“It wasn’t one of my finer ideas, I admit.” Verity gave his arm another sisterly pat. “Now do go to bed, brother. You looked weary when you arrived, and you’re beginning to resemble a stray mongrel.”
“So I shall, after I finish this whisky.”
“See that you do,” Verity said sternly before taking her leave in a swish of mournful black skirts.
Once more, Everett was alone. The night—and the visit he needed to pay to Sybil—loomed before him as he watched the fire dying in the grate, the embers glowing furiously in their desperate attempt to spark flame.
One by one, they failed, until the library was ensconced in almost complete darkness by the time he departed, so much weighing on his mind.
All he knew was that he couldn’t allow her past his defenses a second time. Their marriage was one of convenience. He would take his pleasure, get her with child, and then he would damned well carry on with his life. He had to harden his heart and protect himself at all costs.
The hour was ridiculously late,and for the third time in as many months, Sybil was once again beneath a new roof in an unfamiliar bedchamber. She had seen her mother settled in a pleasant room with cheerful damask and landscape pictures dotting the walls. Mother had been understandably weary after all her journeys and had retired early.
Which had left Sybil alone to pace the confines of her new chamber, awaiting the pleasures of her husband.
Supposing, that was, that Everett would deign to visit her this evening. He’d given her no indication either way when they had parted following a somewhat stilted dinner. She was prepared for him.
As prepared as she could be, she thought as she swept her hands over her dressing gown and paced the floor to the warmth of the fire in the hearth. Her cold feet appreciated the heat. Traveling in the damp and rains from Wingfield Hall had left her in a chilled state that she couldn’t seem to shake. Her bath had been restorative, but the moment she had emerged, she had been cold again.
A tapping at the door adjoining her chamber to Everett’s disrupted her solitude and made her stomach tighten in anticipation.
“Enter,” she called.
The portal opened, and her husband strolled through.
She caught her breath at the sight of him. They had been in close confines in the carriage, and she had sat at his elbow at dinner, and yet there was something distinctly different about watching him prowl toward her in the night, his feet bare, a maroon dressing gown belted loosely, a slice of his strong chest and all his throat on display, unobscured by proper layers and a necktie.
Moreover, there was a bed not far from her.
A bed he had likely come to make use of.
“Good evening,” she greeted him softly, uncertainly.
She didn’t know where they stood. It seemed as if so much had changed in the course of the day. And yet, he was still the same cold-eyed stranger who withheld the smiles and easy charm of the handsome duke who had courted her.
“You are well settled?” he asked.
She plucked at her dressing gown. “Yes.”
He stopped before her. “Everything is to your liking?”
The scent of him hit her, familiar and alluring. Musk and amber with a hint of pine. His jaw was freshly shaven, she noted, the ends of his mahogany hair damp. He must have bathed as well.
She swallowed against a rogue rush of yearning. “It is fine.”
He raised a brow. “You don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t feel as if it is mine,” she admitted, thinking it odd indeed that they should be having such an ordinary, if not mundane, conversation at this hour of the night.
“Make it yours,” he invited, his cool gaze sweeping over her face and lingering on her hair, which she had allowed her lady’s maid to keep unbound after her bath.
Not for him, she’d told herself.
But she wasn’t so sure of that now.
“Perhaps a change in wall coverings,” she ventured. “Or some new pictures.”
“Change it however you wish.”
