The Arrangement

by Sylvia Day

  So, really, Beau thought as he eyed her thunderous expression, keeping her furious at him rather than grieving for her father would be doing her a favor.

  In fact, it would be easier for both of them.

  Beau gave her a smile he knew to be smug and infuriating. “How prescient you are, my dear. I would like a sweet, obedient, and quiet little wife. You would do well to keep in mind that I always get what I want.” Beau was impressed he could utter such a ridiculous claim without laughing out loud. When was the last time he’d gotten anything he wanted?

  He thrust the self-pitying thought aside and continued, “Right now what I’d like is for you to relinquish this distasteful subject and concentrate on behaving in a way that befits your station, as we are almost at Wroxton House.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Well, I’m not finished with this distasteful subject.”

  “Are you quite sure you wish to have this conversation right now, Your Grace?”

  * * *

  Jo understood the warning beneath his soft words and knew he was right: she would not present herself in a positive light in her current state and should wait until her temper cooled.

  But then the words befits your station came back at her.

  “I would like to have this conversation right now. May I remind you, Your Grace, that this distasteful subject, as you so charmingly put it, is the reason there are no longer dunning agents swarming your dilapidated pile of bricks.”

  The nostrils of his fine, aquiline nose flared and his pupils shrank to specks. He nodded. “Very well, let us put an end to this tiresome discussion once and for all.”

  Jo shivered at his silky tone.

  “Yes, I married you for your money—did you only learn of that today? Is that why you’re behaving with such hostility?”

  Jo flinched at his cold loathing.

  “If that is the case, I’m sorry you were misled. It is true, I married you for your great pots of money—money derived from trade and industry. Money—as you so charmingly pointed out—that has already settled a mountain of ancient bills and will soon be spent on dilapidated houses along with a hundred other things. Money your father labored and sweated for.” His lips curled into a cruel, sensual smile and he leaned even closer and said, “Money I will be—” He stopped, extracted his watch from his pocket, and squinted at it before turning to her. “Money I will be laboring and sweating for myself in less than an hour.”

  Jo gasped and a wave of heat slammed into her. Had he really just said—

  “Now.” His face was so devoid of even a hint of sensuality that she must have misinterpreted his meaning. “Is that about it on the subject of your money? Or did I leave anything out?”

  Jo opened her mouth, but his sweating comment had captured her vocal cords along with the rest of her body.

  “I’m going to take your silence for assent and move along. So, while I traded my person for filthy lucre, you traded your person for my title and position—as well as a good-faith promise that my blood will one day soon mingle with yours in the veins of our children.”

  Jo’s body clenched at the words our and children. She pressed her thighs together to suppress the distracting tingling, but the action was less than helpful.

  “Would you agree with that assessment? Again, please correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Hysterical laughter rose up in her throat as Jo briefly—and insanely—wondered what he would say if she told him his status and title had nothing to do with the reason she’d married him.

  Wroxton cut her a stern look that should not have amplified the distracting sensations coursing through her body but did. “When I ask you a question, I expect the courtesy of an answer.”

  “Yes, money for status, Your Grace,” Jo retorted. “You are correct, just as I suspect you are always correct.”

  His lips curved into a cold smile. “Such spousal faith in my unerring judgment is commendable,” he drawled. “You may consider the subject of money and status permanently closed.”

  “And what will you do if I have the audacity to reopen it?” Jo whipped back before she could stop herself—a not uncommon problem and one that often landed her in trouble.

  He sighed, as if bored, but his penetrating blue gaze said otherwise. “I do not make threats, Your Grace.”

  Before Jo could form an answer—not that she had one—he turned from her, hardly waiting for the carriage to come to a full stop before flinging open the door, hopping out, kicking down the steps, and offering her his hand, along with a frigid smile.

  “Welcome to Wroxton House, Your Grace.”

  * * *

  Jo glared at her reflection in the mirror while Mimi tamed her hair into charming curls.

  When Jo had told her not to bother, the older woman had looked so shocked you would have thought Jo had proposed going down to dinner naked.

  “Don’t you want to look lovely for your husband on your wedding night?” she had asked—a question that only a maid who’d once been one’s nurse would be bold enough to ask her mistress.

  “Wroxton doesn’t even see me, Mimi. All he sees when he looks at me are pounds, shillings, and pence.” And an ill-tempered shrew.

  And whose fault is that?

  “Oh, tush!” Mimi scolded. “You’re his duchess.” The older woman hesitated and then added, “I pray you won’t let yourself be goaded into unbecoming behavior, Miss Josie. You know how you are.”

  Jo didn’t bother confessing that Mimi’s warning was too late.

  She had no idea why she was so bitter and furious toward him. Wroxton had been correct in the carriage—Jo had known he was marrying her for money. He’d never tried to pretend otherwise.

  His behavior today hadn’t been disparaging; he’d not singled her out for rude treatment. No, he treated her with the same high-handed arrogance he’d used on his friend, an earl, for pity’s sake; the vicar, a man of god; Lady Constance, the impoverished niece of a duke; the servants; and anyone else he’d come into contact with. The man was simply autocratic to the bone—a duke, in other words.

  And Jo had known all that before she married him.

  Not only had she known about his commanding, dominating behavior—it was what still woke her in a sweat far too many nights.

  Yes, Jo had gotten exactly what she wanted and now Wroxton was her commanding, dominating husband. So why was she chafing at his authority? What kind of woman schemed and dreamed to get something and then behaved as if she didn’t want it?

  An idiot, that’s what kind.

  Jo couldn’t argue with that unkind assessment.

  The unflattering truth was that Jo wanted him, desperately, and she hated herself for wanting him.

  “Besides, Your Grace,” Mimi said, breaking into Jo’s irksome thoughts. “Just because His Grace doesn’t love you now doesn’t mean he won’t come to love you. He can’t fail to fall in love when he knows the real you. Take my word for it, Your Grace, these hoity-toity marriages usually work out for the best,” she said, speaking from no experience whatsoever.

  Jo snorted but didn’t bother arguing; Mimi was one of only two people in the world who actually did love her.

  Something in the older woman’s words had caught at her: Mimi said the duke would love the real Jo once he knew her. Was it possible Jo was behaving like an argumentative toad because it was safer to pretend to be somebody else rather than to risk his rejecting the real her? Was that what she was doing? Sabotaging her marriage before it had a chance to fail?

  Jo chewed her lip as she ran through the day, her mind lingering on the way she’d accused Wroxton of lying and then continued to bicker even though she’d known the plan smacked of Edward Loman.

  Good Lord, even a besotted fool like Jo knew the last thing Wroxton wanted was to spend two weeks cooped up in the country with her.

  No, Papa had bullied—or likely guilted—the promise out of him and then Jo had treated him like a monster because of it. No wonder he’d been so furious.

&nb
sp; Apologize.

  Jo bit back a groan at the thought of apologizing to such a superior, haughty man.

  You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, girlie.

  Jo smiled grudgingly at her father’s voice, even though it was only in her head. She could still remember her response to his annoying proverb all these years later: Now why would I want to catch flies, Papa?

  “There, that’s better, Miss Josie,” Mimi said, catching Jo’s eyes in the mirror and forgetting to Your Grace her. “When you smile, you’re as lovely as any of those snooty great ladies.”

  Jo didn’t bother to correct her maid’s gross inaccuracy; at least two people in the world believed her to be beautiful.

  She studied her hazel-eyed, snub-nosed round face and tried to see herself as the warrior-god in the adjacent room saw her.

  Jo grimaced; she knew exactly how he saw her: he didn’t.

  Wroxton hadn’t remembered her from five years ago in spite of the fact that they’d attended at least fifteen of the same balls and parties and spent a week in the same country house.

  Lord. That time in the country.

  The duke had no recollection of that week yet Jo still cherished—gloated over would be more accurate—the vivid memory of him in her mind’s eye, as if she’d been burnt by the sun. No, it was more scorching than that; it was an all-too-brief image so sinful and erotic that Jo had never shared it with another living soul.

  It was hers.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t really belong to her, because it wasn’t Jo Wroxton was writhing with in that haunting, arousing memory. Wroxton had had eyes for only one woman that summer, and it hadn’t been Jo. No matter how diligently Jo had tried to excise Lady Victoria from her cherished recollection, she’d never been able to erase the other woman.

  For all Jo knew, the duke might still only have eyes for Victoria, now his widowed sister-in-law.

  Jo grimaced. I suppose that makes dear Victoria my sister, too.

  Once upon a time, claiming a connection with the most beautiful, vivacious, and sought-after woman in London would have made Jo proud and pleased. But that was back when she’d still been stupid enough to believe a woman with Victoria’s background and breeding would ever befriend someone like her.

  Jo chewed her lip. Did Wroxton still love Victoria? The thought made her ill, but she could not ignore it. Would the duke have married Victoria if such a union wasn’t forbidden by law?

  “You’re squirming,” Mimi scolded. “I’m almost done.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jo murmured.

  Jo knew the dukedom had been teetering on the brink of financial collapse even before Jason Halliwell died in a hunting accident that everyone knew wasn’t an accident.

  So, no, even if the law didn’t forbid it, the new duke would not have married Victoria. The family needed a great deal of money or they would lose everything, even their ancestral seat, a castle that had been theirs for seven centuries.

  Jo was fortunate they needed so much money, because it was the only reason a man like Wroxton would ever condescend to marry somebody like her.

  * * *

  Beau handed his valet the razor and took the steaming cloth to wipe his face.

  He scowled as he recalled his brief, heated exchange with his bride in the carriage earlier—the very same willful woman who awaited him on the other side of the connecting door.

  Beau experienced a sudden urge to jump into his bed, yank the covers over his head, and hide the way he used to do when he was a boy and Jason had scared the hell out of them both with some ghostly bedtime story.

  Jason. Beau shook his head at his foolish, tragic, dead brother—yet another subject he did not wish to think about tonight.

  He blotted the unwanted thoughts from his brain the same way he blotted up the soap and water on his face.

  Tonight was his wedding night, and, God willing, the only one he would ever have. In a few moments he would bed his new wife—a maiden—for the first time. Beau wasn’t worried he couldn’t bring her physical pleasure, but he did worry they would bring the animosity that flared so quickly and easily between them into their marriage bed.

  Beau refused to have a marriage like that of his mother and father—or Jason and Victoria, for that matter. He simply couldn’t live in such a union. He didn’t just want a body to bear his children; he wanted sex, companionship, and yes—he even wanted affection. Not just wanted—he needed those things, and he refused to feel ashamed for his needs.

  Even when he’d kept mistresses, he’d retained them for long periods of time. He disliked nameless engagements in brothels, although he’d certainly gone to such women to slake his urges when he’d had no other choice.

  Beau pictured the woman who awaited him on the other side of the door.

  Not only did his wife spring from a class of people he had no experience with, she was also far from his physical ideal. Beau was an inch over six feet, almost fourteen stone, and possessed a vigorous and demanding appetite in bed. His wife was small and slight and Beau would need to leash his passion and take care not to hurt her.

  He sighed. Josephine Loman—no, Wroxton—was not the woman of his choice, but she was his wife and only a spoilt child yearned for things he couldn’t have. He was married now and it was his duty to make the best of what he had.

  He ran a brush through his close-cropped hair and grimaced at his reflection; he supposed he should grow it out now that he’d fully rejoined civilian life. But to tell the truth, living on a battlefield for almost a decade tended to alter a man’s perspective. Beau simply did not care about which haircut—a Brutus or a Caesar—would suit him best. When it came to clothing and his person, he was neat and clean but not ostentatious. He would have horsewhipped any officer of his who’d gone through twenty cravats in search of a perfect knot.

  “Your Grace.” Dobson appeared behind him with the blue silk robe Beau’s last lover—Celine, a French widow ten years his senior—had given him.

  Celine had been a beautiful, proud woman from a family almost as ancient as his own. She’d also been a sensual woman who’d been uninhibited, demanding, and open-minded in the bedchamber, just the type of lover he enjoyed.

  But she was part of another life and Beau had locked her away in a cupboard with all his other memories. The woman in the next room was his present and would, he hoped, become his future. The new Duchess of Wroxton was a proud, prickly woman who was quick to see slights where there were none meant. But she was also clever and lively and—if not beautiful, she possessed youthful vitality and might actually be quite pretty if she ever stopped scowling.

  Beau could treat her with affection and respect and she might become his companion and lover. Or he could treat her as his father had treated his mother: as nothing more than a vessel for his children while he took his pleasure elsewhere, living apart once she’d given him the requisite heirs. Beau knew that, in large part, it was a man’s choice what to make of his marriage.

  Dobson hovered off to his side, drawing Beau from his morbid thoughts.

  “That will be all, Dobson.”

  Beau picked up two glasses and the bottle he’d chosen from the cellar, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and then knocked on the connecting door and entered his duchess’s bedchamber.

  CHAPTER 4

  There was a light knock on the door that connected their rooms before it swung open and exposed her husband standing in the open doorway. Jo tried not to gawk at the dizzying sight of the Duke of Wroxton wearing only his dressing gown. In her bedchamber.

  “Good evening.” Her husband glanced from Jo to Mimi, his golden brows slightly raised.

  “You may go, Mimi,” Jo said hoarsely, unable to look away from her husband—as if he were a hallucination that might flicker and disappear.

  He strode into the room, not exactly smiling, but no longer looking at her as though she were some kind of burr stuck to his stocking. Not that he was wearing stockings—or much of anything real
ly.

  “I’m sorry,” Jo blurted.

  His glorious blue eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

  “About what happened in the carriage—I, er, well, I was distraught, but that’s no excuse for blaming you. I—I know my father and I know he has ways of getting what he wants. I shouldn’t have blamed you, Your Grace.”

  His lips curved into the slightest of smiles and Jo was horrified by her body’s reaction to even such a miserly little thing as that. If she didn’t take care, she would be a puddle at his feet.

  “Why don’t you write him a letter in the morning and put your case to him.” His lips twitched. “After all, you are his daughter; I daresay you inherited some of his remarkable powers of persuasion.”

  Jo’s face heated at what was surely the most tepid compliment a bridegroom had ever paid his bride on their wedding day.

  His piercing gaze swept her body and heat crept up her chest and throat as he made a leisurely, and thorough, perusal of her person.

  Jo’s breathing quickened. What did he make of her? Did he think she was trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse by wearing such a beautiful nightgown? That was the notion that had flickered through Jo’s mind when she’d seen her reflection in the glass.

  The lace on the gown—the color of honey—cost more than a factory worker would make in a lifetime and it made even her scrawny figure appear shapely. The warm shade made her skin look creamy rather than pale and freckled.

  And it was also remarkably revealing, so she was grateful she’d put the matching—and more concealing—dressing gown over it before he’d come to her.

  By the time his eyes reached hers, Jo knew she was visibly shaking. His beautiful, stern face softened and he closed the distance between them, the blue silk of his exquisite robe whispering as he walked.

  “You look beautiful.” His warm voice and unexpected words fed the fire that had smoldered in her belly ever since his wicked threat in the carriage.

  Sweating . . .

  Well, the fire burned lower than that, she acknowledged with yet another wave of heat that made her drop her gaze to her husband’s bare—and yes, beautiful—feet.