by Rose Gordon
She shrugged. “I don’t feel well.”
He muttered a curse and rolled away. “Was I mistaken thinking you enjoyed our time together in the library a few weeks ago?”
“No.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “You were not mistaken. I did enjoy it then, I just don’t think I’ll enjoy it right now.”
“Why?”
She said something, but he didn’t hear her. He didn’t need to. He already knew her answer. The one she’d never voice aloud. She was punishing him. She’d come to him that night, just hours after finding out what he’d done, and made love to him. His stomach clenched. He’d honestly believed she’d enjoyed their lovemaking in the library, but now to know she’d been feigning her enjoyment made him sick. And there was no denying she’d feigned her enjoyment that night. He remembered the look on her face during their wedding night. And now she was going to deny him. That was how she’d planned to punish him for what he’d done. She’d not forgiven and forgotten like she said earlier. She was getting her revenge and this was how she was doing it. All the nice things she’d done for him these past three weeks were only a decoy. A way to get him to believe she wasn’t angry—or let him go on believing she didn’t even know—a way to get him right where she wanted him: wanting her. Only so she could deny him in the end.
Fury burned in his gut and, without another word, he jumped from the bed, tied on his dressing robe, and left. Tomorrow she could move into the baroness’ bedchamber and bolt the connecting door to him every night for the rest of her life if she wished. Tonight he was moving into the baron’s bedchamber and throwing away his key to hers.
Chapter 24
By the time morning came, Caroline vowed never to eat again. Things that are delicious going down are not delicious coming back up. Yuck. She wiped her mouth once more and stood up slowly. Ever since breakfast yesterday she’d felt nauseated, dizzy even. Cook made her a foul tonic that tasted worse than it smelled and didn’t produce any results, unless one counted making her sicker a result, albeit not a favorable one.
She grabbed a fresh gown and clutched it to her chest, wincing as she did. Her breasts even seemed different today. Tender, almost painful. She looked in the mirror. They didn’t look different.
She’d taken to wearing gowns that didn’t require help getting them on and off. It was just easier to put something on that had buttons on the side or in the front than it was to ring for help.
Finishing her toilette, she pinched her extremely pale cheeks and headed down for breakfast. Not that she was hungry. The mere mention of food made her queasy. Just like yesterday. No the real reason she was going downstairs was she wanted to see Alex. She needed to speak to him. Last night when he’d left, he’d been upset with her. He hadn’t given her the chance to explain that she wasn’t feeling well before his face hardened and he left. She’d talk to him today. He wasn’t one who normally made rash decisions or acted instinctively; likely he’d had a rough day yesterday and wasn’t quite himself. Either way, she needed to clear the air with him.
Besides, she had a feeling he’d want to talk to her, too. Yesterday his brothers had walked in on her in the conservatory, and when they both just stared at her dumbfounded, she’d jokingly asked them if they wished to undress and help her with the rosebushes. Neither of them so much as cracked a smile, and she wasn’t sure if Alex would see the humor in it or not.
“Feeling better this morning, dear?” Regina asked as she came down the stairs.
“Much,” Caroline lied. Her stomach was still uneasy and she could feel a fit of the vapors coming on. Earlier, when she had her head in a chamber pot for the tenth time in as many hours, she ran through the possibilities of what could be causing her illness, and the only one that made sense was she was with child. The thought of having Alex’s child made her so excited she almost forgot about her nausea. Almost. The only trouble was she couldn’t tell anyone. Not until she told Alex anyway. Which was soon to happen, because she spotted him coming down the stairs from the corner of her eye.
“Good,” Regina said with a slight smile. “Won’t you come join Edwina and me for breakfast?”
“I’ve something to do just now. I’ll join you in a bit.” She stood in the hall and waited for her mother-in-law to go into the breakfast room. “Alex,” she called, feigning the normalcy she didn’t feel. She hated feeling ill.
“Caroline,” he said tightly, taking his hat and riding crop from the butler.
She frowned. Why was she back to Caroline? “Are you angry with me?”
“No.” He put his hat on his head.
She blinked at him. “Can we speak privately?” she asked, looking pointedly at Johnson.
Alex shrugged. “Do we have something private to discuss?”
“Yes,” she said, clenching her teeth. This was not a conversation she wanted to have in front of Johnson, who, for as old as he was, loved to gossip.
Alex pulled a card out of his breast pocket. “This is the direction of my secretary. He’ll be glad to make you an appointment.”
Her face burned with anger. “I am your wife! I will not be made to schedule an appointment to speak to you in your study for fifteen minutes while you look condescendingly down your nose at me and I am made to fidget in one of those terribly uncomfortable chairs.”
He smiled thinly. “I’m sorry, but I have a meeting just now. I must be off.”
“It can wait. Nobody takes precedence over your wife and child.”
“Child?” he echoed hollowly, glancing at her midsection. “Impossible.”
“Possible.”
He shook his head. “I’ll acknowledge it’s possible, but it is not likely.”
“And why is that?” she countered, hands on her hips.
“Johnson, leave.” Alex stared at her until Johnson was out of sight. “That was three weeks ago. You might be merely late.”
“No, it was five weeks ago,” she snapped. “And I am three weeks late.”
He scoffed. “Now, that’s not possible.”
“Yes, it is.” She grabbed her skirt and clutched the fabric as tightly as she could. For years she’d been undermined, pushed aside, and trampled on by most of her family members. She’d never imagined Alex would ever treat her thus.
“No, it’s not.” He crossed his arms. “I have a little confession for you about that night. While you may have enjoyed everything I had to offer, I didn’t—”
“Finish,” she finished for him. “Yes, Alex, I realized that that night in the library. And though I don’t know why you didn’t finish on our wedding night—a little problem, perhaps—I do know that a man is not required to ejaculate for a woman to conceive.”
His mouth fell open, presumably due to her word selection. “I concede your point,” he said flatly. “Though how you’d know such a thing is rather hard to comprehend.”
She smiled wryly. “And here you thought I needed to read a bunch of books and be questioned before joining the Society of Biological Matters.” His face didn’t soften a bit and she sighed. “All right, a year ago I overheard a footman and a maid arguing about something relating to his lack of using sheaths, whatever those are, and her current condition which would have been avoided if he’d used a sheath instead of...” She trailed off. She didn’t relish the idea of using the exact term the maid used. He was a man. He knew. She cleared her throat and fanned herself, not sure if she was hot because of her condition or embarrassment. Not to mention the way Alex was staring at her. “Anyway,” she continued, forcing a smile. “Thinking as a scientist, I filled in the details.”
“Why are you even approaching me about this?” Alex asked frankly, his mouth forming a line so tight the edges grew white.
“Because I wanted you to know. You’re the father. I thought you should know before anyone else.”
“Well, thank you,” he said, breaking eye contact. “Let’s hope it’s a boy since you seem to think I suffer a condition that might prevent me from siring another.”
Caroline flushed with shame. “I’m sorry, Alex. I meant nothing by it. I was hurt by the way you’d been speaking to me and said the first cruel thing I could think of.”
He shrugged. “It matters naught anyway. You have no interest in letting me share your bed as it is. If this baby is a boy, it will supply you a viable reason to refuse me.”
“I’d never dream of refusing you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She’d not meant to let on to how much she enjoyed being intimate with him; it just slipped out.
He snorted. “Not only have you dreamt it, you’ve done it.”
“Only once. And it was because I felt nauseated.”
“Try again, Caroline,” he said, his voice held a bitter edge. “We both know that’s not the truth. You denied me last night because you’re trying to punish me. That’s right, Caroline. I know everything. You’re angry with me because I was foolish enough to plan our courtship like an experiment, and you’ve decided to punish me by tempting and teasing me until I’m mad with want for you, then suddenly you’re not interested.”
“You’re wrong,” she said sharply, clenching her fists again. “I might have been excessively nice to you as a way to capture your attention, but I had no intention of using intimacy as a weapon.”
“Oh, really? I find it rather curious that it wasn’t until after you found that damn piece of paper that you suddenly became interested in fulfilling my needs. Until then, you seemed fully content to have all the attention for yourself.”
Nothing he could have said could have hurt her more than those words. “Is it like that, then?” she asked bitterly. “Do you keep an observation notebook nearby that you use to record all the times we’ve been intimate and exactly who got what pleasure?”
“No.” His voice was hard and his face red with anger.
“Are you sure? It wouldn’t surprise me. You seem to think everything is a scientific study of some sort.” She glared at him, daring him to object.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve someone to meet.”
“My replacement?” she asked sharply, baiting him. She wasn’t satisfied their argument had solved anything. She wasn’t near satisfied.
“What the devil is that to mean?”
She lifted her chin. “Your mistress, of course.”
He sneered. “I’m not going out to look for a mistress, thank you. I’m not so desperately in need of intimacy that I’d pay someone to use their body.”
“You have before,” she retorted.
His face turned redder than she’d ever seen it, his jaw clenched, and the muscle in his cheek ticked. “You’re right, I have. And it disgusted me as much then as it does now.”
“I find that hard to believe. You seem to like to keep score where we’re concerned. I’d think you’d prefer to receive your favors in such a manner where both parties give and receive equally.” She was pushing a matter that was insignificant to the whole, but she just couldn’t stop herself.
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Caroline. I hate brothels. The whole premise behind them disgusts me. Those women are daughters, sisters, friends, mothers, people, and they get treated like little more than animals by the men who come in there looking for a quick, carefree release. Kept mistresses are no better. They may live in a nice home, have a staff, entertain fewer partners, and are undeniably classier and easier to present in public, but the facts are still the same. They are still taking a man’s money in exchange to let him freely use their bodies while they pretend to enjoy it.”
He exhaled sharply and raked his hand through his hair. “When I was two-and-twenty, I met a widow who I formed an attachment to, if you will. It wasn’t your normal situation, or so I didn’t think.” He swallowed and glanced away. “There was no formal contract. I wasn’t offering her money or paying any of her accounts for her. The only exchange was companionship. The idea of companionship for companionship seemed ideal to me. And it was, for a time. Then one day she asked what I brought for her. She asked because I’d given her a small brooch the week before when we’d gone to the opera. As it turned out, she expected me to bring her things every time I came to visit her. Foolish boy that I was, it took me three months to find myself standing over a string of pearls before realizing I was paying her to pretend to enjoy something she’d not engage in otherwise.”
Caroline blinked back tears. Alex was a gentleman through and through. Even in an area of a man’s life where most took advantage and didn’t act gentlemanly, Alex did. “You don’t know that,” she countered softly. “She might have enjoyed your attentions with or without the gifts.”
He shook his head and looked at her coldly. “No. I was paying her. Just in an indirect way. She wouldn’t have shared her bed with me otherwise.”
“You don’t know that,” she protested again.
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed, bitterness still filling his voice and marring his features. “Maybe she thought I was a good lover. But then again, maybe not. Nobody ever knows the truth when they’re paying someone.” He twisted his lips into a sneer. “What’s ironic, I don’t know if you ever enjoyed it, either.”
“Alex, I did. I’ve enjoyed everything we’ve done together,” she said, moving to be closer to him.
He snorted and pulled back. “I don’t believe a word you just said. It was all a game to you,” he replied icily, ruining her good image of him. “The first time you looked to be in complete pain and discomfort. And now that I know you were only trying to punish me, I believe you forced yourself to pretend to enjoy things the second time.”
“Don’t be hateful, Alex,” she said in a low tone. “I did not pretend to enjoy myself with you. I did. I was merely unsure how a lady is expected to express herself in the bedroom. My mother isn’t around to inform me. And anyone I know who would know, I didn’t feel comfortable asking.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds before he looked at her again. “I’m sorry, Caroline. As your husband I should have told you. In the bedchamber—or any other place you might find yourself in such a situation—you are allowed to respond however you want. There are no rules or pretenses. You’re not being judged and there’s no need to be embarrassed. There’s an unspoken understanding that what happens is private and stays private.”
“So it didn’t repulse you when I…um…responded?” she whispered, blushing with embarrassment.
“No. I wanted you to do that. But it’s inconsequential now,” he added, his voice hard as steel once again. “I’ll not be seeking entrance to your bed any longer.”
“Why?” she asked, on the verge of tears again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’ll not be led around by my genitals.” He flashed her a cruel smile. “There are other ways a man can find satisfaction.”
“But you said—”
“You didn’t let me finish. A man doesn’t require a woman’s presence to find satisfaction. The idea may be frowned upon in polite society, but it works all the same.”
She blinked at him. If he wasn’t talking about getting a mistress, what did he intend to do? A rather unusual thought popped into her mind. Her eyes widened and heat crept up her face.
“I believe you take my meaning,” he said, not a hint of emotion in his voice.
Tears streamed out of her eyes in two steady torrents. “What happened to the sweet gentleman named Alex Banks I married? Was that all an act for the purposes of our courtship?”
“No,” he said, grinding his teeth. “That was not an act. He still exists, but he decided to vacate the premises when he discovered his wife was trying to lead him around by his prick.”
She winced at the cruel intent of his words. “You, Alexander Christopher Banks, are the worst scientist I’ve ever met. You have no factual basis for your claims, and yet you believe them as if they’re the very same gospel your uncle preaches every week.” She wiped her eyes and took a deep sniff through her nose. “I’ve
given you no reason to believe I intended to use my body against you. It’s you who thinks I’m punishing you, and you have no basis for it.” A sob cracked her voice and wracked her body.
“Yes, I do,” he countered, matching her steely tone. “I was in the room when you told my mother you hated me and wished you’d never read that paper. I remember how angry you were and how you cried yourself to sleep. I foolishly chose to believe your acts of gentle politeness, complete with you wanting to just put it all behind us.”
“You were there?” she asked, her knees buckling. Had he heard anything else?
He nodded.
“Then you know about the—”
“Stop. I don’t have time for this just now. I am more than five weeks late for a meeting with Marcus. He sent a note yesterday that I must come today at the latest. Something about a dowry I didn’t even know you had.”
She wasn’t sure if Alex’s last words were spoken out of cruelty or disbelief, nor did she really care. She might have a past history of being too forgiving, but not anymore. His words cut her to the core and anything less than groveling wouldn’t so much as grant him an audience with her, much less access to her bedchamber.
***
Alex rode his stallion as fast as he could go to Ridge Water. His words to Caroline might have been crueler than she deserved, but the meaning was not. He’d made a mistake and he’d gladly admit to it and pay penance for it. But for her to be so underhanded as to not say anything and punish him without knowing what he’d done to deserve the punishment was going too far. Fortunately, his brothers had let it slip so he knew why he was being punished, even if he hadn’t even detected that something was afoot to begin with.
Looking at everything logically, he really hadn’t done anything so terribly wrong. Many gentlemen planned out their courtship. Just not in such a detailed and intricate way.
