Amelia pursed her lips. “She is much younger than you are, isn’t she?”
“Seventeen this year,” he grunted, and took a long, bracing sip of red wine.
Amelia let out her breath. “Will you tell me nothing else about her?”
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, still tense, still guarded, though he had to admit it was likely unfair.
Her brow knitted, and she set her fork down against the side of the plate and folded her arms. “Great God, Hugh, you are difficult. I have no idea what you want from me.”
He arched a brow. Deflection. He needed deflection. “Don’t you?” he drawled, taking a page from Robert’s book. The Duke of Roseford used passion as a weapon, and it seemed to work for him. “Even after last night and today, you don’t know?”
He got the response he desired. For a moment Amelia’s gaze widened and her cheeks grew pink. She shifted in her chair and glanced around, as if to be sure that the other patrons in the room hadn’t heard his wicked words. He thought perhaps he had succeeded in distracting her, but then her gaze narrowed. Refocused.
He saw the steel in her return, the strength that she somehow had running through her veins. He admired it, in truth. Admired her singular dedication, her loyalty, the way her jaw set and she kept going forward even when she was deterred.
“Thatpart of what we share is…wonderful. I couldn’t have expected I would—” She cut herself off and took a few breaths to regain her composure. Her bright gaze lifted to his again, and she said, “But it is only one part of what one would call a marriage. You put up walls between us and you will not take them down.”
He tilted his head. “I disagree.”
“You disagree—does that end the subject?” she asked.
Hugh wanted to snap out the affirmative and close the topic at that. He did not share with people, not unless he knew and trusted them completely. Hell, he hardly shared with those he did know and trust to that level. And this woman, she wanted more.
His wife wanted more. He scowled.
“I am simply stating my opinion,” he grumbled.
“This isn’t a matter of opinion, but fact,” she insisted. “Today in the carriage, for example. We spent an hour connecting on a purely physical level, yes. But the moment that was over, you focused on your paperwork the rest of the ride. I read my book. We might as well have been strangers in a post coach. So what in the world do you want from me, Hugh?”
He pressed his lips together. “I wantyou. Isn’t that enough?”
He could see the frustration on her face. “Not for a lifetime, I don’t think. Are you saying you want a purely physical connection until you are bored with it?”
“Bored with it,” he repeated, wrinkling his brow at the thought. Right now he could not picture becoming bored with exploring her body and all the ways to make her shudder and moan and scream.
She shook her head. “Of course you will become bored with it. All men do, eventually. I’m a novelty to you at present, nothing more. And when that happens, then what? Nothing at all? Do you expect we will lead separate lives where I raise your heirs and spares and we pass each other in the hallways like ghosts?”
He frowned at the description. That was not what he wanted, no. His friends had so much more, and he’d seen the value of it. But how could he get there from the beginning they’d made?
Overcoming the walls he built, the very ones he was trying to deny to her, was not easy.
“Please, I just want to know alittleabout your life,” she pressed, and her hand trembled as she reached out. She hesitated, her fingers hovering over his. Then she covered his hand for a brief moment before she snatched hers away. “I am not asking for the secrets of the kingdom.”
He took in a long breath. Shewasasking for just that in a way. The topic of Lizzie was one fraught with secrets and lies that affected Amelia and could bring down the already tenuous connection they’d begun to build.
And yet he couldn’t deny her. Not when she was looking at him with those wide, impossibly gray-blue eyes that spoke of peace and light. Things he’d almost forgotten in the cloud of the last decade.
Things that made him feel so very vulnerable as he said, “I love my sister very much. I raised Lizzie. She was only eight when our parents died.”
Amelia’s expression softened with both relief and empathy. “Yes, Diana said something about that.”
He tensed, longing to slam the door he had opened a fraction. “You spoke to her about me?”
She flinched at his snappish tone. “I-I needed to know a little, at least,” she whispered. “You would hardly speak to me at all at that point.”
That was fair. The first few days they’d been acquainted, he hadn’t spoken much. The situation was so complicated and dire that he hadn’t been able to find the right words. He could imagine how frustrating that must have been to her. How frightening to think of a life with a stranger who stole her future and offered her no glimpse of himself.
He’d played the whole situation very wrong, he could see that now that he knew her better. Only he still hardly knew her at all.
