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“Would you care to have some snuff?” he asked. “I have some very fine snuff just brought over from India.”

“Not particularly,” I said. “I’m sitting by my wife. Maybe if you bring it out here.”

Mr. Elton looked startled, darting his eyes around to the other gentlemen. Lord Sheringham’s eyes goggled with open astonishment, while Mr. Westruther merely looked confused. But my wife had just taken out her needlework and I liked watching her stitch.

“Certainly, my lord,” Mr. Elton said uncertainly, getting up and exiting the room.

I watched him leave with narrowed eyes. I hadn’t forgotten his overly-familiar greeting to Catherine.

When he came back I got up to and walked over to the other side of the room to dip some snuff, but my eyes remained on my wife.

“How is married life treating you?” Lord Sheringham asked.

“Tolerably well,” I said, my eyes on my wife.

Was that the hint of a purple mark on her throat where I had savagely kissed and sucked and bitten her? Fuck, it was pretty.

“I heard the Wendovers are in a bad place,” Mr. Westruther said. “Rumor in the Ton is that they’re regretting this marriage and trying to look for loopholes to annul it.”

I laughed without mirth.

“They can try whatever they like. They won’t be taking Catherine from me.”

Mr. Westruther took another reflective pinch of snuff. “Went to the opera house the other day, dear boy. They said they hadn’t seen you since your wedding.”

I shrugged, feeling my skin tighten. “I have no interest in opera singers anymore.”

My eyes sought Catherine, as they always did now, flicking up and down her body, where her quick clever hands plied her needle through the cloth.

The Garden of Eden.

And Catherine was my Eve.

But, unlike the serpent, now that I had fangs in my Eve, I wasn’t going to let her go.

CHAPTER 24

Catherine

Iwas expecting St. Erth to go in the other room with the gentlemen, but he did not do that at all. Instead, he sat beside me as I worked on my embroidery. My husband sat way too close, his fingers on my threads, pulling each one so that I could barely make a stitch without feeling his fingers brush against mine.

My face flushed hotly.

“The gentlemen are all over there,” I hissed at him.

“So?” he asked lazily.

I pulled a bright green thread through to finish the head of the snake, my movements restricted by the way my husband had twined his fingers around the thread.

“What a vicious snake,” he said, his voice low and wicked in my ear. “Maybe the stories have it all wrong. Maybe the snake is the one who couldn’t stay away from Eve. Maybe there was never any escape for her.”

My breath seemed to catch in my throat, and the way his voice stirred the curls on my neck made heat break out all over me.

Maybe I was just running a fever.

But I didn’t feel sick, just hot, flushed, with prickly, heavy heat stirring between my thighs.

I didn’t trust my voice, trying to focus my eyes on where I was stitching the snake’s tongue. It came out a bit crooked and I looked at it in dismay.