Worry brought lines to her forehead and the tip-tilt of her nose against the light made him look away. He remembered running his finger down the gentle slope and on to the plump rose of her lips. Once she had watched him as if he were the only man in existence. Once she had taken his breath away with a single stolen kiss. Now suspicion and wariness were the only expressions that he could read and the disappointment was disquieting.
‘I have a pouch, too. A hundred pounds for the first time you lie with me and a hundred more for every time after that.’ The heavy thud of the leather purse sounded on the file, like the promise of Antonio’s flesh from the pen of Shakespeare. A pound for a pound. Payment for an heir.
Her teeth worried her bottom lip and shadowed eyes perused the bounty, but she did not reach out, leaving the largesse exactly where it was. Then she lifted her glass and had a generous gulp of wine before chancing a second and a third. Tay wanted to warn her of the strength of the draught, but in the circumstances he refrained. A relaxed Lucinda would be so much easier to handle than an angry one.
‘So you are saying that when I become pregnant the bargain will be fulfilled?’
The catch in her voice nearly broke his will and for a moment he thought to nullify everything and walk away. ‘A doctor will need to verify your condition, of course.’
‘Like a brood mare,’ she returned. Against the candlelight her pale hair shone and her eyes were back to flinty, fighting blue. During all his travels amongst the most beautiful women in the world he had never seen another like her.
He did not want her subdued. He wanted her like this. In bed she would be magnificent.
The thought had the flesh in his trousers swelling and he cursed, feeling like a boy again with no control over any of it. If he had any sense at all he would reach out now and strip her naked, demanding the rights all husbands received at the marriage altar and be done with any bargains. It was a God-given privilege, after all, and he had paid for her in blood and in gold.
He knew she saw the thought, too, for her hands tightened.
‘I would never hurt you.’ It was suddenly important that at least she knew that.
‘Then let me go.’
‘I can’t.’ Two words that stripped the life out of everything and his heart beat faster than ever it had during the bleak and lonely watches in the Americas when death could be forthcoming in one moment of inattention and often was. With care he reached out to gather a long curl of pale flaxen, turning it in his palm as the light caught wheat and gold and silver. ‘I can only hope for release from the demons that have hounded us for three long years. Will you be brave enough to trust me?’
‘Do I have any other alternative?’
He shook his head and the pulse at her throat slowed marginally—small signs of surrender.
To take the charade further he allowed her glance to escape from his own, falling out of contact. Eyes can take much from the soul, he thought, as she jammed her hands into the yellow silk of her skirt. He hoped dinner would be served soon. Eating would ease the tension that words were failing to do. How often had he plied an adversary with food and wine before picking the flesh of secrets clean away from the bone?
The thought that he did not wish to hurt Lucinda in any way at all left him struck dumb with shock.
Her innocence again and her goodness. He had had this same trouble in his bedchamber three years ago with the heady sighs of sexual release reverberating all around them—wholesomeness like some sharp-edged sword smiting evil with a conscience he had never felt so keenly before.
She was very warm. A fire burnt low in the grate, sending out a glow of red, and she was too hot even in her light clothing. She loosened her shawl. The scent of herbs wafted in the air around her. Lavender. She would never again smell the bloom without thinking of this moment, the documents and money spilled across the table before her, sordid rewards of lust.
‘Marriage has left us both in a difficult position,’ he continued, ‘a no-man’s land, if you like, precluding any other relationships we might wish to pursue. But if we use the situation wisely, we may at least enjoy it.’
The shock of his words made her draw in her breath. She was twenty-seven years old and, apart from one night three years ago, her sexuality had lain dormant and curdled.
Until now! Until a husband straight out of the pages of some improper and implausible fairy tale had walked back into her life and demanded this.
The Duke of Alderworth was not soft or quiet or gentle. He was hard and strong and distant, his eyes devouring her and the lavender blurring her senses. When she shook her head he laughed and broke away.
‘May the Lord above help us then if you think we might spin this out for all of a week, Duchess.’
Such brutal masculine honesty reminded Lucinda of her brothers and a further ache of homesickness claimed her. ‘The trouble is that I do not know you at all, your Grace.’ She had agreed to come to this place, agreed to the things he had said. She could not pull back now. But she did need time to adjust.
‘I thought you had made it plain to everybody that you did. Intimately. Your three brothers at least will swear to it.’
‘Much of what happened before the accident is lost to me,’ she continued as if he had not spoken, ‘though I know in my heart that you enjoyed far more than the mere kiss you acknowledge.’
He stood very still, watching her. ‘More?’
‘You wore no clothes.’
‘I had retired for the night and you surprised me. There is no crime in that.’
‘There were red marks upon my breasts.’
Laughter reverberated around the room, his face made years younger by mirth. She had not seen him like this before, humour sparkling and a dimple in one cheek.
‘Fine breasts they were, too.’
Now he was lying, for she knew she had none of the form of those women of society whose charms were followed by the eyes of men.
‘You think it cannot be so?’ He walked across to her and traced his fingers down the line of her bodice, his touch running softly over the skin above the lace.
‘You are a beautiful woman, Lucinda, and the pleasures of the flesh have their own reward.’ The sensuality in his tone was beguiling and his touch made her draw in her breath. But she was neither gullible nor stupid.
‘Lust is a base and shallow emotion, your Grace. It could never be enough to sustain a marriage.’
‘You would want more?’ He said this in such a way that Lucinda knew the thought of love had not occurred to him at all. Probably he found the softer emotions laughable—sensations that were as foreign to his world as easy and gratuitous sex would be to hers. The gap between them was a widening abyss.
‘Hell and damnation,’ he said, pushing back the hair on his forehead. Another opaque scar lay under the hairline and the anger on his face was unhidden.
Love.
She was speaking of that. He knew that she was and cold dread seeped through him.
Love only hurt. Enjoyment was better, of the mind or of the body it mattered not which. Enjoyment allowed the ease of parting when it was time to say goodbye and move on to the next place or person. Enjoyment was not the trap that love was.
Lord, he was paying his wife enough for such enjoyment and he was even biding his time to enable her to get used to the idea. He did not know of one single person who sustained their marriage in the way that Lucinda seemed to think was normal, the congeniality of two souls for ever linked.
This was the stuff of fairy tales and operas and the books that flooded out of the Minerva Press. He had read one once, just out of interest, and laughed at such an implausible nonsense.
His uncle had whispered the word in his ear, too, as he had hurt him. ‘This is because I love you, Taylen. Only that.’ The last time Tay had kicked the bastard hard in the balls as he had lunged for him and run to the door. The key hadn’t turned, though, stuck in the lock as his fingers fumbled to release it and Hugo had caught him easily, holding his shaking body close and telling him he loved him over and over.
That was love. That was his memory of love, bound by blood and hurt to all the adults in his life, until one day they had simply washed their hands of him and sent him off to boarding school.
His deliverance. The few canings there were nothing compared to his regular and systematic abuse at Alderworth, and in the summers when all the other boys save him returned home the masters had allowed him the free run of the place. To read. To walk. To fish.
Lucinda was watching him closely and it was disconcerting with his past rushing in between them.
‘Our bargain consists of a hundred pounds each time you lie with me, the end coming when you conceive an heir.’
He knew such words would cut the talk of love to ribbons, but the sweat had begun creeping up his body. He needed to get away before she understood more about him than he wanted anyone to know and there was no kind way to say it.
He gathered the heavy leather pouch and the papers he had meant to have her sign. ‘I find I am not hungry, Duchess. My servants will see to your evening meal.’ With that he left her.
Chapter Twelve
A sound woke her, a groan muffled by something, but close. Lucinda sat up in bed and listened, the moon coming in through a gap in the curtains. It was night-time and late. She had spent a short time in the dining room and then retired upstairs as soon as she was able. She had seen no further sign at all of the Duke of Alderworth.