She almost shivered at the way he saidmine, somehow making it laden with sensual promise. Still, she knew she could not relent. “I think a month should be sufficient. After I am increasing, you will go to Spain, will you not?”
He clenched his jaw. “That is my plan,sí.”
“When the babe is born, what if I bear you a daughter?” she asked next.
“Then I shall return,” he muttered. “This marriage does me no good without an heir to show for it.”
It required every bit of strength she had not to flinch. “But after the heir, I am free to do as I wish, when I wish, and with whom, just as you promised me. Yes?”
His eyes had darkened, becoming almost as black as his hair. “We will discuss this later, Catriona.”
“Why not now?” she asked.
“Because I find it distasteful to agree upon the terms of my wife’s future lovers when I have only tupped her once myself,” he snapped. “Does that satisfy you?”
Yes, she rather thought it did.
The sheen turned into a flicker.
Her hope would not be deterred.
“I suppose it must satisfy me,” she allowed, careful to infuse her every word with the greatest reluctance she could manage. “For now.”
He muttered something under his breath in Spanish.
Oh, how she wished she could understand it.
*
By the timethe carriage rolled to a stop before Marchmont House, numerous realizations had become apparent to Alessandro.
One, his wife was trouble.
Two, the urge to thrash her unseen future lovers was as wide as a flooded river and every bit as dangerous.
Three, despite his best intentions, he was becoming increasingly obsessed with her mouth. Specifically, with the way it would feel beneath his. Four, he wanted to kiss her. And not just behind her ear or on the delectable bit of skin where her creamy throat met her shoulder, not over her throbbing pulse, and not even just on the sweet mound between her thighs.
Five, he was going to kiss her, unless he could rein himself in properly.
Six, his wife was trouble. Andsí, that one was apparent enough and important enough, it required repetition.
Seven, Marchmont was no longer a reflection of splendor. When he had left it behind years ago, it had been a testament to his father’s architectural dreams and the prosperity of the Forsythe family over the centuries. But as their carriage had meandered through the familiar drive flanked by laurel and pines, he could not deny both the grounds and grand Palladian façade of Marchmont itself evidenced blatant signs of neglect.
And eight, he was going to hunt down his steward and beat him to oblivion.
But he could do nothing about any of these realizations now as he leapt down from the carriage he had spent the last few hours in lusting over his wife. The gravel drive was the same, though perhaps dustier. The castle-like arch through which they had traversed was covered in ivy. The hedges flanking the wings of the edifice were overgrown. The lawns of the park too were lumpy and unkempt.
A feeling of foreboding settled over him as he offered Catriona his arm and assisted her in alighting from the carriage. His legs were stiff. He was tired as much from his journey as from the marked changes his life had experienced in the last few months, and he could not shake the feeling that something was dreadfully wrong here, in the one place he had been reassured, repeatedly and most vociferously, that everything was so very right.
Catriona clasped his arm, cutting a lovely figure in her fawn pelisse and sprigged muslin carriage gown peeping beneath it. Marchmont’s imposing front stole her attention, and he eyed it now along with her. Somehow smaller than he remembered from his youth, the house was nevertheless sprawling and huge.
“This is Marchmont?” she asked.
“Sí, it is.” His gaze swept over the familiar details, which returned to him now as if he had merely blinked and then found himself standing in the same place, almost as if he had never left.
In truth, so much time had passed. A veritable lifetime. And he was not the same man returning now as the hopeful youth he had been when he had left.
Four massive Corinthian columns framed the front portico. Grecian deities were in abundance, statues standing watch from above. The entire edifice was a magnificent sight to behold. Except for the east wing.
