“I shouldn’t think that would concern you,” she couldn’t help retorting. “You displease me regularly.”
He gave her a searing look. “I thought I pleased you well, wife.”
He knew he did, the callous devil. But he also knew that wasn’t what she was speaking about.
New warmth rose within her, and she had to look away from his knowing gaze, averting her eyes to the couples waltzing around them instead. “There is more to a marriage than what happens in the bedroom.”
His jaw hardened. “In an ordinary marriage, perhaps, but we both have come to the agreement that this is no ordinary union, have we not?”
“If we have, then why are you so concerned about whether I dance with the Duke of Kingham?”
“Because I’ll not be cuckolded, damn you.”
His low words were pointed, sinking into her heart. “I have been loyal to you.”
He bit out a bitter laugh. “If that is what you would like to call it, my dear.”
“When do you think I am taking lovers?” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down so that no one else could overhear them sparring. “I’ve been spending every day with both of our mothers and your sister.”
It would do no good for tongues to wag. Not that she particularly cared one way or the other. But she had grown exceedingly fond of both the dowager and Lady Verity. She had no wish to cause undue speculation or scandal that would harm either of them.
“I don’t trust King with you,” he bit out. “All that bastard would require is five minutes in a moonlit garden, and he would have any woman in this room on her knees.”
“Not me.”
“Stay away from him.”
“He is your friend,” she pointed out, frustrated. “If he is such an irascible scoundrel, it is a wonder you keep company with him.”
“All my friends are scoundrels, madam,” he said. “Including me.”
“That I can well believe,” she snapped, thinking of the wicked house party she had attended and the depravities she had seen and heard whispers about.
How she hated the reminder that her husband was a rake. Whilst she chided him for his misplaced jealousy, she couldn’t tamp down her own. All the women he had known before her, whose lips he had kissed, whose beds he had shared. How she resented them for having more of him than he was willing to give her.
They spun about yet again, holding their tongues, having apparently reached a stalemate. Sybil forced her stare over her husband’s shoulder, pinning it to the glittering chandelier overhead, trying not to cry. The ball was such a crowning success, and yet her marriage was an abject failure.
She had married a man who would never return her love.
The waltz came to an end, and with another half bow and dejected curtsy, they parted ways, every bit as unhappy as they had been when the music had first begun.
Lady Verity Saunders hated balls.
She hated them because they reminded her of Leo. Lord Leopold Douglas, the second son of the Duke of Morgan, with his golden hair and sky-blue eyes and the only lips she’d ever kissed. With the heart that was the other half of hers.
Balls reminded her of everything she had lost, of the future she’d once dreamed of that could never be hers. They reminded her of the gentle, sweet, funny young man who had died ten years ago before they could wed. And each time she was reminded of him, her heart ached as if it had been torn asunder anew.
Whoever had first opined that time could heal all wounds had been wrong. Time had not healed hers. It never would. That was why she was presently hiding in a curtained alcove overlooking the crush that had invaded her brother’s ballroom in honor of his new duchess.
Because she’d done her duty.
She had pinned a smile to her lips.
She had danced.
She had made certain the champagne was properly kept cold, that the flowers were fresh, that the musicians knew which songs to play and when they must do so. She had fretted over the details which had been entrusted to her. Supper was some two hours away, and she needed the reprieve from her obligations.
She needed to be alone.
