“My God, Miranda. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. I’m contented now. My school gives me a sense of purpose I was missing before.” She stopped herself before she said more.
And being with you makes me happier than I ever imagined it was possible to be.
It had been there, almost falling from her wayward tongue. She bit her lip to keep the truth from spilling forth.
“I understand the need to have something purely for yourself,” he told her softly, stroking her cheek. “To find your own contentedness apart from what is expected of you. That was what the Wicked Dukes Society was for me when it began. And now, over the years, it’s taken the place in my life that I imagine a wife would have. My obligations and responsibilities are to the club, my mother, and my sister alone.”
“Did you never wish to marry or have a family?” she blurted.
It was reckless, that question. Miranda had no right to ask it, and she very much feared the answer.
“I prefer my life this way.” He gave her a rueful grin, tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Like you, I’ve no wish to be tied down in a marriage that will inevitably be a misery. My parents’ marriage was bloody wretched. By the end, they hated each other. I have no desire to repeat their misfortune. I decided long ago never to visit that kind of agony upon myself or another.”
Miranda tamped down the inane disappointment within her at his response. What had she expected? There was no future for them. Nor had there ever been one. She was a divorcée taintedby scandal, a woman who earned her bread. He was a voluptuary who lived his life one pleasure at a time.
One month.
That was all they had. All they could ever have. And she needed to be satisfied with it.
“You’re wise to feel that way,” she forced out, along with what she hoped served as a carefree smile. “My own experience with matrimony persuades me that it isn’t worth attempting ever again.”
The reminder was for herself. Her marriage with Ammondale had been terrible. She had vowed never to marry again, and nothing had changed just because she had taken a lover.
“Why are you on the opposite side of this damned carriage?” Rhys asked, his voice low and soft, velvet on silk.
“Because there is more room if I sit here,” she pointed out primly, turning her head to press a kiss to his palm.
He winked. “There is room aplenty for you on my lap.”
She laughed, grateful for the return to lightheartedness. “I’m not sitting in your lap the whole way back to London, you rogue.”
A mischievous grin curved his lips. “Who said you would merely be sitting?”
There was no misunderstanding the sensual intent in his voice and eyes.
Her levity faded, overtaken by desire. “In a carriage?”
He gave her that wicked sinner’s rakish grin that never failed to cue an answering rush of need within her. “Oh yes, kitten. Most definitely in a carriage.”
He held his hand out to her, and she settled her palm in it without hesitation.
CHAPTER 17
Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward away an impending headache, and glared at his mother, who had just fluttered into the breakfast room, resembling nothing so much as an agitated owl. Evidence of her distress could be seen plainly not just in her distraught expression but in her silver hair, which was loose and unbound from its customary coil. She was also wearing a dressing gown.
Mater never left her rooms without her hair coiffed, and she most certainly never wandered about indishabille. Perhaps, he thought unkindly and with a hint of disinterest, the old bird had finally gone senile.
“What is the matter, madam?” he asked calmly, watching as she wrung her withered hands and blinked behind her gold-rimmed spectacles.
She exclaimed something unintelligible that he swore sounded likeMignonne casts dreary. Her dudgeon was so very high, which was also most unlike her. If she had been the sort of mother that had instilled a deep and abiding sense of love in her children, he might have been more concerned. As it was, he was rather displeased to have an interruption of breakfast when he had yet to enjoy his bacon.
Rhys stood belatedly, recalling that he was sitting in the presence of a lady, even if said lady was perhaps mad and someone he resented for his unhappy childhood. “Who the devil is Mignonne, Mater?”
“Your sister!” his mother wailed.
“You mean Rhiannon?” He frowned, realizing that his sister wasn’t present at the breakfast table yet this morning.
