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Harmony recalled the barrage of caricatures in the papers. They’d been embarrassing enough, but the thought of her father seeing them…
“What does he do to you?” he asked. “Does he beat you? Make rough with you? If he does, I’ll take you away from him this very moment. Duke or no, I’ll not allow a daughter of mine to be abused.”
“It’s not at all like that.” She was blushing to her ears from this mortifying conversation. “He doesn’t beat me. He doesn’t do anything outside the law. It is…oh, how to explain? He likes a…a disciplined sort of lifestyle. I’ve agreed that this is good for me too. It keeps me focused and thoughtful. After all, I’m a duchess now.” She’d exhausted the extent of her capabilities to explain the matter. “Please trust me. All is well. If it wasn’t, I’d send Redcliff or one of the other servants to tell you right away.”
He didn’t look convinced. “You know, I never laid a finger on your mother. I never hit her—or you—even though it was within my rights to do it.”
“I know. You were a gentle father.”
“I loved your mother just as she was. There are other ways to enforce discipline, such as kindness and loving guidance. These are skills every husband should have.”
“He does have those skills.” Harmony twisted her hands in her lap, then looked back up at him. “Papa, I knew when I wed him what our marriage would be like. I agreed to it. In some way, I wish for order and propriety too. It comforts me to know that he will gather me in when I go too far. And I always go too far, you must admit. I was allowed to run…perhaps…a bit too wild in my formative years.”
Her father bit at his lip. She didn’t mean to chastise his parenting skills. His voice was gruff when he spoke. “I wronged you, poppet. I abandoned you after your mother passed. You see, it was so difficult when you got older, because…well…you recalled her so much to me. You have her same beauty, her same energy and charm.” His eyes misted over, and Harmony’s throat tightened with emotion. Her father composed himself and took her hand. “I miss your mother so, even to this day. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father to you these last years. If I can do anything to contribute to your happiness, I will. Stephen too. That scapegrace has been tamed something awful by his Meredith. You wouldn’t recognize him. There’s a baby on the way, he’s just written.”
Harmony clasped her hands. “Truly? How wonderful. I’m to be an auntie. But, father.” She lowered her voice. “What is afoot with you and the dowager? How did you arrive here together?”
Her father puffed up with a pride she hadn’t seen in evidence in a while. “Why, I’ll tell you how. We rode here together. A gem of a woman, the dowager Courtland, when I can steal a moment without that Mrs. Lyndon by her side.”
Harmony had to laugh at that picture. Her father and the dowager, evading Mrs. Lyndon like two young people dogged by a chaperone. “You are not… Surely you are not courting the dowager?”
Her father waved a hand. “I am too old to court anybody, and she’s too high above me anyway. We talk and write letters. Perhaps one day I’ll marry her or perhaps I won’t. Depends what she wants, if you know what I’m saying. She’s the type to rule the roost. These Courtlands,” he said, with another wave of his hand. “What are we to do?”
“I don’t know, papa. I really don’t know.” Harmony’s head was reeling. The dowager and her father?
“Harry?” The dowager’s voice shrilled from the doorway. She poked her head into the room with a beleaguered expression. “My son would like to have a word with you in the library. Something about discussing the honor of your intentions.”
“What?” Her father rose from his chair.
“He believes we should not have ridden all this way without a chaperone!”
“That young upstart.” Her father crossed the room and offered the dowager his arm with a lazy bow. “I’ll tell you this, Ermie. I shall set him straight if he thinks to trap me into marrying the likes of you.”
The Dowager Courtland giggled—giggled!—as her father turned and winked at her. Then the two of them put their heads together and sailed out the door.
“Oh my goodness,” Harmony said, burying her face in her hands. “Oh my goodness, it is too much.”
Chapter Twenty: The Ball
Two Months Later
They decided—together—on a weekly system of accounting for her transgressions. Not that he didn’t occasionally spank her in a rush of exuberance, or lay on some heat before he made love to her. Harmony loved those spankings tossed over his knee in the bedroom. But for purposes of discipline, both of them found a weekly session suited them very well.
These sessions did not occur in her bedroom, or his, or in the study, but in his very stark and male dressing room, where things like belts and straps naturally abounded, and where he discreetly stored other tools such as riding crops, paddles, and various sizes of birch rods. The canes were left in the study. “A possibility,” her husband warned, “for the very worst misbehavior.”
Harmony tried not to think about that, but she did wait with a queer and excited feeling for Sunday evenings to arrive. She would sit at dinner with Court, barely noticing any other family members or guests, thinking only of what she had done that week in the way of naughty acts. She would stare at her husband’s hands and his stern and handsome face and wonder how he would choose to punish her. Sometimes he would catch her eye and she would shiver in guilty anticipation.
“You enjoy this far too much,” he teased one Sunday. After that, he had introduced the use of ginger figs into their punishment sessions. He’d procure lengths of the root from the kitchen gardens and carve them into slender phallic shapes with a flange at one end. He would carefully feather the edges of the ginger while she watched with wide eyes, and then…
Being spanked or whipped with ginger burning in her bottom was so very different than being spanked without it. When she admitted to Court that it made her feel much more punished, he made it a regular feature of her weekly disciplinary regimen.
This Sunday he had moved their session to an earlier time since the Courtland ball was to take place that night. Harmony headed toward her husband’s rooms just before the appointed hour in a pretty flocked dress and stockings, with her hair drawn up in a fetching style. At these weekly sessions, she took care to present herself in her very best light, and to accept gracefully his efforts to discipline her. In truth, these sessions kept her dearly connected to him. Even if they hurt like the devil most of the time…
The closer she came to his chambers, the harder her heart beat with excitement and alarm. She was already fit to fall apart over the ball and her role as hostess. Perhaps this time with Court would help her calm down and refocus her wits. It seemed the sessions always ended with her feeling clear-headed and relieved of stress.
That’s because he makes love to you so thoroughly afterward... Would he do so today, with the ball to prepare for? She hoped so, but it would be his choice, not hers. The last thing she could do after a spanking was make demands on her husband. But if he wanted her, even now in broad daylight, she would gladly submit to his whims.
Her fantasies along these lines became so ribald that by the time she arrived at his door and knocked upon it, she was blushing hot. He admitted her with an all-too-knowing smirk. “Improper thoughts?” he asked. “What a naughty wife you are. If not for these sessions, I believe you would be completely lost to the civilized world.”
She dropped an apologetic curtsy. “I am guilty as charged.”
“We had better begin then.” He removed his coat and draped it across the back of a chair, then his waistcoat, carelessly flicking open the buttons. He turned up the frilled cuffs of his shirt, exposing the muscled grace of his forearms. Harmony’s heart accelerated and her mouth went completely dry.
“You will remove your gown, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
She struggled out of it with her husband’s help until she stood only in a short chemise and stockings. His gaze raked over her with carnal heat, and then he crossed to a bureau and lifted the lid of a silver-domed plate. The ginger. He took up his carving knife and stood facing her, preparing the gnarled root just prior to her punishment so it would be in its most fresh and potent state.
“Shall we talk about this week?”
She watched his fingers work. “Yes, sir.”
“We have been very busy with preparations for the ball, so some of your harried and disrespectful behavior toward my mother might be excused. For instance, when you made fun of the turban she specially commissioned for this evening’s revelries.”
She felt a snort of laughter rising in her throat.
“Harmony,” he chided.
The laughter burst out, bold and disrespectful. “It’s only that there were so…many…birds…upon it.”
He pursed his lips, focusing staunchly on the ginger. “You are not helping your cause.”
She clamped her mouth shut, knowing he, too, was trying not to laugh.
“Then there was the matter of my mother’s favorite bonbons mysteriously disappearing.”
“I only ate three of them,” she protested. “My papa ate the rest.”
“Ah, but I cannot punish your father, only you. I trust they were delicious enough to be worth a sound switching.”
Harmony’s galloping heart turned over. He hadn’t yet punished her with a switch! Her eyes went to the table where he normally laid out the implement of his choosing and there she saw it, slender and newly peeled by the looks of it. “Oh,” she said softly.
