Bainbridge’s words returned to her then.He fancies himself in love with you.At the time, she had thought it an overstatement. Unrealistic, but looking upon Lord Harry now, she could not deny that he seemed genuinely upset. Guilt pricked through the wine-soaked haze clouding her mind.
She sent him an apologetic smile, wishing for his sake that things had been different. That she had cared for him in the same way he had cared for her. How much simpler would life have been if she and Lord Harry had fallen hopelessly in love, and she sat with him at her side now rather than a cool, imposing stranger who desired her physically but could not abide by her otherwise?
“Regrets, Duchess?” Bainbridge’s voice,sotto voce, penetrated her introspection once more.
She swallowed, turning her attention back to the man she had married. He watched her with an impassive expression, but his green eyes were flat and cold. His tone too had been deceptively smooth. The wine had addled her mind and she knew it, but she could still see that Spencer was livid. He hid it well beneath his icy façade, but there was no mistaking the underlying fury in his eyes, his tone, his clenched jaw.
“What of you, Duke?” she countered rather than responding.
His lip curled. “An endless ocean of them.”
Of course she would be the biggest one. That he had been weak enough to want her, to touch her, to compromise her when he did not even like her—for a man who governed himself with such control, it must still smart. Just as his careless divulgence smarted.
His words should not have hurt her, but they found their way past her bravado, beyond her carefully built defenses, and hit her heart with the unerring precision of a honed dagger. His admission pained her. Made tears prick her eyes. For as much as she had not wanted any of this, neither did she wish to feel as though he would rather have married anyone else but her.
“How lovely to know,” she said with false cheer, reaching for her glass and draining it yet again, only to be rewarded with the vigilant servant whose role it was to ensure she never went without wine. It occurred to her that perhaps this was the dowager’s doing as well—yet another crafty attempt at sabotage—but she was too far gone to care.
The next course arrived, salmon this time. Bo didn’t even bother pretending to put her fork in the sauce-smothered filet on her plate. Nothing could induce her to raise a bite of the stuff to her lips. Not even her growling stomach. She pressed a hand to her bodice discreetly as her stomach made its hunger known yet again. The dowager had made certain that no tray was sent to her this morning as she prepared, and so Bo had been existing on tea and wine and nerves and irritation ever since.
“You have not eaten a bite,” her husband observed at her side, his voice low and meant for her ears alone yet ringing with an air of ducal authority.
She pinned a false smile to her lips, for she would not engage in this dialogue now, before their wedding guests. Even the least well-behaved lady in all England knew not to criticize her mother-in-law before guests on the day of her wedding.
“Of course I have,” she lied. “Each course has been more delicious than the last.”
“Go on, then.” He quirked an imperious brow, waiting.
“I am parched.” She found the wine goblet, drank some more, reasoning it could not possibly hurt.
“Eat the salmon, Your Grace,” he ordered calmly, his eyes daring. Taunting.
He knew, the blighter. He had been watching her, and the realization filled her with unwanted warmth. If she must be his burden and part of his ocean of regrets, she hoped that a small part of him at least longed for her in the same way she did for him: inexplicable, undeniable, all-consuming hunger. For as she looked at him now, taking in his handsome face, strong jaw, the long nose that was almost too sharp, that beautiful mouth, those vibrant green eyes, and his head of dark, lustrous hair, his broad shoulders, strong chest, she could not deny just how much she desired him.
Good God, why should her rotten mind choose that moment to recall his head between her thighs, the divine pleasure of his tongue teasing her flesh, his cock hard and large and demanding, how perfect he had felt inside her? How much she wanted all that again? How she wished a mere snap of her fingers would take them back to where they had been a month ago, ready to consume each other?
But, no. She could not. They could not. Pretense always needed to be upheld, that vain little twit.
“I do not like fish,” she hissed back at her husband, rather than place even the tiniest morsel of disgusting, scaled river creature in her mouth.
Bainbridge’s expression changed then, understanding dawning, his gaze unerringly seeking out his mother. “Ah.”
Before she could attempt to distract him, he hailed a servant. “Ask Chef Langtois if he might prepare a chicken or veal dish for Her Grace,” he ordered quietly, though the entire table of guests seemed to be straining for their every word.
“That is not necessary,” she protested, aware that their seating at the head of the large banquet style table made them the center of attention.
She did not think anyone could overhear them, but she did not wish to be watched with the dowager’s undisguised censure or her mother’s thinly veiled concern. Her parents had been absent for most of her life, forever caught up in their own whims, and now was not the time for that to change.
“Itisnecessary,” he countered, his lips firm. “You cannot subsist on wine and air, princess.”
Bo couldn’t be certain if he was being his arrogant self or if she detected a note of concern in his deep voice. Perhaps he was concerned she would shame him before the assemblage if she continued to enjoy her magically reappearing wine. She stared at him for longer than necessary, partly because he was so dratted beautiful she couldn’t look away and partly because the wine was rendering focusing on anything other than Bainbridge quite difficult.
“I dare not eat the food lest your mother attempts to poison me,” she said at last, louder than she had intended, for Cleo sent her a warning look with raised brows, diverting her attention.
Beneath the table, her husband’s hand wandered to her skirt, falling in heavy warning upon her thigh. She resisted the urge to scoot nearer to him so that his hand would hover between her legs instead. Bo had attended a premier finishing school, after all. She knew how to act with comportment and decorandum—decorative—oh, fiddle. What was the word she sought?
Decorum! She smiled brightly, her hand returning to the stem of her glass, bringing another gulp of wine down her gullet. That was the one.
Decorum.
