The Duke and I

She tried to push him away, but when her hands found his shoulders, all they could do was clutch.

He started to push her, slowly, inexorably, toward the bed. “And when I take you to bed,” he added, his words hot against the skin of her neck, “and we are skin to skin, it is just the two of—”

“No!” she cried out, shoving against him with all her might. He stumbled back, caught by surprise.

“When you take me to bed,” she choked out, “it is never just the two of us. Your father is always there.”

His fingers, which had crept up under the wide sleeve of her dressing gown, dug into her flesh. He said nothing, but he didn't have to. The icy anger in his pale blue eyes said everything.

“Can you look me in the eye,” she whispered, “and tell me that when you pull from my body and give yourself instead to the bed you're thinking about me?”

His face was drawn and tight, and his eyes were focused on her mouth.

She shook her head and shook herself from his grasp, which had gone slack. “I didn't think so,” she said in a small voice.

She moved away from him, but also away from the bed. She had no doubt that he could seduce her if he so chose. He could kiss her and caress her and bring her to dizzying heights of ecstasy, and she would hate him in the morning.

She would hate herself even more.

The room was deadly silent as they stood across from each other. Simon was standing with his arms at his sides, his face a heartbreaking mixture of shock and hurt and fury. But mostly, Daphne thought, her heart cracking a little as she met his eyes, he looked confused.

“I think,” she said softly, “that you had better leave.”

He looked up, his eyes haunted. “You're my wife.”

She said nothing.

“Legally, I own you.”

Daphne just stared at him as she said, “That's true.”

He closed the space between them in a heartbeat, his hands finding her shoulders. “I can make you want me,” he whispered.

“I know.”

His voice dropped even lower, hoarse and urgent. “And even if I couldn't, you're mine. You belong to me. I could force you to let me stay.”

Daphne felt about a hundred years old as she said, “You would never do that.”

And he knew she was right, so all he did was wrench himself away from her and storm out of the room.

Chapter 18

Is This Author the only one who has noticed, or have the (gentle)men of the ton been imbibing more than usual these days?

LADY WHISTLEDOWN'S SOCIETY PAPERS, 4 JUNE 1813

Simon went out and got drunk. It wasn't something he did often. It wasn't even something he particularly enjoyed, but he did it anyway.

There were plenty of pubs down near the water, only a few miles from Clyvedon. And there were plenty of sailors there, too, looking for fights. Two of them found Simon.

He thrashed them both.

There was an anger in him, a fury that had simmered deep in his soul for years. It had finally found its way to the surface, and it had taken very little provocation to set him to fighting.

He was drunk enough by then so that when he punched, he saw not the sailors with their sun-reddened skin but his father. Every fist was slammed into that constant sneer of rejection. And it felt good. He'd never considered himself a particularly violent man, but damn, it felt good.

By the time Simon was through with the two sailors, no one else dared approach him. The local folk recognized strength, but more importantly they recognized rage. And they all knew that of the two, the latter was the more deadly.

Simon remained in the pub until the first lights of dawn streaked the sky. He drank steadily from the bottle he'd paid for, and then, when it was time to go, rose on unsteady legs, tucked the bottle into his pocket, and made his way back home.

He drank as he rode, the bad whiskey burning straight to his gut. And as he got drunker and drunker, only one thought managed to burst through his haze.

He wanted Daphne back.

She was his wife, damn her. He'd gotten used to having her around. She couldn't just up and move out of their bedroom.

He'd get her back. He'd woo her and he'd win her, and—

Simon let out a loud, unattractive belch. Well, it was going to have to be enough to woo her and win her. He was far too intoxicated to think of anything else.

By the time he reached Castle Clyvedon, he had worked himself into a fine state of drunken self-righteousness. And by the time he stumbled up to Daphne's door, he was making enough noise to raise the dead.

“Daphneeeeeeeeeeee!” he yelled, trying to hide the slight note of desperation in his voice. He didn't need to sound pathetic.

He frowned thoughtfully. On the other hand, maybe if he sounded desperate, she'd be more likely to open the door. He sniffled loudly a few times, then yelled again, “Daphneeeeeeeee!”

When she didn't respond in under two seconds, he leaned against the heavy door (mostly because his sense of balance was swimming in whiskey). “Oh, Daphne,” he sighed, his forehead coming to rest against the wood, “If you—”

The door opened and Simon went tumbling to the ground.

“Didja…didja hafta open it so…so fast?” he mumbled.

Daphne, who was still yanking on her dressing gown, looked at the human heap on the floor and just barely recognized it as her husband. “Good God, Simon,” she said, “What did you—” She leaned down to help him, then lurched back when he opened his mouth and breathed on her. “You're drunk!” she accused.

He nodded solemnly. “'Fraid so.”

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

He blinked and looked at her as if he'd never heard such a stupid question. “Out getting foxed,” he replied, then burped.