Meanwhile, Abigail—the woman he’dwantedto spend the remainder of December and a good part of January courting in an effort to convince her to give their marriage a real chance—was either with her hellish felines or attending the duchess, with rarely a minute spared for her husband.
It was not the quiet, romantic winter sojourn at Summerwind House that Stephen had imagined.
Then again, nothing in regard to Abigail was how he had imagined it would be.
Had he truly thought these three weeks would be any different?
Christmas passed with a whisper, and then it was on to a new year where nothing felt very new. The duchess was still expecting, Susan was still hissing at him whenever the opportunity presented itself, and Abigail was still as far out of reach as she’d ever been. With only five days left, he was ready to admit defeat and move on. He couldn’t make Abigail love him any more than the duchess could make her child be born. Except the baby’s birth was an eventual inevitability, whereas his marriage... maybe his marriage had just been doomed from the start.
Turning the page of his newspaper, he sipped his morning coffee as he scanned an article that detailed the unprecedented freezing of the River Thames, trapping all boats in the harbor as London suffered one of its largest snowfalls in recorded history. The unfavorable weather had extended to Northampton, dumping nearly two feet of snow on the ground before it moved northward. Fortunately, his recent renovations of Summerwind House had included replacing all of the old, crumbling clay tiles in each of the thirty-five fireplaces, ensuring that while outside the manor it was cold and icy,insidethe manor it was cozy and warm.
At least in temperature.
“Stephen? Are you in—there you are.”
He nearly spilled his coffee when Abigail entered the solarium, appearing particularly appetizing in a mint-green dress with her curls pinned up with a pencil (she was always looking for something to write with) and her spectacles resting on the tip of her nose.
“Here I am,” he said blandly, closing the newspaper. “Can I help you with something?”
Following the arrival of their unexpected houseguests, he and Abigail had made it a point to be flawlessly polite with each other. There were no thinly barbed references to the past.No sharp words exchanged in the present. Only dull, spiritless, plodding politeness. The kind that made him want to bash his head against the nearest wall when he wasn’t painting on a cordial smile.
“May I sit down?” she asked, and he hid his flicker of surprise by jumping to his feet and pulling out a chair across the table.
“Of course.” If his hand lingered a touch too long on the back of her seat, they both pretended not to notice. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I’ve already had tea.”
“Better than the pond water I had to drink after we first met, I hope.”
Her eyes sparkled behind the smudged lenses of her spectacles. “Pond water that you nearly choked on, if I recall.”
“In my defense, you said... well, you know what you said.”
“Breasts?”
“Indeed.” Unable to help himself, he glanced down at her lovely décolletage framed in white scalloped lace before jerking back up to her face only to find that she was grinning at him. Not a framed, politely stitched together grin that didn’t reach the edges of her mouth but a genuine, eye-crinkling grin that made the freckles on her nose dance.
“Breasts are merely a part of the human anatomy. Not unlike an arm, a foot, or a knee.”
“I’m sorry, but a lady’s breasts are not comparable to aknee.”
“Not in physical function, no.”
“Not in any function.”
She folded her hands on her lap. “I am afraid I did not come in to discuss breasts.”
“No,” he sighed with feigned melancholy. “Women never do.”
“By my calculations, there are five days remaining out of the twenty-one that you proposed.”
Stephen’s spine went rigid as he straightened in his chair. He had been preparing himself for this very conversation.With Abigail’s attention to detail, he knew it would be coming sooner rather than later. And he’d already told himself—orderedhimself—that he would accept her decision to leave with whatever dignity he had left.
“Yes, that is correct. I can arrange transportation for you back to London—”
“I’d like to stay here,” she said in a rush, and no amount of preparing could have readied him forthatparticular statement.
“What?” Under the table, his fingers dug into his thighs as pink climbed into the arches of her cheekbones. Above it, his expression remained carefully blank.
