“It’s filth.” He disliked that she could read him, know him, see through to the bloody heart of him, with such dispassionate ease. It rankled. It shook him. It goddamn grated. “I wouldn’t lower myself to allow such rot to fall beneath my eye. Hardly surprising that you did, given your unseemly nature. Of course, when you are my wife, you’ll abstain from all such imprudent leanings toward the prurient.”
“When I am your wife,” she repeated, the sentence punctuated on a low and delicious laugh that he felt down his spine. “You still insist on believing this fiction that you and I will marry? How amusing.”
“Do you know what was amusing, Lady Boadicea? Watching that little book of yours burn in the grate of my library.” Also a falsehood, but he longed to steal the smirk from her kissable mouth. She made him want to be more of a beast than he already was.
That beauty mark of hers taunted him as her words did. The urge to set his lips there, flirting with the corner of hers, beset him. As he watched, the amusement fled from her lively eyes and expressive features. Watching her brilliance fade was rather akin to a cloud passing before the sun on a summer’s day. That he was the source of the sudden darkness wasn’t lost on him, and his momentary victory was hollow for it.
She surprised him by a touch, butterfly-light and fleeting, on his jaw. Just a flutter of her fingers and then gone. But bloody hell, he felt it like a brand. This girl made too free with his person. He hadn’t felt a woman’s soft caress against his skin like this—a lover’s touch—in as long as he could remember. He wasn’t meant to feel this way now, as if something inside him might shatter and the bitterness he’d fought so hard to control would break free at last.
Her intent gaze searched his. “You’re lying. I’d be willing to wager that even now you’ve got it hidden away somewhere with every intention of reading about Lady Letitia if you haven’t already. I cannot blame you, Your Grace. Itisa particularly enlightening tale.”
“Unfortunately, I’ll never know.” He kept his tone mild, but inside, he felt oddly discombobulated, as if he’d somehow woke from a long slumber, uncertain of where he was and how he’d managed to find himself there.
She was the most vexing woman he’d ever met. He ought to allow Harry to take his place as he wanted, make her his bride. He ought to be disgusted by her flagrant disregard for propriety, the way she flaunted her smutty books without shame. By no means should he be drawn to her, entranced by her, or want to kiss her bloody well senseless. But even as he had all those thoughts, intended to reassure his common sense that he had worked too diligently to escape his former hell to descend into another, he tugged her nearer to him.
“Youwantto know, don’t you?” she whispered, and there was her touch once more, two fingers, pressing to his lips in a mimicry of a kiss.
And yes, he did want to know. Thus far, he’d only managed to read the letter from Lady Pokingham to her niece, detailing the birch treatments she’d received from her governess, along with a description of her clandestine walk in a garden with Lord Longwood. Naturally, the walk had turned into a frenzied burst of kisses, Lord Longwood flipping up the lady’s skirts, and sampling herhoney potfirst with his tongue and then with his tumescent member.
Sweet Jesus.
Lady Boadicea Harrington was a menace. That much was plain as the shoes on his feet. Her insistence on toying with him fueled his ire. He was too damn old and too damn world-weary for games.
He caught her wrist in his grip, breaking the contact between the pads of her fingers and his mouth. “You will cease this nonsense at once, Lady Boadicea. I didn’t invite you here so that you could insult my offer while acting the brazen hussy. I invited you here to sort out the details of how we shall proceed with our arrangement.”
She stiffened at the cold lash of his words. “I’m sorry for whatever happened to you to make you conduct yourself with such frigid condescension, but I have no wish to marry you. Can you not convince your mother and the Duchess of Cartwright that nothing so extreme is necessary?”
Whatever happened to you, she’d said, in a lightly veiled reference to Millicent. The knowledge that Lady Boadicea Harrington was aware his wife had killed herself before him filled him with rage. How dare she flirt with him, touch him, make light of him? He thought then of how she had feigned acceptance of his suit before his mother and the Duchess of Cartwright, how she had even defended him to them.
He saw it all for what it was now: pity.
Something violent and ugly twisted free inside him. He wouldn’t be pitied by this forward chit or anyone else. He set her from him, ignoring the loss of her on his mouth, the unanswered desire to take her lips. Spencer embraced his anger, let it spring free of its cage.
“Do you know what it looks like when someone holds a pistol to their temple and pulls the trigger, Lady Boadicea?” The words were torn from him, a question he had never dared pose to another living soul for fear that it would break him. For fear they’d think him every bit as mad as his wife had been. The truth of it was that sometimes he wondered if the madness had infected him.
Lady Boadicea’s creamy skin went pale as she gave her head a slight shake. “N-no, Your Grace.”
Ah, a stutter. Perhaps he had disarmed her at last. He raised his hands, palms facing the ceiling, embracing the viciousness coursing through him. He wanted to punish her. To make her look at him with anything other than sympathy. “What, no barbs, my lady? No shameless remarks about the tripe you’ve smuggled into my home? Why, I do believe that for once you may be robbed of speech. A rarity for you, surely. Shall I describe the aftereffects of the bullet’s violence to you? Is that what you long to hear?”
“Your Grace.” She pressed the same fingers that had touched his lips over her mouth now, looking as if she may be ill.
But he wasn’t done with her yet. He stalked toward her once more, and not even the sweet scent of her was enough to dispel his wrath. How dare she look upon him with pity? How dare she refuse his hand as though he offered her nothing more than a waltz at a country ball? As though he, Spencer Marlow, the Duke of Bainbridge, was beneath the scandal-courting youngest daughter of the eccentric Earl of Northcote?
By God, he had devoted himself, these last three years, to living an unimpeachable life. He adhered to propriety. He never lost his temper. He repented for his sins. He worked hard to make his estates profitable, to be a good steward of the land and people assigned him. In short, he did everything he could to make amends for what had happened.
“Do you know,” he continued, “what it’s like to watch someone you care for lose their mind, Lady Boadicea? No? I do. What I’ve seen would gut you, my dear, and you’d never again have time for filthy journals or turning up in the library of the brother of the man who’s been courting you and ruining yourself.”
She threw back her shoulders, assuming what he could only imagine was her battle stance. “I’ve no doubt you suffered, Your Grace, and greatly. I’m sorry for that.” She stepped forward, her skirts crashing into him, her finger catching him in the chest. “But none of that gives you the right to be an overbearing brute. And forgive me for my impertinence, but I do recall that I had assistance in ruining myself, as you so blithely refer to your mauling of my person before your mother and her simpleminded bosom bow.”
Something smarted on his chest. Once, twice, thrice, four times. He looked down to find that the termagant was poking him. And hard. He trapped her wrist again in one hand while the other sank into the voluptuous fall of her skirts. He didn’t stop until he found a handful of the lush bum hiding beneath all her fripperies.
The mauling of her person, indeed.
He released her wrist and tunneled his fingers into the silken hair at her nape, angling her head before his mouth took hers. The tense lines of her body softened. She melted against him, falling into his body, her mouth opening. He recognized her surrender, and he took it like an invading army, plundering, owning, making her his. She tasted like sugared tea. Her tongue moved against his, tentative at first, and then with meaning.
He groaned, driving the soft curves of her body into his hard angles as he cupped her arse, holding her to him. His cock pressed into her belly, when where he wanted it most was deep inside her channel. He kissed her hard, open-mouthed, hungry. He kissed her as he’d never kissed another woman before her, told her with his lips and licks and body that she was his.
He staked his claim.
