Chapter 8 #2
He should not have felt the way he did when she said it.
A tightness in his chest, a little relieved leap of his heart.
He had grown used to the suspicious glances, the whispers beneath hands as he passed.
He’d learned how to prepare himself for the way people shied back at his scarred face or the sound of his name. It did not bother him any longer.
Only he found, just now, that he had not wanted her to believe the old lie. He was glad she did not, and ashamed of his own relief.
“It does not signify,” he said.
She made a little hum, and he thought it was not precisely agreement. “Is that why you moved to Northumberland? Your marriage?”
“No.” He took a fortifying breath. “We moved to London after we married. The marchioness wanted to live in town. She had not had a Season, and she regretted that. She—”
He did not know how to go on, or perhaps he did not want to.
So many goddamned mistakes. Grace had been too young, too inexperienced—he had not blamed her for wanting to make friends, to join society, though he had not imagined it when they’d wed.
He’d thought they would stay together in Devon, he and Grace and little Bea, and be a family.
But in London the fighting had begun—his surprise and disappointment in what she wanted, her horror at his own refusal to trot about with her all night, to leave Bea with another nursemaid or governess.
He had been such a spectacular fool. He had married too hastily, to a woman much too young, and he had lived to regret it. He had not yet stopped regretting it.
His gaze settled back on Matilda. To his surprise, she was looking back down at her lap, but the corner of her mouth had ticked up.
“What?” he asked.
She blinked and looked up. Her smile faded, and he cursed himself. What an unmannerly bastard he had become.
“What do you mean, what?”
“Nothing. I only wondered what had amused you. Never mind.”
“Oh,” she said, and to his relief, the side of her mouth lifted again. “I only—well, I was trying to picture it. You, pottering about balls and operas. I had a picture forming in my mind. I was thinking it would be titled, In Which the Marquess Despises Society.”
He frowned at her. “I do not despise the company of others.”
Now the other corner kicked up to match the first. “The Marquess Looms Unhappily.”
“I do not loom.”
“You could be the definitive example of the word, my lord.”
“Christian,” he said. And then he regretted the word as soon as it left his lips, because her face went pleased. Somehow even sweeter.
“Christian,” she repeated, and, for God’s sake, he had to adjust his jacket again as he watched the shape her mouth made around his name, the tiny way her lips parted.
“The Marquess Glares Across the Carriage,” she murmured under her breath.
Well, it could be worse. The Marquess Has an Inappropriate Erection had a certain ring to it—and why in hell was he playing along? He was a man possessed. Matilda Halifax had done something to his brain.
“As long as the word professor does not appear,” he said, “I suppose I cannot complain.”
He did not know why he had reminded her of her damned ridiculous pamphlet. And then—oh. He did. She went pink to her hairline.
He loved it.
“Do you know,” she said, “I begin to suspect that you are having fun.”
He rearranged his expression, which he feared had gone quite foolish, back into a scowl. “Is that what I am having? I did not recognize it.”
And oh hell, that gave her some sort of tender feeling. He could practically see her melt. “You have been too long without fun, I suppose, if that is the case.”
The trouble was, he could not deny it.
He was still trying to think of something to say when she winked. “I shall make it my personal mission to paint you in an aspect in which you are visibly enjoying yourself. Do not trouble yourself. I shall think of something to amuse you.”
She was the most unsettling creature he had ever encountered, and he had to adjust his jacket and look out the window for several minutes to stop thinking about how he might visibly enjoy himself in her presence.
At the inn that night, he did not give her the chance to think about anyone enjoying anything. He put his arm about her waist as though he had the right, asked for adjoining rooms for himself and his wife, and tried not to think too hard about why he had done so.
When she murmured, “Good night, Christian,” and slipped into her own chamber, he felt quite certain that he was not going to hell after all. He was already in hell.
Why had he told her to call him Christian?
His own wife had not called him that. Grace had called him “my lord,” which at first he’d found charming and then later terrible.
He had called her “Marchioness.” She had liked that.
It had been, perhaps, the only thing about their marriage that she had liked.
But he found he could not think of Grace. His mind fled from the old hurt, like fingers from a flame, and when he closed his eyes, there was nothing waiting for him in the warm darkness but Matilda’s smile.