Aideen snuffled, and he gently shifted her from his shoulder, denying the possessive thrill as he noticed ruby marks on the curve of her neck and breast. She mumbled into the pillow, something about thighs, but he thinned his lips, forcing the smile away.
Warmth evaporated as he wrenched himself to stand.
Strewn on the floor were his breeches but his shirt had disappeared, and nude, he walked to their adjoining door.
Fleetingly, he recollected that moment of heady carnality when they’d been merged so very deeply. He’d lost his wits, groaned her name, and said he needed…
Needed what exactly?
Stepping through to his bedchamber, he closed the door behind him.
And turned the key.
Chapter Twelve
What can one expect from a pig but a grunt.
“Is everything to your satisfaction, dear? I hope you’re not unhappy?”
Aideen stabbed her liver-tinged sausage and wrinkled her nose.
Unhappy.
That was the understatement of 1815. No, she wasn’t unhappy. She was utterly fuming.
Five days ago, she may have answered Meghan differently. Indeed, she may have even simpered that she was stupendously ecstatic. Now she didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the wrongdoings of her husband. She severed her stringy bacon ruthlessly.
But for starters…
He never dined with her.
He was always out.
He’d spoken to her exactly once.
Bleary-eyed, she had awoken after the wedding night to a stern dictate about bolting her shutters at dusk.
Not being her sharpest at first light, she’d had no witty retorts or scowling reproofs. She’d simply gawked at him, as he’d stood there, all tidily dressed for the day in deepest black, with eyes as aloof and unblinking as a lizard’s.
She recognised such tactics – use dictates to undermine one’s foe. Or wife.
Onto other misconducts…
He’d not visited her bed again.
Deuced man, he’d even locked their adjoining door. A trifling endeavour, of course, as Uncle Seamus had gifted her with a lock-picking device, but it was the intention that mattered.
He ignored her.
And even if they did happen to pass in a hallway, he treated her as if an inanimate object. She’d tried to speak but he’d hurried on, feigned deafness or glared – sometimes all three. She had no wish to live in his pocket, but a “Good Morning, my duchess” might be appreciated once in a while.
He had a man following her.
“Meghan, have you noticed a young, well-built chap lurking around?”
Her mother-in-law helped herself to an extremely runny egg – even the white dashed around.
“Oh, you’ll get used to that. Alex has had a guard trailing me for years. I pretend not to notice the poor fellow, but I often wish to invite him in for tea, especially when it’s raining.”
