Chapter Ten #2
Rose pointed at him sternly with a spoon. Samuel hastily leaned back. “Meeting your family tells me almost nothing about you—though I admit, it does explain why you consider your siblings to be a small number. No, tell me something true.”
His frown was slight, but it was there. “Everything I have told you is true.”
“I don’t mean a dull fact or a statement of what is about to occur,” Rose said, a wry smile lilting her lips. “I mean something you haven’t told anyone else. Something true, for just us.”
Just us.
There is no us, Samuel hastily reminded himself as his loins did that irritating stirring thing they almost always did whenever in the presence of his wife. His actress wife. His temporary wife.
There is no us.
“I… I intend to do a great amount of good with the money I have inherited.”
Rose raised an eyebrow. She did not even need to speak to communicate her disdain for what Samuel had said, and he had to admit in the privacy of his own mind, it wasn’t that impressive, as secrets went.
“My cousin Thomas runs an orphanage. One for children,” Samuel added.
This time, Rose’s smile was real. “Yes, I gathered that.”
“I intend to supply it with food and clothing for children and staff for years—anonymously, obviously,” he said swiftly. “And I intend to pay for Frank to gain access to better equipment. Cables and wires and metal, and things. And I’ll double the dowries of the remaining Pernrith Chances.”
“‘The Pernrith Chances’?”
Once again, Samuel was reminded that Rose was not a member of Society. Otherwise, she would know the full sordid tale of his father’s youngest brother.
Half-brother.
“Uncle Frederick, he was… Well, let us say that he was legitimized after his birth. He’s half a Chance, really, and his daughters have small dowries,” Samuel explained.
“Though only two remain unwed. And I want to sponsor artists, like my cousin Evelyn, and bequeath a bursary for the London Archery Club, where my cousin Leopold—”
“And, aside from those fortunate enough to live or work in a Chance family orphanage, do you intend to do anything for those not actually related to you?” Rose asked quietly.
Samuel opened his mouth, realized he had absolutely nothing to say, and closed it again.
“Just a thought,” said Rose lightly as she stood to her feet. “And now I think I shall retire. It is hard work, spending your money, and I need my beauty sleep.”
“I think you’re doing quite well on the sleep you’ve already got,” were the words that slipped from Samuel’s mouth before he could stop them.
The flush of flattery on Rose’s cheeks was more than enough of a reward. “Oh. Well. Thank you.”
They walked in silence out of the dining room, across the hall, and up the wide, sweeping staircase that Samuel had never realized was about a thousand steps long. Only after an eternity did they reach the top and walk to the left down the corridor that led to their bedchambers, side by side.
They halted outside the bedchamber that Rose had taken the day they had arrived, and a strange sort of awkwardness rose in the silence between them.
“Well,” he said.
“Well,” Rose echoed with just a hint of a teasing smile.
Samuel hesitated. The whole evening he had been hesitating, teetering on the edge of doing something, he knew not what—save that he should not do it.
The servants were all gone to their evening work or to bed. He and Rose would need to ring the bells to summon the lady’s maid and valet before bed. They were alone here, standing just outside the bedchamber door for the marchioness. His marchioness. His Rose.
His wife.
Samuel swallowed. “I… I suppose… Good night, then.”
Coward, his mind screamed, but what else was there to do or say?
They had entered into an agreement that was quite clear on the complete lack of physical intimacy.
He would not touch her. That, he had told himself a long time ago.
There was absolutely no good reason to do so.
If they consummated the marriage, they would have to aim for divorce, not annulment.
And that meant one would have to accuse the other of adultery—really, he would have to accuse her, as lords were less likely to face the consequences of such an act.
And he could not do that to her. Not even to free her from a lifetime with him, like she so stubbornly wanted.
“Good night,” Rose said in a low, husky voice as she leaned forward and pressed a kiss on his cheek.
Time stopped for that moment: a time filled with the scent of rosewater and the pressure of her lips and the way her palm splayed against his chest for just a heartbeat as she was mere inches from him.
A moment that he reveled in, that Samuel had not known he had needed, but now that it was here, he could never survive its end—
Rose stepped back.
Samuel tried to speak. He really did; his mouth was open, at the very least, and his tongue tried to move, but all that seemed to come out was a low moan.
Not particularly erudite.
She understood nonetheless. Rose’s eyes met his own, and she leaned back toward him, her hand once again against him, and this time, Samuel tilted his head at the very last moment and the kiss she intended to press against his cheek brushed against his lips.
They did not brush for long. Samuel groaned, pushing the woman he absolutely should not have been kissing against her bedchamber door and taking possession of her mouth.
Rose returned his ardor, or passion, or need—whatever it was flowing through him, she was in turn possessed with a great deal of it.
Her hands were somehow around his neck, fingertips grazing his nape, her body pressed up against him, and it was all Samuel could do not to caress every inch of her with his hands.
As it was, his tongue ravished her lips and parted them, his throat growling at the sweet nectar taste of her mouth as his hands grasped her waist and pulled her into his embrace.
Oh, she was everything—this was everything. All he wanted was—
“We shouldn’t,” Rose panted as she attempted to break the kiss.
Samuel did not permit it. Once again, he captured her mouth, but not before he muttered, “I don’t care.”
And he didn’t. All he cared about, in this moment, was the quivering body in his arms; the way she tasted; the exhilaration roaring through his body.
He had needed her and now Rose was his, marked by his mouth, need soaring between them as his fingers moved lower and—
Samuel halted. The kiss ended. He stepped back.
Rose blinked at him with bleary, confused eyes. “Samuel?”
Dear God, he should not have done that.
That’s the trouble with temptation, he thought as he tried not to notice Rose’s mussed hair and the bruised pink of her wet lips. It was sweet, indeed, when one indulged, but the instant that the moment was over, one was filled with the bitterness of regret.
And regret that kiss, he did.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly.
Pain radiated through him as Rose grinned awkwardly. “I do believe I said something to that effect when you were kissing me.”
“When we were kissing each other,” corrected Samuel.
It had been the wrong thing to say. Instead of sadness, fire flashed in Rose’s eyes. “Oh, so I suppose I launched myself at you, did I?”
“You were the one who kissed me!”
“You wanted me to!” Rose shot back, utterly accurately.
Samuel did not have to admit to that, however. Tugging a hand through his hair and thanking the heavens no one had witnessed him do the unthinkable and actually kiss his own wife—and enjoy it!—he tried to calm his frantically beating pulse and actually think.
It took several seconds, four long, deep breaths, and the reminder that he absolutely could not follow Rose into her bedchamber for Samuel to regain his equilibrium.
He looked at Rose’s heaving breasts. The tops of them, anyway.
“We made an agreement,” he said curtly. “No amorous congress, no—no intercourse of any kind.”
“Yes, because you will take a better wife someday,” Rose returned archly. “Someone actually respectable enough for a position such as marchioness.”
“So you can walk away with a small fortune,” Samuel snapped, anger rising. “And I don’t need you tempting me—”
“Me, tempting you!”
She sounded outraged, but Samuel pushed the thought aside.
Yes, it was all Rose. She had been the one to tempt him.
Perhaps she was not the innocent he had guessed.
She was an actress, wasn’t she? Actresses were not often maids.
Maybe she’d found couldn’t go an entire year without laying her hands on a man, annulment be damned.
“Yes, you were—” Samuel had lifted a finger rapidly to point it at the woman he very much wanted to bed but halted his speech at her reaction.
Rose flinched.
Flinched. As though he would hurt her. As though he would hurt anyone, let alone a lady.
Let alone his wife.
She covered the moment well, but he surely had not dreamed it.
Samuel cleared his throat. Focus, man. Focus on what you know. “You may be unable to keep your hands off me,” he said warningly, “but you won’t lie with me, you hear? Unlike you, I won’t be foolish enough to jeopardize the annulment. Something you should be more concerned about than I—”
“‘Unable to keep my hands off you’?” Rose looked genuinely disgusted at the thought. “That is the very last thing I would want!”
Samuel felt his breath hitch. Dear God, the woman had been not so much down on her luck, but down on the street when he had met her! And now the bed of a marquess was not good enough for her?
“Why on earth not?” he found himself asking.
Rose smiled sweetly and leaned forward, as though to whisper a secret. Samuel most definitely did not follow the curve of her breast as she leaned forward, nor breathe in her scent, which was like honey and rosewater with a hint of salt.
“Because,” Rose said in a low voice into his ear, Samuel’s heart thundering as her breath blossomed over his throat, “that would mean we couldn’t annul the marriage. And I would have to stay married to you!”
Before he could say anything—such as how unfair that was, for example, or whether he could inhale her in for the rest of his life—Samuel could only stare in astonishment as the bedchamber door before him slammed…with his wife on its other side.
For at least a full minute, he just stared at the wooden door.
The… The very idea! The mere suggestion that being married to him was that unpleasant! It was an outrage!
It was at the very least, a little harsh.
Samuel swallowed. The trouble was, he wasn’t the easiest to live with, he knew that. Or at least, his siblings had made that very clear to him over the years, and it was hard to argue with the majority.
But he had tried…he had really tried to be welcoming to Rose. To ensure she appreciated her time as his wife, before all that came to an end.
And besides, Samuel told himself firmly, he had rights. Rights as a husband—rights to her body. It was in the law.
Not that he would ever contravene a woman’s wishes in that regard. Dear God, he wasn’t an animal.
Samuel reached out, just for a moment, and touched the door before him, placing his palm upon it. On the other side of this door was a woman who could irritate him beyond belief, spend his money like water, and kissed like a harlot.
It’s a good thing she’s already my wife, Samuel thought fervently as he removed his hand from the door and stepped along the corridor to his own bedchamber. A wife I cannot touch unless I intended to ruin her with a divorce. Otherwise, I might have done something drastic.