“I know.”
“Are you ashamed of me?”
Lewis winced, the words striking him as sharply as any physical blow might have. “You wound me,” he said. “I am not ashamed of you. My dear grandmother, you cannot help how you are. It is only your welfare that I am thinking about. Bridget is a brazen and unpredictable lady, and I just do not thinksheis an appropriate guest for you. Not yet.”
His grandmother gave him an exasperated look. “You say that she is to blame, but I suspect you mean I am difficult.”
“I do not,” he insisted. “I promise that it is Bridget whom I am concerned about.”
Lewis shuddered just imagining what chaos his young wife might see fit to enact upon the household. If his poor grandmother was anxious now, Bridget would doubtlessly do something to force the woman into a severe attack of the nerves.
Worse, Lewis doubted Bridget would even do such a thing maliciously. She was not a bad person. It was merely that Bridget was careless. She left a wake of destruction in her path and did not seem to care who might be damaged in her efforts to do whatever she wanted.
“Well,” his grandmother said. “You married the girl. I imagine that you must also see some redeeming qualities in her.”
Lewis suspected that she disbelieved that Bridget might prove to be a problem, and he was forced to concede that his grandmother made an excellent argument. Why would Lewis marry a woman who was so troublesome?
“She does have redeeming qualities,” Lewis said. “It is just that she can be…a lot, sometimes. But she is also charming and beautiful. And very romantic.”
Lewis was not exactly certain thatromanticwas a redeeming quality, for he feared that Bridget had probably gotten into a fair amount of mischief due to that particular characteristic. Still, it did give her a certain lightness that was endearing. Bridget seemed to believe that the entire world was beautiful and had the potential for greatness, and even if Lewis disagreed with that, he nevertheless found himself drawn to her in a way that he did not wholly understand.
“She might be good for you,” Lewis said thoughtfully. “Someday.”
CHAPTER 24
That insufferable, accursed man!
Bridget found herself still furious with her husband for his trickery just two days before when he had brought her to the very precipice of pleasure and cruelly denied her the satisfaction that she clearly wanted. And then, he had the wherewithal to insist that she behave!
She would not let him win this contest. No, Bridget was going to receive her pleasure howshewanted it, by her own terms rather than by his. Her previous plans had not worked, and after some consideration, Bridget had decided to try and replicate her earlier success at the wedding breakfast.
Her husband descended the stairs, and Bridget feigned sudden interest in the flowers that decorated the nearby table, acting as though she had not been lingering in the entryway just to ambush him.
“Wife,” he said.
“Husband,” she responded, giving him her brightest smile. “Wherever are you going?”
His attire provided little insight into what he might be doing. Bridget suspected that he had a meeting scheduled for the afternoon, as that was often what Elias did when he left during the early afternoon. And if nothing else, Lewis did seem devoted to his position, enough that he had married her, after all.
“I have some business to attend to.”
Bridget frowned at the cold answer. “Oh?” she asked. “What manner of business?”
“Nothing of interest to you.”
Bridget frowned. Was she imagining things, or was he avoiding the question? Whatever business he might be attending to, it could not be worth keeping secret. Well, she was confident that she could coax an answer from him. Bridget raised a hand to her chest, feigning a look of offense. “My dear husband, what a harsh thing to say! Of course, I care about what you may be doing!”
Lewis sighed and crossed his arms. The movement made his jacket pull tightly over his broad shoulders, a detail which Bridget observed with unrestrained admiration. He was so very beautiful, like some cruel god who chose to torment her.
“It is business for the Dukedom,” he said dryly. “Nothing interesting at all to a young lady like you, who so obviously desires excitement.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow. Beneath her calm demeanor, an icy tendril of doubt curled inside her chest. She did not know much about marriage, aside from what she had heard in novels and gossip, but Bridget was aware that once men were wed, they often engaged in certain disgraceful dalliances with…other women.
Was her husband seeing a mistress? Bridget stared at him, unable to determine if her fears were valid or simply something conjured by her romantic imagination. “I see,” she said.
A man would not pay a visit to his mistress at such an early hour, would he? Elias had always visited his mistresses in the evening, but Bridget’s husband was quite unlike her brother. Maybe he believed that it was permissible to visit mistresses in broad daylight, where anyone might see him. Bridget inhaled sharply, her thoughts whirling away from her, as their marriage rearranged itself right before her eyes.
She would be cast as the fortuitous, unwanted wife who was expected to endure every hardship with grace. Thetonwould pity her and whisper about how shameful it was that such a promising, young miss had been forced to marry such a rakish man, and?—
