Page 88 of Kathryn

The throbbing in his temples intensified. His body trembled with fury and some tiny corner of his mind still untouched by all-consuming rage suggested his reaction was excessive.

But for once, logic was the loser.

“Other people do not really matter to you, do they? Or, I should say, what other people value does not matter. Everything in life is just a lark and your role is to do whatever you want, to be as reckless, feckless, and selfish as strikes your fancy.”

Her eyes slowly widened. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me, but I will repeat myself regardless. I said everything is a lark to you. Or at least everything that does not bore you. You trifle with me for sport, disturbing the order I have already told you is necessary to—”

“You think my life is a lark?” She set aside her tambour with what seemed like excessive care. “You think I enjoy being the wife of a man who cannot wait to put me aside? Who can hardly bear to be in my presence and who has not taken even five minutes to tell me what he does all day, every day. A man who refuses to introduce me to my own tenants and neighbors.” She stood and strode toward him until she was close enough that he could feel the heat of her body.

The scent of lavender and warm female invaded his nostrils and began laying waste to his wits like a scythe through ripe wheat. Gerrit swallowed down the blast of lust her familiar fragrance elicited and forced himself to recall what she had just said. “There is no point introducing—”

“Do not say that again,” she hissed in a remarkably menacing tone. She raised one of her hands and he thought she might slap him. Instead, she pointed a finger at him and then, shockingly, poked him in the chest. “You have already made it perfectly clear there is no point in giving me so much as an inch of space in your life.” Poke. “You do not need to tell me yet again that my only use to you is as a w-womb.” Poke. “Nor do you need to reiterate that I will soon be shunted off to one of your distant estates to live a solitary existence.” Poke. “Oh, and I must not forget about your generosity allowing me to take a lover from whatever rural backwater I get to live in once I have fulfilled my duty to you.” Poke.

Jealousy uncoiled in his belly like a startled asp at her last words, and Gerrit opened his mouth to say what, he did not know.

But she was not finished. “I am so unimportant to you that I don’t merit being told what it is you do all day or where it is you go” Poke. “You eat one meal with me on sufferance but leave me alone for the other two.” She gave a bitter laugh and poked him one last time before dropping her hand. “As I list everything out like this, I can see why you believe my life is a lark.” She pushed past him and strode toward the boards. “Let me address the catastrophe of these games I destroyed. Hmmm, let me see,” she said, tapping her chin with a finger in an exaggerated matter before reaching for a piece on the first board.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

She spun on him, her green eyes spitting sparks. “Unless you want to make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have, I advise you to hold your tongue, Your Grace.” And then she turned back around, leaving him standing there with his jaw hanging.

At first, it was her venomous glare and hostile words that stunned him into silence. Nobody had spoken to Gerrit in such a way since he’d been a boy at school.

But his shock at her ill-mannered command was nothing to what happened next.

Her hand was like a blur on the chessboard, move after move—white and black and white and black—until the first game fell to black.

She moved to the second board and once again played the game with flawless precision, the pieces flying across the board so quickly it was all Gerrit could do to keep up.

His jaw was all but scraping the floor by the time she finished the last board and then whirled on him. “Oh dear me! What have I done?” She slapped her hands over her cheeks in a mockery of surprise, her movements jerky with anger. “I have been thoughtless, careless, and brainless and have ruined it all.”

And then she whipped back toward the games and one by one put the pieces back.

“There,” she said, once she had finished. “They are back the way they were before I defiled them.”

Everything Gerrit had just witnessed convinced him that if he consulted his chess notebook—in which he’d scrupulously recorded his games for years—he would discover the pieces were in the exact same positions they’d been last night.

“How on earth did you do that?” he asked dazedly.

“What does it matter?” Her lovely features contorted into a sneer. “Do not fret, Your Grace. I will never, ever touch anything of yours again.” She swept his body with a scathing look, as if she included his person in her threat. “I will not do anything that is not my wifely duty.” She turned on her heel and stalked toward the door in a flurry of emerald silk skirts.

Gerrit had to sprint to get there before her. He blocked the door. “How did you do that?”

She crossed her arms and glowered. “Why do you care?”

“It was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen.” And, bizarrely, one of the most arousing.

Her eyes narrowed and then her exquisite features rearranged themselves into a mocking wide-eyed look that managed to be both vapid and vicious. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am that I have managed to do something that is not reckless, thoughtless, or selfish, Your Grace.” She uncrossed her arms, her green eyes blazing up at him. “Do not be alarmed; I will not allow it to go to my mostly empty head. I won’t expect anything more from you than you have already shown willing to give—which is nothing. I will do my duty and give you your heir and spare and then I will disappear from your life so you can return to your mistress and happy family.”

Gerrit blinked. “What?”

“Do not treat me like a fool,” she shouted.

“I am not treating you like a fool. I genuinely do not know what you are talking about,” he retorted icily.

“I know Miss Wilson is your lover and those three children are yours.”