Now he was to pretend as though all was roses and rainbows, to invite Vanreid to his study and play the part of dissolute rakehell. To bring the bastard close enough to Daisy to hurt her once more.
He didn’t know if he could do it. He needed time. Time to think. To clear his mind. He had hit the one man in the world who was like a brother to him. But Griffin had not hit him back. For some reason, that troubled Sebastian the most.
“Thank you for the message,” he said tersely, and then he spun on his heel and threw himself atop his horse once more before riding hell for leather away from the only person he’d ever believed he could trust. Away from unwanted duty. Away from everyone and everything.
Griffin’s words echoed in the staccato of his horse’s hooves.
This is war.
Yes, bloody hell, it was.
Daisy descended the stairs for dinner at precisely a quarter past eight that evening, just as she had every night since her first dinner with him. What had begun as a small assertion of her independence had quickly changed. She kept him waiting, and he took her to task, though increasingly with more sensual heat than genuine irritation. It had become rather a diversion of sorts between them.
He pushed, she pulled. He was inflexible and disciplined where she longed to experience life free of the constraints that had once contained her. She wanted to soak up every moment of every day in this new life she led, while Sebastian seemed somehow restrained. The sadness in him remained, haunting his beautiful eyes. It was only when she teased him that he came to life at last, shedding his armor and allowing himself to simply be.
She’d come to realize that her husband was a rigid and disciplined man. He woke before dawn, breakfasted early, devoted himself to his estates and other matters, took his exercise, and then awaited her at dinner. And she liked keeping him waiting, even if it meant she secretly paced the floor of her chamber, sneaking glances at the mantle clock, as she made certain not to be punctual.
But there was an undeniably different air about him tonight as she glossed her right hand lightly over the polished balustrade, holding her skirts slightly aloft with her left. She’d become adept at sweeping down the staircase as though she glided, and she’d chosen a seafoam blue silk evening gown trimmed with rosettes and a revealing décolletage, but none of those trivialities mattered when her eyes found him as she was halfway down the stairs.
He wasn’t pacing tonight. His back was to her, head bowed forward as though in prayer, hands clasped at his back. She didn’t know him to be a particularly pious man, and in the fortnight they’d been married, he’d never missed the opportunity to unleash his caged energy on the parquet floor as he awaited her.
Something had changed, and she felt it the same way she’d experience a chill running straight down her spine. She paused, on the fourth stair from the bottom, watching him. This was not the reunion she’d anticipated after receiving a library’s worth of books, all carefully chosen with her interests in mind. And especially not after an inscription that called her a favorite.
A favorite.
As though she were someone to be cherished. Perhaps loved, though that was a finer emotion that she didn’t expect from him after only a fortnight of marriage. Hearts did what they would, and just because hers had stubbornly decided to fall for him didn’t mean his in turn could be expected to feel the same.
Still, those words had worked their way deep inside her to a place she hadn’t even known existed, making her smile all day long. Those words had been responsible for the soft hums of pleasure emerging from her as she made herself at home in the library. Those words were what caused the frisson of desire to glide through her even now, accompanied by the swift fluttering of her heart.
But he still hadn’t turned to face her, and he must have heard her footfalls on the stairs by now. “Sebastian,” she called softly.
He turned to her at last, his expression grim in the moment before he appeared to collect himself and don one of his many facades. A sensual smile curved his lips with ease. “Late again, buttercup?” he asked, but there was no bite to his words, only a bittersweet resonance.
Her heart clenched in her breast as she forced herself to descend the remainder of the stairs. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting,” she said tonight the same as she had each night before, taking extra care to maintain the flippancy in her tone. This time, she had a new explanation for her tardiness at the ready. “Someone sent me the contents of an entire book shop, and I spent the course of the day attempting to reconcile the shelves, the existing literature, and the new volumes.”
He strode toward her with a confidence that was purely his, all ducal, and somehow elegant and sinful at once. His dark hair was swept back from his high forehead, and he wore a black coat, black trousers, and a crisp white shirt beneath a gunmetal brocade waistcoat. He looked dark and lethal and delicious.
And hers.
Hewashers, she reminded herself as he took her outstretched hand in his and guided her down the last step. The guidance wasn’t necessary. His touch, however, was.
She was smiling at him like a foolish girl, but she didn’t care. “Have you nothing to say, Your—”
“Sebastian,” he intervened, drawing her closer. He lowered his head, and their lips nearly met. His scent swept over her, pine and man and husband. “A one-half Your Grace is all I’m willing to allow tonight, Duchess.”
Her fingers tightened over his. He was ever an enigma, keeping a part of himself from her. The part she wanted the most. His eyes were blue, so blue, bluer than the brightest country summer sky of her childhood before her father had moved them to the city.
“Thank you,” she told him. “For the books.”
He raised her hand to his lips for a kiss, his gaze searing hers. “I would have far preferred for you to select them yourself, but you were stubborn as ever.”
His extravagance still did strange things to her insides. When he’d attempted to convince her to buy half the book shop, she had objected. Of course she had. What sane woman would want her husband to empty his coffers over her literary whims? Her father would never have allowed such a thing.
That thought had ultimately rendered her acceptance of Sebastian’s somewhat high-handed gift all the more acceptable to her. Sebastian wasn’t attempting to control her with his gift. He wanted to please her, and that was the difference.
“I’m a simple woman,” she said then. “I don’t require crates of books, fancy houses, or servants to satisfy me.”
He squeezed her fingers, his expression inscrutable. “What does satisfy you, Daisy?”
