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W illiam stared at her, and for a long time, he didn’t speak.

Arabella felt frozen. She couldn’t believe she’d said what she had. She had never felt more vulnerable in all her life. Had she really just accused him outright of not liking her? It was what she feared, but she hadn’t meant to come right out and say it like that.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. If only he would say something to reassure her!

She promised herself that she would believe it if he did.

She would take him at his word if he told her he had cared for her all along, if he explained that he had only ever withheld part of himself from her because he was afraid or because he hadn’t planned for things to go the way they did or—any reason at all would do.

She would hear it, and she would accept it.

“What are you talking about?” he asked her, and her heart sank. It was the worst thing she could have envisioned. Even a confession that he didn’t like her would have been a better answer than this pretense.

She tried again anyway. “You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “You can’t stand to be around me.”

“Then why did I marry you, Arabella? You must realize that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know why you married me. I’ve never known why you married me. It certainly wasn’t because you liked me. We’d had all of one conversation when you arrived at my door to propose marriage. And it’s not because you were so desperate for a wife because God knows you won’t give me that role.”

“Is that what this is about?” he demanded, eyes narrowing. “You want more wifely duties.”

“I would settle for any ,” she said.

“This from the lady who, when we agreed to the terms of this marriage, insisted that I not touch her? I seem to recall that being your stipulation, not mine.”

“How convenient for you. And if I told you now that I wished to remove that stipulation? Would it change anything for you?”

He sighed. “Arabella?—”

She had known, but even so, her insides turned to lead at the confirmation.

“Nothing would change,” she said. “You know it wouldn’t.

It was a blessing to you that I made that request in the beginning because it was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?

Right from the start, it was always your intention that our relationship should be the way it is now. ”

“And what’s so wrong with that?” William demanded. “Haven’t I given you a good life? Haven’t I provided for you and your family? Is it such a hardship to you being a duchess?”

“What do you imagine people will be saying in a year’s time when there’s no child to speak of?

” Arabella asked him. It was her mother’s voice coming out of her mouth now, a fact that didn’t thrill her, but she couldn’t help it.

Her mother’s words had infected her mind, and she was worried about it.

What would happen if there was no heir? Already she worried that William might tire of their sham of a marriage and decide to leave her behind as her mother had suggested.

Having a child might be the thing that was needed to get him to stay.

“This is truly what you’re concerned about?” William asked her, eyebrows lifting. “What people are going to say ?”

If I thought you cared for me, I could forget that part . But she had already been vulnerable enough, and she couldn’t bring herself to say that aloud. She couldn’t emphasize what a role her feelings for him played in the conversation they were having now.

“It’s easy for you,” she told him instead.

He folded his arms across his chest and frowned, and Arabella could tell she had offended him. “What, exactly, is easy for me?”

“Not worrying about what people think,” she said. “You’ve never had to concern yourself with what anybody thought about you.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I know you haven’t,” she told him. “The circumstances under which we married were just one example. You didn’t have to marry me.

You could have walked away. I would have been ruined, but you wouldn’t.

You don’t face gossip and ridicule at every turn as I do.

You’re permitted to live your life as you see fit.

I’ve never been able to do that. I have to care what people think because no one will ever allow me to forget about it. ”

“So that’s what this is. You’ve become so obsessed with the opinions of others that you’re going to allow it to dictate what you and I ought to do behind closed doors.”

Arabella laughed bitterly, unable to help herself. “You make it sound as though I’m using this to ask you for something unreasonable,” she said.

“You don’t think so?”

“I’m not asking for anything that isn’t standard in a marriage!” She threw up her hands. “You treat me as if I’m so far afield of anything I have any right to wish for when actually?—”

“You wish me to take you to bed,” he finished for her. “Isn’t that it? Isn’t that what you’re asking?”

She felt her face grow hot. She’d never been more humiliated in all her life. To think that she had begun their marriage by refusing him this when he must have known all along that he would never give it to her even if she begged! How he must have laughed when she wasn’t around.

Tears pricked at her eyes. “Why did you marry me?” she asked him.

“I wanted a wife,” he said, his voice rather short.

“Why? What are you going to do with me now that you have me? What do you need a wife for that you can’t get anywhere else? You can play chess with your friends; you don’t need me for that.”

“That’s why you think I married you? For chess?”

“I’m done trying to guess,” she said heavily. “If you aren’t going to tell me—and I see that you’re not—I guess I’m just not going to know, and that’s the end of that.”

All of a sudden, Arabella felt unbearably tired, more tired than she thought she could stand.

“I’m going to bed,” she told him. “You’ll speak to me when you want to—or you won’t. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of trying every way I can think of to convince you not to run away from me. If you want to run, I can’t stop you.”

She meant both that he ran away from her emotionally, as he had after their kiss, and that she feared him running from her physically.

She didn’t know which meaning of her words he would take to heart, and though a part of her wondered, she wasn’t curious enough to subject herself to any further humiliation.

This had gone as badly as it possibly could have, and she was appalled, both at herself for daring to pose these questions she now wished she didn’t know the answers to and at him for his heartless answers.

She fled up to her room, shut the door behind her, and after a moment’s thought, threw the latch.

She didn’t want anyone coming in here right now, not even Polly.

Her lady’s maid would try to comfort her, and in her current state of agitation, Arabella thought that comfort would probably only serve to make her feel worse.

She didn’t want to be soothed. She wanted to hold on to the distress she was feeling, to allow it to take her over. She wanted to indulge her sadness, at least for now. She would worry about what came next eventually, when she was ready, but that certainly wasn’t going to be tonight.

Her bed was soft and welcoming, beckoning her, and she went to it and fell back on the mattress.

She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying not to think about what must be going through William’s mind right now—what kind of opinion of her he must have been left with.

He had never been fond of her, but now, he would think her desperate. He had even used the word obsessed .

Well, it was his fault! She wasn’t the one who was being completely unreasonable here.

What she’d told him was true—she was asking for something very normal.

He was the one who didn’t take life seriously.

He was the one who should be grateful for what she had offered today.

An heir to his dukedom—any normal man would want that!

The fact that he didn’t was further evidence of how little he thought about anything, how he focused only on what was happening at any given moment and not at all on the demands of the future.

He wouldn’t be so happy with no heir in a few years, but by then, it would likely be too late—they would be cemented into these roles that he had apparently decided they ought to play in one another’s lives, and there would be no coming back from that.

Arabella sighed, wondering how it was possible that everything had gone so wrong. For a brief window of time, she’d believed that this marriage might actually be a good thing.

Of course, it wouldn’t be. What had she been thinking?

Just because he had given her family money and created a life that she could step into and try to thrive in…

no, she could never thrive as his duchess.

Not when it meant being so distant from the life she had always pictured for herself.

Not when it meant a marriage in which she was treated like she was nothing, like she didn’t matter at all.

She rolled over, too tired to bother with undressing, too tired to take down her covers and tuck herself into bed properly.

A foolish idea, but right now, all she cared about was closing her eyes and forgetting about the world for a few hours.

At least in her dreams, none of this would be able to touch her.

When she fell asleep, she could stop thinking about her humiliation, stop thinking about the way William had looked at her as if she didn’t matter to him at all.

The pain would go away, even if only for a few short hours.

Arabella needed that reprieve.

Her head came to rest on her pillow, and she closed her eyes, anxious for sleep.

But it was hours before sleep found her.

The time seemed to tick by more slowly than it had ever done in her life, and it wasn’t long before Arabella found herself wishing for the morning.

At least when morning came, she would have distractions.

She would be able to get up and move around, go down to breakfast—she would go early in hopes that William wouldn’t be there, for she didn’t want to see him at all.

She didn’t like to think about what the coming days would require—she’d have to do all she could to avoid crossing paths with him.

But at least that would be something for her to focus her time and energy on.

It would be better than sitting around waiting to see what he would do with her confessions—with her demands.

It would be better than lying in the dark pondering all the ways her life was a shambles.

She sighed and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and evenly, trying to will her body into sleep. She didn’t want to be exhausted tomorrow on top of everything else she was facing. She wanted to feel as whole and like herself as she possibly could.

But to be realistic, Arabella knew that it was unlikely she would find any comfort or ease in the days to come—and perhaps not for a very long time.