“Stay. We can return to London together—tomorrow—if it is convenient with your plans.”
“That will be pleasing, no doubt. I trust, dear boy, that you have sent an announcement of your marriage to the Gazette?”
“I imagine that my father has done that.”
“I wonder,” Lyonel said, his voice a lazy drawl, “what the fair Constance will make of it?”
“I would never have married her,” Hawk said. “Even if I had wanted to, well ...”
“Yes, I understand. Your Scottish lass. As for your Amalie, she is certain to be devastated.”
“No, I daresay she won’t be. Why should she be, after all?”
“It is like that, is it?” Lyonel said easily. “Odd, but I have always believed that when I marry, if I ever find a woman to bear up with me, that I should show my mistress to the door. Of course, Amalie is a charmer ...”
He paused a moment, seeing Hawk eye him with frank surprise.
“I’ve said something that your intellect can’t grasp?”
Hawk said slowly, “I have never believed that any gentleman would forgo his pleasures for the sake of a wife, particularly if the wife in question is merely a ... duty.”
“Perhaps that is true of many of our acquaintances,” Lyonel agreed. “I imagine, though, that there are some love matches. I hope I shall be so lucky.”
Hawk said something quite crude.
“Then a gentleman wouldn’t be inclined to poach elsewhere,” Lyonel finished.
“Not for a twelvemonth in any case,” Hawk said, his voice as cynical as his raised eyebrow.
“If that is your belief, my friend, then wouldn’t the same thing apply to a wife? Lady Constance—well, she has a great deal of self-consequence, as well as stunning looks. She is also an accomplished flirt. I am certain her flirting wouldn’t go to the bedchamber until she’d provided an heir for her husband, but then... ?” Lyonel shrugged elaborately. “I suppose you have excellent reason for cynicism. Sometimes I find myself wishing that ... Well, no matter, here I am carrying on like a gabbleseed. Come, old fellow, let me show you my new cattle. My bays will beat your grays to flinders.”
“And your Great-Aunt Lucia will become mute! You know I got those grays from Kimbell when he went all to pieces, the damned fool. Nothing can beat them.”
Frances was standing by the window of a small sewing room that faced the drive. She saw the two men stroll companionably toward the stable. Both large powerful men, both filled with all the confidence only a man of title and wealth could possess. But appearances could be deceiving, she knew. She could imagine how the Earl of Saint Leven would treat her if he had to suffer looking at her a second time. Surely he couldn’t hide his true feelings again. But he had looked at her so very oddly.
Would she have to suffer another night of Hawk’s amorous bouts? Amorous, ha! Husbandly bouts was more like it. Duty bouts, heir bouts, damn him.
She saw Lord Saint Leven throw back his head and laugh at something her husband said. Had her husband made a jest about her? No, he couldn’t be that great a bounder. She turned away from the small window, her shoulders hunched.
She pleaded an indisposition that evening and stayed safe in her room.
Agnes, eyeing her when she brought her a tray, wondered just what this indisposition was. Her mistress was pacing about, looking alternately flushed with anger, then pale as the gravy that swamped the veal on the beautiful gold-edged plate.
“I will not let him do it, not again,” Frances said aloud to her empty room several hours later. “Enough is enough.”
It was more than that, she knew. If she stayed and he visited her, she would have to tell him that she was far from pregnant. She would have to tell him about her monthly flow. The consequences of such a confession left her mind blank.
She molded a fat bolster under the covers of her bed, and made her way to the small sewing room.
When Hawk quietly entered her bedchamber three hours later, he was more drunk that he cared to admit, but his determination was profound. It took him several moments to realize that the bolster wasn’t a woman. He stared down in the darkness, his hands feeling the damned bolster as if it were a woman’s leg. Then he felt utterly enraged.
He’d asked nothing of her, damn her! He’d given her everything any woman could possibly want. His sexual demands required but ten minutes of her precious time. And she didn’t have to do anything save lie there like a damned log while he did all the work. He realized vaguely that he’d been through all his logic several times before, but it didn’t matter. He was certain the list of her shortcomings would continue to grow.
The roar of anger was building in his throat when he realized that Lyonel and his father were in the house. It would cause the most ridiculous scene. He could just hear Lyonel’s lazy drawl. “How very odd, Hawk, old man. You say you mistook a bolster for your wife? She’s hidden from you, you say?”
He swallowed.
He would leave her to wallow in her own dowdy stupidity. Selfish, silly twit!