aisy returned from yet another evening’s entertainment. It was well after midnight, and she was weary, as much from the lateness of the hour and the strain of the charade she maintained as from her delicate condition.
All night long, she had feigned smiles and flirted madly. Danced with as many rakes and scoundrels as she could find. She’d laughed, pretended to be a merry wife who hadn’t a care in the world that she’d been left behind.
Pretended that she hadn’t been left to gather dust in a Belgravia townhouse as if she were of no greater import than the landscapes and former dukes once lining the walls. That she didn’t mind if she had no inkling of her husband’s whereabouts and nowhere to send a proper letter aside from barraging his estates. That she’d received not one godforsaken word from him.
It was as if he’d vanished as surely as Bridget had.
Once ensconced in the solitude of her bedchamber, she plucked the earrings from her ears and slipped off her dress shoes. They were aquamarine satin, fetching creations that matched her ensemble perfectly, but hours of clipping about in heels had left her feet aching.
Closing her eyes and releasing a sigh, she rolled her head about her shoulders, seeking to loosen her tense muscles. She had instructed Abigail not to wait up for her, and Hugo was already asleep in the comfortable bed he preferred in the lower salon. She was alone. The silence after such a raucous evening was enjoyable.
With a sigh, she hugged the gentle, almost imperceptible swell of her belly where a child grew. It had taken Georgiana’s perceptive observations regarding her wan appearance and frequent bouts of nausea for her to realize she was carrying Sebastian’s babe. The notion had initially filled her with hope that he might, at last, return to her. But more days had passed, more letters unanswered, more silence, more waiting, and she had begun to settle into the grim acceptance that her husband didn’t give a damn about her.
Not to worry, little one, she promised the babe now with a pang in her heart. I will love you enough for the both of us.
“Where were you tonight, wife?”
The voice, deep and dark and silky with menace, cut into the quiet calm.
An undignified squeak tore from her as she started, eyes flying open. Sebastian stood before her, as if conjured from her troubled thoughts. Wickedly handsome, tall, dark, debonair. Expression as solid as granite, jaw rigid. Blue eyes glittering.
At long last, her husband had returned.
All the air fled her lungs, as if she’d taken a fall from a horse at full gallop. Her heart pounded, the anger and resentment swirling inside her warring against a fragile burst of hope that he was back. Had her letter reached him, then? She drank him in before she could remind herself that he had left her with nary a word or expectation of finding him for nearly three solid months.
“How ironic you should pose such a question,” she told him tartly when she found her voice at last. “For I’ve been wondering the same of you, husband. Where were you these last months?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he remained forbidding and still, raking her with an insolent gaze. Heat suffused her body. A pang of intense longing began low in her belly and radiated outward before she could ruthlessly tamp it down.
How foolish she was, flesh and heart both betraying her. For she’d missed the husband she’d only begun to know. She’d missed his teasing, his rare smiles, his sensual touch, the way he kissed. Her fragile heart had begun to believe she’d found a future that would not only be preferable to her fate as Viscountess Breckly, but one in which she could find happiness. She couldn’t ignore just how bereft his absence had left her.
And now that he was here, within reach, it was as if a missing part of her had been restored.
He was every bit as beautiful as she remembered. More so, in fact. But there was something different about him. Something in the way he held himself so stiffly, in the way he stared at her, his finely formed lip curling into a sneer.
All at once, she knew what that something was. Felt it like a blow that banished her naiveté and her interminable weakness for him both. This was no happy homecoming.
He was furious.
Her earrings, heavy diamonds and hard gold warmed by her skin, bit into her palm. “Sebastian,” she said, irritated by the breathless quality of her voice. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
He cocked his head, glowering. “Were you expecting someone else, then?”
Daisy frowned. “Someone else?”
“Someone else.” He stepped closer to her. He was so near that his scent, clear and masculine and delicious, washed over her. “Someone like the Earl of Bolton, perhaps? Or any one of your other lovers?”
Ah. The gossip had finally reached him wherever he’d been secreting himself. She knew a brief moment of satisfaction that her endless devotion to flushing him out had succeeded. But the pleasure was hollow, for he had returned a wrathful stranger. And she was angry at him as well. She wanted answers. Wanted to rail against him, demand to know why he’d left her in such haste, nothing but a vague missive to explain. To know the secrets that had taken him from her.
“Well?” he snapped, his voice as sharp as a rapier. “Still holding your tongue, darling? Don’t you know that this is the part of our little tragedy where you attempt to explain why you’ve been welcoming other men into your bed?”
She flinched, steeling herself. “What have you heard?”
“That you’ve been making a cuckold of me.” He took another step closer, stalking her like she was his prey.
Daisy resisted the frantic urge to retreat. He wouldn’t strike her. His vitriol was almost palpable. Fear crept its way into her heart as she recalled all the times her father had charged at her. The times he had hit her. The occasion when he’d struck her with so much force that she’d fallen to the floor and his boot-shod foot had connected with her midriff. Her sin? Embarrassing him at dinner by laughing too loudly. She still remembered the sensation of all the air being knocked from her body in a rush, the burning in her lungs.
But she held her ground now against Sebastian’s anger, because she was not the girl she’d once been. She was a woman now. Independent and strong. Her chin tipped up in defiance. “I’ve been doing nothing of the sort.”
Two more strides and his long legs brushed the twin falls of her specially tailored trousers. Trousers that would soon no longer fit her with their snug embrace of her blossoming figure. He made a show of raking her with a glance that swept down over her form and left her feeling as though she was bare before him rather than fully dressed. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
“You have functioning eyes,” she pointed out with a flippant air she little felt. “What does it look like I’m wearing?”
Her evening wear ensemble was, she knew, unusual. As part of their campaign to stir up enough scandal to bring their husbands back to them, she and Georgiana sought the aid and creative genius of the talented Madame Blanc, who had been delighted to create beautiful and costly wardrobes featuring cleverly designed trousers and skirted bodices. Daisy adored them, and rather imagined she would wear them even though her original purpose for them—starting enough tongues wagging to bring her husband home—was done.
“It looks as if you’re wearing the costume of a whore.” His voice was pure ice. “What can you be thinking, gadding about London wearing bloody trousers? Wasn’t it enough to take your pleasure with whatever man you could find? You needed to humiliate me as well, is that it?”
His words cut her more than she had expected them to. When she and Georgiana had set their plan into motion, she hadn’t considered the full ramifications. She’d been driven by desperation, by longing. By missing him. She’d been prepared to do anything—don trousers, flirt with rakes, incite whispers and disapproval at every turn. Heavens, she had written him a waterfall of letters, desperate for any way to make him come back to her.
But scandal was rather like wildfire. It couldn’t be controlled. Once it had begun burning, its hunger for destruction became voracious. Now, it seemed all her frustrated efforts had turned upon her to disastrous effect.
He was home at last, but he didn’t believe her. He believed the gossip. And well, why should he not? They were strangers, weren’t they? Married for several months, only a fortnight spent in each other’s presence. What could she have expected? Her heart felt like a weight in her chest to match the knot of dread spinning in her stomach.
Yet, it was he who had created the chasm. He who had abandoned her with a hastily scrawled missive as explanation. The loneliness, isolation, and confusion of the months without him struck her now with the force of a locomotive. An ire to match his fanned into a flame. Where had he been? What had he been doing? Who was the real Sebastian, Duke of Trent?
“How dare you insult me?” Pent-up emotion made her voice shrill. “You, who abandoned me with no real explanation, no notion of where you’d gone or when you might return?”
“It was a private matter of extreme urgency,” he gritted. “I told you I would return as soon as I was able. My departure from London was necessary. Had I been able to avoid it, I wholeheartedly would have.”
“A private matter. Necessary.” The words left a bad taste in her mouth, and the pressing suspicion that had been her constant companion for the last few months returned. What if he had been engaged in a different form of secrecy than what Georgiana suspected? By-blows were common enough, though hardly proper drawing room conversation. A few oddly phrased missives weren’t enough to prove some sort of vast conspiracy. “Were you with your mistress?”
“No, goddamn it.” Suddenly, his hands gripped her upper arms, large and warm on her bare skin. The contact sent the same fiery need as always licking through her. “I’ve told you before that I don’t have a mistress. I’ve been bloody true to our vows, which is more than I can say for you.”
She wanted to believe him, even as his continued assertion that she had been unfaithful left her cold. “I have not made a cuckold of you.”
He pulled her into him and her hands flew to his broad chest, seeking purchase, her earrings falling forgotten to the floor. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. They were so near that if she rose on tiptoe, their lips would meet. How she missed his kiss. For an instant, it didn’t matter that he’d been gone, that he had returned a cold and bitter stranger. Her body still longed for his.
Ached for him.
She still loved him.
“Would you care to explain what you’ve been doing behind closed doors with the Earl of Bolton?” His tone had become deceptively smooth once more. His eyes traveled over her face, studying. “You’re beautiful as ever, Daisy. Little wonder half the men of London are waiting in line to lift your skirts. How many others have aside from Bolton?”
She’d known that receiving the Earl of Bolton had been a grievous mistake. At the time, her husband’s dislike of the man had served as her primary impetus. “The door was never closed. That was a rumor likely begun by the earl himself.”
That much was the truth. Bolton had been clear with his desire that she become his mistress. Daisy had refused and slapped him for the insult, which was likely why he’d spread such a tale—a balm to his wounded pride. The only man she wanted was the one standing before her, and it was a truth she couldn’t deny. She had made vows to him and him alone. Her heart beat for him. Broke for him.
“Did you scream the way you did for me, sweet?” His hand left her arm to skim over her jaw, then cup her cheek. His thumb pressed into the fullness of her lower lip with a rough pressure that surprised her. But she liked it. The savagery in him made her pulse leap, her entire body come to life. It was odd and troubling, and yet, there it was. “Tell me. Did you enjoy it when he fucked you? Did you pretend he was me, just for a moment? We both know he couldn’t have made you come the way I did.”
She swallowed, the memory of their blistering lovemaking coupled with his lean hardness against her—his masculine scent and strength enveloping her—made heat bloom between her thighs. The flesh he’d brought to life became hungry and wet. Her nipples tightened against her corset. His anger should have disturbed her, should have lessened her desire. Such provocative, ugly things, he’d said. He was being rough and crude, deliberately cruel. The way he touched her—masterful though detached—should have left her cold.
And yet, she couldn’t help the way she felt. The way he made her feel. Hot. Restless. Yearning. Her heart still ached for him, and in spite of everything—logic, reason, hurt, common sense—she couldn’t deny him.
She nipped at his thumb, tasting him—salt and warmth and man—and he removed it, allowing her to speak. “I did nothing with the Earl of Bolton. Nothing with any other man, for that matter.”
“You expect me to believe you?” His tone was frigid. His touch was anything but. It was hot, demanding, seeking. Urgent.
His fingers trailed down her throat, lingering at the diamond necklace she still wore, a weighty reminder of her former life. The caress sent sparks skittering over her skin, need throbbing deep within.
“It’s the truth,” she whispered.
“The truth. How rich.” A bleak smile curved his sensual lips. It was grim, harsh. There was no hint of the dimple she’d once longed to kiss. Not a trace of humor remained within him, it seemed. It was as if a stranger had taken his place. A bitter, broken, angry stranger. Where had he been for the past three months and what had he done? Perhaps, more importantly, what had been done to him?
But she held firm. Stoic. “Yes, the truth. I would never betray our vows, Sebastian.”
“You don’t think I believe a word that slips past your pretty lips, do you, sweet? Not when you’ve been carrying on as you have. Wild fêtes, a string of lovers, wearing trousers, for Christ’s sake. Were you so foolish to believe that word would not reach me? That I wouldn’t learn of your antics and your debauchery?”
She should be frightened. But she was not. Though his language was coarse and his touch lacked the skillful play of slow seduction she’d become accustomed to from him, he would not hurt her. She knew it instinctively.
“How did word reach you?” she asked instead. “Did you get my letters?” One letter in particular. The one in which she revealed the impending birth of their child. The one good that had risen from the ashes of their turbulent union.
“I daresay word has even reached America by now. You made no attempt to hide your lechery.” He sneered. “You couldn’t even bother to wait until you’d provided me an heir before bedding the Earl of Bolton.”
That answered her question, then. He hadn’t read a single one of her letters.
Disappointment bloomed as his fingers traveled lower, stopping at the ribbon-trimmed edge of her décolletage. She swallowed against a fresh wave of need. His cruelty should have diminished her body’s response to him, but it seemed that nothing could. Her nipples longed for his touch, his mouth. The rake of his teeth. He cupped her breast, and it was a possessive clamp of ownership, nothing sweet about it. Through her corset, undergarments, and silk, his fingers bit into her skin with just enough pressure to arch her back.
She wanted more, and her reaction frightened her. She had not known that darkness and anger could form such a powerful web of seduction. Still, he owed her every bit as much as she owed him, if not more. He was the one who had left. She had been right here, waiting for him, all along.
“Tell me where you’ve been,” she challenged impetuously. “Tell me the truth.”
Care for me enough to give me that, if nothing else.
“The truth is that even though you’ve been bedding other lovers, you still want me, don’t you, buttercup?” He stilled, his eyes intense and glittering, sparking with unadulterated sexual fire as they burned into hers. “Your pretty pink lips might lie, but your body doesn’t.”
Damn him. “The truth,” she demanded again. “Where were you? Why did you go?”
“Ah, I see the way of it.” He smiled without mirth, his tone bitter. “You think you can tempt me with your body, and I’ll confess all. But I won’t give you the gratification of fucking you, Daisy. You’d like it too much.”
The wickedness and arrogance of his words should have repulsed her. He was being a beast, but it somehow made her long for him all the more. Her breasts tingled. The flesh between her thighs hungered for him, for his touch, his claiming. At last, her body seemed to say even if her mind couldn’t form the acknowledgment, at last.
Daisy pressed herself closer to him, her breasts crushing into his hand, into his chest. Their lips were a scant inch apart. His breath ghosted over her mouth, hot and promising. Their legs tangled, free of the encumbrance of skirts, and she felt his arousal, rigid and undeniable, cutting into her belly.
He wanted her, no matter what he said. In that moment, she had infinite power over him, and she knew it.
And she liked it.
She rocked forward, gliding her body along his hard length. Her lower lip brushed his once, twice. “Do you know what I think, Sebastian?” She paused, a wicked urge to shock him rising within, to goad him, push him off the precipice to which he clung. “I think you’re lying to me. Lying to yourself. You don’t want to fuck me because you’re afraid you’d like it too much.”
There.
One word, raw and vulgar and wrong. His word. Fuck. Used upon him as a weapon. But it had the desired effect, and she didn’t feel a drop of shame as he growled deep in his throat and forced her backward, guiding her with hands on her waist and long strides. Taking her to the big bed where she’d lain awake so many nights wondering where he was and whether or not he would ever return. Where she’d imagined him joining her, taking his time, kissing her and stripping her bare, learning every bit of her flesh before joining them as one.
But this wasn’t going to be anything like her silly fancies, or even like their previous couplings, and she knew it by the harshness in his expression, the wildness of his touch. The backs of her knees bumped into the bed’s softness. He didn’t throw her on it as she thought he might. Instead, he stopped, stared down at her.
“Explain yourself,” he commanded.
She swallowed, not knowing what he wanted to hear. What he meant. She was breathless with waiting, with wanting, with a deep, decadent tide of anticipation. “What do you want me to say, Sebastian? That I’ve spent these last months wondering where you’ve been? That I’ve flirted like mad and courted scandal at every opportunity just so that you would come back to me?”
“No.” His nostrils flared.
He was fiercely beautiful, his body leaner against hers, honed to hard, well-muscled angles. Everything about him had become dark and powerful and ruthless. Even his shoulders were more severe and hard beneath her hands as she settled them there to anchor herself.
But she wasn’t finished. Let him think of her what he would. There was only one way to win this battle between them. “Do you want to hear how I did everything in my power to find you, and when all else failed, I decided to bring about your return by causing as much scandal as possible? For that’s the truth.”
“No, goddamn it,” he snapped. “No more of your lies.”
“My lies?” She rubbed her leg against his, because it felt good and because she couldn’t resist the temptation. His proximity did wild things to her senses. But even as she teased him, parried back in this sensual battle between them, she hadn’t forgotten that she had just as much cause as he to be angry. More, even. “What of yours, Sebastian? Where have you been?”
Heavens yes, she had every right to be properly enraged. He had disappeared without explanation. Months of no word had passed. Yet he barged back into her life with the grace of a gunboat, raging and bent on destruction. How dare he brand her a liar, accuse her of debasing their vows, when she still didn’t have any idea where he’d gone, what he’d done, or whom he’d been with during his lengthy absence?
“You want to ask questions, buttercup?” The grin he flashed her was stark and lethal. Not a hint of merriment. Not a drop of sympathy or contrition. His dimple appeared for a fraction of a moment before it was gone. “Very well. But I get to ask first.”
His hands tightened on her waist, her only warning before he lifted her in one fluid motion and tossed her back onto the bed. She hadn’t expected his sudden reaction, and so she made her landing in a rather undignified heap, legs akimbo, flat on her back. Her husband’s expression was dark and unrelenting as a summer thunderstorm. He stalked forward, between her thighs, and bent forward, planting his palms on either side of her as he pinned her to the mattress. His muscled abdomen pressed into hers, robbing her of breath.
Sebastian lowered his head so that their foreheads nearly touched. His eyes sparked into hers, intense and burning with so much wrath she trembled. “Who the hell is Padraig McGuire to you, Daisy?”