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She knew how to react to him when he was coarse or autocratic, but she didn’t know how to deal with this tenderness. Just as she was trying to sort it all out, he nudged her off his lap and seemed to go all stern again. “We must finish dinner. The hour grows late.”
“I think I am already finished.”
“You may be excused then. Try to get some sleep. We’re traveling tomorrow.”
She halted in her retreat. “Traveling where?”
“The season is over, for all intents and purposes. We shall retire to my country estate where we can commence your...training...in a more private and uncrowded setting.”
The word “training” made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Did he really mean to go through with this? His country estate was in Berkshire, she remembered, nowhere near his parents’ or her papa’s estate. She would be in the country, far from her friends and family, at her husband’s mercy.
I swear I’ll keep you safe.
She prayed it was true. She was not at all at ease with the idea of being trained for his pleasure, but with him in absolute control of her life now, what choice did she have?
Chapter Eight: That Good
Hunter sat opposite his wife on the journey west to Berkshire. Being a gentleman, he took the backward-facing bench. He might have sat beside her, elbow to elbow, and offered her a shoulder to lean upon, but he could study her more easily while facing her—and he had become rather fascinated with studying her. Every so often she shifted so their knees wouldn’t touch in the middle. Then he rearranged his long legs so they touched again.
It wasn’t a great distance to Somerton, but it was tedious with the servants and luggage carts coming behind them. He might have escaped the carriage altogether and gone ahead on his horse if he wanted. It was a sunny, temperate day, perfect for galloping neck or nothing, but he had chosen instead to ride with Aurelia in this velvet-lined and cushioned compartment. He’d become unsettlingly preoccupied with his little mouse after their discussion the night before.
He had tried to be authoritative and unmoving when he laid out his sexual ultimatums, but in the end he couldn’t help feeling some tender respect for his wife. She had been embarrassed, shocked, dismayed, but ultimately resigned to a situation she could not change.
And he had meant what he said about doing things for her in return. If she had been haughty and condemning, he would have done his best to make her miserable, but when she put her head in her hands and told him to take her back to her father in that pitiful voice, some part of his armor had cracked. When he whacked himself in the forehead with his own fork, her choked, stifled laughter had shattered it further.
The blasted woman literally didn’t know how to laugh.
He could tell she had never been allowed to laugh and make merry, not least of all from the way she clapped her hands over her mouth and looked at him with an expression of horror, like she’d performed some great breach of etiquette. His wife had been given everything, had she?
Except for permission to make merry and have fun.
Hunter and his friends searched out fun and merriment in every aspect of their lives, and wallowed in it when they found it. They always had, ever since they were young lads. What had Aurelia been doing while he was tearing around getting into scrapes as a child and sowing wild oats as a young man? Sitting somewhere stitching flowers on some blasted silk pillowcase, he presumed.
It wasn’t her fault she was the way she was. He had to remember that. How sober, how proper she looked now, gazing out the carriage window at the sunny day. He wanted to teach her to laugh and have fun, and to find pleasure where she might. At the same time, he wished to retain authority over her. He wished her to continue to be an obedient and appropriately submissive wife, not one of those shrews who led their husbands about by the balls while other gentlemen snickered behind their hands. It would be a delicate balance to manage it.
He moved forward to peer out the carriage window along with her. “It’s not far now, my dear. Not so far as traveling to Oxfordshire.”
“Why did you set up your country home so far from the Lockridge estates?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I liked the property. It’s a good mix of wilderness and civilization, and the manor itself is comfortable and in excellent repair. And of course, it’s closer to London, where I have always spent the majority of my days.”
She looked back out the window at rolling green fields, and the last of summer’s wildflowers. “It’s pretty country. As pretty as Oxfordshire, I think.”
“Certainly. At Somerton, there are paths for walking, and lakes and follies.” My, was he ever trying to impress her. He had never felt such pride in Somerton before. It was merely a country retreat, a place to escape and occasionally hold parties, an additional estate he might some day pass down to a first-born son, or a second-born, if the first set up at Lockridge. For now, it was to be his and Aurelia’s home, and he found himself hoping she would admire it. “Do you enjoy riding? There are plenty of places to ride, and a stable of admirable horses, if I do say so. We could ride out and have picnics now and again, if you like that sort of thing.”
She looked down at her lap. “I do not ride especially well, I’m afraid. And I’ve never been on a picnic.”
Never been on a picnic? He’d half a mind to ride to Oxfordshire right now and strangle the Duke and Duchess of Lansing for raising their daughter this way. “Why no picnics? Too subversive for an impressionable young lady? Too much dirt? Too many insects?”
“I was never permitted to run about outdoors or lounge on the ground. My mother said it wasn’t ladylike.”
Your mother was a blasted idiot, he thought to himself. “Will you raise your daughters that way?” he asked aloud.
She looked at him from under her lashes. “You mean our daughters?”
“Yes, our daughters, though you’ll have the raising of them, I suppose.”
“Well, I will want them to develop into respectable ladies, certainly.”
He couldn’t suppress a frown. “And I will want them to have picnics sometimes.”
Them. He was already picturing more than one daughter, just as he’d pictured more than one son. He was surprised by this, and a little unsettled. He slouched back upon the cushions, so their knees knocked together in earnest and she was obliged to shift hers away. “I think it a crime,” he said, “that you were imprisoned inside during your childhood. Your brother certainly had the run of Lansing Grange. The grounds around your father’s house, those old forests and meadows, were irresistible to me as a boy. I trespassed upon them all the time, sometimes with Severin, although he thought me a young, paltry fellow.”
“I never saw you at Lansing.”
“I didn’t come there because I didn’t want to see you. The few times I encountered you at the house, you seemed a big-eyed, staring sort of creature. Hair hanging down, and some glaze or something dribbling from your mouth.”
She glared at him. “I only dribbled as an infant, I’m sure.”
“Well, you were an infant then, practically. It was very off-putting to think of you as my future wife. It was not well done of them, to promise us to one another at such a young age.”
She unruffled a bit and eased back against the seat. “But you agreed, did you not? You signed the betrothal document. I was too little.”
“Yes. It was ridiculous stuff. It was a time in my life when I dearly wished to please my parents. One of the last times, I might add.” He staunchly pushed all such memories from his mind. “Ah, here are the gates, and the limits of the property. Welcome to Somerton.”
He was torn between watching out the window at his home—which had last housed a fortnight-long orgy—and watching her. Did he see some measure of awe in her gaze? Somerton was newer and more stylish than Lansing Grange. It was Palladian in design, with great columns and porticos, and wings flanking the great central manor. A road curved gracefully to the grand staircases framing the front door. A Roman
-style fountain rose in majestic tiers from the center of the paved courtyard. All around, gardens and fields stretched in a sprawling fashion, easily seen from the head road.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, with what he believed was true admiration.
And it was beautiful, he thought, seeing it through new eyes. Her eyes. The liveried staff, well-trained by his capable steward, arranged themselves in welcoming lines leading down from the landing. Perhaps Lansing was doing Hunter a favor, making him stay dutifully at home to play master of the manor. How singular, this feeling of satisfaction.
