His eyes dilated. “Yes,” he said slowly, “yes, you are. No, don’t argue with me in that reserved well-bred way of yours. Tell me why you’re glad I’m here.”
She became perfectly still and he hated it. He shouldn’t have reminded her that she was reserved. She’d become a bit more open with him, spoken freely, without restraint, but now her hands were folded quietly in her lap. Slowly, very slowly, she raised her chin and looked at him squarely. It seemed to him a mighty effort. Then she said baldly, “You’re my husband. I missed you.”
“Your husband,” he said, sarcasm evident in his repetition. For a moment he’d forgotten her perfidy, but now she’d fan
ned those perfidious embers back into a roaring orange flame. “Don’t you find it odd that we’re married, Duchess? I’ve known you since you were nine years old, skinny with knobby knees, and so very solemn you could have been a pillar in the Norman abbey in Darlington. Yes, so quiet you were, so aloof, so very reserved and watchful. I saw the future beauty in that somber, too quiet child. And I called you the Duchess and everyone then saw the same things I did, and thus it became your name, even to your red-haired maid who’s an actress and looked at me as if she’d like to bed me and have me buy her a bauble in return.”
“Yes,” she said. “And when I was only nine years old, you were fourteen and proud and strong and the devil’s own son. My father was right about that. You led Charlie and Mark into some disgraceful mischief. My father always knew it was you who led them, always. Do you remember when you, Charlie, and Mark made a stout pine casket and filled it with stones and laid it on the floor in front of the altar in the church? When people filed in for the Sunday service, there it was, that coffin, just lying there with a rough bouquet of flowers on top of it, and everyone was afraid to open it.” She smiled a very small smile down at her folded hands, then added, “I looked up to you ever so much, but still you frightened me.”
“Frightened you, Duchess? I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine you ever being frightened of anything. If anyone threatened you, you’d just freeze him with one of those still, blank looks of yours. One of those inhuman looks that make a person silent as the grave. Why would you be frightened of me?”
She looked away from him then, and he realized she was embarrassed.
“Why?”
She said in a voice that didn’t sound at all like her, a low voice, muffled, reticent, “You belonged here. You were strong and confident and you belonged. Even now you belong although you’re fighting it with all your absurd misplaced pride. I never did belong.”
He didn’t want to deal with that, not now, there was too much else to think about. He said shortly, “Well, now you’re the damned countess of Chase. Surely you believe that you belong now. More than I do, truth be told, for your father gave you everything that wasn’t nailed down with the entailment. Doesn’t everyone treat you with respect and deference?”
“Yes, everyone has been most kind. When Mr. Wicks and I arrived three days ago, I will tell you that I was nervous. After all, I am the former earl’s bastard, no matter how you cut the cake, a former bastard who is now the mistress. But everyone has been generous. I am grateful for that.”
“But not dear Aunt Wilhelmina.”
“Her behavior is frankly strange and leaves one’s mouth gaping open. I daresay you will gain her measure very quickly. It is time to go to the Green Cube Room, Marcus. It is time for you to meet her and James.”
“Very well. No, no, don’t move. Good God, you’re showing too much cleavage, Duchess. Here, hold still.”
He strode to her and she rose to meet him. He rearranged her shawl, tying it first in a knot and setting it directly between her breasts, then pulling the knot to the side so that the long part of the shawl draped low over the front part of her gown. It looked frankly ridiculous, but she said nothing, didn’t move, her arms hanging limply at her sides. Still displeased, he tried to pull the gown up, but it wouldn’t move, for it was banded snugly beneath her breasts. For a moment, she felt the warmth of his fingers against her flesh. If he noticed where his fingers were, he gave no indication of it, saying with a frown, “I still don’t like it. You will have it altered. I trust your other gowns are not so very revealing. Doubtless that mangy dog Trevor will ogle you. You will give him one of those cursed cold looks with your chin up to the ceiling, like he’s so lowly he’s beneath your slipper.”
“Do you believe he would prefer being a mangy dog to a bloody fop?”
But now Marcus was looking at her breasts. Then he looked at his fingers that had touched her. He didn’t say anything. She saw his eyes darken, saw his pupils enlarge. His cheeks flushed. Slowly, he lowered his fingers and lightly skimmed them over her bare shoulder. He looked utterly absorbed. Those calloused fingertips moved slowly, so very slowly, to touch the top of her breasts. She felt a shiver of warmth, felt a shaking response from deep within her and leaned toward him, pressing her flesh against those tantalizing fingers. He whipped his hand away. She was motionless for a moment, knowing she had to regain her sense, knowing that she hadn’t behaved as she should have. She’d simply done what her body had wanted her to do and he’d found her unacceptable. She finally managed to say, “It is time.”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice, still looking at her breasts. “I suppose it is time, Duchess.”
It was very late. She yawned, then realized that she couldn’t manage the buttons at the back of her gown. She stood there before her mirror for a moment, wondering what to do. She wondered until the adjoining door opened and Marcus walked through, wearing an old burgundy velvet dressing gown. His feet were big and bare.
She froze. “What are you doing here?”
He walked up to her, stopped just inches away, and smiled down at her. “I’m your husband. I’m also the master here. I can be anywhere I please.”
“I see,” she said, her eyes on the lapels of his dressing gown. She saw the bare threads threatening to pull apart, particularly at his elbows.
“I doubt it.”
“What do you think of Aunt Wilhelmina?”
He frowned a bit. “She is unexpected. She was all charm and sweetness to me, but I don’t trust her. As for Trevor, I was right. He stared at your breasts and don’t try to deny it. And James, he was staring too, but he is more concerned with his own troubles than with your attributes. It went off all right. Everyone behaved himself. It’s fortunate that there are so many tidbits of interest right now, what with the political situation and all the entertainment our foreign visitors are providing us. Have you heard that ditty about the Grand Duchess Catherine? With the rude, crude, and lewd? She and her brother, Czar Alexander, and their antics, will provide dining conversation for another three months.”
“I have heard Spears singing it. I think it a clever ditty. He has a beautiful voice.”
“He thinks so at any rate. As I said, Aunt Wilhelmina acted normal, at least as much as a Colonist can act normal, their speech being so slow you want to yell at them to just get on with it. Yes, the evening went off just fine.”
The evening hadn’t been all that painful, she thought, as she nodded slowly. She had, however, been surprised when Aunt Wilhelmina had oozed charm all over Marcus. He was right about that. And she’d watched him, she couldn’t seem to help herself. She’d looked at his beautiful mouth, listened to his deep voice, his deeper laughter, the way he chuckled off-key, and couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off his hands, large hands with black hair on the backs, and those long fingers of his, fingers that had touched her, caressed her.
“Would you please unbutton my gown, Marcus? I cannot seem to manage it.”
With any other woman, he would have believed it an invitation. But not with her. Not with the Duchess. His wife. She turned, lifted the thick glossy black hair that was in a loose pile down her back. It hung there in deep ripples, for she’d just pulled the braids apart and smoothed them through with her fingers. It was a style that suited her, those fat braids interwoven with ribbons in a coronet atop her head. Her face was too fine, too well-sculpted for all those clusters of ringlets over the ears. No, this style suited her to perfection. He unfastened the row of small buttons that marched up her back. The gown was quite pretty, the dark blue the precise color of her eyes. Still, it was cut too low.