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This time she’d be wise. Even if it tore her heart in two.

Griff watched his wife sweep into the room ahead of him and march straight to the dressing room. The terror gripping him was too painful for words. Rosalind had been hiding things from him.

From the day they’d married, she’d always been truthful with him, never gone behind his back. That she’d do so now only increased his desperate fear that he was losing her. Ever since she’d begun to obsess about having a child, he’d worried that she blamed him for her inability to conceive. And why was it so important to her anyway? Why wasn’t he enough for her?

He’d lost her affections, and he didn’t even know how or why.

Oh, she still came to his bed with all the eagerness she’d shown before. But it was her behavior outside the bedchamber that worried him—her constant air of distraction, her determination to marry Juliet off, her fixation with having a child. He often found her staring at nothing. And when he asked what was wrong, she wouldn’t tell him. They used to share everything. Now they shared only a bed. He missed the way it was before.

He entered the dressing room to find her removing gowns from hangers and folding them neatly. “Rosalind,” he said, coming up behind her, “what’s this all about?”

She glanced up at him with a false smile. “What do you mean? You said we were going back to London.”

“That’s not—Why would you ask Juliet to pretend to be sick so you could stay here longer?”

She concentrated on her folding. “You’ll think it’s silly.”

God, he hoped so. He could handle silly. “Try me.”

“I thought perhaps the country air would do me good. Help me conceive, you know? I’ve long wondered if it’s not that ghastly London air that’s hindering me.”

Relief coursed through him for the briefest moment. Then reality sank in. “If that’s the case, why haven’t you ever asked me to take you home to Swan Park, or even the chateau? We needn’t spend all our time in the city.”

“I wouldn’t want to drag you from your work,” she said evenly. “Besides, I like being in town. But after we came here…well, I merely thought that staying awhile might be invigorating.”

“Invigorating.”

“Yes.” She shot him a hesitant smile. “And you must admit we’ve had a fine time together without you having to dash off to Knighton Trading all the time.”

He wanted to believe her. God, how he wanted to believe her. But her explanations simply didn’t ring true. Rosalind hated the country. She’d always thrived on activity and bustle and the excitement of the city.

“Yes, but what’s so special about Charnwood?” he persisted. “The master is never around, and the servants can’t heat water to save their lives…I can’t imagine why you’d find Charnwood any more ‘invigorating’ than your own home. And if that’s all it was, why not tell me you wanted to stay, instead of engineering some nonsense with Juliet? I would gladly have done whatever you wanted.”

“That’s not true. You would have insisted you had too much work to do to remain out here.”

He supposed he couldn’t refute that. Yet for her to go so far as to have her sister play sick…“So that’s all there was to it. You wanted to enjoy the country air.”

“Of course.”

“And you weren’t concerned that being here put Juliet in the path of Templemore, whose own brother kidnapped her.”

“He isn’t like his brother,” she said hotly. Too hotly. “He’s a very nice man. Juliet would be hard-pressed to find a better suitor.”

Now she was championing Templemore for Juliet. His eyes narrowed. “So I was right then. That’s where she’s been sneaking off to all this time.”

“She hasn’t been sneaking off anywhere,” Rosalind snapped. “If you don’t believe me, ask Polly. Juliet has been lolling about in her room, that’s all.”

“Has he been ‘lolling about’ with her? All those times he missed meals and disappeared God knows where—”

“For pity’s sake, Griff, he wasn’t with her. I’m sure that most of the time he was out at that cottage of his. I swear you’re the most suspicious man in creation.”

He went still. “What ‘cottage of his’? I never heard him mention any cottage.”

She glanced up at him, startled. The change that came over her face made his heart drop into his stomach. She knew something he wasn’t supposed to know. Regarding Templemore and a secret cottage.

Dropping her head, she folded a chemise into the smallest square he’d ever seen. “I…I…the servants mentioned it once. He goes out there to shoot, I believe.”

“But you haven’t seen it yourself or anything.”