The Dangerous Lord (31 page)

“That bitch!”

She laughed. “You don't mince words, do you?”

“I don't have to.” He clutched her to him. “I don't write for the public. If I'd written your column, I'd have been
far more ungenerous to the woman than you were.”

Her column. She'd forgotten all about it. “I shouldn't have put that in tonight, not when I'm feeling…unwell. You're right about its being personal. I'm usually less overtly antagonistic, even when I write about Papa's old patrons, but tonight I was testy.”

“And I'm sure I didn't help by being an ‘arrogant ass.'”

She groaned. “I shouldn't have called you that.”

“It was true. I've been as bad as Pelham.”

“No!”

“Yes. I kissed you against your will, and I attacked you at the Worthings—”

“You did
not
attack me!” She gazed into his remorseful eyes. “It was entirely different with you. I liked what you did. Pelham made me feel dirty and cheap. You made me feel desirable. And when you withdrew, as an honorable man should, you convinced me that not all men of rank are like Pelham.”

His eyes glittered. “But I seduced you a week later. I—”

She placed her finger against his lips to silence him. “I won't let you speak of yourself in the same breath with him. You're nothing like Pelham—nothing, I tell you! You never forced me to give my body to you. I chose that myself. And I don't regret it.”

Her fervent tone must have convinced him. But it did something more, something she hadn't counted on. She felt the change in him even before he lowered his head.

And to her shame, she welcomed his kiss, welcomed his easy intimacy. He was her husband. She was his wife. There was nothing wrong in it. His kiss was full of delights, tender and thorough at the same time. It blotted out everything but thoughts of their last joining.

He shoved her wrapper off her shoulders, and she shifted to twine her arms about his neck. She was heedless of how that crushed one of her breasts against him until he slipped his hand inside her chemise to cup the soft weight.

“My sweet
querida
,” he muttered against her lips, teasing her nipple into a hard button with little tweaks of his thumb and forefinger that made her blood race hot and silky through her veins.

My love
, she thought in answer.
My sweet love
.

Dragging her chemise down to bare one breast, he covered it with his mouth and drew hard, the rasps of his tongue sending exotic pleasures shooting through her. She clutched his head to her and rained tender kisses in his hair, which seemed to make him only more ravenous.

Then everything moved too quickly. He was laying her back on the bed, half-covering her body, his hands stroking up her inner thighs beneath her chemise. A sudden panic hit her. She was on her courses…he could not…he mustn't…

She caught his wrist frantically. “No, Ian, you mustn't…”

“Don't do this to me again,
querida
,” he growled as he lifted his head to stare at her with bleak, haunted eyes. “You can't mean to stop me this time!”

“I don't want to, truly I don't! Not anymore. But…” Here a violent blush stained her cheeks. “But I…my…oh, dear heavens, this is so embarrassing.” She swallowed. “My courses came today. That's why I didn't feel well enough to come down for dinner.”

Ian hovered over her, looking blank. Then as what she'd said sank in, he groaned and dropped his head onto her shoulder. “Damn it, was ever a man so cursed?”

She lay still beneath him, stricken by remorse. “I-I'm sorry. I should have said something sooner…I truly did want to…you know…”

“There will be other nights.” He pressed a perfunctory kiss to her cheek as if anything more might test his endurance. Then he drew back and raised an eyebrow. “There
will
be other nights, won't there?”

She knew what he was asking, and now she knew her
answer. It was time to make their marriage what it should be. Her attempts to force his hand weren't working, because deep down he distrusted her motives. She'd realized that when he'd grown so angry over her column.

So she must show him that her motives were pure, that she loved him so much it didn't matter what he told her.
That
was the way to make their marriage a true one.

“Yes,” she said softly. “And my courses are generally of short duration. In a few days we can—”

“Enough,
querida
.” He smiled wryly. “Unless you want to torment me further, do not tell me what we can do in a few days, I beg you. A few days seems like an eternity.”

“For me, too,” she said shyly.

He sighed and sank back on the bed beside her, staring up at the canopy. He was quiet a long time, so long she wondered what else she could say to reassure him. Then he spoke in clipped tones. “I suppose this means you aren't with child.”

“No. For that, too, I'm sorry.”

Rolling to his side, he propped his head up on his elbow. “It's nothing to be sorry about. That's one of those matters only nature can control. But we have plenty of time.”

So why did he look so disappointed? Why did he seem compelled to sire an heir with all due haste?

He shoved himself up to sit beside her on the bed. “I'd best leave you now. You need your rest.”

Not ready to lose his company yet, she sat up and took his hand. “You could sleep here tonight.” She traced the long lean fingers, the broad palm with the tiny scars probably gained when he was a soldier.

“Sleep and not touch you?” he said softly. “Impossible. Forgive me,
querida
, but the last time we shared a bed without making love, I got drunk to endure it. And I fear I'd have to do the same tonight. So I'd best return to my room.”

He rose to leave, and she said, “Ian?”

“Yes?”

“I meant what I told you. I'm done fighting you. I'm your wife, and I mean to be your wife in every way from now on.”

He cupped her cheek. “Sleep well.” He paused, then added, “If you feel up to it in the morning, we'll visit my tenants so I can introduce you to them.”

She smiled. “I'd like that.”

“It's all I can think of to take our minds off other things,” he admitted ruefully.

Then he was gone. Feeling bereft, she rose and went to the desk. Her article still lay where Ian had tossed it. She sat down at the desk and read it over again. The lines now seemed silly, like a child sticking its tongue out at her tormentors.

For the first time in years, Felicity's bitterness toward Pelham was gone. In its place was the most profound pity. For Pelham, because he could never have a woman care for him without browbeating her into it. And for his wife, because she must live with the wretch. Nothing Lord X could say would alter that situation one whit.

She deliberated a moment longer. Then she took up her pen and crossed through the lines about Pelham and his wife.

A
s Ian left Felicity's bedchamber, her parting words echoed sweetly in his mind.
I'm done fighting you…I mean to be your wife in every way from now on
. At last he'd won her, and without relinquishing his secrets.

But later, as he lay in his cold bed alone, he examined her words more closely, and they struck him with foreboding. She hadn't said,
I'm done fighting you because I want you
, though he knew she desired him. She hadn't spoken of
wanting
to be his wife in every way. She'd spoken of her will—
I mean to be
…As if acknowledging her duty. Or her weariness of fighting him.

That wasn't what he wanted—a wife by default. He wanted her to care for him freely, to be his wife because she desired it, not because she felt trapped into it. He'd gained her acquiescence at a great price to his own conscience.

The following morning, he sent a servant with his excuses for canceling their visit with his tenants. He could no longer bear to face her. She'd said too much last night,
revealed just enough of her past to make him see his behavior in a new light.

And examining his own behavior—or rather, contemplating his many sins—was all he did for the next three days. He certainly didn't go anywhere near his long-suffering wife. For God's sake, what could he say to her that would excuse his earlier arrogance? The very thought of her tortured his conscience. So what would the sight of her do to it?

Now it was late afternoon on the day before New Year's Eve, and he was in a quandary. The day after tomorrow, they'd return to London. What was he to do about Felicity?

Pacing his study restlessly, he paused to glance out the window, then started when he saw the object of his thoughts standing in the garden below and jotting down notes in a tablet. What was she planning? To improve the garden? Or level it and put in a pond? Hard to know with his darling wife.

Regardless, it was such a domestic action it briefly salved his conscience. Too briefly.

He turned from the window to stare blindly about the impressive study, a veritable bastion of masculinity, thanks to Father's decorating preferences and Ian's own lack of time to oversee its redecoration. Mahogany furniture and velvet hangings and ancient bronze lent it a dark, almost gloomy air. He hated it.

But not only for its appearance. My God, that massive, ugly desk—how often he'd hunched over it while Father laid into his backside with a cane. Not that the canings had hurt his ass any more than those he'd routinely suffered at Eton, but they'd tortured his pride. He'd hated having them administered by the man he wanted most to please. He'd despised being forced to submit against his will. Most of all, he'd been humiliated the few times his father had wrung tears from him.

Ian had always regarded it a matter of pride not to cry,
and Father had always regarded it a matter of pride to make him do so. No one understood their private duel. His mother had wanted Ian to shed fake tears to end the caning. Jordan had said he was insane to hold back the real ones. But every time Ian had outlasted his father's whipping arm without crying, he'd considered it a triumph over the whole degrading process.

From that he'd learned that physical force didn't work, that manipulation and strategy were the keys to getting what you want, because his father's canings had never done anything but stiffen his resistance.

Now Felicity had taught him something else—there were more kinds of force than physical, and they were just as destructive. Unwittingly, she'd taught him that in countless ways. Her tears in front of Sara, which had apparently been genuine. Her horror at his threats to make her marry him. Most of all, the way she'd refused him her bed after the wedding.
If you force this upon me, you'll have to force the other upon me as well
, she'd said, and he'd been so arrogant he'd ignored her legitimate complaint.

Instead, he'd acted exactly like the long string of so-called gentlemen before him, the Pelhams and the Faring-dons and all the other bastards. He'd browbeaten her. Taken advantage of her. Seduced her. The list of his offenses was so long, he choked on them.

He'd still succeeded in making her willing, or as willing as a woman can be whose pride has been trampled on, whose energies have been exhausted by the fight. He'd won without giving in one whit to her simple request for the truth about his past.

How hollow was his triumph.

Because eventually she would learn the truth—if not from him, then from another. Someone would make a random comment or Uncle Edgar would tell her just to spite him. Then she'd have reason enough to leave him, since
the truth would surely break any bonds of duty he'd managed to make her feel for him.

He gazed out the window again. She looked so fetching, so perfectly at home in his garden. He could grow used to having her always in his sight. Which made the thought of her leaving him all the more terrifying. What good was winning the fight against his uncle if she weren't here? Or worse yet, if she stayed, despising him with every breath? The very thought made him ill.

No, he must heed the call of his conscience. He'd made a mistake by forcing her into this marriage—he saw that now. But Fate had kept her from bearing his child just yet, thus handing him the chance to undo his mistake.

So he must seize that chance and offer her back what he'd taken from her—her pride, her independence, and yes, her freedom. After all the indignities she'd suffered at the hands of men of his kind, she deserved that much from him.

Even if he had to cut out his heart to do so.

 

“Good evening, milady,” Ian's butler, Spencer, greeted Felicity as she entered the dining room and took her usual place.

Milady
. She always wanted to look around for the stately and elegant personage to whom they surely referred.

Spencer bent over her place to pour her a glass of burgundy. “His lordship sent word that he will not be dining this evening, milady.”

A keen disappointment seized her. She'd dressed with such care, looking forward to telling Ian that her courses had ended. “Oh.”

The elderly butler hesitated. When she glanced at him, he said, “If you should need the master, however, he's in his rooms.”

She brightened. “He told you to say that?”

“No, milady. I merely thought you might find the information of interest.”

Her spirits fell once more. “I do. Thank you.”

He motioned to the footman to serve her the first course—a consommé. She stared into the bowl, but her mind was elsewhere. Ian's absence at dinner for the past three nights had garnered even the servants' attention. No doubt they'd also noticed his avoidance of her. The promised visit to the tenants hadn't materialized. He'd sent word that he would be too busy with other affairs to carry her round and introduce her.

She detested that phrase—“sent word.” Ian forever “sent word” to her. That he couldn't accompany her into the village. That he would be out all day inspecting his properties. That he wouldn't be at dinner. She only wished the wretch would “send word” about why her behavior the other night had made him avoid her.

“Milady?” Spencer asked.

She looked up to find him at her elbow. “Yes?”

“Is there…something wrong with the soup?”

She'd been staring into it for several minutes. “No.” She shoved back her chair. “I'm not hungry, I'm afraid. I believe I'll do without dinner tonight.”

“Yes, milady,” he murmured, bowing.

She stood abruptly, took a fortifying gulp of wine, and then set the glass down and headed for the door. She'd had enough of this nonsense. She'd seen less of Ian in the past three days of married life at Chesterley than she had in one day of unmarried life in London. It wasn't like Ian to sulk simply because her courses had prevented him from bedding her. But why else could he be avoiding her?

Well, she would find out. They were married, for pity's sake, and if he thought being married meant ignoring his wife when he couldn't bed her, he was very much mistaken. It was time she informed him of that fact.

When she arrived at Ian's bedchamber, she was relieved
to find the door open and Ian clearly visible inside. He must have just come from his bath, for his hair was still damp and he wore a dressing gown of figured silk tied at the waist with a sash. He stood at the foot of the bed, directing his valet who was…

Packing an open trunk.

“Where are you going?” she asked sharply from the doorway.

His valet looked up in surprise, but a quick nod from Ian toward the door was all it took for the servant to slip past Felicity and off down the hall.

“To London,” he answered.

Her heart skipped a beat. She entered the room with unsteady steps, closing the door behind her. “I thought we weren't returning to London until the day after tomorrow.”

He continued where his valet had left off by tossing a pair of drawers into the trunk. “There's been a change of plan. You'll want to attend Lord Stratton's New Year's Eve ball, won't you, so you can write about it in your column? That means leaving tomorrow. I'd planned to tell you this evening.”

“Oh.” She wished he'd asked her about it first. The ball wasn't nearly as important to her as consummating their marriage, and now there would only be tonight before her brothers were with them again.

Still, she only needed one night. Feeling a bit nervous, she strolled to the bed and sat down on the edge. “I…I came to tell you that my courses are finished.”

He obviously didn't miss the significance of that. His hands paused in the act of reaching for something in his bureau. “I see.”

She waited for him to say more…to look at her or kiss her…anything at all. When he returned to packing, she couldn't believe it. What had happened to him? Three days ago, he wouldn't have left her alone on his bed for more
than a second after such a pronouncement. “Ian, that means there's no reason for us not to—”

“I know what it means.” His profile was to her, the taut muscles more unyielding than marble. “It means we should have left for London today.”

She stared at him in utter bewilderment. “Whyever for?”

“Felicity.” His voice cracked a little on her name. He straightened as if steeling himself for an unpleasant task. When he faced her, his expression was grim. “We're going to London early for another reason as well.”

This didn't sound good, not good at all. “Oh?”

“I sent a message off today to a solicitor, requesting an appointment for tomorrow. I think he'll oblige me.” He paused. “This particular solicitor specializes in annulments.”

She jumped up, her heart lurching sickeningly in her chest. “What do you mean?”

His gaze locked with hers. “It's time we acknowledged this was a mistake.”

A mistake? He was seeking an annulment? How dare he! “Why? Because I took so long to let you bed me again?”

“Of course not! But thanks to our abstinence, you aren't yet pregnant. Under the law, the marriage hasn't even been consummated. We should take advantage of that and obtain an annulment while we still can.”

“I don't want an annulment!”

He sighed. “If it's the money you're worried about, be assured that I'll settle on you an allowance that will provide handsomely for you and your brothers.”

“Damn you, Ian, it's not the money! I don't care about money—I never did! I care about
you
! I don't want an annulment, and you don't either!”

“What I want is of no importance.” Eyes of deepest obsidian stared earnestly into hers. “I once thought it was—that my need for a wife superseded any claims of morality or conscience or even simple courtesy. I wanted a wife, so
I set out to get one. And I fixed upon you. When you refused me, I seduced you. When you balked at marrying me to save your reputation, I made it so you couldn't refuse. And all because I wanted you.”

She opened her mouth to protest that she'd wanted him as well, but he held up a hand to forestall her. “Now I find that my conscience plagues me. The only solution is to annul this farce of a marriage.”

And she'd expected to seduce him tonight. “Drat it, Ian, why must you choose
now
to repent your sins?”
Now that I love you so dearly
.

“Better late than never, don't you think?”

“No, I do not! I don't want you heeding your conscience if it means ending our marriage. I didn't marry you for your conscience!”

“You didn't marry me for anything at all—I forced you to marry me!”

“The devil you did! Remember that conversation we had in the church vestibule? If I'd wanted to be rid of you, I'd have turned you away then. But I didn't!” Should she tell him why? Would he withdraw into himself if she did? She must take that chance. “It was love that kept me from turning you away, damn it. I knew it even before I arrived at the church. I married you because I love you, Ian!”

The words visibly shook him. Although he didn't offer the same, she gained encouragement from his expression, which showed uncertainly, not disgust. Surely that was a good start.

Averting his gaze from hers, he raked his fingers through his hair. “I can't imagine why,” he said finally.

“Can't you?” She strode up to stand in front of him, wanting him to look at her. “You're generous and patient with my brothers. You listen to me when I talk, unlike other men who think that anything a woman says must necessarily be stupid. You're considerate to your servants as well as to me.”