Page 33 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

AT FIRST, RAE tried to tell herself that it was all right because Rutchester never really got angry with her.

He would get angry rather often, of course, but it wasn’t because of something she’d done, at least that was what she thought at first.

He would be angry at stupid and petty things, she thought.

He got angry if the breakfast wasn’t to his liking. He threw a bowl of porridge against the wall during only their second week of marriage, screamed abuse at the servants and stalked down to give the cook a piece of his mind, and then went for a walk.

The walks were part of it, she’d noticed.

He went walking afterwards, sometimes for hours.

When he came back, he usually came and found her and they fucked.

Sometimes he talked first, especially if she’d witnessed him do something awful, or if he’d nearly hurt her.

He’d apologize or he’d chastise himself or he’d express regret.

But he’d be kissing her at the same time, his hands down the front of her bodice, and whatever she was feeling in those moments, it was too heated to be rightly called forgiveness.

He’d get angry at the servants, yes, but he’d also get angry about other things.

The weather. If it rained and ruined his plans, he was livid.

The traffic on the city streets. If it took too long to get someplace or other, he’d scream at the driver and the other carriages. He broke their carriage window one afternoon, in fact.

His clothing. Once he got irate about the way his cravat was lying after he tied it. He redid the bow four or five times and then pulled the thing off and tore it to pieces before…

Going on a walk, as per usual.

Rae didn’t like it.

Once or twice, she tried to have conversations with him about it, but they never went well. He would get immediately defensive.

“Look,” she would say, “it does no good to get angry at the rain. Your little fit won’t change the weather.”

“I know that,” he’d seethe. “You think I don’t know that?” Then he’d stalk out and go on another walk.

Anyway, she hated it.

But she consoled herself that it was never really about her, never really at her, never really her doing.

And then, one day, they got into an argument.

It wasn’t about anything important, but then his anger was often petty.

And she had sort of taunted him, she supposed, but she would not accept blame for it. It wasn’t her fault. He had overreacted.

They were sitting down to dinner, and the footman brought him a dish of green beans with ham in it, holding it out for Rutchester to serve himself. The duke looked the dish over and made a face.

“Are they too green for you, Your Grace?” she muttered. “Mr. Nichols, if you don’t mind, come over here and serve them to me before he spatters all of them on the ceiling and I don’t get anything to eat.” Mr. Nichols was the footman.

Mr. Nichols scurried over and she served herself.

When she looked back up, Rutchester was glaring at her.

“What?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Are you hungry much of the time, Your Grace?” he said to her in a very flat voice.

“No,” she said, furrowing her brow.

“Just quite desirous of green beans tonight, then?”

“You know it wasn’t about the green beans,” she said, and she speared three of them on her fork and put them in her mouth and chewed, glaring at him.

His nostrils flared.

She speared more. “These are delicious, Your Grace,” she said. “Are you certain you don’t wish to try them?”

He reached across the table, picked up her plate and hurled it across the room.

It hit the wall, shattered, and food hit the wall before sliding down to the floor, leaving smears everywhere.

She got up from the table. “You… you…” She clenched her hands into fists. “You can’t do that to my plate.”

“Oh, can’t I?” he said. He picked up her wine glass.

“Don’t,” she said.

He threw it. It hit the wall and shattered.

“You’re an overgrown child, do you know that?” she said. “One thing doesn’t go your way and you throw a tantrum, like a squalling baby.” She leaned across the table and picked up his glass.

“What are you going to do with that?” he said.

“Oh, when it’s your glass, you care?” She threw it at him.

It hit him in the middle of the chest, spilled wine all over his shirt and then tumbled onto the table. He looked down at the stain and then up at her.

She spread her hands. “What?”

He came around the table.

She planted her hands on her hips. “If you can’t ever learn to control yourself, Oliver, I don’t know what I’m going to—”

He took her by the shoulders.

Her voice died in her throat.

He let go of her, immediately. He fled the room, leaving the house. He walked all night that night. He didn’t come back until dawn.

RUTCHESTER PUSHED OPEN the door to her room. It was early morning, and he’d been walking all night after he’d thrown her plate and she’d thrown a glass at him and called him an overgrown baby.

It must have been that, when he was turning the whole evening over that had made him start thinking about it.

He counted.

He counted the weeks since they’d been married.

He would have noticed if she’d bled.

She hadn’t.

So…

But he knew—how did he know this?

Some conversation overheard somewhere, some women, he thought, and he wasn’t sure where he’d been.

He thought the women had been nearby, at someone’s country house, and he’d been sitting all alone at another table, and they’d been talking loud enough that he’d been able to hear what they were saying.

Anyway, it wasn’t the sort of conversation women tended to have around men, but they were talking about the regularity of their monthly bleeding, and at least one of the women said hers only came every six months and another of the women said there was no rhyme or reason to when hers came, that it was sometimes once a month and sometimes once every three months and sometimes stayed away for even longer.

Maybe Rae was that way.

He thought it might be likely that was the case, because she hadn’t said anything, and certainly, she would have been worried if her bleeding was late, and it had to be late at this point, because they had been married for six weeks.

But he couldn’t go home and ask her, not right away, because he needed to decide what he was going to do if she was with child. He could not be around her if she was. Tonight had illustrated that quite clearly.

After she’d thrown the glass at him, he’d nearly thrown something back at her.

He couldn’t do that.

He wondered if he should, in fact, talk to her about his plans, however, because they’d had that argument before, where she said she’d chase him if he tried to live separately than her. No, better to simply go, on his own, and not tell her where he was going.

She could not follow if she didn’t know where he was, after all.

He agonized over this, though, because he didn’t really want to leave her. It seemed even more dreadful to do it when she was gone with his child. Shouldn’t he be there to help her, to support her, to be there for her?

Except, he was only a burden. He had to go. He was dangerous to her, to the child.

Anyway, it was dawn before he finally got home. He was still not decided on what to do, but he had to know. If she could tell him that she wasn’t with child, then he could stop thinking about this, because he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Well, not yet, he supposed.

But unless he stopped fucking her, he’d eventually have to worry about it.

Damnation.

He stalked to the foot of her bed. “Rae,” he said.

She was asleep.

He reached out, seized her foot under the covers, and shook it.

She awoke with a start and recoiled, climbing up to the top of the bed. “You scared me,” she said, breathless.

He folded his arms over his chest.

“Have you come to apologize for last night?” she said.

“You haven’t bled,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said quietly. “I suppose I haven’t.”

“You haven’t noticed?”

“W-well…” She sat up against the headboard of the bed, pulling the covers with her. “I suppose everything’s different here and I’m out of sorts and I don’t have any sort of routine, so I have nothing to remind me that I should have my bleeding, but… oh, my, it’s been too long. I should have.”

It was quiet.

He felt like he could not breathe. “So, then, that means what?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“It means I’ve gotten you with child, doesn’t it.” His voice was dull.

“Don’t sound so pleased,” she said. She looked down at her belly and bit down on her lip.

He ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll send for a midwife to confirm it.”

“I don’t think it can be confirmed yet,” she said. “We just have to wait and see if I bleed again. I might bleed. Still. I don’t feel… shouldn’t I be sick to my stomach or overly tired or tender or something? None of those things are happening.” She sounded frightened.

“It’s your fault,” he muttered.

“Oh, is it?” Her voice went sharp.

“You’re the one who begged me to spend inside you.” He groaned. “Of course, we never did talk about it, did we? You might have just said it in the moment, because you were aroused, and maybe you didn’t mean it—”

“No, I did want it,” she said. “I do want it. I want… it’s not exceptionally wonderful timing after you threw my dinner plate and my cup and then went walking for ten hours.”

He nodded. “No, I understand. It’s foolish to be married to me. It’s even more foolish to be bearing my child.”

“Well, you’ll be more careful with me now, though,” she said, hopeful. “You won’t get as angry, either. It wouldn’t be good for the babe.”

“I have said it only a thousand times, and it’s as if you’re deaf,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I can’t stop it.”

She flinched. “You don’t have to be that way.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I haven’t slept. I’m out of sorts.”

“I’m out of sorts, too!” she said.

“Of course you are, considering you’re married to an overgrown child,” he said tartly.

“Well, you are maddening, really, Oliver. Everyone else on earth learned to control themselves, you know. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“I suppose I do,” she said. “It’s likely because of what your father did to you. It must have stunted you in some way, halted you there, at a young age—”

“I was six years of age, not three,” he muttered. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Well, it obviously has something to do with it. Maybe if we got to the root of it, we could sort of fix it.”

“To be honest,” he said, “my father was like this. Particular. Easily moved to anger. Tyrannical in many ways. All our fathers were, in fact.”

“So, you’re just behaving like he did? Mimicking him?”

“But I hate him.”

“You said you still love him.”

“True,” he said, feeling deflated.

“Maybe if we talked about what he did to you—”

“I’ll talk about it,” he said. But not to you, because I won’t be anywhere near you.

But certainly, if there was some way to get to the root of it by talking about it, then he’d try it.

He did remember how he’d felt lighter after he’d spoken about it in the carriage with her all that time ago, after all. It might work.

“Good,” she said.

He ran a hand through his hair again. “Go back to sleep.”

“Lie down with me.” She reached for him.

He shouldn’t. He should go and make ready to leave her. He needed to decide where to go. Perhaps he’d take a ship somewhere. Maybe the Americas. Maybe India. Somewhere far, however. Somewhere she would not seek him. He must make ready and he must do it at once.

But if the damage were already done, what did it matter now?

He climbed into bed with her.

She put her hands on him through his trousers. “This is always so very hard after one of your walks, Oliver,” she purred.

It got hard when she touched it, when she said things like that.

“I want to touch it,” she said, kissing him.

God help him, he wanted her to touch it.