“I am not yours.” Her spectacles slipped downward, but she ignored them. Lashes black as night made her eyes seem paler than they actually were. Lord, how had he ever thought such eyes lacked spirit? Hers blazed with intelligence.
“Yes, you are.” He smiled slightly. “You gave yourself to me when you signed your name on the marriage lines.” Christ, her eyes were lovely.
“Papa said you would set me aside.”
“So that’s what he told you downstairs.” He shook his head. “I wondered about that. What else did he say? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Your father does not signify.”
“He said you will divorce me. That I shall have to live abroad until Parliament grants you a divorce. Then—” She faltered just the tiniest bit. “Then, sir, why, I will to Bartley Green, and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Bartley Green is my home. Why on earth could I not go back?”
“A divorce. A divorce is not possible.”
“You can’t mean you haven’t the money or the influence.”
“I have both, of course.”
She lifted her palms. “Well, then.”
“Divorce would ruin me. I’d not be welcome anywhere. More important, I’d have to step down from Parliament and the Privy Council. If I were prepared to do that, I would have done as you expected; settle on you a sum sufficient to keep you in the deep countryside never to be heard from again.”
“Would that be so bad?”
He met her forthright gaze. “I have responsibilities I wish not to relinquish. There are inequities in England I would see eased, if not erased.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
Her surprise pricked his pride. His voice took on a certain coldness. “So much so that there are but a limited set of circumstances under which I would consider so extreme a course as divorce.”
“Such as?”
That sounded like a challenge, and he frowned. “The obvious ones. If I had reason to believe any child of yours was not mine, for example.”
“Whose could it be, if not yours?”
Ruan felt her innocence like a blow. It kept him from telling her how many married women had come willingly to his bed, how many women he knew of who gave her husband another man’s brat. Only one thing would be worse than that, and that was no brats at all. “Or if you denied me conjugal rights such that I would not have any heir from you.”
He met her gaze head on and was shocked by how intensely aware her eyes were. Aware of him. Aware of his meaning. Aware of the consequences. A woman of parts, he thought, even though he’d never before applied the compliment to anyone of her gender.
“Under those circumstances, yes, I would divorce you. But none other.” A rather long silence ensued. He gave up fighting the ridiculous feeling that they had years of history behind them and years more to come. “I’m sorry if you thought otherwise.”
“You’ll not set me aside. Child or no child?”
“No.” He felt—What? Relief. Certainly that. But while the distant future concerned her, he thought only of the present. At this moment, he had clear memories of making love to her. Memories she appeared not to share, at least not with any fondness. “Can you bring yourself to the marriage bed without disgust?” The thought of her lying inert while he did what he must appalled him.
“If I had a baby, I might not feel so alone. There would be at least some purpose to this mockery of a marriage.”
Once again, her thoughts were on the future when what mattered was right now. “You will meet the purpose quite nicely, I should say.” She did not look like a woman capable of sending a man insane with wanting. She was not beautiful or seductive, at least not as he’d formerly understood the words. But he knew what he’d felt. He wanted to feel it again. To have an orgasm that shattered him to oblivion and back.
“You make me sound like a prize broodmare.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. “I’m certain you will be a good dam to my foals.” That made her smile, and he grinned back. “Do you know, until now, I’d only thought of a wife and children in the abstract. As if I’d one day have some sent over from Regent Street. Boxed up nice and pretty to be taken out on holidays and the odd special occasion.” He cocked his head. There wasn’t a woman alive he couldn’t charm if he put his mind to it. “Now that I have you, tomorrow wouldn’t be too soon for children. I’d like several.” Christ! Where the devil had that come from?
“So would I,” she whispered.
“All the dukes of Cynssyr have been born in Cornwall.” He took her hands in his, touching the wedding band on her left hand. “At Fargate Castle. It is where my heir will be born.” He stood near enough to see the neat stitches in the collar of her gown and an area where satin thread was meant to mimic fabric worn away from long use.
“I’m sure I shall like Cornwall,” she said in a determined voice. He rather thought she’d have said the same of hell. A regular solider, she was. “Is that where you’re sending me now?”
“Satterfield is much nearer London than Cornwall.” He gave a faint grin. “Did you think I meant to banish you to Cornwall?”
She shrugged in reply. Amenable on the outside she was, but inside, Ruan thought she was not so yielding. He fancied if he pushed hard enough he’d feel the bite of steel beneath.
“Under different circumstances, I might have banished us both, but I’m afraid I cannot stay away long enough for the gossip to die a natural death. So, it’s Satterfield, not Fargate Castle. I’ll be in Town, though. I can’t say if I’ll be able to join you very often. I shall if I can get away. Christ,” he sighed, brushing his fingers through his hair. “I’ve not been gone twenty-four hours, and I’ve nothing but disasters to be dealt with.”
“Including me?”
He gave her a sharp look, but she smiled, and the tension in him eased. Without thinking what he was doing, his slid his hands up her arms, savoring the warm, silky flesh. “Believe me, you are the least of them.” In the back of his mind, he puzzled over how at ease he felt with her. He might have known her for years. Just like with Devon. An odd, but certainly not unwelcome, realization. “So, my dear Anne, only when we have achieved our mutual goal will I banish you to Cornwall.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am a practical man.” She made a little sound of surprise when he cupped her elbows and pulled her close. He watched her, feeling his interest rising, stirred in a surprising degree. Really, she wasn’t a bad-looking woman at all.
“That is not your reputation.”
He kept her close. “And that is?”
“That you make women love you.”
“I never in my life made a woman love me.”
“And the moment they do, you are bored and must find another heart to break.”
“If any broke their hearts over me, that’s not my affair. Now, Anne, surely, there are more pleasant things at hand than whether I am bored by silly women. Do not look away.” He put a finger under her chin and brought her head back to face him. “Your skin is soft. Like silk. Everywhere I touch you.” He put action to his words and stroked her cheek. “I made love to you. Here. In this very room. We made love, make no mistake of that. You were—and are—so very passionate, and you made me feel like a bloody stallion.” He drew a finger down her throat, feeling her racing pulse. “The experience was...shattering. Last night... Last night—I won’t ever forget it. I can’t.” He hadn’t intended to make love to her, but now there wasn’t anything he wanted more.
And she, sensing the change in him, went stiff. Her hands made fists at her side, and she clenched her jaw.
Her perfume floated to him, light and pleasant, with a hint of citrus. “I will be gentle.” But her body shook, and her eyes locked onto his, wide and panicked. Thinking to calm her, he kissed her. Tenderly. A lover’s kiss. The sort of kiss he had used to great effect on dozens of other women: soft and just the least bit eager. With his fin
gers now buried in her hair, he tasted her, feeling the shape of her mouth under his and, regrettably, absolutely no indication that she knew what to do to help things along. “Have you never been kissed?” he asked, pulling back from her. “Well,” he amended, remembering the likely answer to that. “Other than by me.”
“No.”
After a moment’s consideration, he said, “I think I like that.” He drew her closer. “Do you feel it?” he whispered. He could tell she had no idea what he was asking. “When I’m this near you, the very air thickens with desire. I could reach out and grab a handful it’s so thick, and all I can think of is kissing you and feeling your maddeningly, wondrously soft body against mine.”
Anne’s head came just under his chin which meant he had only to tip her chin to his to brush his lips over hers once again. As he did so, he slid a hand between them and lightly touched his thumb to the crest of her breast. She nearly jumped out of her skin. He summoned all his patience, which wasn’t much but would have to be enough. His hand fell away from her. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.” She gasped for air and got very little. “I don’t know you,” she said with a soft hiccup. “I know you are my husband, but in fact, I don’t know you at all. I thought you would send me away until the divorce. Now you’re not, and you expect me to...do...do whatever it is you intend.”
“You are my wife. And I must have an heir. We will do this often, you and I.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Kiss me, Anne.” A moment passed before he felt her lips press briefly against his. Catching the nape of her neck before she could back away, he kept her close. “Not like that. Like you did last night. Like this.” And he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her until her lips softened under his and she responded. He kissed her until he was completely taken away by the sweetness of her. Leaning back, he touched his fingertips to the side of her face. “You surely do kiss like an angel.”
Behind them, a servant coughed. Her eyes darted past him, but Ruan didn’t look away. “Ignore that.” The moment he heard the door discreetly close, he gathered handfuls of her skirts. “I adore women. I adore making love. I’m told I’m very good at it, but I think you’re better because God knows I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you.” Slowly, he brought the material up and up and up until he touched the bare skin above her garter and was stepping forward to let his body trap the material between them. “I’m harder than a stone,” he said as he opened his trousers to the imperative.
He knew he should save the more interesting variations of sexual congress for later, but he just couldn’t. She set him on fire. He took her there, against the wall, sliding inside her, nearly undone by the soft exclamation that accompanied his entrance, lifting her thigh to open her for him, feeling her not as ready as he might have liked. “Christ, but you are perfect. You are so hot inside.” Moving in her exposed the head of his sex to her depths and almost immediately, pleasure coiled in him, threatening to take over. “Oh, God.” He couldn’t believe the intensity of his every sensation. He’d not been abstinent long enough to feel everything so sharply, but he did.
She put her arms around him, palms touching his back and holding him close. Her earnest and thoroughly unschooled intent to please him did just that. He groaned into her ear, briefly caught the lobe between his teeth before sliding his mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat. Determined to make her want him the way he wanted her, to have her the way she’d been last night, he held her waist and then her upper thigh and for all of five minutes concentrated on her. The effort ended in failure because she made a small sound, an intake of breath, and then he was gliding in her more and more easily and his urgency built. Their hips found a rhythm and there wasn’t anything left of him but desire. The siren call of release beckoned. “Oh, sweet Christ.”
While he moved from orgasm to an otherworldly pleasure that threatened to turn him inside out, she whispered his name. He heard it low and soft, an undercurrent of tenderness beneath the roar of his climax. Cynssyr. Cynssyr. One moment, he clung to the edges of himself, in control, if just barely, of his pleasure, and the next he was gone. The sweetest death he’d ever felt in his life.
When he let her go afterward she began to slide to the floor as if only his body, his manhood, had held her up. Then, she gathered herself, adjusting the hem of her gown so that it once again fell to her ankles. She arranged her face with as much care as her skirt. No other description would do. The chin firmed, her back straightened and her mouth curved in a gentle smile. Her hands, though, trembled and gave away the emotion so carefully concealed.
He still didn’t have his breath or his customary equilibrium back. The pleasure lingered, but he wanted it back at the same time he wondered if he would survive it if he felt it again. When he could stand no more of the silence or his inability to gather logical thought, he gave his attention to his clothes.
She tried to repair the damage to her hair, but he’d made a such mess of her braid she had to start over. With deft fingers she twined her hair into another braid. This was not at all what he had intended. She’d had little satisfaction from him. No release at all. At the very moment she ought to be clinging to him in the aftermath of mutual enjoyment they were a thousand miles apart. Her face once again settled into mute amiability.
Appalled by the magnitude of his failure with her—Did he not pride himself on finesse?—he said, “Forgive me. I am not usually a clumsy or selfish lover.” Lord Almighty, he had taken her up against a wall like she was some practiced courtesan. “Next time, I assure you, I will see to your thorough satisfaction.” He walked to her, standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders, deciding that a change of subject might help relieve the tension. “I’ll place the notices when I arrive in Town. Shall I send you copies?”
“I should like that.”
“Devon is right. It’s better that you stay at Satterfield. Let Mama and your family combat the gossips until I send for you.”
“I don’t want to go to London.” She faced him, clutching the curtain in a fist. Pleading as much as he suspected she was capable of doing. It wasn’t much. “Can I not stay there?”
“I’m not about to travel all the way to Satterfield whenever I want to make love to my wife.” Which he now began to think might be often. “Besides, when the time comes, my duchess will be expected to entertain, so you must.”
“I don’t care for parties.”
“There’s no help for that.”
“Than I shall.” She shrugged. “I shall.”
“I’m sorry,” he lied.
“As am I.” He wondered if she knew they weren’t talking about the same thing at all.
Affairs in London kept him frantically busy, so he didn’t get to Satterfield even once in the next three weeks. Even after settling matters with the Council and saving Buckley’s fat neck—the man had been in Germany during three of the assaults of which he’d been accused and dead drunk at Boodles during another and further, he had in his possession uncollected vouchers from half of London and so no motive for ransom—there arose crisis after crisis that demanded his attention.
Urgent appeals required his presence at the Justice Courts, and since he was in Town, he attended the Sessions, which proved just as well because had he not, the Pensions bill would surely have been killed. As it was he managed nothing better than to delay the vote.
In deference to his marriage, he accepted no invitations, made no calls and was, in general, unavailable and not at-home. His butler, Merchant, was under strict orders to leave the knocker off the front door to keep up the appearance that he was staying at Satterfield with his bride. At Whitehall, he kept Hickenson on guard at his office door. He stayed away from his clubs, except for Brooks because most political compromise took place at Brooks. When he rode in Hyde Park, he did it at an ungodly hour of the morning. Several times he thought about calling on his mistress, Katie, but never did.
&n
bsp; Four weeks into life as a married man, Ruan decided it was time to call Anne to London. Having her in London seemed far more practical than enduring the bother of a journey to Satterfield. Besides, more than once he found himself thwarted by the distance when he found himself in a mood for her intimate company.
This particular evening the Parliamentary sessions had extended to nearly three in the morning but as soon as he came home, he told Merchant to have Anne brought to London tomorrow. Quite satisfied with his decision, he went to his room. Dobkin glided from his dressing room, a fresh jacket in hand. Gratefully, he changed into clean clothes.
At his desk, he quickly sorted though the afternoon post. Of all the correspondence, only one item interested him. He was by now so used to watching for Anne’s letters he no longer questioned why he so looked forward to one. Ignoring the stack of papers Hickenson had given him on his way out of Whitehall, he took her letter and sat down to read.
Though mostly she penned polite recitations of the weather, Anne had a knack for deft descriptions of village life and of his staff at Satterfield, so he expected her letter would amuse him. Which was why he wasn’t at all prepared for what he read.
“Cynssyr,” she wrote. “I believe I may be with child.”
He went to Satterfield himself.
CHAPTER 8
Slowly, reluctantly, Anne surfaced from deep sleep. Exhaustion pulled at her, clouding her mind. She didn’t know where she was or even who she was with. Someone shook her shoulder. “Anne, my dear.” The voice, a man’s rich and silky voice sent a thrill along her spine. Not her father which it ought to have been. “We are home.”
Cynssyr. Even before she fully recalled her situation, she felt a curiously physical recognition of the man. Electric. My God, the duke of Cynssyr was her husband, and she had been asleep, truly and deeply asleep with her head and hands on his lap. His warmth had seeped into her, she felt it still, could not shake it off. Her hands and cheek retained the feel of his thighs. A man’s legs, firmly muscled, and yet she had been quite comfortable. She sat slowly, letting her aching body resign itself to wakefulness. Her stomach roiled. She saw him make a sharp motion in the direction of the open carriage window.
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