Katie MacAlister: The Trouble With Harry

There they were again, those two words. My lady . She had deceived a marquis, led him to believe she was a poor but honest woman. Well, truly, she was poor but honest, honest with the exception of neglecting to tell him about one minor little fact…Plum moaned softly and leaned forward until her forehead rested in her hands. “Edna, would you happen to know if it’s a hanging offense to deceive a marquis?”

“Erm…” Edna backed toward the door. “Will you be needing anything else, my lady?”

Plum tilted her chin up and spread her fingers so she could see the maid in the mirror. “Yes, please. Would you mind terribly not calling me my lady ? It makes me a bit uncomfortable, not as uncomfortable as I deserve, to be sure, but uncomfortable enough that I flinch, and one can only do so much flinching before one starts to twitch, and it’s a short path from twitching to utter and complete madness. Do you understand?”

“Eep,” said Edna, and with eyes as big as saucers, she slipped out the door, closing it softly behind her.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” Plum told her reflection, “you’ve frightened your maid. She probably thinks you are already mad. She’s probably right. Stupid, stupid Plum. What am I going to do? How am I ever going to tell Harry — a marquis, for heaven’s sake, he’s almost royalty — the truth about me?” Plum looked away to the door connecting her bedchamber to her husband’s, giving it a righteous glare. “Although I don’t know why I should feel guilty about this. After all, it’s his fault, it’s all his fault. If he had told me before we were married who he really was, then I would have told him who I…who I…oh, pooh. I don’t know what I would have told him.”

Plum rose from the small gilt dressing table and fidgeted with the ribbon on her night rail. It was an old night rail, patched and mended and somewhat frayed on the bottom, not at all the sort of night rail a real marchioness would wear, especially on her wedding night, but it was all she owned, and she was pathetically grateful that Edna had found a rose-colored ribbon to replace the bit of braided cloth that had previously graced the neckline. “You are a coward, Frederica Pelham. You are nothing but a base coward, and you have no right to whine about anything because this is what you wanted.”

The scent of jasmine carried on a warm evening breeze hung heavy on the air as she gazed out the window at the blackness beyond. Because they had arrived after dark, she hadn’t had much more than a glimpse of Ashleigh Court as Harry had brought her home, but what she had seen stunned her almost as much as the carelessly tossed out fact that he, Harry, her lord and master, was truly a lord if not her master. True the house and grounds were horribly ill-kept, but Harry had reassured Thom (Plum being at the time too stunned by the marquis’s revelation to do much but sputter, “But, but…”) that he had plans to renovate and rejuvenate the once-proud estate, and he looked forward to the help and advice of his new wife.

“A wife who doesn’t deserve to offer any advice or help,” Plum said sadly to herself.

“You think not? I’m of another mind. I’ve always felt that a home needed a woman’s touch to keep it from being too utilitarian.” Harry strolled into the room through the connecting door, clad in a heavy gold brocade dressing gown that reached to his feet. He stopped next to her and looked out the window, sighing as he did. “There’s so much to do here, I would appreciate your help, but if you’d prefer not to take the house in hand—”

“Oh, no, I’d be happy to…my lord.”

Harry smiled as he turned to face her, a smile that would seem to be made up of mundane things like lips and eyes and adorable little crinkle laugh lines, but the sum result of it was so astoundingly wondrous, it melted all of Plum’s internal organs. Or that’s what it felt like happened. She couldn’t believe that simply by standing beside her he had whipped her traitorous, not-in-the-least-bit-sorry-she-had-married-him-despite-the-fact-that-she-hadn’t-told-him-the-truth-about-her-past body into a frenzy of want, need, and unbridled anticipation.

She had been far, far too long without a man in her bed.

“Are you still having difficulty with the marchioness idea? I am very sorry I didn’t tell you before we married, Plum. It wasn’t well done of me at all, but you see, I thought it might scare you off, and”—he took her hand, his thumb stroking over the backs of her fingers in a way that set alight all of the previously melted internal bits—“I wanted very much to have you legally mine before I bared my breast of all my secrets.”

A warm puddle of happiness did much to soothe her guilt. If he wanted her so much, perhaps the incident in her past would mean nothing to him? She hoped so. She prayed so. She also prayed she would survive the look of mingled desire and admiration that glowed from behind his spectacles. Plum had seen just such a look in the eyes of her first husband, and although it pleased her then, now she found herself responding to it with so great an enthusiasm, she thought her legs were going to give out. “It was a bit of a surprise, my lord—”

“Harry, please.”

“—Harry, but I can assure you it wouldn’t have sent me screaming into the night had you told me before we were wed. Indeed, the fact that you were baring your secrets to me might have induced me to bare a few of my own.”

“Would it?” Harry said, his gaze dropping to the thin lawn of her night rail where it covered her breasts, breasts that were brazenly pushing themselves forward and clamoring for her to walk them into his hands. “And what secrets could a woman such as you have to bare?”

It was the word bare in combination with the avid way he eyed her breasts that sent the few wits remaining her flying straight out of her head. “Oh…I’m sure I have some…”

“Yes, yes you do have some. You have lovely some.” Harry’s eyes glittered brightly as he looked at her breasts.

Plum frowned down at them, unsure whether she should affect maidenly mortification about the fact that her nipples were hard little pebbles against the soft linen, clearly outlined, right there for anyone to see, or to indulge in the wanton thrill of knowing Harry could stir such a reaction in her as to set her ablaze with the need to rub herself all over him. She decided that although the maidenly route was probably for the best, wanton was closer to her true nature. At least she could be an honest wanton. She took a step closer to him. “I assure you I have secrets, Harry. In particular, I have one secret. I was married—”

The words dried up on her lips as he — still staring at her breasts much in the manner of a starving man deposited at a feast — spread the fingers of his left hand and gently cupped her right breast.

“Yes, you told me you were married, and if you will recall, I told you that your past was of no concern to me.”

A tremor of heat rippled through Plum starting at her breast and ending at her womanly parts, which were now tingling for all they were worth. She closed her eyes and shuddered with pleasure, her back arching of its own accord, pressing her breast hard against his hand.

“Are you cold?” Harry asked hoarsely.

She opened her eyes as he rubbed his thumb across her aching nipple. “No. Not cold. Hot. Very hot.”

“Hot, yes, so hot, I can feel your heat. I wonder if your other—” Plum moaned as he placed his right hand on her other breast. “You are very hot. Feverish, almost. I believe the best thing for you would to be freed of the restriction of clothing.”

“Do you think so? Do you think that might help my…fever?” Plum ignored the fact that she was babbling like an idiot, too overwhelmed with desire and lust and a variety of other emotions all related somehow to the wonderful tingling going on in her breasts and nether parts.