Her Sudden Groom (44 page)

By the time morning came, Caroline vowed never to eat again. Things that are delicious going down are
not
delicious coming back up. Yuck. She wiped her mouth once more and stood up slowly. Ever since breakfast yesterday she’d felt nauseated, dizzy even. Cook made her a foul tonic that tasted worse than it smelled and didn’t produce any results, unless one counted making her sicker a result, albeit not a favorable one.

She grabbed a fresh gown and clutched it to her chest, wincing as she did. Her breasts even seemed different today. Tender, almost painful. She looked in the mirror. They didn’t look different.

She’d taken to wearing gowns that didn’t require help getting them on and off. It was just easier to put something on that had buttons on the side or in the front than it was to ring for help.

Finishing her
toilette,
she pinched her extremely pale cheeks and headed down for breakfast. Not that she was hungry. The mere mention of food made her queasy. Just like yesterday. No the real reason she was going downstairs was she wanted to see Alex. She needed to speak to him. Last night when he’d left, he’d been upset with her. He hadn’t given her the chance to explain that she wasn’t feeling well before his face hardened and he left. She’d talk to him today. He wasn’t one who normally made rash decisions or acted instinctively; likely he’d had a rough day yesterday and wasn’t quite himself. Either way, she needed to clear the air with him.

Besides, she had a feeling he’d want to talk to her, too. Yesterday his brothers had walked in on her in the conservatory, and when they both just stared at her dumbfounded, she’d jokingly asked them if they wished to undress and help her with the rosebushes. Neither of them so much as cracked a smile, and she wasn’t sure if Alex would see the humor in it or not.

“
Feeling better this morning, dear?” Regina asked as she came down the stairs.

“
Much,” Caroline lied. Her stomach was still uneasy and she could feel a fit of the vapors coming on. Earlier, when she had her head in a chamber pot for the tenth time in as many hours, she ran through the possibilities of what could be causing her illness, and the only one that made sense was she was with child. The thought of having Alex’s child made her so excited she almost forgot about her nausea. Almost. The only trouble was she couldn’t tell anyone. Not until she told Alex anyway. Which was soon to happen, because she spotted him coming down the stairs from the corner of her eye.

“
Good,” Regina said with a slight smile. “Won’t you come join Edwina and me for breakfast?”

“
I’ve something to do just now. I’ll join you in a bit.” She stood in the hall and waited for her mother-in-law to go into the breakfast room. “Alex,” she called, feigning the normalcy she didn’t feel. She hated feeling ill.

“
Caroline,” he said tightly, taking his hat and riding crop from the butler.

She frowned. Why was she back to Caroline? “Are you angry with me?”

“
No.” He put his hat on his head.

She blinked at him. “Can we speak privately?” she asked, looking pointedly at Johnson.

Alex shrugged. “Do we have something private to discuss?”

“
Yes,” she said, clenching her teeth. This was not a conversation she wanted to have in front of Johnson, who, for as old as he was, loved to gossip.

Alex pulled a card out of his breast pocket. “This is the direction of my secretary. He’ll be glad to make you an appointment.”

Her face burned with anger. “I am your wife! I will not be made to schedule an appointment to speak to you in your study for fifteen minutes while you look condescendingly down your nose at me and I am made to fidget in one of those terribly uncomfortable chairs.”

He smiled thinly. “I’m sorry, but I have a meeting just now. I must be off.”

“
It can wait. Nobody takes precedence over your wife and child.”

“
Child?” he echoed hollowly, glancing at her midsection. “Impossible.”

“
Possible.”

He shook his head. “I’ll acknowledge it’s
possible
, but it is not likely.”

“
And why is that?” she countered, hands on her hips.

“
Johnson, leave.” Alex stared at her until Johnson was out of sight. “That was three weeks ago. You might be merely late.”

“
No, it was five weeks ago,” she snapped. “And I am three weeks late.”

He scoffed. “Now,
that’s
not possible.”

“
Yes, it is.” She grabbed her skirt and clutched the fabric as tightly as she could. For years she’d been undermined, pushed aside, and trampled on by most of her family members. She’d never imagined Alex would ever treat her thus.

“
No, it’s not.” He crossed his arms. “I have a little confession for you about that night. While you may have enjoyed everything I had to offer, I didn’t—”

“
Finish,” she finished for him. “Yes, Alex, I realized that that night in the library. And though I don’t know why you didn’t finish on our wedding night—a little problem, perhaps—I do know that a man is not required to ejaculate for a woman to conceive.”

His mouth fell open, presumably due to her word selection. “I concede your point,” he said flatly. “Though how
you
’d know such a thing is rather hard to comprehend.”

She smiled wryly. “And here you thought I needed to read a bunch of books and be questioned before joining the
Society of Biological Matters
.” His face didn’t soften a bit and she sighed. “All right, a year ago I overheard a footman and a maid arguing about something relating to his lack of using sheaths, whatever those are, and her current condition which would have been avoided if he’d used a sheath instead of...” She trailed off. She didn’t relish the idea of using the exact term the maid used. He was a man. He knew. She cleared her throat and fanned herself, not sure if she was hot because of her condition or embarrassment. Not to mention the way Alex was staring at her. “Anyway,” she continued, forcing a smile. “Thinking as a scientist, I filled in the details.”

“
Why are you even approaching me about this?” Alex asked frankly, his mouth forming a line so tight the edges grew white.

“
Because I wanted you to know. You’re the father. I thought you should know before anyone else.”

“
Well, thank you,” he said, breaking eye contact. “Let’s hope it’s a boy since you seem to think I suffer a condition that might prevent me from siring another.”

Caroline flushed with shame. “I’m sorry, Alex. I meant nothing by it. I was hurt by the way you’d been speaking to me and said the first cruel thing I could think of.”

He shrugged. “It matters naught anyway. You have no interest in letting me share your bed as it is. If this baby is a boy, it will supply you a viable reason to refuse me.”

“
I’d never dream of refusing you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She’d not meant to let on to how much she enjoyed being intimate with him; it just slipped out.

He snorted. “Not only have you dreamt it, you’ve done it.”

“
Only once. And it was because I felt nauseated.”

“
Try again, Caroline,” he said, his voice held a bitter edge. “We both know that’s not the truth. You denied me last night because you’re trying to punish me. That’s right, Caroline. I know everything. You’re angry with me because I was foolish enough to plan our courtship like an experiment, and you’ve decided to punish me by tempting and teasing me until I’m mad with want for you, then suddenly you’re not interested.”

“
You’re wrong,” she said sharply, clenching her fists again. “I might have been excessively nice to you as a way to capture your attention, but I had no intention of using intimacy as a weapon.”

“
Oh, really? I find it rather curious that it wasn’t until after you found that damn piece of paper that you suddenly became interested in fulfilling my needs. Until then, you seemed fully content to have all the attention for yourself.”

Nothing he could have said could have hurt her more than those words. “Is it like that, then?” she asked bitterly. “Do you keep an observation notebook nearby that you use to record all the times we’ve been intimate and exactly who got what pleasure?”

“
No.” His voice was hard and his face red with anger.

“
Are you sure? It wouldn’t surprise me. You seem to think everything is a scientific study of some sort.” She glared at him, daring him to object.

“
I don’t have time for this,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve someone to meet.”

“
My replacement?” she asked sharply, baiting him. She wasn’t satisfied their argument had solved anything. She wasn’t near satisfied.

“
What the devil is that to mean?”

She lifted her chin. “Your mistress, of course.”

He sneered. “I’m not going out to look for a mistress, thank you. I’m not so desperately in need of intimacy that I’d pay someone to use their body.”

“
You have before,” she retorted.

His face turned redder than she’d ever seen it, his jaw clenched, and the muscle in his cheek ticked. “You’re right, I have. And it disgusted me as much then as it does now.”

“
I find that hard to believe. You seem to like to keep score where we’re concerned. I’d think you’d prefer to receive your favors in such a manner where both parties give and receive equally.” She was pushing a matter that was insignificant to the whole, but she just couldn’t stop herself.

He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Caroline. I hate brothels. The whole premise behind them disgusts me. Those women are daughters, sisters, friends, mothers, people, and they get treated like little more than animals by the men who come in there looking for a quick, carefree release. Kept mistresses are no better. They may live in a nice home, have a staff, entertain fewer partners, and are undeniably classier and easier to present in public, but the facts are still the same. They are still taking a man’s money in exchange to let him freely use their bodies while they pretend to enjoy it.”

He exhaled sharply and raked his hand through his hair. “When I was two-and-twenty, I met a widow who I formed an attachment to, if you will. It wasn’t your normal situation, or so I didn’t think.” He swallowed and glanced away. “There was no formal contract. I wasn’t offering her money or paying any of her accounts for her. The only exchange was companionship. The idea of companionship for companionship seemed ideal to me. And it was, for a time. Then one day she asked what I brought for her. She asked because I’d given her a small brooch the week before when we’d gone to the opera. As it turned out, she expected me to bring her things every time I came to visit her. Foolish boy that I was, it took me three months to find myself standing over a string of pearls before realizing I was paying her to pretend to enjoy something she’d not engage in otherwise.”

Caroline blinked back tears. Alex was a gentleman through and through. Even in an area of a man’s life where most took advantage and didn’t act gentlemanly, Alex did. “You don’t know that,” she countered softly. “She might have enjoyed your attentions with or without the gifts.”

He shook his head and looked at her coldly. “No. I was paying her. Just in an indirect way. She wouldn’t have shared her bed with me otherwise.”

“
You don’t know that,” she protested again.

He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed, bitterness still filling his voice and marring his features. “Maybe she thought I was a good lover. But then again, maybe not. Nobody ever knows the truth when they’re paying someone.” He twisted his lips into a sneer. “What’s ironic, I don’t know if you ever enjoyed it, either.”

“
Alex, I did. I’ve enjoyed everything we’ve done together,” she said, moving to be closer to him.