The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

“How the hell do you know about that, damn you? Ah, it was that bloody Spears! I’ll kill him after I’ve seen to you. Good God, have all of you been planning this?”

His face was white, his hands tight fists. If his ribs hurt, she doubted he felt it. He was finally furious. He was finally over the edge. Very slowly, she rose to face him. She splayed her fingers on the table. “Marcus, you don’t have to keep me as a wife. Indeed, I had intended to go back to London at the end of the week to spare you the sight of me. What I wanted to happen has happened. Everything is as it should have been. Surely you can forgive me, or at least forget me without too much anger.”

“You damned sacrificed female goat! I won’t have it, Duchess. You have tricked me, manipulated my valet, drugged me, all to give me back what I didn’t want. Don’t you remember what I told Mr. Wicks? I don’t want it, none of it. That damned pederast, Trevor, will become the next earl.” He paused and rubbed his fingers over his j

aw. “Well, that can still happen, can’t it? My thinking processes aren’t quite sharpened yet this morning, doubtless because of the dose of laudanum you forced down my throat.

“But I’m thinking now. Yes, Trevor could easily be the next earl. After all, I would have to force myself to bed you, probably many times, to get you with child. And what if it were a girl you birthed? Then I would have to force myself to take you again and again for the male child.” He stopped again this time because he saw that her face was perfectly white. But it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. “To bring myself to seek out your bed would require more than I have, Duchess. It is true what I said to Mr. Wicks. Whispering love words to a bloody inert woman would shrivel me into oblivion. Is your flesh as cold as you are, Duchess? Would you perhaps sob softly whilst I had my filthy way with you? No answer. Well, what did I expect? How did you bring yourself to say your vows during our eminently forgettable marriage ceremony? Yes, just look at you, all tight and stiff and cold.

“I would have to lay Lisette there beside you so that I could look at her while I took you, hear her laugh and moan and scream so that I could force myself to even touch you.” He was doing it again, he thought vaguely, hurling insults at her again, insults that had to cut deep. But this time she’d done it, she’d gone too far—drugged him for God’s sake—and he refused to take them back or apologize. Besides, it was possible that what he said was true.

Oddly, although she knew intense pain at his words, she felt no anger. She said then over his harsh breathing, “You don’t know that, Marcus.”

“Don’t know what, curse you?”

“If you would need your mistress there to stimulate you.”

He shook his head, his right hand lightly stroking over his ribs. But the pain dulled, oh yes, dulled to practically nothing when he looked at her perfidious face again. “I don’t believe this, any of it. I will spend the day determining if I wish to strangle you. Send me Spears. I have a meeting with Wellington and have no wish to miss it.”

She merely nodded and left him.

10

HOTEL BEAUVAU, RUE ROYALE

BADGER LOOKED CLOSELY at her, not saying anything for the longest time, waiting for her to speak, but, of course, she didn’t. She was the most self-contained individual he’d ever met in his life. He’d always believed her inviolate—that’s what her mother had always said—but now he wasn’t so sure. The thought of her with Marcus Wyndham, the thought of that man as her husband, a man who was outrageous in his speech, who said, in fact, anything it pleased him to say, who gave way to rage and anger with the speed and precision of a battlefield surgeon, worried him profoundly. But then the young earl got over it, and cleanly, realizing of course that he’d strewn insults and hurtful words in his wake, but not knowing the power of them. Badger shook his head and said finally, “Duchess, I heard him yelling.”

“Oh yes, his yelling. He is quite good at it, but for the most part, he was fairly quiet. Then he saw me again when he was on the point of leaving.” She drew in her breath. She’d meant to stay out of his way once she’d left him to his breakfast, but she was worried about his injuries, and thus had returned to his bedchamber. Her hand was raised to knock on the door just as he’d opened it. He looked like a banged-up demon, she thought, with his black eye, the swelling in his jaw.

“You’re a little late, Duchess,” he’d said in that sneering voice of his that made her wonder who this man was, for surely Marcus wouldn’t sneer like that. “I’m not naked anymore. Indeed, I am leaving this house. I assume it is yours?”

“Yes, I rented it before I came to Paris. You may remain here, if you like, Marcus.”

“Why? Do you mean you told my landlord that I had been shot and was no longer in Paris? Did that bastard Spears bring all my clothes over here?”

“I don’t know.”

“ ‘I don’t know,’ ” he repeated, his voice thick with sarcasm. “This was all your plan, wasn’t it? What the hell do you mean, ‘I don’t know’?”

“If Spears did bring all your clothes here, then don’t you think you’d like to remain here? Perhaps you would like to dine with me this evening?”

He looked down at her from the intimidating height he’d attained during the past five years. She realized with a start that she came only to his jaw. “Have dinner with my wife? That’s a novel idea. A wife, a commodity I hadn’t ever considered. Well, yes, I did, didn’t I, for all of five seconds when dear Mr. Wicks gave me my ultimatum. It sounded damnable to me then and now it makes me want to puke. No, I believe I will be spending the evening with my mistress.”

“I wish you wouldn’t, Marcus. I ask that you come back here and let us speak about the future.”

“The future? You think you have changed everything, don’t you, Duchess? Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever it is, it won’t include you. Good day, madam.”

He stomped down the corridor, stopped, wheeled about, and shouted, “Don’t wait up for me, will you. God knows, Lisette is a greedy puss, and in her bed I intend to forget you and all you’ve done to me.”

Hurtful words, she thought. Marcus had never learned brakes for his tongue.

She now said aloud to Badger, “For the most part, he preferred to stomp this time rather than waste his breath. Though when he does yell, the neighborhood must enjoy the drama.” She sat down in a window seat, her hands folded quietly in her lap. “I imagine that everyone in the house heard him slam out of the front door.”

“Yes. Did he agree to, well, anything?”

She gave him a ghost of a smile. “Do you mean is he delighted that I am his wife?”

“I shouldn’t go that far yet with a man like the earl.”