Chapter 34
MARGARET COULDN’T SPEAK FOR A MOMENT. An image came into her mind, lying on soft grass, Sebastian beside her, leaning over her, tenderness in his eyes just before he...
The image shattered abruptly. She’d never seen tenderness in his eyes, at least not when he looked at her. At Abigail, yes, she’d seen it once, enough to know he was capable of tenderness. He wouldn’t have feigned that emotion, not for his grandmother, anyway.
She turned her back to him and told him quite primly, “I must insist that you refrain from saying things like that, Sebastian.”
“You can insist all you like.”
She gritted her teeth. “But it won’t do a bloody bit of good?”
“I always knew you were a smart girl.”
She drew in her breath sharply. Was the man actually teasing her? She glanced over her shoulder at him, but his expression hadn’t changed. The morbid setting was still governing that.
“We could have had this conversation at Edgewood,” she pointed out stiffly.
“At this time of day? There was no place with guaranteed privacy—other than your room. Are you inviting me back into your room, Maggie?”
That question, asked in a lower timbre, held much more meaning than she cared to address. It also warned her that he wasn’t going to honor her request to keep his hands off her.
Why had she expected him to come to his senses and realize how great a risk they’d taken last night? He was a man who took risks, after all. They were part of his life. Apparently, getting himself trapped in a real marriage was a risk he was willing to take.
“You will need to spend your remaining nights at Edgewood sleeping somewhere other than my room,” she said pointedly.
“Not a chance.”
She sighed loudly in frustration. “Then we’ll need to come up with a reason why you’re going to request your own room. A spat will do nicely, one that we don’t wish to discuss.”
“That won’t work.”
“’Course it will. Civilized people don’t pry into the problems of married couples.”
Amazingly, some humor entered his golden eyes. She was sure, well, maybe not so sure. It could have been a trick of the light, she supposed.
But his tone suggested anything but humor when he said, “Do you really think you could keep me away from you if we really were married? When the thought of your lush body under mine has driven me beyond good sense?”
She gasped again, felt her cheeks bloom with bright color.
And it wasn’t just his words, though they conjured up all sorts of images of the previous glorious night when he’d made love to her.
It was what he was making her feel inside, at that very moment.
And the way he was looking at her . . . no humor now in his eyes, but some very intense heat.
Despite where they were, despite her resolve, she knew without a doubt that she would succumb to the temptations he presented if he approached her.
She was that powerfully attracted to him.
Desperately latching onto anything that would tamp down the desire that had arisen between them, she took the perfect opening he’d given her.
“You’d actually force yourself on me if I were seriously angry with you?” she asked with the outrage his comment deserved.
“If we really were married, Maggie, we wouldn’t be having spats,” he replied. “We’d be spending too much time in bed to argue.”
She couldn’t believe how much that promise appealed to her. She really was out of her league with The Raven, and he was definitely The Raven right now, using skills to chip away at her resolve that she couldn’t hope to resist.
All she could do was fall back on indignation, which she had to try hard to muster. “Odious man, that did not answer my question.”
“But the answer is twofold. No, I wouldn’t force you against your will, I’d manipulate your will so that it matched mine. I’m adept at that, even if I have been making a muck of other things since we got here.”
Margaret wished she could refute his confidence that he could manipulate her sensually. Even for a moment she’d like to refute it, just to put a dent in his colossal ego. But since he might see that as a dare and feel the need to prove his point, she opted for good sense over pride and refrained.
“What muck are you talking about? What hasn’t gone as you intended?”
Sebastian told her about his frustrating conversation with Juliette. When he was done, Margaret said thoughtfully, “Well, there you have it, a case of revenge netting more than she bargained for.”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “I understand why Juliette would want to marry Denton after Giles died. She needed a husband, and once I was disowned, Denton became a good candidate, being an earl’s heir.
Now they appear to loathe each other, but she might be willing to wait for Denton’s inheritance.
The question is why does he remain married to her when he’s told me he’d love to quit the marriage?
” Sebastian shook his head. “For all their animosity toward each other, they seem to be connected in some intimate way, as if they’re both guarding the same secret.
By the by, my father is also hiding something. ”
Margaret blinked, incredulous. Douglas, like Abigail, was too straightforward to harbor secrets.
“What d’you mean, hiding?”
“Nothing that I can put my finger on exactly. It’s just that when he told me the same thing he told you about the accidents, he actually seemed a tad embarrassed about it. There was also a not so brief pause.”
“Indicating?”
“My guess would be that he wasn’t quite sure which answer to give me.”
She tsked. “He’s just recovering from an extreme fever.
Any pauses in his speech might be related to his health.
He could have been out of breath. He could have been dealing with pain from his wound.
That hasn’t completely healed yet. He could simply have been too weak for the type of interrogation you’re capable of. ”
“I’ve considered all that, Maggie. But I’m going with my gut instinct. He’s hiding something. And as soon as we know what that is, I think your fears will be put to rest and I can get the hell out of here.”