Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elizabeth awoke to images which dizzied, and for a moment those images felt not like dreams but like reality. Her wedding night came crashing back, making her flush to her toes.
‘Fuck,’ she realized, was indeed a fine word.
“Good morning, wife,” Milton’s deep voice rumbled as he leaned over to kiss her nose. “How does it feel to no longer be a virgin bride?”
She stretched her body like a cat, every inch of her gloriously sore. “Well used, husband.” She sighed. “And most thoroughly pleasured.”
“Good.” Milton’s hand boldly traveled beneath the covers, to right between her legs.
Elizabeth gulped.
“I am pleased I brought you pleasure.” His hand stroked her awake. “I think I’ll have my bride again.” He pulled back the covers to bathe her in sunlight, then raised her hips to enter her once more. Her breath caught as he pressed her hands again above her head, in undeniable control.
She fell into his motions, though he was large and she still tight. She’d learned last night to relax her body and remain open to him, for if she did he would not hurt her.
She arched her hips to match his rhythm as he nibbled the shell of her ear.
“I expect you to acquiesce whenever I ask, Lizzie, and I warn you, I will ask more often than is seemly.” He thrust harder, making her moan, much too eager.
“I am going to fuck you often, to ensure my seed takes root in your womb. For I long to see you as round and ripe as the Duchess of Allendale looked at our wedding.”
He pushed her legs wider, hitting her sweet spot now. She spiraled higher, reaching for that all-consuming peak she knew he’d grant.
“My prick at your cunt, my lips at your teats…” He groaned between thrusts. “I am impatient, wife, to get you with child.”
Her breaths stuttered at his crass language.
“Does it arouse you, Lizzie, to imagine me in you even as a babe grows inside you? I should like nothing more, Lady Milton, than to fuck you while pregnant. Would you like that too? Tell me.” He forced another gasp from her lips, the sensations increasing in intensity.
She’d do anything to gain her end, that moment when—
“Tell me what you want, Lizzie. Tell me, and I will give it to you.”
She could not speak. He’d rendered her senseless, again. His lurid words only fueled her inner frenzy, which the rake surely knew, else he wouldn’t do it so adeptly. He made her shiver with each thrust, made her tremble with—
Yes, yes!
“There,” he crooned as Elizabeth flew to heaven and back. “You’ve shattered again much too soon; you must delay your climax, wife. You must learn to come on my command.”
Her breath caught as he spent his seed deep into her core and collapsed, sated, atop her.
Her husband began to lightly snore.
Elizabeth dreamt new swirling bursts of color, or was it sunshine that blinded her sleep? She wriggled deeper into the bed’s warmth, wrapping her body more tightly into the covers, when something cold and wet shoved straight into her armpit.
She sat bolt upright, accosted by the biggest, most insistent wolfhound she’d ever—
“Heel!” shouted a voice from the door. “He’d not be contained a moment longer, Jasp. We waited long as we could, honest.”
Elizabeth clutched the bedclothes to her chest.
Meanwhile, a hound snuffled and sniffed her roundly, whiskers tickling flesh in places her body had never been licked by dog, let alone human, before last night. The creature’s tongue lapped her up; she could not help but laugh.
“Gerald, breakfast, and a bath for my wife. Mutton may stay … for now.” Milton grabbed the dog in a headlock to pull him off Elizabeth. The wolfhound licked his master’s chin.
“Right, then.” The butler left as Milton wrestled the beast off the bed, ordering, “Down, boy! Sit.”
The dog at once obeyed.
“Mutton?” Elizabeth asked. “However did he get such a name?”
Milton snapped his fingers and the dog trotted up to lay his head atop the coverlet, closing his eyes in ecstasy as his master worked the fur behind his ears. “Is it not obvious?” Milton turned the dog’s head, pulling out tufts at either side of snout, a perfect pair of muttonchops.
She laughed. “I see now, yes. He is gorgeous, Milton. How long have you had him?”
“Mutton and I go back to when we were both more starving mongrels than sleek wolfhounds.” He continued to scratch the dog’s ears as Elizabeth leaned across to pet the fellow.
“Your taste in dogs runs large, I see—in contrast to the Wigglebottoms of the world.”
“Mutton gobbles pugs in one bite, don’t you, boy?” His tone shifted when he spoke to his hound. She could not believe her husband had a soft side.
“Which reminds me, Lizzie, I invited Lady Stanton to congratulate you today.”
“You—?” Elizabeth was immediately distressed.
“Expect a list of callers this afternoon, all eager to greet the new Lady Milton. Enough wardrobe has been delivered that you should have a few ensembles from which to dress. I’ll send a cart to fetch your belongings from your father’s house later today.”
She continued to stare at him.
“May I ask why you look so put out, wife?”
She debated how best to respond. “Because as lady of this house, sir, it falls to me to determine the handling of my social affairs, such as my calendar and dress.”
Milton continued to stroke Mutton. “Elizabeth, I thought we went over your position during our courtship. Surely you recall the rules I taught you.”
Her disbelief only grew.
“Recite them for me,” he stated calmly.
Elizabeth frantically reviewed all she’d learned over the past tumultuous week. “Do not cross you.”
“That was the first rule, yes. Number them for me, Lizzie, there should be six.”
She inhaled a breath. “Do not insult by being late. Two.”
“Continue…”
She fired off the rest. “Three, do not goad. Four, do not touch your person without permission. Five, do not try your patience by kneeing you in the bollocks.” She bit her lip at this. “And six, do not disobey.”
“Excellent. I will point out rule number six is the same vow of obedience you swore to uphold before God and our wedding guests. Therefore, there can be no question, on your part, as to how our marriage will work.”
Nowhere in his list was there a rule explicit to social calendars or manner of dress, however.
“Husband.” She chose honey to catch this fly.
“I do recall, in detail, your rule concerning obedience, and as I have obeyed your every wish both during and since our wedding, I believe I am now entitled, as befits a baroness, to see to my own dress and possessions, as well as my own calendar, these being nowhere expressly stipulated in your six rules.”
“Hmm.” He scratched Mutton’s chops.
“You must grant me certain freedoms, husband, if you wish our union to be an amicable one.”
“Hmm.”
“Respect is earned, sir.” She spoke carefully. “Granting a wife some allowance would go a long way toward—”
“Earning her respect?” he finished, Milton’s handsome lips twitching.
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” his chest rumbled.
“Milton…” she began.
“Yes, darling?”
“Do you think I jest?” Elizabeth grew anxious.
“Oh no,” he told her, lips now smirking. “I think you are entirely in earnest, Lizzie, which is why I am earnestly contemplating your request.”
“Contemplating?”
“Hmm.”
“Jasper…”
“Elizabeth, I did not give you permission to use my first name.”
“But we are married, and married couples may address one another by their—”
“You see, this is where we seem to differ in our interpretation of my rules,” he stated coolly, all mirth vanishing.
“You are under the impression rules are negotiable, and I am under the impression that as my wife, you are now my property, along with any other property you bring to our marriage, such as personal possessions, which include, of course, the body you possess. And as such, I am legally entitled to do with my property what I will. Is that not what British law states here in England, when a woman marries?”
She glowered at him, for she knew this legal truth, a truth which burned as hot as coals here and now, beneath her husband’s thumb, as it had under her father’s.
“Therefore, wife, I am respectfully contemplating your request, while knowing it is completely within my rights to deny it. In fact, it is within my power to demand you address me as ‘Master’ rather than by my first or last name even. Would you like that, Lizzie, to call me ‘Master,’ as reminder, perhaps, that I am?”
He’d said this so quietly, so calmly, she felt slapped.
“Elizabeth,” he prompted, “I should like an answer, and I’d rather not have to demand it.”
She hoped her gaze sliced him clean in two. “I think you are the devil himself to treat any soul the way you treat me.”
Only instead of taking offense, Jasper Audrey, whoreson, threw back his head in deep, delighted laughter. “Why Elizabeth, that is the most honest thing to come from your mouth yet! At last you know whom you married: the devil himself. Welcome to my world, wife.”
Elizabeth hadn’t time to retort because breakfast arrived just then, wheeled into her husband’s bedroom on a cart. She refused to look at him while she ate. Instead, she lavished her attention on Mutton and snuck him tidbits from her plate. She did not care if Milton disapproved.
He sent her to her room once she had finished, through the adjoining bedroom door. There, a slew of servants finished pouring her a bath.
As she settled into the tub, her new lady’s maid, Ginny, arranged Elizabeth’s toilette.
Elizabeth barely listened as the girl prattled on, her mind a mess of thoughts, least of which was that she’d have her own maid.
For years she and Bella had simply assisted one another.
She prayed this marriage would keep Annabelle safe.
At the very least she might give her sister finer items to pawn, for the Baron’s house dripped with expensive taste.
She slipped beneath the water, Ginny’s chatter now a muddied hum.
How in the world would she convince Milton to grant her greater freedom?
Miss Li’s maids had sung his praises, and he was skilled in bedsport, to be sure.
Yet he did not treat her, his wife, like he treated others.
Why, he treated whores, for God’s sake, better.
And in a flash it came, his motive clear: Her husband had not married her to improve his social standing, he’d married her to settle a score with the Ton. And she—insignificant, bespectacled Elizabeth Winthrop—would now be proxy for every insult ever rained upon Jasper Audrey’s whoreson head.
Elizabeth gasped as she came up for air. She was being punished for the sins of society, subjected to the same snubs shown him. For hadn’t Milton’s mother been cast off by whatever lout for lord had fathered him?
She’d be her husband’s scapegoat in society, doomed to fail.
With a wretched sob she drowned herself again, to hide from her bleak future, for where could she possibly go?
What recourse did she have? She pitied herself a second longer before she vowed to make a plan.
She’d not survived her blasted father to succumb to a bloody husband instead.
But to carve a path forward she must learn why Jasper Audrey wished to punish her for punishments he’d endured in the past.
“Done then, miss?” Her lady’s maid asked as Elizabeth resurfaced.
“Yes, thank you.” She stepped into the soft banyan held out.
“Jasp work yer over last night?” Ginny grinned knowingly.
“And have you had him too?” Elizabeth bit back. “Tell me, has my husband hired an entire household of whores?”
The girl’s face fell. “Beg pardon, ma’am, fer speakin’ out o’ turn.
” She quickly toweled Elizabeth’s hair dry.
“’Tis me mum Jasp knew. Did her a good turn, hirin’ me on here.
We ain’t all of us former whores an’ thieves, but Master Milton don’t look down his nose at no one in need.
You’ll not find a more loyal staff in all o’ London. ”
Elizabeth was at once contrite. “I—forgive me. I should not have assumed. Nor do I know the Baron well enough to judge his actions.” She wrapped the robe tighter about her.
“Oi, y’ sound like any lass just married, ma’am.”
Was Elizabeth’s slight so quickly forgiven?
“An’ I’m sure he’s not an easy man as ’usband, you bein’ his better’n all.”
“Is that how others see me? How staff see our marriage?”
“See you, ma’am?” Ginny’s forehead creased.
“Well, sure there’s more’n a few as can’t figure why Jasp’d want t’ marry you instead of his own kind.
” Her frown deepened. “Rumor has it he paid a small fortune for yer, ma’am, an’ no offense t’ yer person, but he could’ve had th’ fairest whore fer wife, had he wished. ”
Elizabeth hid her displeasure.
“So if you’re askin’ my opinion”—Ginny laid a dress out on the bed—“either Jasp’s lookin’ t’ move himself up some rungs by marryin’, or the man’s sweet on yer, ma’am.” Her eyes sparkled. “Mayhap a bit o’ both.”
“Oh it is decidedly the ladder he wishes to climb, Ginny.” Elizabeth grimaced.
“You so sure, ma’am?” The maid grinned. “’Cause I’m guessin’ he climbed yer ladder more’n a few times last night!” She laughed heartily.
Clearly, no amount of training would make this girl respectable.
Elizabeth subjected herself to Ginny’s ministrations, but took offense when the maid refused to fetch Elizabeth’s drawers.
“I’ll not go about this house without smallclothes,” she informed her tersely.
“He’ll not like it, ma’am.” The maid clucked. “Jasper gave strict instructions on how t’ dress yer ladyship. I’ll not take blame fer orders you choose t’ disobey.”
“Disobey?” Elizabeth was livid. “You listen to me, Miss Ginny. As my lady’s maid, you will obey my orders when dressing me, not the Baron’s. If he takes umbrage with you, you tell him to speak with me.” She stared the girl down. “I will not dress sans smalls.”
Ginny grudgingly fetched Elizabeth’s drawers, muttering, “As y’ wish, ma’am.”