Page 20 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“I will tell Sellers to increase your pin money,” he added.

At that, she sent a glance toward the far end of the long room where her escritoire sat, the movement so quick he could almost convince himself he had imagined it.

In an obvious effort to retain her calm, she sat down beside the tea table and carefully arranged her skirts around her. “And you, sir?” she asked, as if this were merely an ordinary social call. “Will you stay in England or return to…Paris?” That slight hesitation conveyed not doubt, but knowledge, as if she understood full well that he had not been in the French capital all these years. Had he forgotten how clever she was?

“That remains to be seen.”

His business in London was urgent, and he had intended to travel on before nightfall. Then again, the notion that he might stay longer in her company clearly made her unhappy. “Are you so eager to be rid of me, madam wife?” He sat down across from her in one of the elegant upholstered chairs, too small for his frame, and stretched out his booted legs. Whatever it took to increase her discomfort, to remind her how terrible he was. “But of course. How thoughtless of me. Your lover is expected this evening, perhaps.”

Color fanned across her cheeks. “On the servants’ half day? How predictable.”

Damn him for wishing her to deny it outright. “You will be alone, then? All the better.”

Her eyes flared. Oh, he’d intended to alarm her—and was gratified to see he’d succeeded. But even so, a frisson of… something, something that wasn’t fear, passed between them. No, she was not indifferent to him.

Neither was he indifferent to her.

“I daresay a few days at the seaside would prove most enjoyable,” he went on.

“The Old Ship offers acceptable accommodations,” she replied. He could almost admire her show of calm. “Shall I ring for Mrs. Horn and have her send someone to make arrangements?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Her breasts rose and fell on a sharp, silent breath. “Surely you don’t expect an invitation to stay in my house?”

“Your house?” He made his voice light, easy, even as hers began to betray her agitation. “I’m afraid there’s a flaw in your logic, my dear. Is not this house leased by my solicitor? Using my money?” Her control slipped from her with his every word, and he gathered it eagerly to himself. “Therefore, it is, under any reasonable interpretation of the law, mine.”

Her cheeks were pink and her respirations uneven. “There’s a flaw in your logic, too,” she replied, her voice quieter than he had expected. “If I were dear to you, you would not have abandoned me six years ago.”

Abandoned.

Her voice, earlier so cool and bright, had grown brittle enough to crack beneath the weight of that single word.

No, not indifferent at all.

“You left me without cause, without explanation, without—”

“No.” With an idle flick of his hand, he waved away her accusations, wondering when he had last troubled to defend himself. “I left you with a house in London, a staff of servants, ready access to funds to meet all your material needs, and the title of marchioness—itself no insignificant weapon for self-defense.” She arched a skeptical brow. “The only thing I removed from your life was my person, my disagreeable person, and if you were so unwise as to pine for me in my absence, well…” He brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his sleeve. “I cannot help you.”

“One need not pine to wonder what has become of someone. Surely, in six years’ time, you might at least have written.…”

“What could I have told you that you would have wished to hear?”

She glanced down at her hands, folded tightly in her lap. “What if you had died…?”

A laugh ghosted from him at her oblique answer to his question. “Then you would have been a wealthy widow.”

Far from appearing reassured, she flinched. Laying her hands on the arms of the chair, she pushed to standing, perhaps to disguise the involuntary movement. “I should go and speak to Mrs. Horn about dinner,” she said, suiting her actions to her words, “though I suspect she’s already scrambling to prepare your favorite dishes.”

“I hope she will not trouble herself overmuch. I am a man of simple appetites.”

Her hand, which had been reaching for the door, fell to her side, and she shot a quelling look over her shoulder.

“As for where you will sleep…” The coolness had returned to her voice, but still, he detected the slightest tremor. Was she wondering whether he intended to slake his simple appetites in her bed?

“Mrs. Horn already directed my man to put my things in an unoccupied suite of rooms at the back of the house,” he told her. “She said that there, I would run no danger of troubling the mistress.”

Something—amusement? relief?—flickered through her eyes, though it did not travel deep enough to change her expression. When she thought of those nights together, so long ago, did she remember them with pleasure or pain?