Chapter 14
“Iam here, Madeline,” Kenneth said, his voice breathless as if he had been running through the corridors.
Where did he come from? Were his chambers not just adjacent to hers? He was through the door before she could arrange her face, and the room shrank around him.
Madeline was probably truly sick. When she peered at her husband, it seemed like his presence was expanding before her eyes, filling every corner.
She lay against her pillows, her breath caught in her throat.
The only way she could release it was slowly.
While she knew he would come, she had not expected how his eyes swept over her once, fast, searching her face and her body for whatever Gertie’s panic had promised.
Then he caught himself, and his face was back to its stoic expression.
“Kenneth,” she rasped, her voice trembling a little. He was too close, and she felt like he could read her mind. “Y-you came.”
“Gertie said you were very ill. She said you were burning,” he said, his voice calmer than his demeanor.
He reached for her forehead, planting his palm over it.
Then, the same hand slid down to her neck.
She almost thought he was going to squeeze, remembering Malcolm’s comment about choking.
But no, his thumb merely rubbed her pulse point.
Oh, God. He knows.
“Your maid said you could not breathe,” he continued, eyes holding hers. “She said that you might die.”
Madeline looked up at him, her heart racing inside her chest. Yes, right now, she could not breathe. Still, the sight of the tension in his jaw brought her a little feeling of triumph.
He cares about me?
“Y-you need not be afraid,” she stammered, placing her hand on the one he had by her neck. “I feel better now.”
Kenneth’s hand stiffened under hers. It did not pull away from under hers. Instead, his fingers slightly tightened around her neck. She could swear that he could see the guilt in her eyes. Her cheeks burned.
“Afraid?” Kenneth echoed. His voice had dipped dangerously low. He slowly withdrew his hand, pulling it from under hers.
Then, he stood over her, using his full height, his face devoid of emotion. But somehow, she could feel something emanating from him in waves. Fury. Or was it merely her imagination?
“So, you thought I would be afraid, Madeline?” he asked.
This time, the mask slid on his face once more. Even his voice had taken a monotonous tone.
“You ran here, did you not?” she guessed. “You did not even put your coat on, and I can tell you are not coming from your chambers. You care for me, and you were afraid something happened to me.”
“I came as soon as I heard from your maid that you are in distress,” he said flatly. “What do you think people will say if I cannot take care of my own wife in my own house?”
Madeline’s optimism froze the smile that was slowly forming on her lips. She felt disappointment like a hard slap. She kept his eyes on him. He was the picture of composure. Whatever she saw earlier could well have been her imagination. Her attempts to appeal to his fear had failed.
“Oh, I should have tried the spiders, then.”
“The spiders?” he repeated.
“Alexander suggested that you may be afraid of spiders,” she admitted.
She was never going to be good at deception.
Her honesty would soon bubble up before she could stop it.
“I was told that a messy room might be a possible fear. Alexander and Emily seem to think that you are afraid of the mess they sometimes make. It might then be a miscalculation on my part to think that a life-threatening fever could make you feel… afraid.”
Kenneth stared at her. He was mostly expressionless and unaffected, except for that tic in his jaw.
“You pretended to be very ill,” he said, the words sounding like an accusation, “just to see if I would be afraid?”
“I... I wanted to see if you can feel, Kenneth! If there is a heart beneath that chest,” Madeline cried, losing all pretense of illness.
Her temper flared, and she wanted to jump out of bed and pummel his chest with her fists.
“Now, I can tell that I am wrong. You are made of marble. Your fears are probably all about your ledgers, and I have called you from your study!”
“I am not afraid of spiders,” he said. “I am not afraid of messy rooms, ghosts, or even unpolished surfaces. These are not the sort of things I am afraid of, Madeline.”
“Then what are you afraid of?” she asked, tilting her chin up. “What could have an effect on the brave Duke of Huntington? I want to know before I am tempted to make another attempt at pretending I am on death’s bed to get a reaction from you.”
Kenneth took a deep breath and sat on the edge of her bed once more. He planted his firm hands on her hips, keeping her still. She could not breathe. Perhaps they needed to call the physician after all.
“Failure, Madeline,” he whispered. “That is what I am afraid of.”
“Failure?” she echoed, as she blinked her eyes. Her focus was no longer on his words but on his warm hands on her hips.
“Failing at my responsibilities to this estate and to the name I now carry. The failure to protect what belongs to me,” he said, again dropping his voice into something that vibrated under her skin.
“Even your fears are irrational, Kenneth,” Madeline remarked, letting out a huff of laughter.
Yet, she did not find anything he said funny at all, and her voice sounded shaky, even to her ears.
She tried to slide from under his grasp.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I must go to the kitchens and fetch myself some warm milk. I cannot disturb Gertie a second time tonight.”
He would not budge. He pressed her down to her bed, gently but firmly.
“You are going nowhere,” he declared.
“I am sorry for pretending to be ill, but I think I will need this milk if I want to fall asleep tonight.”
“Ah, but you said that you are very ill. You had your maid running across the corridors late at night. Since you are feeling so poorly, you must remain in bed. Yes, feverish and breathless people should remain bedridden. It is for your own good. For your health and recovery.”
Even as he said those words, he reached for the silk sash of her discarded coat. Madeline’s eyes widened as he took the sash and used it to tie her wrists around the carved posts of her bed.
“W-what are you doing?” she asked.
She did not remember the whole exercise to be about her fears, but his.
“You would not dare!” She gave one half-hearted tug against his grip—enough to prove she could have pulled free if she truly wished it. Then she went still, her heart hammering, and let him work the knot.
“You went to such lengths to have Gertie call me to run to your aid. I am here now, dear wife. Let us make you feel better. These efforts should not go to waste. You have my undivided attention now.”
“And what do you intend to do with me now?” she asked, as she saw him take another sash from her chair. Surely, one sash to tie her wrists was enough?
She was not afraid of him, either, even as frustration grew within her. His proximity and her immobility made her more aware of him.
“I do not believe you will behave if you can escape from your bed,” he murmured as he pulled at her ankles gently until he was able to tie them to the bedpost.
“This is outrageous.” But the protest came out closer to a laugh than a command, and she made no real effort to pull free. “I... Is this another way for you to punish me?”
“Oh no, Madeline. I am simply helping you get better. You are too weak to stand and walk away from this room,” Kenneth said, tightening the last knot that had her left foot tied to a footpost. His hand lingered on the curve of her instep. The mere touch had her trembling. Anticipating.
Kenneth then watched her, as if proud of his handiwork. Madeline lay spread-eagled against her bed, her hair creating a halo over her head. She could imagine what he was seeing: a woman with flushed cheeks who might have a fever if not for the determination in her face.
Then he stilled, and his eyes found hers, all teasing gone for a moment. “Tell me to stop, Madeline. One word from you, and this ends. I untie you and leave you to your warm milk.” He waited. “Shall I stop?”
She held his gaze. Her pulse was wild, her cheeks hot, and they both knew the truth before she spoke it.
“No,” she whispered.
“That is a good girl,” Kenneth said. “Now, let us give you the attention you need.”
“I... Is this part of our duties?” she asked, her words and tone giving out a challenge.
“Oh, no,” he said, as he leaned closer to her. He sat by her side, his lips brushing her temple. “This is a lesson. Consequences should be learned.”
Kenneth rested his hand on her bound ankle and dragged it slowly upward—over her calf, behind her knee, up the soft inside of her thigh—stopping just short of where she had already begun, traitorously, to ache and slicken for him. He watched her face the whole time, missing nothing.
“You went to a great deal of trouble for my attention tonight,” he murmured. “It would be ungentlemanly of me to rush.”
“Kenneth—”
“Patience, wife.” His knuckles grazed the crease of her thigh, a breath away from her sex, and her hips bucked up to chase him. He pulled back at once. “Be still, or I will make you wait all night. You asked whether I feel anything. Let us find out what you feel first.”
He gathered her nightgown up to her waist, baring her to the firelight. Then he sat at her hip and laid his palm flat on her belly, his thumb tracing idle circles toward the crease of her thigh and away again, stopping, every time, just short of where she was wet and swollen and desperate.
“Kenneth, I... I cannot.”
“What is that? Are you dripping for me, Madeline?” he asked, his fingers gliding through the slickness at the top of her thigh without ever touching where she needed. “I have scarcely touched you. So much fire, from a woman who claims she will not give herself to me.”
“You are insufferable,” she gasped.
“And yet...” He drew one finger up through her slick folds, feather-light, circling close to where she throbbed and then retreating before she could grind against it. She groaned in frustration. “Tell me what you want, Madeline.”
She turned her face into her arm, as her pride was at war with the unbearable wanting. He only waited, idle, tracing lazy patterns over her thigh, until the need burned the last of her resistance to ash.
“Please,” she breathed.
“Please, what?”
“Touch me. Please, Kenneth, I cannot bear it.”
Only then did his fingers find her swollen bud, stroking slow and merciless circles over it, and she cried out and arched up as far as the bindings would let her. He kept the rhythm without pity, his other hand splayed across her belly to pin her down when she tried to writhe against him.
“Kenneth...”
He leaned over her, his mouth at her ear, his fingers never slowing. “Beg me again. Or I will stop.”
“Please... Please do not stop—”
He pushed one thick finger inside her, letting her feel every inch of the stretch before he drew it out and drove it back.
Then a second joined it, and his unhurried strokes had her clenching around him.
He curled his fingers on each withdrawal, dragging against some hidden spot that made her vision go spotty.
“That is it, Madeline,” he murmured, watching her come apart on his hand. “Take it.”
He now thrust his fingers deeper and faster, the heel of his palm pressing against her with each movement, and she could do nothing but lie there and take it.
The tension grew tighter and tighter until it finally snapped, releasing so violently that she screamed into the dark, her whole body wrenching against the silk that kept her open for him.
How can this be a punishment when it feels so good?