“Imogene, there will be no intimacy between us. I do not love you.”
“But I am your wife.” She nearly stomped her foot on the words.
“And I made myself clear when I agreed to marry what type of marriage we would have.”
“That is so unfair. Why should I be stuck in a loveless marriage without the benefits of intimacy?”
“Then perhaps you should have given your decision more consideration.”
“I only went along because it was you that I wanted.”
“Me? You did not even know me until we were introduced a sennight ago.”
She turned away from him while wrapping one of her dark curls about a finger. “I have known who you are for a very long time, Julian.”
“We had never met.” Did his wife possess a faulty memory?
“I used to watch you in London. I hoped that you would notice me, but you never did.”
He had no recollection.
“I tried to gain your attention so many times, but you looked right through me.”
“I am sorry for that.”
“I feared that you would settle on a wife before we ever met.”
“I had no intention of ever marrying.” She did not need to know about Cait, or that his heart belonged to another.
She turned and stared up at him. “All men intend to marry one day,” she insisted.
“Not I.” Until he had met Cait, Julian assumed it was likely that he would die a bachelor.
She stared at him for a moment as if the thought had never occurred to her and then she smiled. “Some plans change. Now we're wed. And I want us to have a real marriage.”
“That we will never have.”
“But we must!”
Why was it so important?
“I did all of this for us,” she cried.
“You did what?”
“Everything!” she cried and threw out her arms. “I allowed your brother to seduce me. It was easy enough and I played the part of the type of woman he liked to ruin. And I kept letting him seduce me until I was with child.”
A chill swept down his spine when she laughed. Was his wife bordering on madness?
“Your brother was so foolish. All the while that he was seducing me and finding places for us to be alone so that he could have his way, he whispered words of love in my ear and told me how often he needed me and thought of me. I knew it was all a lie. He had done it to so many women before me. But I lied to him as well. I made him think he was the only man I ever wanted. Then, when I was finally with child, he refused to marry me, which I knew that he would. I do not know what I would have done had he decided to be honorable for a change.”
All Julian could do was stare at her. “It had been your intention to get with child?”
“I decided to act after hearing an argument between your father and Grayson.”
Julian stared at his new bride. “What argument?”
“Your father said that if Grayson did not marry soon and get his wife with child that he would arrange a marriage for him. Your father was quite insistent that the heir come from the eldest and not the wastrel son Julian.”
