“Do you feel in love?” Warren prompted.
Hunter couldn’t profess to be in love, no. In fact, he’d languished in a most uncomfortable state of self-loathing since he’d left his wife’s bedchamber the night before. Aurelia had been beautiful, lush, nubile, innocent—and icy as her glacier-gray eyes. He’d enjoyed himself anyway, availing himself of her hot, tight pussy because it was his right, and because he’d gone without sex the entire week before.
That had been a mistake, of course. He hadn’t been as controlled as he ought to have been for her first time. He hadn’t been patient, at least not patient enough to overcome her deeply ingrained fears. He’d spanked her, to correct her in the notion that she might ever refuse his attentions, yes, but he’d done it selfishly too. He’d done it because it excited him, pervert that he was. The memory of her round, spankable arse still roused a rigid response in him. Had Warren asked him a question? He couldn’t remember.
“He’s rendered speechless by the blissful state of matrimony,” Arlington said, signaling for more libations. “Let’s hope Lady Dormouse flourishes in an equally blissful mood.”
“I wouldn’t think so, since he’s here at the club the day after his wedding,” Warren said glumly.
Hunter shrugged. “My wife’s in hiding. I hope the servants took her breakfast. Otherwise she’s starving to death in her bridal bower.”
“You’d best keep her alive, or you’ll have to answer to Laudable Lansing,” August said. “And he’s not one to be crossed. Then there’s Little Lansing to worry about. The Marquess of Whatever.”
“Severin,” said Hunter. “The Marquess of Severin.”
“The brother,” Warren nodded, still glumly.
They looked around. The Duke of Lansing never showed his face at the gentlemen’s clubs but his son—Aurelia’s brother—sometimes did. The Marquess of Severin did not appear to be in attendance but a bottle of whiskey was delivered to the table with a note.
“Ah,” said August, flipping it open. “With regards from the Earl of Newscombe. Congratulations on your marriage and all that.” He flipped the card over to Hunter. “You see, they all want to weasel into our depraved little group, since we’re down one member.”
“You’re not down one member,” said Hunter, once he’d turned to thank Newscombe with a nod. “I have no intention of turning into Laudable Lansing and forgoing the sins of the flesh.”
“But you’ve a wife now,” said Warren.
“What does that matter?”
“Here, gentlemen,” said Arlington, interrupting their spat. “As the first one of us to bed a virgin, I believe Towns deserves some type of commendation.” The duke poured for everyone at the table and held up his glass. “To Lord Townsend, who stuck his cock where no cock’s been before.”
“Stuck is right,” said Warren. “How’d you fit it in there without me coming beforehand to loosen her up?”
“All of you are degenerates.” Hunter shook his head, refusing to raise his glass. “It’s a nasty business, bedding a virgin. Nothing to celebrate, I’ll tell you that.”
The men drank anyway, and Hunter drank too in the end, because it was easier than dealing with his conscience.
“Wasn’t she grateful, then?” August put down his glass with a bang. “If she cried, you didn’t do it right.”
“She was afraid, damn it. She—” His voice cut off. These were private matters. He leveled a scathing look at his friends and hunched over his drink. Before he married, it was no unusual thing to talk about the women they bedded, since they shared most of them. But now the woman in question was his wife, the mother of his future heirs. “It’s none of your goddamn business, but virgins are...skittish.”
For long moments there was no sound save the clinking of glasses and the other muted conversations in the room. A gentleman in the corner crowed briefly over a hand of cards.
“You must try to allay her fears then,” said August, breaking the heavy silence. “It can’t be that difficult. Not for you.”
“How not? She doesn’t like me. She wanted Warren, you know.” He tried to make a joke of it, but his lips twisted and the jibe sounded more like a growl.
“Warren?” August barked out a laugh. “God save her from demons she doesn’t know. Did you tell her Warren’s a worse deviant than you? An unrepentant hedonist and lover of unnatural sex acts?”
“Well, that could describe any of us,” Warren retorted in an injured tone. “It’s not my fault Townsey’s wife developed a tendre for me. I never courted her. She was one of Minette’s friends.”
Hunter ignored the ensuing bawdy accusations and innuendos. He believed Warren. The man wasn’t one to flirt with innocents. Like all of them, he adhered to a code of honor. A morally sketchy one, perhaps, but a code of honor nonetheless. The four of them fulfilled their objectionable desires with experienced, willing women, and by silent agreement, left the innocents alone.
Of course, he’d been tempted to tell Aurelia about Warren the night before, especially when he felt her rejection and revulsion like a weight in his chest. He’d been tempted to pierce her precious, girlish fantasies and tell her just what sort of man she’d fallen in love with, but in the end he couldn’t do it. He’d already hurt her so much.
Or had he? Hunter wasn’t sure where Aurelia fit into his convoluted code of honor. He hadn’t broken any laws, spanking her and bedding her last night. It was a man’s right to discipline his wife, and a man’s right to enjoy the bit of flesh between her thighs and put a baby in her womb if he wanted to. There were so many more things he could have done to her, sordid, depraved things, but he chose not to. He chose to protect her from that side of him—and from knowing the truth about Warren—and all he’d received in return was her fearful distaste.
“I need to get back to my regular life,” said Hunter, and everyone at the table knew what he meant.
“Do you think Lady Townsend will accept your ‘regular life’?” August asked.
“She’ll accept what I wish her to accept. That’s one thing I’ll say for my wife. She’s easily cowed with the proper methods.”
Warren frowned. “Always the disciplinarian. Beaten her already, have you?”
“I would never beat my wife. I may have spanked her, though. She deserved it.”
“For shedding virgin’s tears? It’s going to keep me up tonight, that vision.”
“Are you judging me, Warren?”
His friend gave a lurid smile. “I meant, it’s going to keep me up in the nicest of ways.” He glared at his friend in feigned frustration. “I have to pay Marta or Imogene whenever I want to wallop a delicious arse. You only have to accuse your wife of some breach of behavior and turn her over your lap.”
r />
“Marriage has its perks.”
“For you, anyway.” Arlington grinned. “I don’t know how Lady Dormouse feels about those perks.”
“She’s my little dormouse now, fully and legally. She’ll feel what I want her to feel, or she’ll be punished for it.”
“Poor little dormouse,” said Warren, to general laughter.
Hunter took a deep drink of whiskey and raked a hand through his hair. It was all very well for them to laugh. He was feeling damn unsettled about Aurelia, and about married life. He would try again tonight to show her some warmth and patience in bed, but he didn’t know how long he could hold out before he returned to his bachelor-style pursuits.
*** *** ***
Hunter wasn’t surprised that Aurelia cried off on dinner, but he felt damned pathetic eating alone the day after his wedding. He ought to have stayed at the club with his friends but that would have caused talk. Here at home, there were only the stone-faced servants to witness the obvious failure of the Lockridge-Lansing alliance.
He sent a message for her to come down and join him, but it went unanswered when the servant was refused entrance to her rooms.
“Has anyone been in her rooms today?” he asked in a fit of temper. The servant informed him that her lady’s maid had been admitted for a short time but that the marchioness had not touched any of her luncheon or dinner trays.
“Fix another,” he said, pushing his plate away. She could refuse to admit the servants, but she’d not refuse him. He carried the tray himself, mounting the central marble stairway and stalking down the right side corridor to her suite of rooms. A footman materialized, sweeping open the tall, carved door without the least change in his expression, as if it were perfectly normal that his master might carry a dinner tray to his wife. After Hunter entered, the door closed behind him with a barely audible click.