It had made Aaron’s blood boil, and since he hadn’t been able to rid himself of that rage with violence, he’d gone with… another method.
One that he had found distressingly pleasurable.
He’d almost erupted in his trousers like an untried lad for Christ’s sake. He’d woken up in the night half a dozen times, hard as stone, and only Phoebe’s presence in the adjacent room had stopped him from doing something about it.
All in all, this whole business with his wife—with hisattractionto his wife—was becoming a problem.
“Well, reconsider,” Jacob said jovially. “Because the fundraising efforts last night were beyond our wildest expectations. And that’s not even accounting for your own generous contributions.”
This was, Aaron supposed, good news, though he seized upon it less due to any joy it brought him than for the potential for distraction.
Anything to take his mind off the woman who was rattling around this house somewhere and, even without being in his eyeline, ensuring that he would never feel any kind of peace in his own home ever again.
“Aren’t ladies meant to be the ones cooing over fundraising?” he asked. “Why am I not being graced by one of the iron-haired matrons who live for this sort of thing?”
“They are mostly afraid of you,” Jacob answered with such promptness that Aaron justknewthat the louse was waiting for this precise question. “I volunteered for duty. Mostly so I could come drink some of your good liquor.”
Aaron narrowed his eyes at his friend, but he waved him tiredly in the direction of the drinks cart.
He needed to get some sleep. This part was Phoebe’s fault, too. She really had a lot to account for.
He shouldn’t have been so affected by her. She wasn’t even his first bloody choice for marriage!
And yet…
The thought of being married to anyone else felt instinctuallywrongto him.
Aaron blinked and realized that Jacob was looking at him expectantly, as if he’d called his name more than once.
“Warson,” he said, looking completely delighted, “are youdaydreaming?”
“I will have you keelhauled,” Aaron threatened. “I don’t care that we’re both out of the navy. I will find a boat and drag you beneath it.”
Jacob, perverse little thing that he was, looked even more thrilled at this threat.
“This is good for you,” Jacob said, gesturing at Aaron with a tumbler. The man really did only ever come over to drink Aaron’s spirits. And pester him. One or the other.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aaron said.
“I think you do,” Jacob contended.
Aaron pressed his lips into a thin line. The problem was that he didn’t know what was happening to him. He had almost bedded his wife—for the first goddamned time—in another man’s house. Up against a wall. Like it was some sort of quick dockside romp, not the first encounter between a man and wife.
He was furious that he’d done it. He was furious that he was feeling so bloody sentimental about it.
He was furious that Phoebe made him feel all these—things.
His marriage was supposed to be an arrangement ofconvenience.These feelings were bloody inconvenient. Not at all what he’d planned upon.
“It’s better if I stay in control of things,” he said eventually to Jacob’s probing look because this was as close as he could come to admitting any of the things rioting inside him, most of which he could not describe even to himself.
Jacob paused, like he was thinking carefully about each and every word before he let it pass his lips.
“Warson,” he said, voice wretched with understanding, “we’re not at war any longer.”
Aaron pressed the tip of his tongue against the point of one of his teeth, hard enough that he tasted a hint of the iron tang of blood. It wasn’t a comforting taste, but it was a familiar one—and sometimes that was all he needed.
“I know,” he said eventually, his voice quiet. “But maybe that’s the problem.”
