“I slept well, thank you,” she said with cool, quiet poise, her eyes dropping once more to her plate.
Devil take it, where had the passionate warrior queen gone? The woman who had set him on fire with her body and her unabashed desire? He did not know what to make of this. Did not understand the cause of her distance. Was she embarrassed, perhaps, by the raw passion they had shared? He did not think she could be, for she was the selfsame lady who had stood naked and fierce before him a month ago.
“Excellent.” He kept his tone light, took a sip of his coffee, watching her still. He thought he could look upon her all day long, every day, for the rest of his life and never tire of seeing her. It wasn’t her beauty alone that drew him to her—though to be sure, she possessed a rare vibrancy that was undeniably breathtaking—it was something else, something unique. Something that was simply Boadicea. He had not been able to resist her from the first moment he had been alone with her, and his reaction to her had only intensified with the intervening time and their marriage rather than lessening.
He would do well to hold it in check, lest it get out of hand. He could not allow her to think that he would ever be able to give her more than the slaking of their mutual desires.
“Tonight I do think it may be best if I sleep in my own chamber, however,” she said calmly, using her knife to cut a bite of sausage on her plate.
Her words, so casual, shook him. The primitive part of him roared to life, and he said the first thing that rose to his already addled mind. “No.”
She paused, her gaze flicking back to his. “I beg your pardon, husband?”
There was no way in hell that she wasn’t sleeping in his bed. He was aware of the sleeping arrangements that most married couples had. His marriage to Millicent had been no different—they never spent the night in the same bed. In fact, he had never spent the night sleeping in the same bed as any woman before Boadicea. But the moment he had laid her on his bed, it had felt inherently right. He would not allow her to put this wedge between them on the first day of their marriage. He had enough wedges for the both of them.
“No,wife,” he repeated. “You will sleep with me, where you belong.”
She pursed her lips. “I am sure that is a most unusual arrangement, Bainbridge. It is ordinary, in fact, expected, for a husband and wife to maintain separate quarters.”
Boadicea was determined, but he was equally so, and she would find that in a battle of intractability, he would always emerge the victor. “Do I snore?”
Her flush deepened. “No.”
Damn it, he wanted her so much he ached with it, and he couldn’t be certain if it was because of her obstinacy, because he wanted to prove to her that she was his, or because she was so bloody beautiful. Perhaps all three. But it didn’t signify. All that did was that he wished to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was his wife in his bed. Beneath him. Astride him. Any way he could have her.
“Do you find fault with the bed?” he asked, relentless.
“Of course not.” She sighed, looking quite vexed with him now. “It is fine.”
“Were you too cold?”
“Bainbridge.” Her tone and use of his title told him he had irked her.
“Too warm, perhaps?” he persisted.
Her full, kissable lips flattened into a grim line of irritation. “Bainbridge.”
“I am using rationalizing and logic.” He shrugged. “There must be a reason you do not wish to share my bed. I want to know what it is.”
“You do not want children,” she blurted.
Ah, perhaps he had finally found the root of the problem. “And what has that to do with sharing my bed?”
For truthfully, one had no bearing upon the other. He was definite in his decision. Nothing she could say or do would sway him. What he had lived through with his former wife had been sheer hell, and he could not run the risk of enduring it a second time. Harry was his heir, and while Spencer had never supposed he would marry again, circumstances had demanded that he do so. But neither circumstances nor his new duchess could force him to once more make himself vulnerable to madness and death.
“You should have told me,” she said quietly, her eyes searching his, and he could not shake the feeling that she saw far more than he would have preferred. “Did you not think I had a right to know such a thing before we married?”
Her words gave him pause, for he had not considered the ramifications of his wishes. In the years following Millicent’s death, he had remained celibate, with no intention of marrying again. Then, Boadicea had appeared in his library with her vibrant beauty, her bawdy book, and her rampant boldness, and he had lost his head. He had ruined her, himself. Christ, he had ruined the both of them. It had all been so sudden and unexpected that he had not given thought to much aside from his desire for her and his duty to wed her.
“Our courtship was rather extraordinary,” he reminded her, his voice wry. “I did not wish to marry again.”
She stiffened. “Then why did you?”
“Because I had no choice.” The words were torn from him, and he said them before he could think better of it.
Once they were spoken, there was no rescinding them.
It was true that he had married her because his hand had been forced—after being caught compromising her by his mother and the Duchess of Cartwright, what option had he left? But having married her, he could not deny that he was pleased by the physical connection they shared. More than pleased.
