“I could be carrying a female child.”
“I am aware of that. If so, we’ll … try again for a male to inherit the title.” He roved his gaze up and down her body in a clearly suggestive way. “And that child I will know is mine.”
Instant images of tangled covers and passionate moans assailed Victoria. Fighting her body’s tingling, tightening response, she raised her chin, determined to ask the one question that meant everything to her. “What will happen should this baby, male or female, I carry now … prove not to be yours?”
His expression hardened. “It will not bear my name.”
Somewhere, deep in her heart, she’d known he would say that. Still, the shock of hearing the words nearly sent Victoria to the floor. A hand pressed against her mouth to prevent a cry of protest, she stared at the man who would label her child a bastard. He had condemned it, male or female, to a life of being ignored, of being pushed aside, all because of the accident of its conception. And the child, should it be male, would be passed over for the title and the duchy … and would come to hate her, his mother, when he was old enough to realize all that had been denied him.
As Victoria’s fledgling-mother’s heart constricted with pain, she lowered her hand to her side and spoke with quiet passion. “No. You will do no such thing.”
He pulled back, clearly surprised. “I beg your pardon. You do not dictate terms to me—”
“In this instance I do, and you will listen to me.” Victoria’s heart pounded, forcing her to breathe in gasping breaths. “Understand that I will stand here and allow you to heap scorn on me. I have no choice, given my … my recent past. I might even deserve it. Certainly, I shamed my family, and I will live with that for the rest of my life. But what I did not do was shame you in any way. So you may act as injured as you choose—”
“‘Act as injured’? You think I’m merely acting?” With a tense leonine grace, the duke rose smoothly to his feet and slowly advanced on her. “Perhaps, Victoria, you should consider not saying anything else.”
Though she backed up, her hands fisted, she continued with her tirade. “And yet I will. I find I have more to say, and you will hear me out, sir.”
When he stopped, his chin lowered, his black eyes sparking fire, Victoria stood her ground, as well. Her husband crossed his arms over his chest. “I see. Then have your say, madam.”
“I will.” Victoria had never been this afraid—or this determined. “No matter what you might think, I had no idea when I came to your bed on our wedding night that I might be carrying another man’s child. None. And I still do not know that it’s true. The very likelihood is this child is yours as much as it is mine. And birthmark or no, rest assured, sir, you will not cruelly label this child a bastard because I will swear all day long and to whomever I must that this child is yours, and I will hold you accountable for its future. I have done many things for which I am sorry, but the one thing, Your Grace, I will not do is shame my baby by saying I am sorry for having it.”
Her husband’s lightning-swift movement caught Victoria off guard. Before she could even draw in her next breath, he had her arms pinned in a painful grip and had jerked her to him. “You think hearing you say you’re sorry is what I want?”
Victoria’s heart thumped so wildly she expected it to jump right out of her chest, but she could not stop her intemperate tongue. “I have no idea what you want because I don’t know you in any way that matters. But one thing we both know is how much you knew about me when you married me. You knew I had no claim to innocence—”
“Yes, I knew. And my reasons for marrying you were no more noble than your father’s were for marrying you to me. And yes, money exchanged hands. And yes, I now control it and you—”
“Oh, you are sorely mistaken, sir. I have my very large allowance as determined by our marriage contract. And I will do as I please. No man controls me.”
“You think not? Whose bed were you in last night? And whose ring is that on your finger?” His grip on her arms tightened as he yanked her even closer to his face. Filling Victoria’s vision was the sight of his black and glittering eyes. “Whose name is it you now bear, Victoria?”
“It doesn’t matter. If you disown this child I carry now, there will be no others, Your Grace, I swear to you. I will do whatever I have to do to prevent it. I will see to it that no Whitfield heir will come from me—”
“Allow me to grant your wish, madam. When your child is born, if he or she is not a Whitfield, I will be sending both of you back to your father with your divorce papers in your hand. Raising another man’s bastard was not a part of our bargain.”
“How dare you!” Victoria raged, struggling wildly in his grasp. If she could just gain a free hand, she would slap his face until it bled. But her efforts bore no fruit. Spencer Whitfield easily held her prisoner.
“Be still,” he warned, “and listen to me.” He waited, glaring daggers at her. With no choice, with her face hot and damp with emotion, she stilled in his embrace, a mockery of a tender prelude to a kiss. “Until this child is born,” he said sternly, “I will give you the benefit of my doubt and treat you with the courtesy and respect due you as my duchess. But that is all, and even that I will do from a goodly distance.”
Dread washed over Victoria, causing her to forget her physical pain as she envisioned imprisoning towers. “What are you saying? Where are you sending me?”
His smile, so close to her face, to her mouth, was a slash of angry decision. “I’m sending you nowhere. In fact, you will go nowhere. You will, instead, remain here in the country while I reside in London—”
“But you can’t leave me alone out here in the Midlands—”
“I assure you I can, and I will.”
“But I know no one. I don’t know what to do—”
“That much is evident, madam. All your spoiled life, you’ve had to do nothing except demand. Allow me to assure you that those days of getting your way in everything are gone.” With that, he put her away from him.
Victoria caught herself by gripping a chair’s curved back. With a hand fisted tightly around her lace hanky, she was aware only of horrible shock as she listened to her husband pronouncing her sentence.
“Between now and the time the child is born, all of Wetherington Point’s assets are at your disposal. Too, I shall have a doctor look in on you. He will be instructed to send me reports of your progress. But should you have a need, for whatever reason, to communicate with me, you will do so through my solicitor.”
Victoria could barely make sense of all he’d said. She was a Southern miss and he was a British peer. They had nothing in common, except a marriage neither of them had wanted yet both of them had desperately needed. But what was she to do now? Then, unbidden, something deep inside her turned. She felt her initial horror steadily congealing into an icy disdain that had her raising her chin. “So I’m never to see you again, is that it?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Hardly. But would you care if you did or not?”
“No.” She refused even to blink. “Not in the least.”
Her husband made a mocking, chuckling sound. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I will return when I am notified it is time for the birthing. And then, my dear, we shall see. We shall see.”
Victoria tried very hard to hang on to the cold inside her that stiffened her spine and held her erect. Was this, then, to be her life? A loveless marriage? Alone in a foreign country with a child who could claim no heritage? Suddenly, the years seemed to stretch into eternity—and it was too awful to bear.
“I hate you!” she shouted, startling her husband as much as she did herself. “I do—I hate you, and I’m sorry I married you. I’m also every bit as sorry you were made to marry me. But what’s done is done. You can think me the worst person in the world, but I’m not—not in my heart. I am not a wanton. In my innocence, I believed a man’s pretty words—”
“That is quite enough.” Her husband pointed a warning finger her way. “Beli
eve me, Victoria, I will not listen to—”
“Don’t you ‘Victoria’ me.” Lost to reason and caution, she batted his hand away. “You may rest assured that I feel every bit as trapped as you must. Neither one of us wanted this marriage.”
“Well said, madam.” Her husband again crossed his arms over his chest—and gave Victoria the impression that he waited for her to step over some imaginary line he’d drawn. When she did, he would pounce.
Even realizing that, the words poured forth from her. “You are not the one so far away from home and family and friends. And you are not the one who is sick every day and tired all the time because you are going to have a baby. I am. And you are not the one who is scared to death. I am.” Her fears got the better of her. She took a deep, ragged breath and bleated out a pathetic sob. “I hate it here, and I want to go home to my mother!”
Her hands fisted at her sides, Victoria watched Spencer open his mouth to speak, but then close it. He stood there, staring at her, seeming suddenly to be more at a loss than he was angry. Victoria glared at him, naming him the source of all her problems. Even if her parents did think of him as their savior because he, an impoverished nobleman, had married her, a fallen woman in the eyes of Savannah society, she didn’t feel the least bit grateful to him or even think she should.
Finally, the duke spoke … slowly, softly: “I wish—fervently so—Victoria, that you could be with your mother. Believe me, I do. But that’s not possible.”
“Why isn’t it?” She hiccupped softly, quickly covering her mouth with her hanky, then using it to dab at her tears.
“Because…” His voice trailed off as he looked around him, apparently searching for something. He pointed to the chair in which he’d been seated. “Would you like to sit down?”
His solicitousness caught Victoria off guard. Actually, she would have liked nothing better than to sit down, but she refused to accept any kindnesses from him. “No.”
Spencer raised his eyebrows. “No? I see. Would you like a drink of water, maybe? Or some tea? Something stronger?”
He was being so nice and polite. Victoria decided she should have screamed at him a long time ago. “No. But please help yourself.”
He smiled briefly, uncertainly. “Thank you. I think I will.”
This was the oddest exchange, she marveled, given all the passionate shouting that had just transpired between them. She watched him turn and stalk toward the crystal liquor service set up on an ornate sideboard across the room. Once there, he stood with his back to her, his weight evenly distributed on his strong legs.
Though he’d held her roughly and had threatened divorce; though she had told him she would deny him her bed and an heir, Victoria could do nothing but rove her gaze up and down the solid, muscular length of her husband—
“Victoria,” he said suddenly, speaking over his shoulder. She jerked her gaze up guiltily. The sound of crystal tinkling against crystal told her he was pouring himself a drink as he talked. “I’m sorry you feel so alone here. I confess I hadn’t really thought about how strange everything must seem to you. Our customs—”
“And your food.”
He pivoted to look fully into her face. “Our food?”
“Your cook boils everything.”
“I see.” He again turned to the sideboard but only long enough to stopper the decanter. When he turned back to her again, he had a brimming glass of whisky in his hand. “You have only to tell Mrs. Pike how you wish your food to be prepared and she will do so. You are, after all, the duchess here.”
“I remember.” What she didn’t know was how long she would be the duchess here. But the weight of the huge sparkling diamond on her left ring finger was a constant reminder. In fact, she was ashamed of how often she stared at it and turned her hand this way and that to see it sparkle. It was so big it was unseemly … and beautiful.
“Good.” Her husband approached her, holding out a hand to indicate a delicate divan. “Are you sure you won’t sit down?”
Somehow it seemed all right to do so now. Besides, her knees felt watery. “I think I will.”
As he approached the chair he’d been sitting in a moment ago, Victoria surged forward and took it first, ignoring him and his stunted snort of protest as she arranged her voluminous skirt of forest-green silk becomingly about her legs and feet. Done with that, she turned innocent eyes up to her husband and watched as he, with a feline grace that she envied, settled himself on that nearby divan. Once he was comfortably seated, she said sweetly, “I believe, sir, that I do feel a thirst coming over me now. Do you suppose there might be some water over there?”
With practiced grace, she charmingly pointed to indicate the bar service at which Spencer had just busied himself. The man’s eyes narrowed as he watched her over the rim of his whisky glass.
He took a healthy swig, held it in his mouth a moment, and then swallowed, wincing no doubt at its strength … all while staring long and hard at her. “I feel certain there is water there,” he drawled at last. “You may feel free to help yourself to some.”
If she vacated her seat, he would take it—and reclaim the victory. Victoria inhaled through the thin crevice of her parted lips, all while maintaining eye contact with her husband. She watched him as she would a wriggling water moccasin if she’d found herself in the water with it. “Never mind. I’m not thirsty.”
She thought he fought a grin as he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “If you say so. Now, tell me, why do you wish to go to your mother?”
Because I’m pregnant and scared to death and very afraid to be alone here. But she would die first before she would say that again. “I’ve just … never been away from Savannah before. I miss it and everyone there.”
“It’s only natural that you would. However, and I am sorry for bringing up the unpleasantness again, your family does not wish you to be in Savannah any time soon. But even were that not so, I would not permit you to travel.”
“May I ask why not?”
“It would be too dangerous.”
“You mean the days on end bumping and rattling in the coaches? The possibility of highwaymen? Staying at the various and atrocious inns along the way? And then the Atlantic crossing on a tossing and churning steamship?”
“Yes, I do. You’ve made my point admirably.”
“But I’ve only just survived all of that.”
He nodded, sipping again at his measure of liquor. “But I was with you. And that was before I knew you were carrying a child who could possibly be my son and heir. A trip such as you’ve just described would be too dangerous.”
“Then you won’t allow me to go home?”
“This is your home now, and here you will stay.”
Infuriating man. Too bad she didn’t have the courage to pick up and hurl at him the small porcelain figurine within her reach on a side table. The satisfying mental picture of her doing exactly that would have to suffice. “Then I’m never to see my home again?”
“I do not like having to repeat myself. I have told you already that you will be staying right here until this child is born. If it should prove not to be a Whitfield, then you will get your wish. You will be returning to your mother for good.”
Victoria stared at the arrogant male who was her husband … a tall, passionate, and handsome man of broad shoulders, jet-black hair, and eyes equally dark. “But I wish to go home now,” she said quietly, stubbornly.
Her duke narrowed his eyes, the shine in them reminding her of the predatory gleam of a leopard. “You may wish all you like, but you do not dictate terms to me, madam. Though it may be a bitter pill for you to swallow, you are my wife, and you will travel only as I see fit. Do we understand each other?”
Victoria locked her gaze with her husband’s. “Yes. We do.”
CHAPTER 2
England, later in August 1875
An elegant though road-dusty traveling coach bearing the Whitfield coat of arms labored around the rolling green hills of the Mid
lands area of England. Inside the plush cabin, the Right Honorable—and very hungover—Earl of Roxley, Edward Sparrow, a blastedly cheerful and randy cousin of Spencer’s, remarked: “I say, Spence, old man, I quite look forward to seeing your charming wife again.”
Seated opposite his cousin and peering out a small, square-cut side window, which was open like the others to allow for airflow through the coach, Spencer absently watched the passing landscape and just as absently replied to his cousin. “That makes one of us, then.”
“Oh, come now, certainly it’s all the rage to pretend one did not make a love match and that one isn’t in love with one’s wife, but yours is an especially lovely woman. And I was being honest when I said I look forward to seeing her. She’s as witty and charming as she is pleasing to look at. And I do love to hear her talk; that lovely Southern drawl of hers could charm a wild boar—perhaps even you—into purring. So, admit it, you want to see her.”
Exasperation had Spencer frowning at Edward, a slender man with thick brown hair and merry, though bloodshot, brown eyes. The younger man held on to the hand strap to steady himself in the gently rocking enclosed cabin and stared back at Spencer, who said: “What makes you think that?”
“Good Lord, dear fellow, we’ve been on the road from London for nearly two hell-bent days now, destination Wetherington’s Point. Are you going to tell me this trip was my idea?”
“Hardly.”
Edward’s expression crumpled to confused. “Will you at least tell me why we are on this trip?”
Spencer fought the urge—only because he knew firsthand the effects of a hangover and could sympathize—to reach over and cuff his cousin. “Had you been sober when we left London, you would know why we are.”
“Well, I’m sober now. Frightfully so. Therefore, please tell me why we’re in this coach and out in the hellish countryside with that obnoxious sunshine.” Edward held a hand up between it and his eyes. “Has it always been that bright?”
To Make a Marriage Page 2
