His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “It would behoove you to think of Lady Boadicea as your sister from this moment on, for that is all she will ever be to you.”
“If I were made of ice as you are, that would be a simple feat,” Harry growled. “But I am nothing like you, thank God, and I cannot forget the way I feel for her.”
Something snapped within him, and he grasped through the darkness, gripping fistfuls of Harry’s dressing robe. “She is mine, and if you touch her, I will thrash you to within an inch of your life. Do you understand me?”
His brother released a laugh that was equal parts bitter and cocky. “She will never be yours, brother. Never.”
Barely checking his rage, Spencer forced himself to release Harry’s robe and take a step back. “I bid you good night,” he said curtly, before turning and stalking away.
More laughter chased him down the hall.
And the devil of it was that he knew Harry was right. He didn’t understand why the knowledge filled his gut with the heavy weight of dread, or why his entire body was coiled tighter than a spring, or why in God’s name he should give a damn about a wife he did not want and could not even abide one half of the time.
But he did.
As he stalked back to his chamber, he swore he could still smell her scent lingering in the air. But like all his demons, she had vanished back into the dark night from which she’d emerged.
y the third day of her forced rest and isolation,Bo was beginning to think she was a prisoner. Her body’s aches and pains had lessened, but now a different sort of malaise descended upon her: restlessness. If there was one thing she loathed, it was being confined. She couldn’t abide by restrictions and definitely not by a rigidly enforced mandate of rest.
She paced the limits of the duchess’s chamber for what must have been the fiftieth time that morning. Breakfast had been delivered. Cleo had yet to make her obligatory appearance. And Bo was tired of being trapped in Purgatory, lingering where she did not yet belong but would soon be indisputably tethered, rather like a dog upon a chain.
She had not seen Bainbridge since their unexpected collision in the hall, and this omission nettled her in a way it ought not. The morning after that turbulent night, she had awoken to find a guard at her door. Oh, her lady’s maid claimed the man was a footman, but the fellow was quite firm in that he would not allow Bo to step over the threshold.
“His Grace’s orders,” the oaf had said by way of apology, blocking the doorway and refusing to allow her egress.
The adjoining door between her chamber and the duke’s chamber was locked from the opposite side, also ruining her escape via that medium. Subsequent attempts to pick the lock with her hairpins had met with failure. As had an ill-fated effort to shimmy out the window and climb to the ground—her skirts had caught upon the ledge, almost sending her tumbling to her death, and she had deemed it wise to forego all such inquiries into her freedom.
Bainbridge had sent polite notes to her chamber questioning after her wellbeing, as though they were strangers and his hand had not been inside her drawers, and as though he did not still hold her book hostage, likely reading it each night whilst he lay abed. She did not like the distance or the pretense any more than she liked the torturous notion of him reading her book, lying in bed all alone. Something had shifted between them in the hallway, and yet he still seemed determined to pretend as though he was the block of ice he would have the world believe.
Bo wanted to melt his ice. She wanted to go back to that night in the hall and rattle him. Kiss him. Make him do something, anything, other than walk away and then go about the business of pretending she was a simple guest—strike that,prisoner—in his home rather than the woman he had compromised.
Her reaction to him didn’t make sense. Part of her wanted to punish him, and part of her wanted to lure him closer. Perhaps it was all down to her being trapped in her chamber. And nearly going mad for it. Was that what he had done to his wife before her? One began to wonder, and when Bo’s mind wandered, trouble inevitably followed.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, stalking back about the chamber again. Her back remained sore, but the rest of her was fine. Her mind was in the most trouble, for Lady Boadicea Harrington did not appreciate rules of any sort. She was firmly of the mind that if a rule had been made, it had been necessarily made to be broken. By her.
And so she was thoroughly having enough of Dr. Martinriver’s orders, or whatever his surname had been. To hell with Bainbridge’s high-handedness as well. He had not even deigned to see her in person in three days’ time, so he could not have any inkling as to her wellbeing.
She was perfectly well. The fall had not done her any permanent damage. One more pace around the perimeter of the chamber. She glared at the door. And finally decided she’d had enough.
One steps, two, three, four, and her hand was upon the knob. She turned it without impediment. The door opened soundlessly, and by sheer miracle, the corridor outside was empty. Not a guard or other soul to be seen. She looked to the left, then to the right to confirm before stepping out into the carpeted hall.
Ah, freedom.
The chamber door closed behind her with a quiet snick. For a moment, she stood in the hall, basking in her liberty. Her hesitation proved a dire mistake, however, for the lummox who guarded her chamber appeared at the far end of the hall just then.
“My lady!” he called, his strident voice echoing off the wood-paneled halls.
She turned and beat a hasty path in the opposite direction, pretending as though she hadn’t heard him. His harried footfalls, muffled by the thick carpets, sounded at her back. She increased her pace, tossing a glance over her shoulder to find him gaining upon her.
No.
Bo could not bear one more day of forced imprisonment. She could own that the initial rest had benefitted her, but she was not the sort of person who relished lying about. She was filled with energy and purpose. Being imprisoned in a chamber—whether in the name of her own health or not—did not suit her in the slightest.
“Halt, my lady! You are under His Grace’s orders to rest,” he called.
“His Grace can go hang for all I care,” she muttered before increasing her speed from rapid walk to outright run.
Bo had mastered the art of sprinting—having a bevy of mischievous sisters and brothers necessitated such an ability. But her jailer’s heavy footsteps seemed to ring ever closer, and this called for more devious means. She headed in the same direction she had taken the night she had wound up colliding with Bainbridge.
