“Not if you stick to what we agreed.”
“And as I’ve already told you, the life I had in Africa is over for me. I’m not going back, and I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have to return to Africa if you don’t wish to. You can live anywhere you choose, as long as it isn’t with me. I’ll still provide you an income. In fact, I’ll double it. Hell, I’ll triple it,” she added, rubbing four fingers across her forehead, “if you’ll just go away.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“You cared once.” She lifted her head, defiance in her eyes. “You might care again if I cut you off.”
“No, Edie, I wouldn’t, because for me, money isn’t the point. And besides, I’ve invested all the income you’ve already provided me and did rather a fine job of it, if I do say so myself. I managed to buy into some very profitable gold mines in Tanzania, as well as some diamond mines, shale fields, and railways. All are paying healthy dividends. I don’t need your money.”
Her slim shoulders sagged a bit, making it clear she’d hoped a financial threat would be enough to dissuade him. But she rallied almost at once. “Are those dividends enough to support your family?” she asked. “And what about Highclyffe and the other estates? I’ll cut them off, too, Stuart. All of them.”
“You’d do that? You’d really let it all go? Turn your back on everything you’ve built here? You’d stop providing an income to the villages and employment for the people who live there? You would really destroy everything in their lives?”
That hit a nerve, he could tell. Her face twisted. “I’m not the one destroying everything!” she cried. “You are!”
“No, I want to make sure all your efforts weren’t a waste of time. Don’t you see?”
She folded her arms, pressed her lips together, and didn’t answer, making it clear she didn’t see at all. Resistance was in every line of her, in her pose, in the stiff rigidity of her body, in the distance between them. They stood only fifteen feet apart, and yet, the gap between them seemed wider than the thousands of miles between England and Kenya.
He swallowed the rest of his whisky, then set aside his empty glass, reached for his stick, and began walking toward her. It hurt after the cramped hours in the train, but he knew that if they were ever going to work through this, someone had to take the first steps. Hadn’t he known all along that that person would have to be him?
“Edie,” he said as he approached, “it’s admirable what you’ve done with the estates, but what did you do it all for? I’m offering you—both of us—the chance to build something even greater than what you’ve already accomplished.”
“And what is that?”
He stopped in front of her. “A family to leave it to. What good is Highclyffe, or any of the other estates we own, if we can’t pass them on to our children?”
“I can’t give you what you want!” Her voice wobbled on the last word, and she looked away. “I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” She walked around him and stalked to the liquor cabinet, obviously feeling that the conversation required a drink after all. “Mr. Keating said a legal separation is possible,” she said as she poured whisky into a glass. She downed it all in one gulp, slammed down the glass, and turned to face him. “I intend to fight for one.”
“You haven’t a prayer of obtaining it without my consent.”
“I don’t need your consent if I offer sufficient grounds.”
“Which you don’t have.”
“Don’t I? How about adultery? Or shall you claim you’ve been celibate for the past five years?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, happy to sidestep that rather sticky wicket. “A legal separation is similar to divorce, and a woman needs two causes to have any chance at separation without her husband’s consent. What’s your other?”
“How about desertion?”
He felt compelled to point out the obvious. “But I’m right here, ready to reconcile and be a true husband to you—”
“With no regard at all for what I want!”
“That’s not true, but even if it were, it doesn’t signify. No court will accept desertion as grounds to separate unless I leave the country, you beg me to come back, and I refuse. That scenario is not going to happen.” He once again started toward her. “And even if you were to succeed in obtaining a separation without my consent, think of the price you’ll pay. You’ll keep your title, but you’ll lose everything else. Access to Highclyffe and all the other estates, of course, and your social position. A legal fight with me will cause you to be snubbed by many social acquaintances. And what of Joanna?” He halted in front of her. “Are you prepared to hurt her chances in society by forcing a separation?”
Her lips trembled, telling him he’d hit a tender spot. Her eyes shimmered, not with the hardness of resistance but with sudden, unshed tears. “My God, I’m trapped,” she whispered, staring at him. “Trapped in a net of my own making.”
“Is it such a bad net, Edie?” he asked gently and reached out to touch her face. “Being married to me?”
“You don’t understand.” She jerked at the contact, evading his touch. “You don’t understand at all.”
“No, I don’t. Why are you fighting this so hard? Is it—” He paused, but it had to be said. “Is it this?” he asked, gesturing to his thigh with his walking stick. “I’m not the man I was when we met, I know, but—”
“It’s not your leg,” she cried. “Don’t be a goose. It has nothing to do with you at all!”
He’d already suspected that, but he felt a rush of relief just the same. “Then what is it?”
Her tears vanished. Her jaw set. “Let it go, Stuart.”
“I don’t think I will.” He tossed aside his stick. “What’s the real reason you’re so opposed to a true marriage between us?”
She looked away. That stubborn jaw trembled, and her lips parted, but she didn’t answer.
“I’m not such a bad chap, you know.” He ducked his head to look into her eyes, smiling a little. “I’m intelligent, good at conversation, well-bred, easy to live with. Some women have even considered me quite charming and not half-bad to look at.”
“Have they indeed?”
“You must think so, too. After all, one look, and you followed me out to the maze and blatantly proposed marriage to me.”
“Not to take anything away from your charms, which I’m sure are considerable, but I chose you because you suited my purpose. That’s all.”
“You didn’t find me attractive?” He leaned closer. “Not even a little?”
“You could have been five feet tall with a potbelly and bad teeth, and I’d have still done it.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
She frowned at the question, taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“You’d been in London for a full season, with Lady Featherstone introducing you to every peer in town, many of them in just as dire straits as I was.”
“They weren’t all going off to another continent.”
“No, but I’ll wager any number of them could have been persuaded to do so for the money you offered me. Yet, you admitted to me yourself, you’d never made any other man such an offer.”
“I would have done if I’d thought of it sooner! But it wasn’t until I saw you that I got the idea.”
“Just so.”
She made a sound of exasperation. “And you think the idea occurred to me because you were just so damned attractive?”
Granted, he’d had precious little feminine companionship the past five years, but not so little that he’d forgotten everything he’d learned in his life about women. She might not have desired him, but she damn well hadn’t found him repulsive either. “If I’d been—how did you put it?—five feet tall with bad teeth and
a potbelly, I don’t think the proposition you made to me would have even occurred to you.” Mentally, he crossed his fingers, betting on his knowledge of women, and went on, “I think you were at least a little bit attracted to me the moment you first saw me. I know damned sure I was attracted to you.”
“Oh you were not!”
“Indeed, I was. From the moment we met, I thought you were the most fascinating bit of skirt I’d ever seen. I even told you as much, if memory serves.”
“Yes, but you didn’t mean it.”
“Of course I meant it.” He gave a laugh at her astonished face. “For God’s sake, do you think I’d have married you otherwise?”
“We both know you married me for the money!”
“Your money, as lovely and fortuitous as it was, my sweet, wouldn’t have persuaded me to the altar. I knew what my family’s financial situation was before I was fifteen, and if money was all I needed to tempt me to matrimony, I’d have married long before we met. No, I married you because although I’ve known plenty of women, I’ve never known one quite like you. I’ve never known one who could make me want her even while she’s making it so painfully clear she doesn’t want me. That intrigued me and attracted me, partly because—forgive me if I sound conceited—but it was rather a novelty. I wasn’t used to it. But when the novelty wore off, the fascination didn’t.”
A hint of what might have been panic came into her face. “Yet, despite this fascination, you left after only one month, when we had agreed to live together for two.”
“You kept talking about when I was leaving. By the end of a month, you were practically shoving me out the door, and a man can only tolerate that sort of situation for so long. Wanting you the way I did, I’d have lost my sanity if I’d lingered any longer. And it wasn’t as if I was prepared at the time to give up Africa and stay in England permanently. I wasn’t. But those last days at Highclyffe were rather a rough go for me.”
“I . . .” She paused and licked her lips as if they were dry. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, well, it’s not the sort of thing a man likes to admit. We like to think we’re irresistible. Which brings me back to the material point. We’re married, I’m home now, and you still haven’t told me why you are so opposed to a real marriage between us. And don’t tell me it’s because of that chap from years ago, for I refuse to believe you’re still pining for him.”
“Pining?” she echoed, and for a moment, she stared at him, her face blank. But then she shook her head as if coming out of a reverie and spoke. “Oh, but you’re wrong. I am still pining for him.”
Her words were so unconvincing, a child wouldn’t have believed her, and he smiled, relieved to know at least he didn’t have some other man’s ghost to contend with anymore. “Still heartbroken, are you?”
“Devastated.” She took a step back and grimaced as her bum hit the edge of the cabinet behind her, rattling the glasses and decanters. “Crushed. I’ll never . . . I’ll never love anyone else.”
“Never?” He once again closed the distance between them. “Never, as I once told you, is a long time.”
She lifted her chin. “Not long enough to want you.”
“No?” He paused, studying her face, and oddly enough, what he saw there gave him more optimism about his chances than he’d felt yet. There was resentment in her face, and a hint of panic, but there was also something else: the challenge to prove her wrong, and just maybe, the faint hope he might succeed. “Uh-oh,” he murmured. “Now you’ve done it. You’ve thrown down the gauntlet.”
“What do you mean?”
“No man worth his salt could let such a declaration stand.” He met her challenging gaze with one of his own. “I think I can make you want me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Many men think they can make women want them. Some are less than honorable in how they go about it.”
“And you think I’m that sort of man?”
“I don’t know.”
“You damned well do know! Edie, we lived together for a month after we married, and I never once behaved dishonorably. Many a man would have chosen to exercise his conjugal rights after the wedding, promises be damned. But I didn’t, did I?”
She didn’t answer, but he had no intention of letting it go. “Did I?”
“No,” she said at last.
“No, I was very much the gentleman. And as I said, it wasn’t easy. Especially that last afternoon on the terrace. I wanted to ravish you over the cucumber sandwiches in the worst way.”
She stared at him, and he thought perhaps she’d forgotten that day, but then, he watched the color wash into those pale cheeks, and he realized she knew precisely what he was talking about. His hopes rose another notch.
“You remember, don’t you?” he murmured, leaning closer. “I made you smile, and I said I wouldn’t mind waking up to that smile—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she interrupted.
That was a lie, he knew it, and he couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I think you rather liked the idea of waking up with me.”
“Really?” she countered. “As I recall, I shut you up quick.”
“So you do remember?”
“Enough to know that I didn’t welcome your suggestion in the least,” she said, but even as she spoke, the color in her cheeks deepened, and she couldn’t hold his gaze.
“Rot. You wanted to. You just weren’t ready to admit it to me. Perhaps not even ready to admit it to yourself.”
“You have a vivid imagination,” she said, staring at his collar. “Have you ever thought of becoming a writer? Because you compose fiction beautifully.”
“Is it fiction? Or am I simply recalling inconvenient facts?”
“The only inconvenient fact here is one you can’t accept.” She looked up, meeting his gaze. “I don’t want you. I didn’t then, I don’t now, and I can’t be made to in the future.”
He shrugged. “If what you say is true, then you won’t mind putting it to the test. I think despite what you say, you do feel some attraction for me. What’s more, I think I can prove it.”
“And just how do you intend to do that?”
He considered, lowering his gaze to her pale pink mouth for a moment. “I think a kiss would prove it, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Try kissing me, Margrave, and I’ll slap that conceited smile right off your face.”
“No, no, Edie, you misunderstand me. I think I can persuade you to kiss me.”
That made her laugh, a full, merry laugh that sounded—unfortunately—quite genuine. “And how long do you think it will take you to perform this miracle?” she asked.
He considered. She’d never agree to a year, or even half a year. “A month?”
“Ten days,” she said abruptly. “You have ten days.”
“Ten days?” Despite this unexpected capitulation, he felt compelled to voice an objection to the narrow time frame. “Really, Edie, that’s hardly sporting.”
“Ten days from tomorrow is when the next ocean liner sails out of Liverpool for New York, and I intend to be on it. I’ve already booked passage.”
“New York?” He glanced over at the papers Joanna had dropped on the table, appreciating with some chagrin that they actually were steamship tickets. In all the scenarios he’d conjured of how their reconciliation might go, he’d never considered she would rather go back to America than try to make a life with him. “What about Joanna? Or are you now changing your mind about higher education for girls?”
“I know the British consider Americans terribly uncivilized, but we do have schools on the other side of the Atlantic.”
“So running away is your solution? Is that how you handle every crisis in your life?”
She stiffened, showing that shot had go
ne home, but she refused to be drawn. “Ten days. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it because I’m sure I’m right.”
“Are you indeed?” She paused, studying him, her expression alert and thoughtful. “Sure enough to place a bet on it?”
“A wager? What, you mean money?”
“No, not money.”
“What, then?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “If I win, you agree to a legal and permanent separation of bed and board.”
He straightened, staring at her in dismay. “But a legal separation means I’d never be able to have legitimate children.”
“Which would make you no worse off than you are now since I have no intention of giving you legitimate children. And I’m leaving for America. Unless . . .” She paused, eyes narrowing. “Unless, despite your assurances about your honorable character, you intend to employ force and stop me?”
“Neatly done,” he said, giving her a wry look. “Do you play chess, too?”
“Actually, I do, and I’m quite good.”
“I can believe that.”
“To spare my sister any scandal, and to make everything as simple as possible, your consent to a private and discreet legal separation would be the best solution.”
“It’s the most dismal thing I’ve ever heard.” It meant he wouldn’t be able to live with her, and without that sort of intimacy to draw her closer, his chance of ever winning her was reduced to almost nil. He knew that without his cooperation, she would never gain a legal separation, and he opened his mouth to reject her proposition utterly, but then, he paused to consider.
If he refused this bet, he had no doubt she’d be off to America like a shot. Once that happened, he’d have merry hell dragging her home again, even if the law was on his side. And if he did succeed in dragging her back by force, would it gain him anything but her enmity?
This wager, however, might give him exactly what he needed if he could turn it to his advantage. By agreeing, he knew he was taking an enormous risk, but hell, he’d never been a man for playing things safe. He could win a kiss in ten days, surely.
How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days Page 10
