The Plain Bride by Chasity Bowlin
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was late evening when Sinclair returned home. She had thought it would be another dinner alone. There had been several of late. He would vanish to his club in the afternoons. It seemed the more physical intimacy they shared, the less intimacy they had of any other sort. He was determined to keep her at arm’s length, and that told her all that she needed to know about his feelings for her.
“Ah,” he said, entering the drawing room. “I had hoped to have a word with you before dinner.”
“I am at your disposal,” she said, hating how very true those words were.
“I’ve made some arrangements, Thea, for your future,” he offered, crossing the room to the small cart laden with spirits. He poured himself a shockingly conservative measure of brandy.
“Oh? And what sort of arrangements are those?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve obtained a house in Bath. I thought—since London society is not something you have any great interest in—that Bath, with its somewhat quieter society and slower pace, might be more to your liking. And there are numerous accounts now set up in your name so that, should anything happen to me, you will not be dependent upon me for your income.”
“What might happen to you?”
“Well, one never knows, really. Regardless, these are things that I should have taken care of earlier, given our arrangement.”
That dratted arrangement.“I see. Well, I shall certainly apprise you the moment I have news. We wouldn’t want to drag this on any longer than necessary, would we?” She hadn’t been able to keep the bitterness from her tone.
His expression hardened. “I am not a villain for granting you what you’ve asked for. Nor am I the villain for being a responsible husband and seeing to your future, in the event that something should happen to me! Or would you rather I ignore my responsibilities and leave you to the tender mercies of your father? How likely is he to welcome you back?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she bit out the words between clenched teeth. “Thank you very much for reminding me of all the many reasons why I did not wish to be married to you to start with! How foolish I’ve been to think these last few idyllic weeks were anything but a very temporary interlude! You can’t be bothered to care about anyone else; that much is obvious.”
“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have done this!” he snapped.
“This wasn’t about caring for me! Don’t pretend you did this because you cared! You did this because you’re eager to be rid of me, and this will allow you to do so without guilt, because you will have discharged your duty!” she snapped back, her voice rising to a degree that she was fairly certain she had never reached before. He was utterly maddening.
The dinner gong sounded, halting whatever reply he’d intended to make. From the tightly clenched jaw to the anger blazing in his gaze, it was likely a blessed reprieve. Instead, he said, “I’m going in to enjoy my evening meal, after which I will go seek my own bed for the evening. Though, perhaps I ought to provide the stud service you require. The sooner I’ve managed to put a brat in your belly, the sooner we can stop shouting at one another.”
The words cut her to the quick, because they were likely the most honest exchange that had passed between them in some time. Any faint hope she might have held that things could be different with them simply fled in that moment. Yet, despite that stinging pain, her newly discovered sense of pride would not allow her to be cowed by his harsh words or his flaring temper. She’d weathered worse, after all. Getting to her feet, she followed him into the dining room and took her place at the end of the table directly opposite him.
His only response was to arch one brow and observe sardonically, “I see you are not in the mood to negotiate a truce.”
“I wasn’t aware we were at war,” she answered, as the footman filled her wine glass. She could see by the servant’s expression that they would all be eagerly dissecting the argument as the evening’s entertainment. Sinclair was so used to his life as a privileged member of the peerage, he was simply oblivious to the people who kept his house running like a well-oiled machine.
“Funny, that’s precisely what I thought we were doing when I walked into the house to find you tossing verbal volleys in my direction.”
Althea shook her head. “If you’d been making arrangements for my future security because you cared about me, you might have included me in those arrangements or, at the very least, discussed them with me first. Instead, you arbitrarily decided where I am to live even when I do not live with you! Once again, Sinclair, you are high-handed, arrogant, and self-serving. What you did was not for my benefit. It—no, I—was simply an object to be marked off your agenda!”
He glowered at her but had no argument to refute her assertion. Whether he had intended it to appear that way or not, it was an accurate assessment. Then one of the footmen smothered a laugh behind a fake cough. Sinclair looked up, caught the rapt expressions on all of them as they looked on, and he snapped. “Get out, the lot of you. Get out now, and if I hear so much as a peep or a whisper, I’ll sack the lot of you!”
“It isn’t their fault we’re behaving like children,” Althea protested.
“And you will not say another word until we can do so privately,” he hissed.
She laughed. “Now! Now you’re concerned with respectability! A month ago, you were so stumbling-down drunk in an inn yard you couldn’t tell the difference between a vicarage and a tavern!”
“A fact which you have benefited from greatly, have you not? You’ve certainly not complained about having someone else to scrub floors and do the washing!”
Mayville knew,the very moment the words left his mouth, that they were a terrible mistake. Everything he’d said, from the moment he’d entered the house that night, had been a terrible mistake. She was right. He should have discussed her future with her, especially as he didn’t really plan to be a part of it. Making assumptions about where she should live and how much she would require, those were decisions she was entitled to be privy to—not under the law, perhaps, but certainly under any sense of fairness.
As he watched, she pushed her chair back and rose. “I’m not very hungry, after all. I think I will retire for the night. Alone.”
Before he could even consider what he was doing, he was out of his own chair and closing the distance between them. He caught her wrist before she reached the door and spun her about till she faced him.
“I have no wish to continue this conversation,” she said.
“Then, do not,” he said softly. And instead of uttering another word, which would surely come out wrong, he kissed her.
Hard and angry, that kiss had an edge to it that reflected everything they’d said to one another and everything that was left unsaid. But she didn’t shy away from it. No, she kissed him back with the same ferocity. The animosity from only seconds earlier transformed in that instant to a raging passion.
By God, she drove him half mad. Challenging and often maddening, she could be, then sweet and tender or cold and indifferent. But she wasn’t indifferent in that moment. It lit a fire in his blood.
Unable to think, unable to do anything but act on the basest of instincts, he simply pressed her back against the door and began tugging her skirts up. Her assistance with that task was all the confirmation he needed that she was just as eager. With the fabric of her gown bunched at her waist, he dropped to his knees before her and pressed his face against her mound, licking and gently biting at her plump lips. When she let out a broken whimper, and one of her hands grabbed at his hair, pulling it roughly, only then did he give her what she wanted—what she surely craved with the same hunger he did.
Parting the folds of her sex, he lapped at the hardened bud until she was arching against him, calling his name. Heedless of anyone that might overhear, heedless of anything but the consuming need she felt, seeing her in such a state and knowing that he was responsible for it was the headiest of feelings. He wanted her to scream for him. He wanted her to be so wild with passion that nothing else mattered. And, so, he continued the onslaught, never giving quarter even when she begged. Even when she shattered, her release washing through her until her entire body was slack with it, he didn’t stop. He drove her up and over that precipice again and again while she sobbed brokenly.
When his own need became too demanding, he rose, slid his hands beneath her thighs and lifted her. It was she who fumbled with the buttons of his breeches, until his shaft sprang free from the fabric, then he was driving into her even as he pressed her back against the door. With every thrust, the door banged loudly in the frame, and her cries echoed softly in the large dining room.
He kissed her again, his tongue invading the soft recesses of her mouth, claiming it as surely as he claimed her body. And then she was trembling against him, taken once more by the undeniable pleasure. He followed seconds later, his release leaving him shuddering as he pressed his body fully against hers to hold them both upright.
Only the sound of their ragged breathing filled the room as they both slowly returned to the present and to what had just passed between them. It had been consensual, but it had bordered on the knife edge of violent, a reflection of their complicated and, at times, contentious relationship.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For this?” she asked, with a slightly bitter laugh. “This is the one thing we seem to get right. It’s everything else that we get wrong.”
“Not for this,” he said, pressing his lips against her forehead in a gesture that was gentler than anything else that had passed between them. “For everything else, yes. But not for this.”
She pushed against his chest, and he reluctantly stepped back from her, disentangling their bodies. He immediately regretted the loss of her warmth, the loss of that connection.
“I cannot do this with you,” she said.
“You wanted this bargain between us, Thea. You asked for a child, and I am doing what is required to give you one,” he replied flatly.
“I know that…but the cost might be too great. I didn’t know what it would do to me. I didn’t know that having this…intimacy with you would change me. But it has. I can’t give you my body again and again without giving you the pieces of myself you do not want. You don’t want my heart, Sinclair, nor do you want my soul, and now I have discovered that they are all far more connected than I had ever imagined.”
He couldn’t say anything. He certainly couldn’t find the words to say what needed to be said. It was so much more than just physical. She was more than a way to slake his lust. But the words were locked inside him, dammed by years of pretending that he felt nothing but ennui and disdain.
She smoothed her skirts and then turned to exit the dining room, leaving him staring after her, with his heart in his throat and a world of regret pressing down on him.
