by Emma Wildes
which time he and Brianna had exited the house in quick succession. Hudson did not yet know
the identity of this mysterious gentleman, but he was investigating. The description was a little
vague because Hudson’s man had been watching from across the street, but the report stated the
stranger moved well, like a young man.
Arabella had been Brianna’s friend for years. Was it possible Arabella would provide a discreet
meeting place for his wife to meet with her lover? Colton wondered about the incident with an
inner agony he hoped didn’t show in his face.
It was all he could do to spear another piece of the roast lamb on his plate and chew and swallow
it. It was perfectly cooked, but it tasted like sawdust. He managed to wash it down with a
mouthful of wine. “I see,” he murmured. “How is the countess?”
“Fine.”
Another one-word answer? He waited for her to elaborate, but instead she merely took a forkful
of potato. If he inquired whether Arabella had company when she arrived, he would sound too
suspicious. How could he know such a thing if someone hadn’t told him? He said nothing, but the
silence was torture.
When the devil was she going to tell him she carried a child?
He set aside his fork, no longer able to even make a pretense of wanting to eat.
Perhaps he should just ask her. Maybe he should also inquire why she was also patently
uncomfortable around him all of a sudden.
“I want to go visit my mother and father. I think I’ll leave tomorrow.” His wife spoke so quietly
he almost didn’t catch the words. In the candlelight, her long lashes lent shadows to her perfect
cheekbones.
“No.” His autocratic refusal came out before he could help it.
Obviously startled, Brianna stared at him. “I—I beg your pardon?”
He needed to keep her near him, just in case he was right. What if her lover was someone she’d
known since before her marriage, and now that her innocence had been given to her husband so
the deception couldn’t be detected, they could freely indulge themselves in a torrid affair? What
if he was a family friend, a neighbor perhaps, and she wished to tell him about the child first?
He’d tormented himself with a dozen theories. A ruthless, practical voice inside his head
reminded him that someone was teaching her how to drive him wild in bed. Colton wasn’t her
instructor, so who was?
When forced to look at the situation with the light of cold logic, he couldn’t come up with any
explanation besides another lover. There was little doubt Brianna knew exactly what she was
doing.
Well, he’d already said it, so he might as well make his position clear. “No, I do not give you
permission to go.”
“Per—permission?” she sputtered, her linen napkin dropping from her hand and drifting to the
floor.
“You must have it. I don’t give it.” He enunciated each word clearly.
He was being both petty and tyrannical but he didn’t care. A lack of sleep and restive doubts
weren’t conducive to civility.
“Colton,” she whispered in shocked reproof. “Why wouldn’t you wish for me to see my parents?”
“I’ll escort you myself when I get the time.”
“Time? You? God in heaven, when would that be? They live in Devon, which is several days’
journey in either direction. I had to use coercion just to get you to Rolthven, which is convenient
to London.”
“Do not blaspheme in my presence, madam.” Now he was being truly overbearing, but he’d been
dwelling on nothing but thoughts of his wife’s possible infidelity for weeks and it was eating him
inside. She was entirely right, but he was not in the mood to admit it.
Two red splotches appeared on her smooth cheeks. “Colton, what on earth is wrong with you?”
“There is nothing wrong with me.”
“Yes, there is.” Brianna tilted her chin, defiance in her dark blue eyes. “Or do I need permission
to disagree with you?”
She shouldn’t have goaded him, not in his current state of mind. He leaned forward, holding her
gaze. “You might keep in mind you need my permission for just about anything you do. The day
we wed you gave a vow to be faithful and to obey me. I expect both. You are my wife and under
my rule.”
“Rule?” She gave what sounded like a hysterical laugh but it could have been a sob.
It hadn’t been the right word to choose probably, but he wasn’t at his best.
The arrival of a footman to clear their plates, with another right behind him with the dessert
course, put an end to any further conversation, which was probably just as well for the moment.
The minute the servants exited the room, his wife rose. “Please excuse me.”
“Sit down. I have no wish to have the household staff put it about that you walked out on me in
the middle of a meal.” That was true anyway. His troubles with his wife were a private matter. It
had been humiliating enough to express his doubts to Hudson when he hired the man to follow
her.
Brianna sat back down, her soft mouth set in a mutinous line. She eyed the frothy chocolate
concoction on her plate as if someone had set an asp in front her. “My stomach has been unsettled
lately. Does it meet with your royal approval if I decline to eat any more or must I choke it down
and deal with the consequences if it doesn’t agree with me?”
Her acerbic question reminded him of her pregnancy. His or not, she nurtured a child in her body
and he wasn’t an ogre, though he might be acting like one. Colton inclined his head. “If you wish
to skip dessert, that is fine with me. But you will stay here while I eat mine.”
He didn’t have the stomach for it either, but some perverse part of him was insisting he make a
point.
She looked at him as if he’d sprouted a second head and made a helpless gesture with her hand.
“I truly do not understand your mood this evening. And it isn’t unique to this meal either. It is as
if I’ve done something wrong but I don’t know what it is.”
Colton couldn’t help it. He said in a silky voice, “You’ve done nothing wrong, my dear. Have
you?”
“Have I? What kind of question is that?” Brianna gazed at her husband in unconcealed
consternation.
He was a stranger, the cold-eyed man across the table, calmly sipping wine from his glass but
looking at her as if she’d committed some heinous crime. True, Colton was rarely warm and
open, but tonight he looked positively shuttered.
Was he happy about her possible pregnancy? Damien had assured her that his older brother
would be overjoyed at the news, and she assumed he’d be delighted since he needed an heir, but
he hadn’t said a word to her about the subject. Not one blasted word. That he would ask her maid
about it and not say a word to her was disturbing. He wanted children, didn’t he?
Maybe he didn’t, she thought with a sinking heart. Maybe he considered her condition indelicate
and inconvenient. After all, before long she’d be fat, ungainly, and unable to go about in public
without everyone knowing she was enceinte. Some aristocrats never interacted with their
offspring, relying on nannies and governesses to raise them, relegating them to nurseries and
school-rooms until such a time as they could either be sent away to school or
married to some
male who would take them off their parents’ hands.
She just hadn’t imagined Colton would react that way. Especially now that her suspicions were
confirmed and she knew the pregnancy was real, the notion he wouldn’t share her joy was
unsettling in the extreme. And because of his uncertain mood, she hesitated to tell him. It was
precisely because of the way he’d acted lately that she’d asked Arabella to arrange to have a
physician make a discreet call at her town house rather than summoning their own doctor. If she
wasn’t pregnant, why cause more tension between them? But the physician had confirmed her
condition and she was going to have to tell her husband soon.
He regarded her with no visible emotion. “I didn’t say you’d done anything wrong. Those are
your words, not mine.”
Bewildered, she just looked at him.
Maybe it sounded childish, but Brianna wanted her mother. She may not have done an admirable
job in instructing Brianna on the details of what would happen on her wedding night, but her
mother adored children and was going to be delighted when she heard the news. Brianna needed
that, needed to talk to someone about what things were going to be like until she gave birth,
someone who would be equally happy over her condition, someone who would both coddle and
counsel her. Both Rebecca and Arabella were wonderful, but they hadn’t had children, and they
couldn’t help. Lea had sent her a hurried note to say that one of the children was ill and she
expected the whole household would come down with the malady. Lea would send word when
the sickness ran its course, but right now Brianna couldn’t even talk to her sister. Devon sounded
like heaven, at least until this cloud over her marriage passed by.
Colton had just refused to let her go. Moreover, he’d meant it, too. She wasn’t sure she’d ever
heard him use that particular arrogant tone.
It wasn’t like him at all. He was solicitous and generous, and at all times a gentleman. But there
he sat, handsome and urbane in his formal evening wear even for a dinner at home, his thick
chestnut hair gilded by the flickering light, his long fingers ceaselessly toying with the stem of his
wineglass, looking every inch the dictatorial husband.
She was more confounded than ever.
The convulsive, edgy movement of his elegant fingers told her something. The restless motion
wasn’t his normal behavior. Impulsively, she blurted out, “Damien told me I might be going to
have a baby. It’s true.”
Her husband’s brows shot up and his eyes grew even colder. Glacial would be appropriate.
“What? How the hell would Damien know?”
This was all wrong, she thought with an inner grimace. Since Colton had just sworn in front of
her for the first time ever, he probably agreed. Brianna calmed herself and sought a more
reasonable tone. “He guessed after I almost vomited on his shoes the other morning. Please don’t
tell me this comes as a complete surprise. I know you’ve questioned my maid.”
Another of what felt like several hundred awkward silences of the evening ensued. Well done, she
told herself caustically. Saying the word vomit at the dinner table surely had to be a blunder of the
worst sort.
Not at all how she’d pictured telling him.
“I have wondered if you might be pregnant.” Colton’s face resembled a granite statue. “So I
asked a few questions, yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Her humiliating ignorance rankled, and she would much rather
her husband had asked her about the possibility of a pregnancy than her brother-in-law.
“I was waiting for you to tell me.”
Something inside her crumbled at his acid tone. Brianna fought the bite of tears. “You aren’t
happy about this.”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course, I’m happy.”
He was? A wash of relief went through her, but she still didn’t really believe him. He looked like
someone going under the executioner’s axe. “Then what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.”
Could two people have a more vague conversation and yet have it be so loaded with emotion?
She felt like the affronted party, but had the impression he did also.
“Colton, I’ve seen a physician. We are going to have a child. Shouldn’t we celebrate rather than
argue?” Her voice was soft and held a betraying tremor she wished she could hide.
For a moment, his face changed and she saw a vulnerable cast to it that wasn’t at all haughty
aristocrat, or privileged lord. He was just a man, and an uncertain one at that, and she realized
that as unsure as breeding this new life within her made her feel, maybe the weight of this new
responsibility was affecting him in the same way. He always seemed so strong, as if he didn’t
need guidance, so she assumed he was in control of his emotions at all times.
His fingers stilled on his wineglass and when he spoke his voice was weary. “I think I must
apologize to you. My behavior this evening has been boorish.”
Azure eyes looked into hers, making her heart skip a beat. She didn’t think he’d ever, ever looked
at her with such poignant entreaty.
He had, actually, been unbearably boorish, and she was still in the dark as to why.
But it didn’t matter. She loved him. She was going to be the mother of his child. “I have missed
you so much,” she said softly. “More than you can imagine. I am still not sure why we are
arguing, but I do know I cannot bear another lonely night.”
“I quite agree.” His voice was hoarse and he stood, tossing his napkin aside. He held out his
hand, the gesture not imperious, but a token of compromise. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He needed her so desperately it frightened him.
His hand at the small of her graceful back, Colton hoped Brianna couldn’t sense his intense
hunger as they climbed the stairs, feel the slight tremor of his fingers, hear the increased cadence
of his respiration.
“My bedchamber,” he said tersely. It was a possessive decision sparked by his volatile emotions.
His bed, his room, his body claiming hers . . .
His beautiful wife, his child. It must be.
Brianna merely nodded, her fragrance tantalizing, a promise of warm, smooth skin and silken,
perfumed hair. Colton opened the door for her, followed her inside, and had barely shut the door
behind them before he caught her in his arms. He swallowed her gasp of surprise as his mouth
claimed hers with almost violent possession. There was something primeval in the force of the
emotion that gripped him, something beyond his control, and the realization that if he battled it he
might just lose was unique in his life. If there was one thing he could do and do well, it was
command his emotions.
Not so when he was with Brianna. He was bewitched, beguiled, and utterly baffled by his lovely
wife. Just when he thought he understood her, he found he was wrong yet again. This evening
was a perfect example. Just moments before he’d been inexcusably autocratic, and yet here she
was kissing him back with a fervor that matched his wild need, trembling against him. She should
be furious with him. He deserved it.
If she was innocent.
His hands fumbled with her gown, undoing buttons, parting cloth to find bare flesh. Their lips
still clung
and her hands moved under his jacket to flatten against his chest. One small palm was
positioned over his heart and he was sure she could feel the riotous pounding there as he slipped
her dress off her shoulders.
“I’ve missed you so,” Brianna murmured against his mouth.
He certainly had missed her, and his rigid cock agreed. The recent self-imposed abstinence had
been a tactic to help him work out his doubts—something he didn’t think he could do with
impartiality when sharing her bed.
The trouble was, he hadn’t worked out anything except a terrifying conviction that he couldn’t
live without her.
Colton stripped off her chemise and knelt to remove her slippers and stockings, making short
work of the task, running his fingers lightly up over her calves, the inside of her knee, and
skimming her thighs and hips. She looked the same, he thought, wondering when he would notice
the swell of the new life that he would claim and give his name. Anything else was out of the
question, and there was no doubt that whatever else might be going on, there was a good chance
this child was his. He kissed the still-flat plane of her stomach, a gentle, soft pressure of his
mouth.
“Oh, Colton,” she whispered, lightly touching his hair.
“Get into bed,” he ordered as he rose swiftly, the sight of her nude body, a becoming pink in the
flickering light, making his arousal surge. He added as an afterthought, “Don’t cover yourself. I
want to look while I undress.”
She complied, climbing onto the big bed and reclining there, her delectable breasts visibly tight,
the nipples pink and erect. They were larger, he realized as he examined them with heated
deliberate perusal and untied his cravat. The mounded flesh was fuller—though they’d been
lusciously shaped before—the thin veining of blue under her translucent skin more prominent.
The evidence of change made the pregnancy more real, more immediate.
To regain some semblance of calm, Colton took his time, removing each article of his clothing
with deliberation, forcing his mind away from anything except the shimmer of desire in his
wife’s eyes and the eager clasp of her arms as he joined her on the big bed.
It was time to tamp down the complex roil of his thoughts and concentrate on purely carnal