Chapter Two Matters of Love

Chapter Two

Matters of Love

A ugust returned to the music hall once Elizabeth and Larissa were gone. Another spanking doled out. Someone would catch them at it one of these days and he’d have some real explaining to do. He ought to end their piano lesson arrangement, or at least refrain from spanking her at every one of them. She was his friend’s sister, and betrothed to be married in a couple months besides.

But he wouldn’t end the lessons. He didn’t wish to, not until she was wed to that dull stick Fortenbury. Their weekly meeting gave him something to look forward to as the days began to shorten and the winds carried a stronger chill.

He sat at the piano and leafed through music he might give his pupil in the few weeks they had left, music that was intricate and difficult even if she practiced—and she would not practice. He started to play a short piece, imagining how she might muddle through it. The thought of her mistakes, the faces she pulled as she hit wrong note after wrong note. Her wide green eyes as she turned to him, guilty…

He laughed aloud, all alone in his music hall. The servants would think him mad if they overheard.

He switched to a different piece, a challenging piece he’d been working on to distract him from the boring country days. He could go to London for the rest of fall and stay through the winter, but there wasn’t much to do in town, was there, when everyone was gone to the country? His closest friends, once his partners in crime, had all settled down into family life with their wives and young children.

He had no wife or children, only a mistress he visited infrequently, since she wasn’t as fun as the rollicking girls at Pearl’s Erotic Emporium, who enjoyed wild coupling and spanking activities. His mistress could seduce him to the seventh height of heaven when she put her mind to it, but she did not enjoy disciplinary games as he did.

As Elizabeth did.

How shocked he’d been that first time she’d suggested he punish her. He would always remember her uncertain expression, how stammering and sweet she’d been when she’d uttered the words. Perhaps you might teach me a lesson…

Of course, one never knew what might come out of Lady Elizabeth Drake’s mouth. She was doggedly unpredictable. Her mother, the Duchess of Arlington, had purportedly been a wild Welsh maiden in her youth, though she and the duke had raised three proper, normal daughters before Elizabeth, and married them well. Elizabeth was to marry too, if Fortenbury survived the betrothal period, as three other unfortunate candidates had not.

Mysterious, unpredictable Lisbet, married to a proper marquess. He couldn’t help but think Fortenbury wouldn’t know what to do with her.

You don’t know what to do with her either , he reminded himself. He had to guard himself against her charms, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to pursue a deeper relationship with someone who thought of him as a doting older brother.

She’s not your sister, chap. Not least when you’ve got her over your lap, and your cock stirring despite your best intentions…

He refocused on his piano music, a dense, tempestuous Beethoven composition known as “La Passionata.” Churning through the challenging piece dispelled some of his pent-up energy, his passion, which lately had nowhere to go.

He ought to return to London. Try again with his mistress or end the arrangement. Look for a wife within the ton ? Perhaps. Someday. He still had feelings for Felicity, his first and greatest love, but practicalities loomed. He was an oldest son, heir to the Barrymore marquessate, and grown now past the ripe age of thirty. He must discover a worthwhile marriage candidate soon and court her to the altar.

Meanwhile, his errant piano pupil wished him to go to Wales for her wedding. Perhaps he would, though he ought to stay away on principle, because of their spanking antics. Really, it was not well done of him to accommodate her requests for punishment. He must put a stop to it soon. He must court a proper woman and marry her. If Elizabeth could settle down with Fortenbury like a responsible duke’s daughter, he could settle down with some ingenue of the town, or perhaps some young widow who was willing to overlook the more salacious gossip about his perverse proclivities.

Soon. Eventually. What else was there to do?

*

Elizabeth traversed Arlington Hall’s echoing stairwells on a quest to find her papa. He wasn’t in any of the downstairs parlors, nor in his chambers. She didn’t believe he’d ridden out, for the stable yard was quiet. That left his study, or the library. She hesitated to bother him at work, but he was not the sort of papa to get angry at interruptions.

She passed through the East Salon, murmuring a quiet greeting to her many forebears in their portraits. There were paintings of her parents too, who frequently had their likeness made, smiling together in marital bliss. Since her youngest years, she’d admired those portraits and wished to be wedded and happy, too. There was a stern portrait of her papa in the gallery, decked out in his ducal regalia, his sashes and medals and golden coronet. She was counting on that imposing side of her father to convince Lord Augustine to travel with them to Wales in a few weeks.

Of course, August should make his own choice, but if she had the means to massage his decision to her liking, she would. He ought not to stay back, lonely and tragic, while the Oxfordshire friends and families gathered to celebrate her wedding. Elizabeth felt he had pined for Felicity long enough, and imagined Wales might free him from this sadness by providing some novel marriage prospect to tempt his heart.

He knew all the London girls and hadn’t proposed to any of them; perhaps that was because he was fated to fall for a Welsh lady. Elizabeth had intuitions all the time, and this was one of them: that Lord Augustine must go to Wales, that he would meet his true love there. That this Welsh maiden, finally, would break his heart’s tie to Felicity and free him to love elsewhere.

But sometimes intuitions needed interventions to come to pass. A little meddling, just the right amount, and that was where her papa would come in.

He was not in the library, but she sensed he’d been there recently. She walked beyond the tall shelves of leather-bound books and comfy chairs into her papa’s private study, where the faint scent of his cologne confirmed she was close on his trail. She glanced at the papers on his desk, the ledgers and accounts he pored over when they were in the country.

Her papa managed many business interests, as well as political interests for king and country. She used to watch him work as a child, and he’d let her look at anything she wished, even let her sit on his lap and read official papers, helping her puzzle out what they meant.

It had been a while since she’d sat in his lap, but her curiosity was sharp as ever. She ran her fingers over a listing of rents, and his largest tenants’ livestock holdings which seemed a thriving success. There was some correspondence from sundry aristocrats, still sealed. Invitations to house parties, meetings, or social gatherings, perhaps. She saw a printed drawing peeking from beneath the stack of unopened letters and pushed them aside to look closer.

It appeared to be a comedic circular, one of those distributed in London’s daily papers. This one was dated a couple weeks prior and featured a line of aristocratic gentlemen with the Grim Reaper hovering over them, scythe in hand. These cartoonish men all stared at a diminutive, black-clad witch in the foreground with dark ringlets, a pointed cap, and a mischievous grin. Beneath the drawing was a poem in four stanzas.

The first she made to choke

upon an errant fish’s bone

The second suffered an apoplexy

to the sound of his mistress’s moan

The third might blame a horse

for stealing his last breath

The next depends on God to save him

from the curse of E————.

Her fingers began to tingle halfway through the simple rhyme, and by the end, her face flamed hot with horror, because she came to understand the poem was about her. The witch in the pointed hat with the dark ringlets was supposed to be her. What a horrible realization. She did not even have ringlets.

“Lisbet, well met. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

She spun at her father’s light greeting. “Papa! Am I interrupting your work?”

“Of course not. In fact, I’d just gone down to the kitchen to stretch my legs and get a handful of biscuits to eat while I look over papers. I would have brought you some if I’d known you’d be here.”

“I’ll wait until teatime,” she said, thinking of the biscuits from her piano lessons. Would the sweet treats always remind her of those illicit afternoons, and their inappropriate activities? She looked down at the poem with its insulting picture, then back at her papa. His expression darkened as he noticed what she held.

“I did not mean you to see that, dearest.”

“What is it?” She still held to it, as if in her embarrassment, she could not let it go. “Where did you get it?”

“Someone sent it to me. A concerned friend. It’s rubbish of the lowest sort, and I’ve informed the publisher that any further ‘artwork’ along these lines will result in a visit from our family’s attorney-at-law.”

She looked back at the line of gentlemen, meant to be her previous fiancés. She realized now the telling touches…the first had Lord Cole’s heavy build, the second, gripping his heart, looked like Lord Sylvanbrook. The third had Lord Greyfield’s distinctive moustache, and then there was Lord Fortenbury, clearly, gripping his holy book and cross.

Elizabeth understood it was outrageous that so many of her prospective husbands had met an untimely end, but none of it had been her fault. She was not a witch or a spiritualist or any of the things gossips continued to insinuate.

“Honestly, it is infuriating,” she murmured, tears blurring the offending picture.

He crossed to her and took it up, depositing it back beneath the pile of correspondence. “You mustn’t take these things to heart.” He touched her cheek, then cupped her face. “Some villains think it’s fun to mock others, though I daresay they would not enjoy being mocked themselves.”

Her teary eyes came near to welling over, though she didn’t want to be silly about it. She didn’t want to admit how much it affected her, how much it had shocked her to see herself depicted thus. Her papa opened his arms and she went into them, and some tears did fall against his dark coat.

“There now,” he said, stroking her hair. “I wish you’d never noticed it, sweeting. I was careless to leave it out on the desk.”

“But others have seen it. What must they think of me?”

“It matters not. You’re loved by your parents, your brothers and sisters, all your family and friends. It matters not what anyone else thinks.”

“They whisper to one another that I carry a curse,” she said, looking up at him. “Sometimes I think…the way those men all died in such unfortunate circumstances… Oh, what if I am cursed?”

“I can’t imagine anything more fanciful.” He wiped her tears with a handkerchief produced from within his pocket. “You’re a charming, bright, intelligent young lady. If anyone is at fault in this matter of your fiancés, it is myself for not seeking a higher standard of candidates. Cole met his end because he was a glutton who ate too quickly. Sylvanbrook was…well…he would have made a poor husband.” It was the most her papa would say about the indelicacy of him dying in his mistress’s company. “And Greyfield was too reckless by far. He’d had accidents before, carriage accidents and a hunting accident, before his horse threw him. I should have ruled all of them out before you became engaged to marry them. I’m sorry now that I did not.”

“I suppose it’s tricky, finding proper men to marry,” she said with a sniffle. Of course, her older sisters had easily found excellent husbands. This was all her fault for being “mystical” and odd. How humiliating, to be depicted as some silly witch in a public circular… She held her papa’s hand. “Do you think—” Tears threatened again at a terrible thought. “Do you think Lord Fortenbury saw that poem?”

“If he did, he will disregard it as mean-spirited and low, as any respectable person would.”

“He’s only been to visit me once since we’ve been in Oxfordshire.” Anxiety clutched at her heart. “What if he does not truly wish to marry me?”

“Has he given you any sign he does not?”

Elizabeth thought back to their recent courtship. He had been polite and attentive as a suitor and had stayed with them in the country a full week. And before then, when they were in London, he’d taken her on several outings to ride in the park.

“Perhaps he’s only been too busy to make the journey here,” she said, letting go of his hand. “If he did not want to marry me, he would say so, wouldn’t he?”

She hated the weakness in her voice. She disliked being weak and doubtful, particularly when their wedding was so near at hand. Her papa studied her, his gaze pensive.

“Do you feel he is no longer a good candidate for marriage?” he asked. “If he does not pay you enough attention—”

“He is a fitting candidate, isn’t he? Upstanding and all that?”

“Yes, but—”

“I think he’s only busy at his own estate in Hampshire. It’s good to have an industrious, conscientious husband.”

Lord Fortenbury did not make her feel swept away, or full of love and passion as depicted in her friend Rosalind’s romantic-poetry book. But he was a respected gentleman of the ton .

“I only want you to realize,” her papa said, “that there’s no requirement for you to marry someone you don’t care for. There’s no need.”

“You married Mama sight unseen,” she reminded him. “You’d never met her once.”

“Ah, but that was at the request of the king.” He gestured for her to sit, and he took the chair beside her, still studying her with unnerving attention. “I hadn’t much choice in my marriage, Lisbet. But you do.”

“You had no choice, it’s true, but it worked out for you wonderfully. You fell in love once you knew each other better. You’ve had a happy marriage with Mama. I’m sure I’ll find things to admire about Lord Fortenbury as I come to know him.”

“There is no one else you admire more?”

There had been gentlemen, the handsomest ones of the Season, that she might have enjoyed marrying, but it had not worked out that way. She twisted her fingers together, avoiding her father’s scrutiny. “I want a steady husband. I want to have children before…before it grows too late.”

“You’re not an old maid, dearest.”

“I rather am.” Or at least, I will be if this fourth betrothal doesn’t work out. That would be four fiancés down, and would leave her quite unmarriageable. She hated to think of it. “Anyway, I find Lord Fortenbury quite acceptable and…respectful and…” Her voice trailed off. Did Fortenbury love her? She did not even use his Christian name, Gerald, which her papa probably wondered at. She simply didn’t know him that well.

“Perhaps we ought to invite him to visit again,” she said. “I’ve missed him.”

“We can certainly ask him back to Arlington Manor.”

“I mean, we needn’t beg him, if he does not want to come. Well, I shall consider what to do. In the meantime…” She straightened and gazed into her papa’s caring blue eyes. “Can you help me with something?”

“Anything.”

“I wish the Earl of Augustine to come with us to Wales, to attend my wedding, but I’m not sure he’s inclined to make the journey.”

“Ah, dear August. How are your music lessons proceeding with our friend?”

“Very well,” she said, which wasn’t precisely accurate, at least as applied to her playing. “He seems restless in the country, though. I fear he’ll return to London, but I wish he would come to Wales. I think he would enjoy some time at Cairwyn.”

Her father studied her, then nodded. “Of course I can prevail upon him to come. Wales has much to recommend it.”

“Yes! Especially in matters of love. I wish Lord August to find love after all these years, and there are many beautiful women in Wales. Perhaps I’m being hopelessly romantic.”

“Not at all. It’s natural to wish happiness for your friends.”

“Particularly such a kind and patient friend as Lord Augustine.” She fidgeted as she said it, her bottom still sore from August’s spanking, even in her father’s cushioned chair. “Well, I ought to let you get back to work, Papa. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Indeed, though I’ve been well fortified by biscuits. You may stay if you like.”

She stood and went to the window, looking out at weather that had gone rainy and gray. “Perhaps I’ll read in the library.” She turned back to her papa. “Lord Fortenbury does like to read and study. We have that in common.”

“Indeed.” He paused, spreading his fingers upon the top of his desk. “If you ever wish to speak to me further about your intended, about anything at all, please don’t hesitate. Or you may speak to your mother. We wish you happiness, Elizabeth. It’s our dearest hope.”

His kind words touched her. She returned to his side and gave him a strong hug, the kind she’d given him as a child. He was so much taller and bigger than her, he always had been, and so blond compared to her dark coloring. She might favor her mother in looks, but he was her papa through and through. Soon she would be married, in a new home away from her parents. She was ready, of course, even excited for it, but…

“I love you,” she said, holding him an extra moment. “Thank you for talking to Lord August for me.”

“I love you, too. And I doubt he’ll need much convincing,” he said with a smile. “He’s a most agreeable young man and will wish to make you happy.”

He is agreeable , she thought to herself. Even when he spanked her, he was quite caring and agreeable.

Caring? A caring spanker?

Somehow, it was so.

She left her papa and went to Arlington Hall’s silent library. She’d always loved it there, with its high windows and the cozy nooks in which to sit and read. The library had a character to it, a comforting, welcoming feeling, and she browsed the shelves for something to catch her interest.

She passed by books of maritime travels, browsed a couple of Gothic romances, then settled upon an Arthurian adventure with retellings of the most popular legends. She carried it to a chair in the corner and turned to some of her favorite stories, as she’d read this book many times before. She loved to think about life back in those ancient times, and thought she would have enjoyed being a princess, but not Guinevere, her mother’s namesake. That princess had a bit too much tragedy in her storyline.

No, Elizabeth would be a different princess, a content, settled princess with a loving husband—her knight, of course—and sweet boy and girl children who would all be princes and princesses too. The book’s stories were accentuated with detailed, dramatic drawings. She flipped through pictures of Merlin, the great wizard, and the Lady of the Lake. There was Arthur’s powerful, magical half-sister Morgaine, whose name was Elizabeth’s second name.

She would be a content, settled princess, yes, but have some of Lady Morgaine’s spark too. As for her knight…

She turned the pages until she found the illustration she sought, the rendering of one of Arthur’s knights in full armor, with his sword at his side and his helmet slung from his fingers. He had dark features and dark hair, tousled as if he’d just come from battle. His solid stance vibrated with the possibility of violence.

Not violence. Protection.

King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table had protected their women and lived by a strict code of honor: chivalry. While gentlemen still adhered to the vague idea of it, it was subtler now, not as visceral and commanding as it seemed to have been back then. She traced her fingers over the knight’s broad shoulders, his armored thighs spread wide as if ready to spring to action. The face was not clear; the artist had used heavily shadowed pencil.

When she was younger, she’d imagined the man looked like Lord Townsend, who also had dark hair, but then a few nights ago she’d dreamed of this knight, and it had been Lord August with his helmet held at his side. In her dream, he’d been tall and intense, striding toward her with his armor clanking. Studying the picture now, it did favor Lord Augustine in the hint of effectual movement. She’d awakened from the dream with a start of surprise, thinking the knight might spank her.

She closed the book, feeling silly, then opened it to a different section and read more about Merlin and King Arthur, and the ancient kingdom of Camelot.

She knew that Lord Fortenbury liked to read books, mostly about God and religion. She wondered if he ever read other books. She would like to talk about Arthurian legends with him, about the history, romance, and magic of it all. She tried to picture him as the knight in dark pencil, but Fortenbury reminded her more of a priest. Perhaps when she knew him better, it would be easier to see him as a chivalric hero.

Then she thought…would Lord Fortenbury spank her?

Would she want him to?

It wouldn’t be her choice, would it? If her husband believed she needed a spanking, she would have to take one. That was the way of the world.

She shook the thought from her head and tried to refocus on the story about Merlin and King Arthur, but in the end, she flipped back to the knight’s picture. Yes, there was no doubt on the subject. It favored Lord Augustine most of all.