice, and Vander ordering her to take herself downstairs, which he hadn’t any right to do.
“She’s my maid!” she shouted.
Susan abandoned her, of course; she could hardly refuse the duke’s command.
There was a huge thump and the whole door vibrated.
“What are you doing?” Mia shrieked. “Nottle said that door was imported from Venice.”
“So what?”
Another resounding thud.
“It probably cost as much as a thatched roof! Don’t you dare break it.”
“Then open the door. Now!”
“I want to be alone,” she cried. “Is that so hard to understand? I want to think.”
His voice quieted. “Don’t think.”
“How can you say that? Do you think that you can rule every moment of my day?”
“I know
what you’re thinking.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re thinking that I don’t respect you.”
“I am not.” There was no point in dwelling on unpleasant truths.
The door rattled again. “Mia, if you don’t open this door, I shall break it down.”
“Oh, do go away, why don’t you!” she snapped. “You don’t care how I’m feeling. I’m the wife you loathe, remember?”
“I do not loathe you.”
Her answer was a curse that she had never spoken aloud before. In fact, now she thought about it, he brought out all her worst tendencies.
“I do not loathe you,” he repeated.
“You—you did that to me, and you said those things. A man only treats a woman he loathes in that manner.” She kept her voice steady even though another tear ran down her cheek. “Or a woman he’s paid for.”
“That’s it.” Another thud, and the door bowed ominously inward for a long instant. With a shriek, the lock gave way and the entire hook and eye assembly flew across the chamber, smashing into one of the long mirrors.
She turned from gaping at the cracked glass to see Vander standing in the doorway, looking so stormy and beautiful that her heart temporarily lodged in her throat. “Look what you’ve done!”
“I hate these damned mirrors. In fact, I loathe everything about this room.”
Mia wrapped her arms around her knees and put her head down again.
Edward would never have treated her like a harlot. He had kissed her with reverence. Once he even dropped a kiss on her forehead for no reason.
Vander hadn’t kissed her when they wed, not even when the vicar bade him to. It was no wonder that his kisses were more like invasions than demonstrations of respectful affection. His kisses were just about lust, brute lust.
He stood over her now, as big and tall as a pine tree. Mia refused to look up. He could glower and bully her all he wanted.
Then Vander hunkered down before her. “I’m sorry, Duchess. I shouldn’t have said those things. They were unconscionable.”
“Yes, well,” Mia said. “I’m sure you had your reasons. It hardly matters.”
“Yes, it does matter, because I’ve hurt your feelings and I didn’t mean to.”
At that she raised her head. “Yes, you did mean to hurt my feelings. No man would speak in that manner unless he deliberately wished to hurt. But at least you were speaking the truth. I prefer the truth.”
“What truth?” He sounded frustrated.
“You were correct. I—I bewhored myself.” Her voice wavered a little. Whore was such an ugly word; she had never thought to apply it to herself. But she would never have thought that she could behave in such a manner either. “All the same, I saw in your eyes that you wanted to hurt my feelings, so don’t try to insult me by pretending otherwise.”
He sat beside her.
“I didn’t deserve that from you,” she said, steadying her voice. “You didn’t say a single nice thing to me. Not even one. I may not have behaved like a lady, but neither were you a gentleman. I think they treat doxies with some respect.”
“You did not behave like a doxy.”
Mia’s gut clenched. “Yes, I did. There’s nothing you or I can do to change that. I have—I have a part of me that I loathe, but I will spend the rest of my life taking control of these disgusting urges. I vow it.”
He flinched at her words; then his hands clamped on her arms and he lifted her straight into his lap.
Mia gave a startled yelp. “Let go of me! Just because I’m small doesn’t mean you can keep moving me about like a doll.”
It felt good to be in the circle of his arms, though.
“There was nothing disgusting about what we did.” His voice was firm and unwavering. “And you are beautiful, not loathsome.”
Mia would have snorted, but she remembered just in time that ladies don’t snort.
“I behaved like an ass afterward,” he said. “I just— I’m not used to feeling that way while bedding a woman.”
“‘Bedding!’” Her voice was bitter. “That would imply we got as far as a bed. I wasn’t even worth a pair of sheets.”
He gave her a gentle shake. “I was overcome. We both were. And Duchess, I’ve never been that mad for anyone. Any woman. Ever.”
Mia’s heart missed a beat.
“When it comes to refinement, I’m an ass,” Vander said. “I didn’t bother to learn ballroom etiquette and the rest of it. But I have never found myself so overcome by lust that I couldn’t even get to a bed. You turn me into a madman. That’s the truth, if you care to hear it.”
An involuntary shudder ran through Mia. His arm tightened, pulling her head against his shoulder.
“I feel that way now,” Vander told her, his voice low and gruff. “I just had you, and all I want is to take you again. I could do it on the floor or in that bathtub. I see you, and I want to get close. I smell you, and I want to taste. I taste you, and the only thing I want is to shove myself inside and ride you until you scream with pleasure.”
Mia’s entire body turned liquid at his words and she couldn’t find an answer.
“If you think I have ever spoken to any woman the way I spoke to you,” he continued, “you’d be mistaken. I may not prance around like a court dandy, but I’m a decent man. I have paid for my pleasures because I don’t like adultery and I don’t—I didn’t—want to marry. But I have always been courteous. I’ve never behaved like a lunatic, not until I met you.”
Mia closed her eyes. She didn’t know what to think.
“Four nights won’t be enough,” he said, his voice rasping.
She struggled to keep up with what he was saying. “What?”
“This is some sort of erotic madness.” He hesitated. “I think it will burn out. I don’t want you to . . . I don’t want you to fall in love with me again, because I’ll end up hurting you.”
“I won’t,” she said swiftly. “Do you think I could love anyone who would treat me this disrespectfully?” It was a lie. She loved him so much that she ached with it. But she couldn’t let him know. She couldn’t.
He would walk away, leaving her devastated. But at least if he didn’t know how she felt, she could keep the humiliation to herself.
His hand stroked her arm. “I know it can be hard for women to keep their feelings separate when they’re making love.”
Was he feeling sorry for her? Again? Mia straightened and glared at him. “Vander, there is nothing that could get me to fall in love with you after what happened years ago at that musicale, let alone your coarse behavior this morning.”
“That’s good,” he said immediately. Still, she could tell that he believed he was so irresistible that she would fall for him anyway.
“I have been in love,” she told him, keeping her gaze unwavering.
“I know that.” His thumb rubbed across her lip. “You’ve been biting it again. Your bottom lip has turned the color of a ripe strawberry.”
“Not with you. That was a silly infatuation, and I was only a girl. I hardly knew you.”
His thumb stopped.
“My fiancé, Theodore Edward Braxton Reeve, courted me for a year and we were betrothed for another year. I knew him very well—and I fell in love with him.” She wasn’t precisely telling the whole truth, but it didn’t matter.
A dark emotion flashed through his eyes. “You still love the man who jilted you?”
Mia ignored that question. It was none of his business, and he would like her answer too much. “Edward is brilliant, handsome, and very kind. He is a professor at Oxford, and he knows your friend Thorn. In fact, I believe Mr. Dautry bought a machine of some sort from him.”
“The patent for a machine,” Vander said slowly. “I remember now that Reeve was the man who designed a continuous paper-making machine. Thorn made a fortune on it.”
“As did Edward,” Mia said, a trace of pride appearing in her voice, even though the last thing she should do is
feel pride for the man who had jilted her.
Vander’s hand slid down to her throat, an indescribably soft caress. “I find it harder and harder to believe that he left you at the altar.”
Was it worse to say cutting things to her, as Vander did, or to leave her, as Edward had done? Mia cleared her throat. “My point is that you needn’t worry that I will become infatuated with you, simply because you made love to me against the wall of the stable. If that is the right word for what we did.”
“It is not.” He leaned down and whispered a different word in her ear.
Mia felt herself turning bright red. “You mustn’t use that word in my presence, let alone to me.”
“It’s part of the madness I fall into when you’re around me,” Vander said, his voice rasping. “I want you, Duchess. I want you so badly that I’m having trouble thinking even right now. You’re telling me that you are still in love with that miserable son of a bitch you were betrothed to, and I’m sorry about that. All the same, the only thing I want to do is lie down and pull you on top of me.”
On top? Mia gave that a second’s thought before returning to the subject at hand. “You see my point, don’t you? You needn’t worry that I will fall in love with you.”
“Because of Reeve.”
“Edward broke my heart.”
His thumb swept along her chin, and he said, “I hate to hear that, Duchess.”
“Yes, well . . .” She suddenly realized exactly what she was feeling under her bottom.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the most luscious arse in all Christendom?”
“No.” She shifted her weight, just to see that flare of dark lust in his eyes.
“I’m starting to get the idea that you have no idea what effect you have on men.”
Mia stopped wiggling. “I have no effect on men. And I don’t want you to pay me compliments that you don’t mean.” She cleared her throat. “That—what we did earlier—it wasn’t ladylike. But on the other hand, it was real. It hurt to be characterized the way you did, but I can see that the truth is preferable to insincere flattery.”