They had been discussing what should be done for Collins, a mutual friend who had fallen on hard times. As they talked, Nathaniel had partly kept his attention on Cecily, and had felt a twinge when he observed her short exchange with Lady Mountingdon.
That was nothing, however, compared to the anger he felt when he saw Cecily give her hand to that fair-haired adventurer. All other thoughts instantly flew out of his mind.
“Oh, it’s only Lord Keenan,” Leo replied, unconcerned. “He never likes to miss a dance.”
“Why is he holding Cecily like that?” Nathaniel demanded, his gaze tracking the couple through the open doors of the ballroom and his feet already following.
“Because this dance is a waltz,” Leo told him with a sigh, walking beside him into the ballroom. “How else would he hold her? Look, Keenan is a flirt, but he’s no harm, really. Can we get back to Collins?”
Nathaniel was no longer listening, however. He watched with stormy eyes as the blond man swept his wife into the waltz, bending and twirling her in time with the music.
Lord Keenan was just a flirt, was he? No harm? Maybe. Even so, Nathaniel didn’t like it at all, especially when he saw Cecily laughing at something the man said to her.
“Nathaniel,” Leo murmured in a warning tone. “It’s only a dance. You look like you want to murder the poor man.”
“Maybe I do,” Nathaniel muttered through gritted teeth.
“Good Lord, you’re actually jealous?” his friend exclaimed with a little laugh. “I never thought I’d see the day that Nathaniel Winslow cared enough about a woman to be jealous.”
“Mind your own business, Leo,” Nathaniel snapped, not liking what was being implied any more than he liked the sight of Cecily waltzing with Lord Keenan and enjoying it.
As he readied himself to move forward and intervene in the middle of the waltz, Leo placed a restraining hand on his arm.
“Very well, Nathaniel, but I caution you to be prudent. Cecily is your wife, and Keenan is nothing to her. Do not make more of this than it is.”
Reluctantly, Nathaniel paused and waited for the dance to end.
Cecily was his wife in name, just as Leo said, but was she his wife in reality or even to her own understanding? With her body still unclaimed, did she feel that she was his?
At that moment, it did not seem so.
Damn it all, he should have taken her a hundred times over while he had the chance. Then, his blood would not be roiling now, and perhaps her dark eyes would be smiling up at him like that, and not at Lord Keenan.
As soon as the music began to wind down, he stalked over to her.
“My wife and I must talk,” he said tersely, taking her arm before the final bars even sounded, not caring how rude he must seem to Lord Keenan or anyone else watching them.
Cecily did not resist, her expression cool and unreadable as Nathaniel led her out of the ballroom, down a dim corridor nearby, and into a small candlelit sitting room that suited his purposes just as well as any other.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing, Nathaniel?” she demanded with cold and dignified anger. “We could have talked in the carriage on the way here. We will have another opportunity on the way home, and?—”
“Have you forgotten who you are?” Nathaniel interrupted angrily as soon as the door closed behind them. “I saw you out there laughing and flirting with that man. You aremywife, the Duchess of Greyhaven. I expect you to conduct yourself with the propriety suited to our rank.”
“As you do?” she hurled back at him, her mask of cool disdain suddenly discarded and replaced by hot fury that more than matched his own. “I do not think I could match your levels of ‘propriety’ if I tried, nor would I want to.”
“What?” he sputtered, confused now as well as angry.
“Oh, Lady Mountingdon has opened my eyes to you,” Cecily told him accusingly. “I understand now. I was a plaything, a toy you picked up because it entertained you for a few minutes. Now that you are bored with me, you have returned to your regular mistress, or mistresses. I neither know nor care how many other women you have.”
Nathaniel’s head spun. What on earth was she talking about? Her face was entirely sincere, and her dark eyes flashed with indignant fury even as her lip trembled with emotion.
However wrong she might be, she truly believed what she was saying.
“I have no mistresses,” he told her bluntly.
“Then why did Lady Mountingdon talk about you the way she did?” she demanded. “She made me feel like such a fool because I never guessed?—”
“Oh, hang Lady Mountingdon!” Nathaniel exclaimed, seeing now that the blonde woman had used Cecily to take her revenge on him. “She and I were lovers once, briefly. It was purely physical. She wanted more, and I did not. Now she seeks to turn you against me. That is all.”
