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Disappointment sliced through her. “Is this not your chamber?”
He halted but did not turn around. “You can sleep here for tonight or return to your chambers. The choice is yours.”
Heat stained her cheeks. He was so dismissive. Then he exited.
Adel scrambled from the bed, placing her foot onto thick soft carpeting as she stood in the center of the room, shaking. The pleasant masculine décor of the room with rich colors and dark wood furniture did nothing to ease her stormy emotions. With a great effort she calmed the racing of her heart. She inhaled, and his scent rushed into her lungs. Unable to stay any longer she hurried to the door, opened it, and rushed down the corridor to her chamber. She crawled onto the bed and buried herself in the mound of pillows.
What had just happened? With a frustrated sigh, she rolled on her back and stared at the canopy above her. She felt empty and bereft. Was this how her marriage would be? Should she accept the duke’s edicts, or wait to see how their lives unfolded? It would be useless for her to fervently hope he might come to love her, and while she would not fight for a love he was not willing to give her, she would not remain childless.
She needed to understand his demons, but she knew the maddening man would not allow her close. But…he’d just responded to her with such raw force, surely that must mean he desired her. Should she try and make him fall in love with her as surely as she knew, she would eventually love him? Why would she even want to waste her time, loving such a vexing man?
His empty eyes.
No one should look so lonely and bereft.
She crushed the thoughts with willpower she never knew she possessed and drew the coverlet to her chin, before closing her eyes. Eventually she would know what to do, and prayed she would not muck it up. She was now a mother…a wife, and there was no turning back the hands of time.
In this, she would not fail. Adel had failed in her season, and she had certainly failed to be an exemplary daughter with her conduct, but she was determined to succeed as a mother…and as Edmond’s wife and duchess. She lay on the bed and watched the embers dying on the hearth until she finally succumbed to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
It was most assuredly not the scotch, but the woman herself. Edmond had held on to the belief that without his drinking the night he visited Lord Gladstone, Adel climbing into his bed would not have had such an effect. It was not pleasant learning he was very wrong. It was not only love he was uninterested in…he wanted distance from this brutal punch of pleasure to his system from a simple whiff of her scent and taste.
He was a damned fool, God help him, for he had been unable to stop the madness of tasting her. When last had he felt such pleasure from a mere kiss? The front of his breeches tightened embarrassingly and instead of withdrawing, the vexing and bewitching lady had stretched up on her toes, lifted her hands, and wrapped them around his neck, her fingers combing through his hair. Her touch had been exploratory, definitely innocent, and it had allowed him to pull back from her when everything in him clamored to devour, to slake a need that had been too long denied.
Thank Christ. A tiny sound of protest had caught in her throat as he withdrew and disappointment had glowed in her eyes. The lady was purported to be in love with another man. Why would she been yearning for his kisses, when her heart was engaged elsewhere?
But what was it about Adeline that made him loose the tether on his control? Edmond had almost taken her, and without an ounce of the tender consideration he had bestowed on his first wife on their wedding night. Though he’d only been eighteen when he had married Maryann, he’d had a few lovers. She had been the shy blushing virgin, and it had taken him almost an hour before he’d been able to convince her to shed her nightclothes. Then when he made love with her, it had been under the banner of darkness, communicating with touches, and soothing murmurs. They had gone so slow, sweat had beaded his brow and his arms had trembled from holding back.
It had been like that for the first few weeks, before she lost her shyness. A wry smile twisted Edmond’s lips. When he had received Adel’s summons, he’d only intended to put her at ease, and provide the relief he thought she would crave at the knowledge he would not expect marital relations when she still had love for another. Instead he’d been consumed with the need to pound his lust inside of her because of the visceral desire she elicited.
Bloody everlasting hell.
He wrenched opened the library door and slammed it with much more force than he’d anticipated. How it had all shot to hell so quickly, his muddled brain still had to figure out. Worse, not once had the dangers of bedding her entered his thoughts the second she had tumbled into him. What if he’d lost control, took her, and she’d fallen pregnant?
He swallowed down the sick feeling rising inside, stalked to the side mantle, and poured brandy into a glass. With three swallows he consumed the fiery drink. It did the job. The queasy feeling had been replaced with the harsh burn of the liquor.
Edmond strolled over to a wing-backed chai
r by the fire and sank into the chair’s plush depths. He needed to analyze their situation and find a way to resolve the raw emotions bubbling in his gut. Since his loss of control and his sense of self when Maryann died, he’d prided himself on his cool emotional state that he had worked with a ruthless will to attain.
He was now married. Fact.
He had no need for another child. Fact.
His new wife seemed to desire marital relations. A distressing fact.
And he could not get the taste and feel of her out of his head. A disturbing fact.
He had barely touched her and she had been so wet. An enticing fact.
Edmond scrubbed a hand over his face and laughed ruefully. He should have left the chit to her ruin and disgrace and wed lady Evelyn. He was certain that lady would have been thrilled with the knowledge she would not have to burden herself to fulfill any marital duties. But Lady Adel actually wanted him. Her hot and eager responses had almost bewitched him. His cock stirred, and he groaned.
A knock sounded on the door and he glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. “Yes?”
The door opened and in strolled his mother, Lady Harriet Rochester, the dowager duchess. She was dressed in the height of fashion in a Prussian blue silk gown with pale blue long satin gloves, with a matching turban on her head. The modest bodice trimmed with white silk roses and silver embroidery. A row of silver embroidery continued down the front of the dress and around the hem, which also had small clusters of white silk roses at regular intervals around the edges.
At forty-eight, his mother was still a ravishing woman with generous charms, and many men of the ton still pursued her in earnest. Diamonds dripped from her ears and throat, and her gray eyes, so much like his, found him unerringly in the darkened room.
