Julianna smiled. “The prospect of life in London has just become infinitely more attractive. Tell me all about it, if you please.”
Gabe could notstop staring at Helena across the dinner table.
She was dressed in a fetching sapphire-blue gown that showed off her ample bosom to perfection—and distraction. Her hair was dressed in a softer style, a loose Grecian braid with wisps of blonde curls a halo about her oval face. She was ravishing. Stunning.
And she loved him.
Fuck.
“Is something amiss, Huntingdon?” she asked, eying him curiously.
Those emerald orbs bored into him, stoking the fires which had been simmering beneath his surface ever since he had left her bed that morning. And yes, the answer to her query was that somethingwasamiss. He did not think it possible for him to suffer through another handful of courses without hauling her onto the polished mahogany, throwing up her skirts, and feasting upon her instead.
Curse her.
He cleared his throat. “Of course not. Why do you ask, my lady?”
“You are staring at me strangely.” She settled her soup spoon in an elegant motion. “Have I inadvertently dripped somepotage à la princeon my bodice?”
If she had, he would not be above licking it off. And then tugging down that indecent silken fabric and her corset with it, until her nipples popped free. She was so deliciously sensitive there…
But she had not dribbled soup. He was simply staring at her because his control had been dashed. Because Shelbourne’s unwanted words were ringing in his head with the persistence of a bell. Because she was so deuced lovely, there was no other place he wished to look. Not even his own bowl, which sat before him, scarcely touched.
The only pangs of hunger affecting him in this moment could not be sated with food.
“You have not, of course,” he told her. “I am merely attempting to accustom myself to the notion of sharing the dining table with my wife each evening.”
He inwardly winced at his words.
She stiffened. “Is it because I am not the wife you intended to sit across this table from you?”
Lady Beatrice was ever a specter between them. One which grew increasingly dim to him with every passing hour.
“It is because having a wife is new to me,” he countered.
As was having a wife who loved him. Because love had no place in a marriage.
But he must try to push that particular thought from his over-burdened mind. He still had no inkling of what to do with it. He had not been seeking a love match. He had been seeking a calm, rational union with a lady who would give him children and companionship, one who would never bring him scandal.
The perfect countess.
That was what he had been seeking.
What he would have had, if not for the siren seated opposite him. If not for his own helpless attraction to her, his stupid actions, his lack of restraint, her lie…
“I suppose I cannot find fault in that,” his countess grudgingly offered now. “For having a husband is new to me as well. At the moment, he is not attempting to flee me in favor of Shropshire, and that is my small measure of success.”
Gabe winced. “I was never trying to flee you. I was trying to put some time and distance between us, that we might find our places in this unexpected union of ours.”
She pursed her lips. “That you might have our marriage annulled, you mean to say.”
Damnation.She had not forgotten that.
“Helena,” he began, attempting to explain himself as a tide of guilt threatened to drown him from within, “I never intended to annul our marriage.”
At least, he did not think he had intended it, not truly. He had told himself it was an option because he had been so angry with her for lying to Shelbourne. And he was still angry with her for what she had done. For forcing him to break the promise he had made to Grandfather on his deathbed.
A man without honor is a man who has nothing.
