My Naughty Minette (Properly Spanked 3)

August turned at the servant’s voice, thinking, what now? But it was only a caller, the esteemed Duke of Arlington looking dapper in a deep plum coat and black breeches. Going to the theater? The opera? To visit some lady of the night? Arlington greeted him with a rakish smile. “How goes it, Augustine?”

August raised a brow. “Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere yet. I’m just back from the club. Warren and Townsend were there, and asked after you.”

“How are they?”

“How are you?” Arlington rejoined firmly. “There is talk that you never leave the house, that you are put upon by your bride, or suffering a terrible illness, or escaped on a trip abroad, or a dozen other hypotheses you really ought to put to rest.”

“It’s nearly the holidays. I’ve been busy.”

Arlington seated himself on a divan and stretched out his tall frame. “I thought you’d say something like that. Anyway, the fellows say hello, and wonder where you are, and Warren said for me to come here and tell you he hopes his sister is well. I imagine he wanted to visit himself but didn’t wish to encounter you. When will the two of you settle your differences?”

August watched Minette reach to smooth a wrinkle in his father’s blanket. “I don’t know,” he said absently. He really didn’t know. Things hadn’t been the same between them since that morning at Townsend’s, and perhaps would never be the same again.

Arlington let out a long, slow sigh. “Are you all right?” When August didn’t answer, his friend came to stand by him at the window. The duke noticed Minette sitting primly with her book, reading to his dying father. “The dear lady. How sweet she is.”

“He can’t hear her. He responds to nothing at all. I don’t know why she bothers.”

“She bothers because she’s got a kind heart.” Arlington caught August’s gaze. “I’m afraid you’re having a hard go of things, and reluctant to ask for help. Is there anything I can do?”

“You can assure Warren that Minette is fine. She is mostly fine.” He looked back out the window, at his wife’s curls peeking out of her bonnet. Now and again she tilted her head as if emphasizing some passage in the book. “She says my father must be in the sun. That he would not want to spend his final days in a dim sick room. She’s reading him poetry, to soothe his soul.”

“She’s being very much like Minette, isn’t she?”

“My God. Arlington.” The words burst out, embarrassingly desperate. “What am I to do with the girl?”

“First of all, you’ve got to stop this nonsense about her being a girl. She’s not a girl. She’s a woman, and you’ve married her.”

“She’s like a sister to m—”

“She’s not your sister,” Arlington interrupted. “You’ve suffered enough guilt and self-denial, don’t you think? And now you’re making her suffer too.” His friend leaned on the sill, as dangerously insightful as ever. “Your father will die soon, and his dark cloud of a legacy will be gone. Don’t brew more storms in its place.”

August pursed his lips. To liken his childhood to a “dark cloud” was rather inadequate to describing life as Barrymore’s only son. His father had been angry. Stern. Violent. “I can’t wait for him to die,” he said.

“I know. And when he is gone, you shall be Barrymore in his place, with a kind and loving wife, and all your children, whom you will never browbeat or abuse.”

August stalked away from the window. Arlington was too direct sometimes, because he’d been a toplofty, wealthy duke for more than half of his thirty-odd years.

“I’m afraid I’m just like my father,” he said when he was safely across the room. “I’m afraid of hurting her.”

“In what way?” Arlington asked. “In what way could you ever hurt Minette, whom you love so dearly?”

“I could easily hurt her. I have, and I could again. You saw the blood the first night I had her.”

“Virgins bleed, August.”

“She’s so fragile. You don’t understand. You’ve never held her.”

“I have. I’ve hugged her and swung her around and rollicked with her the way all of us did before she was grown. She was strong as ever then, and I don’t doubt she’s stronger now. You’re making excuses.” August opened his mouth to speak, but Arlington held up a hand to silence him. “No. I don’t want to hear any more about sex and Minette.”

“You see? It’s not only me.”

“It is only you, because she’s your wife, and you need to figure things out.” He turned back to gaze out the window. “Look at her. She’s a remarkable woman and she’s all yours. Me, I’ve got to marry some Welsh stranger I’ve never even seen.”

“What’s this?” said August. “You’re to be married?”

“A request from the king, but more like an order. Some favored border baron’s got to be rewarded with a high-placed duke for a son-in-law.”

“What a disaster,” August said. “I’m sorry. When is this happening?”

“When the crown orders it to happen, I suppose.” Nothing betrayed the duke’s feelings on the matter, except perhaps the steady tapping of a finger upon the sill. “It’s just as well. The rest of you have married. It’s bloody boring to gad about all by myself. The women in Wales are pretty, aren’t they?”

August hadn’t any idea what women in Wales looked like. He imagined they looked rather similar to English ladies, at least he hoped so, for Arlington’s sake.

“So you see,” said his friend. “At least you’ve got a known quantity, a willing and eager minx who adores you beyond measure, whom you’ve known more than half of your life.”

August wished he could explain what it was like, to lie beside Minette night after night, and want her and ache for her, and feel too conflicted to have her. It was a special sort of torture, one he had probably earned.

*** *** ***

Minette made her way toward her husband’s study after dinner, with ropes of ribbon and garland on her arms. The servants had decorated some of Barrymore House’s rooms, but Lord August’s study was not among them. When she asked why, they told her it was not normally decorated for Christmas.

Minette didn’t care. She wished to brighten his quiet, private space. August spent a great deal of time at work in there, and she wanted it to look cheerful for the holidays. If she couldn’t embroider a passable handkerchief, at least she could give him this.

She grinned at a footman as he bowed and opened the door, and then shut it behind her. Her husband sat at his desk, just where she expected to find him, but he wasn’t working. Why, he wasn’t even awake. His head was cradled on his pinstriped evening coat; the flickering candles reflected off his ebony hair.

She dropped her armful of greenery onto a chair and rubbed herself where the needles had abraded one wrist. She regarded August, feeling the usual fond fluttering in her heart. Or her stomach. Or somewhere down there. Even asleep, sprawled gracelessly upon his writing desk, the man was handsome as sin. She tiptoed closer, being careful not to wake him. She had long ago memorized every feature, every eyelash, every wave of hair upon his head, but that didn’t stop her from staring at him daily, hoping to notice more.

How long and curved his lashes were, and my, how tired he looked. Perhaps it was only the shadow of candlelight that wrought dark circles beneath his eyes. His elegant hand still held a quill. It had nearly slipped from his fingers. She worried that his correspondence would be ruined if ink dripped upon it. She thought to slide the quill from his hand, but then became distracted looking at the page. Why, it was not correspondence. It was music, pages of it spread across the desk, each measure filled with notes penned by his own hand.

Her husband was a composer.

A cabinet door stood open beyond his shoulder. Drawn by curiosity, she skirted the desk and peeked inside, and found more pages of music, both loose and bound into volumes. This was not a recent lark, to jot down some song. Good gracious, there was so much!

Beneath the cabinet, a drawer was partly ajar. It was ful

l of music too, in the same bold, heavy hand. Some of the bound pages had titles and dates. Concertos One and Two, 1788. Sonata et Fugue, 1785. Etude in Red, 1777. Why, he would have been only thirteen or fourteen then.

She stared at the complex arrangements of notes, wondering if her brother and his friends knew of this talent. If so, they’d never discussed it in her hearing. She tried to read one of the sheets as he’d taught her, analyzing it for tempo and tone. She wished to go play some of the music, even though most of it appeared too intricate for her modest talents. What a lovely motivation to get better. Someday she would play all of it, every single note. She opened the cabinet above to leaf through more of the handwritten music. If she could find some piece he’d written at eight years of age or so, perhaps she could perform that.

She took out a folio of work and the lined papers slipped from within, scattering over the floor. “Bother,” she whispered. She didn’t want him to wake, especially now, when she was snooping through his cabinets. She knelt to collect the scattered pages, but they were all out of order. She started to stand but—ow!—she knocked her head into the open cabinet door above her, sending it with a bang against the shelf. She clutched at the volumes of music to retain her balance and ended up knocking them over in a cascade of noisy thumps.

August startled awake and turned to her in alarm. “Minette. What are you doing?”

She might pretend to be sleepwalking. It would explain the mess she’d made of his music and exonerate her from blame, but she was too disarrayed to lie. She rubbed the back of her head. “I’m sorry I woke you. I was poking about where I should not be. I suppose I deserve this bump on my head.”

He stood and smoothed the back of her hair, and inspected her scalp for injury. His light, seeking caress raised goose bumps on her arms and neck.

“I came to decorate your study for Christmas,” she said. “I found you asleep over your music and I saw the open cabinet, and then I—”

“Then you started sorting through all my private papers and ended up flinging half of it on the floor,” he finished in exasperation.

“Not half of it. And I intend to pick up what I’ve dropped and put it back in order for you.”

She whacked her head on the cabinet again as she bent to retrieve the music. August muttered an oath and lifted her bodily away from the mess. “Go sit over there.” He pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk.

“But I would rather help.”