Rosalinde shrugged. “Perhaps I am just lamenting the loss of a dear sister when you wed in—God’s teeth—just days now!”
She had meant Celia to laugh at that statement, but she didn’t. Celia folded her arms as if irritated.
“Please don’t pretend the truth away or try to distract me. I want to know what it is your heart, Rosalinde.”
Rosalinde sighed. “I suppose I feel…guilty.”
“Guilty?” Celia edged closer. “Why?”
“I ran away to marry a man I knew grandfather would despise,” she said. “And that rebellion led to his threats to you, to his devil’s bargain that you must marry a title for us to find out the truth about our father. If I had been good, if I had stayed home, if I had—”
Celia lifted a hand. “Stop. There are many things that are regrettable about your marriage, Rosalinde. Watching your heart break when it became clear Martin had only held an interest in money and connection was horrible. But you can’t blame yourself for Grandfather’s actions. He wanted me to marry a man of rank and he would have wanted that whether you turned away from his path for you or not. Your marriage may have pushed him to the timing of his threats toward me, but I have no doubt he would have made them no matter what.”
“Still, it could have beenmemaking this sacrifice rather than you,” Rosalinde said. “After all, it is clear you don’t care for Stenfax.”
Celia bent her head. “No,” she said slowly. “I have tried, I truly have. After all, he is handsome and intelligent and kind enough. Most women would give their arm to have him. And yet when I look at him, I feel nothing.”
Rosalinde shivered. “Oh, dear.”
“But one can live in a loveless union, can’t one?” Celia asked, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “People do it every day. Stenfax and I will surely find some common ground along the way, develop a friendship and a partnership when it comes to children.”
Rosalinde bit her lip. “And what will you do about making those children?”
“You’ve explained to me already about the marital bed,” Celia said, and her face twisted, as if the thought of sex was unpleasant. “I’ll bear it.”
“You should experience more than just that,” Rosalinde declared, her mind turning to Gray and his searing touch, his ability to awaken her body with just an expression or a glancing touch. “Celia, the moments shared between a man and a woman should be passionate and tender. You should feel heights of pleasure and then a connection afterward that is unlike any you’ve felt before.”
Celia’s eyes narrowed and she said, “That is a far different story than the perfunctory touches you described to me weeks ago.”
Rosalinde gasped. She’d been so caught up in her worry for her sister, she hadn’t thought through what her words would reveal. Now Celia stared at her.
“Rosalinde,” her sister said slowly. “What has suddenly made you so passionate about the marital bed?”
“Nothing,” Rosalinde lied. She moved to get up, but Celia caught her wrist and held her in place.
“You told me that there was little pleasure with Martin,” Celia said. “You said that you wished you could have experienced something more like what you’ve just described. So what changed between then and now? What makes your eyes light up when you describe what a woman should experience with a man?”
Rosalinde sucked in her breath. Celia was too clever to be distracted from this line of questioning now that she had gotten the scent of Rosalinde’s lies. The truthwouldcome out.
And perhaps it was best that it did at last. Despite being two years younger, Celia had always been the more rational of the sisters. She could help Rosalinde in the tangle she had created for herself. But only if Rosalinde could manage to say the words that now stuck in her throat.
“I didn’t know who he was when I met him,” she squeaked out.
Celia shook her head. “Who?”
“And he drew me in, made me want…made me want things I had long ago declared would never be mine.”
“Who?” her sister repeated, this time more strenuously.
“Gray,” Rosalinde whispered. “Grayson.”
The blood drained from Celia’s face as recognition dawned. “Grayson?”
Rosalinde nodded slowly. “We were trapped in the same inn the night of the storm, my room was damaged and there was no choice…I stayed with him. Just one night, just a stolen night.”
Celia jumped to her feet and stared. “You shared a night withGrayson Danford. My fiancé’s younger brother, the man driven to find any reason to have me ousted from Stenfax’s life?”
“I didn’t know it was him,” Rosalinde reminded her. “And then I got here. We were both shocked, especially since I knew by then that he had a desire to break you apart from Stenfax.”
