It frightened her, the lingering strength of that desire. She was passionate about many things: horses, birds, weather, gardening, most things to do with nature, but she had not realized her own earthy nature until her handsome stranger had taken her in his arms. He’d elicited powerful responses in her body, tightenings and dampness and urges that made her cry into her pillow when her maid finally left her alone. He’d overcome her reason, at the same time appealing to her basest instincts. She had let him spank her, and it had only made her eager for more...
You’ll have nothing more, she scolded herself. The Duke of Arlington was on his way to meet her, and dine with her family and some other local gentry. She could barely breathe in the fitted constriction of her formal blue gown, and her scalp ached because her hair was so tightly braided and pinned against her head. Her lady’s maid had brushed it nearly an hour to achieve the requisite shine, then placed a slim gold coronet on top which had been her mother’s. Her father had brought her mama’s diamond-drop necklace too, although Gwen’s wrists and fingers were bare.
There was a great sense of trying to impress this duke, when they did not have the necessary affluence to do so. They’d scrimped and saved for this dinner for weeks now. The gown she wore had been procured along with four others when the marriage contract had been finalized. Shoes, gloves, fans, hats had been ordered which they could not afford. Gwen possessed these things already, in reasonable variety, but her Aunt Meredith had insisted they were not fine enough, and would humiliate them before the duke.
Because of this, Gwen had come to despise her future husband before she even met him, as she noticed her father drinking less wine, selling off horses, and quietly letting go a few servants in order to buy things fine enough to impress this kingly envoy, who would only grace their presence for a couple of days. The gown she wore this evening was the finest thing she’d ever owned, aside from her ivory and silver wedding gown, which hung upstairs for tomorrow’s ceremony. Even with the effort and sacrifice, Gwen feared the duke would look upon them and sneer.
So she waited with great trepidation beside her father and her brothers and their wives, all of them dressed in unaccustomed finery. The duke’s gilded, crested coach came gleaming down the rutted pathway to the courtyard. It was drawn by a team of four, all of them midnight black, in the same crested livery. She heard her brothers murmuring about fancy horseflesh and heard a few titters from her sisters-in-law.
Gwen stood rigid, hands clasped at her waist, wondering if she ought to smile or look serious, or run away screaming the way she wanted to. Her father would get money and land from this match, and a tenuous link to the monarchy. The duke too would be gifted lands in Wales, for future sons or daughters to inherit. This had all been explained to Gwen, that this fine and laudable match was important because it would secure the future of the Lisburne dynasty. So running away screaming was not an option, as much as she wished it were.
The carriage came to a stop, and a set of grooms jumped down in their gilded uniforms to let down the gilded stairs and open the gilded door. When the duke emerged in his gold-embroidered coat and breeches, she thought, my word, he is gilded too. The man was uncommonly tall, with formal buckled shoes and a gleaming black hat, and a gold-tipped cane. She noted these first details quickly, that he did not appear old or stooped, or fat about the belly. Finally, she summoned the courage to look at his face.
The handsome stranger of the meadow—the artist and rogue—stared back at her.
Gwen felt a flailing sense of disequilibrium. They could not be the same man. They were not dressed the same. They did not have the same hair, or clothes, or the same manner. She would not have believed they were the same man if she had not noted the shocked recognition in his gaze. He quickly shuttered his expression to one of polite hauteur.
“Lord Lisburne, I presume,” he said to her father. The men shook hands and exchanged formal greetings. All Gwen heard was the rush of panic in her ears. Were they to pretend not to know one another, then? Because this man—this duke!—had flirted with her, and kissed her, and handled her in a most inappropriate fashion. And she had let him, because he was charming and beautiful, and because she knew she must be married to some stodgy old aristocrat soon.
She could barely raise her face when he approached. His Viking hair was tied back, which granted him a more dignified appearance. She saw a muscle twitch in his jaw as her father led him over.
“I’m honored to introduce my daughter, Miss Guinevere Vaughn.”
“Miss Vaughn.” The duke bowed over her hand. “How pleased I am to make your acquaintance.”
He looked up and his eyes bored into hers. He was so close she could smell the scent of his shaving soap and starched linen, but all she could think of was the meadow, the smell of the flowers, and the lake, and his lips upon hers. She lowered her gaze and sank into a curtsy. Please, oh, please don’t say anything. Humiliation made her flush with agonizing heat.
She prayed everyone would think it nervousness, or shyness. Must he stare at her so? He was every bit as guilty as she. He was the one who had asked to sketch her, and then pulled her into his lap in that carelessly flirtatious manner. Oh yes, she was aware what sort of man he was, and he knew it.
But he knew her secrets too. God help her, she had spouted lies and behaved like a common harlot, even allowing him to spank her bare bottom. Would she be the ruination of all her father’s plans? Would the duke reject her? She thought she might faint, waiting to hear his next words. I don’t think I want her after all, or some other more subtle and political words that would invalidate their betrothal. It seemed an hour before he raised her from her curtsy and released her hand.
Then he smiled at her, a smile that said a thousand things. A smile that said no, I won’t tell, at the same time it said, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
And oh, she was mortally ashamed.
* * * * *
Aidan offered Miss Guinevere Vaughn his arm as Lord Lisburne invited the company in to dinner, the company being the brawny old war hero and his seven hulking, dark-haired sons with their plump country wives. And Rose, of course, his luscious village maiden.
She trembled, perhaps afraid of some reprisal, even though he was the one who had seduced her in the meadow. Who had preyed upon her, to put a finer point on it. He was ashamed to have done so, now that he knew who she was, then more ashamed that he thought it all right to do such things to a nobody with pretty hair and an alluring figure, but not all right to do to his future wife.
I’m a good girl, she had cried. Thank God he’d taken her at her word, and not tupped her on the grass the way he’d wanted to. When he glanced down, he could still see the blush upon her chest and the tops of her breasts.
Don’t gawk at her breasts, you monster.
Aidan had behaved monstrously toward her in that meadow. He knew it, but it was one of those things a duke was privileged enough to forget, unless the victim in question turned out to be one’s future wife. She had only to say a word of their illicit dalliance, and he’d be skewered into a thousand pieces by her hoary father and brothers for insulting her honor.
“They mustn’t know,” he said to her in a quiet voice.
She raised her head. Her gaze met his, those otherworldly green eyes that had haunted his dreams the night before. “Why didn’t you say who you were?” she asked in her musical Welsh accent. “Why didn’t you tell me your real name?”
“Why didn’t you tell me your real name?” he retorted. “And why were you wandering about that meadow?”
“I wasn’t ‘wandering about.’ I went there for solitude and privacy. You’re the one who intruded on my peace, and accosted me.”
“I hardly accosted you. You behaved like a trollop.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If I did, then so did you.”
Oh, to spank this Guinevere Vaughn. A real spanking, not the playful smacks he’d dealt her in the meadow. She deserved it. She had been unfaithful to him...with hi
m... Which, come to think of it, made everything rather difficult to sort out. He had no moral high ground from which to reproach her, but he did so anyway.
“I hope it’s not your general habit to dress as a servant and go about flirting with strange men,” he said.
Her mouth fell open. “I wasn’t dressed like a servant. Those were my riding clothes.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you weren’t in disguise? Why, that ill-fitting bonnet, and that decrepit horse—”