No.
He must have sensed what she was thinking. “You will live here, at Rutherford Park. Your nephew will also live with me. And”—he leaned forward and there was a distinct flare in his eyes—“you will sleep with no one but me.”
“You don’t understand!”
“Oh, but I do understand. I understand madness all too well, and I suspect you have more than a touch of it. I’d say that we have even odds on whether our children will be as cracked as a broken egg. Another reason we ought to have spares: the eldest might have to be put away before he reaches majority.”
The sob that she had held in check broke and she tried to twist free. “Let me go!” He released her immediately and she dashed sideways, putting a heavy chair between them.
“You really thought I wouldn’t mind having a temporary duchess?” Vander asked incredulously.
“I imagined that we would live separately for the few months that we would be married,” she said, rubbing her arms where she could still feel the pressure of his fingers. “I planned—plan— to travel to Bavaria with Charlie.”
“I gather you didn’t picture yourself fulfilling your wifely duties. Presumably you would lure some unwary Bavarian into giving you evidence of adultery if annulment didn’t work?”
“No! I’m sure I could bribe someone. With my own money. I would be writing,” she explained. “You can’t know it, but I—”
“If you ever write another one of those deplorable poems that could be construed in any way to address me or a body part of mine,” Vander said flatly, “I cannot be responsible for the consequences.”
Anger flashed up Mia’s spine and she drew herself as tall as she could be. “My poem was not deplorable,” she retorted. “If you think that I would write a line about you again, you are sadly mistaken.” She added, “Besides, I don’t write poetry anymore.”
With a violent shove, Vander pushed aside the chair that stood between them and took a step toward her.
“Stay there!” she cried. “If you—if you try to hurt me in any way, I shall shoot you!”
That caught his attention and he gave a rough bark of laughter. She hated that his face still affected her, even knowing how arrogant he was. It was just that he was very beautiful, with his tousled hair and deep bottom lip.
“Allow me to tell you something important, Duchess. My wife lives with me.”
“No.” She managed to make the word firm but polite.
“No?”
You’d think no one had ever refused him in his life.
“No,” she echoed, feeling like a parrot. “No, Your Grace, I will not live with you, dine with you—or sleep with you, even for four nights.”
Chapter Ten
NOTES ON FREDERIC
~ Flora wakes knowing her heart is in Frederic’s keeping, he of the angelic eyes and . . . something.
~ “I will love none other than him he,” she announces to Mr. Mortimer’s solicitor.
~ His request she give up her bequest appeals to Flora’s sacrificial side. “Filthy dross means aught to me; I would live in a Hovel with my beloved.”
~ Mortimer’s solicitor notes Frederic has palazzo in Italy. (would that make his name Frederico?) Frederic has palazzo somewhere in Bavaria. Or a castle? Ugh.
Frederic draws her into his arms, kisses her passionately. Flora feels her head swim (‘Flora feels’?), and her slender body sways in his, overcome by the Force of Pure Sentiment. Recalled to herself by a whisper from an Angel on High (her dead mother), her slender delicate hand strikes his cheek. “How dare you forget yourself, Count! My Circumstances have been difficult but my Soul is that of a lady!”
Vander was in the grip of shock. No one—not even Thorn—gainsaid him. Not that he issued orders to Thorn.
But where he did command, he was used to unquestioning obedience.
He was a duke.
His wife didn’t seem to appreciate what that meant. Every inch of Mia’s small body was rigid with defiance. A sense of profound surprise rocked Vander to the core. For once, it seemed he truly had made a mistake. That he had both underestimated and misunderstood his opponent.
“Why in the hell did you want a temporary marriage?” he demanded. “If you are so infatuated with me, why didn’t you bid for more time?”
“You truly believe that I would blackmail you into making me your wife because I was still in love with you—after over ten years in which I hadn’t even seen your face?”
Vander’s eyes narrowed and his body stiffened. Put that way, his assumption had indeed been illogical.
Mia’s voice took on a distinctly derisive edge. “And the ‘four nights’ proviso? I suppose that was meant to corral my adulation. Did you come up with that, or was it your solicitor’s addition?”
“Mine,” he bit out.
“My father thought a great deal of himself, but I don’t think even he believed himself quite as irresistible as you apparently do!”
Vander cursed, more or less under his breath. “It seems I misunderstood the motive behind your marriage proposal,” he said.
The mockery in her eyes vanished. “It wasn’t a proposal,” she admitted. “I blackmailed you into marriage, which is an ugly business. I would never have done it if I hadn’t been desperate. No decent woman would have.” One side of her mouth quirked up. “Even so, I must confess myself surprised by the arrogance of your thinking I would commit a felony in order to buy myself four nights in your bed!”
A moment of silence in the room made the air sizzle.
Vander drew a hand through his hair and said, “I must be losing my bleeding mind. None of this makes sense. You didn’t marry for ambition, for money, or for love. Why the hell did you blackmail me?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time,” he said grimly.
“I was jilted,” Mia blurted out. “At the altar in St. Ninian’s. Well, not quite at the altar, because I was waiting in the vestibule, but everyone else was in the church.”
That was unexpected. “When did this happen?”
“Around a month ago. I had to marry, you see. I’m—well, I’m a mother.” She stopped.
Vander froze. No wonder Mia’s bosom was lush. She was carrying a child. Hell, India looked like that too—now that she was carrying Thorn’s child.
Her eyes widened. “Not that sort of mother!”
“Do you count me a fool, Duchess?” Vander demanded. “I can see your shape well enough. What will you say to me in four months, when your waistline expands? Even more than it already has,” he added, knowing it was unkind but unable to control his tongue.
Mia’s mouth trembled, and he felt a stab of guilt. “I am not carrying a child,” she repeated. “Yet in every way that matters, I am my nephew’s mother and have been since his birth. Charles Wallace Carrington, my nephew, is the child your solicitor mentioned. My brother’s will specified that I would remain his guardian only if I were married to a man of worth within a year of the will being proved. I was betrothed when John died, so it didn’t appear to pose a problem. We waited until I was out of mourning—but he fled the country rather than marry me.”
Vander frowned at that. “I gather the guardianship reverted to Sir Richard Magruder if you did not marry?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately, Sir Richard made it clear that I would no longer be welcome in the house, and I would have had to leave Charles Wallace—Charlie—behind.” Mia’s voice trembled for the first time. “I could not allow that to happen. Moreover, Sir Richard is recklessly litigious and will lay waste to my nephew’s inheritance. In the last year, he has launched three separate court cases on behalf of the estate.”
Bloody hell. It all made sense now. Jilted and desperate, Mia used the only tool that came to hand: his father’s treasonous letter. Vander choked back another curse. “So you came to me with a proposition to marry for six months, which I promptly chucked into the fire.”
“My solicitor thought if you knew all the details be
forehand—the fact that Sir Richard will almost certainly sue you—you would be even more disinclined to make me a duchess, temporary or otherwise.”
Somewhere in the back of Vander’s mind, in his very blood, a pulse pounded, and he knew what it was. His wife had been betrothed to marry.
To another man.
He took a moment to consider the emotion rationally. It wasn’t possessiveness. Hell, a few days ago he’d scarcely known Mia existed. That wasn’t entirely true: he had clear memories of her from years before, but he certainly wouldn’t have turned a hair if he had heard she’d married.
Not possessiveness. He was feeling lust, that was all. He lusted after his little wife, with her tempting curves and rumpled golden hair.
It must be something to do with the fact that she had just become his wife. That changed things. He’d seen perfectly sound men go mad when they thought that their wives were unfaithful.
Satisfied, Vander relegated that feeling to its proper compartment. Someday he would take Mia, whether it was for four nights or longer.
He simply had to convince her that he had no intention of enduring the charade that would be necessary to find a second wife, particularly considering divorce would further blacken his reputation and make the process more difficult. Mia was good enough, and he’d be damned if he would allow her to leave him on the grounds of adultery, and saddle his family name with yet another scandal.
Now he knew her weakness, he was not above exploiting it. “It seems that I am now Charles Wallace’s guardian,” he pointed out.
“That doesn’t mean we have to live together!”
He smiled at her. “Charles Wallace will live with me.”
He watched as the reality of it sank in. The battle was won. Over.
“In exchange,” he continued, “I will counter Sir Richard in court when he sues me for theft of the estate and whatever other charges he trumps up. I will raise your nephew as if he were my own son. I will endeavor to make the Carrington estate double in value by the time Charles Wallace is of age.”
“I would make a terrible duchess,” she cried. “Look how I dress.”
He shrugged. “Not exactly à la mode, but I don’t care.”
“Society will care!”
“I don’t go into society.”
Panic was settling into Mia’s bones, making her cold from the inside out. Vander meant it. She was caught in a trap of her own making.
He rose and moved toward her in a lazy stroll. “All I need is an heir, and I’ll take that from your body.”
“No, you won’t!” Mia snapped, unnerved by that grotesquely vulgar statement. “I’m not your wife, not really.”
“Yes, you are.”
She knew what he had in mind. He was going to kiss her. Once, Edward had kissed her for long minutes, and afterward Mia had felt flushed all over, and had a happily muddled feeling low in her stomach. He had laughed, and put her away, and said, “You’ll be the death of me before I get you to the altar.”
The memory sent a pang through her.
Stupid Edward and his stupid promises.
Sure enough, Vander bent his head and forced his way into her mouth—or perhaps surprise made her part her lips. His kiss was hungry and disrespectful and raw.
She should struggle. She should hit him. She should stamp on his foot, or bite his lip.
Any of those things.
All of them.
But instead her mouth opened and her head tilted. Her arms went around his neck while his hands tightened on her hips. He brought their bodies together with a jolt.
Mia felt an ache move through her, slow as honey and twice as sweet.
Vander’s hands slid down, rounding her bottom. He pulled her closer, and ground his hips against hers. Her breath caught in her throat.
When he drew back, she blinked up at him and found his face completely unmoved. “My instincts are always good when it comes to women,” he told her, sounding as triumphant as a farmer who got a bargain on two piglets.
“Wh—what?”
“I like the way you wiggled against my cock.”
Mia’s mouth fell open and every bit of sultry warmth drained from her. “Did you just say that to me?”
“I did.” Vander held her gaze. “Why the hell not? The good thing about us is that we don’t have to bother with the stupid rigmarole of polite conversation. We can be honest. There was no surprise in your body when I rubbed against you.”
Heat crept up Mia’s cheeks again.
He shrugged. “In case you’re wondering, I’m no virgin.”
Mia couldn’t even speak.
Vander, on the other hand, was becoming visibly more cheerful by the second. He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “I can’t wait to remove that ugly gown.”
“You think my stomach is large and my breasts are cabbages and I’m a charity case!” she retorted. He opened his mouth and she gave him a look that closed it. “You don’t want me. Don’t start lying now. You just said that we would be truthful with each other.”
“I do want you,” Vander repeated, sounding annoyed. Before she could stop him, he pulled her in again and encircled her with his arms and his scent and his strength.
The problem was that when he was kissing her, her mind dimmed like the sun fading at twilight. She stopped thinking, because he was tasting her . . . or the other way around.
One of his hands closed on her bottom in an entirely inappropriate manner that made her long to push closer. The other held her head so that his tongue could do as it wished. Her brain shut down and it became nighttime, dim and dark in her head.
His arm hitched her higher and he was grinding against her again. She whimpered, and it was only that sound coming from her own lips that brought her back to sanity. She pulled away and brought a trembling hand to her mouth.
“This is the best possible marriage,” Vander stated. “And you can’t complain that I don’t want you, because the evidence is clear.”
He didn’t sound calm anymore; his voice was rough. His silk breeches stretched in the front, just the way they had when he—the first time. The sight made her heart thump at an even faster rate.
“I don’t want to be married to you,” she said once again, her voice coming out cracked, like a shard of glass.
“That’s no longer your prerogative,” Vander replied. He shifted his position and winced, and before she could stop herself she looked there again. He was adjusting himself.
It was the most erotic thing she’d ever seen. Not that she’d seen much. Or anything, really.
Mia fell back a step, and then another. She had to get away.
“Do you believe that I want you?” he inquired.
“What I believe,” she said, blurting out the truth, “is that you’re one of those men who desires any woman within reach. You think that I will remain faithful to you for the whole of our lives.”
Something savage and primitive crossed his eyes. “You damn well better.”
“But you will go around London and bed whomever you wish, is that right? I merely wish to understand the arrangement clearly. You may take lovers and do whatever you please.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “If I feel so inclined.”
“While I spend my entire life with someone who finds me fat and mousy.” She made herself meet his eyes. “Maybe if I were really in love with you, I would count myself grateful. Or if I had any ambition to be a duchess. But do you know, Vander? I don’t feel grateful. I don’t feel fortunate.”
His mouth tightened.
“I think there might be someone out there who doesn’t think those things about me. My fiancé, Edward, liked me.”
A big sob rose up, but she forced it back down.
“But now I will never find someone who will love me for myself, because you’re so angry that you want to punish me.”
He began to speak, but she shook her head. “Don’t bother to deny it. You’re happy to be punishing me; I can see it in you
r face. But I don’t deserve this . . . I don’t.”
“I am not punishing you,” he said impatiently. “Bloody hell, I’d think you had ample evidence that I desire you. Are you always this dramatic?”
“No,” she said shakily. “Only when I find myself being punished for the sins of my father.”
His face froze.
Mia didn’t even feel triumphant at the evidence she was right. “You can see to it that I never have a chance to fall in love,” she cried. “You can take that from me. But you will never know whether I am unfaithful to you. Never!”
Vander’s response was blasphemous.
“You’d better enjoy those four nights with your mousy duchess while you still have me,” she added, “because one day I will find a man who—who respects me.”
“Respects you?” His eyes raked her body. “Does that mean that you’ll never tell him why I married you and how we married? Because he won’t respect you after he knows that, Duchess.”
The sob pressed so hard that Mia could no longer suppress it. He was right. “I’m going to my room,” she managed, running for the door, blinded by tears.
He caught her just as she reached it, spun her around.
“No!” she said with a little scream. “Get away from me.”
“I respect you,” he said in a grim voice. “You did what you had to for your nephew, and any decent person would respect that.”
“Get away,” she gasped. “Let me go.” Tears were pouring down her face, and it wasn’t decorous weeping. It was the kind of sobbing that tears a woman apart. The kind that comes after she’s reminded that she’s not beautiful, and not loved, and not even respected.
She shoved him again, and this time he backed away, a helpless look on his face, the same look that her father got every time she had a female problem. For example, when her father had ruined her debut year by sharing her poem.
Without another word, Mia wrenched open the door and ran up the stairs, ignoring Vander’s butler. Tears were salty in her mouth and she needed a handkerchief . . . ten handkerchiefs.