The Scandalous Proposal Of Lord Bennett

Not unless he married me because I was his sun, moon and stars. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that. Life would be less than acceptable if he kept to usual ways.

‘He hasn’t changed one bit,’ Clarissa said one morning when the previous night he’d had one duty dance with her and spent the rest of the night squiring Lady Beaufort. A woman who, it was said, spread her favours far and wide. It was a repetition of most events they had attended together. So far Clarissa had bitten her lip and kept her mouth shut, but one moment alone with him and Clarissa feared his ears would ring. Either from her tongue as she gave vent to her feelings, or her hands when she boxed them.

‘He’s as arrogant and unfeeling as ever.’ Clarissa sat down on the chair the footman held out for her. She was conscious she had a flounce and a pout, and neither were becoming. Look what he’s reduced me to.

‘Why should he not be?’ her grandmother asked as she deliberated between two large pastries. ‘He’s a man and he’s not married yet, and your attitude would sour milk, my dear. Have you never heard that to keep a man sweet, you need to be sweet yourself? ’Tis a fact. Anyway, it’s better if your man has spirit and experience. It will make your life all the more pleasant.’ She didn’t say how, and Clarissa was in no mood to ask her to expand on her statement. ‘And you, my love, would walk all over a man with no backbone. You need a strong male to manage you. Whatever your dear papa thinks you are not made in the mould of your mama, God rest her soul.’ Her grandmother took a large bite of pastry, and ended the conversation. Perhaps it was as well. In the mood she was in Clarissa might well have flown into a paroxysm of rage that surpassed anything ever seen before.

Instead she visited her friend Belinda, ostensibly to chat about anything and nothing, and then perhaps seek advice. On arrival it was obvious Belinda had problems of her own – even if she wasn’t openly sharing them all – and Clarissa chose not to tax Belinda even more. Instead she drank herself into a stupor with Belinda’s finest whisky, and Phillip had to be called upon to assist her home.

After some thought, Clarissa appealed to her father, and begged him to let her cry off from the marriage.

‘Say I’m deranged, have consumption… oh, I don’t know, papa – say I’m dead if you like.’ He, poor man, had been appalled. An expression of dismay crossed his face and his lips turned down. Where had he gone wrong? It would have been her mother’s greatest desire to see Clarissa married to such a wealthy and eligible man.

You are wrong. Surely she would have wanted me to be happy? In truth, Clarissa had no idea. She hadn’t known her mother at the sort of age you asked that. Her godmother, Lady Lakenby, yes, but Lady L was well known for being an individual, whose views did not necessarily mirror the majority.

In her papa’s mind, Lord Theodore Bennett was everything a woman could want for in a husband. He begged her to be reasonable. ‘I feared so much you would be left alone when I die, with only Phillip to make sure you wanted for nothing.’

As Phillip was as big a rake as Lord Bennett, that was not a sensible option. His comment on her forthcoming nuptials had been brief. ‘Poor Bennett. Does he know what he is getting into?’

To Clarissa, it seemed completely wrong to say Lord Bennett was everything a woman wanted in a husband. There was a lot she didn’t want. A man who had a mistress, for instance. And although it was true she didn’t like being thwarted, she was a reasonable woman, wasn’t she? One prepared to listen and … maybe not. However, the thought of her beloved mama, and the obvious delight of her father, made her decide it was futile to protest any more. After all, unless she wanted to be an old maid, and the put-upon younger sister, always at the beck and call of her older brother – and any family he eventually had – she had to marry. It may as well be to Lord Bennett as anyone else. She chose to ignore the way her heart sped up when she was near him, and how many of her friends had admitted their envy of her altered circumstances. Apart from his one moment of chivalry, he had done nothing to show he had any regard for her whatsoever.

With a heavy heart, Lady Clarissa Macpherson resigned herself not to accept any nonsense from him or anyone else. How she intended to do that she chose not to ponder over.

The talk her with her grandmother about a woman’s duty had firmed her heart, and she vowed she wasn’t going to be a duty. Indeed it was lucky she and her friends at school had purloined some leaflets and read a little about anatomy. Even though the actual act of love, consummation, whatever you chose to call it, seemed nigh on impossible. Had the leaflet maker being playing a joke? It seemed she would not be long finding out.

Before she had a chance to say bouquets and wedding breakfasts she was married. To a man with whom she had spent no more than half an hour alone, and who, it seemed, preferred to look at the bottom of a brandy glass than at her.

Chapter Two

Lord Theodore Bennett, known to his friends as Ben, and to his enemies – of whom there were several – as that bloody Bennett, rolled over in bed, and opened one brandy-bleary eye. No doubt if a mirror were handy, the eye would be as blood red as the wine he thought followed the brandy. Or was that before? Ben was more than a little hazy with regard to the previous night’s activities. The last he remembered was accepting a wager that he couldn’t empty the overlarge glass put in front of him, in one go. Had he? He had no idea, but it was a certainty someone would let him know if he owed them money.

Ben sighed, winced as the noise set off a blacksmith’s hammer in his head, stretched, and froze. Why was a bolster down the middle of his bed? A soft squidgy flesh-covered bolster? He patted it cautiously and it moved. He dropped his hand as if it were scalded, and tried to bring his thoughts into some form of order. It wasn’t easy.

A woman? He never spent the night with a woman. Never, ever. Bed them and leave them had always been his motto. And not in his own bed. That was a given. Everyone knew and accepted that. Didn’t they?

Somewhere in the back of his fragmented mind he remembered music and damned doves flying overhead. Doves, for fuck’s sake, and he didn’t even get a chance to take a pot shot at them. Had he been to Vauxhall to watch one of the many spectacles there? No, the music had been ‘churchy’, and … Oh my lord. A wife. I have a wife. The events of the previous day came back to him with immediate and hideous clarity. This needed to be discussed further. He reached out to the softness next to him and squeezed.

The bolster stirred and muttered something. Even in his less than awake state it didn’t sound complimentary. He pulled his hand back again. Soft fingers fumbled over his body, and fastened on his morning erection.

The screech sent sharp daggers of pain splintering through his head. Nails dug into his skin, and that hammer hit his skull with monotonous regularity.

‘For goodness’ sake, woman’ – he hoped to hell it was a woman – he didn’t think he’d suddenly discovered a propensity for his own sex – ‘there is no need to awaken every dog and monkey for streets around. Have you never felt a …?’ He paused. What polite way was there of informing your wife – or who he assumed must be his wife, for surely he was not debauched enough to take another woman to bed on his wedding night – how your body woke up every morning? Even, it seemed, after an excess of wine and brandy. ‘A man’s body like this? If not, get used to it.’

His wife – damned if his vision wasn’t so blurry he couldn’t define her features – struggled out of the bedclothes and sat up with the sheet clutched to her like a suit of armour.

‘Of course I haven’t. Who would want to feel that?’ She shuddered. ‘As for get used to it? In your dreams, not mine.’

She gulped. Actually showed distaste. Even in his bemused state Ben was astounded. It was a first. Women usually reacted in a much more positive manner.

‘Where is my nightrail? Oh thunderheads.’ Her dismay was obvious.

He glanced to where she looked. A flimsy cotton nightrail hung over the end of the bed, out of arm’s reach without her showing her all. It looked somewhat the worse for wear. Almost in tatters. Surely she could afford better? He wondered how it had got there. Ben didn’t remember taking part in that disrobing. Not that he had any recollection of having anything to do with, well, anything.

‘How? Oh, don’t tell me. Of course I haven’t. You told me …’ She shook her head in such a vigorous manner it hurt him to watch and blew several strands of hair off her cheeks. ‘Oh, never mind. Nevertheless, explain to me one thing, pray. Why?’ She spoke baldly, in a none-too-wifely manner.

Why? Why what? The state of my body? What I said?

‘Because this is me.’ He hoped it was the correct reply. By the way she pursed her lips he was none too sure. Ben tried to expand on his statement a little more. It wasn’t easy. He looked in her direction, saw three wives, and had no idea whom to address. However, he focused on the middle one and hoped for the best. He recognised her grim-looking countenance.

Clarissa? Her of the voluptuous body, and forbidding attitude. Oh sweet lord. She whom I have lusted after ever since the first time I rubbed up? He accepted he was deep in the mire. Lady Clarissa wasn’t one to appreciate his types of demands, even though they were honest and straightforward. Whenever he’d attempted to be gallant, she’d shot him down as if she thought he jested. He didn’t, but he’d never been able to make her see that. She shied away from him like a frightened filly – or virgin? In the end he gave up and used her image in his mind when he gave himself relief. That thought strengthened his staff even more. Good lord, if he wasn’t careful the evidence of how she affected him would begin to run down its length.

‘This you what? Are a drunkard?’ She snorted. ‘Then I’ll take my leave now and retire to the country and breed dogs. Big ones, with very large teeth, who have an aversion to men who imbibe too freely.’

Give me strength. She knows we are wed and it’s too late for anything else, except accept and move on. Why can she not just accept it? What have I done that I’ve forgotten?

‘This is me when I awaken. Get used to it, madam, wife.’ Was his tone as intimidating as he hoped?

Clarissa stared at him from under a dark-reddish-brown fringe of hair as if he were a curiosity escaped from the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.

Why does she have that frizz over her forehead? Dare I ask? Perhaps not.

‘Thankfully I won’t need to. It won’t bother me. As you gave me to believe we will not bed together.’

Perhaps this is not the time to discuss her hair.

‘Repeat that.’ Surely he hadn’t heard right?

She ground her teeth. Ben thought that was an expression, not something people actually did.

‘We. Will. Not. Bed. Together.’ She snapped each word out separately.

Definitely not the time.

Her expression dared him to contradict her. ‘Is that correct? What you told me? We will not share a bed?’

How often was she going to say that?

‘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.

She’d wriggled out of the remains of her nightwear, and put it to one side. Sitting on rough edges and torn threads was less than comfortable. Clarissa pondered dark thoughts of retribution. That nightrail was – or had been – beautiful, and even if it was intended, so her godmama said, to be taken off, she was sure Godmama hadn’t meant quite in the manner it had happened.