“Will this be a common occurrence?” she demanded flatly.
“As I see fit,” he murmured. “Or if you do.”
She laughed at that, and he might have enjoyed the sound if it weren’t so full of condemnation. “I can assure you, I won’t.”
He was growing more curious about their conversation with each passing moment. “Does that mean you didn’t experience the ‘little death’ when your lover was thrusting inside of you?”
For someone who was no longer a virgin, she blushed like an innocent schoolgirl. “That is none of your business.”
“It is now,” he countered smoothly. “I need to know the sort of competition that came before me. Did he make you orgasm so hard that it took your breath and sent you reaching for the stars? Or was it over as quickly as it began? If so, I pity you, but I shall make it my goal to ensure you are thoroughly satisfied in our bedchamber.”
By the time he was through speaking, her mouth was gaping open, as if she had been insulted in the worst possible way. For Benjamin, it told him everything he needed to know. She might have had sex, but she hadn’t been properly seduced. The groom she was supposed to have lain with must not have been as experienced as she might have wanted to claim if what he was saying caused this much confusion.
“You will have to drag me to your bed kicking and screaming if you are going to speak to me in such a lewd manner!”
This time, he was the one who laughed. “Sweetheart, you will bebeggingto slip under my covers when you know what I can do with my cock. And my tongue.”
Catherine yearned toreach across the coach and slap the smug grin from the baron’s face.
And yet…
Something enticing and entirely dark began to flow through her veins. Did she actuallywantthe wicked things he was promising? It was ridiculous. She was not some wanton whore who slept with every man she encountered. She had ridden David because of her defiance toward her parents’ rules and society’s strictures, determined to show them all that she was more than just the Duke of Lancaster’s daughter. She was Lady Catherine Cecil, someone with feelings and emotions, but more importantly, her ownidentity.
A strange, pulsing sensation thrummed between her legs, something that she hadn’t felt but only briefly before when she had been kissing David in the hayloft of her father’s estate. However, it paled in comparison to the desire that abruptly flared inside of her when she was listening to the baron’s coarse words. He was vulgar in the extreme, but she found it strangely… erotic.
He would never know that, though.
Rather than reply to him and prove that her voice was slightly breathless, she turned the subject to another matter that made her feel emotions that were completely opposite than what Baron Fontaine evoked. Since it was obvious he wasn’t willing to let her sleep, she decided that a bit of plotting would help to pass the time. “What are your thoughts on Mrs. Dove-Lyon?”
He visibly clenched his jaw and the action sent another thrill shooting through her. “If you want me to be honest, I should like to see her walls crumble in around her.”
Catherine’s pulse skipped a beat. “You will be glad to know I’m of a like mind.” She smiled. “It seems we have something in common after all, my lord.” She leaned forward slightly. “If you are willing to discuss a proposition, I have an idea to enact our revenge.”
She thought she saw a spark of something devilish flash in his eyes before it was quickly banked. “Like what?” he asked blandly, but she could sense the tension sizzling just beneath the surface.
“If our union collapsed, her prowess as a matchmaker would certainly be in question. And since it is her true livelihood, that around which everything else seems to circulate, I say we show the patrons of England that not every match the Black Widow makes is a success.”
He folded his arms across his midsection, but she was glad to see that he wasn’t immediately discounting her suggestion out of hand. “It is a sound idea, but it would take some time to make our disagreements toward one another believable. As a newly married couple, it would be expected that we shall have some rough patches along the way while we are growing used to one another.”
She sat back against the squabs and considered his argument. It was a sound one, to be sure. “You are right about that.” As she pondered what he had said, silence surrounded them, but he soon spoke up and offered a solution.
“When is the babe due to arrive?”
She thought to when she had discovered she had missed her courses, combined with what the physician had told her. “I should say another four to five months.”
The baron stroked his chin and she found her focus abruptly riveted on his well-shaped hands. She imagined that instead of his face, they were sliding up the inside of her leg and suddenly, the urgent pulsing had returned. She clenched her legs together to ease the ache.
“What if I claimed I didn’t know about the child?” he suggested. Catherine instantly perked up. “I don’t recall anything in the marriage contract that spoke of your current condition. It was just mutually agreed upon that we would be discreet about the matter. But if I spoke up and said I was a cuckold, that Mrs. Dove-Lyon deceived me…”
Catherine gasped. “It would surely cause other men to give her a wide berth and reconsider marriage to another lady for fear they would suffer the same consequences.” She tapped a finger against her lips. “And four or five months should be long enough for society to know the truth because no one would believe I gave birth so prematurely.” She frowned. “The only problem is that if our confession were to be questioned by the lady herself. She might claim she has evidence that we were intimate before our wedding; therefore, that is why we married in haste.”
“I would deny it, of course, and I have acquaintances and loyal servants who would vouch for me since I could always be counted on to be at the gaming tables every night and sleeping off a drinking binge every day.”
For the first time since she had walked downstairs to meet her fate, Catherine felt the stirrings of something exhilarating sliding into her soul.
This could be the beginning of a beautiful union, indeed.
Chapter Four
