The Marriage Bed (6 page)

"Well, yes," he agreed. "We men do like things our way."

"Anthony is in the House, and he is very powerful. He would fight for me."

"Even the Duke of
Tremore
is not powerful enough to change marital law. No doubt he would go through hell and back if you asked him to do so, but in the end he would still be forced to turn you over to me. You are my wife."

She took several steps back. "I could run away. Go to the Continent."

"Hide?" That surprised him. It also concerned him. It was a possibility that had a remote chance of working.
Tremore
could keep her in funds wherever she decided to go, and he would have to run all over the world chasing her down. If she could succeed at that tactic long enough, she could put herself past the ability to have children, and he would never have a legitimate heir to supplant Bertram.

He knew he could not afford to give her an inkling of his worry at this moment. As impulsive and strong-minded as his wife could be, if he showed any sign of concern over her threat, she'd be off to
France
within an hour. "I would always find you," he said with far more assurance than he felt, "and if I may say so, hiding is a course of action very unlike you. I never thought you could be a coward, Viola."

That hit a nerve, and she scowled at him. "Having the
English Channel
between us is a notion I find quite appealing."

"It would be a lonely life for you. To evade me, you would have to conceal yourself in some remote place, change your name,
hide
your identity. You would have no company. Knowing your love of society, it would kill you by inches to be so isolated, to be without your friends.
And never to see Anthony and Daphne again?
You could not bear it."

Her shoulders slumped a bit at his words, and when she spoke again, he knew she would not be running off to
Europe
. "I am surrounded by impossibilities," she whispered, and all of a sudden, she looked so forlorn and lost that if he had not been unjustly judged as a brute and a cad and the entire reason for her present state of misery, he might have felt sorry for her.

"You are making this situation far more difficult that it needs to be," he said.

"Really?" she countered, anger flaring again.

"So you expect me to make it easy? I should just lie back passively and do my duty by my lord and master as other wives do?"

He gave a shout of laughter.
"You?
I might just as well wish for lightning to strike me dead. The odds are better." He could tell from her outraged expression that she did not share his amusement about that, and he stifled it. "First, since you were never passive when making love, I can't imagine why you would start now. Second, I would like to think you would not only appreciate the necessity of creating an heir, but also remember the pleasure of it."

His words made her blush. Eight years had not destroyed all her memories of their marriage bed, it seemed.
John
chose to see that as a good sign. "This situation will be as easy or as difficult for you as you choose to make it."

"And if I choose to make it difficult?" she countered. She stiffened and looked at him. Behind the soft, mossy, green-brown of her eyes, he saw something else, the unmistakable glint of
Tremore
steel. It was a look he knew well.
"If I refuse to do my wifely duty?
What are you going to do,
Hammond
? Drag me to bed? Throw me down and force me?"

Of all the women in the world, he had married the most stubborn one of all. "I have never forced a woman in my life," he answered, "and you should know that better than anyone. Many a time, I

could
have beaten down the door you locked between us."

"Why didn't you?"

"Damned if I know. Perhaps it was that habit you got into of bursting into tears when I touched you."

"Finding out my husband lied to me and deceived
me
was a good enough reason to weep, I think!"

"Or," he went on as if she had not spoken, "perhaps it was because you started throwing accusations in my face when I tried to kiss you.
Or because your fists started hammering me when I tried to take you in my arms.
Forgive me, but being made to feel like a cur for touching my own wife took all the pleasure out of it for me."

"You never loved me. How do you think it made me feel when I found that out?"

Christ, have mercy
. Were they going to talk about feelings again? He'd lose that battle for certain. He always did. He folded his arms and said nothing.

"How do you think I felt when I learned you'd been keeping a mistress before our marriage? The whole time you were courting me, whenever you kissed me or touched me or told me you loved me…" Her voice trailed off, choked by her rage. Her hands balled into fists. "Right up until our wedding day, you were bedding Elsie Gallant. Even after we were married you—"

"
Not
after we were married, Viola.
Not after!"

He'd already explained that whole mess about the necklace and paying off Elsie's contract.
More than once.
He wasn't going to do it again. He gritted his teeth.

"Five mistresses since then, Hammond, and God
knows
how many other women that I know nothing about."

He would not justify his affairs after being turned out of her bed. A man never had to justify something like that. "Been paying attention, have you?"

"It is hard not to do so when the society papers and the gossipmongers tell me all about them in lurid detail. I had to sit across from Lady Darwin and take tea and pretend to be polite, knowing all the while you were between her sheets. When Lady Pomeroy was your lover, I had to endure her smirking smiles of triumph and her veiled innuendoes of your lovemaking prowess at card parties."

"Viola—"

"I had to listen to people at the
theater
rave about what a lovely creature Jane Morrow was," she interrupted, her voice cold, her hands balling into fists at her sides, "and how her lack of acting talent didn't matter because she was such a stunning beauty and charming hostess. I heard the compliments at musical recitals about what a lovely singer Maria Allen is, and the bawdy asides of how prettily she sang in your bed until her husband shot you for it! Good for him, I say! And Emma Rawlins is the woman of this season, the one whose beauty and talents and lovemaking prowess I have had to hear about."

"I am not with Emma Rawlins, and have not been with her for three months. Your recount of the gossip is a bit behind the times."

"You care nothing for the humiliation I have endured at your hands."

"I took my pleasure where I could find it after
you
turned me away," he shot back, hating the way she made him into a villain for fulfilling masculine needs that were natural and just when she had been unwilling to do so. "For God's sake, I'm a man, Viola! What did you expect me to do? Come to your bedside and beg? Become a monk for eight years? Wear a hair shirt and flog myself daily because I did what I had to do?"

"What you had to do?" she repeated with disdain. "Marry me for my money, you mean."

"Yes!" he shouted, pushed beyond endurance. "Yes, I married a woman with a dowry and income to save my estates from ruin. I made what I thought was a sensible marriage to a girl I both liked and desired. When that girl turned me out of her bed, trying to manipulate me with tears and guilt, I went elsewhere. In my position, any other man would have done the same."

"Foolish of me, but I once thought you were better than any other man."

"I know you did." He looked at the woman whose face was filled with loathing, and the lovely, vulnerable girl in the doorway flashed through his mind again, a girl with all the lights of the sun in her hair and all the adoration in the world in her eyes. All for him and the pedestal she had put him on.
Hating him now because he had fallen off, because he had stopped being a hero and had become a flawed and ordinary man.
His flash of anger dissipated as quickly as it had come. "What do you want me to say, Viola?"

"I don't want you to say anything. I just want you to go away. Bertram has two sons. Let him inherit after you."

"I cannot. I will not."

"Then we are back where we started."

Yes, they were, and he was tired of it—tired of the round and round discussions and tit-for-tat accusations, stony silences and separate beds that kept bringing them back to the same problem. No more.

He hardened his resolve. "We started our life together nine years ago, and circumstances now force us to resume that life. The only point open for discussion is which house we shall do it in.
Enderby
is six miles out of London, which is less convenient, but my house in town is equipped as if for a bachelor and is therefore somewhat
spartan
, so—"

"I don't even know you anymore." She shook her head, staring at him in horror. "In fact, I never really knew you at all. I cannot live with you as your wife again after all that has happened between us."

"Nothing has been happening between us. I believe that is the material point."

"And you expect me to go along with this?"

He met her appalled and angry gaze. "I do not just expect it, Viola. I demand it. Tomorrow is Sunday, so have your trunks packed and ready on Monday. I will be here to fetch you at
two o'clock
."

He turned and walked toward the door. He wasn't halfway across the room before she spoke. 'Don't you see that this will never work?" she called after him, bringing him to a halt. "Don't you remember what it was like? Living as husband and wife was hell for both of us."

"Was it?"
John
turned to look at her, his mind calling forth recollections of the times over the years when they had lived together. But it was not the later years, when they spent a few months together during the season for the sake of appearances that he remembered, for during those times, they had never spoken and almost never saw each other.

No, what came to his mind now when he looked at his wife were the early days. Back then they had scrapped and fought, like any newly wedded
pair,
probably more than most, in fact, for they both had strong wills and strong opinions. But he didn't remember their life becoming hellish until she turned him out of bed. He slid his gaze down the length of his wife's figure, and for the life of him, the only memories he could bring to mind right now were the early ones.
The sweet ones.

Her body, so much smaller than his, was still exquisitely shaped, a figure of delicate bones and soft, full curves. That body might be hidden beneath layers of muslin and silk at this moment, but he still remembered what she looked like without all those clothes. It might have been over eight years since he had seen her nude, but there were some things a man just did not forget.

He remembered the perfect shape of her breasts and the flare of her hips.
The deep indent of her navel and the dual dints at the base of her spine.
The sound of her laughter, the sight of her smile, the cries of her pleasure.
He remembered the places he used to kiss that made her melt like butter—her neck, the backs of her knees, the fiddle-shaped birthmark at the top of her thigh. With those memories, he felt his body begin to burn.

"It wasn't hell all the time," he murmured. "As I recall, there were some heavenly moments here and there."

Before she could say a word of reply, he came to his senses and spoke again.
"Monday, Viola.
Two o'clock
. You have that long to make up your mind about where we're going to live for the remainder of the season." He opened the drawing room door.
"
Enderby
or
Bloomsbury Square
."

"Neither," she managed to shout just before he stepped through the door and closed it behind him.