The Marquess Tames His Bride

She struggled with her answer. Should she be truthful and tell him that she’d passed a wretched night? Wrestling with her conscience for hours before finally drifting off into a fitful doze. And that only after getting down on her hands and knees, and clearing up all the broken crockery, and blotting up the water with a towel so that his staff would not guess what she’d done.

Or should she take her lead from him and pretend nothing had happened?

‘I cannot say it was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had,’ she finally decided to say. Honesty had always been important to her. And she wasn’t prepared to abandon all her principles the minute she ran into difficulties as a married woman. ‘I was…so…’

He sat on the chair beside her bed, crossed his legs and gave her an indecipherable look.

‘So…?’

Oh. So he was determined to exact his pound of flesh, was he?

‘Ashamed of myself.’ There, she’d admitted it.

‘Indeed,’ he said coolly, raising one brow. ‘For what, precisely?’

‘For losing my temper with you! I don’t know why it should be, but you only have to raise your brow, the way you are doing now, and I want to…scream and throw things, and…’

‘Is that your notion of an apology? Dear me, it seems to fall short in so very many ways.’

‘I…’ She took a breath. Counted to three. ‘Yes, I…’ She drew on every reserve of self-control she possessed. ‘That is, you are right, I should be apologising.’

‘Your response did seem a little extreme,’ he said, looking down his nose disdainfully. ‘If I had known you had such a partiality for diamonds, I should not have dreamed of withholding them from you—’

‘It wasn’t the diamonds! And don’t pretend you think it was about them. You know perfectly well you made me feel…cheap. Used. As though you had to pay me for services rendered.’

‘No, no, I am sure I explained it was a family tradition—’

‘I don’t give a fig for your family tradition. All I wanted was for you to…’ to hold her in his arms as though she mattered ‘…to let me know I wasn’t a disappointment.’

‘I believe I did exactly that.’

By saying it had gone remarkably well, considering her so-called virtue?

‘You did it,’ she said from between clenched teeth, ‘in such a way that you made a mockery of my values and comparing me to all the other women you’ve had…’

‘I did no such thing—’

‘Oh, not out loud. But you did in your mind.’

‘So you think you know what I’m thinking, do you?’

‘Yes. You—’

But then, as if to prove she could have no idea what he was thinking, he leaned over and stopped her mouth with a kiss. It surprised her so much that she promptly forgot whatever it was she’d been about to say in the sheer delight of having his mouth on hers again when she’d been so certain, from the caustic comments he was making, that he was never going to forgive or forget the way she’d brought their wedding night to a close. She was so relieved he could still bring himself to kiss her that she put her arms round his neck and tugged him closer.

In the dim reaches of her consciousness, she was half-aware of the breakfast tray sliding to the floor, accompanied by the sound of more breaking crockery, as he threw back the covers so that he could climb in beside her. But she didn’t care. He must have decided to draw a veil over her temper tantrum now he’d made her apologise, to judge from the way his hands were all over her. Not that she could keep her hands off him, either. Which was easy to do, since the dressing gown was all he was wearing.

* * *

Much later, when he’d taken her to the heights she’d experienced the night before, only without giving her even the slightest twinge of discomfort, he tucked her into the crook of his arm as he rolled on to his back.

‘I almost forgot,’ he said, reaching for his gown and drawing a square of card from a pocket. ‘Your bride gift.’

She took it from him and held it up to the light filtering in through the lace curtains at the window.