“I’m not so strange. I’m your husband.” He slid her nightdress down over her shoulder. “And I daresay your lips might be telling me one tale, but your body tells me another. You aren’t as cold as you would pretend, my girl.”
“You’re five months too late recalling we’re wed, my lord.” How many nights had she lain alone, thinking of his kiss, his hands on her, his body joining hers? Far too many to give in with such ease, her conscience warned her. She did not wish to become a victim to him yet again. “Or do you expect me to believe you’ve suffered a blow to the head and have been wandering about London an amnesiac left with no choice save pilfering the drawers of every woman you can find?”
He nipped the curve of her shoulder with his teeth, sending a shiver of awareness through her. “On that account, I can assure you that you’re hopelessly wrong, my dear. I’ve never once purloined the drawers of any lady of my acquaintance.”
How like him not to deny his sins but to attempt distraction and seduction instead. “That is probably owed to them not wearing any,” she said with grim boldness, not caring if she shocked him. Let him be shocked. Let him be angry. Let him be anything but the cad she’d married, all beautiful of face and silver of tongue.
He cast her an amused glance as he licked her skin. “Have you a peculiar habit of peering beneath other ladies’ skirts? I daresay if you have, I might be tempted to watch.”
The rotten man. She should’ve known she couldn’t shock someone of his reputation, a man who thought he could leave his wife to collect dust in the countryside while he gadded about London, only to return months later with fast hands and a wicked mouth. “Of course I haven’t, you scoundrel.” She shrugged away from him. “If there is anyone in this chamber with a fondness for being beneath other ladies’ skirts, it is you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll own my failings.” He stilled, capturing her gaze with his. Even after all he’d done, the impact took her breath. “I’ve hurt you.”
Pembroke said it as though he were just processing the realization, almost as if the fact that she possessed feelings was a revelation. Perhaps he had never thought of her as a flesh-and-blood woman with expectations and emotions. Certainly, it would have been far more convenient for him that way.
Of course he had hurt her. He’d hurt her far more than she cared to admit and far more than shewouldadmit to him. “You disappointed me and misused me.”
“I’m sorry, darling.” He bent his head and kissed her shoulder again.
She wished that apology hadn’t slid so effortlessly off his tongue, for it only underscored his disingenuousness. But she wasn’t the girl he’d married any longer, now was she? She had come a long way from the quiet, shy debutante who’d been more terrified of London’s Upper Ten Thousand than she’d been of New York’s frigid Four Hundred.
Victoria stopped him again. “No. You mustn’t.”
“Ah, but I must.” Her husband’s mouth was on her neck, kissing a trail over her bare skin.
She steeled herself against him. His brand of persuasion was exceedingly intoxicating, but the price would prove dear. It always had with him. “When last I saw you, your tone was quite different,” she reminded.
“Circumstances change.” Somehow, the bedclothes had pooled around her waist once more. He peeled the fabric of her nightdress back and kissed his way down the swell of one breast.
“How could they have changed so swiftly?” She pushed him away but he caught her hands, turning them over to kiss. “You made it abundantly clear you didn’t want a wife, and you most certainly didn’t want me.”
“I did no such thing,” he scoffed. His teeth scored the sensitive center line of her palm.
Victoria recalled all too well the awful argument they’d had before he left for London. His words still stung, even with the intervening time that had passed.I married you because I had no other option besides penury. My father demanded it. I bloody well never wanted a wife. I’ve done my duty, and now I’m going to carry on living my life as I see fit.
The Duke of Cranley held Pembroke’s purse strings, she had discovered after their nuptials took place. The duke wanted his heir to settle down, and he’d done what he needed to make certain the unruly Pembroke would comply. He’d cut him off. Having satisfied the old man’s stipulation, Pembroke had once again had no need for an unwanted wife. He’d left her behind in the country and pretended as if she didn’t exist.
She’d somehow been foolish enough to believe he held her in regard, but he had merely been good at manipulation and getting what he wanted. She had begged him to stay, and he’d looked through her as if she were a piece of furniture in his study. Expendable. The reminder was like stepping into a hip bath of ice water. She shoved him. “Go away, Pembroke.”
He rolled over onto his back, his big body stretched out alongside hers, and heaved a sigh. “I can’t go away. I live here.”
“You live in London,” she countered.
“I live wherever I choose.”
She supposed he did. But he’d chosen to live as far away from her as possible. Victoria straightened her nightdress and propped herself up on her elbow to study him. “Why have you decided to return to Carrington House? Truly?”
He skewered her with a ferocious frown. “Why pepper your husband with blasted questions when he’s just returned home? Should you not be overjoyed to see me?”
Victoria considered him, wishing he was not quite so debonair, not quite so compelling. Not quite so likeable in spite of his voluptuary ways. His teasing air and persuasive kisses were like wine. She didn’t dare over imbibe. “No. I daresay I ought not to be. If you think you can return here after mostly ignoring me for the entirety of our marriage and expect a warm welcome, you are positively delusional.”
“It’s only been a fortnight or so.”
Oh he was a maddening creature. “It’s been five months.”
“Dear me. Has it?” The look he directed her way was half sheepish.
And then, like a sudden burst of light in a dark room, it came upon her, the real reason for her husband’s return, for his presence in her chamber, his skilled kisses and roaming hands. Her lips tightened and a wave of fury hit her with so much force her body trembled with it. “You’ve spent the money you received in the marriage settlement, haven’t you?”
