Chapter 9
“The hour is late,” Maxwell said as he paused just inside the doorway, his voice low enough not to carry beyond the room, though the weight of it settled easily within it.
Arabella, who had been standing near the hearth with her hands clasped tightly before her, turned at once. The fire cast a soft glow across the room, catching in the pale fabric of her night gown and outlining her figure in a way that made him still for a fraction longer than intended.
“I wondered if you would come,” she replied, and though her tone was steady, there was a tightness to it that betrayed her.
Maxwell closed the door behind him with deliberate care, the latch falling into place with a quiet, final sound.
The room was warm, far warmer than the corridor he had just left, and faintly scented with lavender.
The bed had been turned down. A single candle burned near the bedside, its light softer than the fire but no less present.
“You need not have waited standing,” he said, his gaze moving briefly across the room before returning to her.
Arabella gave a small, uncertain laugh. “I did not think I should receive you while already abed.”
His attention settled on her more fully then, and she felt it.
Not the cold, dismissive glance she had grown accustomed to, but something slower, more deliberate.
It traveled from the loose fall of her hair over her shoulders to the narrow line of her waist, to the way her fingers tightened and released against one another as though she did not know what to do with them.
Heat rose unbidden to her cheeks.
She resisted the urge to reach for the shawl draped over the chair beside her. It would have been easier to cover herself, to put some barrier between them, but something in his gaze held her still, as though movement would draw more attention rather than less.
“You are uncomfortable,” he observed.
“I am not,” she said quickly, then faltered. “Not overly so.”
Maxwell inclined his head slightly, as though acknowledging the effort rather than the accuracy of the statement. He moved further into the room then, each step measured, the sound of his boots softened by the thick rug beneath them.
Arabella’s breath caught, though she kept her chin lifted.
“I believe,” he said, stopping a few feet from her, “that it would be prudent for us to speak plainly.”
Her fingers stilled. “Plainly.”
“Yes.”
She nodded once, though she did not trust herself to speak immediately.
Maxwell’s gaze did not leave her face now, whatever earlier appraisal had passed replaced by something more controlled, more distant. “We are married,” he said. “The circumstances that led to it are understood. What remains is to determine how we proceed.”
Arabella’s lips parted slightly. “Proceed.”
“Yes.”
The word echoed faintly in her mind, far more clinical than she had expected, though she could not say what she had expected instead.
Maxwell continued, his tone even. “It is my intention to fulfill my obligations,” he said. “I assume you share that intention.”
“I do,” she replied at once, her voice firmer now, though her hands betrayed her again, tightening together.
“Good.”
The single word felt like the close of a ledger rather than the beginning of a marriage.
Arabella drew in a slow breath, steadying herself. “And what does that entail, precisely?”
Maxwell did not hesitate. “We will share a bed,” he said. “But not tonight.”
The answer surprised her. She had braced herself for something else. Something immediate. Something unavoidable.
“Not tonight?” she repeated questioningly.
“No,” he said. “You will need time to adjust.”
Arabella blinked, the tension in her shoulders shifting, though it did not fully ease. “I see.”
“We will not act beyond what is necessary,” he continued. “Once a week will suffice.”
The words landed with quiet finality. Arabella stared at him, certain for a moment that she had misunderstood. “Once a week?” she repeated, slower this time.
“Yes.”
The fire crackled softly behind her, the sound too loud in the silence that followed.
“And when…” she began, then faltered slightly before continuing, “when that results in a child?”
“We will live separately,” he said.
The answer came too quickly to have been newly considered.
Arabella’s brows drew together. “Separately?”
“There will be no reason to continue the arrangement beyond that point,” he said. “An heir will have been secured.”
She stared at him, the words settling into something sharper now, something that pricked at her composure in a way she had not anticipated.
“No reason?” she echoed, still questioningly.
Maxwell’s gaze did not shift. “I do not see one.”
Arabella let out a small breath that might have been a laugh, though there was little humor in it. “So… you speak of this… arrangement… as though it were a contract.”
“In effect, it is, Arabella. You and I signed a legal document of marriage.”
She took a step back then, not enough to create distance, but enough that she could draw a fuller breath. “And you believe I have been… enduring you this whole time?” she asked, the edge in her voice no longer concealed.
Maxwell’s expression did not change, though something in his posture sharpened. “Have you not?”
The question struck deeper than she expected.
Arabella straightened, her chin lifting slightly as warmth rose to her cheeks once more, though it was no longer born of embarrassment. “No,” she said, her voice steady now. “I have not in any way… from the first moment we met. As infuriated as I was at you in that moment… never.”
Maxwell watched her silently.
“I have been many things in your presence,” she continued, her fingers uncurling at her sides, “frustrated, perhaps. Annoyed, certainly. But I have not endured you.”
The words hung between them.
Maxwell did not respond immediately, though his gaze held hers in a way that felt different now. Arabella felt her pulse quicken, though she did not look away.
The room seemed smaller again, the fire warmer, the quiet heavier.
“You will find,” she added, softer now but no less firm, “that I am not so easily dismissed.”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“I had begun to suspect as much,” he said.
The admission settled between them, quiet but undeniable.
Arabella drew in a breath, steadying herself once more, though the tension had shifted into something unfamiliar, something that coiled rather than pressed.
Outside, the house had gone still. The corridors silent. The night fully settled around them.
Inside, neither of them moved.
And as the quiet stretched, thick with everything that had been said and everything that had not, Arabella became acutely aware of the distance between them.
“Have you been enduring me this entire time?” Arabella heard the sharpness in her own voice the moment the words left her, though she did not attempt to soften them. The question lingered between them, carried on the quiet crackle of the fire and the steady tick of cooling embers in the grate.
“I have not in any way, Miss Barker.”
He stood where he had been, only a few paces from her, his gaze steady, unreadable in the shifting light. The shadows cast by the fire moved across the planes of his face, catching briefly at the edge of his jaw, the line of his mouth, the faint rise and fall of his breath.
Arabella let out a short, disbelieving scoff when the silence stretched.
“You speak as though you have been suffering some great trial,” she continued, folding her arms lightly across herself, though the gesture did little to steady her.
“If there is anything else you would like to add to your list of terms, Your Grace, I suggest you do so now.”
Maxwell’s gaze shifted slightly, not away from her, but inward, as though he were considering something more carefully than before.
“There is one more matter,” he said at last.
Arabella lifted her chin. “Of course there is.”
“There will be no kissing.”
For a moment, she simply stared at him.
The words were so unexpected, so entirely at odds with everything she had braced herself for, that they took a moment to settle into meaning.
“No… kissing,” she repeated slowly. The certainty of it only made it more absurd. Arabella blinked, then frowned. “But… is that not required?”
Maxwell’s brows drew together slightly. “Required? For an heir?”
“For children,” she said, as though clarifying something obvious. “I was under the impression that it was… part of it.”
There was a pause. Then, quite unexpectedly, a quiet sound escaped him. It took her a moment to realize that he had actually laughed at her.
Arabella felt heat rush to her face at once, her eyes widening slightly as she stared at him. “You find me amusing?”
Maxwell’s expression shifted, though only slightly, the faintest trace of something lighter passing through it before it was gone again. “No,” he said, though the remnants of it lingered in his tone. “Only… slightly misinformed.”
Arabella’s flush deepened. “I am not misinformed,” she said quickly. “I am simply… less experienced in such matters than you appear to be.”
“That is evident.”
Her mouth fell open slightly at that, then closed again as she drew herself up. “You are utterly insufferable.”
“And yet,” he replied evenly, “you married me.”
“You gave me little choice!”
“I hardly held you at knifepoint to do so. You proposed the idea at the start. You had a choice to walk away.”
The words landed with quiet precision.
Arabella huffed softly, turning her head away for a moment before looking back at him again. “Then enlighten me,” she said. “If kissing is not required, what is?”
Maxwell did not answer immediately. And the air in the room shifted again, the earlier edge of irritation giving way to something heavier, something that settled deeper, closer to the skin.
Arabella became aware of it at once.
Of him.
Of the space between them.
Of the way his gaze had changed, no longer dismissive, no longer detached.