Lord Belden's Baggage
Chapter Ten

That night, she went up just after dinner, pleading a headache she didn't have.

Evie, who had become her permanent lady's maid, had helped her undress, brushed her hair until it shone, and helped her into a nightgown and robe.

"Will there be anything else, my lady?"

She didn't think she'd ever get used to hearing that. "No, thank you, Evie. Good night."

Less than a half hour later, she heard her husband go into his room, and, in a few minutes, because he almost never slept in his own room, she heard him try the door that connected their two rooms. In fact, she heard him slam quite loudly into it, because he had assumed that it was going to be open to him. It wasn't, this time.

Bram drew a breath and took the trouble to confirm that the door into her bedroom from the hallway was also locked, before he came back to the one they shared, which was more private.

He was at least as livid as his wife had been earlier today, but when he spoke, his words were calm and measured. "I'm only going to say this once, but hear me, wife. You are in a truly enormous amount of trouble for being so naughty as to lock me out of your room. If you would like to attempt to mitigate just how bad your punishment is going to be, then I suggest you unlock this door immediately."

Alisa stood by the fire, her hand over her mouth, knowing that was what she should do. That she should never have been stupid enough to lock him out, in the first place, but that was done now. And she couldn't quite bring herself to unlock it now, especially since she had at least some inkling about what awaited her when he was no longer on the other side.

She walked over to the door, and, summoning all of her anger, she said back to him what he had said to her when he'd denied her the money she wanted, "I just can't, in good conscience, do it."

The fact that he hadn't said anything further to her after that was horrendous psychological torture. She paced in her room, fretting, crying, going to the door and reaching for the lock, but never being quite able to turn it.

She kept a small bottle of brandy in the drawer of her vanity for nights when she couldn't get to sleep, so she poured a bit of it into a glass she kept for just that reason, closing the drawer and walking to stand at the end of her bed to stare down at it, vivid, stark scenes from all of the things he'd done to her playing out on the duvet. Suddenly, a hand relieved her of the glass.

Alisa whirled. "How-how did you get in here?" She hadn't heard him break the door down, which was really what she figured he was going to do. So, there must've been a spare key.

"That's not something you need to concern yourself with at the moment, wife." He took a hold of her arm and guided her to sit at her vanity. Then he turned away from her but turned back again. "I don't think I need to tell you that you shouldn't move." He did leave to go into his room, reappearing seconds later with his pocket watch, which he gave to her to hold, for some strange reason.

Then he leaned back against her vanity, very close to her, crossing his arms over his chest. Somehow, that made him look at lot bigger to her, although she didn't know why. He was always enormous. That wasn't going to change. He seemed to be collecting himself, then he said in the same tone as he had used at the door, "In a few minutes, I'm going to tell you to go downstairs to the kitchen and get a wooden spoon."

"A wooden spoon?" she said back to him.

"Yes. I don't care what kind. I assume as you should that Mrs. Foster will be present, since they might well still be cleaning up after either our dinner or their own down there, and it's Mrs. Foster I want you to ask to get you the spoon. She'll know right where they're kept. If you're brave enough-and it would behoove you to be so, believe me-you can specify a small one, but I'm not sure they even have those, so you might not want to risk adding any more embarrassment to that which you're already going to be feeling. That's up to you, as very little else this evening will be."

Dear God! Alisa thought.

"And then you're to bring it right back here to me."

"Bram, you can't really make me" Alisa rose, but a very gentle hand pressed her back down onto her seat. "Please, Bram! I'm sorry I got angry about the money. I'm just used to having my own, and you telling me I couldn't buy something I wanted, I just" She popped up again, this time, all the way, turning to look at him.

Her husband said but two things. "Sit. Down."

She sat down.

"I take it that you don't have any questions about the task I've set for you?"

She really didn't know whether she did or not. "N-noooo?"

"You said I can't make you. And you're right. I'm your husband, but there are limitations as to what I can make you do. But this, this will make you do it, and quickly, I promise."

He handed her the watch, which had a second hand. "Look at it, Alisa. Once I've told you to go, you'll have a minute to leave the room, and you should really take it. Because once the second hand gets back to the twelve, every fifteen seconds that go by that you haven't left this room on your way to collect the very implement that I'm going to use on you when you get back, I will add fifteen extra swats."

Bram tucked his finger beneath her chin and made her look up at him. "So you had better resolve in your mind right now to leave this room before that minute of grace I've given you is up, or you are truly going to be the epitome of regret. I promise you that." He kissed her gently on the forehead. "And just so that you are fully informed, when I'm done with it, you're going to go return downstairs and give it back to whomever is down there, or you're going to leave it on Mrs. Foster's desk."

With that, he held the hand that was holding the watch up, and at nine-fifty-five and fifty-five seconds, he said the words she dreaded hearing, "Go to the kitchen."

He didn't watch her struggling with herself and the humiliation that this was going to cause her, although he did occasionally look down at the watch to keep track of the second hand. Even when the minute was up and she was still there, drumming her feet in frustration, he didn't say anything..

Finally, she forced herself to run out of the room, then forced herself to calm down as much as she could on her way down to the kitchen.

Luckily, she supposed, the only person there was kindly old Mrs. Foster.

"My lady! I'm surprised to see you here. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Alisa swallowed hard, feeling as if there was a boulder in her throat...and in her chest...and in her stomach...and on her heart. "Yes, please. You could..." She'd managed to fight off the tears, but they were flooding into her eyes. She forced them back and said what she knew she needed to say. "You could get me a wooden spoon, a small one, if you have one, please. I'll bring it back to you as soon as I can. I just need it for a moment." She knew that was weak, but she couldn't come up with a reason why she would need it!

"You're welcome to one, your ladyship, but I don't think I have any small ones. This is probably the smallest one I have."

It looked enormous to her, but she wasn't about to complain about it and ask for another. She turned away, taking a few steps, then turned back. "Thank you, Mrs. Foster."

"You're very welcome, your ladyship. Good night."

"Good night, Mrs. Foster."

Alisa didn't hear her say, under her breath, to no one, "Someone's getting a smacked bottom tonight."

Unfortunately for her, the person who had followed her down, just in case there was any untoward problem, being careful that she didn't see him, did hear it, and he had to chuckle softly to himself at just how right the old woman was. Still, he made it back to her room before she did, knowing back passageways that she didn't, and was in the same position as when she'd left him when she came through the door, having hidden the implement in the folds of her robe the entire way, so she wouldn't feel as if she needed to make any kind of explanations if she met anyone.

"I would say that that's better than I thought you'd do. You only earned fifteen extra swats," he said as she gave him the spoon, only now taking a good look at it. It was much bigger than she'd thought, with a convex bowl that would be much smaller than his hand was, and would concentrate the power of each swat into one very specific area. It was likely to be very painful in his hands. It didn't bear thinking of, but it seemed to be the only thing she could contemplate from that moment on. She wasn't sure what he wanted her to do from there, but she was certain he would tell her.

He'd already moved "her chair" into the center of her room. It was a plain, straight-backed chair that he'd given her as one of her wedding presents. She was required to keep in the corner of her own room. And to her eye, it even looked like an evil chair that was specifically designed to participate in imparting pain and humiliation to a wife.

She hated that chair, having already spent a goodly amount of time either over it or over his lap, while he was sitting on it.

This time, it was the former. He had removed all of her clothing, then bent her over the back, which was so tall that she would have to spend the entire punishment on her tiptoes. At least there was the seat to grip, although she knew she'd have black paint chips beneath her fingernails shortly, which was preferable to ever letting go, she knew from experience. And there was nowhere to go with that chair, nowhere to lean away from a swat or she'd likely end up on the floor, no way to arch away from one because her tummy was already pressed up against the wooden rungs. There was no hope of him missing-not that he ever missed many even when she was at her most athletic-and hitting the chair or even anywhere else on her body.

But it wasn't just the spoon she was subjected to that night. Her husband started out with a hand spanking that left her shaking and shuddering and pleading with him to stop. She could feel her nates burning, the skin sizzling after each crisp, loud smack. He landed most of them at the bottom of her bum, where she'd feel it most tomorrow, and perilously close to another very tender area.

"When I stop spanking you, Alisa, I'll start using the spoon," Bram warned, and she wailed, enduring another twenty-five swats to her sit spot that had her arching her back with each one as his hand crashed down onto her wretched backside. And then, before she had a chance to take a breath or collect herself in any way, he took up the spoon. She was beside herself by the fifth agonizing explosion at a spot that was only about the circumference of the bottom of a medium sized juice glass, but that only made each smack that much worse. And he set about distributing them all over the available area, even down the backs of her thighs, which had her all but dancing a jig as they fell relentlessly against her tenderized skin, although she could never thrash far enough away from them to earn herself any kind of relief from the relentless rain of pain.

When the last one for the moment-clapped loudly against her cheeks, he didn't allow her up, but rather, he began to lecture. "I am not happy that you locked me out of your room, Alisa. I'm not happy at all. I understand that you are angry with me for denying you the money you want for the chair or chaise or whatever it is. And I would have understood if you had been pouty or moody or whatever. I might even have tried to cajole you out of your bad mood with a present of some sort-flowers, jewelry, or a small trip or some other kind of enticement."

He sank down by where the front of her was stretched out over the seat of the chair. "But locking me out of your room, Alisa, was very naughty. I am your husband, and you have no right to deny me access to you. None at all, by the laws of God and man. You are mine, and I will not have locked doors between us. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," she croaked.

"Remind me, wife, how many extra strokes did you earn by not fetching the spoon to me more quickly?"

He was asking her, but she knew very well that he kept careful track of those kinds of things. He wanted to humiliate her by making her say it. "Fifteen, sir."

"We shall take care of those right now, and then I'll send you down to give the spoon back." "Y-yes, sir."

Every one of those last cracks landed right where he wanted them to. Right where he knew they would serve her the best and remind her longest afterwards what she was not allowed to do. It was true that part of her bottom was quite a livid red just from her spanking and from where the spoon had landed already, but he didn't let that deter him from delivering them right where he knew they belonged. That spoon left quite a nasty impression indeed.

She'd twisted his heart in his chest with every cry, and after each one, she'd begged him not to give her another, but he gave her the full count. He couldn't slight her like that and give her less than he knew he should. He wouldn't. Bram put the spoon on her vanity and helped her up, holding her easily until she could stand and putting her back into her nightclothes as if she was a child. Then he handed her the spoon, cupping her cheek in his hand and saying, "When you get back, I'll need to spend a long time hugging you." Then he sent her on her way, following her again as he had earlier, just to make sure that she was all right.

When she came back from having left it on Mrs. Foster's desk in the kitchen, he opened his arms to her, and she ran into them unhesitatingly, which twisted his heart in another way entirely.

***

It wasn't until months later, when Alisa and her mother-in-law, who felt much more like a mother to her, were shopping again for some of the last pieces they would need, that Alisa had a revelation. It hadn't been an easy refit, and by now, she felt like a veteran of the process. She could spot a good buy much more accurately than she used to.

They'd been hard at it since the early morning, and they found a little teashop where they stopped for a bit of a respite.

As they tucked into a wonderful repast of cream tea and scones, Charlotte just happened to ask her what had happened to that darling little chaise she had been going to buy.

Just the thought of it made Alisa shift uncomfortably in her chair, knowing she was blushing. "It...it was too expensive."

But Charlotte knew her son too well for her to get away with that. "That's what Bram told you, I take it?"

Her daughter-in-law brightened even further. "How did you guess?"

"A mother knows these things. What did he say?"

As she'd mockingly said exactly those words to him later that day, she was able to say them from memory. "He said he couldn't, in good conscience, give me the money." Charlotte loaded up her scone with jam and cream. "And do you know why he's so careful with his-with our-money, Alisa, my dear?"

"No, I don't. I certainly didn't grow up as he did, with a silver spoon. But it seems to me, that having unlimited funds at their disposal causes people to lean much more in the other direction from what Bram has. Every time he thwarted a potential suitor-well, a potential dance partner, really-he would always tell me that they were gamblers or something bad in regards to how they handled money, as if that was the worst possible sin."

"Well, he comes by it naturally. You probably don't know this, but about fifteen years ago, there was a panic in the financial world-all over, but it hit particularly badly here in England. We lost quite a bit of money, and, like all good parents, we really did think we were keeping our worries about that from our child. But he knew. He was terrified that we were going to lose everything we had, and he went through it all by himself, never saying anything to us about it. I learned all this about him much later, in fact, sometime after you arrived. It answered a lot of questions I had about why he behaves as he does."

Alisa was musing about everything she'd learned from Charlotte. "It certainly does."

"As a result, he's very careful with money, and it's done us well. He's done us well. My husband doesn't have much of a head for business, but Bram does, I'm glad to say. You might have a hard time prying any out of him for anything he considers foolish, my girl, as you've already experienced, but you'll always have money because he's not going to allow it to be spent frivolously."

It took Alisa a few days to digest what Charlotte had told her, but once she had, she sought her husband out, finding him in his study.

"Come in."

He was already up and out from behind his desk to greet her as she closed the door and met him half way.

After kissing the breath out of her, he asked, "To what do I owe the honor of a midday visit?"

She looked up at him worriedly. "Am I interrupting? Do you want me to wait until later? It can wait until later. It's not important." She was already trying to turn in his arms when he contracted them just a bit.

"Stop that," he said with no rancor at all. "If you felt you needed to come to see me, then it must be important. If it's important to you, then it's important to me." He captured her hand. "And I always want to see you, anyway. Come sit on my lap."

She perched there happily, then gave him a sidelong glance. "Is this how you conduct all of your business, Lord Belden?"

He frowned comically. "No, Lord Bellamy wouldn't look anywhere near as fetching as you do on my lap."

She laughed at that, and he beamed up at her. "Why did you come here, little love?"

She'd recently received a promotion from "little dove" to "little love." She thought that was probably a good thing.

All of a sudden, Alisa looked quite a bit more serious than he liked to see her. "I-I came here, because I think I owe you an apology."

Bram's eyebrow went up. "You do? Well, far be it from me to discourage you from that!"

Alisa swatted at him out of habit more than anything else. "Yes, I think that I shouldn't have given you such a hard time about you not allowing me to buy that chaise I wanted, a while ago."

"Hmm." He gazed up at her. "I thought you had already paid your penance for that, and quite thoroughly, if I remember correctly. I had put it out of my mind."

"Yes, I did, but you telling me no was only part of the reason why I got so angry about you not allowing me to have it. The other part was that I really wasn't trying to be profligate and spend us down to nothing by doing this remodeling and redecorating. I don't come from money, so, I, too, am careful about what I spend, and this was no different. Ask your mother. I dragged her from pillar to post looking for bargains on everything."

He met her eyes. "I appreciate that. I really do. And I know you've economized, because I know what some of my friends' wives have spent when they remodeled."

"Thank you. I wanted the chaise, but that was why I started by asking for my own money, which I thought was going to be just a pin money account. It wasn't all that important to me, but I let it become that way and was very naughty because of it. But I never said I was sorry, and I should have, so I'm very sorry."

Bram smiled down at her. "Well, of course you're forgiven, sweetheart. But what prompted this sudden change of heart?"

"Your mother and I finished up the buying for the redecorating a couple of days ago."

"Well, that's always nice to hear."

"And well, don't be mad at her, but she told me what's behind you being so cautious about the financial end of things."

"Oh."

Alisa desperately hoped she was doing the right thing, although she was realizing that thinking that now was a bit too late. "I hope you're not angry, Bram. Please don't be. It really helped me understand why you do some of the things you do and a lot about why you were so mean to me when I first got here. You must've taken one look at me and seen all your money being spent on some interloper."

That was uncomfortably accurate, but he didn't confirm it for her. Instead, he clasped his arms around her and squeezed just a bit. "Well, I think I'm growing a soft spot for this particular interloper."

"You are? I'm glad to hear that, because I'm growing a little something of my own."

"Is Mother pushing you into her gardening club? You don't have to let her do that, you know—"

His wife was glaring down at him, so he guessed he'd gotten it very wrong.

"No. Think again. I'm growing something."

She was as patient as she could be under the circumstances, but then she finally pried one of his hands from around her and placed it on her lower belly. "I'm growing something for us, Bram."

Alisa knew the moment he got it-finally-because he stiffened beneath her. "You-you're going to have a baby? Our baby?"

She bit her lip hard-to keep from laughing. "Well, it's not anyone else's, I don't think."

He picked her up and whirled her around, then thought better of the idea, cradling her on his lap, instead, as if she was infinitely breakable. "Oh, Alisa, you have made me the happiest I have ever been in my life." She smiled softly. "Really?" "Absolutely." Bram pressed his lips gently to hers.

While their foreheads were still pressed together, Alisa asked, "Bram, if it told you another something that is very important to me, would you promise me that you won't get angry or...laugh or something like that?" "Of course, lovely. What is it?"

She spent a long time trying to work up her gumption, and in the end, she almost didn't say it because she was so afraid of what he probably wouldn't say back. But then she decided that it deserved to be said, regardless. "Now, I'm not saying this just because of the baby, I want you to know."

He nodded in agreement.

"But...I-I think..."

"You think what, darling?"

"I think I love you," she whispered, then buried her face against his neck in embarrassment.

Bram was stunned for the second time in a few short minutes, but he wound his arms around her tightly, anyway. And seconds later, when he had worked up his own gumption, he pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, "I love you, too." The End Blushing Books Blushing Books is the oldest eBook publisher on the web. We've been running websites that publish steamy romance and erotica since 1999, and we have been selling eBooks since 2003. We have free and promotional offerings that change weekly, so please do visit us at http://www.blushingbooks.com/free.

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