Tilly clutched her teacup in a violent grip, wondering if the delicate handle would break free. If it did, could she use it as a weapon against her husband? How much damage could she inflict with fine porcelain?
Not enough, came the sad answer.
And nor was she a violent person. Many times over the years of her unhappy marriage to the duke, she had wished she could be. It would have at least been a means of defense. As such, she had none, save distance and secrets.
“What you have just proposed is despicable,” she told him, amazed at the calmness in her voice when inside, she was seething.
“What I have proposed is the only means of securing your future,” Longleigh countered, his lip curled in a perpetual sneer.
It was the same expression he had worn for her ever since their wedding night, when he had proven unable to perform his marital duty. And on every opportunity since when he had groped her and forced her to suffer silently through his attempts to make his flaccid member rise to the occasion of bedding her.
Only to fail.
She could not give him a child if he could not bed her.
Tilly took great care not to allow any of the disdain she felt for him to show in her countenance, for if it did, she knew he would punish her. “My future or yours, Your Grace?” she asked quietly. “I do not need an heir. You, however, do.”
“You want a child,” Longleigh said, his observation cutting into her heart.
How could he know? Longleigh was neither an observant man, nor a caring one.
“I do not,” she lied, because the means by which he had just informed her she could have her child was not just unacceptable to her.
It was shocking. Horrifying.
Wrong.
“Every woman wants to be a mother,” he countered, watching her with a flat stare, as if she were hateful to him. As if the sight of her filled him with such contempt, he could scarcely bear to occupy the same room.
It was also the way he had looked at her before he had struck her when she had shown him pity. In the earliest days of their union, he had blamed his inability upon her. She was too hideous, too fat, too stupid. She flirted with other men. One of her breasts was bigger than the other. He could not bear the scent of her perfume.
He despised her for her lack of subservience. She hated him for being not just cruel and unkind but genuinely vicious. For placing all his anger and frustrations upon her and making her life into the misery his must have been before she had entered it.
She had married him thinking to please her parents. The Duke of Longleigh was old enough to be her father, but he was wealthy, his title practically dating back to the times of William the Conqueror, and his family name was unparalleled. But she had consigned herself to a life of misery with a man who hated not only her, but the world and everyone in it.
“I will not accept such a revolting arrangement,” she denied. “It is not worth the damage to my soul.”
“Was it revolting when you took the Earl of Sinclair to your bed?” he asked, shocking her, for he had never directly acknowledged her private affairs before now.
Longleigh’s composure was disturbing.
Ordinarily, when he confronted her, it was with a great, railing, billowing rage.
A calm Longleigh was troubling indeed.
“Nothing to say, Ottillia?” he asked, his voice hard.
She took a sip of her tea, now cold, to distract herself. She detested that name and he knew it. Her friends and family called her Tilly, which was what she preferred. “What would you have me say?” she forced out, her lips numb.
“You need say nothing at all. Whores will fornicate with anyone. I fail to understand your objection.”
She flinched. “I am not a whore.”
“Your actions suggest otherwise.”
She had been friends with Sin long before her marriage to Longleigh. They cared for each other. Had sought each other for comfort, both trapped in despicable marriages and seeking each other for mutual solace. Their relationship had been different than what Longleigh was asking of her.
Far different.
