To Marry The Duke (19 page)

“I don’t need time to myself. I’m already alone enough as it is, even when I’m sitting in a room with Mildred or your mother or ten footmen!”

“Lower your voice.”

Sophia took a deep breath to calm herself, then continued. “James, you must know I want to share a bed with you. Perhaps it is not very ladylike or very English of me, but I am not an English lady. I spent my childhood in a one-room shack in Wisconsin, where manners were a little more lax to say the least, and we all slept together and woke up together and ate together. I have some deep-rooted values that are not so easy to abandon.”

“You’re in England now,” he reminded her, “and you are a duchess. You can’t expect us to adapt to your ways and all share the same room.”

“I don’t expect that.”

“Then what do you expect? You must realize that we, too, have deep-rooted traditions that are not so easy to abandon.”

Feeling defeated, she dropped her forehead into her hand. “I don’t expect you to change everything for me.” She looked him in the eye again. “There are only a few things that I feel are important.”

“Sharing a bed is one of them.”

“Yes. And…” She hesitated, hating the fact that she had to request this. “And I need to know that you care about my welfare.”

“Of course I care about your welfare. You’re my duchess, the mother of my future children. Do you not feel taken care of here? You are mistress of this house. You have over fifty servants at your disposal.”

“I’m not talking about servants. I’m talking about
you
. I need to know that you care.”

“I do care,” he said matter-of-factly. Dutifully.

Where was the passionate man she’d come to know on their honeymoon? Sophia wondered. Who was this person and why had he changed? Was he afraid of something? Did he not know how much she loved him?

“I have enough money of my own. I could have married whomever I wished—rich or poor—and I chose
you
, James. I came here to live in your house because I love you, and I want to be with you.”

He considered her words, then turned his back on her. “It was my understanding you came to London in search of a title.”

She felt the air flee her lungs. He might as well have hauled back and punched her in the stomach. Where was all this coming from? “Don’t you remember what I said to you that day when we went walking together? That I believed marriage must be based on love?”

“You said what you had to say to—”

“You thought I was lying?”

“No, not lying…” He paced around the room. “Sophia, we are both rare individuals with duties and many different qualities to recommend us besides our… lovability, for lack of a better word. I am a duke, and you are an heiress.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” A sick feeling began to spread through her.

“I’m trying to tell you that marriages between people like you and me are not like marriages between more common people. In my family, there are too many other factors to complicate matters and—”

“What do you mean, in your family? Why? Because by mere accident of birth you were born into a title? That doesn’t make you any different from me or the servants or the people who work their fingers to the bone on your land. You are still a man, and I am a woman, and it is in our nature to
want
to love and be loved in return.” She took a step forward.

His brow furrowed with anger, as if she had overstepped some invisible boundary. She halted where she was.

“Why did you come here?” he asked. “What do you want, exactly?”

Cold-hearted veracity blazed in his eyes. It was the same angry bitterness she had seen in the portrait of his ancestor.

Alarmed, she gazed at James in the lamplight. No, she could not have made such a ghastly mistake, and been so wrong about what she had seen in his eyes in all the minutes and days leading up to this one. He was her prince…

“What I want is for you to love me.” She hoped she would not live to regret saying it.

For a long moment he stared at her, his chest heaving with deep, furious breaths, then he shook his head. “You do not know what you’re asking.”

“I do. I want you in my bed.”

“Your bed.” He contemplated that, then crossed the room toward her. She took an instinctive step back.

“You want me to make love to you, like I made love to you in Rome?” His voice became a dark, menacing seduction. “Is that it?”

“Yes,” she replied breathlessly.

“Is that all? Because I have no reservations about making love to you for the sake of
enjoyment
, Sophia.”

For the life of her, she did not recognize the man before her. He was a complete stranger. “I don’t understand. Why are you acting like this?”

“I’m not acting like anything. You came here for sex, and I’m willing.”

“I didn’t come just for sex.”

“Well, I can’t make any promises beyond that, because I never intended to love you.”

Shock and disbelief forced the air out of her lungs. She felt as if he had slapped her. “I beg your pardon?”

He said nothing more.

Her voice broke as she stumbled over words. “Are you telling me you only married me for my money?”

“It wasn’t quite as mercenary as that. I wanted you when I proposed, Sophia, and I want you now.”

With a choking cry, she moved away from him. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

He followed her with his eyes. “You pushed.”

“I didn’t push. I just wanted to be with you.” Her shock erupted into anger.

“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying each other, as long as it doesn’t give you unrealistic expectations.”

“You tricked me. I thought you loved me.”

“I never said I did. Besides, how could I love you? I barely knew you. And what did you expect, coming to London and offering a colossal marriage settlement? You must have known you’d be snatched up for your money.”

“But not by
you!
The way you spoke to me… the way you looked at me…”

“I was courting you for your dowry, just like all the rest.”

She could not restrain the fury that was cutting her from the inside out. Her gaze clouded with tears; she had to fight for a breath.

To her surprise, James moved closer, pulled her into his arms, and held her. He raised her chin with a finger and kissed the tears on her cheeks, then laid his soft lips upon hers. She drank in the comfort he was offering, for it was all she had.
He
was all she had, and this seemed to be all he could give.

Then something stopped her. She turned her face away. “No.”

“We can still enjoy each other, Sophia, as long as you don’t expect too much from me.”

Her anger swung around again. All she could do was pull away and wipe his kiss from her mouth.

“I don’t want to
enjoy
you. Not like this. I would rather hate you.”

“You don’t know me well enough to hate me. You married a fantasy. Now it’s time to settle down to real life.”

“You think love is a fantasy?”

“Most definitely.” He spoke with unwavering certainty.

“But I’ve known real love,” she told him. “The love of my family. A family I am missing very much.”

“Maybe you should have considered that before you steamed across the ocean in search of a husband.”

“I gave everything up for you, because I loved you.”

He stiffened at her candor, and his brows drew together in stupefaction—as if her belief in loving him was as ridiculous as a belief in leprechauns.

“Maybe you will rethink how you feel about me.”

Sophia’s body went completely numb at the realization that in falling in love with this man, she had made the worst mistake of her life. There was nothing more to say. She turned from him and walked out.

James stood in the center of his bedchamber, staring at the door for minutes that seemed more like hours, then he collapsed into his chair by the fire and downed his brandy.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. God, his heart was aching! He should have known marrying Sophia would be a mistake, and giving in to his desires on their honeymoon had been an even bigger mistake. He should have known he would not be capable of meeting her needs for intimacy and love. He could not love. There had been no seeds for it sown into his heart as a child, nor had he ever come to understand it through experience as a man.

All he knew was cruelty, and he had been cruel tonight. Just as he had always suspected he would be someday. The irony of it was that he had been cruel in some deranged effort to be kind. His life made no sense.

Kind was what he wanted to be. He had thought that by pushing Sophia away, by forcing her to give up the idea of a true bond between them, he would be protecting her. Protecting them all. If only it was not so complicated. If only she did not want so much from him.

He poured another glass of brandy and took a long sip, then settled back in his chair, praying that its numbing effect would come quickly, for he could not bear to think of Sophia in her room. Alone, and no doubt crying. Another fierce ache squeezed inside his chest. James shut his eyes in an attempt to overcome it.

He could not give in to the temptation to go to his wife and hold her and plead for her forgiveness.

For if he gave in to such feelings, hell would surely follow.

Chapter 16

Sophia climbed into her cold, mammoth bed, wishing she had dreamed or merely imagined all the shocking, hurtful things James had said to her. She had left her beloved family, given up her home and country for him. Hadn’t he believed the sincerity of her feelings on their honeymoon? Surely he must have felt it in his bones every time she cried out his name or told him that she loved him. Did he not want to be loved? Was that it? How could anyone not want that? It was the only thing in life that mattered.

Why had he changed so drastically upon their arrival here? Was it this house? Was it a need to be what everyone expected him to be? A duke, not a man?

The idea of such a thing made her squirm in her bed with fist-clenching fury. This world of titles and crests and coronets had such power, it crushed and smothered the passions of the people who were born into it.

Or those who married into it.

Her spine prickled. Would she become like them someday? With a heart made of stone? Would her spirit and ideals and optimism be beaten down and sucked out of her? Would she feel dead inside and disillusioned and finally become too weak to cling to the person she once was?

Feeling as if she had been cast adrift in a stormy sea, Sophia clambered out of bed and went to her desk, where her candles still burned. She pulled out a single sheet of stationery, picked up her pen, and dipped it in ink. She wanted to write to her mother and tell her how miserable she was. She wanted to pour out all her woes. She wanted her father to make it all better like he always did. He had even said he would come and fetch her if she wanted him to.

Sophia held the pen over the paper. Her hand trembled; she shut her eyes.

She was a grown woman now, a married woman. She couldn’t go sobbing home to her parents at every disappointment, no matter how enormous that disappointment was or how desperate she felt.

She searched inside herself for the strength she knew she still possessed, and reminded herself that she had only been here a few days. Perhaps all she needed was more time to adjust. James had admitted that he wanted her. Maybe that was the way it was with men. Maybe they simply required more time to develop their deeper feelings.

But he had not just said that he didn’t love her. He’d said he didn’t
intend
to love her. Ever.

Sophia dropped her pen and covered her face with her hands. The memory of his cruelty pierced her heart again and again. If only there was someone she could talk to.

Sophia wiped the tears from her face. Florence! Who better to understand what this was all about? Florence, too, had left her home and country to marry an English aristocrat—a man who was kind, but very reserved.

Sophia penned a short note to Florence:
Please come. I must speak with you
. She signed it simply,
A fellow countrywoman
. She sealed the note and set it on her desk to send first thing in the morning, then climbed back into bed.

Despite her letter to Florence and the tiny grain of hope it rendered, her insides continued to pitch and roll, and she did not know how to make the sick feeling go away. The only thing she knew was that she would not allow herself to lose her dignity and self-respect. It was the only thing she had left. No matter what Florence had to say, if Sophia’s husband did not truly love her, she would not go begging for his attentions again. He would be the one to come to her.

For an entire fortnight, Sophia did not see or hear from James. He had gone to London allegedly for Parliamentary business, without even informing Sophia that he was leaving. His drawn-out absence without a single letter to his wife only served to stoke the flames of her anger and discontent.

Day after difficult day, she ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with her mother-in-law, who continued to criticize Sophia’s manners and her lack of knowledge about her duties. The dowager offered no help or encouragement, and tormented Sophia with a “you-are-so-hopeless” tone whenever Sophia was forced, out of sheer desperation, to ask for guidance.

It was all she could do to keep up with her daily duties: the ceremony of her attendance at the morning prayers in the chapel, consulting with Cook about meals, learning the way things were done and keeping up with all the little traditions Marion had always adhered to. All this, between trying to learn proper forms of address and study
Burke’s Peerage
, which Marion had insisted was a top priority.

Sophia did not even have her more congenial sister-in-law, Lily, to turn to, for Marion had sent her away to visit an elderly aunt in Exeter. Sophia was beginning to think that the dowager had sent her daughter away for the express purpose of removing the one person who would offer some cheer to Sophia and make her life even slightly, momentarily enjoyable.

Sophia was hanging on to her grand ideals by her fingernails, and she knew it. She had wanted to be a devoted wife and a great duchess and make a difference in people’s lives. She’d wanted to help those in need.

Now, all she wanted to do was survive.

Sophia opened the door of the coach just as Florence Kent, the Countess of Lansdowne, stepped off the train into a harsh downpour of rain. A footman greeted her and escorted her to the carriage, where she hugged Sophia. “I left home in a beastly state of panic. What is it, my dear? Your note sounded urgent.”

The footman attended to her bags and assisted them both into the shelter of the coach, then leaped up onto the page-board as the vehicle lurched forward.

“It felt urgent at the time,” Sophia replied, recalling how desperate she had felt the night James had rejected her. She had needed to talk to someone, someone who would understand. Someone who would be able to shed light on the situation. Florence was an American, and she’d been through all this a few years ago, marrying an earl. Surely she would have some words of wisdom for Sophia.

“Thank you for coming, Florence. It does me good to see a familiar face, to hear the sound of your voice.”

“Is everything all right? Where is James?”

“He’s in London attending to some Parliamentary business. He left two weeks ago.” Sophia neglected to mention that he had not even informed her that he was leaving, nor had he contacted her since.

“Why didn’t you go with him?” Florence asked. “We could have met there instead of here.” She tried to peer through the rain-soaked window. “Heavens. I’ve never been this far north before.”

Sophia peered out, too, at the mist and moors in the distance, at the stony grayness of it all. “It’s not exactly how I pictured it either.”

Florence squeezed her hand. “You sound disappointed.”

Oh, she hoped she had done the right thing, bringing Florence here. “It’s just not what I expected, that’s all.”

“Is it the countryside that has not met your expectations? Or the house?”

Sophia shook her head. “It’s all of it.”

“All of it. Oh dear.” Florence pulled off her gloves. “You must tell me what has happened. Nothing could be as bad as all that.”

The coach rattled and bumped over the road; the narrow wheels washed through deep puddles. Sophia gave in to the motion and let everything spill out in one simple verdict. “I’ve discovered that James married me for my money.”

Florence rubbed a finger over Sophia’s cheek. “Oh, my dear, sweet Sophia.
That
is what’s bothering you? But you knew your dowry was a part of this. You knew how much your father was offering, and you came here to raise your family in society. Don’t tell me you thought that you were marrying for love.” Her face went pale. “You
did
think that?”

Sophia gazed at Florence with surprise. “Of course I thought it. Couldn’t you tell how I felt about James?”

Florence hesitated before she answered. “I knew you wanted him.”

“Of course I wanted him. I was in love with him. Madly in love. I thought he loved me, too. He made me believe he did. The way he looked at me and spoke to me… there was such passion between us. Or so I thought.”

Florence grimaced. “Passion is easy for men. You’re a beautiful woman, Sophia, and it would be impossible for a man
not
to feel desire when he looks at you. The important thing is that James did marry you. He could have had any woman he wanted, and he chose you. He made you a duchess. You don’t realize how lucky you are.”

The coach swayed beneath them. “I don’t care anything about being a duchess.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Sophia gazed resolutely into Florence’s blue eyes. There was a question that had niggled at Sophia since the moment Florence tried to discourage them from hoping for a proposal from James. Then, when Sophia began to fall in love with him, she had shut her eyes to anything that might have been a cause to dismiss him.

For some reason, that question was niggling at her again. “Did you tell me everything about how you first met James?”

Florence’s shoulders lifted as she took in a deep breath. “Why must you ask me that?”

The reply sent a stabbing dread through Sophia. “You have kept something from me. Please, tell me what it is.”

A tension closed around them. “It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me, Florence. You must tell me.”

“I don’t see what—”

“Please.”

She sighed in defeat. “All right. Something happened between us, but as I said, nothing came of it. I met James at a ball, my first week in London, when I was still in awe of everything. He walked into the room looking so beautiful and elegant, and I wanted him, then and there, more than I ever wanted any man in my life.”

Sophia felt a sudden chill move over her.

Florence continued. “I was presented to him and we danced, and we met a few more times at assemblies and such, until one night, I was determined to make him mine, and I went off with him, alone. We found a private library that was closed off to everyone, and we remained there for… a while.”

Sophia’s heart was ramming against her chest as she listened: She felt like she was going to be ill there in the coach.

“I could have been ruined,” Florence said.

“
Were
you?”

The countess shook her head. “No, but I came very close. Thank goodness I came to my senses and put a stop to things, not a moment too soon I must say. Miraculously we were not caught, but he never spoke another word to me. I even wrote letters to him, hoping he would request my hand, but he never replied. He was as silent as a grave, and as cold. A heart made of stone, I soon came to see. I hated him after that. I still hate him now.” She stared out the window for a long time, then spoke softly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that. He’s your husband.”