School For Heiresses 2- Only a Duke Will Do (28 page)

He chuckled. “Can you imagine Sidmouth’s reaction if I did?”

She caught her breath. “Sidmouth isn’t your opponent.”

Simon froze as he realized what he’d said. “I…did not mean that how it sounded.”

The devil he didn’t. “So you do agree with Sidmouth’s policies? You want to see him continue in office?”

“Sidmouth is a necessary evil. I have to play his game—and the king’s—if I want to become prime minister.”

“And after that?” She remembered that he’d been on the wrong side in the issue of parliamentary reform. Perhaps that wasn’t the only issue. “Would Sidmouth be part of your cabinet if you became prime minister?”

He hesitated a long moment. “No.” When her face lit up, he added, “But that is not something I want generally known, even among your friends, Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” she exclaimed, too excited to contain her delight.

“I mean it, Louisa. Not a word.”

“My lips are sealed,” she said cheerily.

“I can’t unseat Sidmouth right away. It will take time and maneuvering—”

“And patience and careful planning,” she said, now able to tease him. “Yes, I know, my cautious husband. But how do you mean to do it? Who do you mean to put in his place? Are you seriously considering throwing him out?”

He kissed her hard, then drew back, his eyes smoldering. “Can we discuss this tomorrow?” Pulling her close, he ground his erection against her. “Right now, politics is the last thing on my mind.”

And the dear man deserved a reward after his wonderful revelation. “Certainly, my husband.” She flashed him a coy smile. “Just give me ten minutes to prepare myself before you come to my room.”

Turning, she darted up the stairs.

“I can undress you perfectly well, you know,” he said as he stalked after her.

“You’ll wreak havoc on my clothes,” she said breathlessly. “And shock my maid besides.” Thank heaven for her maid, whose presence always kept Simon at bay while she slipped in her sponge. He grumbled something behind her, and she hastened her steps. This was clearly not the night to tax his patience. Besides, what he’d told her lent her feet wings. Simon meant to unseat Sidmouth!

After he’d admitted to supporting parliamentary reform earlier, she’d begun to think he was not quite the stodgy old Tory she’d assumed. Though he did share the Tory’s belief about radicals, she felt certain she could change his mind about that once he listened to what Godwin had to say. Tomorrow. Because tonight, she meant to enjoy lying in her husband’s arms.
Chapter Twenty-Two

Dear Charlotte,

I hope you’re right. If Foxmoor can’t influence his wife with tender glances, he will no doubt turn to more restrictive measures, like packing her off to the country. It is what I would do if my wife caused me trouble.

Your cousin,

Michael

E ven without the help of his valet, whom Simon had dismissed the second he walked into his bedchamber, Simon undressed and donned his dressing gown in under two minutes. He had not lied to Louisa—rutting beast that he was, he’d been thinking of this all day. He only prayed that his craving for her lessened with time, because right now it was a damned nuisance. Why else had he blurted out his plans for Sidmouth? God help her if she spread that among her radical friends. If it got to the press, that would be the end of his political aspirations. He did not have enough support in the Commons yet to unseat Sidmouth, and until he did he must appear not to oppose the man. He could only hope that his wife would be discreet.

At least as discreet as she was in other areas. Like their marital relations, where she was almost too discreet. He paced beside the adjoining door to her bedchamber. She had made it abundantly clear that she preferred privacy when preparing to come to his bed. Until now, he had acquiesced, figuring that she had been a virgin and needed time to adjust to marital intimacies. But damn it, he wanted to watch her undress. He wanted to undress her himself. He wanted to make love to her somewhere other than her bed. He wanted to sleep with her at night, wake up with her in his arms. And no matter how much he told himself to be patient, he craved those things to a maddening degree. How was he supposed to bring his obsession under control when she still denied him those intimacies?

He reached for the door handle. Surely he had given her enough time to grow used to being a wife. What mysterious preparations did she do anyway that he, her own husband, could not watch? Opening the adjoining door, he stopped short when he saw her maid standing there alone, his wife nowhere to be seen. Beyond her the dressing room door was closed. It was as if the maid stood guard. That roused his curiosity even more.

The maid spotted him and started to speak, but he held a finger to his lips to silence her. Although alarm flickered in her face, he knew she dared not disobey. But the fact that she looked as if she wanted to gave him pause.

With grim purpose he strode to the outer door, opened it so as not to make a sound, and ushered her out. After closing it just as silently, he crossed the room to ease the dressing room door open and look in at his wife.

The candle upon her dressing table revealed Louisa standing in her unbuttoned nightdress with her back to him. But although she faced a mirror that showed him plainly watching her, she was too engrossed in what she did to notice.

At first he thought she was cleaning her privates, for she had her linen nightdress hitched up and one leg propped on the stool as she lifted a dripping sponge to her sweet little honeypot. His cock, already half-stiff, instantly thrust itself through the gap in his silk dressing gown. Then he saw her insert the sponge far up inside herself. With his stomach sinking, he held his breath to see if it came back out, but her hand came out empty.

He had visited a brothel often enough to know what she was doing. And he could easily guess why. She had denied him greater intimacy because of this, damn her!

“How dare you!” he hissed.

She jumped, and the guilty flush that spread over her cheeks as she met his gaze in the mirror was enough to confirm his suspicions.

A sense of betrayal sliced into him.

“It’s not what you think, Simon,” she whispered.

“No?” Entering the dressing room, he slammed the door behind him. “So you are not trying to keep me from siring my heir?”

She jerked her leg down. “No…I-I mean…it has nothing to do with—”

“I spent half my youth in a brothel, Louisa. I recognize a sponge meant to prevent children when I see one.” Stalking up beside her, he dipped his finger in the bowl of liquid that sat on her dressing table, then lifted it to his nose and sniffed. The pungent scent of vinegar assailed his nostrils. Angry beyond words, he thrust the finger at her. “This is why you come to my bed with your privates so heavily perfumed. This…this travesty is why you will not let me undress you or make love to you anywhere but in your bed—”

“You have to let me explain,” she pleaded.

“What? That you still secretly hate me? That despite every accommodation I make for you, you are determined to plot against me?” The pain boiling up in his throat threatened to choke him. “No wonder you so readily agreed to quit your London Ladies when I got you with child—you planned to make it so I never did.”

“That’s not true. It was just for a while, until—”

“You got your radical elected?” he spat, still hardly able to believe she was so cruel as to deprive him of children without his knowledge. “Thus destroying any hope I had of becoming prime minister? Is that how you meant to undermine my authority?” He emptied the vinegar into the chamber pot, then dashed the bowl against the door. “This will not be tolerated!”

While she still gaped at him, shocked by his sudden burst of violence, he jerked up her nightdress, preparing to remove the sponge himself.

Then she began to cry. “P-please, Simon,” she blubbered. “I didn’t…it wasn’t…”

She could hardly speak for her pitiful sobs, and they tore at him, making him curse himself for upsetting her. Then curse himself for paying them any heed.

Good God, he was pathetically besotted with her. He dropped her nightdress. “I want it out,” he said in a low voice. “Now!”

She nodded, then propped her foot back up on the stool. “You h-have to understand. I-I wasn’t ready for children, that’s all. I just n-needed some time…to prepare myself…for the blood…and the doctors

…”

The way she said “doctors,” in the same tone one might use in speaking of snakes, arrested him. She’d used that tone in her bedchamber at Draker’s town house when saying how doctors bled and cupped women.

“I-I wasn’t trying to u-undermine…” She continued sobbing as she removed the sponge. “It really had nothing…”

She couldn’t finish a sentence for her weeping, and now other things came back to him. How even after his doctor had finally arrived that day, while he and Draker were negotiating the marriage settlement, she’

d refused to let the man examine her, no matter how much they’d insisted. Then there were the comments she had made at the school—about the prisoners giving birth…about the blood. But why was she so—

The conversation with his sister about Princess Charlotte leapt to his mind, and he groaned. Damn it all to hell.

He captured her trembling hand as she dropped the sponge on the table. “You were there, weren’t you?”

he said hoarsely. “You were present when the princess died in childbirth.”

Unable to speak for her tears, she nodded.

This had all been about fear. Which he would have recognized if he had not been such an idiot. Cursing himself for his quick temper, he swept her into his arms. “Shh, sweetheart,” he said against her ear. “It’s all right. Shh.”

With a strangled cry she threw her arms around him, seeking comfort from her tormentor, and he gave it as best he could, murmuring soothing words, rubbing her back.

“I-I wasn’t supposed to see the birth,” she choked out, her tears soaking his dressing gown. “They banished nearly…e-everyone from her bedchamber.”

He stroked her and gentled her, feeling like a tyrannical monster. She struggled to gain control of her fierce sobs. “But she was m-my sister. I loved her. So I-I hid in her dr-dressing room.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said softly.

“The labor was bad enough,” she whispered against his chest. “She screamed for hours…”

He could only imagine. He had heard that Princess Charlotte had spent a grueling two and a half days in labor.

“But then came the birth, with the baby stillborn. He was huge, too big for…and they wouldn’t use the forceps and…” Her voice turned fierce. “There was too much blood, so much…not only then, but before, too.”

She turned up to him a gaze tinged by outrage. “By the time she went into labor, they’d bled her and bled her, and practically starved her, too. What else did they expect once she came to her childbed? How could any woman bear a child after she’d endured such—”

She erupted into tears again, and the full extent of her fear clawed at him. He brushed kisses against her hair, her temple, her damp cheek. His throat was raw with the horror of imagining what it must have been like for her to witness such a thing. She had only been twenty-two, still young enough to let it eat at her. Almost the same age as the princess.

“You should have told me,” he whispered. “I wish you had.”

She went still in his arms. “And what would you have done? Told me that…my fear was nothing. That Regina had borne two children with…no trouble.” She swallowed. “I know it’s not always as bad as what I’ve built up in my mind. But every time I think about—”

When she broke off with a sob, he clutched her head to his chest. She was probably right. With everything that had gone on between them, if she had told him from the beginning, he would have assumed she was refusing to have children to strike back at him.

Now he understood why she had been so reluctant to marry. It had certainly not been a Joan of Arc determination to be a reforming spinster.

She lifted her face to his. “I-I do want to have your child. Our children. I want it more than anything. I shall r-resign myself to it. I can do that. I can.”

Yet she was stiff in his arms, and tears still trembled in her eyes. Bloody hell, what was he to do? If he indulged her fear, how long would it last? He had to have an heir. And she would make a wonderful mother.

But not if she died of fright going to her childbed first.

He groaned. How could he make love to her, knowing that she so violently dreaded the inevitable result of doing so?

“Simon, I’m all right now. You can throw the sponges away if you like. I’ll—”

“Shh,” he whispered. There was only one choice he could make. Cursing himself for being such a weak fool, he reached over and picked up the sponge. “Lift your leg,” he said. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“We will do it your way for a while. Until you…feel more comfortable with the idea of bearing my children.”

“You don’t have to do this—”

“Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “I won’t have my wife quaking in fear when she comes to my bed. Now lift your leg.”

When she did so, he inserted the sponge partway before letting her push it the rest of the way. She lifted her face to his, and her expression of relief tore at him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she kissed him, and he clung to her lips as he had never clung before, kissing her ardently, desperately. He wanted to blot out everything that had just transpired, to forget that his wife had just convinced him to allow what no other husband in his right mind would. Never let a woman’s tears plague you into doing what you shouldn’t, his grandfather’s voice sounded in his head.

He cursed Monteith, then cursed himself when his cock came to attention with the predictability of Raji spotting a bird. Christ, he was mad. Yet he could not seem to help himself when he was with her. Louisa must have felt his arousal, for she broke the kiss, staring up at him with a heavy-lidded gaze. “

Shall we go to bed now?” she asked in a throaty murmur.

He glanced away, only to see their image in the mirror, limbs entwined, him erect and her with her leg still lifted onto the stool. Her nightdress was hitched up to her waist, baring her silky-skinned privates to his gaze.