“Tell me what is really going on here,” she said in a voice so low and dangerous that she wasn’t surprised when he blinked in fear and awe. “Tell me what really happened to the castle. Tell me why you hate being here so much. And tell me—right now—what is really going on with Lord Redfield and why we are here.
“And don’t you dare say that it’s for our honeymoon! Because this is no honeymoon. And believe me, I would know! I’ve dreamt of my honeymoon all my life. Just like how I dreamed of marrying a kind, caring man who would love me for who I am. But no, instead, I’ve ended up marrying exactly the kind of cruel, vindictive man I always promised I wouldn’t marry—a man like my father. But even he wouldn’t be monstrous enough to take his wife to a dilapidated, rundown castle with only one tiny bed and call it a honeymoon.”
But she had said the wrong thing. At the wordmonstrous, he flinched, and something closed in his face. He didn’t seem angry so much as not there. She froze, waiting to see what he would do next. Then he drew himself up to his full height and looked down at her with something akin to indifference.
“Get out,” he murmured, and despite the quietness of his voice, there was a cold authority to it that she had to obey. When she didn’t move, his face twisted, and suddenly he was shouting.“GET OUT!”
She turned and fled from the room.
Chapter Eleven
“What would one of the heroines of my novels do?” Rosalie muttered to herself as she paced back and forth across the floor of her bedroom. “Hang the notion that life isn’t like a novel—why shouldn’t it be?”
There was one thing she knew for sure as she reached the wall opposite the bed and turned back around: none of the heroines in the books she read would be pacing their rooms late at night, waiting for their husbands to come to them. They would be out therelookingfor them.
Rosalie stopped pacing. It had been three hours since the blow-up fight with the Duke, and so far, she had not seen head nor tail of him. She’d gone back to the bedroom after the fight where she’d tried to distract herself, but it hadn’t worked. Even reading had given her no respite from the anger, guilt, and worry that gnawed at her. So, she’d brushed her hair, gotten into her silk nightdress, and tried to sleep, but nothing worked. She’d ended up out of bed for the past hour, pacing the room.
We are going to have a miserable marriage.That was the most dominant thought, the one that was making it impossible for her to sleep—the idea that the next thirty, forty years of her life were going to be spent with a cruel, unfeeling man who despised her.
Nor could she blame that misery entirely on the Duke. Yes, he had been more angry than was strictly necessary, and she thought he ought to work on his temper, but she had also resorted to a low blow.
I knew calling him monstrous would remind him of his epithet,the Beast of Carramere.I knew it would hurt him, but I said it anyway.
That was another reason why she couldn’t sleep: the guilt was hounding her. She had never been the kind of person to sink to low blows or become cruel. She had always been the most spirited of her sisters, yes, but she wasn’t unkind.
“That’s enough,” she said out loud as she stared at the door. “I am not going to simply wait here, hoping that he returns to our bed! Nor am I going to ignore my problems. I’m going out there, I’m going to find my husband, and I’m going to fix this!”
That’s what Lizzy “Nobeard” Seacliff would do!
Rosalie strode to the bed, grabbed her dressing gown from it, and threw it over her shoulders. Then she marched to the door and out into the corridor. It was late now, and all the lamps had been extinguished. She couldn’t see anything, and whenshe reached the end of the corridor, she stubbed her toe on the corner.
“Blast!”she swore quietly, but it must have been louder than she thought because someone suddenly grunted near her, as if being woken up. Rosalie let out a gasp, made to scramble away, and tripped over the end of her dressing gown. With a lurch, she went flying, and landed on?—
Something surprisingly soft. And warm. And… moving!
“Who’s there?” the Duke’s voice said out of the dark, and then large hands seized her by the arms. She had landed on top of her husband, she realized. He seemed to have been sleeping on one of the small divans that lined the hallway, and now, she was sprawled right on top of him, her legs intertwined with his.
“It’s just me,” she squeaked, shame and another harder-to-identify feeling, warming her cheeks. “It’s Rosalie!”
“Rosalie?” The Duke’s voice sounded confused and drowsy, as if he had been deep asleep moments before.
“Yes,” she said, and she tried to get up off of him, but his hands held tight to her. “It’s me,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, the two of them lay there, her trapped in his arms, breathing silently together. His chest went up at the sametime that hers went down; they were sync, in rhythm. Then his grip eased, and she pulled away and stood up.
Her eyes seemed to have adjusted to the darkness because she could see the Duke now, lying on the divan. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and stared at her.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked. He didn’t sound angry, merely curious.
“I was looking for you,” she said, a little indignantly. “You never came to bed.”
“Oh, well, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was…” In the dark, she saw him hesitate. “I wanted to give you your space.”
“So you slept on that?” Now that she could see better in the dimness, the divan looked even smaller than she remembered it. Or perhaps it was just the sheer size of the Duke. He had curled his legs almost all the way into his chest in order to fit on the small sofa. “But you don’t fit!”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, but she made sure her tone was gentle, not chiding. “You’re far too large to sleep on that. Please, come to bed.”
