The Ideal Wife(67)

When she had lost the last remaining corners of her heart to her husband.

She loved him with all the passion she had not expected ever to be able to focus on any man.

And yet, standing at his desk, dressed as immaculately as usual, looking quite as handsome as ever, he seemed again remote, unknown, not the man who had shared hours of naked passion with her in the bed upstairs a few hours before.

She felt shy.

“Did we stun the cuckoo last night?” he asked her, setting down his letters and turning to smile at her. “I was forced to read my newspaper at the breakfast table, having only it for company.”

She hurried into the arms he held out for her and lifted her mouth for his kiss.

“How could you have got out from under me without waking me?” she asked, and felt the blood rush to her face.

“Very slowly,” he said, “and to the accompaniment of many muttered grumblings—from you. There are enough invitations here to keep us running for forty-eight hours a day all spring, Abby. I will leave you to choose. Pick the ones you would like to accept.”

“Oh,” she said, “but I would like to attend everything. How do I know that in attending one event we will not be missing something at another?”

He picked a card from the top of the pile. “Do you fancy a literary evening at Mrs. Roedean’s?” he asked.

She pulled a face. “No, not particularly.”

He tossed it into the basket beside the desk. “That is how it is done,” he said, grinning at her. “Abby, I need to talk with you.”

She did not trust his expression. She did not want to be talked to. She wanted to be in love. She wanted to be loved. The night before, he had called her beautiful—not plain, but beautiful. And he had made her feel beautiful in what he had done to her and with her in the next several hours. He had made her feel that he had come into her because it gave him pleasure to do so, because he needed to be in her, not just because he was planting his seed in her. And he had made her feel that a marriage, a love commitment, was beginning, not just a pregnancy so that she could be taken to Severn Park in the summer and left there.

She did not want to talk.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said warily.

“What?” he said, smiling and reaching out one hand to set flat against her forehead. “You do not want to talk? You must be sickening for something.”

She said nothing. She knew him well enough to know that despite the lightness of his tone and his teasing manner, he had something serious to say to her. He was going to send her early to Severn Park? Last night had been an ending, a farewell, instead of a beginning? She had misunderstood in her naïveté.

He took both her hands in his and held them warmly. “Abby,” he said, “I don’t want you to misinterpret what I am going to say. I have no intention of being a tyrant, dictating what you do and where you go and with whom you associate. You are an adult who has known considerable responsibility in your lifetime. But I do feel a duty to protect you from people and dangers you may not know about.”

He knew about Rachel, she thought.

“I have heard mention of the fact that you called on Mrs. Harper the day before yesterday,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I did.”

“I suggested to you at Lady Trevor’s ball that she is perhaps not a suitable associate,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You did.”

“Yet you visited her, Abby?”

“Yes, I did.”

He searched her eyes with his own. “Are you able to tell me why?” he asked.

It would be easy. In fact, it was unavoidable. She would tell him everything, and he would be able to advise her on how best to see to it that she would have the bringing up of Bea and Clara. It would be a great load off her mind to confide in him. And he would go with her to Rachel’s that afternoon.

But he would know. He would know whom he had loved the night before, whom he had called beautiful. He would know on whom she had spent five of the six thousand pounds he had placed at her disposal.

She wanted him to love her, to admire her, to respect her.

“I just thought it would be the polite thing to do,” she said, “having made her acquaintance at Lady Trevor’s.”

“It was not done in defiance of me?” He frowned.

“No.” She shook her head.

“It was not like the cutting of your hair?” he asked, smiling fleetingly.

“No.”

“I thought perhaps it had something to do with your brother,” he said. “I thought perhaps you had heard that he was gambling there and had gone to beg Mrs. Harper not to let him play too deep.”