Jane sat in a low-backed chair beside the bedroom’s unlit fire, waiting for her husband and praying she could do what she must.

Meeting Hugh again cast her into such confusion. She’d missed him so much. She’d missed his presence in her bed. More, she’d missed his company. His sly humor, and sweet teasing, and kind understanding.

When she first saw him today, she’d had a job concealing her dismay. He looked ill, pale and strained. The deep lines running from his nose to his mouth added a forbidding sternness to his features.

The urge rose to enfold him in her arms and tell him everything would be all right.

She was glad she’d resisted. After almost a month at the Beeches, she started to feel her life was her own. Years as her father’s nurse, six months as a grieving daughter, then the whirlwind of her marriage had left her fragmented and on edge. The estate’s quiet beauty knitted a few of the holes in her soul together.

Five minutes in her husband’s company, despite his uncharacteristic testiness, wrecked her artificial calm and hard-won contentment as if they had never existed. Proof of his power over her. Proof also that she couldn’t go back to playing his second-best bride. It would annihilate her. Condemning herself to a future where the man she loved was a few feet away while endlessly out of reach would be purgatory.

A soft knock on the door indicated Hugh was outside. She beat back a poignant memory of all those nights in Salisbury when he’d slept in her bed. “Come in,” she said in a shaky voice.

He opened the door. She’d feared he might be naked, but he kept his breeches on and his white shirt hung loose around his hips. His long, elegant feet were bare.

When he saw her in her corner, he frowned. “You’re dressed.”

Clearly he didn’t approve. She bolstered her courage and made herself stop pleating her skirts. If only she didn’t have to do this. But she owed him a child.

“I’m not wearing any drawers.” She hoped he didn’t hear how her voice squeaked.

“Very efficient.” This bitterness was new since she’d left him. He’d taken her desertion so badly, much worse than she’d ever expected.

He crossed the room and took her hands. She started at the contact, as she’d started on their wedding night.

She waited for this sardonic stranger to treat her roughly. When he’d arrived, he’d been in a foul mood. But when he drew her up to stand before him, he was gentle.

“You’re not even going to let your hair down?” he asked softly.

She stared into his unforgettable face. The eyelids lowered over his brown eyes in a way that was familiar from a hundred seductions. If he touched her as if he cared, when they both knew he didn’t, the travesty of what they did together would become unbearable.

“This is…this act is for you to get a child, Hugh.” Just as he no longer sounded like he had a grudge against the world, she sounded tremulous and unsure. Like a bride again.

He raised her hands and set a kiss on each set of knuckles. “Must it be just that?”

Longing swept through her like wildfire. His tenderness posed such a danger. This was how she’d tumbled into this impossible love in the first place. He acted like she was the only woman in the world when it was all lies.

“Yes, it must.” Stiffening, she tried to withdraw. “You’re not a cruel man, Hugh. Do what you must, then leave me to find what peace I can.”

He didn’t let her go. That muscle flickered in his cheek, although his voice remained steady. “Until next month, when we have to go through all this again. Give it up, Jane. Come back to me. You haven’t stopped wanting me. I’d wager on it.”

Yes, she wanted him. She loved him. He wasn’t the only one with a loyal heart, damn him. “Wanting isn’t enough, Hugh.”

“Make it enough.”

“No.”

His lips tightened, and the lines on his face deepened into furrows. “Then let’s get this over with.”

It was what she’d asked for, so his terse response shouldn’t make her flinch. She didn’t realize he meant to kiss her, until it was almost too late. She jerked her head, and his lips slid across her cheek. Even that clumsy kiss made every hair on her body stand up in charged response.

“No kissing,” she said indistinctly.

She waited for a protest, but he curved one hand around her neck and tilted her chin so he could nibble a trail down her throat. Despite everything, Jane couldn’t contain a whimper of pleasure.

“This…this isn’t necessary,” she forced out. “I’ll lie on the bed, and you can do what you have to.”

“Oh, no, my lovely wife,” he murmured against her skin. “That’s not how this plays out. If you’re so determined to put me to stud like a ram to a ewe, this is how it’s going to be.”

Fear rose to choke her, fear as crippling as the terror that had turned her to ice on their wedding night. Except as his lips and teeth teased her neck and ears, ice was the last thing she felt like. Already that throbbing weight set up in her belly, and her body softened in readiness.

She pulled away to see his face. “Hugh, you’re frightening me.”

Jane waited for the reliable consideration to kick in. Instead, ruthlessness hardened his features. “You’ll live.”

He caught her by the waist and whirled her around, until she stood behind the chair and he stood behind her. “What are you doing?”

“It’s my turn to give the orders.” With hard hands, he bent her over the back of the chair. He set one hand over the small of her back, pinning her in position. “Of late, you’ve got your own way. Put your hands flat on the seat.”

She obeyed. God forgive her, despite everything, a surge of wild excitement swept through her. “This is…odd,” she said, largely for the sake of her pride.

“This way you don’t have to see my face,” he said in a voice like needles. “That should suit you down to the ground.”

She swallowed a sob. He sounded like he hated her.

It wasn’t entirely comfortable bending over the padded chair. She leaned her weight forward onto the brocade seat. He must have guessed that she wouldn’t try to escape, because he stopped holding her down. She heard the rustle of his clothes, then he bundled her skirts up her legs. He’d often seen her naked, but she’d never felt as exposed as she did now, with her bare rump pointing at the ceiling.

He moved closer, and suddenly in spite of the strange position, so much that was familiar washed over her. The rich scent of his arousal. The unsteady rhythm of his breathing. His hard rod pressing between her legs in male demand.

When he leaned in and cupped her breasts, teasing the nipples through her muslin gown, she bit back a protest. In this position, her breasts tumbled into his hands as if designed for his touch.

She shivered under his bold caresses. “Hugh, this isn’t…”

“Shut up, Jane.” The hard, sucking kiss he placed on her neck would leave a mark. “And spread your legs.”

How could she deny him? He stroked her. Now both of them knew that for all her defiance, she was hot and ready. Unforgiving hands seized her hips, and his body went taut against her back.

She couldn’t restrain a yearning sob at the delay. Then a cry of satisfaction as he plunged deep inside her. With one powerful thrust, he filled her aching emptiness, and she clenched around him in helpless welcome.

He groaned against her ear, and his kiss on her neck this time expressed a longing to match hers. Even knowing that was only wishful thinking, she released another choked sob and bumped backward. Her wordless consent drew a low growl of satisfaction from him.

He began to move in and out, each time claiming more of what she’d tried to deny him. Soon, astonishingly soon, she began to quake with a climax that had her moaning in pleasure.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip and battled to keep some distance from him, even as every muscle quivered and tightened with rapture. She felt a great liquid surge from her womb, then Hugh thrust one last time and flooded her with every drop of his passionate heat.

Garson collapsed exhausted on Jane’s back. He’d found his release, and he’d brought her to climax. He should feel triumphant, relieved, purged.

Instead he felt dirty, as though he’d desecrated something holy.

He made himself stand upright and tug down her skirts, hiding those delicious pink folds between her legs that glistened with his seed. He stepped back. Clumsy hands fastened his breeches and straightened his shirt. He felt cheap and mean. His wife deserved better of him.

“Jane, you can stand up now,” he said tonelessly. “It’s over.”

Slowly she lifted away from the chair, so slowly that he worried if in his savagery, he might have hurt her. “Are you all right?”

When she turned, her face was flushed and her eyes were dazed. “Yes.”

One trembling hand rose to her chest. The pretty dress was creased, although he took his hat off to her maid. Jane’s hair remained mostly in place, apart from a few garnet tendrils clinging to the damp skin of her neck.

“Good,” he said shortly.

He left her and returned to the room she’d assigned to him, where he stood in the center of the floor until he stopped shaking. Despite that massive orgasm, he felt sick and unhappy and discontented. Their encounter had been like diving into the sun, but it only proved that he wanted his wife back where she belonged. With him.

Garson didn’t expect to see Jane before his departure. After all, they’d done what he came for, and she’d made it humiliatingly clear that beyond that, she had no use for him. But when he led his saddled horse out of the stable, she waited in the yard.

She’d changed into one of her old gray dresses. If she thought that might quash his desire, she was mistaken. The dress reminded him of those radiant days and nights in Salisbury, when he’d dared to believe that this marriage might lend his life purpose and joy.

For a month, regret had haunted him. Now it rose so strongly, it tasted rusty on his tongue. He regretted hurting this lovely, ardent creature, until all she offered him was this afternoon’s bitter passion. He regretted that despite everything he knew of honor and goodness, his body basked in a glorious afterglow. He regretted most of all that he couldn’t give his wife what she wanted, so that she trusted him to make her happy.

Garson brought Lysander to a stop. “What is it, Jane?”

He was too weary and heart-sore to be angry. He hoped like hell that she conceived soon. Too many meetings like this would finish him.

He hoped that she never conceived, because this was all she’d give him, and he couldn’t bear the thought of never touching her again.

Jane looked equally wrung out. Her brief animation after her climax had faded to more of that watchful composure. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

He didn’t take much encouragement from that.

“Goodbye,” he said curtly. But he didn’t get on his horse and ride away. Not yet. “You’ll write.”

“Yes. Another visit may not be necessary.”

“No.”

She didn’t move. “Has all the talk been horrid?”

What was this? A sign of some interest in his life? The brief impulse to sarcasm didn’t last. He’d been here long enough to see that she was at least as unhappy with their current dilemma as he was. “The gossips have had a field day.”

“That must be beastly.”

“I’ve been through it before.”

She frowned. “That makes it worse.”

He shrugged, his casualness unfeigned. It was odd. When Morwenna threw him over, the public nature of his rejection had been an excruciating ordeal. When Jane left him, he hardly cared what people thought. All he cared about was how much he wanted her back and how he’d let her down so badly.

“I haven’t been in London to hear most of it. I just got back from Beardsley Hall four days ago.” He’d hoped returning to his estates would heal the endless ache in his soul. But without his wife by his side, the house where he’d hoped to install her as mistress had felt empty. “Susan came to see me yesterday. She wanted to know where you are.”

“Did you tell her?”

“No. I assumed if you wanted to see her, you’d invite her to visit.”

Susan had arrived at Half Moon Street in a state. In his opinion, her theatrics stemmed more from fear of how her sister’s marital dramas might affect Lucy’s prospects, than any genuine concern. But then he was biased against his sister-in-law. He’d always thought she treated Jane abominably. These days, he acknowledged that was the pot calling the kettle black.

“I don’t want to see her. She hasn’t spoken to me since the Oldhams’ ball. If she speaks to me now, she’ll only say ‘I told you so,’ and lecture me about people who make their own beds having to lie on them.”

He winced. The mention of beds was a little too close to the bone. “I told her you needed total rest in the country, on doctor’s orders.”

“She wouldn’t believe that.”

“She didn’t. She left convinced that I’ve strangled you and buried the body in the garden.”

Jane looked startled. “Oh, no, I didn’t think of that.”

He gave an unamused grunt. “I assume if the magistrates take me up and charge me with murder, you’ll deign to appear to prove that you’re not dead.”

It was her turn to wince. “Hugh, I hope you know that I don’t wish you any harm.”

No, even if her absence threatened to destroy him. No harm in that at all. “How do you see this working long-term, Jane?” he asked, taking advantage of the fact that she seemed in no hurry to send him on his way.

The question surprised her, although he couldn’t imagine why. “Surely I’ll conceive.”

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “And the child might be a boy. Then you’ll no longer have to suffer my distasteful advances.” Perhaps after that torrid joining, his rancor at her desertion wasn’t quite as exhausted as he’d thought.

Jane went pale but met his eyes. “You know your advances aren’t distasteful, Hugh.”

He ignored that and persisted with his questions. “Once you’ve had the child, who will bring it up? You? Me? Some neutral third party?”

She faltered back, although despite his hard tone, he wasn’t attacking her. “I don’t know. I thought perhaps we could share.”

“Not the best choice for a child, to be pulled from pillar to post because his parents don’t see eye to eye.”

“I’m aware that all the legal power in this battle is yours.”

His heart camped in agony. “Must it be a battle?”

She looked devastated. “Hugh…”

He swung into the saddle. Either he left now, or he wouldn’t leave at all. His reluctant bride would find herself tupped from the cellar to the attic of the dower house, whatever his better nature might insist upon. “What if we have a string of girls? Think about that, Jane.”

She swallowed. “I assumed you were only interested in a boy.”

His hands clenched on Lysander’s reins, making the black sidle and snort in protest. “Then you assumed wrongly.”

“You only ever mentioned an heir.” She spread her hands. “I thought if we had girls you’d leave them to my care.”

“I won’t be a stranger to any child of mine. And as you pointed out, if it comes to a dispute, my wishes will prevail in law.”

She regarded him with a touch of contempt. “I can’t believe you’re threatening me.”

Had he fallen so low? It seemed he had. Although blackmailing her into his life and using her children against her wouldn’t bring back the joy they’d shared; it would just chase it further out of reach. This damnable situation offered him no reprieves. “At the moment, the point is moot. But if there is a child…”

Her eyes narrowed on him. “You’re trying to make me change my mind about my plans.”

For the first time in that long, grueling day, he found himself smiling at his wife. Nastily. “What a clever girl you are.”

Without waiting for her response, he dug his heels into Lysander’s sides and galloped away from the house with a clatter of hooves on cobblestones.