Chapter 7
In the drawing room of the FitzOsbern townhouse, Marianne mindlessly played the beautiful new harp Frederick had acquired for her use. She had a small one, also just purchased by her husband, in her rooms, but she hoped to catch sight of him when he returned that evening.
She needed to see him again. What she’d done in the bath unsettled her and made her fear — irrationally — that she’d lost him for good by thinking of another man.
When Frederick entered the house, he initially rushed past the drawing room with great vigor as if in search of something. But soon, he drifted back, his movements jerky.
“Marianne,” he said, standing in the doorway and taking her in.
She paused in her playing and moved to rise.
“No, stay where you are,” he said, his steps slow. He was acting as if she were a small animal or child who might be afraid of him! “Play for me.”
As he lowered to a chair near her harp, Marianne played a melody she thought he might like. It was a jaunty tune. Well, as jaunty as a song on the harp can be.
“What did you do today?” asked Frederick, his eyes roving over her as she plucked.
She’d dressed for dinner hoping to see him, then eaten alone when the staff informed her that the duke took his meals at his club.
She had arranged her hair and kept her gloves pristine, all ready for a husband who never came.
Marianne feared she was well on her way to a broken heart. Or a disappointed one, at best.
“I counted the number of dresses in my wardrobe. Then the shoes and stockings.”
“When you have a need for more, I’ll establish accounts for you. Simply tell my man where. He’ll set it all up.”
Marianne nodded and whispered her thanks.
“And then what did you do?”
She thought back, and her mind snagged on that moment in the bath. Such a tale would hardly prove suitable for one’s husband, especially not when it involved the fantasy of another man’s nude body, commanding pose, and hard member!
“The garden. I walked in the garden and catalogued which bulbs I’d like to plant.”
She thought she heard her husband mutter, “I have a bulb I’d like to plant,” but she doubted he had an interest in horticulture, so she didn’t ask him to repeat himself. She must have misheard. Seeming dim before Frederick might send her sobbing into her pillows.
In trying to manage a conversation with her husband, Marianne’s song had changed from a popular tune to something of her own creation. A lonely cry to the universe that she’d started playing shortly after taking up the harp.
“That melody,” whispered Frederick. His eyes were lidded, and he watched her with an expression that made her wonder if her dress was actually sheer.
Marianne fidgeted in her seat. “What about it?” she asked, half hoping he liked it, half fearful he might break her heart by disparaging her own composition. The composition of her soul.
And then he shocked her. Frederick Clare, Duke of FitzOsbern, slid from his chair to the floor.
“Frederick, are you unwell?” she asked, frozen in fear for his life.
“I’ve never been better,” he said, crawling towards her. “Keep playing.”
As if her notes were the thing keeping her husband alive, Marianne plucked out her song, all while watching him intently.
“That sound,” he said, closing his eyes and allowing his head to hang before he resumed his advance. “You have bewitched me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He was at her slippered feet, toying with the pooled hem of her dress. It swished against her ankles and made her shiver.
“The ankle that necessitated our marriage,” said Frederick, lowering his whole body as if to bow. He placed a kiss on those bones, right over her stocking.
“We both know you didn’t see my ankle. You simply wanted to marry me,” she said wryly, allowing her natural humor to escape.
Frederick looked at her, something like approval and relief crossing his face. What did he have to be relieved about? He was a duke!
“Is that so?” he asked, pulling off her slippers. Her stockinged feet rested on the floor. She thanked her lucky stars and somewhat overawed guardians for the wedding shopping trips that had sent her to Frederick with an array of pristine stockings.
“Yes?”
He pulled off his coat, then waistcoat, leaving himself in shirtsleeves.
Thinking better of it, he then removed his necktie, too.
His shirt was open at the collar. Blood pulsed in his neck.
Marianne felt a jolt of fear when she looked into his eyes.
He was so intent on her, so potent. He had the look of a predatory animal.
“Keep playing,” he said.
“Keep—?” she asked.
Then he took her stockinged foot and brought it to his shoulder.
He was low to the ground, but all the same, his movements spread her legs beneath her voluminous skirts most obscenely.
One foot still rested on the floor, and she struggled to remain upright and playing when he didn’t release her captured limb.
“What are you doing?” she asked faintly.
“What I should have done last night,” he said, turning his head to kiss her arch.
Marianne shuddered. Oh, this wasn’t the least bit good. She was in their family drawing room and growing hot and swollen and wet from a few moments with her husband. If he took her to bed now, what would he think of her?
She felt him run his hand up her calf, past her knees, and to her thigh, where the stocking stopped.
“You’re so smooth, Marianne,” he bit out while slipping his fingers inside the top band and drawing it back down her leg. All the while, he caressed and nipped at her skin.
When the stocking was nearly off, he let the material pool at her ankle, then used his teeth to draw it over her foot. It was strange and reverent, a loving ritual she’d never expected.
Frederick dropped the stocking. She struggled to keep playing while watching her husband, and when he ran both hands up her legs, she jolted in surprise.
One slid over bare skin and the other over her still-stockinged leg.
“My lovely wife,” he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the skirts of her dress right above the place she’d touched so pleasurably in the bath.
Already, Marianne could feel him there; felt herself expand to receive him.
It was a heady feeling, as if she’d jumped down from a hayloft suddenly.
“Before I married you, I was something of a libertine,” he confessed before pressing his face into her gathered dress and inhaling.
“Just before?” asked Marianne, well aware that many powerful, very married men carried on with their raking well after marriage.
“I suppose I still am,” he mused from her lap. Her heart dropped; though it was to be expected that he’d carry on with other women despite their nuptials. They weren’t a love match, after all!
“But now I’m only a libertine with my wife,” he continued, pushing her skirts out of his way to see more and more of her legs.
Her heart shouldn’t have responded like a horse bolting at the sound of a starting gun, but she struggled to catch her breath from the speed at which it raced and how hungrily Frederick was gazing at the place between her thighs.
“The prettiest, silliest little drawers,” he mused, yanking on a decorative bow.
“Yes,” she said, remembering periodically to keep playing despite the awkward angle and her most pleasurable distraction. “Purchased by my guardians, it—”
Frederick rent the drawers between his hands, one bow dropping to the floor. Where there had once been pants, there was now fabric with a tear down the middle. A tear in a very interesting, needy place.
“Apologies, I find I do not like the idea of other men buying your underthings. Set up the accounts with my man of business immediately and replace everything.”
“Everything?” cried Marianne. “My guardians purchased them! I can assure you they were quite delighted to perform the service for the last time!”
“Your husband is a tyrant,” said Frederick with a shrug before continuing to tear the fabric away from her body with care.
“What has come over you?” she asked. Suddenly, everything seemed so funny. Her aristocratic husband was acting most strangely!
He sighed and placed her stockinged thigh upon his shoulder. “I want you, Marianne,” he said, not bothering to disguise his hunger.
“Well, that seems most convenient,” she said. “Since we are, in fact, married.”
He moved closer to the apex of her thighs, pulling open a leg and handing her the voluminous fabric of her dress.
When Marianne looked down, his eyes were watching hers. “Does this look like mere married hunger, wife?” he asked. His eyes were lidded, and he used his free hand to part her more sensitive place. He held it, letting the evening air cool the wet, swollen lips that ached for his touch.
“What’s the alternative?” she asked, fearful of hearing an answer she wouldn’t like. This wasn’t trying for an heir in the duchess’s chambers. It felt illicit despite happening within the confines of marriage and their own home.
“There are many ways to be married,” he said, running his nose up the tops of her thighs to where she was now freed of her knickers. “Why don’t you start by telling me what got this pretty puss all wet?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she breathed.
“I’ll go first with a confession: hearing you play that song on the harp gets my cock harder than sin.”
“My playing?” she asked. It was hardly to be expected that an instrument associated with soothing music should inflame the blood so!
“You play your windy tune and my cock leaks on command,” he growled. All the while, she played notes as best as she could.
Marianne thought back to the events they’d both attended during the Season and struggled to recall an instance where she’d have played before him.
“But I don’t—”
And then he dropped his mouth — his mouth! — and licked her from the channel that ached for him to fill her to a nub that caused her legs to shake when touched just the right way.