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And he didn’t want to do that yet.
Soon, but not yet, because she was afraid. Not only afraid of being married, which she admitted, but afraid of him. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she held her body, that he frightened her. Of course, this both dismayed and excited him, because he was both a civilized man and a beast. Sometimes he would let the beast out to play with her, and she would enjoy it for all that. But tonight, their wedding night, in this carriage with her shaking in terror, he would be the civilized man no matter the beastly thoughts crowding his head.
He gave her tantalizing backside one last caress, and pulled her skirts down. “Sit up now, and behave. No more grousing about being a married lady. We’ve a nice, relaxing honeymoon to enjoy, and you’ll be pleased to know it won’t involve anyone else in society. Only you, and me.”
“Oh,” she said, smoothing down her skirts with palpable relief. “That’s good to know. And as you’ve said, there are plenty of beds.”
Lord save him from innocents. He stifled a sigh. Lady Baxter apparently hadn’t offered his bride any parting words of marital advice. “I perceive you are not very knowledgeable in the affairs of men and women,” he said.
If she smoothed her gown anymore, she would wear a hole in it. “I only know they should not be in bed together.”
He raised a brow. “Ever?”
“It’s best that way, yes. I understand that gentlemen sometimes entertain…wild humors.”
“Wild humors? My goodness.” He nearly laughed at this revelation, but she looked so serious he composed his expression. “Tell me about these wild humors. Do all gentlemen have them, or only certain types?”
She looked at him warily, as if he mocked, but he was taking this conversation very seriously. “I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “I only know that women and men are not supposed to go to bed together because…”
“Because why?” He was almost afraid to ask. “Because a man might be seized by wild humors?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
“Because you’re afraid, which I find very vexing.”
“I’m not afraid. It’s only that… My mother always told me men were not to be trusted. That they could be aggressive, and harm you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Some can, I suppose. But it’s hardly an intrinsic male trait. Have I harmed you yet?”
“You spanked me just now,” she pointed out. “And before, in the woods, you used a switch on me, and that really hurt.”
“Yes, and I stopped after five middling strokes, because you were teetering on the edge of utter disintegration. At any rate, you needed to be punished because you’d done a bad thing, and you felt terrible about it. There are logical, practical reasons behind the act of corporal punishment. Sometimes a man’s got to dole out a spanking or switching to make a fussing woman come around.”
“A fussing woman?” She ruffled up like an angry cat.
“Do not become peevish again, Josephine. You remember what happened, oh, five minutes ago.” The wretched thing went back to smoothing her skirts again, while he thought what a puzzle she was. “My dear, you must admit that you felt better after I spanked you. Expiated and all that. It would have been the end of the whole matter, if Baxter hadn’t found us on the way back.”
“But he did find us.”
“Yes, and I married you, which he wanted from the beginning. It has happened and we must resign ourselves to it. Come here, would you? Stop picking at your skirts.” He hauled her onto his lap and clasped her restless fingers in his. “Listen to me. There are men with whom you can feel safe, and men with whom you decidedly cannot. I promise you will always be safe with me, no matter how aggressive and wild you imagine men are. That’s not to say I won’t demand my marital rights.”
She stiffened in his arms. “What does that mean? That you’ll spank me whenever you like?”
He laughed, then sobered when he saw her expression. “Oh, my sweet, confused girl. Do you think we’ve been talking this entire time about spanking?”
He watched the flush spread across her cheeks. “I don’t know. I’m sure I don’t know what we’ve been talking about.” She tried to escape his lap, but he pulled her back and circled her in his arms, and made her face him.
“Do you even know what marital rights are?”
“I don’t want to know,” she said, shrinking back from him.
“I suppose you believe they involve wild humors. Whatever the hell those are.” He shouldn’t curse. He should look at her innocence as an opportunity. Above all, he mustn’t frighten her any more than she already was. “Marital rights are best explained in the moment,” he said. “I’ll tell you more about them tomorrow, once we’ve settled in at Warren Manor. Unless you’d like to start our honeymoon tonight?”
“Oh. Well. No, I would rather…” She stared past him at the wall, then turned toward the window as the carriage slowed. He could see the lights of the inn blazing in darkness. “I suppose Warren Manor will be soon enough.”
It wouldn’t be soon enough for him, not by any stretch, but he’d give her one night of respite. He hoped she would come around, not just in the bedroom but in her other misgivings. His friend Townsend had fought tooth and nail against the constraints of marriage, and was now blissfully wed, so Warren felt a calmness about the whole thing. Eventually they would grow comfortable with one another and figure out how to go on, and if he must be married, he preferred the interesting, complex Baroness Maitland to some simpering milksop.
If only she were not quite so complex.
Chapter Six: Marital Rights
They arrived the following afternoon at Lord Warren’s grand ancestral seat, comprised of acres of fields and forests, and a pretty, tree-lined drive that swooped about to the front of the house. No, it wasn’t a house. More like a mansion, or a palace, with rows of gleaming windows and a crenellated roofline, and yes, two round, pointed towers. When Josephine stepped out of the coach to gawp at the towering stone edifice, she came to understand how rich and esteemed a person her new husband was.
Inside, painted ceilings soared overhead, with ornately wrought chandeliers, and every kind of molded trim. The floors were of waxed and inlaid wood, and they echoed when you walked on them. Hallways led off in every direction from the grand set of stairs. Footmen stood about in bronze livery trimmed in blue, bowing and assisting, and opening doors before one could touch them.
From the gleaming state of the fixtures and furniture, and the size of the staff, it seemed clear that servants maintained the home even when no one was in residence. Each person, from the head housekeeper to the lowliest stable boy, afforded Lord Warren a respectful deference, and of course, showed her the same deference as his new wife. It all seemed intimidatingly fine, especially when she thought of the ramshackle shelters she’d grown up in.
But there were no more steaming jungles or parched savannas, or wild animals, or snakes, or spiders the size of her head. There were no more leaking abodes or foreign faces giving one inscrutable and terrifying looks. There was no more danger, which she knew in her mind, but could not quite fathom in her heart.
Lord Warren’s face was not foreign as they dined together in his elegantly appointed dining room. No, she’d come to know it well over the many hours in the carriage, although his expressions were still difficult for her to figure out. She worried about his propensity for wild humors, and whether and when he might kiss her again, and what she would do when he did. She wondered why he kept looking at her in that assessing way.
“Do you like your new home?” he asked as the footmen shuttled dishes in and out.
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” she replied. “It’s very grand.”
When she was young, her father used to tell her about the time he’d visited a pasha’s kingdom. He said there had been dancing horses and graceful, veiled women, and everything had glittered golden. Josephine always wished they might see something like that again but they n
ever had, and she had started to wonder if her father’s stories were true.
Perhaps Lord Warren had dancing horses in his stables.
“If you don’t like the food, I can have the cook prepare something more to your tastes,” he said, interrupting her memories.
