The Dastardly Duke: A Medieval Erotic Novella

Chapter 1:

Magda's POV:

My fiancé stands like a giant: 6'5 to be precise, and he looks down at me as if I am the female Messiah, come to save his soul: "Magda, my dying wish is to marry you. At least on my deathbed, I shall have an angel holding my hands, like the Dormition of the Virgin."

I sniff, batting away the hands of my old flame. "Elias, you are not sick. My scrying with the Welsh god Gwydion revealed that your affliction is simply a languishing caused by offending the fey. If only you left out milk and bread for fairies, you would be immediately cured."

I cross my arms, and Elias' gold eye glints like the ruby cabochon on his thumb. With a pallor to match Pallas Athena, my intended wipes his damp brow with the back of his sleeve.

"This is the death of me, Magda, not some blasted Good Neighbor. Please, comfort me instead of turning away. I need a woman's touch," he sighs. His freckled face softens as he caresses my nutmeg hair.

I let my hand linger on his gloved knuckles for but a moment, then frown slightly. "This is a foolish marriage. If you truly are dying, you will leave me a widow."

"The wealthiest widow in England. Soon, Lilith the Night Hag shall drag me to Hell – but not before I bed you."

"You are a cad! Do not bring up images of our picnic frolicking, this is a church."

"Do not tempt a dying man. We cannot resist our first-kissed maiden."

"You are terrible, binding me to a coffin, if your hypochondriasis is right."

He steals a kiss and says no more.

I bite back salty tears. "Just milk and sugar and bread, for the fey. I do not want you to die either," I mutter under my breath. He looks at the Bishop of Oxford and squeezes my hand. I study my intended at our wedding walkthrough:

Unlike me, my fiancé, Duke Elias Hollesfern, likes his women dead: bored stiff by bairn-bearing and banquet-arranging. Killed by a sewing stitch that renders palsy to their thumbs.

I have been in training all summer as his "high society wife" with his old spinster aunt, Countess Ruth, who knows what he is really like: Elias is a stickler for heirs, stuffy, and head over heels for me. But he must have had other lovers, which makes me jealous, though he protests he is a virgin.

I just know it. My intended likes us executed in the matrimonial pose, spreading our legs like a corpse underneath him as he sires a millionth bastard on another hapless village maid.

The moans and screams from his room across from mine are enough to confirm that particular matter. Elias claims he is just doing his daily swordsmanship exercises with Charles and getting massages from the physic to work out his battle-hardened muscles, but what else is it but a maid on his prick? I am twenty-one, after all - and I may have kissed a village boy at my father's summer manor in the Cotswolds - I know a frottage grunt when I hear one!

I imagine myself speared on Elias' sword - untainted, virginal, and pure, splayed out underneath his brute, dark strength with his scarred, jagged edges consuming me on our coming wedding night, like Persephone raped by Hades. I shiver in delight, but then my maidenly humility shames me.

Why in the world am I excited by my marital duty? Tis a sin! My pneuma and humours are unaligned, mayhaps? I must see the physic about my yellow bile. And procure impotence charms for a lustful husband from a fairy doctor better than I. My charms in Elias' tea only make him well-rested and glowing with desire. But a proper impotence charm? They are worth all the gold in Britain. If his mast cannot rise, I will not have to enact my wifely duties.