He walked a circle to survey the damage he’d done, appalled at the marks yet on her backside which were now a cluster of bruised hues. Shame washed over his soul as he reached insidehis pocket and laid the diamonds he had bought that day about her slender neck. “I am sorry I hurt you, Elizabeth. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” He clasped the brilliant stones at her nape, yet she remained in position, unresponsive.
“Lizzie…” He let one finger trail the slope of her shoulder and felt her shudder to his touch. “Say something,” he added. “Please.”
“I do not require gifts to do my duty by you, sir.” She kept her head bent. “Take me to bed and do what you must.”
Hurt surged in his breast.
“I am prepared to give you an heir. I ask only that you be quick about it.”
Her words roused his ire, but the punishment was just. With a quick scoop he lifted her onto his bed and laid her on her belly to spare her more pain, then began to kiss her marred buttocks with reverence.
Still, she did not react.
Milton slid his hand between her legs but found her unresponsive. He tried to coax her into pleasure, but she neither moaned nor sighed to his softest touch. She did not so much as twitch, a stone beneath him. Lifeless.
In frustration he pulled her to her knees, on all fours now, but she was so terribly, terribly cold, he found no spark, no heat. And only monsters forced themselves on women.
Milton pulled away, appalled and enraged. He’d never raped a woman and he would not start now. Elizabeth was his wife and legally this was his right, but the act felt suddenly wrong. Criminal.
“Go to your room.” His heart beat madly in his chest. “Get out. Now!”
Elizabeth threw her robe about her and exited so fast she nearly tripped.
Milton wanted to punch something,neededto punch something, because he was not some beast who would force his wife to beget himself heirs. Is thatwhat she’d now make him do? Was that what she wished to turn him into?
By God, this was not how he’d dreamed of starting a family!
He raked his hair with both hands, fingers digging into his skull. She was punishing them both, denying him enjoyment but denying herself pleasure too, for he knew full well she’d enjoyed him before.
A cold and nasty thought slithered into Milton’s pounding head, for he’d taken her against her will before. He’d been precisely such a beast when he’d struck her with his ruler.
He dropped to his knees in an avalanche of self-loathing, guilt roiling his gut and falling like lead upon his shoulders. Elizabeth hated him enough to forgo her own pleasure, her own happiness, just to punish him.Thatwas how much he’d hurt her.
He knew the impulse intimately. How oft had he been willing to inflict pain and misery on himself to enact revenge upon his tormentor, to punish the devil in return? And now he’d done the same to this beautiful, bright creature. This innocent young woman.
He’d done his wife a terrible wrong.
But how in God’s name did one right such a wrong? How to prove one was willing to do andbebetter? He couldn’t go crawling on all fours, begging like a wolfhound.
Or could he?
By morning, a chocolate croissant rested on Elizabeth’s breakfast tray, a fresh vase of flowers perfuming her bedside. The Baron’s servants were wonderful, even ifhewas not.
Still, her husband could have taken her last night, as was his right, yet he hadn’t. He’d seemed unduly angry when he’d sent her away, for wounded pride or wounded ego, she wasn’t sure. But those awful diamonds he’d given her—such glittering, hard stones, so cold and bright—had felt more like a yoke about her neck than an attempt at true apology.
She’d stuffed them in the box with his other necklace, though she didn’t know what stones those were. Lapis lazuli, perhaps, given their mottled blue. She knew little about gemstones, having been forced early on to pawn all her mother and stepmother owned. She was herself not much for ornament either; her spectacles drew the eye no matter what dangled at her breast.
No wonder Milton wished to outfit her with jewels that sparkled, since she did not.
Elizabeth brushed tears from her eyes, realizing, oddly, that she wept. She was twenty-four today. Such a solid number, really. Was her life truly already over before it had even begun? Was a bedroom lined with books all she could look forward to while she birthed this man his heirs? Yesterday she’d felt more hopeful, but this day dawned fresh with despair.
Until Bella arrived, that is.
“Well go on, open it!” Annabelle sat on the edge of her seat, Elizabeth’s snail-like approach to unwrapping gifts annoying her sister to no end. She cruelly unspooled ribbons an inch at a time, whereas Bella tore into all packages with gusto.
“Oh, you torture me on purpose!”
“Why, sister,” Elizabeth teased, “I do no such thing.” She dropped the ribbon and made an elaborate show of retrieving it from the floor only to smooth it flat so she might slowly roll it into a?—
