But it was a start.
“I look forward to doing this as often as possible,” Rafe said, licking and nipping his way down her throat to her decolletage. “We seem rather compatible, you and I, and there is something to be said for physical compatibility.” She trembled when his tongue dipped into the valley between her breasts. “This, I have found, can be a better foundation than anything emotional.” She arched into his ministrations, her ripe nipples peaking the thin fabric of her night clothes. His mouth watered from the desire to taste them. “How wet you are for me…how hard I am for you…? Those are more necessary to any attachment than false words of affection. Of the lie of love.”
Victoria froze beneath him so thoroughly that she even stopped breathing.
He lifted his head to discover her wide, disbelieving eyes looking down at him.
“What?” she whispered.
Rafe cocked his head. “I was trying to offer you a compliment.”
“By saying you are grateful there are no emotions between us?” The slight rise in her tone should have warned Rafe that he’d made an unfortunate misstep.
“Well, no. The compliment was in the fact that I find you so enticing…that we have physical attraction and compatibility. That is more than a great many couples in our situation possess. The truth is that this was not a love match.” Though nothing he said was a lie, it all seemed to increase the shadows in her hazel eyes. “I am incapable of love, Victoria. I do not believe in the emotion. I have never experienced it, nor do I plan to.”
Rafe had, rather unfortunately, misjudged his bride’s sensibilities. Used to speaking with more worldly bedmates, he’d made a grave mistake.
Victoria displayed a surprising amount of rage-induced strength and shoved against him with all her might. He was sent, rather gracelessly, tumbling off the bed with one leg caught up in the air, tangled in the bedding. His back and shoulders thudded heavily to the floor. He was dazed from the unexpected change in his position, so he hadn’t yet reacted by the time Victoria peered over the edge of the bed while clutching the faded coverlet to her chest.
“Leave!” she snarled. Otherworldly flames of fury danced in her irises, which had so recently been hazy with desire. The stark contrast was stunning. “If you have no notion of how insulting your words were, then I do not know what to do with you. You are beyond help. Beyond redemption. I may not be as experienced as you are, but evenIknow that lasting relationships cannot be built upon physicality, alone; they cannot survive if two people do not strive for more. Your assertion that you do not believe in deeper emotions—that you cannot feel them and will not even try—why, that is perhaps one of the most damaging revelations of the day. Andthatis saying something.” Rafe was struck silent by the vehemence of her words, the raw pain dripping from every syllable. This was certainly not the response he’d anticipated. “Perhaps this marriage was a mistake.”
Catching his breath, Rafe clambered to his feet. “You misunderstand—”
“I think I understand perfectly well. Despite what you believe, I am not naïve enough to have ever assumed that ours was a love match, so do not insult me by trying to explain that it was not. If I hadn’t been certain of it before today, then your obvious need for funds has now made that abundantly clear.And you do not need to insult me further by telling me to my face that there is nothing emotional between us, and that there never would be.” Rafe tried to shake his head in denial, but stopped. That hadn’t been what he meant, but he could, begrudgingly, see how it might be interpreted that way. He liked her well enough; he was attracted to her, but he had already lied to her far more than he should have. He’d thought it would be a kindness to both confess to his undeniable attraction to her and to let her know that she should not hold out hope for love from him. He would care for her, see to her needs, but wasn’t it cruel to allow her to hold out hope for more?
Perhaps his timing hadn’t been the most fortuitous, but none of it had been a lie.
He’d never felt love, and he never planned on feeling it.
He refused to allow such a destructive emotion into his soul. Anything that could turn a man into a hateful, abusive father who cursed his son and heir was not something he wanted to ever give himself over to.
“And what about me?” Victoria added. “Don’t you think I would rather spend my life with someone who appreciates me for more than what he would earn from tying himself to me? I suppose that foolishness lies with me, because I was blind enough to think that we might at the very least have a foundation of friendship between us. Now I can see it was all a ruse. I gave up on the fantasy of marriage for true love a long time ago but thank you for reminding me of that. You have your money and your wife. You have shattered any illusions I might have had about forming an amiable marriage upon a foundation of fondness, and you might as well leave right this moment because you are certainly not welcome in my bed.”
Rafe wanted so badly to have his chance to rail right back at her, but how could he when she was right? How could he fight the truth? He’d lured her in with contrived friendship, marriedher for her money, and had always planned on continuing life as normal once he and his wards were on more stable ground. She had been treated as a means to an end, and he’d insulted her horribly by insinuating that there was nothing sacred about their union—a union barely more than twenty-four hours old.
He shoved his hands through his hair and, with a growl, he stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. A haze of frustration clouded his vision. He was frustrated with Victoria for her reaction—even if it might be a little bit justified. He was frustrated with himself for his idiocy. He was frustrated with his lot in life that this was what he’d become.
His furious pacing froze mid-step when a thin wail floated down from the floor above.
Heart sinking, he threw on a pair of breeches and lashed on his dressing robe before stepping out into the hall.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning,Rafe felt as if he’d been trampled by a horse. Exhaustion wrought havoc upon his visage; dark circles sat beneath his eyes, and he could have so very easily slept the day away.
Just a week ago, he likely would have done just that.
Now, however, he had an irate wife upon his hands. The fumes of her fury lingered in the air around him, clinging to him with all the unpleasant, cloying stench of smoke. His normally glib and gilded manners had fled him last night along with the blood from his brain and left him in a sorry state, to be sure. To make matters worse, he could hear Alice’s admonishments bouncing around inside his skull as if she were alive and well in the room right there with him to reiterate repeatedly what a perfect bastard he was. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. While he’d much rather have hidden away in his darkened rooms for the better part of the day, the echoes of his sister’s voice prodded him awake and out of bed like a hundred furious wasps.
As he dressed, his ears perked for any sound from Victoria’s chamber, but none came. She was either already away and belowstairs, or she was still asleep. He would find out soon enough. Inhaling a bracing breath, he left his chambers and descended to the main floor…only to find not a single sign of his wife.
Rafe poked his head into every room—even the ones occupied only by dust and the remaining pieces of sheet-covered furniture not decent enough to sell—and went so far as to duck down to the basement kitchens. The maids had blinked owlishly at his unexpected arrival, and he’d beat a hasty retreat with a muttered apology when his appearance had startled Mrs. West into dropping a freshly washed cast-iron pot with an unholy clang.
He made his way back up the stairs, continuing upwards toward the bedchambers and, on a whim, he decided to check the family parlor. The door was ajar enough where he could see inside without being immediately detected, and what he saw caused him to blink several times to be sure that the scene before him was real.
There, Victoria sat on the floor in the center of the room, her skirts a pool of cerulean and cream stripes around her. Faith was asleep in her arms, a silent bundle of white muslin and pale pink flesh, as Victoria asked Dominic, “What about your left-flanking cavalry technique?” Dom sat back on his heels and eyed the array of tin soldiers spread out before him. “The Americans will win, regardless,” she teased lightly.
“My soldiers will win!” Dominic argued as he gestured vehemently toward his red-coated toys to indicate they would prevail against the blue. “No one can best the British military!”
