The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

When the carriage door opened and Sinjun leapt out, Douglas didn’t move. He stared beyond her. Finally, Alexandra emerged, her head down, her shoulders bowed. She looked defeated and that angered him even more.

“I see you came back,” he said, cold as a fish on ice.

“Yes,” Alexandra said, not looking at him. “I don’t want to be, but it appears that I cannot even best the youngest Sherbrooke.”

She was trying to hold her valise and that angere

d him even more. She was still recovering from her illness and yet she’d tried to leave him again—and carrying that damned valise herself!

“The Sherbrookes are competent, for the most part.”

“May I leave now, my lord?” As she spoke, she raised her head and looked him squarely in the face. “I want to leave. May I have Your Lordship’s august permission?”

“No.” Douglas strode to her and pulled the valise from her fingers. “Come along now.”

She didn’t move. He was aware that every Sherbrooke servant was an avid watcher to the damnable melodrama they were witnessing, and that he was serving up meaty gossip for many winter nights to come.

He moved closer to her and said very quietly, “I am tired to death of your imprudence. You act without thought, you are reckless, and I will tolerate it no more. You will come with me this instant, and for God’s sake, stop acting like I am going to beat you!”

She straightened her shoulders and walked beside him into the hall.

Her mother-in-law stood there, looking ready to breathe fire at her. Alexandra hung back. She didn’t want this. She looked at the other young man, and knew him to be Tysen, the youngest brother who was in love with the twit of two names and no bosom. Sinjun was nowhere to be seen, but Alex knew she was watching. No Sherbrooke would pass up such a promising spectacle.

Douglas turned back when she stopped. “What is it now?”

“When are you going to take me back to my father?”

“What the devil does that mean?”

“You know very well that you don’t want me to remain here. I simply left to save you valuable time and to spare myself further mortification at your hands. If you would but allow me to leave, you would never have to see me again.” She paused and the bitterness crept into her voice. “I suppose you prefer to take me back, don’t you? Will it give you pleasure to further humiliate me? To tell my father that I am sorely deficient and that you want all your money back?”

“Lower your voice, damn you!”

“Why? Your mother wants me here about as much as she would welcome the plague! My words must make her rejoice.”

“Be quiet!”

“I will not be quiet! I no longer recognize you as my husband. I will no longer obey you.”

“You are in my home! I am master here, no one else. You will do exactly what I tell you to do and that’s an end to it! No more of your nonsense, madam.”

And Alexandra, mild of manner and of quiet, thoughtful temperament, flew at her husband and struck his chest with her fists.

He let her strike him simply because he was frozen with shock and surprise. Her face was flushed, her eyes dilated. He very gently clasped her wrists and pulled her hands to her sides.

“No more, Alexandra, no more. Now, you and I have some talking to do.”

“No,” she said.

Douglas was a firm believer in reason and calm. He exercised beneficent control. He also was quite used to being the master in his home, he hadn’t been bragging about that for it was the simple truth. He was not a despot nor was he a malignant savage. But his word was the law and his opinions the ones that counted. But this damned woman dared to go against him. It was infuriating and intolerable. He found himself uncertain what to do. In the army, any recalcitrant soldier he faced would simply have been removed and whipped or confined to quarters. But what did a man do when his wife disobeyed him in front of every servant and his mother and his brother and sister? If she struck him?

“No,” she said again.

“Let her leave,” said the Dowager Countess of Northcliffe. “She wants to go, Douglas, let her.”

He bent on her a look she had never before received from him. “Mother, I would that you keep still.”

His mother gasped.