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“A village idiot, that’s what I begat!”
“Father, you will cease insulting me. I am going riding now.”
“Damn you, boy, what did you do to her?”
Hawk looked his father over very coolly, an expression he had perfected in his army days. It was nearly always effective, particularly with recalcitrant troops.
“I did nothing to my wife,” he said finally, his voice as forbidding as the wretched cold water in Loch Lomond.
“Oh yes, you did,” the marquess said, his eyes gleaming with fury. “Her maid told Mrs. Jerkins, who just happened to let slip to Grunyon, who told me, as is proper, that there was blood on her bedsheets and that she was pale as a ghost this morning!”
Hawk cursed very softly.
“Surely your wife wasn’t a virgin until last night?”
Hawk was silent.
“No, I can’t believe that, not with you, you randy young goat.”
Goaded, Hawk said, “No, no, she wasn’t.”
“Then why blood, damn you? What did you do to her, you half-wit?”
“It’s what I didn’t do,” Hawk said. He wondered vaguely if a village idiot was worse than a half-wit.
“And that being?”
Hawk shrugged, and walked to the long windows in the drawing room. “I didn’t use any cream,” he said over his shoulder. “I forgot.”
The marquess closed his eyes. Why the devil would a husband have to use cream with his own wife? It was ridiculous, unless he was rough with her and uncaring.
He looked over at his beautiful son. He was standing tall and straight, his eyes locked on the elm tree outside the window. His Hessians gleamed in the mo
rning sunlight that poured into the room. He was wearing buckskins, and a gray sporting jacket.
“A husband shouldn’t hurt his wife,” the marquess said slowly.
“I didn’t mean to,” Hawk said, turning to face his father. “I thought that if I left her to get the cream, she would hide herself somewhere in this tomb of a house to escape me.”
“Well, that’s truth of a sort. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going riding.”
The marquess frowned, his most baleful frown, and Hawk suddenly realized that his own practiced expression came from his father. He wondered suddenly if his own son would carry the same expression.
“You shouldn’t, you know.”
“Look, Father, I’m weary to death of all this idiocy. If you’re so concerned about Frances, why didn’t you marry her yourself?”
“I did consider it,” the marquess said frankly.
Hawk looked surprised.
“But, Hawk, I realized it wouldn’t be fair. What young girl would want to be bound to an old man?”
Hawk threw up his hands. “Quite a rich old man,” he said. “I’m quite certain Ruthven would have been delighted.”
“I never believed—unti! this moment—that you had more of your mother’s brains than mine.” With those blighting words, the marquess strode from the room.
