“Oh, hello, Clio,” he said, smiling at her. “I didn’t realize you were?—”
“We’ve already done all that,” Phoebe said, rising to accept the kiss on the cheek he offered. “We’re all fine. You can go; Clio and I will stay.”
Aaron reached up briefly to touch his wife’s cheek, and he wore such an expression of tenderness that Clio looked away, feeling like a voyeur.
Phoebe and Aaron loved one another so much. Clio was pleased for them, of course. She wanted her brother to be happy.
But when she contrasted that with her own recent marriage, and the discomfort of feeling like a rabbit hiding from a fox in her own house …
Well, it was hard not to be maudlin about it.
“I’ll be home for supper, so if you’re still here, Clio, I’ll see you then,” Aaron said, placing his hat on his head, then stealing one last kiss from his wife. “If not, Phoebe and I shall have a proper dinner for you and your husband soon, yes?”
He left before she could respond. Clio rolled her eyes. She didn’t know if it was because he was an admiral or because he was a duke, but the man had an annoying habit of assuming people would go along with his plans.
And the worst part of all was that she loved him anyway.
“So,” Phoebe said, eyes gleaming with interest as she returned to the settee. “Tell me everything. How is your honeymoon?”
Clio suspected her smile looked more like a grimace. She’d expected this, of course, but it didn’t make matters any less awkward.
“It’s fine,” she said shortly, not really believing that this would put matters to bed.
Phoebe’s brows rose. “Fine,” she repeated in an extremely dubious tone. “So, you are … enjoying yourself, then?”
“I’m reading a great deal,” Clio supplied as cheerfully as she could manage.
“Reading,” Phoebe echoed, as if Clio had said she’d been doing a great deal of murder. “You’ve been recently married. To a manwho looks like that. To a man who looksat youlike that. And you’ve been …” Her pause went on for so long that it was outright damning. “Reading.”
Clio scowled.
“Not all of us can go as wobbly as blancmange when we are in our husbands’ presence, thank you very much,” she said, trying to sound arch and dismissive rather than wounded. “You know what preceded our marriage. It was not precisely a love match.”
“Perhaps,” Phoebe said, and Clio wanted to protest that there was noperhapsabout it, but she knew she had to pick her battles. “But the two of you were caught in—if I say it outright, will you blush yourself to death?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. In acompromising position.” Phoebe looked disgusted with herself for the euphemism. “You can hardly try to convince me that there’s no attraction between you.”
Clio had tried such a thing, and it hadn’t worked.
Besides, she could do with some advice.
“He did mention … duties when we married,” she said.
Phoebe’s eyes lit up. “Yes, excellent. That’s what they call it when they want to do it but cannot admit that they want to do it, because they are men and men are stupid,” she said gleefully.
Clio agreed with about seventy percent of this, but it was the remaining portion that troubled her.
“Perhaps,” she said, mimicking Phoebe’s earlier tone. “But he has not yet … paid me a visit.”
“Have you tried going to him?” Phoebe supplied with so little hesitation that Clio justknewshe was speaking from experience. Given that Phoebe was married to Clio’s brother, she declined to reflect on this further.
“No, of course I haven’t! Because,” she continued firmly before Phoebe could argue, “the man alreadymarried meunder duress. What am I supposed to do, just wait for him in his bed with my dress rucked up?”
“Well …” Phoebe looked strongly in favor of the idea.
“No! That was a rhetorical question!”
