Chapter 17
It was a mistake to be kissing her husband. Clio knew that it had to be a mistake—it was the kind of thing that was no doubt going to end with her feeling crushed and abandoned—but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
But that didn’t mean that she intended to go down without a fight.
“You make me so angry,” she informed Hector, even as she fisted his hair, holding him in place against her.
He growled, and she felt the rumble in his chest against her front, and she felt her nipples grow hard inside her gown. It was so unfair how he affected her.
Except, apparently, she wasn’t alone in this, because Hector’s growl turned into something resembling a moan.
“Princess, if you only knew what you stir up in me,” he groaned into her kiss.
He hoisted an arm under her behind and used it to lift her up.
She was gasping at the utter bloody audacity of his just—just tossing her around like a sack of flour when he used his other arm to sweep aside his neglected place setting and put her on the dining room table.
One of the plates crashed to the floor and shattered. Clio feared that she was destined for the same end—not physically; no matter how angry she got, she knew that Hector would never drop her—but somewhere deeper, somewhere that mattered more.
But she pushed aside any fears that her heart might be compromised far more brutally than her reputation. She let herself have this, this consuming moment, with her husband’s powerful body between her legs, his arms wrapped around her as he guided her to lie on her back, and his mouth on hers.
“You have wormed your way under my skin, princess,” he told her as his hands hungrily caressed her jaw, her neck, her collarbones. “You found me as I stumbled into this city, and you drew me in, and now here I am. Here I am.”
He sounded as though he was wondering how such a thing could have happened, and Clio suppressed the sting that she suffered every time he made it clear how much he hated every part of the world that had produced her.
It reminded her that, yes, she might be his wife, but he would always do what everyone had always done: he would see her as a member of her family first, and as a person second.
Hector might not want to ingratiate himself with the Lightholders the way so many others had done, but it turned out that his utter rejection of everyone she loved hurt just as much as knowing she was being used to access them.
It was easier to feel angry than to feel hurt, so she grabbed him by the hair again and jerked his face back to hers. She wasn’t gentle, but there was something feral and hungry in his expression as she pressed her mouth to his again.
“You are right here,” she told him. “With me.”
He might be planning to leave her behind, but for right now, she wasn’t about to let him forget that—for right now at least—he was with her.
She hitched up a knee so that his body could nestle more firmly against hers, and she thrilled at being trapped between the hardness of the table and the hardness of his body.
Again, he crushed his mouth to hers, and she could feel it so much more now, the invasion of his tongue, the press of his hips against hers.
She writhed on instinct, and he groaned, and for a moment Clio thought that maybe it could be all right between them.
That maybe she could take this pleasure that they found between them and use it to fix everything else that seemed so determined to go awry.
After all, if she could make him feel like this—if he could make her feel like this in return—couldn’t they sort the rest out?
But then there were footsteps nearby, and even though they were man and wife, even though this was his house—their house—even though it was the actually thrice-damned day of their wedding, Hector leaped away from her like he’d been caught doing something unseemly.
For a moment, Clio was left staring at the ceiling, flat on her back and utterly abandoned.
But that was rather too pathetic, no matter how appropriate it might feel, and these days her pride was one of the few things she had left.
So, she pushed herself upright just in time to see a conflicted, almost frightened look on Hector’s face give way to a confident smirk.
“You know,” he said, “if you just admit that you are starved for the pleasure that only I can give you, I’m sure we could figure something out between us. You know perfectly well that I can make you feel good.”
It was … utterly crass, that comment. And, yes, it made her burn inside, but in a way that was more embarrassment than desire, though she could not deny that both were present.
What did he expect, though? That she would beg for him? That she would debase herself to a man who had married her only because he’d had to? Because she’d been unable to control her desires before and gotten them both caught in a compromising position?
And why would he even offer? Was it just masculine pride? Just a desire to know that he was desired—that his appeal was enough to send a proper young lady into a fervor?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know, and it drove her mad.
It was bad enough that he’d married her out of pity. She wasn’t going to make herself an object of ridicule in her own home.
“I will never do that,” she snapped, shaking out her skirts with trembling hands. “You will never, ever hear me beg for you.”
She didn’t dare look to see how he reacted to this. Instead, she summoned all the dignity that centuries of aristocratic breeding had instilled in her, held her head high, and took herself off to cry in private.
After a week, in which Clio avoided her husband and read seventeen novels—whatever she could say for her new home, it had a well-stocked library, which she would need if she planned to hide in her bedchamber until Hector returned North—she decided to go see Phoebe.
A week was enough time that people wouldn’t make comments about her emerging from her newlywed bower too soon, Clio reasoned, hating herself for considering gossip, not to mention letting it control her comings and goings.
More to the point, a week was more than long enough for her to worry that she might quite literally lose her mind if she didn’t speak to anyone besides her maid.
Phoebe, bless her, was delighted by the unannounced visit.
“Clio!” she cried, rising from her writing desk, wiping errant smudges of ink from her fingers with a cloth. “I didn’t expect to see you!”
It was at that precise moment that it occurred to Clio that she ought to have sent some kind of note.
This wasn’t her home any longer.
Phoebe must have seen this realization in Clio’s face, because she crossed to Clio and wrapped an arm around her.
“None of that,” she chided, guiding them both to a settee. “You are always welcome here. Always. I only said as much because I think Aaron might have already left for the day. He is going out to the soldiers’ home this afternoon.”
Aaron had come away from his time in the war scarred, but with his body and mind intact, something that could not be said for many of the men with whom he had fought.
In recognition of this good fortune, he funded a convalescent home for soldiers whose injuries meant that they could not support themselves or live alone.
Phoebe was a great favorite at the home, and she often accompanied her husband.
“I’m not interfering with your plans, am I?” Clio asked.
Phoebe waved her off. “No, I wasn’t planning on joining him this time, anyway. It’s only fair that I sometimes let someone else win at cards. I just am sorry that you may have missed him.”
Just then, however, Aaron himself came through the door, hat in hand.
“Oh, hello, Clio,” he said, smiling at her. “I didn’t realize you were—”
“We’ve already done all that,” Phoebe said, rising to accept the kiss on the cheek he offered. “We’re all fine. You can go; Clio and I will stay.”
Aaron reached up briefly to touch his wife’s cheek, and he wore such an expression of tenderness that Clio looked away, feeling like a voyeur.
Phoebe and Aaron loved one another so much. Clio was pleased for them, of course. She wanted her brother to be happy.
But when she contrasted that with her own recent marriage, and the discomfort of feeling like a rabbit hiding from a fox in her own house …
Well, it was hard not to be maudlin about it.
“I’ll be home for supper, so if you’re still here, Clio, I’ll see you then,” Aaron said, placing his hat on his head, then stealing one last kiss from his wife. “If not, Phoebe and I shall have a proper dinner for you and your husband soon, yes?”
He left before she could respond. Clio rolled her eyes. She didn’t know if it was because he was an admiral or because he was a duke, but the man had an annoying habit of assuming people would go along with his plans.
And the worst part of all was that she loved him anyway.
“So,” Phoebe said, eyes gleaming with interest as she returned to the settee. “Tell me everything. How is your honeymoon?”
Clio suspected her smile looked more like a grimace. She’d expected this, of course, but it didn’t make matters any less awkward.
“It’s fine,” she said shortly, not really believing that this would put matters to bed.
Phoebe’s brows rose. “Fine,” she repeated in an extremely dubious tone. “So, you are … enjoying yourself, then?”
“I’m reading a great deal,” Clio supplied as cheerfully as she could manage.
“Reading,” Phoebe echoed, as if Clio had said she’d been doing a great deal of murder. “You’ve been recently married. To a man who looks like that. To a man who looks at you like that. And you’ve been …” Her pause went on for so long that it was outright damning. “Reading.”
Clio scowled.
“Not all of us can go as wobbly as blancmange when we are in our husbands’ presence, thank you very much,” she said, trying to sound arch and dismissive rather than wounded. “You know what preceded our marriage. It was not precisely a love match.”