Without another word, he stalked away. He made it out the door before he cast up his accounts into the mud and dung-caked street.
aisy returned from yet another evening’s entertainment.It was well after midnight, and she was weary, as much from the lateness of the hour and the strain of the charade she maintained as from her delicate condition.
All night long, she had feigned smiles and flirted madly. Danced with as many rakes and scoundrels as she could find. She’d laughed, pretended to be a merry wife who hadn’t a care in the world that she’d been left behind.
Pretended that she hadn’t been left to gather dust in a Belgravia townhouse as if she were of no greater import than the landscapes and former dukes once lining the walls. That she didn’t mind if she had no inkling of her husband’s whereabouts and nowhere to send a proper letter aside from barraging his estates. That she’d received not one godforsaken word from him.
It was as if he’d vanished as surely as Bridget had.
Once ensconced in the solitude of her bedchamber, she plucked the earrings from her ears and slipped off her dress shoes. They were aquamarine satin, fetching creations that matched her ensemble perfectly, but hours of clipping about in heels had left her feet aching.
Closing her eyes and releasing a sigh, she rolled her head about her shoulders, seeking to loosen her tense muscles. She had instructed Abigail not to wait up for her, and Hugo was already asleep in the comfortable bed he preferred in the lower salon. She was alone. The silence after such a raucous evening was enjoyable.
With a sigh, she hugged the gentle, almost imperceptible swell of her belly where a child grew. It had taken Georgiana’s perceptive observations regarding her wan appearance and frequent bouts of nausea for her to realize she was carrying Sebastian’s babe. The notion had initially filled her with hope that he might, at last, return to her. But more days had passed, more letters unanswered, more silence, more waiting, and she had begun to settle into the grim acceptance that her husband didn’t give a damn about her.
Not to worry, little one,she promised the babe now with a pang in her heart.I will love you enough for the both of us.
“Where were you tonight,wife?”
The voice, deep and dark and silky with menace, cut into the quiet calm.
An undignified squeak tore from her as she started, eyes flying open. Sebastian stood before her, as if conjured from her troubled thoughts. Wickedly handsome, tall, dark, debonair. Expression as solid as granite, jaw rigid. Blue eyes glittering.
At long last, her husband had returned.
All the air fled her lungs, as if she’d taken a fall from a horse at full gallop. Her heart pounded, the anger and resentment swirling inside her warring against a fragile burst of hope that he was back. Had her letter reached him, then? She drank him in before she could remind herself that he had left her with nary a word or expectation of finding him for nearly three solid months.
“How ironic you should pose such a question,” she told him tartly when she found her voice at last. “For I’ve been wondering the same of you,husband. Where were you these last months?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he remained forbidding and still, raking her with an insolent gaze. Heat suffused her body. A pang of intense longing began low in her belly and radiated outward before she could ruthlessly tamp it down.
How foolish she was, flesh and heart both betraying her. For she’d missed the husband she’d only begun to know. She’d missed his teasing, his rare smiles, his sensual touch, the way he kissed. Her fragile heart had begun to believe she’d found a future that would not only be preferable to her fate as Viscountess Breckly, but one in which she could find happiness. She couldn’t ignore just how bereft his absence had left her.
And now that he was here, within reach, it was as if a missing part of her had been restored.
He was every bit as beautiful as she remembered. More so, in fact. But there was something different about him. Something in the way he held himself so stiffly, in the way he stared at her, his finely formed lip curling into a sneer.
All at once, she knew what that something was. Felt it like a blow that banished her naiveté and her interminable weakness for him both. This was no happy homecoming.
He was furious.
Her earrings, heavy diamonds and hard gold warmed by her skin, bit into her palm. “Sebastian,” she said, irritated by the breathless quality of her voice. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
He cocked his head, glowering. “Were you expecting someone else, then?”
Daisy frowned. “Someone else?”
“Someone else.” He stepped closer to her. He was so near that his scent, clear and masculine and delicious, washed over her. “Someone like the Earl of Bolton, perhaps? Or any one of your other lovers?”
Ah. The gossip had finally reached him wherever he’d been secreting himself. She knew a brief moment of satisfaction that her endless devotion to flushing him out had succeeded. But the pleasure was hollow, for he had returned a wrathful stranger. And she was angry at him as well. She wanted answers. Wanted to rail against him, demand to know why he’d left her in such haste, nothing but a vague missive to explain. To know the secrets that had taken him from her.
“Well?” he snapped, his voice as sharp as a rapier. “Still holding your tongue, darling? Don’t you know that this is the part of our little tragedy where you attempt to explain why you’ve been welcoming other men into your bed?”
She flinched, steeling herself. “What have you heard?”
“That you’ve been making a cuckold of me.” He took another step closer, stalking her like she was his prey.
Daisy resisted the frantic urge to retreat. He wouldn’t strike her. His vitriol was almost palpable. Fear crept its way into her heart as she recalled all the times her father had charged at her. The times he had hit her. The occasion when he’d struck her with so much force that she’d fallen to the floor and his boot-shod foot had connected with her midriff. Her sin? Embarrassing him at dinner by laughing too loudly. She still remembered the sensation of all the air being knocked from her body in a rush, the burning in her lungs.
