AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She sucked in her belly, then went still as she puzzled over the implication behind his words. Was he referring to her, or both of them? Surely he didn’t expect her to think that he hadn’t been seeking his pleasure outside of their marriage bed! He was a man. Anobleman. And they were as renowned for their affairs as a fish was for swimming.
“What is her name?” she asked, and her blush immediately intensified because a wife wasn’t supposed to ask her husband such a probing question. It was an unspoken rule that no one talked about but everyone acknowledged. Certainly her mother had never wanted to know the identity of her father’s longtime mistress. Such deliberate ignorance was a means of protection for both husband and wife. A way to keep the table balanced even when it was wobbling on three legs. Not because a leg had broken, but because it wasbuiltthat way.
“Whose name?” Duncan said, the growing heaviness of his arm indicating that he was slipping closer towards sleep while Alexandria remained wide awake and wishing that she hadn’t let her mind wander down a path that it didn’t need to visit on this night of all nights.
“Never mind,” she said hastily. “It’s not important.”
“Whose name, Alexandria?” Growing more alert, he sat up on his elbow and craned his neck until she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “It must be important if you’re asking.”
“The…the name of your mistress,” she said before she hid behind her lashes, casting them down to sweep across the top of her cheeks in a fan of flaxen. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have–”
“My mistress doesn’t have a name,” he interrupted. “Because she doesn’t exist. I told you that before. I take it you didn’t believe me.”
“Can you blame me?” She wet her lips, lightly bruised in the best way from his kisses. “For most of our marriage, you’ve been traveling to London.”
“For business,” he said, studying her closely. “I’ve told you that. And if I did have a mistress, I’d tell you that as well. I’ve no reason to lie to you, Alexandria. I never have. Of my admittedly numerous faults, lying isn’t one of them.”
She…believed him?
She believed him.
But somehow, that almost made itworse.
“Then why have you been away more than you’ve been here?” She sat up and hugged her legs to her chest, chin resting on her knees as she looked at her husband with a mixture of frustration and bewilderment. “For business, yes. That’s always been your excuse. But no one can workthatmuch, Duncan. Not even you. If you haven’t been going to meet a mistress, does that mean…does that mean you’ve been leaving to avoid spending time with me?”
He took a long time to form a response. And in those brutal seconds that felt like hours, a lump formed in her throat.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said thickly. The snow outside had slowed, but within her heart, ice was starting to spread with alarming speed. “You needn’t explain yourself to–”
“Yes,” he said, and she had a leg over the edge of the mattress before he hooked an arm around her waist and yanked her against him. “Yes, damnit, I did travel to London to avoid our marriage. But it’s not what you think.”
“How could it not be what I think?” she cried incredulously, struggling to be free of him. But the harder she fought, the closer he held her, until she was exhausted and breathless and once again perilously close to tears. “A marriage isn’t something you should feel the need to run from. You asked me to marry you, Duncan. To be your wife. Your partner. Your lover. And then you left me out in the cold, and I’ve been freezing ever since.”
He exhaled heavily. His grip softened, and then she felt a sturdy weight on the crown of her head as he rested his chin there. “You were supposed to be a box, Alexandria.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“For as long as I can remember, my life has been defined by boxes that I’ve had to check off. That Ineededto check off, if I wanted to win my father’s approval.” His voice was weary, as if in the past five minutes, he had aged five years. But it was the underlying vulnerability that struck a chord within Alexandria. That tentatively guided her hand to his knee where she gave a small, hesitant stroke. A touch of both emotional and physical support. The kind that they’d so rarely shown each other. Not just him, but her as well. For hadn’t she maintained her own walls? Her own boundaries. Her own ingrained habits formed by the life she’d lived and the person she’d been before they were married.
“An earl should have a countess,” she said quietly. On the table beside the bed, the last candle flared a brilliant orange and then went out, plunging the room into darkness save for the silvery light of a half-moon peeking out from behind a curtain of clouds. The same moon that had shone down on them the night of the Belingrove Ball. “And a young lady should make a good match.”
“Precisely.”
“But we don’t have to be our parents.” She twisted to face him, her gaze imploring as it traveled across every inch and angle of his countenance. “Our marriage can be different from the rest. It can be better. It can be whatever we want to make it. But not if you’re running away, and not if I’m hiding here. I wantmore, Duncan. More than our upbringing has promised us. More than a marriage of convenience. More than a union of two people who are suited for each other on paper, but ignore one another in real life. Don’t you want that, too?”
“I want this,” he said gruffly, his eyes taking on a familiar gleam as they dropped to her breasts. “You, naked in my bed. The rest…the rest we can figure out in the morning.”
“Duncan–”
He silenced her with a kiss...and with a moan of desire, she surrendered to the inevitable.
Six
Duncan watched Alexandria sleeping beside him with a shuttered expression. The blanket had fallen to her waist, but while he’d admired the curves that comprised her delectable little body during the night, it was her face that captured his full attention in the morning sun.
Ivory skin with the faintest hint of a pink blush still lingering in her cheeks. Full lips, the color of a rose blossom, slightly parted. Curved brows a shade darker than her tawny mane of curls, and long lashes that pointed to a tiny freckle beside her perfectly shaped nose.
She was a True Beauty.
