Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Now the duke and duchess sat at the head table, entertaining their youngest child’s wedding guests in advance of next week’s nuptials.
“You must sit with me and your father,” she said, guiding him among the long, roughhewn tables.
“Of course, Mama.”
“Look who it is,” said his brother Theo. Beside him, his twin sisters Isabella and Constance tended to their children while their husbands passed around plates of food. They peppered him with questions about his journey as their young ones crawled from their chairs to throw themselves at “Uncle Aw-gust.” He patted them on their heads and sent them back to their dinners. The room was full of friends and family, all chatting merrily.
It was a lot to take in after his cold, solitary journey. He’d ridden most of the way atop his horse, while his valet rode in the coach with the luggage and gifts. The faithful old retainer, who’d followed him through Europe—and the wilder streets of London—in his reckless youth, deserved his comfortable journey. August had preferred the wind and cold, bundled against the chill. An external chill, and a bit of an internal chill also.
Oh, he was not feeling low, but he was not feeling jolly either. It was no fun to go to a wedding when you, yourself, ought to have been married a long while ago. It made one embarrassed, but he’d agreed to come because when the Duke of Arlington sent a terse note strongly requesting one’s presence at his daughter’s nuptials, one was obliged to comply.
It was natural that someone as bright and sociable as Elizabeth would want all her family and friends about her for her Christmas wedding. He’d noticed dozens of carriages parked at Lisburne’s stables, some of them spilling over into fallow winter fields. Between his parents and siblings, his friends’ parents and siblings and children and wives, Lord Fortenbury’s extended family, and all their servants and baggage, they’d become a noticeable presence in this corner of the Welsh countryside.
At the inn where he’d stopped last night, a buxom housemaid had offered herself to him without using so many words. She’d made her availability known in constant flirtation as she served him at dinner, progressing toward the end to rubbing against him with burning glances. She’d pouted, disappointed, when he didn’t take advantage.
In a lighter mood, he might have, but this wasn’t London, and she wasn’t the sort of woman he was used to tussling with. She would have wanted sweet lovemaking, country simplicity, and his tastes were far from simple.
Instead, he’d retired to the inn’s small, firelit parlor and eavesdropped when conversation turned to the influx of aristocrats at Cairwyn. The local guests spoke of Lord Lisburne’s granddaughter and her Welsh wedding. Then they lowered their voices to trade gossip of Elizabeth’s ill-fated betrothals, and whether she was really a witch. Why did this nonsense travel from lips to ears all across the countryside?
He supposed it was because it was sensational, to talk about a witch or sorceress or whatever otherworldly thing they believed her to be. It didn’t help that she was daughter to the powerful Duke of Arlington, the wealthiest, most influential aristocrat in England, save the king.
Then there were her unusual green eyes, greener even than her mother’s. He was used to them now, but when people saw those eyes for the first time, with their rare, distinctive hue, they were often taken aback.
Poor Lisbet. His fingers had tightened on his pint as their gossip veered to the ridiculous, though he’d made no effort to defend her from the drivel pouring forth. Those simple-minded cretins hadn’t seemed the type to be reasoned with, and they weren’t worth his effort at the end of it all. Elizabeth would marry and be happy, and they could choke on their slander after making her the subject of so much lurid speculation. She did not deserve it. There was no one less lurid and evil than his sweet-natured piano student.
Former piano student.
He’d left those gossiping travelers and prowled about the inn’s common areas, finding a dusty piano in a side room which was only slightly out of tune. He’d sat down to play, to drown out their stupid insinuations. He’d played for Elizabeth, who deserved all good things, and none of the speculation that followed her.
Why, society’s whispered words had blighted her marital prospects, powerful father or no. Her previous fiancés…God rest their souls…had not been of the highest water, not what she deserved. Her current fiancé was honorable enough but dull as days-old dishwater. Perhaps duller.
What is more harmful to her then? his conscience questioned. The gossip of strangers, or using her for your twisted spanking fantasies?
Because at the end, he had come to enjoy spanking her too much. He’d begun to desire it in a very unwholesome way. The last spanking, the last “lesson,” had been a veritable orgy of self-indulgence on his part. He’d only just managed to refrain from taking down her thin knickers, from spanking her on her bare bottom as some sort of crescendo. It was not his right to see her bare bottom, nor spank her on it.