Chapter Twelve: Folly
His duchess did not come down that night to dinner, and he didn’t order her to attend him. Instead he sat alone at the head of the table, the silent ruler of his broken, miserable estate.
Her horse had arrived that afternoon—lamentable timing. He went to the stable after he’d punished his wife, and watched the grooms put the mare through her paces until he was satisfied she had been tamed to bridle and saddle. He would not get rid of the creature now, as much as he wished to. He could only hurt his duchess to a certain degree before he crossed a line.
Perhaps he’d already crossed that line.
Aidan tried to convince himself he’d only been trying to teach her a lesson. The caning, perhaps. The buggering, no. He might pretend it was a punishment, but it had been his own lustful vice, his perverse reaction to the way she struggled after he bound her to the bed. Gwen knew it too, but she let him have his way, and then reviled herself for it afterward. Horrible.
Their relationship was bleak and dishonest, and broken at the core. He had reduced his wife to tears in some misguided attempt to soothe his ego, and then sent her away for the remainder of the afternoon because he couldn’t deal with the guilt. He’d never imagined he’d be so awful a husband, that he’d be such an abject failure at nurturing his wife.
But he could give her the horse.
After dinner, he climbed the wide marble staircase and walked down the echoing corridor to her chambers. She was curled in a chair in her sitting room. A tray of food sat beside her, mostly untouched. He crossed to her and stopped a few feet away.
“How are you?” he asked.
She sat up straighter and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’m fine.”
She was not fine; nor was he. I’m sorry, Gwen. I’m sorry… He almost wished she would berate him for a monster and a pervert. Even now, he wanted her. He wanted to be inside her, inside this beautiful, wild duchess who made his life such a hell.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, nodding to the tray.
“No, Sir. I’m not.”
She thought he was here to take her to bed. He could see it in her resigned expression. It pricked him, that resignation and dread.
“I know it’s late, but there’s a full moon and plenty of light,” he said. “Are you too tired to ride?”
She blinked at him. “Ride...now?”
“Eira arrived today. She’s developed fine manners, but she’s in need of a mistress, if you are up for the job.”
Gwen stood at once, no longer woebegone but breathlessly ecstatic. “She’s here now, in the stables?”
“She is. Go put on something for riding. Be quick.”
She started toward her dressing room, but then she hurried back and threw her arms around his waist. “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, Sir. Thank you.”
The exuberant hug shocked him. He raised a hand to stroke her hair, but then she was off again, calling for her lady’s maid.
Aidan sat at her desk to wait, and noticed a half-finished page of Welsh scribblings. Letters had begun to trickle in from Wales, though she had not done a lot of writing in return. The letters she did write were carefully lacking in detail. She didn’t say anything negative, but he could glean her loneliness and homesickness from the translations his servant provided. The spidery lines of her writing made him feel very glum.
When he took her down to the stables, Gwen squealed and stroked and caressed her Eira, and whispered Welsh words in her ears as they pricked to the sound. What was she saying? Thank God you’re here. I’m trapped in this mansion with this horrid man who ties me to his bed and beats me, and sodomizes me for his pleasure.
He told the stable hand to saddle Gwen’s horse, and his stallion. “We can ride on one condition,” he said.
“Yes?”
“You’re not to kick your heels into her side and run away into the night. Your mare has been tamed to city manners. You must stay abreast with me and hold her with a firm hand.”
“Yes, Sir,” she agreed, and then she turned to the horse with a sympathetic gaze. “Is it true? Have they tamed all the life out of you? All your spirit? I still love you, pretty lass.” She patted her mane and spoke again in Welsh. He wanted to ask what she said, what she and the horse were plotting. Was she promising her a wild ride as soon as his back was turned?
“I mean what I say about sedate horsemanship,” he repeated. “If I learn you’ve been riding her neck-or-nothing, I’ll leather you and your horse.”
But none of his dire warnings could dampen her joy. She climbed on her mount and took up the reins like a proper lady, even correcting the horse in Welsh when she danced a step sideways.
“You ought to speak English to her,” he said irritably. “She’s an English horse.”
Gwen turned to him as they headed out of the paddock. “Does it bother you that you can’t understand?”
“It bothers me that you talk more to the horse than you talk to me.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
Aidan didn’t know. He didn’t know what he wanted to talk about. Any topic seemed fraught with peril. Her homeland, her life, their marriage.
“How did you learn to ride so well?” he asked.
“I’ve ridden since before I could remember. I grew up a lonely child, with gruff older brothers who found me very tiresome. Horses were my favorite friends.”
Perhaps that explained her manners. If only London’s court were made up of horses rather than people. He allowed himself to picture King George and Queen Charlotte as rough Welsh mounts with glittering crowns.
“Did you have a pleasant childhood?” she asked. “A happy family life?”
Had he? Perhaps. “It was just me and my sister, but we got on well enough. I rarely saw her most days. I was raised very strictly, and spent a lot of time at lessons.”
“Because you were to be a duke?”
“Yes. I was my parents’ only son. I was a boy when I inherited the dukedom.”
“I suppose you were sad when your parents died.”
In truth, he had barely known his parents, only the grand and glittering aristocrats. His childhood had been consumed by statecraft and manners, and the occasional paternal audience, during which he was stringently measured and judged.
The same way you judge your wife now...
They fell into an uncomfortable silence as they rode deeper into the woods. Gwen was sitting high on her saddle. Poor, sore bottom. He had done that to her. “Are you cold?” he asked. “Do you wish to go back?”
“No, Sir. Unless you wish it.”
“How do you like your horse? She is not completely docile, is she? Her good manners are only for show.”
He spoke about the horse, but he realized he might as well be talking about his wife. No matter how much he bullied her into proper behavior, and yes, Sirs and no, Sirs, underneath she would always be that wild, lonely girl from Cairwyn who’d grown up in a dark castle, and seduced him in that meadow
.
Gwen patted the mare’s neck and smiled at him, and he remembered her abrupt hug up in the room. It seemed she was always flitting to him, and then flitting away again before he could capture her in any lasting way. She was not a duchess, not by nature and especially not by will. Like her horse, she would always be pretending, waiting for the opportunity to rebel. Perhaps that was why he plagued her every night with his caresses. That was the only time she stopped pretending, and rebelling.
The horses had taken them into the garden clearing, by the temple folly. He stared at the marble edifice and stone columns, and remembered their encounter there, when he had made her admit she liked perverse and common pleasures.
“Let’s stop here a while,” he said.
She looked wary. Well, he had given her the opportunity to return to the house, and she hadn’t taken it. He would not let her go now. They tethered the horses to a nearby tree, and then he put a hand at the small of her back and led her toward the temple. When he took her inside and shut the door on the moonlight, the space went pitch black. She clutched at his coat.
“I can’t see,” she said.
“You don’t need to see.”
He found her lips in the darkness and kissed her, the sort of violent, grasping kiss one only gave in the absence of light. As he did so, he hiked up her skirts so her arse was bared. She whimpered as he ran his palms across her cheeks.
With a muttered curse, he yanked off one of his gloves so he could trace the lingering cane tracks. He would not say he was sorry for putting them there—she had earned them. But he was sorry that it aroused him to feel them now. She shuddered as he pinched one of the welts.
“Please, that hurts,” she whispered, pressing closer.
He was sorry that her shivery little plea inflamed him beyond bearing. She clung to his coat, his lovely wife who was aroused by pain. He circled her waist and drew her against the hard, thick line of his erection. He wished he could explain to her how she excited him, but he could only kiss her madly, assaulting her lips and reveling in her eager response. He caught her lower lip between his teeth as he worked loose the flap of his breeches. He was rigidly hard, bursting to be inside her.