Chapter 3 – A Bed of Roses #2
She caught the duke watching her from the corner of his eye and lowered her head, hoping he wouldn’t ask.
She could already hear his question in her head, punctuated by the derisive princess.
She didn’t know how to dance. Her mother had danced with her when she was a little girl, but after she died, there had never been a tutor or a dancing-master.
Not even a nurse like Mistress Ursule, who taught Lisabe the proper arts of a noble lady.
Ophele looked up at her tall, imposing husband, wondering with renewed fear what he would say when he realized exactly how poor a princess she was.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she whispered, looking hastily away.
She watched the moon rise like a criminal counting down the minutes to their execution, and saw the key players in the final drama moving into their places: one of his knights came to murmur in the duke’s ear, and a moment later Mistress Goel appeared at the far end of the table, flanked by two maids. It felt as if her heart stopped.
His Grace looked at her with opaque black eyes, and bent his head to her ear.
“Go on up, Princess,” he said quietly. “I will follow shortly.”
It occurred to her that dancing might have been a better alternative.
Traditionally, her mother and sisters should have escorted her from the hall, along with any other married female relations and close friends. Ophele rose and exited the hall alone, trying to walk with dignity, her head held high and her pace unhurried.
But they did not take her to her room. They went instead to a different room at the end of the hall, where Sir Auber was just coming out of the door.
“Your Grace,” he said, moving aside with a polite bow.
The new bedchamber looked much like her old one, a large and luxurious room with a large and luxurious bed, littered with a small assortment of belongings that plainly belonged to a man: a large pair of boots on the floor, a familiar cloak over a chair, a rough leather bag.
Patiently, the maids undid all their work, removing the layers of her gown and replacing her chemise with a lighter one of thin white silk edged in lace.
Then Mistress Goel shooed them from the room and sat her by the washstand to remove the roses from her hair.
“Your Highness, please forgive me for asking,” she began, looking troubled. “I assumed someone from your family was on the way, and had perhaps been delayed on the road. But…has no one given you your bridal lessons?”
“Bridal lessons?” Ophele repeated blankly.
“Oh, dear.” The mistress glanced anxiously at the windows, marking the progress of the moonrise. “And His Grace will be here any minute, I wonder if I dare…you must be very honest with him, Your Highness. I believe he is a sympathetic man, he seemed quite taken with you. It was just as I said…”
A knock sounded at the door, and both women started.
“He hasn’t been able to take his eyes off you,” the mistress finished in a whisper, and gave Ophele’s hair a final stroke with the brush before she rose and departed.
There was a brief, whispered conversation in the hallway, and then the duke ducked through the door, and made the room small with the sheer force of his presence.
She had skittered halfway across the room like a frightened deer before she realized it.
“Wife.”
The single word stopped her in her tracks. Her fingers tangled in an anxious knot before her as she lifted her eyes to his, ignorant that the fire behind her revealed the curves of her body through her thin chemise.
“Mistress Goel said no one told you what’s to happen.” As he spoke, the duke undid the silver buttons of his jerkin, sliding it off his shoulders and letting it fall on the floor. His tanned skin was dark against the open neck of his white shirt.
Mutely, she shook her head.
“We have to be together tonight. I will take your virginity.” He was moving closer, too close, too tall, reaching out one huge hand toward her face.
Her eyes fixed on it as if it were a snake and it took everything she had not to cringe backward.
By the time his thumb brushed her cheek, she was trembling.
“Will it hurt?” she whispered.
“It might, a little.” Gently, his hand stroked her face, curving around the back of her neck to slip beneath the warm weight of her hair. That didn’t hurt. “But if I do it right, it is supposed to feel very good. I promise I will be careful. You must tell me if it hurts. Promise?”
She nodded. Her pulse was beating so fast, she could feel the tiny, frantic knot of it in her throat.
His hand shifted to cradle her head and there was a sense of vertigo as his black eyes descended, his lips covering hers in the same slow, considering kiss he had given her in the temple.
It was a kiss that felt strangely…patient, his lips gliding slowly, plucking at the soft curves of her mouth.
His hand touched her back and she flinched instinctively, her eyes squeezing shut. But he was only caressing her, his hand sliding up and down her back, his fingers in her hair, as methodical as if he was surveying the contours of her body.
It didn’t hurt. He had said he wouldn’t hurt her.
Ophele thought of the romances she had read and tried to do what he was doing, her lips moving in timid, tingling brushes.
Those books had never gone further than kisses, and the strange, fluttering feelings they provoked.
But those girls did often fling their arms about their lover, and her hands crept tentatively upward to wrap around his neck.
His shoulders went rigid.
“What are you doing?” he murmured against her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, removing her hands at once. “You don’t like it?”
“No, it’s fine.” But he was frowning as he kissed her again, his thick black brows lowered ferociously.
Ophele shut her eyes tight only for them to fly open again at the warm and shocking roil of his tongue into her mouth.
He tasted of wine, and the honey-cakes they had had for their wedding supper.
This was not the sort of kiss she had read about, and it made her feel very peculiar.
It was hard to think when he was doing that, hard to breathe, and she bent back, and back, and back, and hardly knew she was falling until he caught her.
“See?” he murmured. Another kiss. “It will feel good. Don’t be afraid. We have all night.”
It was obvious to Remin that she had no idea what he meant, but that was his own fault; he had snatched her from Aldeburke without giving anyone a chance to explain things to her.
Though he could not trust her, and she was the daughter of his enemy, he could not bring himself to be cruel to her.
Not when she was looking at him like that, with her eyes eating up her face.
“Come here,” he said, drawing her over to one of the chairs by the fire and sitting her on his knee.
Miche had offered a painfully explicit explanation of how he should proceed, but it was something else to actually do it.
Remin had never done this before, either, and it was all too easy to imagine accidentally hurting her.
Now that it came to it, he found himself unexpectedly nervous.
They must do this tonight, to ensure there were no possible grounds to contest the marriage later, but he felt foolish as he brushed his lips over her cheeks.
Her eyes slid shut and her breath shivered out and then it was easier, and he moved more confidently down her jaw, nuzzling into her throat.
The sweet scent of her made his head spin and he lingered against that soft, warm skin.
There was a fluttering against his lips that he realized was her pulse, speeding away.
“Does it feel good?” he asked thickly, and sensed her reluctant nod.
The more he kissed her, the more he wanted to kiss her.
His hands at her waist tightened, sliding up and down, feeling her ribs move as she breathed, tiny and delicate as a bird.
The slender frame of her collarbones called to him, and before he could think about it, he was licking her, sliding his mouth over those little bones and feeling her jerk as he bit her.
But she liked it. Remin was warming to his task, advancing steadily downward, and every time she squirmed, every time she stiffened, he retreated back to her lips until she softened for him.
The back of his neck heated as he finally reached her breasts and sought one rosy nipple with his mouth, tugging her through her chemise.
It was the first explicitly sexual thing he had done to her, and she rewarded him with a high, breathless gasp: the single most erotic sound he had ever heard.
The princess clapped her hand over her mouth and turned scarlet, and he couldn’t bite back a chuckle.
Drawing her nipple between his lips, he tugged again, wetting her chemise with his mouth.
His other hand slid resolutely over her knee to the inside of her thigh, and she pushed it away, unthinking.
“But…what—why?” she stammered. He opened one eye.
“I am making you ready,” he told her, and deliberately licked her nipple again, a lewd motion that made it darken and harden through the fabric. “We are going to be naked together, and I must touch you everywhere until you are wet. Then I will put myself inside you.”
Ophele digested this.
“Like a goat?” she asked timidly. “I saw goats once…”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Like a ram, I should hope,” he said. “Do not be embarrassed. This is what we must do together, as husband and wife.”
She did not look entirely persuaded, but he could feel her response as he captured her other nipple, her body jerking with every stroke of his tongue.
His fingers trailed lightly up and down her inner thigh, tickling that sensitive skin, making her jerk and shiver like a horse needing gentling.
Both of them were breathing hard, and she could not be still.