Disciplining the Duchess by Annabel Joseph

there was a world of courtesans, actresses, and dissolute women who made themselves available to men of his rank. He had always imagined he would continue to use such professional services after marriage, but he wasn’t so certain now. He hadn’t lain with Miss Barrett—Harmony—last night, but even the spanking had far surpassed any experience he’d enjoyed in the company of a professional. Now he stared at her rashly bared ankles and wondered how she might slake his other lusts.
    “Your Grace, you must lie back with me and look at the sky!” Her delighted voice interrupted his lurid fantasies. He felt so guilty he actually complied, strolling over and sitting beside her, but not too close, and leaning back on one arm. He raised his eyes and noted there was indeed a lovely sky today. All blue, no clouds whatsoever. Late summer in the north of England could sometimes be…magical.
    “No, you must lie completely down,” she scolded with good nature. “I know you shall sully your beautiful coat just a bit, but believe me, the view is worth it.”
    He scoffed. “I have not sprawled back on the grass like that since I was a child.”
    “That’s a shame. When you lie back and look up, it’s like the sky is a large blue bowl above you. There is nothing but endless heavens. I wonder what it would be like to see the earth from up there.” She reached to the sky as if she could capture it. “I wonder how high a person might go.”
    I wonder… I wonder… I wonder… With a sigh, he lowered himself back, and for the first time in many years stretched his full length along the ground. The earth was a hard bed, but not unpleasant.
    “I wonder how many people have lain back here, just like us, to gaze at the sky,” she continued softly. “Romans, or even those who came before. Perhaps a young herding boy or a girl daydreaming of a suitor. Perhaps some Romans had an assignation here beneath the blue sky and sun.”
    “Miss Barrett, you are scandalous.”
    She ignored his teasing, carrying on in her wistful voice. “It is entirely possible, you know. This wall has been here for nearly two thousand years.”
    “And before the wall?” he asked. “Even before the wall, people walked here. Creatures, perhaps, that we have never even known.”
    “Dragons,” she breathed.
    “Perhaps. The world is ancient, and everything in it.”
    Her eyes shone with new thoughts, new questions yet unspoken. How whimsical he was becoming, to encourage her so. Perhaps, rather than improving his wife’s peculiarities, he might become over time as peculiar and ill-mannered as she. His mother had already accused him of such. Harmony was looking over at him now with the most sincere gaze of…adulation.
    “Yes, Your Grace. Everything is ancient, as you say. How can we ever understand all of it?”
    “We needn’t,” he said, a practical stick-in-the-mud. “We need only understand the questions and concerns that affect us directly.”
    She turned away to look back at the sky. She was thinking so hard he expected her to pass out at any moment from the pressure of all the “I wonder’s” in her head. She closed her eyes and spread her arms outward.
    “I can feel the earth moving under me,” she said.
    Nonsense , he thought.
    “Can you feel it, Your Grace? The sway of the earth beneath you?”
    “Yes,” he lied, only to hear her sigh of pleasure.
    “It’s like a mother rocking a baby to sleep, don’t you think?”
    “I surmise we are the babies,” he intoned lightly.
    He waited for the next “I wonder” but none came. After several moments of silence he became aware that Miss Barrett had drifted to sleep there beside the Roman wall, rocked by the earth under her big blue bowl of sky. He leaned up quietly so he would not wake her, and regarded her for some time with his head propped on one hand. It seemed too intimate to watch her sleep, although they were both fully dressed and outdoors within view of the coachman, who waited