by Dalton, Lily
The wounded creature inside him gnashed its teeth. Anger and humiliation warmed his blood. “I bared my soul to you for nothing.”
“No,” she breathed, turning to him, her hands open at her sides. “Please no. Don’t say that. But, Claxton, please understand. I grieved the death of my marriage last night. It is gone in my mind and a piece of my heart with it. I don’t know if I can go back to the place where we were. There are no guarantees things would be different. I would love to believe our lives hold no more tragedies or trials, but that would be naïve. I just…I just wouldn’t be able to survive it all a second time.”
“I would not repeat the same mistakes twice. I wouldn’t leave you again.”
“You say that now. I think you even believe yourself, but I don’t know.”
Again, despite everything said, they hovered on the edge of good-bye. Regardless of her assurances to the contrary, very likely by his confessions he had pushed her even further away.
Sophia could not read Claxton’s expression. Gone were the emotions she’d glimpsed in him moments before. He’d once again become the dispassionate diplomat, seeking to secure a treaty. The quiet ease with which he made the transition from one self to the other unnerved her, but it served as a reminder that she must do the same and fiercely represent her interests.
“But everything is different now,” he challenged calmly, his blue eyes piercing her through. “We are speaking like rational people, and I for one acknowledge my mistakes in allowing our marriage to fall into such early disorder. I won’t allow things to return to the way they were before. I want to be there.”
“Be there? What do you mean?”
“In his—or her—life. I understand you wish for your family to be involved in the child’s upbringing—but know this, Sophia—” His voice lowered into a dangerous hush. “I will not be excluded.”
Sophia bristled at his tone. He shouldn’t be issuing edicts. After all, it was she who continued to hold the cards. If she so wished to proceed with a separation, she would have one whether or not he agreed. But if she wanted a child, she needed his cooperation.
Lord, things were not so confusing when he was on the other side of the Channel and not sitting in front of her, looking at her in a way that stole her breath and blurred all her reasons for wanting a separation in the first place.
“So…” His gaze narrowed. “What can I do to convince you to withdraw your demand for a separation?”
Something in his voice sent a shiver down her spine—the determination of a man who had made the decision to fight for his marriage and who would not waver from that course until he emerged the victor. The realization did not displease her, but she also realized they had two very different ideas of what composed a successful marriage. She wanted a love story, two hearts forever entwined, through good and bad times. Claxton, instead, offered his fidelity and good behavior in hopes of making her stay…which weren’t quite the same thing. She couldn’t help but ache for more. Of course, in the context of their society, she was the one being unreasonable.
One certainty remained. She wanted a child. A child would bring her some sense of belonging in this partnership and give her ownership of the name she would continue to bear by marriage, separated or not. And perhaps…perhaps she owed it to their future child to try harder to make the marriage work so that he or she might have the benefit of a father’s interest and guidance.
What could the duke do to assure her, short of falling to his knees and issuing a declaration of love? She knew that would never happen. If it ever did, the words would be misguided and offered only to appease her.
She turned and announced with conviction, “I need to know their names.”
Claxton’s brows went up. “Whose names?”
“The names of your lovers. Your paramours from before our marriage. And every woman you kept company with afterward.”
His lips twisted, and his eyes widened. “I can’t imagine why. I told you I never broke our vows.”
“And I believe you, but as you said, those remnants of your past still affect our future. My request for their names isn’t about suspicion or jealousy or so that I can behave vindictively. It’s just that if I am to drop my demand for a separation, I don’t want to be surprised again. Ambushed. You can’t know how it feels. Why, it’s sickening. One’s head fills with thunder, one’s face goes numb, and everyone in the room, even those that didn’t hear what was said, knows something is terribly wrong because the Duchess of Claxton looks as if she’s been kicked in the stomach.” Her hands clenched against the wool of her skirts. “Then there is the whole miserable aftermath of silence. Whispers and pity and ugh—even laughter. There are those who take pleasure in the whole scene.”
“I do understand.” He spoke quietly. “The same took place each time I accompanied my father into a room. He destroyed countless marriages, not just his own.” He drew his thumb along his upper lip, a pensive gesture. “Only people never laughed. They did not dare.”
“I am clearly not as terrifying as you and your father.”
He scowled. “But to tell you their names?”
Claxton wore a rather menacing face now, but she wasn’t going to back down. Of course, the idea of learning the names of his old lovers made her squeamish, but she would not enter any agreement with him to continue their marriage and bring an innocent, blameless child to life unless she gained the power and confidence to defend the two of them against attack.
Claxton wouldn’t always be there to ducally glare everyone into silence. He would be off again on some diplomatic duty or the other, or in Jamaica or elsewhere, leaving her alone with the same hungry sharks as before. She refused to return to London and the society she knew under the same terms as before.
“I don’t want you to say the names aloud.” She went to the small escritoire in the corner and rummaged in the drawer until she came away with a quill pen, ink, and paper. “Write them.”
She moved aside several of the dishes on the table and placed the writing implements in front of him.
“I don’t want to write them,” he answered obstinately. He crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to take possession of the quill.
She drew back. “Then things will proceed no further between you and me.”
“This is the only way?” he demanded, incredulous, glaring down at the blank page.
“The only way.”
He snatched the quill from her hand.
“Very well. As you wish.” Lips pressed thin, he extracted a penknife from his coat pocket and expertly trimmed the pen’s nib. Sophia shook the bottle of ink and after several efforts managed to twist the lid free.
“You’re certain this is what you want.” He scrutinized her.
“I am.”
“This is highly irregular,” he seethed. “I can think of no civilized circumstance wherein any lord of the realm would ever agree to comply with such an outrageous demand.”
She leaned forward, planting her hands on the table and staring him directly in the eye. “We are estranged spouses who’ve found themselves snowbound together. Who knows how long we will be trapped here together? If there is any time to be uncivilized or outrageous, it is now.”
Claxton blinked. Exhaled. Indeed, he perspired on his forehead and upper lip. Were there that many names that he would become so discomposed? Apparently so. He lifted the pen and immersed the nib, only to abandon the quill to the jar and throw himself back in the chair in clear agony.
“Hell and damnation,” he blustered. “I can’t be expected to remember them all. That’s almost twenty years of—”
“Quiet!” she blurted, silencing him with a hand, never wanting to hear the end of that sentence. “Limit the task, then, to those ladies with whom I might come into contact under social circumstances. At a ball, or at cards, or out shopping. That kind of thing.”
“Good God, Sophia,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “If you disliked me before, you will despise me now.”
“I told you, this isn’t about emotions or me liking you.” She said the words to convince herself as much as Claxton. “It’s about me being prepared to defend myself and your child in the future with dignity, no matter how unpleasant the circumstance.”
“My child,” he repeated quietly, closing his eyes. He breathed deeply. “My child.”
With that solemn utterance, the child that had seemed so real and alive in Sophia’s heart until the night before sprang to life again, even amid her self-warnings of caution.
By next year at Christmas, she might have a child of her own.
At last, Claxton appeared convinced. With both elbows on the table, he rubbed his hands over his face, looking suddenly very weary, with his jaw drawn tight and shadows beneath his eyes.
He took up the quill pen again. Sophia experienced a moment of pity. He looked so tortured and earnest, as if he wanted to please her. The pen’s tip moved over the page, bleeding its indigo ink to form one name. Then two. Three. Four. Sophia closed her eyes, but the scratching sounds continued, forever it seemed.
At last, he stopped writing.
“Do you have another page upon which I can write additional names?”
Chapter Nine
Sophia’s eyes flew open. “You can’t be serious.”
He glared at her darkly. “Of course I’m not. But you deserve a shock for forcing me to this.”
“Give me the list.” She extended her hand.
His eyes narrowed. “One moment, please. I just remembered another.”
With dramatic flair, he scrawled one more name at the bottom of the list before handing the sheet to her. “Merry Christmas, darling.”
“Are you certain that is all?”
“Quite certain.”
Sophia cleared her countenance of all emotion and inhaled deeply. It was important that she distance herself from the intelligence on the page and not lose her head if she recognized any of the names, for most assuredly she would.
If she was truly going to forgive and forget, for the purpose of endeavoring to have a child, she must learn to mute her emotional reactions.
Sophia looked at the paper. Her eyes moved over the first assemblage of letters written in her husband’s hand. Then the next. As her mind registered each name, little explosions went off inside her head, powder kegs of alarm. Each one growing larger. Louder. More catastrophic. Her eyes widened. A jagged breath escaped her lips.
Vane muttered a low curse. “I knew it.”
Before his very eyes, the lovely Sophia transformed into a dragon, complete with red glowing eyes and flames shooting out her nose. At least that’s how she appeared to him. And she’d never been more beautiful.
“You despicable man,” she shouted.
In that moment he knew without a doubt he’d lost whatever ground he had gained. Tenfold. For a moment, he felt guilty. Contrite. But then anger rippled up from inside him, ablaze. He launched up from the chair, coming to stand just before her. “You forced me to write the names, assuring me there was no other way to preserve our marriage. Now you call me despicable?”
“Yes,” she railed, shaking the list at him so violently the paper made crackling noises. “I am acquainted with each and every one of these ladies. Mrs. Pettijohn. I sit beside her at tea and cards every Tuesday afternoon. Lady Gatcombe. She sits in the opera box next to my grandfather’s all season long.”
“I cannot believe I agreed to this loathsome folly,” he muttered.
“Lady Noord—”
“Give me that.” He reached for the list—
“No!”
She twisted, holding it just out of his reach. He caught her around the waist, pulling her close against him. With her elbows and her back, Sophia attempted to push away, planting her buttocks—hell on fire, her sweet round buttocks—firmly against his groin. Which she seemed to realize the same moment he did.
She gasped and jerked round to face him, her arm bent behind her back in a vain attempt to keep the list from him, but with his arms, he crushed her against his chest and groped behind her—
“Claxton!”
Clearly not the list. He chuckled wickedly, low in his throat.
—until he found her wrist…her hand…and the damnable list clenched inside.
“Let go of it,” he uttered, his fingers prying at hers.
“I won’t.”
“I’m going to burn it.”
For a long moment they stood thusly entwined, pushing and pulling beside the fire, dancing an intimate dance. He felt her tremble against him and then sweetly…slowly…go limp in his arms, sinking against him. A little sigh of surrender broke from her lips.
“You just don’t know how it hurt to read those names,” she whispered.
Her capitulation transformed their struggle into an embrace. Her breasts, round and soft, pressed against his chest. His brain went instantly fuzzy. He didn’t release her because he very much liked her breasts exactly where they were, but he did ease his grip on her, sliding his hands over her back to hold her more gently. From somewhere in the fog of his desire, he realized if he wished her to stay there, he ought to cobble together some sort of soothing verbal response.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he assured. Well, he hadn’t. “You insisted.”
“I know, Claxton,” she murmured, peering up at him from beneath thick lashes. Her lips were parted and damp. Her silky hair hung down her back to graze the top of his hands.
He lowered his head nearer to hers. “Sophia.”
She sighed and relaxed.
In the hazy recesses of his mind, he contemplated sweeping her into his arms and carrying her upstairs. No, too fast. Soon, though. Soon. He skimmed palms upward over her torso, savoring the slide of the fabric beneath his palms. He slanted his face to kiss her—
“Ha!” she exclaimed, leaping away the moment he released her.
“Ha” was right. He stood, arms empty, feeling as if he’d taken a bucket of cold water to his face.
She put a few more paces between them before pivoting around and pointing at him. “Knave!”
Her lips emitted a sound, something between a shriek and a bellow. She crushed the paper in her hand and hurled it toward him. The missile bounced off his forehead. Turning on her heel, she quit the room.
Only to return. She leveled him with a merciless glare, and while he stood like a senseless dullard, she snatched up the list and left again.
Moments later, her door slammed.
Vane dropped into the chair. He squeezed his thumb and forefinger on the ridge of his nose and let out a low, wry chuckle at the absurd turn of the past half hour. He had been trying only to satisfy Sophia’s wishes. He’d glimpsed the path to victory, but had somehow fallen short. For all his experience with women, it seemed he’d never really had a clue how to handle a wife.
With the memory of her lush body still imprinted in his mind, he tore his cravat free from his throat. Crushing the cloth in his hand, he almost threw it into the fire, but he stopped himself, throwing the linen to the settee instead, where he would spend another lonely night. Not coaxing more kisses from his wife. Not stripping each layer of clothing from her body until she stood naked and bared to his hungry gaze. Not making love to her.
How bewildering to discover that shouting and arguing with Sophia only made him want her more. Once while hunting in Austria, he’d come across a male wolf separated by a high stone wall from its mate. Drawn by the sounds of her voice, the animal had paced and snarled and panted, desperate to rejoin her, until Claxton took pity on the poor animal’s desperate condition and opened a gate. He felt much akin to that animal now, only he was separated from Sophia by a wall of his own making.
At least, as consolation, a goodly portion of Mrs. Kettle’s plum cake remained. He unbuttoned his shirt at the throat and tugged its hem free from his breeches. Taking up his fork, he sectioned off a substantial bite.
That’s when Sophia screamed.
Not a furious sort o
f scream, a terrified scream. He dropped the fork and sprang to his feet, nearly upending the table in the process.
When he reached her room, Sophia, garbed in only her short corset and chemise, crouched just inside the door, both hands over her mouth. Her attention appeared fixed on the bed, where her nightdress lay.
“What is it? Are you hurt?” He stepped inside.
Seeing him, she sprang into his arms. For a moment he was too dazzled by the contact of her body, the soft crush of her breasts against his chest, the intimate flex of her thighs at his waist, to process her words. Oh, God, the memories. The sudden rush of lust. They scrambled all rational thought from his brain.
Sophia shouted something about the bed. Yes. God, yes. He wanted to take her to bed.
She jumped off him and punched his arm.
“Claxton,” she exclaimed. “There is an animal in my room.”
“An animal?” he asked dazedly. Did she mean him? “Where?”
She ducked behind him and pointed to the far corner. “I told you. Under the bed, I think. It moved so fast, jumping off the walls.”
“What did it look like?” Claxton advanced in the direction she indicated, crouched low, prepared, if necessary, to kill with his hands. She followed, a few steps behind, clutching his shirttail.
“Like a large rat. White with dark spots. And teeth.” She pointed at her mouth. “Sharp teeth.”
He lifted the coverlet and peered under the wood frame into the shadows. Two mirror-bright eyes peered back at him.
“I believe it is only a stoat.”
“Bloodthirsty creatures!” she wailed.
“Indeed, if you are a rabbit or a chipmunk.”
Claxton snatched up a blanket from the end of the bed, but determining the swath of wool too cumbersome for his purposes, he shrugged off his coat. Holding the garment before him, he rounded the corner.
Sophia retreated to the door to watch in safety. Vicious snarls arose from the creature in the corner—and Claxton. He shoved a wooden chest across the floorboards. He stomped. Muttered an oath. Scrambled and crawled.