Page 78 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Even now, as her silence condemned her, he found himself praying she’d say something perfect. He willed her to explain away the swirling abyss of suspicions tainting his every tumultuous thought.

He itched to light a lamp. To gauge her reactions and assess her expressions.

What good would it do? He’d been pitifully hopeless at that thus far.

Besides, if he looked at her now, naked and lovely, her lips and hair glossy and lush…

He might throttle her.

Or make love to her, despite everything.

What a foolhardy fuck he was, to play white knight to her damsel in distress.

The fire of his temper had begun to fade in the quiet dark, smothered by cool fingers of ice. With each silent moment that passed, a frigid wall made of memory and misgiving barricaded his ribs, turning his very core into a monument of glacial bitterness.

He drew in a breath of velvet smoke, imagining he exhaled all his growing devotion for her. Three days, he’d only known her three days, how had he become so beguiled in such a short time?

Would he never learn?

“You’ve nothing to say for yourself? No explanations, no excuses? I should think a brilliant woman as fond of lists as you are would have a contingency plan for just this occasion. Did you think me such a lackwit that I’d not notice?”

“That’s not it…” She let her words trail into the dark once more.

“Then tell mewhy,” he demanded. “Why you felt you needed to lie to me in the first place.”

“I didn’t lie,” she stated carefully. “I never claimed to be a virgin. You inferred that on your own.”

“But you claimed not to—” He broke off, pinching at his temple against a stabbing ache.

She was right. By God, she’d been right. He’d asked her if she’d everreallybeen kissed, and she’d denied it.

“Really” was such a broad term, wasn’t it? Open to so much interpretation.

So why mislead him? Why act like the innocent ingenue when she’d had a previous lover? A terrible suspicion curled in his gut, cording his muscles taut with disgust.

“Have you gotten yourself into trouble?” It’d happened to him before, when a mistress of his had become pregnant. He’d been all of twenty and three, awaiting his bastard child with almost rampant anticipation.

A child who’d appeared early, apparently sired by an Asian lover.

Bloody hell, was it happening again? “Did you mark my need of an heir, and grasp at the opportunity to make another man’s child a duke?”

Had that been her reason all along? Why her behavior had been so strange? He thought of her blurted marriage proposal, her artless seduction, her offer to resume even after they’d been interrupted by Rose.

Had her intention been to get him inside her no matter the circumstances?

“I’d never!” she cried. “Please. It’s not that—” She broke off, swallowing a note of hysteria before asking, “What are you going to do?”

The anxiety in her voice tugged at him, which brought his rage surging back.

“I’m not going to annul the marriage, if that’s what you’re asking. Not until I can be sure one way or the other. Despite how I look, I’m not a monster, you know.” His voice belied his claim, as it could have belonged to the coldest demon in hell. “The terms of our agreement haven’t changed. Funds in exchange for heirs. Isn’t that how you so charmingly put it?” Because, damn his soul, he still wanted her. Still burned for her. Despite the bleak poison curdling what was left of his heart, his body insistently throbbed for the ambrosia he’d found between her thighs.

As was her bedeviling way, she’d aroused more desire in the dark than an entire household of painted French courtesans lit by golden lanterns.

“Then… should we… resume?” She sounded as though the prospect of a night in his arms held as much joy for her as a night spent in the iron maiden.

Had she always felt thus? Revolted by him? Perhaps Rose had been brutally honest back at Castle Redmayne. Perhaps she’d seen what he did not.

He frightened and disgusted the woman who’d done her level best to seduce him. But, come to think of it, her repugnance had been evident in their every interaction. Hell, she’d nearly shot him at Torcliff. Her ridiculous lists. Her visceral reaction tonight when he’d established intimacy…