Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

T he moment the Duke’s lips touched hers, Madeline felt that she had caught fire. The strange longings that had disturbed her in their previous fleeting encounters now possessed her entirely, her body seeming to know its part in this game even while her mind was baffled and sidelined.

Her hands were at her husband’s back, holding him near to her, and then running over the firmness of his torso beneath the jacket, discovering the play of muscle and the beating of his heart through the linen shirt and light waistcoat. Their tongues were dancing together, his leading the way and hers learning its steps by example and obedience to instinct.

Then, at some point, when her fear seemed to have burned up in the searing sensation of his kisses and closeness, Madeline felt the Duke’s hands beginning to explore her body as well as her face. At first, they only caressed her shoulders and arms and then her back, straying to the curve of her hip. As they returned upwards, one of his hands gently cupped her breast as the other lightly stroked the roundness of her bottom.

“Oh God, Charles,” Madeline gasped, breaking from his kiss for a few seconds with the unbidden surge of sensation generated by this gesture.

“You have the finest breasts I have ever seen, Madeline,” he told her, his voice thick with desire. “How I have longed to see them, hold them, cover them with my kisses…”

Muting her sounds of surprised pleasure by lowering his mouth once more to hers, his fingers worked the neckline of her dress loose and brought her sensitive globes out from their covering. Now, his palms covered her bare skin, her nipples hardening at his caress.

Madeline cried his name again as he lowered his head and applied his lips and tongue to her naked bosom.

“So beautiful,” he murmured as she writhed helplessly in his arms, some distant part of her wanting to protest anew that she was not beautiful at all.

Charles’s gentle but persistent attention to her breasts, throat, and lips silenced all such internal dissent for several minutes after that. In her dazed state, she could not doubt his interest in her physical form nor deny her own willingness to surrender herself utterly.

“Do you know what I saw when I looked at you in your gray dress this afternoon, Madeline?” he whispered to her in roughening tones. “Your bodice loose, your hair slightly tumbled…”

“I…Oh! I do not know…”

She could not talk but did not want him to stop. One of Charles’s hands held and fondled a breast while his mouth teased the other.

“Your appearance was like an invitation to tumble you further. I wanted to do exactly this, Madeline. And more, far more…”

Charles lifted her off her feet now and swung her onto his lap on the bed, his strength evident in his easy handling of her body. Tall for a woman and physically strong, Madeline was unaccustomed to the sense of helplessness she experienced, but her desire continued to outpace her fears.

He had said he would not take her that night. But then what was he doing? Not knowing what was happening was becoming unbearable.

“Please, Charles,” she moaned as his hands again found her breasts, pressing and rubbing as he kissed her. “Please.”

She did not even know what she was asking for, but the Duke responded by murmuring soothing words into her ear again, even as his hand slid to raise her skirts and slipped beneath onto her stocking-covered knee. Something hard and throbbing was pressing into Madeline’s hip, and she knew it must be the Duke’s erect organ. Was he going to deflower her or not?

“Please,” she moaned again.

The throbbing in her most private places, which began at the first touch of his lips on hers, was now becoming almost unbearable. Madeline felt a sharp jolt deep in her belly as his hand caressed her thigh where silk stocking met garter.

Her breath came in audibly panting gasps as his fingers continued to slide upwards over her bare flesh and then actually touched the soft, furred lips of her womanhood.

“My wife,” the Duke breathed. “My gorgeous, sensual, nubile wife who will welcome me with deep kisses and open thighs when I finally mount her… You will, won’t you?”

His fingers were sliding over flesh that felt engorged, slippery, and impossibly sensitive to the touch. What had he done to her that her body felt this way and responded so? It was almost like he’d cast a spell.

“Yes,” Madeline moaned. “You are my husband…I want you…”

A finger had found the entrance to her slit and opened her without effort to its intrusion, soon followed by a second finger. Together they pressed, explored, and stretched her body. Charles’s thumb was on the small nub where her pleasure centered, and he began to caress her there in tandem with his fingering.

Madeline cried out incoherently, helpless, pleasured, and disoriented. She had not expected Charles to touch her like this, but it felt better than anything she had ever felt in her life. It was certainly better than the limited satisfaction her own touch could provide.

“This is how soft and wet you will be when I claim you,” he told her. “You will cry out for me then too, and I will take you as you need to be taken…”

The rhythm of his fingering became faster and stronger as he whispered these things in her ear with mingled fierceness and tenderness. Madeline had abandoned herself to the strange new experience, unable to do anything else. The first contraction of pleasure caught her off-guard, a ripple warning of the powerful current that seized her a moment later with wave upon wave of ecstasy.

“Yes!” Madeline heard her husband’s voice say triumphantly somewhere in the background as her climax peaked, his mouth pressing fierce kisses at her throat.

When it was over, she came to herself trembling on Charles’s knee, half naked and with the scent of her most intimate places between them, emanating from the hand now stroking her shoulders.

“What did you do to me? What was that?” she breathed, pressing her thighs tightly together under her disordered skirt, echoes of pleasure still passing through her.

“I introduced you to a vital aspect of your marital duties. I hope that I have shown you enough that you will look forward to your fuller initiation rather than thinking of my attentions as something burdensome or fearful.”

Madeline smiled and welcomed another kiss, amazed to feel a fresh surge of desire already at this light touch.

“Your kisses feel so good,” she sighed, stroking his dark hair and the slightly rough skin of his jaw. “I could kiss you a thousand times right now, and it would not be enough…”

“I cannot do what I did again tonight. I want you too much, and there is a limit to my self-control,” Charles confessed regretfully. “We can enjoy one another in good time, I hope, without being overwhelmed to the abandonment of all other responsibilities. But now, let us return you safely to your own rooms.”

Conscious of the rock-hard swelling at his groin and the restrained tension in his expression, Madeline eased herself from his lap. He dropped two further kisses on her breasts with a faint groan before allowing her to adjust her dress and cover them once more.

As Madeline did her best to return order to her gown, Charles closed his eyes and steadied his breath, the bulge in his trousers gradually becoming less prominent until he was ready to move. At last, hand in hand, they walked together to Madeline’s suite on the other end of the long corridor.

“What will I say to Gabrielle?” Madeline suddenly thought aloud in a moment of fresh panic. “My hair, my dress! But if I send her away, what will she think? I cannot…”

“We are married,” Charles reminded her with a laugh and then pushed open the bedroom door, his other hand coming easily about her waist.

The young Frenchwoman was waiting inside and jumped up immediately as the door swung inward.

“Duchess Madeline, I…” her voice trailed off as she took in the sight of the Duke and Duchess together, both pink-faced and disordered in dress, his arm around her mistress.

“You may go to bed,” said the Duke. “Duchess Madeline will not need your assistance tonight.”

With a quick curtsey and the flash of a delighted smile in her eyes, Gabrielle was gone before Madeline could say a word.

“There, I did it for you,” he laughed again and escorted her inside. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Oh my! Look at me.”

Madeline caught sight of herself in the looking glass, the chaos of her hair and uneven line of her dress even greater than she had realized in the Duke’s suite. There was also a small but obvious reddish mark visible on her throat. She remembered him kissing her there while she was in the throes of ecstasy.

“I’m sorry,” Charles said, seeing her hands touch the mark. “I was carried away when that happened. It can happen.”

“So was I,” Madeline laughed ruefully, seeing the funny side. “I shall have to wear a scarf in the sunshine now. Or a dress so high-necked that Gabrielle will tell me I resemble her ancient grandmother.”

“There may be other solutions. We will see in the morning.”

As he spoke, Charles caressed Madeline’s throat and smiled at her again in the mirror before dropping one more kiss into her hair.

In the glass, she watched him depart and close the door.

“What on earth have we begun?” Madeline whispered to her reflection.

The following morning, Gabrielle was thankfully discreet and demure, asking no awkward questions about Madeline’s appearance with the Duke the previous evening nor commenting on the mark of passion she now carried at her throat.

At the washstand, Madeline splashed cold water on her face and then began to refresh her skin with the flannel. Her dreams had been a heated daze of half-remembered scenes from which she awoke damp and frustrated. She only knew they had involved Charles and the memory of the ecstasy she had experienced at his hands.

“Will you ride before breakfast, Duchess Madeline? Or should I lay out a day dress to receive your sister and the Marquess of Radcliffe?” asked Gabrielle.

“I will ride first,” Madeline decided. “Lay out my habit please and a white scarf.”

Her maid was just fastening the final buttons on her riding outfit a few moments later when they both jumped at an unanticipated knock at the bedroom door and looked at one another in surprise.

“The Duke!” Gabrielle whispered. “Shall I go, Duchess? I could leave through the sitting room door.”

Madeline nodded and then shook her head, trying to indicate that it likely was her husband but that there was no need for Gabrielle to absent herself. She was more flustered than she could justify.

“Come in,” she managed to say, and it was indeed Charles’ handsome and imposing figure that revealed itself behind the door with several small cases in his hands.

Her heart fluttered at the sight of him, especially when those deep green eyes caught sight of her and lit up with the desire she now better recognized. In her form-fitting riding habit, she also better understood how she might be an object of male lust and felt less confusion.

Gabrielle had melted away in the background, carrying a bundle of clothing into the dressing room.

“You look very well this morning, Duchess,” said her husband. “Will you ride out directly?”

“As soon as I’m ready,” she told him with a smile, indicating the scarf lying beside the handkerchief and riding gloves still on her dressing table. “The mark on my neck has not faded as much as I’d hoped.”

“Sit down at your dressing table,” he instructed her then.

Madeline looked at him with a slight frown of puzzlement but did as he said, watching Charles come to stand behind her in the looking glass. He laid the three small cases on the table and then snapped one of them open to reveal the gleam of emeralds.

Taking out a full emerald choker, he arranged it about her throat, its green stones vivid against her pale skin and black riding habit.

“It is beautiful,” she told him, touching it lightly.

“It is yours,” he said. “They belonged to my grandmother and were unwanted by my mother.”

Now he flipped open a second box, containing another necklace of similar style, this time set with blue sapphires and the white fire of diamonds.

Madeline inhaled sharply at the touch of his fingers as he unfastened the first necklace and replaced it with the second which must have been worth a small fortune.

“That is one of the finest pieces of jewelry I have ever seen,” she remarked.

“It is a masterpiece, I believe. I have never yet seen it worn. I hope you will do me that honor this week.”

She smiled and nodded, instinctively leaning into Charles’s hands as he unfastened the clasps and then opened the third box.

The final choker was made of pearls as pale and shimmering as the extensive strings she already owned. Charles leaned in close as he fastened the third necklace.

“I like you very much in pearls, Madeline,” he murmured at her ear. “The other necklaces will ornament you as the Duchess of Huntingdon before our guests, but I hope you will wear this one just for me as my wife.”

“Yes,” she murmured back then bit her lip as her husband’s knowing hand stroked her neck and then reached up to touch her mouth. “Charles…”

“And for riding this morning, you will simply want your scarf, I assume.”

Removing the pearls, he wrapped the white linen scarf loosely about her throat and smiled at her in the glass before securing it with a tie pin removed from his own stock.

Madeline was breathless in front of the dressing table when Charles closed the bedroom door behind him, and Gabrielle returned, her eyes opening wide at the sight of the fine new jewelry scattered across the dressing table.

“Your husband has certainly noticed you now, Duchess Madeline,” she smiled happily as she secured the necklaces in their boxes. “How wonderful! It is like a fairy tale…”

This one naive little remark jolted Madeline back from her fevered, sensual dreamworld into reality. She was no starry-eyed young girl to be distracted with shiny baubles, and this was not a fairy tale. It was her real life, and all that had really changed since yesterday was that the Duke of Huntingdon had demonstrated a new and disconcerting power over her.

Madeline knew she must tread carefully until she fully understood her own feelings and motivations, never mind those of Charles, Duke of Huntingdon.

“Letitia — how I have missed you! And how well you look. Married life, and Scotland, have evidently suited you well.”

Madeline embraced her younger sister at the top of the steps of Huntingdon Manor, holding her back to observe and compliment her glowing features and fashionable dress.

“As I have missed you too, sister! I wish all wives could be as fortunate as I have been in my Benedict. He really is a prince among men. I did not believe I could love him any more than I already did before our wedding, but I do.”

Letitia’s husband, Benedict, Marquess of Radcliffe stood down by the carriage chatting to Charles as servants unloaded and carried various items of luggage indoors. Cecilia was keeping to her rooms during the arrival, likely shy about meeting the outgoing and outspoken Letitia, but had promised to join them for luncheon.

Madeline laughed to herself at Letitia’s description. She thought Benedict a good-natured and kind fellow with an unfortunate sense of humor and little dignity. Still, Letitia evidently loved him, and Madeline was accustomed to her sister’s flowery and fanciful language around people and topics that enthused her.

“I believe the two of you were made for one another,” she said sincerely. “I have no need to wish you every happiness since I believe you have already found it.”

“It only makes me all the sadder to see you stuck with…that man,” said Letitia, waving a hand down at Charles distastefully. “I am still so angry that the Duke of Wrath abandoned you for a whole year with barely a letter and no consideration whatsoever for your position…”

“Letitia,” Madeline halted her sister’s flow quickly, not wanting anyone to overhear such negative remarks against the Duke. “Do come inside, and tell me about your honeymoon. I have been longing to hear about Scotland from your own lips although I read all your letters. We can take tea in the drawing room, just the two of us.”

“Why, yes, of course. I have so much to tell you. Only let me tell dear Benedict where I am going first.”

She stepped back outside and met the two men coming up the stairs.

“I am going to tell Madeline all about our time in Scotland, my love,” she said to Benedict. “We will be in the drawing room if you want me.”

“I always want you, darling Letitia,” declared Benedict, sweeping his happily shrieking wife off her feet and spinning her in a circle before kissing her lips and depositing her back on the steps.

Madeline and Charles both looked on at this childish display of public affection with amazement as did several of the servants although more guardedly.

“There is no need to look quite so disapproving, Your Grace,” Letitia said pertly to Charles as Benedict released her. “This is how normal married couples behave. Perhaps Benedict might teach you a lesson or two.”

Madeline’s stomach dropped, but to her relief, the Duke chose not to take offense. He only laughed, clapping Benedict affectionately on the back.

“Benedict and I already know all there is to know about one another, Lady Radcliffe. There is nothing left to learn.”

“Letitia, please. There is no need for formality between us, surely. Don’t forget you are married to my sister however easy you find it to put that from your mind.”

Turning her back on the Duke with a flash of triumph in her face, Letitia returned to the front door where Madeline was waiting, her face frozen in a smile that did not reach her eyes. How could Letitia behave like this? Why would she show such open hostility to Charles in his own home?

She knew part of the responsibility lay with her. Madeline had, after all, spent much of a year complaining of Charles’s absence and neglectful behavior to her sister. She had told her nothing yet of how their relationship had evolved since his return from Switzerland.

A few months ago, Madeline might have found her sister’s antics funny, but now, they were only an unpredictable and unwanted distraction in an already overly complex situation.

Letitia was known to be supremely partial in defense of those she loved, and Madeline wished now that she had shown more discretion and self-control in her venting. Why, oh why, had she not written a diary instead?