Page 103 of Kathryn

Hit him over the head with a club would probably be more useful.

Snarling, she punched the unoffending pillow and then flopped onto her back, still glaring.

She didn’t mind challenging him—she actually enjoyed locking horns with him, not to mention how much she loved the way they had resolved their last two disagreements.

But as much as she enjoyed the passion they shared, she needed more. She wanted more. They needed more or she would be living alone in Spenwood for the rest of her life.

How could she ever get through to him?

Just… how?

Chapter Twenty-Four

“—looking for you, Your Grace.”

The voice slowly penetrated the dense fog of Gerrit’s concentration, and he looked up from the ammonite—which filled one entire table in the tent—to find Jessop, his assistant, hovering on the threshold to the tent, his forehead deeply furrowed.

“What was that, Jessop?” Gerrit said, wincing as he stood up and straightened his back. He should have been sitting instead of bending over, but he often forgot about things like posture when his mind was engaged.

“The duchess is here, Your Grace.”

“My mother has returned?” he blurted, his pulse racing. And not in a good way.

Jessop cleared his throat and glanced away, as if embarrassed. “Er, not the dowager, but your wife.”

Gerrit felt like an idiot. He opened his mouth to ask what she wanted and luckily realized that would only make him look like a bigger idiot. Instead, he strode out of the tent.

Kathryn’s gelding, Robin, was grazing not far from Centurion but he could not see her. “Where is she?”

“She is at the dig, Your Grace.”

Gerrit strode toward the well-trodden path that led to the terraced hillside everyone referred to as the dig.

He spotted Kathyrn immediately, her emerald riding habit vivid against the dun background. She was talking to Leopold Scott and Albert Everett, both junior lecturers at Oxford who’d spent several months here for the last two summers.

Albert, the more sociable of the two, was gesturing with his arms and whatever he said made Kathryn laugh.

Jealousy boiled in his belly at the younger man’s apparent ease when it came to chatting with women. Gerrit had never made a woman laugh—at least not intentionally.

By the time he reached the trio he was seething, more at his own consuming jealousy than anything else.

“You should have told me you were coming today, Your Grace.”

Kathryn, who’d been speaking, stopped at his harsh announcement, her pleasant smile fading at whatever she saw on his face. “Hello, Dulverton.”

“I would have arranged a tour for you,” he said, biting back the urge to tell Scott and Everett to sod off and get on with their bloody work.

“You needn’t put yourself out. Alby was just showing me what he was working on.”

“Alby?” he repeated, probably more loudly than necessary.

Everett cleared his throat. “Er, yes, Your Grace. Um, Her Grace and I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted several years ago at a house party,” he said, reminding Gerrit that Albert Everett was the younger son of Viscount Everett.

A house party? Although Gerrit had never actually been to one, he knew country house parties were, if not outright orgies, certainly notorious for the amount of bed hopping that occurred. Had Everett fucked Kathryn?

You are allowing your jealousy to run away with your sense. Kathryn already told you she’s had only one lover.

Gerrit was stunned that he heard the tiny voice over the sudden roaring in his head.