“Oh goodness. Your parents?”
“And their friends, sometimes. You look shocked, Ophelia. I’m certain they all enjoyed themselves. Shall I explain the particulars of erotic punishment?”
“I don’t want to know.” She put her hands to her eyes, then her ears, daunted by his smile. “Do you…have you…?” She couldn’t finish the question.
“Have I engaged in erotic punishment in that temple?”
She nodded. “Whatever that is.”
He was guiding her toward the folly, not that she wanted to go.
“I have, in the past,” he said. “When my friends and I found this place, we didn’t know what it was for. When I got a bit older and wiser, I made use of it during the wilder house parties of my bachelorhood. It’s quite fun to imagine you’re in ancient times, doing perverse sorts of things.”
She couldn’t picture these “perverse things,” could hardly believe what he said was true. When they reached the temple, he looked behind a rock at the edge of the foundation and extracted a long, narrow key. This opened the lock handily.
“You see,” he said, pushing open the door. “No snakes or badgers.”
She could see at a glance that the room was indeed created for the business of punishment. There was an imposing pole in the center that made her draw in a breath. On closer inspection, she saw it was a polished whipping post with cuffs attached. She turned about and noticed a pair of shining chains hanging from a corner. There was a rack on the opposite side with more leather cuffs, and several platforms and benches arranged along the smooth, stone walls. The only light for the room issued from the doorway, as well as four small windows at each side.
She did not dare step inside to inspect anything more closely. What if he closed the door and rolled up his sleeves, and said I believe I shall punish you right now, Lady Wescott, in his lofty, lackadaisical way? What if he locked her in there and bound her into one of those sets of cuffs? And then he…
No. She couldn’t imagine it. Erotic punishment? She didn’t want to imagine it.
“Were they frightened?” she asked, backing away. “The women you brought here to punish, were they terrified?”
“Dear girl, they were willing. It was all in fun, for excitement and pleasure.”
“Pleasure? I don’t understand.”
He sighed. “You wouldn’t.” He took a last look inside, a longing look that unsettled her, and shut the door.
“You shouldn’t have married me,” she said. “If these are the things you like, then I…I will never make you happy.”
“I didn’t have a choice, remember?”
She watched as he locked the secret room away. “I cannot imagine enjoying anything like…” She waved a hand at the door. “Like that.”
“Nor can I, when you’ve such an attitude of aversion.” He placed the key in its former hiding place and returned to her. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll only require one thing of you in our day to day life, and it will happen soon.” His piercing eyes held hers. “I’ve given you time, Ophelia, but a honeymoon is a honeymoon. You can’t push me away forever, especially when I’m sleeping next to you each night. It’s not easy for me, you know. My control can only stretch so far.”
Her chest constricted, her body quailing away from his, even though he didn’t touch her. She must stop having the nightmares, so he wouldn’t need to lie in her bed. It gave him the excuse to come to her, to touch her. Soon, he would take full possession of her body again, come inside her as he’d done the first night she met him. He’d had so much power over her then.
“I’m tired,” she said, walking away from her husband and his profane Greek temple. “I think I ought to go inside.”
“Yes, and rest, so you can come down and join me for a proper dinner tonight. Eight o’clock. The servants must see us dining together as husband and wife, or gossip will soon reach London.”
“Good servants don’t gossip.”
“All servants gossip,” he said. “I’ll send a footman to fetch you, so you won’t have any trouble finding the dining room.”
He was giving her an order to join him for dinner, and as the temple reminded her, he was only too happy to dole out punishments for poor behavior, erotic or otherwise. He’d given her two spankings so far for displeasing him. She didn’t care to receive another.
“As you wish,” she said, walking with him back toward the manor. She kept her expression neutral beneath her bonnet’s brim, but her blood beat in her veins, frenzied as her panicking heart.
*
When she met him at dinner, she was still unsettled, her mind turning on the alien concept of pleasurable punishment. She supposed she’d been too sheltered, for she could not imagine such a thing, but he admitted the vice with no embarrassment whatsoever.