Under A Duke's Hand (4 page)

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 him... 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—”

“That horse is beloved to me. Do not
disparage her, and do not insult me because you found my clothing
too poor for your ducal sensibilities. We can’t all ride about in
gilded carriages.”

Her sharp scolding pricked him. This was the
worst possible beginning to a marriage. He would not be a henpecked
husband; this snippety girl would show him respect or she’d receive
a spanking in earnest, one she would be hard-pressed to forget. He
looked about to see who was near, then leaned closer and spoke in
her ear.

“I care nothing for your clothes, or your
damned horse. I wish to know if it’s your regular habit to dally
with unknown men. Because if it is—”

“It’s not,” she said. “I had never...
Before... It was your fault. You shouldn’t have been there. That
meadow was my special, private place to be alone, and spend time in
meditation.”

The heartbroken tenor of her voice confounded
him. He wanted to be angry. If only this entire debacle was not his
fault. If only he’d stayed silent and crept from the clearing,
rather than play with the pretty toy dangled before his eyes. She’d
gone straight to the lake and sat upon her rock, and he should have
left her there to her musings.

He hadn’t. His fault.

They exchanged no more words as they went in
to dinner, both of them fuming and trying not to show it. The
baron’s manor seemed as shabby and old as his betrothed’s pitiful
horse. Was the structure fourteenth century? Thirteenth? The floor
was cracked, the walls crumbling with centuries of wear. The dining
room was a true medieval great hall with scorched and pocked walls
from past skirmishes, probably with the English. God help him.

He and Miss Vaughn were placed next to one
another at the roughhewn table, in the midst of overflowing trays
and gauche candelabras. The seating was so crowded their elbows
touched. The Lisburne family, whose names he could not keep
straight, smiled and frowned and stared, and occasionally murmured
to one another behind their fingers. Neighbors arrived in the
middle of the meal, unannounced, and squeezed onto benches wherever
they pleased. Aidan was introduced more times than he could
remember. He finally stopped standing, as it was not a very
courteous company.

Wine flowed, and noisy conversations took
place in a mish-mash of English and Welsh. Whenever those around
him lapsed into the unfamiliar tongue, Aidan assumed they were
talking about him. Every so often, someone asked him a question
about London politics, or the king’s business, or some other
uncomfortable topic. As soon as he answered in as vague a way as
possible, they went back to bantering back and forth in Welsh. Miss
Vaughn sat stiff and silent beside him, barely touching a bite of
the celebratory offerings.

It was a painfully awkward dinner, but in the
midst of the bedlam, a lovely thought occurred to him:
I get to
marry the fairy queen.

Crumbling castle, dripping candles, scowling
brothers, rough-edged guests. So be it. At some point in the very
near future, he would have the right to take her hair down from
those braids and kiss her, and play with her, and turn her from a
good girl
to a bad girl. He looked down at her breasts again
and, this time, he allowed his gaze to linger. Those would be his,
those delectable globes, along with the rest of her body. In the
meadow, she’d displayed a smoldering sensuality that he couldn’t
wait to explore. The way she had looked up at him as he spanked
her, with that longing, and confusion—

“Your Grace?”

Her father looked at him expectantly. Blast.
Had everyone at the table seen him slavering over Guinevere’s
breasts? “I beg your pardon,” he said, to indicate he hadn’t heard
the question.

A few muffled guffaws drifted down the table.
Lord Lisburne flashed a gap-toothed smile. “I said that you’re
welcome to start the toasts, sir, as our guest of honor.”

The servants streamed in with more wine. Was
this to devolve into a drunken rout, then? He finally understood
why their wedding was to take place tomorrow afternoon, rather than
the customary morning—because all these soused peasants would still
be abed. He stood with his best aristocratic air and smiled down at
his future bride.

“I must disagree, Lord Lisburne. I’m not the
guest of honor. That title must surely go to my betrothed, who
graces all of us with her purity and beauty on this happy day.”

The lady in question pressed her lips
together and stared up at him as if he must be daft, but he was
only getting started. Public speaking was a particular talent of
his. He picked up his wine and gazed for a moment into its crimson
depths. “It was a long journey’s ride from my holdings in England,
and I spent the whole of it wondering about my bride-to-be. Would
she be short or tall? Pleasant or shrewish? Would she be
pock-marked, or buck-toothed?”

There was a soft rumbling of protest before
the slower among them realized he made a joke. “Then I arrived...”
he said. He paused and gazed down at Miss Vaughn. Guinevere. His
fairy of the meadow. He made a show of touching her cheek, and
perceived a tremble in her lower lip. “Then I arrived and
discovered an Angel of Paradise, a Welsh rose I shall be honored to
make my wife.” He looked around the table and raised his glass. “I
propose a toast to my future bride, and this rugged Welsh homeland
which has nurtured and sheltered her until now.”

The table erupted in approving shouts at this
courtly speech. Her father surged to his feet and followed with
rambling toasts to his daughter, his late wife, his homeland, his
king, and numerous other entities, until the table was adrift in
wine and Welsh exclamations. Aidan ought to have made a study of
Welsh language as soon as he knew his fate, as soon as the king
told him about his border bride. Too late now. Perhaps Guinevere
could tutor him in the most important words, words like
pretty
and
obedient
and
mine
.

He reached under the table to take her hand.
Before she could pull away, his fingers curled about hers.
Mine.
You’re mine now, or you soon will be.
A duke could do worse
than a fairy queen, he reasoned. While their acquaintance had not
begun in the most traditional fashion, he had high hopes for a life
with Guinevere Vaughn. If he could only weather these endless
toasts, this drunken dinner and the wedding tomorrow, he could
bundle his exotic bride back to England, where he could start
transforming her into the duchess of his dreams.

Chapter
Three: So Awfully Uncivilized

The wedding went about the way Aidan
expected. Flowery, country-shabby, overly emotional. Lots of
tears.

His bride wept openly through their vows,
wept so hard she could barely get the words out. Aidan felt some
sympathy, but a greater impulse to shake her and tell her to stop.
Did she think he was overjoyed to be here? He might have had a
London wedding with all his friends and contemporaries in
attendance. He might have wed a blueblood, a diamond of the first
water, and had an elegant breakfast reception at his Berkeley
Square home, rather than a drunken dinner in a dark, sooty medieval
hall which still stank of the previous night’s wine.

But he did not shake his bride. He was not
the shaking type. He was the proper, refined type, and so he gazed
at her steadily, allowing nothing in his expression to betray his
disgust at her histrionics. Thank goodness none of his friends had
made the journey to witness these nuptials; they would have mocked
him forever. By the time the ceremony ended and they signed the
marriage papers, Aidan felt in need of a very strong drink.

But he didn’t partake in any strong drink. As
scores of Lisburne guests grew drunker and drunker, Aidan sipped
brandy and stayed close to his bride. Now that they were legally
and officially wed, she had ceased crying, but she still looked
miserable. Nary a smile, and very little conversation. This
marriage was good for her father and her family, so they
celebrated, but his bride clearly did not think it good for
her
.