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Her eyes widened, and those brown orbs went soft with relief and confusion. “That’s rather indulgent of you.”
A painful, aching tightness lingered inside of him. He turned on his heel to retire to his chamber and hesitated. “I assure you, upon my honor, I’ll never take you by force, Daphne.” Then the devil in him added, “I’ll wait until you are willing and wet for my touch, until the need to be filled is a crippling ache that keeps you awake at night, until anticipation and hunger cloud your beautiful eyes.”
“You have a terribly long wait ahead of you…Sylvester.”
He smiled at the pique in her voice. Satisfaction filled him. He wasn’t an easy man. Over the years he had grown hard, and no matter how he tried to soften, it eluded him. He did not want a woman who would dissolve into hysterics at the first sign of danger, or raised voices, or his anger. This was how he wanted his countess—defiant and unafraid. The notion that she had feared him burned along his skin like acid. It bothered him greatly, and he couldn’t understand the reason behind the disquiet. He did not require her love or her trust, for he had no deep sentiments to give.
Only an heir and an agreeable marriage, and that could be achieved with seduction.
Chapter Six
Three days later, Sylvester found himself at his club, reading a freshly pressed newspaper, a steaming cup of coffee awaiting his attention. The muted sound of clinking glasses and masculine laughs and chatter lingered in the air. Word of his return to London had swept through the rooms of White’s when he’d entered an hour ago. Though he had returned a couple weeks past, he’d been abed in the last stages of recovery in Victor Drummond’s lodging in St. James’s.
When Sylvester had been in Jamaica, ravaged with fever, one single thought had kept him sane—he needed to see Daphne once more. Why, he hadn’t understood; his fevered brain had been illogical but persistent and desperate. Everyone had protested when he had ordered Victor to make arrangements for travel, and the local doctor had promised him he would die on the voyage.
Perish he did not, and he had spent some time assessing the desire that had pushed him to travel when he had been so ill. The delirious dreams had been of his countess, rounded with child, reposing on the grass with her head in his lap, and the emotions behind the picture they had presented as a family had been a visceral longing.
“Say, Redgrave, how capital of you to allow me the use of your box for the missus,” said Mr. Walton, an upcoming barrister who was busy making a credible name for himself.
Folding the paper and resting it on the table, Sylvester leaned back in his chair and assessed his quarry. Redgrave appeared assured and handsome in a dandified sort of way. He couldn’t imagine what his wife saw in the bounder to even entertain a life with this weasel after the mythical divorce she wanted. The viscount glanced in his direction, and Sylvester lifted his head in a silent command for the man to attend him. Wariness settled on the viscount’s face, but he made his way over.
“Sit down,” Sylvester said, motioning to the chair across from him.
The viscount complied, assuming a mien of lazy indifference. “Carrington, to what do I owe this honor?”
“You will never approach my countess again,” Sylvester said smoothly, driving straight to the heart of the reason for which he had visited his club. It had taken him a few hours to persuade himself not to slip into the man’s townhouse in the dead of night and have this conversation with the edge of a knife’s blade at the viscount’s throat. Sylvester was even pleased he was acting with such restraint when he wanted to gut the man before him for touching his wife…for kissing her…for wanting to debauch her when he had no bloody right.
Redgrave stiffened, then narrowed his gaze. “What do you think you know?”
“Enough.”
“Are you afraid she will choose me?” The man had the galling temerity to taunt.
Sylvester couldn’t help smiling. Perhaps providence would shine on him after all, and the viscount would act with stupidity. “Are you confirming you have acted with gross dishonor in trying to seduce my wife?”
Redgrave frowned, clearly sensing a trap. “And if I am?”
“Then we shall meet at dawn.”
The viscount froze. “You cannot be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. I quite look forward to teaching you just how serious I am about my countess.”
“Good God, man, do not act in haste. Dueling is illegal.”
Sylvester’s lips curved mockingly. He couldn’t say if the viscount saw the promise of ruination in his small smile, but the man blanched and tugged at his cravat.
“I never touched her, I swear on my honor.”
“Honor? The concept eludes you, Redgrave. It would be prudent to swear on something more tangible.”
“I swear on my life I never seduced her. I may have stolen a few kisses—”
The soft snarl that came from Sylvester shocked even him. “I promise you, it is your life you will lose if I prove your words wrong.”
Redgrave swallowed visibly. “I swear, my lord, she was never eager at participating, and I did not dare hope for more despite my admiration. I do not understand it, but she is steadfastly loyal to you.”
A peculiar kind of pain entered his body. Steadfastly loyal. And he had done nothing to earn it. His wife had honor.
“As it stands, the two recent investments you made to recoup the losses from your plantations in Barbados have been closed to you.” Sylvester took a piece of paper from his jacket and slid it across the table. “This is an offer for your plantations in Grenada and Barbados. You will accept, and I will not increase my offer. Charges will not be brought against you for going against His Majesty’s orders in purchasing slaves from ships recently docked in Jamaica and Haiti. The only reason I am lenient is that my countess has been seen in your presence this past year. The stain of your disgrace will taint her by association, and that is the only reason I am showing mercy to a dishonorable bounder as yourself.”
Redgrave paled alarmingly. He took the paper, unfolded it, and read the sum. “This is not even a quarter of what they are worth.”
“Reparations will be made to the people who have suffered under your cruel stewardship. It is fair they will be given a parcel of the land their liberty was stolen to toil.”
“You Goddamned bastard,” he said through bloodless lips.
“Are you impugning my mother’s honor?”
Rage burned harsh and bright in the viscount’s eyes.
“Give me a reason to put a bullet through your black heart, I’ll happily accede and bury you.”
The viscount made no reply, only snatching up the paper, stuffing it into his pocket, and lurching from the chair to stumble toward the billiards room. Sylvester was tolerably satisfied with the outcome of the confrontation. The urge to smash his fist into Redgrave’s front teeth was still present, but for now, he would have to settle for the real fear that had darkened the man’s eyes.
He finished the coffee that had grown tepid and stood. Invariably, his thoughts turned to his countess and his campaign of seduction. Collecting his coat and hat, Sylvester called for his carriage and a few minutes later departed for Lady Blanchette’s ball. Pinning down his wife at home seemed impossible. When he’d returned from his morning ride in Hyde Park, she was missing and only returned to ready for tonight’s ball. He hadn’t planned on attending until she had strolled down the winding staircase sheathed maddeningly and provocatively in a high-waisted scarlet satin gown with a stunning display of décolletage.
In one shocking breath, she had aroused his emotions and lust, his possessiveness and his jealousy.
Sylvester had almost ordered her to return and change into something more demure, more unlikely to beset his mind with images of seating her on his cock deep and hard and urging her to ride at leisure and then furious passion. But there had been a dare of defiance in her eyes, and he had been curiously captivated.
His carriage slowed, and he tapped the roof
and alighted several blocks down from Lady Blanchette’s townhouse. It made no sense for the carriage to join the long queue visible ahead. The night was alive with music and merriment, and he wondered if his countess anticipated his presence. What had that defiant smile been about? And how would he procure his heir when she seemed so disinclined to share the same space with him?
It flummoxed him that notions of the art of seduction were something beyond his purview. Before he’d married his countess, he’d had several lovers, and there had been rumors declaring him a rakehell. Mothers had warned their daughters from slipping away with him to dark corners even as they had plotted on how to trap him into marriage. He hadn’t lied to Daphne when he told her he’d been without a lover. The need for warmth and pleasure had haunted him several times, but to act with such dishonor had never occurred to him, and he had buried his loneliness and hunger in his work.
Everything about seducing his wife solely for an heir felt wrong. Seduction hinted at a tenderness, a need to please and be pleasured without reservation. It had nothing to do with securing his title. Except he wanted to be sweet and tender with her so badly. He could still taste her on his tongue, feel the ripple of her release. Her submission to his touch had been sublime.
He quite liked the notion of a forever kind of passion with her, not something that would burn away once an heir had been achieved. Now he knew exactly what he had been missing for so long. A peculiar feeling of regret wound its way through his heart. How he must have hurt and shamed her with his distance. She had been so young when he married her. He frowned. She would now be three and twenty, and he truly had no notion of the woman he had taken to be his countess.
And the question he now had to consider was: Could he only take her to bed for his blasted heir and spare, or did he want to know the heart of the woman that lingered behind those beautiful but saddened eyes?
…
