My Naughty Minette (Properly Spanked Book 3) Page 17

He turned from the door. “You understand nothing.” He stalked to her and took her head roughly between his fingers. “I dream of you every night, and God, how I suffer for it. I dream of fucking you, holding you down and grasping your delicate little neck.” As he said this, he gripped her throat hard enough to make her gasp. “I dream of riding you so hard that you plead with me and cry out for mercy, and it fills me with such pleasure, to imagine how desperate you would sound. I dream of tying you to my bed and invading every inch of your body as you struggle to get away.”

  She thought a moment, really thought about these fantasies and how she felt about them. She stared into his stormy hazel eyes and said, “I would never try to get away from you.”

  He ground his teeth. “Damn you, Minette.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she insisted. “Nothing you say is frightening to me. You can tie me up if you like, but I wouldn’t try to get away from you. I want your passion and your torment. I already know what you’re like, August. Why do you think I’ve loved you all these years?”

  He pressed his forehead to hers and let out a long, haggard breath. “You’re so foolish, so reckless. You don’t know.”

  “If you keep saying that, I’m going to kick you.”

  He turned from her and went to the fire, and leaned against the mantel. He ran a hand through his hair so it stood on end, which gave him the look of a madman. Was she driving him crazy?

  “The spankings are nothing,” he said. “The intimacies I want are so much worse.”

  “Would you have done such things to Priscilla?”

  “No. I wouldn’t have wanted them with Priscilla. I want them with you.” He passed a hand over his face. “But I shouldn’t. I don’t want to.”

  “But you do.” Minette felt a warmth of joy spread through her body at the realization. “You want them with me. You want them with me.”

  He gave her such a look then. A look of anger and shame, and restrained longing that burned to her very soul, burned even hotter than the fire dying in the grate.

  “Minette—” His voice cut off as a crisp knock sounded at the door. “Not now,” he yelled.

  “My lord, please.” The servant’s voice sounded desperate. “You are needed at once.”

  “What it is?” He crossed to open the door.

  The butler stood there, all color drained from his face. “I am so sorry, my lord. A thousand pardons for the interruption, but...it is Lord Barrymore.” He swallowed hard. “My lord, you must come. You must hurry, before it’s too late.”

  Chapter Fourteen: Lost

  Charles Ulysses Randolph, the eighth Marquess of Barrymore, took his last breath just after midnight. It was not a peaceful breath but a gasp choked with blood and vomit, as his father’s body convulsed in seizures which could no longer be controlled. Only August and the physician were there to witness these last throes of agony, as his mother had taken a numbing dose of laudanum and retired in the care of her lady’s maid. “Drape the house in black,” he said to the servants when he emerged from the death room. “We’ll make arrangements in the morning.”

  Then he went to the ballroom, sat at the pianoforte, and began to play.

  Strange how, no matter his anxiety or sadness, his fingers could always play. Music soothed him as nothing else could ever soothe him, except perhaps Minette, but he didn’t deserve her, not after he’d punished her tonight for the high crime of admiring his talent. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he behave as a proper, affectionate husband when he loved her so much? He could make excuses about their past, and the pressures related to his father’s illness, but now his father was gone. What was he to do?

  For now, he would lose himself in music. He played for two hours without stopping, played dirges and dire, noisy, ugly things he’d written. For you, father. Let me play you from this world with a bit of angry hate. This instrument had been his first great love, the keys so soft and smooth, the vibrating sound of each note like an aural caress.

  Minette was his second great love, and his most complicated one. He wanted her to stay the innocent Minette forever, at the same time he wanted to grasp and invade her, and fuck her to oblivion. She wouldn’t resist him if he did. That was the worst part. She desperately wanted him to take her.

  He left off in the middle of a song and began a new composition, one as light and complex as his wife. He added some blonde curls to the melody, to go with the deep blue undertone of her eyes. Some chattering chords and a bright sally of conversation to make him smile. It was still so hard for him to smile. His face would never be used to it. He stopped and played a section again, trying to commit it to memory so he might write it down later. Or perhaps he’d write something entirely different. A song about Minette ought to be a little different every time.

  To amuse himself, or perhaps punish himself, he made up an accompanying song for himself. An August song, or, now, a Barrymore song, stark and grim, lacking any sort of beauty. Banging chords. Don’t touch my music, Minette, or you might manage to touch me. He was mashing away at the keys like a peevish child when her voice came out of the shadows.

  “August?”

  He stopped and turned to find her in the darkness, looking light and pale as ever in a stark black dressing gown. In mourning already, was she? It seemed he had been in mourning his entire life.

  “I don’t know if you want to be alone,” she said in a voice that was much more muted than her normal one.

  He held out a hand to her. “Come.”

  She flew to his side and embraced him, and erupted in tears. They wet his cheek, reminding him of her tears from earlier. How miserable he’d made her ever since they’d wed. “The servants told me,” she bawled. “They said your father has died. I’m so sorry.”

  He held her against him, wondering how she could weep so hard for a man she barely knew, when all he could do was play angry songs.

  “Are you awfully distraught?” she asked. “What can I do to help you?”

  “You ought to be asleep.” He didn’t know why he said such a thing. He sounded cold and emotionless, like a man with no heart. “I mean, it’s very late. I’m not distraught, my love,” he reassured her, wiping away her tears.

  “I wish there was something I could do. I hate that lives must end and people must die.” She bit her lip hard, as if trying to compose herself. “And the way you played…I was terribly afraid you were upset. I made this for you for Christmas but perhaps...well... I thought I would give it to you now.” She produced a folded silk handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. He looked down at the thing and spread it open, smoothing the fabric between his fingers. One corner had been painstakingly—if messily—embroidered with an M.

  “The M is for Method,” she reminded him. He could barely make out the letter’s shape, but he didn’t care. She had made it, and so he would always treasure it.

  For him, the M would always stand for Minette.

  “This is my most favorite gift I’ve ever received,” he said, turning it over in his hand. “And it’s a perfect gift for a sad night like tonight. The stitching is very fine. It must have taken a great deal of work.”

  “Not so very much.” She pulled nervously at her dressing gown. “I thought of you while I was embroidering it, and bound some hope into the stitches. I wished you greater happiness, because you’ve had such a bleak time of late.” Her voice trembled on the last words, and she began to cry again. “I’m so sorry for your loss. What can I do?”

  Now that he had a handkerchief, he could more efficiently mop up her tears. He brushed at her cheeks thinking how pretty she was, even when she was tearful. “Will you sit with me while I play?” he asked. “And hold my new handkerchief so it doesn’t go missing?”

  “Of course.” She accepted the dampened square of silk, pressing it to the corners of her eyes. “I’ll stay as long as you need me. I love to hear you play.”

  He had always preferred to play alone, but now he was grateful for her solid warmth
beside him. He didn’t want to be alone tonight. As he began another piece, the ballroom seemed filled with a thousand ghosts, all of them his father, shouting and striking and stalking around. For once, Minette didn’t chatter. He was the one who began to speak.

  “I wrote this composition when I was very young.” He did an elegant glissade. “I suppose I began to write music as an escape.”

  “An escape from what? All those sisters?”

  “No.” August’s lips cracked in a smile. “My sisters were a trial, but nothing like my father. Barrymore had...rages.” For a moment he felt like an eight-year-old boy again, that fearful, wary boy just coming to understand that his father was never going to change. “He hated me from the day I was born.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Minette sounded horrified. “It was only his sickness.”

  “This was before...before his sickness. He was very selfish and full of himself, a gruff and unpleasant fellow. He was never happy.” August punctuated this revelation with a series of minor chords. “I don’t suppose you can fathom such a thing. Warren raised you so expertly. You have always been a very happy girl. Woman. Excuse me,” he amended when she frowned. “Of course you are a woman now, but happy all the same.”

  “I try to be happy.” She huddled closer and looked up at him. “Warren always said that was my gift to bring to the world.”

  “It is a gift,” August agreed. “And not everyone has it. My father didn’t. His gift to the world was anger and violence.”

  He didn’t know why he said such things to her, when it would only upset her. In some way it was a confession. This is what I come from. This is why I can’t love you the way you’d like.

  This is why I’m so afraid of hurting you.

  “It must have been awful to grow up with such an unpleasant person,” said Minette, clutching her handkerchief tighter.

  “Yes. Awful.” Did he sound nonchalant? It had never been an easy thing, living through his father’s rages. Music alone could mollify the bully. When August was at the pianoforte, Barrymore let him be.

  “I remember the first time I saw him hit my mother,” said August, starting into a more contemplative piece. “He was spitting out oaths, battering her with punches and kicks even though she was so much smaller and weaker. He caught her by the hair and backhanded her so hard she fell to the floor. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen, then or since, and I thought...” He gritted his teeth. “I thought I ought to have stopped him but I was too little. Too afraid.”

  “Oh, August,” said Minette. “Of course you were afraid. Did he ever hit you too?”

  “Sometimes. Better me than my mother, or my sisters.” He remembered fists, screaming, shouting, his mother’s tears, his sisters’ wide-eyed gazes peeking at him from behind nursery doors as his father punched and kicked him only for being his son. “It was easier to keep him angry at me. As I said, he already hated me. I was never good enough, never smart enough or tough enough for the Barrymore title. He told me so many times that he wished he had another son, one who wasn’t an utter and abysmal failure.”

  “Oh, no. I can’t imagine,” said Minette, clutching his arm. “He was terribly wrong to do such things. You’re a wonderful person, a wonderful man.”

  August laughed, a short, sharp burst of laughter. Even as his father had taunted and battered him, and declared him an unfit son, August had begun managing the Barrymore estate to protect his mother and sisters’ interests. His father could not do it. The man’s rages were born of self-loathing and personal failure. By the time August left for school, his father was showing symptoms of the disease that would eventually kill him. The marquess had lost his life years ago to excessive drink and cheap whores.

  “It was nice when I got big enough to defend myself, and them,” he said. “And of course I had music to get me through the darkest days.” He began to play another piece, a sorrowful melody he turned to whenever the hours were bleakest. “I remember the first time I hit my father back. Such a discovery, and such rage.”

  “Your rage?” asked Minette.

  “No. His. He couldn’t bear to be bested.” He stopped playing, abruptly, in the middle of a sequence. “I’m so glad he’s finally dead.”

  He hadn’t realized moisture was leaking from his eyes until Minette dabbed at his cheeks with the handkerchief. Tears! This ignominious development both angered and befuddled him. He hadn’t cried the entire time his father was alive, and now that the devil was in hell where he ought to be, he was sniveling like a child.

  He forced the tears back, sniffed up snot and feelings and let out a sigh. “So you see, that’s why music has always been an escape for me. And an obsession. It’s also the reason I’m reluctant to share it with the world. There’s a lot of pain and torment within those pages, more than anyone ought to know.”

  Minette put her arm through his and gazed up at him indignantly. “Why can’t anyone know? They should know what you suffered. Why didn’t you ever tell anyone what was happening within your family? They might have helped you. Does Warren know this? Arlington? Townsend?”

  “It’s not something you talk about. And they were boys, like me. What do you think they could have done? Warren had his hands full with you, and Townsend with his parents. Arlington was being groomed for his dukedom.”

  “You ought to have talked about it,” she persisted. “Someone ought to have helped you. Your mother’s family or friends, or the neighbors, or even the servants. Why, if I had known, I would have come over here and rung such a peal over your father’s head. I would have railed at him until he stopped hurting you. And if he didn’t stop, I would have gotten Warren’s pistols and—”

  August placed a finger atop his wife’s lips. “This was the same man you insisted on making comfortable at the end of his life. The same man to whom you read novels and poetry in the garden for hours at a time.”

  She pushed his hand away. “Well, I didn’t know then he was the devil. He was suffering so terribly.”

  “He suffered his whole life.” August had realized this long ago, even if it didn’t help him. His father had inhabited a miserable, dark existence, which he had taken out on those closest to him. “He was a devil, yes, but also a very tortured man.”

  “I wish he would not have hurt you.” Minette’s hand tightened on his arm and her lower lip trembled. “I wish I could have stopped him from hurting you.”

  August stared back at her, at her cheeks flushed with anger and outrage. She would have gotten Warren’s pistols. He didn’t doubt for a moment she would have. He wanted to say, I adore you, and your words mean so much to me. I love you more than anyone else in the world. But he didn’t say that because he was afraid, and jammed up with a thousand emotions that had nowhere to go.

  “The thing about my music,” he said instead, “is that too many memories live inside it. That’s why I got angry when you showed it to my friends. I shouldn’t have punished you for taking that piece to Warren’s. I regret that I behaved so unreasonably when I should have accepted your compliments with grace.” He clenched her handkerchief between his fingers. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Of course. I will always forgive you. I suppose you were very wrought up about a lot of things.”

  He didn’t want her to excuse his behavior. There was no excuse. He had behaved exactly like his father this night, yelling at her and hurting her because of his own fearful weaknesses. Minette was always using those lavishly committed words...always, everything, forever. She loved him. She always had and she always would. By comparison, he was brittle and fragile and incapable of love. He feared he might break into a thousand pieces if she stroked his forearm again.

  “You ought to go to bed,” he said, turning from her to play another morose composition. “I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.”

  She put her hands over his and stilled them on the keys. “Please, don’t play anymore.” She swallowed hard as she gazed up at him. “Come to bed.”

&nbs
p; She meant, Come to bed and let me help you forget. He could see it in her posture, in that slight tension. He let himself imagine it for a moment...losing himself, forgetting, releasing his angst and frustration all over her welcoming body. No. He dared not go to bed with her, not tonight. “My dear, I wish you would retire and get some rest. I won’t be good company.”

  The light went out of her expression, so she seemed a disappointed angel sitting beside him on his bench. She could not understand his conflict, that he needed her to stay innocent and pure, because she was the only innocent, pure thing that had ever existed in his life.

  “But...will you be all right?” she asked. “You will not be too sad? Oh, of course you will be sad. You’ve just lost your father, although he was a terrible man, from what you’ve told me. Even so, you must have all manner of feelings to sort out. And that’s perfectly all right, you know. Mrs. Everly said she cried for weeks when she lost her first husband, even though she never liked him very much, although in her case I suppose it was more a matter of social incompatibility than any real emotional—”

  “Minette.” He took her hand to silence her chatter. “I’ll try to come to bed in a while,” he lied in a gentle voice. He could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe him.

  “Will you kiss me when you come?” she asked. “So I’ll know you’re there, and that you’re all right?”

  “Of course,” he lied again. “Of course I will, my love.”

  *** *** ***

  Christmas had come and gone, but the decorations were still up, shrouded in black mourning cloth. For days, the house had been full of visitors. His sisters, with sobbing red eyes and screaming children, and their husbands and their families, and his mother’s family and his father’s relatives down to aunts and uncles and cousins far removed. Townsend had returned to town for the funeral, although Aurelia was too close to her confinement to accompany him. Warren and Josephine had come, and Arlington, and Minette’s Aunt Overbrook, who had never spread gossip after all. His mother’s friends came, doddering dowagers who shook their heads and clucked about how sorry they were. Sometimes it seemed a thousand people milled about Barrymore’s dark halls and parlors as his father lay in state.