He helped himself to another glass of whisky and brooded. Brooded. There was no other word for it. The fireplace burned, casting the comfortable parlor in a warm red glow that was almost demonic and fitting for his mood.
Gregoria entered the room and sashayed over to him, the invitation he’d read in her eyes from earlier still clear as day in her eyes now. She took his glass and refilled it. There was no mistaking her look or the hand that lingered on his thigh as she poured his whisky. She would be agreeable to a tryst. He considered it. Except, he soon discovered as he searched inside himself, that was not his desire, at all.
Nursing his drink, he stared blindly into the fire.
His father would not have turned down Gregoria’s overture. Hellfire, he would not have walked away and left Alyse untouched—well, largely untouched—in that bed. Not before slaking his own needs first. He would have used her and still refused to call her his wife. That was his father’s way. Take. Use. Leave.
“Bloody hell.” He downed the remainder of his glass, but it did no good. Two whiskys and he could still taste her.
He should not have touched her at all . . . should not have groped her breast the moment he grew aware of her rubbing against him. His father would have done the same thing, of course. He would have touched, grabbed and fondled her without invitation. Not Marcus.
He had stopped himself and he would be more circumspect in the future.
He and Alyse would resume their journey and even if they had to share a bed the entire way north he would not touch her. Even if she invited him, he would not go there. She could strip naked and launch herself at him and he would have all the restraint of a monk.
He wasn’t a slave to his base desires. He had more restraint than that.
Even so, he did not wish to test his strength further this night. He’d pushed himself far enough. It was all too fresh. The taste of her. The sensation of her satiny flesh beneath his lips . . . fingers. She felt too good.
He’d never have thought the temptation of her would be so overwhelming. He’d had several alluring women over the years, and they knew the power of their allure. They worked tirelessly at it and wielded it with utter proficiency. Their skin fragrant and soft from lotions and perfume. Their hair styled to silkiness. They were artfully arranged.
Alyse Bell did not require such manipulation. She was no skillfully wrought construction of feminine beauty. She was just as she was, fresh off a farm and sold at auction without any embellishment.
So, contrary to his earlier avowal, he moved to the sofa. He removed his boots and set them on the floor. He was too tall for the piece of furniture. His feet hung over the end, but the discomfort wasn’t enough to send him back upstairs.
It was a decidedly better sleeping arrangement than the temptation of returning to that bed with Alyse.
It did not take him long to fall asleep.
Only it wasn’t the peaceful rest he’d craved. It was a dizzying collage of faces. Alyse. His stepmother. His sisters. Colin. They all called his name, pulled at him and chased him.
Then, he saw his father’s face, angry and contorted, spittle flying from his lips as he shouted.
Marcus woke with a start, his ears still ringing with their voices.
He was gasping, the sounds wet and ragged in his ears. He dragged a hand over his face. He hadn’t trembled like this since he was a child. He laughed hoarsely. Last night he admitted to Alyse that he’d suffered nightmares before, too. Except it hadn’t been recently. Perhaps the ailment was contagious.
He glanced around the room. The fire had died overnight. He inhaled and rubbed at his chest, hoping to massage loose the painful tightness.
He glanced to the room’s single window. The gray of dawn pressed against the glass panes. It was time to greet the day.
They left a little after dawn, taking the road north just as the sun rose to streak the sky in shades of pink and orange. It was cold and grew only a little warmer as they moved north—a condition he expected to continue.
When he had returned to their room to rouse her, she had looked at him as though he were some unwanted vermin sneaking in from the cold.
“Did you sleep well, sir?” she’d asked icily as they packed their things. That stiff sir and her cold eyes and the colder tone of her voice said it all. She thought he’d taken her suggestion to heart and spent the night in another female’s bed. Let her think that. Better she thought him loose with his favors than harboring a tendre for her.
Noticing she was shivering atop her mule, he stopped and foraged through his pack. Finding an additional jacket and pair of gloves, he tromped back to her.
“Put this over your cloak,” he advised, staring at her on the mule. Her lips were ashy.
She opened her mouth and he knew some fool protest was about to emerge. “Come now,” he snapped. “It’s cold and only going to get colder. I don’t need you to freeze to death.”
She relented with a nod and slipped the jacket over the cloak. The scarf followed. She wrapped it several times around her face and pulled the fabric up to cover her lips and nose.
She flinched when he seized her hand and guided his too big gloves on over the well-worn wool gloves she already wore.
“In the next village we will see about outfitting you better for this weather.”
She nodded stiffly, watching him with those wide topaz eyes as though he might lunge at her. Tension crackled between them.
Last night crackled between them.
He wasn’t so stubborn he wouldn’t admit that to himself. He’d tasted this woman. Touched her. Felt her shudder and come apart in his arms. Usually when he knew that much about a woman he knew everything about the woman. He knew what it felt like to be inside her, how she fit around him.
He could only imagine what that would be like with Alyse Bell. He didn’t know. He would never know.
Swallowing back a curse, he turned away and remounted, determined to cover as much ground as they could today. Every moment with her increased his urgency to reach Kilmarkie House, where she would be firmly implanted as his housekeeper and he would again be the Duke of Autenberry and not some random wanderer who buys brides in irrational flights of pity and then spends way too much of his time lusting after said bride.
As they continued on, he looked behind him several times to make certain her mule didn’t lag too far behind.
“Bucephalus,” she would call as though his gelding were a cat or hound that she might lure back to her side.
“You needn’t call for him,” he finally instructed. “I won’t leave you behind.”
“Only being cautious. You did warn me to trust no one.”
Yes. He had uttered those stupid words. Not that it had seemed to help.
Last night she had placed her trust in him. She had responded to him, kissing him back and arching under his touch as though he were the lover she had counted on rescuing her from the auction block. The lover who had abandoned her. The man she had known and loved and trusted.
At the thought of that faceless bastard, his temper sparked along with a deep throb of possession. That man had failed her. He lost her.
She belonged to him now. Him . . . Marcus. No one else.
Shaking off the troubling line of thought, he realized she was speaking again.
“Where did you get such a horse?” she was saying. “I’ve never seen anything like him in Collie-Ben. Bucephalus is quite the mouthful. I can’t quite accustom myself to it. I think I shall call him Bucky.”
Bucky? He winced. “Please don’t call him that.”
“Bucky, hold up,” she called, ignoring his request.
A glance over his shoulder revealed that her bloody mule was lagging behind again. That or Bucky—damn it all, Bucephalus!—had increased his pace. He sighed as he forced his mount to slow his stride. Now she had him thinking of his own horse as Bucky. “Must you be so irritating?”
“I’m only talking. It’s called conversation.”
&nbs
p; He angled his head. “Is it, though?”
“Yes,” she responded with a cheerful surety that grated his nerves.
“I think it’s called maddening,” he returned.
“Girls . . . women like to talk. Surely you know that. You have sisters. A mother, presumably?”
He shrugged. “Yes. Two sisters and a stepmother.”
“I always wanted siblings. A big family. You’re very fortunate.” He shifted in discomfort in his saddle. She thought he was fortunate because he had a big family? He inhaled. A family he happened to be avoiding. “You’re close with them, yes? The way you talked about Clara . . . it sounded like you’re close.”
A simple enough question and yet he took his time in answering because the answer was not so simple. And that summed up his life succinctly lately. Not simple.
“I’m close with my sisters, yes,” he admitted, wondering why he was telling her more than he told anyone before. “Clara is the baby. Very animated. She’s easy to love. Enid is more reserved, but a wit. Full of quips and clever observations. With my stepmother . . . things are complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“Strained.”
“Strained? That sounds intriguing.”
Annoyance flashed through him. “Not at all. It’s rather . . . disappointing. I had admired her greatly once.”
He knew he’d lectured Alyse not to trust any man, but trust in general hadn’t worked out for him, be it man or woman.
Trust was for fools.
“What happened?” she pressed.
He compressed his lips shut. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss Graciela and Colin. He was doing his best not to think about them.
“Come, come,” she coaxed, smiling. “It helps to talk about these things, you know?”
“Does it?” he asked, unconvinced. The only person he’d confided to over the years had been Colin. He was like a brother to him. They’d roomed together at Eton. And considering his best friend had betrayed him by shagging his stepmother, he didn’t think all that talking had helped much in regards to anything.
“Of course.”
He sighed. She wouldn’t stop pestering him. He might as well give her an abbreviated version of events. “A little over a month ago I caught her in a compromising position with my best friend.”
“Oh.” The single word was restrained, but rife with interest. There was no mistaking it.
“That intrigues you, too, does it? The sordidness of my life?”
Nothing about it had felt intriguing. Not then. Not now. The fact that Colin had toyed with his stepmother and gotten her with child still made his blood boil. He’d had to leave town before he did something regrettable. Something like challenge his former friend to a duel.
The scandal of the Dowager Duchess of Autenberry taking up with the young Earl of Strickland was going to be salacious enough for the wagging tongues of the ton. He refused to add to the fires by putting a bullet in his friend. That would definitely not help his sisters’ marriage prospects and he still had them to worry about.
At the time, it had made sense to leave. Now he wasn’t so sure. It had been rash. A reflex to catching Colin and Ela together. Perhaps he’d behaved badly. Like the spoiled privileged sot he knew Alyse Bell thought him to be.
“It was far from intriguing, believe me. I lost a friend and my stepmother.”
She shook her head. “I am sorry. I did not mean to make light of it.” She paused, but he could have guessed she was not done talking. “But I do not see how you lost them simply because . . .”
“Because they’re shagging one another?” he finished bitingly, his sense of betrayal surging to the surface.
Heat flared in her cheeks at his language.
He shook his head. “I cannot fathom how you can still blush. Days ago you stood on an auction block whilst all manner of ribald things were shouted at you.” Although that did feel a long time ago. It felt as though they had been together for quite some time now. Every moment with her felt full . . . significant.
“That doesn’t mean I’m accustomed to such coarseness.”
Coarseness? Meaning she thought he was coarse? He . . . a duke, godson to the queen? Not that she knew any of that, of course. He knew her well enough to know that it would not impress her in the slightest.
Her judgment did not sit well with him. His father had been coarse. Unequivocally. He was the definition of that. He did not care to be lumped into the same category.
Marcus stifled a groan and dragged a hand over his face. What did it matter what she thought of him? She was a member of his staff. She should be beneath his notice.
“I’m only saying,” she continued, “perhaps they love each other. Perhaps they couldn’t help themselves because of that. You couldn’t blame them for—”
“Love,” he snorted. “Lust more like it. And I do blame them. They could have exhibited self-control. Restraint.” Instantly his mind drifted to last night and his decided lack of self-control. There had been no restraint on his part. He’d acted impulsively and let his desire rule him. Could it not have been the same way for Colin and Ela?
The comparison did not sit well.
“Love. Lust. Perhaps it’s both. Do the emotions have to be exclusive of each other? Can people feel both things?”
He contemplated that, wondering if he’d ever pondered the subject of love and lust with anyone, much less a female. “More often than not lust is just that. Two people giving in to base desires and forgetting everything else.” Propriety and obligations. Friendship. Family loyalty. As the mental list grew, he actually felt a familiar tightening in his gut. Graciela and Colin hadn’t considered any of those things as they succumbed to their base desires. They had not considered Clara or Enid or him. Not how Society would react and what the consequences would mean for all of them.
“I believe you are a pessimist, Mr. Weatherton.”
For a moment, the sound of his family’s surname jarred him. He’d never been addressed by anything other than his title.
“It’s not pessimism. It’s called experience. I’ve seen . . . things.” Hard things. Ugly things.
He knew a great deal about base desires and lust. Less about love. Perhaps nothing. Nothing at all about love.
She made a sound. It was nothing he had ever heard from a woman before. At least never directed at him. It was a kind of like a . . . jeering snort.
He sent another glance over his shoulder. Her expression was scornful, one of her dark eyebrows cocked over those cat eyes of hers. “So life has taught you to doubt love?”
“In a manner . . .” Again, that sound from behind him. He wheeled around to face her. “What?”
“I don’t doubt love. I was so young when my mother died I can’t even remember her. At fifteen my father died and I married a man old enough to be my grandfather. I had to work his farm, raise his children, cook and launder for him. That same man sold me at auction. So I’ve seen things, too, you know. I’ve seen ugly things and I still believe in love. Your life must have been very hard indeed for you to be such a nonbeliever.”
She finished her tirade with flashing eyes and a deep exhale and nudged her mule ahead, for the first time bypassing him and Bucephalus.
Marcus started after her, admiring her and marveling at this female who had just made him feel like a rebuked child. He couldn’t even be annoyed with her. Not when she was right.
She took a fortifying breath. Little Bit couldn’t keep up with Bucky’s pace and she soon fell behind again. She rocked on the contrary beast’s back, staring hard at Weatherton ahead of her, sitting so stiffly in his saddle. He was a cold man. She was foolish to let such a man rouse emotions in her.
Alyse was never one to despair. It was not her way. Even when life had been the hardest. When everything felt like a rock to break herself against. The last few years with her father, when he was sick and suffering and it became clear she would be left on her own, she had not given in to despair. Not ev
en then.
When Papa died and she had moved into Mr. Beard’s small gable room she still clung to hope. She’d grown up reading fairy tales. Papa had filled her head with them. His romantic nature had been infectious. He’d gifted her with the ability to dream. Perhaps that’s why she so readily believed in Yardley.
In Papa’s stories, the peasant girl always found love. Good always prevailed. The witch always died and princes never failed. Never abandoned you when you most needed them.
She had always believed in these ideas.
Except riding in this dark wood, following a dark figure, she knew her story was not written yet. She couldn’t see into the darkness ahead. She couldn’t know for certain if her happily ever after would come.
But she had a plan.
She would make the best of her time at Kilmarkie House, even if she hadn’t counted on these confusing feelings for the man who held a deed declaring her his property.
She wouldn’t get too comfortable. She wouldn’t grow to like him. That would be foolish. Her future was elsewhere.
The wind blew and her teeth chattered in response. The hills above the tree line were growing more craggy—turning into steep, snow-blanketed shapes against the graying sky.
It was getting darker. They’d have to stop soon. Maybe then she’d feel warm again.
Chapter 16
He was a wolf without a pack, but that didn’t mean he needed anyone.
The next few days passed without incident. Thankfully, there were no more problems with overcrowded inns. Marcus was able to acquire separate rooms every night they stopped. The relief reflected in her eyes wounded his ego more than he cared to admit. She really didn’t like him.
For three nights, they stabled their mounts.
For three nights, he walked her to her door, seeing her safely to her chamber.
He ordered their meals to be delivered each to their separate rooms. They did not have to endure one another’s company once the sun went down and that seemed for the best. He needed the respite . . . and to avoid further temptation.