Page 54 of Seducing the Marquess (Lords and Ladies in Love 1)

Eugenia shook her head. “I think not. I have heard one can have unusual dreams from the drug. The pain is not so bad now.” She eased back a bit and glanced up at him. “Tell me about your sisters.”

She shifted further, removing her lovely breast from his side, and he felt the loss immediately. “I have told you stories from my early years. You told me a bit about yours, but I know nothing of your sisters. I remember meeting Lady Withington and Lady Rochester at our wedding, but we really didn’t have time to converse.”

Devon rested his head against the back of the bed. “Lady Withington—Mary Ann—is two years my junior. Lady Rochester—Louise—is two years younger than her. Both have been married for a few years now and have children.”

“You have nieces and nephews?”

“Indeed. Louise is mother to two little girls and Mary Ann has four boys.”

“My goodness. I never knew that. You so seldom mention your family. And if I remember correctly, both of your sisters left the morning after our wedding, so I never had the opportunity to speak with them.” She paused. “Are you not close with them?”

“No. Not really. I spent the bulk of my youth away at school. Louise and Mary Ann were under their governess’s and tutor’s care. With my mother’s supervision, of course.”

“And your father?”

His father. He remembered the man as someone who sat behind a large desk, frowning at him as he peered through his spectacles to grill him on his studies. Each time he’d returned from school he would present himself to Father and sweat through the in

quisition. What was he studying? Was he keeping up his grades? Had he made proper friends? Who were these friends, and who were their families? And then when he returned home after university, the man instructed him to find an accommodating mistress and begin his search for a proper, well-connected bride.

No brothels for Lord Devon, nor his progeny. He’d sat through numerous lectures on the diseases one caught from common light-skirts. Father bragged about the fact that he’d had only four mistresses in his entire life.

Get yourself set up with an opera singer or well-known courtesan. Slake your lust on her, boy. Hold your wife in the highest regard, and visit her bed only when you wish to increase your nursery. They’re damn sensitive about things like that. Buy her jewels, pay her modiste bills, and give her a generous allowance. She will be grateful, and you will have many years of a pleasant marriage.

Stay away from the gaming hells and brothels. Lead a proper life, leave your title untouched by scandal. ‘Tis the way it has always been for the Devons, and I expect you to uphold that legacy and pass it to your own son unsullied.

Once, in a moment of rebellion, Devon had wanted to ask what his mother thought of his pater’s four mistresses. But since he’d always been anxious to leave his father’s presence once the questioning was over, he’d held his tongue. Mother had always seemed content, so he had to conclude she felt their arrangement acceptable.

He realized Eugenia watched him with a slight frown as he ruminated. “So sorry, my dear, I am afraid I was woolgathering.”

“I can see that.” Her soft smile brought him back from his wanderings and to his presence in her bed.

“My father was a hard man. Strict. Full of rules that one never questioned. When I returned home during school breaks I was subjected to extensive questioning on my life at school.” He shook his head at the memories. “He even visited me several times over the years and spoke with my tutors and professors. Yet, for all his hardness, I always knew he loved me, and wanted only the best for me.

“Some of my friends had fathers of the same ilk, but I respected Father and allowed for his experience in life and sage advice, while my schoolmates decided to take the opposite path.”

“You were ever the proper son?” Her eyes glowed with mirth.

He grinned at her. “You make it sound as though there was something unpleasant about that.”

“No. I would be quite pleased if a son of ours respected you the way you did your father. However, I would like to think he would not consider visits home to be inquisitions.”

She drew small circles on the counterpane with one slender fingertip. “Our upbringings were not dissimilar. My mother was somewhat like that.” Eugenia paused. “Not with the inquisitions, of course, since I was never out of her sight, so there was very little to inquire about. Well, that’s not actually true, since I spent a great deal of time with my governess and tutors. But she oversaw everything and made sure I was learning my lessons on how to be a proper lady.” She ducked her head and lowered her voice. “A few of her lessons were imparted with some vigor, I am afraid.”

The conversation had certainly gone in a direction to dim his desire for the lovely, warm woman at his side. Thinking of his father, and the years of admonishment about his role as a proper and respectful husband, had certainly cooled his ardor.

“So here we are—a proper husband and a proper wife.”

The muscles in his stomach clenched at the sudden flush of red on Eugenia’s cheeks. All the anxiety and questions about the change in her behavior being due to a lover washed over him like a rain-swollen creek. Although everything inside him screamed his Eugenia would not do that, he was hard-pressed to consider any other explanation for her change in dress and behavior. On the other hand, perhaps her brother was correct, and Eugenia was merely coming into herself after being out from under her mother’s strictures.

Clinging to that thought, but still torn, he sighed, all the warmth and tenderness he’d been feeling swept away. “I will leave you now, my dear. I fear I have imposed upon your rest.” Before he could rethink his intentions, he slid from the bed, helped her to lie flat, kissed her on the forehead, and left the room, softly closing the door between them.

…

What had happened? Eugenia stared at the space Devon had occupied until a few seconds ago. They’d been having quite a pleasant conversation, then he’d called a halt and abruptly left. She sighed and closed her eyes. She touched the space he had vacated and already felt his absence, the coolness of the sheet.

His words floated through her mind. No doubt it had been his father who had imposed the idea on Devon that a wife was to be held in high regard and little else. Affection, certainly, seeing to her comfort, of course, respect, definitely, but nothing as messy as love or passion.

Nor had she questioned it until she’d read her book. Too tired to climb out of bed and flip through a few pages, she settled into a more comfortable position, and was soon fast asleep.