The Lord's Scandalous Bride Page 5

  Nele hadn’t seen his father in two years, at the request of his mother. She lived in London at Mercester House and in Lincolnshire at the Georgian mansion that now rose within the ruins of Mowton Castle and still went by the name of that edifice built by Nele’s ancestor Robert de Lourcy, first earl of Mercester, at the command of William the Conqueror himself. His namesake Nele’s brother Robert, four years older than Nele, had been their mother’s creature from the moment of his birth, as far as Nele could tell, and had drunk in her poisonous tales of their father’s misdeeds with his wet nurse’s milk.

  Nele’s own relations with his parents had rather more complexity to them. He and Robert had gone to Panton as boys, and then as youths, for the twice yearly visits the duke required, at Christmas and at midsummer. During the uncomfortable few days of those visits, Robert had taken the duchess’ lessons to heart, and had maintained a stony cordiality to his father, which the duke had never managed to penetrate—nor, really, Nele thought, had he ever tried to penetrate it.

  Perhaps because of his youth and perhaps because of the beginnings of that affinity that Nele now understood himself to share with his father in certain deep matters of character, Nele had never felt himself able to do as his brother did and his mother commanded. It had cost him bitter tears when he returned to Mowton, which he could not help thinking his home since he lived there most of the year and had his education there until he followed his brother to Harrow. Robert told of how familiar Nele had become with their father, and their mother demanded to know if Nele wished to go to hell just as their father would surely go. The recriminations from the duchess would go on for weeks, but every time it happened that when Nele returned to Panton, he found himself falling under the duke’s spell.

  When Nele had been a boy and then a stripling, perhaps from the ages of ten to eighteen, he had spent his time with the duke hunting and shooting. His father had even taught the brothers to fence, and Nele enjoyed the sport so much that he practiced very diligently. Though his brother had five inches and two stone on him, when Nele was twelve and Robert sixteen the younger sibling began beating the elder so regularly that Robert gave up fencing entirely when the duke allowed him to, at eighteen.

  But Nele went on fencing with the duke until finally, eighteen himself, he beat his father for the first time. That had been the year, though, when according to the agreement made between the duke and the duchess the compulsory visits would cease, on the assumption that the boys would now know their own minds enough to choose for themselves whether to spend their university holidays in Lincolnshire or in Sussex.

  In practice, because Robert refused to admit that their father might have a single redeeming quality, and because Nele could not help worshipping the arrogant but apparently virtuous and upstanding young man who would one day be head of the Lourcy family in place of the duke, it had meant that Nele’s visits to Panton had ceased entirely. From that last midsummer, in his nineteenth year, Nele had seen his father only in London, and very briefly.

  He had, however, heard a great deal more about his father in the intervening years, between eighteen and twenty-eight, than he had heard in all of the previous years combined. Nele had felt the more compelled to seek out tales of the duke because of the conversation they had the day before Nele left Panton for Mercester, walking across the park of Panton Castle in a direction Nele did not think he had ever traveled before.

  The duke had roused him at an early hour, to walk across the dewy meadow to a wall of which Nele had no memory, though he supposed that he did not recall it because it had always represented a bar to his wandering that over the years he must have in some sense forgotten that he had forgotten. The wall of age-greened limestone stood in the deep shade of tall oaks, and had a covering of ancient ivy.

  “Let me see,” his father said. “The gate was always meant to be hidden, and now the ivy has grown so thick that my task is doubly difficult. Nor have I stood here in more than twenty years. Since Miss Halton came, actually.”

  Miss Halton—the headmistress of the duke’s school, in whose young ladies Nele had begun to take a rather more lively interest this past year than he had as a boy. Or, he supposed, more accurately, he had begun to wish to take a more lively interest, but had been prevented from doing so by the strict watch kept on the schoolhouse where they lived and learned by the brown-coated school warders who would say, “I’m sorry, milord, but you must be getting along, or I shall have to tell his grace you was here.”

  He saw the young ladies only in the ducal chapel, on Sunday, when they came in and sat in their special pews, dressed modestly and chaperoned by their mistresses, with Miss Halton herself at the front. Nele sat in the family pew with his father, which meant he had a good view of their faces. Sometimes one would look at him but then quickly turn away, blushing, but that was all Nele had known of the young ladies before two incidents in that same midsummer visit had increased his curiosity to terrible proportions.

  The feelings of adolescent shame he had attached in those days to anything that made his cock stand had served to make him obey the warders in the main. The stirrings he began to feel that summer in relation to the young ladies of Miss Halton’s academy therefore both attracted him to her school and her girls and pushed him away. Thus it was that he ended up in the tree and outside the window, to see and hear what he saw and heard. Indeed, it seemed to him afterward that nothing could make his cock as stiff as thinking of the two moments in which he had stolen the barest hints of what went on at a girls’ school—or so he had thought at the time, though he would learn very soon afterward that the duke’s school for young ladies bore little resemblance to most girls’ schools.

  A single tree, in a thicket of brambles overlooked the walled playground where the girls, all of them eighteen or older themselves, had their sports. Many times in his youth Nele had attempted to climb this tree, but had failed through lack of height and reach. Now, at eighteen, he knew he could climb it, but it required all his courage to overcome his shame at his craving to see Miss Halton’s young ladies and make the ascent.

  At last he did, and found himself rewarded beyond his wildest amorous dreams. To Nele’s astonishment, it appeared that Miss Halton’s girls played their games of rounders and football naked as the goddess Diana and her nymphs in a French painting.

  His cock stood to attention instantly, and he thought his eyes could never take their fill of the trim bottoms bouncing merrily as the girls ran the bases, or the breasts in all their various sizes with differently shaped and colored nipples. Or, most of all, the glimpses of the sweet curls between their legs that made him feel so faint. Robert had of course told him almost the day Nele turned eighteen all about sexual relations, but that dour recital could never have prepared Nele for the arousal he felt now as he noticed that to the side of the pitch one girl, in tears, was bent over a little bench, wailing as a schoolmistress whipped her with a punishment strap of black leather.

  Oh, how Nele wished then that he might hear what the schoolmistress said! Had the girl said something amiss? Had she failed to exert herself sufficiently? In any case, the shapely bottom of the raven-haired miss now bore a tapestry of curling red welts, the sight of which made Nele’s heart beat so fast he thought it might pound its way out of his chest, and he could certainly hear, though faintly, her screams of pain as the thrashing continued.

  He reached for his cock, so hard that it had begun to ache, in the thought that perhaps even perched thus in the tree he might be able to ease his amorous fever, but at that moment he heard a sound in the thicket below him that surrounded the school wall, and in confusion and embarrassment—and fear at the prospect of being caught spying on a scene so obviously not intended for masculine eyes (oh, how wrong he was proved about that!)—he lost his grip with his other hand and fell from the tree, thankfully into a cushioning lattice of brambles that tore at his clothes but could not prevent him from sprinting away as if the devil drove him, never to know whether he had been de
tected in his prurience.

  A few days later, though, Nele managed to hear the goings-on in one of the school’s rooms. Since falling from the tree, Nele’s path around the grounds of Panton Castle had described a sort of hyperbolic arc in which he would come as close to the school as he thought he might be able to find a reasonable explanation for—he was taking a vigorous walk, or thought he might have left his Lysias text—and then shy away, cursing both his timidity and his silliness to hope he might steal another glimpse of the girls, whether clothed or naked.

  Finally, two days before his father took him to the old wall in the park, Nele noticed on one of these arcing perambulations that a little niche seemed to be formed between the schoolhouse and the wall of the playground, in which a person might conceal himself at least from anyone who looked from the sides. It was Sunday, and the warders seemed to be fewer on Sundays, as if they were allowed alternate Sundays off from their duties. Sunday, too, was the day the duke hosted gentleman callers who paid visits to the girls, and Nele had recently—and in particular after seeing from the tree what he saw—wondered very intently what might occur on those visits. Feeling his breath quicken and his heart pound at his boldness, Nele strode toward the niche with an air of much more resolution than he felt, ready to say that he was sure his Lysias was there and indeed with his Lysias in his hand, ready to toss to the ground to prove the excuse.

  Almost as soon as he had arrived there, he heard the sounds coming from a window above him, open to provide at least a bit of a cooling breeze to the room’s occupants.

  “…are you here at the duke’s school, Louisa? Did you let some nobleman fuck this pretty cunt?”

  Nele’s heart skipped a beat, and his cock grew instantly hard. Those were the words Robert had spoken to him when he had informed Nele about what he called the physical realities of the relation between men and women. He had called them men’s words and said that he did not like to use them himself, but that Nele should be prepared to hear them and even to say them, for conversation at university could take a coarse turn among gentlemen, and a chap had to be prepared to keep up with it.

  “Or was it the butler, Louisa? You must answer me, or I am afraid I shall have to spank you.”

  The girl’s voice, then, anxious but also… thick, as if something were happening to her that she found irresistible. “A f-footman, sir… oh, sir, please…”

  “Please what, Louisa? Please fuck you? Ask me to fuck you, girl. I have always wanted a wife who would beg for a good hard fucking dog-fashion, bent over as you are so that I may punish you or pleasure you as I like.”

  A slap, and a cry of surprised pain. “Which shall I do now, Louisa?” Another slap.

  “Please! Please fuck me, sir!”

  “Good girl.” A low growl, another, very different cry from the girl. Nele couldn’t help it: his cock was in his hand, and he had almost spent himself at the noises that answered to the description his brother had given of the sexual act but had, oh, so much more of interest about them.

  A rustle arose in the underbrush nearby, though, and Nele, red-faced, took off once again like a shot. At least, he reflected now as he rode next to Susan in the landau, he had had mental pictures enough from the sounds, when combined with the sight of the girls at their sports, to provide the necessary matter for more than one spend in private, that night.

  Chapter Eight

  Lord Nele seemed to Susan very grave as the carriage made its stately way southward, so much more slowly than a railway train would have gone but also so much more grandly. He appeared so absorbed in his thoughts that Susan didn’t dare even ask where they were going, though unlike Lord Granby he showed no sign of the sort of temper that would punish a girl for speaking out of turn or simply at an inopportune moment.

  At first, as he bundled her into the carriage in the pre-dawn light, Lord Nele had spoken cheerfully, as if it were a lark to go to his father’s estate.

  “Bertram—the earl—has been so good as to suppress his wonder, my dear. He’s lent us this landau along with the pair to drive it, and the coachman. He’s even promised to make some sort of silly apology to Miss Redding.” That, as he walked Susan to the door of the carriage, drawn up in the stately portico of Hobberly Hall where Susan had never imagined a vehicle might await her—there, whither all the lords and ladies arrived and whence they departed.

  Then, when they sat side by side on the bench seat in the sumptuous cabin, big enough for six, and Lord Nele’s enormous trunk rested alongside Susan’s tiny one—for Lord Nele had said that she would not soon return to Hobberly Hall and she must bring away all her things—he said, “I’m afraid I’ve told Bertram that he should keep your wages as compensation for the nuisance of having to find a new maid. Do not be anxious, though, for I warrant you shan’t need money, with me.”

  He said that with such seriousness that Susan laughed. “My lord,” she said, “the other men who have brought me hither and thither were never so good even as to make reference to my needs. I feel that I have entered upon a strange dream, I must confess, but to have you spiriting me away seems to me wages enough.”

  Then the carriage had begun to move, and quickly the grave mood had come over Lord Nele. They stopped at an inn after two hour’s travel to refresh themselves, but Susan’s traveling companion barely said two words to her. When they had taken to the road once again, a half-hour of the same silent gravity ensued, with Lord Nele’s attention apparently divided between the back of the coachman and the passing fields, until finally Susan could bear it no more.

  “Shall I suck your cock for you, my lord?” she said. “The coachman is the earl’s man, of course, and quite used to such things. Nor might anyone on the road or in the fields see, I am sure.”

  She said the wicked thing not because she truly had a craving to have his penis in her mouth again—though she certainly would not have minded, and the thought of pleasing him that way made her warm between her thighs—but because she wanted to take his measure. Truly she had begun to worry that the man with whom, the night before, she had believed herself to be falling in love, had vanished, to be replaced by the silent presence beside her who might, for all she knew, treat Susan even more terribly than Lord Granby did.

  Lord Nele looked at her with a bemused smile, the grave look disappearing in the blink of an eye. Susan’s heart felt light; that smile definitely came from the man she hoped he might be. “That might be very diverting, my dear, despite the fact that you’ve just earned a spanking for your naughty language and for your forwardness.”

  A thrill went through Susan’s chest; he seemed like Lord Granby in certain ways and utterly unlike him in others, as if someone had taken the exciting bits and left out the cruelty.

  As if he read her mind, Lord Nele said, “Have you been punished for forwardness or wantonness by any of the men who have had you?” He had to speak loudly to make himself heard over the clatter of the hooves and the creak of the wheels, and suddenly, looking at the coachman’s back, Susan regretted her forwardness terribly, whether or not the coachman had grown accustomed to free talk in his employment by the earl of Hobberly.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said, willing her voice to reach him but not the coachman. “You might say that Mr. Greatrex punished me that way, for he always told me that I must have him… that way because of my natural wickedness. And then, later, Lord Granby whipped me if… if he found me…”

  Blushing, Susan mouthed wet to Lord Nele, but he smiled broadly, evidently entering into the terrible, wonderful spirit of the game Susan had begun but now wished she had not, both despite and because of the warmth and wetness she felt exactly where Lord Granby had inspected her so often for signs of lewdness. “What’s that, Susan?” he asked so loudly that Susan knew the coachman must hear. “When did his lordship whip you?”

  The back of the coachman seemed to twitch, as if he very much wanted to turn around to enjoy Susan’s blush as much as Lord Nele must be enjoying it.

  “When
he found me wet, my lord,” she replied with furrowed brow and terribly hot cheeks.

  “Wet? Where?”

  “Between my legs, my lord.” How had she thought that offering to please him with her mouth could ever result in anything else but these blushes, she wondered. But then she knew: the Susan who had wondered whether she should suck Lord Nele’s cock was the Susan who had lost her shame. She had forgotten, because he had grown so serious and silent, the astonishing ability Lord Nele had, simply with a smile, to return her to her lost innocence.

  “Well, then,” he said. “I think I shall have to do the same. It’s important to me that your pleasure remain under my control. Raise your skirts so that I may inspect your cunny.”

  At the sound of these words, Susan’s cunny became, of course, very wet indeed. The knowledge that sometime very soon she would have a whipping for her wantonness, though it frightened her, added even more to the arousal, as did the silent back of the coachman.

  “Coachman,” Lord Nele said, “what’s your name?”

  “William, my lord,” the young man called back without turning

  “William, I apologize that you mayn’t get a look at my girl’s cunt just this moment, but I promise to give you a glimpse before we part. Is that alright?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “My lord… please,” Susan said in a whisper that she knew he couldn’t hear. She took the stuff of her simple black gown in her hands, with the petticoat, and slowly pulled them to her waist, closing her eyes as she did the shameful thing.