The Scandalous Proposal Of Lord Bennett

‘Not all the time, no,’ he said cautiously. Her hands were fisted on top of the sheet, and her knuckles shone white as she flexed and unflexed her fingers. He kept a wary eye on them. Lady Clarissa Macpherson was somewhat of an unknown quantity. She seemed biddable, but Ben was convinced he’d seen a less than placid gleam in her grey eyes on more than one occasion. He had often heard her reply to the so-called gallantry of his peers in a feisty and unladylike manner, and on one occasion told a prosy lord she preferred reading a book than listening to him. It might have gained her a reputation as a bluestocking and a termagant, but for Ben’s part he admired her for her spirit. Or he had. Now, with the Lightbobs charging though his head, he wasn’t so certain. Shouldn’t a wife be more sympathetic? Not if it’s Clarissa.

‘What do you mean, not all the time?’ Her voice rose, and he winced. ‘You said, and I quote, “I never spend the night with a woman. Never.”’

Really, loud noises and a hangover from hades didn’t go well together. Where had her father got the brandy? It had been definitely inferior. And he had said that? In essence it was the truth, but she had taken the literal sense much too far.

‘Keep your screeching to a minimum, for pity’s sake,’ he said, and hated the pleading and pitiful tone he used. ‘We’re married. I need an heir. Therefore we sleep, or not sleep, together.’ He kept his tone as level as he could, considering the band of the Coldstream Guards now played a rousing march in his head.

She raised one eyebrow. ‘Elucidate.’

‘We procreate. I spend my seed in you as many times as necessary until you’re with child.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. No sowing is necessary, my lord.’

What?

‘Pray tell me why not?’ His tone was too even for it to go unnoticed. Surely she wasn’t with child? If so, it wasn’t his, and he wasn’t going to be a cuckold.

‘You said, and I quote once more – please listen carefully – we married because you were protecting my honour. For no other reason. A chivalrous gesture that you seemed as surprised about as I was.’

Wrong, a gesture I was happy to make, although I hoped for a more positive reaction to me … us … our wedding and our … His mind faltered to a halt. Just because he wanted her, and thought his attitude might make her soften to him, didn’t mean it had.

‘You never mentioned heirs. Well, why would you? I evidently have … had,’ she corrected herself, ‘no effect on you. That result is reserved for others.’

‘Wrong,’ he muttered.

‘What? Oh, never mind,’ Clarissa said impatiently. ‘Why you decided we had to wed, I have no idea. You don’t want me, I’ll be a burden, and may be an obstacle in your … Ah, I see.’ She nodded her head. ‘Of course, ‘tis all clear now.’

Ben wished he saw. Her addlepated and meandering thoughts were too much for his alcohol-soaked brain to process.

‘You think I can be a deterrent to those who ask too much of you?’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘If you imagine for one moment that the presence – no, not the presence, as I wouldn’t be there … that the knowledge of a wife is enough of an impediment for some women, you are not as worldly wise as I suppose. I think to someone like Lady Fennister’ – she named his personal bête noir – ‘or … well, to others I could but won’t name, a wife is a reason to chase you.’

How she could see any amusement in the situation, Ben couldn’t fathom. Lady Fennister he hadn’t bedded and had no intention of doing so, but she was a burr in his side. One he needed to lose. He was uncomfortable, hungover and at sea to know how to ask one very important question. Did we consummate the marriage? Before he could enquire, she carried on with her theme.

‘Stand between you and your paramours?’ Clarissa shook her head. ‘Not a chance, my lord. You can sort your own problems.’ She folded her arms across the sheet. The action tightened it over her ample, and in his eyes perfectly proportioned, breasts. He looked at them, outlined in loving detail and then up to her face. Her expression was not welcoming. However, her lips, even pursed, were luscious and rosy, and even in his hungover state Ben wondered what they would feel like beneath his. They reminded him of someone … or rather of another pair of equally luscious lips. He couldn’t remember who they belonged to.

‘What are you staring at?’

Lord she’s mouthy. I know a way to stop that, if I have half a chance.

‘Just as, given the opportunity I would have sorted mine,’ Clarissa continued.

He was confused for a moment, until he realised she was still talking about the reason for their marriage. How women could carry a conversation with so many threads, swap between them and expect a man to follow and comment was beyond him in any state, not solely when his head was less than clear.

‘I could have used my knee very effectively to deter that idiot. Ferdy Pendragon has as much sense as my little finger,’ Clarissa said. ‘You, however, had to be a man.’

She invested the word with so much scorn that he blinked. Even that little action made his eyes hurt. Were they all that bad?

That was a fine way to thank me for my chivalry. So did we? How could you ask a question like that politely, and without admitting you had no idea of what had happened after your wife took your sword and stuck it in the cake with a muttered ‘if only it were you’?’

‘Even so, madam wife, I am a man. Some things are non-negotiable.’ He strove for an emphatic tone and was aware he fell well short of that specific mark. His voice sounded more like that of a constipated swan. ‘My heir is one of them. Who knows how long it will be before you’re with child.’ There, that was suitably ambiguous.

‘After last night?’ She shrugged and held her hands out in a ‘who knows’ gesture.

The action made the sheet slip until Ben imagined he could see the dusky outline of one rosy nipple. In her attempt at insouciance, it seemed Clarissa hadn’t realised. He had no intention of telling her.

‘Aeons I would think,’ Clarissa said. ‘Not that I know much about the mysteries of what is alleged to go on in the marital bed.’ And nor do I want to, her tone intimated. ‘But in ours it seems to be thus. To order me to said bed like I am an unruly child, when surely the boot is on the other foot. To leave me alone, wondering what next for hours. Then, lo and behold, you appear, stand at the door blinking myopically and squinting towards me, and utter the inane words, “Ah ha, tis you.” I wonder, who else were you expecting? No, on second thoughts do not answer that. I have no wish to know.’

Ben blinked. He had neither opened his mouth nor uttered a word. It seemed Clarissa hadn’t finished.

‘Next, you proceed to fall down across the bed, fling your arm in my general direction, miss me by several inches, grab hold of my nightrail and rip it to shreds.’

That accounted for the state of the garment, then.

‘After which you mutter some epithet or other, pinion me to the mattress by dint of passing out across my legs and proceed to snore. All night. At some point you roll to one side and use me as a pillow until you wake up with a log between your legs, and expect me to know what to do with it. I have an idea, but I also have an assumption it won’t be beneficial to your health. According to you, as we left the wedding feast, knives, swords and something you call cocks don’t mix. That is strange because I thought poultry and sharp edges work very well? One slice and the bird is ready. I’ve never subscribed to holding it in my bare hands and eating it. So messy.’

Ben choked back a laugh. Was she truly that naïve? The expression on her face said yes, the look in her eyes said no. He recognised his wife had hidden depths and was not about to divulge them.

Damn, now I want to know more. The original reason for their marriage, to whit, to save her from shame, and do nothing more than begat an heir, went out of the window. If, he acknowledged to himself, it had even been there in the first place. Lady Clarissa Macpherson had intrigued him for years. Ever since, as a schoolgirl with flyaway hair and that fuzzy fringe, she’d shied away from him as if he had the plague. Come to think of it, her attitude towards him hadn’t changed much.

The fringe. Where else had he seen one just like it? Hopefully one day he’d remember. Ben decided it was important. Not only that – if there were hidden depths to his wife, it was surely up to him to uncover them?

‘Clary, in all seriousness, I’m sorry. I overimbibed,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s to my shame I recollect very little of our wedding night.’ Now came the sticky question. ‘Did we not consummate our marriage?’

She slid out of the bed and took the sheet with her. One slim ankle showed briefly as she twisted the sheet round her like a toga inscribed on the friezes he’d seen in Egypt. He looked down at the tent in the remainder of the covers and grinned. Whatever she thought, his log was here to stay, until her body or his hands decreed otherwise. Sadly he thought it would be his hands.

‘Sir, my name is Clarissa, and I’m thankful to say we did not.’ She gave him a glare that would have felled a lesser man – and splintered his log into kindling – curtseyed, stumbled on the edge of the fine linen shrouding her, and righted herself. ‘Thunderheads.’ She swept out and into the bathing chamber like a galleon in full sail.

It was a pity she spoiled her exit by tripping again on the cloth and staggering into the other room.

Ben fell back on the pillows and laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks. Life was looking up.

****

Clarissa, Lady Bennett, née Lady Clarissa Macpherson, sat on the lid of the commode and held her head in her hands. Life was cruel. She kicked the linen sheet with her toes and cursed as once again it clung on as if its – and her own – life depended on it. Maybe it did. What on earth had she landed herself in? And why goad him? Retribution, and an imp of mischief that wanted to pay him back for the worry he’d put her through? More than likely. Plus, if she were honest, she had looked forward to her wedding night with excitement as well as trepidation, and felt let down. She’d wondered if she was to taste his kisses now as a young woman, not a girl.

Now she knew. No, she was not.

Clarissa sighed as she used the commode and then washed in the lukewarm water that had been left on the washstand, heaven knows when. What a mess.

It had been hours before she’d fallen asleep the night before. Her nerves had been as tight as the strings of a violin, and she’d gathered all her courage to decide to face the perils and pitfalls of the unknown facets of the marriage night. Surely he would be gentle? Explain everything and make her a woman in the full sense of the word, as considerately and kindly as could be? As time ticked by, Clarissa had become more and more wound up. When the bedroom door opened and he had made his way with exaggerated care across the bedchamber floor, she had shivered, although whether in fear or excitement she didn’t examine. Then he’d pulled his banyan off and stared at her owlishly.

She’d stared back. His naked body shone in the soft candlelight, and reminded her of the sculpture of a Greek god she’d seen. Every angle, plane and – she gulped at the thought – his masculinity were highlighted in perfect detail. Her mouth went dry. The sculpture had been anatomically correct, something she had seriously doubted, even after she had equated that hard rod he’d pressed against her all those years ago with that part of the drawing that angled out proudly from the top of his legs. Until that moment she had still distrusted those pamphlets stowed safely in the secret drawer of her escritoire. Now, however …

Her pulse jumped and her mouth was dry. Was this it?

‘Hello? What have I here?’ The words were slurred and ran into each other.

Before she had a chance to reply, he’d hiccoughed, pitched forward, grabbed her nightrail, and torn it on his downward slide. Then he’d collapsed into a semi-drunken stupor onto the bed and proceeded to snore and snort for the hours of darkness.