“Where should we have such a dialogue, Your Grace?” she asked quietly into the silence that had fallen between them. “Because I wish very much to know where I stand.”
An odd, tight sensation began in his chest and settled low in his gut.
Guilt.
Surely not. He was trained to never empathize. His capacity for emotion was tainted by years of living a secret life, of never allowing anyone to breach his defenses.
He swallowed, unable to look away from her. Daisy. The woman he’d married. The woman Carlisle wanted to throw into prison. Jesus, as if she hadn’t already suffered enough. It was guilt, alright. He felt lower than a goddamn worm.
He was lying to her. Manipulating her. Using her.
She could be innocent. Or she could be guilty as sin.
“Come to my study in two hours’ time,” he bit out, tamping his conscience firmly back down to the furthest, unreachable depths of himself. Precisely where it belonged.
aisy would have swornshe faced a different man entirely as she entered the duke’s study.
He stood at her arrival, steeped in his customary arrogance once more. Not a wrinkle was to be found on his jacket, not a dark hair on his head out of place. He looked handsome and refreshed. For a moment, it was difficult to recall her earlier ire at being abandoned on their wedding night in favor of a bottle of whisky.
Difficult but not impossible.
“Daisy,” he greeted, his tone formal rather than warm. “Do sit, my dear.”
She didn’t know which version of the man she’d married to expect. He was at times forbidding, at times unbearably sensual, others remote and aloof. This morning, he had arrived the dissolute wastrel and metamorphosed into her champion before once again closing himself off to her. Who would he be now?
Arranging her skirts with care, she seated herself opposite his imposing desk. “Have you breakfasted?” she asked, instantly wishing she could call the words back as soon as they left her lips.
She’d had her breakfast alone, and she’d thought to send him a tray but had not at the last moment, deeming him unworthy of such an act of consideration. Guilt had been a gradually growing knot in her belly ever since, even if he didn’t deserve it. Such an odd thing, to have another person to fret over. To be living in a strange house with a strange man, with servants whose names she couldn’t all yet remember, and yet tobelong.
An odd expression flashed across his face, as though she’d startled him but also displeased him at the same time. “I took a tray in my chamber. Thank you for your concern.”
She swallowed, laced her fingers together in her lap, and tried not to appear as awkward as she felt. “It is my duty as your wife to look after you, Your Grace.”
His jaw went rigid. “No it is not. I shall look after myself just as I always have.”
He was angry with her, but she didn’t know why. Wouldn’t most men expect a wife to make certain they were well pleased and well fed? In her father’s household, keeping him content had been her chief concern. Over time, she’d found it helped to assuage his tempers. Little things, like making certain each meal contained only his favorites, served at the right temperature, the right time of day.
But this man was not her father. Nor, she hoped, was he anything like him. Naturally, that would remain to be seen. He had promised never to harm her, but she still knew so little of him. And what she did know left her with nothing but questions and consternation.
Then again, perhaps her revelation that she’d sought to entrap him was the source of his disquiet. It was a sin she owned fully, for she alone had led him into the moonlight. He was equally as responsible for what had occurred next, but the initial lure had been her doing.
She pressed her lips together, considering her words with care. “It is not my intention to displease you.”
As much as he had hurt her, she was willing to forgive. After all, she had manipulated him. Having to wed in such an abrupt manner could not be easy for anyone. Lord knew it had not been for Daisy, though she found her union to Trent infinitely more palatable than a forced marriage with Breckly.
His vexing actions aside, she wanted them to have a fresh start. For their unorthodox marriage to have a chance to flourish rather than to founder. While she’d spent most of her life motherless, she longed for children of her own one day. The notion filled her heart with a bursting, airy sort of joy as she stared at the forbidding stranger before her.
Her children would be his, as odd as it seemed, and she would not bring children into an unhappy union. She had been the product of one, and she didn’t wish to visit the same sin upon an innocent. At the very least, she felt certain they could achieve mutual respect for each other, if the duke was but willing.
He frowned then, but the severity of it only seemed to intensify his looks rather than detract from them. “You do not displease me, Daisy.”
And yet his every reaction to her suggested the complete opposite. “Clearly I have or else you wouldn’t have left me on our wedding day only to return the next morning smelling of whisky, wearing the same clothes you departed in.”
There. She’d said it. And a humiliating tear was poised at the corner of her eye, drat it all. She would not allow it to fall. Would not. When he didn’t immediately speak, she launched into another speech, fearing the silence and what it would do to her. “I understand you resent me for having trapped you. It wasn’t fair of me to place my own wellbeing and desires before yours. Fear of my father is not sufficient excuse. If I could redo what I’ve done, I would, knowing how wrong it was. But I would very much like our marriage to be a cordial one… pleasant, even. I think perhaps we might be friends, if you’ll but grant me your forgiveness and a second chance. Do you think you can, Your Grace?”
“Sebastian.” He stood so abruptly that his chair flew back, nearly toppling over.
She should have stood as well, but something about the man and the moment kept her rooted to her chair, incapable of motion.
