All the efforts she had made to present herself in an alluring fashion during the earlier days of the house party were at an end. She was no longer attempting to attract a lover, even if the Duke of Kingham had proven a most lively and entertaining dinner partner earlier.
Nor was she committing adultery to obtain a divorce. Which was just as well. She hadn’t the stomach for such nonsense. How the men and women of the house party could hop from one bed to the next with such unabashed abandon was a mystery to her.
But then, she wasn’t certain she possessed the mettle it would require to consummate her marriage either. Yet, she had agreed to Riverdale’s inglorious demand. The arrangements had been made. With the house party soon coming to an end, someof the guests had already left. Riverdale had seen to it that her bedchamber had been moved next to his.
Forconvenience. A word she disliked almost as much asbreeding.
Sybil might have objected, had not the notion of traipsing through the corridors in dishabille been far too shameful to contemplate. So here she was, a wife of three months, about to finally endure the marriage bed with the husband who had married her and left her.
As if on cue in this drama of theirs, a knock sounded at the door.
Riverdale.
Her heart began beating faster.
Sybil smoothed her dressing gown and, with a final look at her reflection, turned toward the adjoining door. “Come.”
The latch opened, and then he crossed the threshold, closing the door at his back. There he stood, the duke she’d married. The man she had fleetingly believed she’d lost her heart to, until he had crushed it beneath his carriage wheels as he left her.
He wore a dressing gown in a somber shade of navy that heightened the brilliance of his eyes. His feet were bare, his hair damp. Had he been swimming in the grotto again, or had he bathed?
She told herself it didn’t matter and then cursed her wicked mind for the images that rose within it of Riverdale emerging, naked and virile, from the pool’s water earlier. Of his length once more on display. He was shameless. But then, she already knew that. His reputation was notorious. Only she had chosen to ignore it.
And now, here she was.
“Madam.” He bowed to her formally, as if they weren’t husband and wife about to lie in bed together and perform their marital obligations.
She curtsied. “Riverdale.”
“You were certainly amused by Kingham at dinner.”
There was a hint of bitterness to his words.
She held his gaze, unflinching. “I find him quite droll.”
He inclined his head. “And I find him needlessly meddlesome. But enough about King.” Riverdale paused, considering her in a way that made her heart beat faster. “You are ready?”
“As ready as I am going to be,” she answered truthfully.
Which was to say that she wasn’t ready at all. But then, would she ever be? The answer was a decisive, unfaltering no. This man had her at sixes and sevens. Once, she had believed herself in love with him. And now…well, she didn’t know how she felt about him.
She felt resentment. Anger. Hurt. She felt betrayed herself. There was the question of what he had been doing in his absence and who he had been doing it with. She suspected she would never have the answers, and she wasn’t certain she wanted them anyway. It was a Pandora’s box.
“Perhaps you would like a glass of wine,” he suggested.
“Do you think wine will alter my opinion of you?” she asked sharply.
A small smile played with the corners of his lips. “Perhaps when consumed in a large enough quantity, it might.”
“I am not as convinced.”
“No wine, then,” he allowed. “Would you care to sit by the hearth for a few minutes?”
He was being oddly considerate. She didn’t trust it.
Or him.
“We may as well proceed,” she said, wanting it to be over with so that the anticipation was no longer seizing her in its grip.
