Page 30 of The Duke and the Hellion Bride

“You... you should clean yourself up,” he said instead. “It would not do for the girls to see you like this.”

Diana could not have looked more perplexed. Was it so wrong that even in that state, he still found her impossible seductive. How he wanted to lean forward and push back her matted hair, wipe the dirt from her face and...

“Excuse me?” she said from her position still on the ground.

“I told you...” Magnus forced himself to straighten, putting on airs of being disgusted even if the opposite was true. “Women do not play in the mud. You should lead by example.”

For perhaps the first time, Diana was rendered speechless.Huh, so that is what it takes?She stared at him in shock, quickly turned to anger, quickly turned to disgust which had her lip curling into a snarl.

Magnus did not wait for a response. He raised a warning eyebrow at her and then turned and strode across the garden, desperate to be away from Diana before she ensnared him once more.

It was only once he was inside, ducking into a spare room, closing the door behind himself, that Magnus stopped to think about what had just happened – what he had just done! He had lost all control. Dammit, he had wanted to lose control! He was attracted to his wife, that was now undeniable. The only question was... what was he going to do about it?

To that, he had no answer.

ChapterEleven

“It is not funny,” Magnus snapped.

“On the contrary, from where I am sitting, it is rather hilarious.” Magnus’ best friend, Theodore, Earl of Northwood, cackled gaily. He slapped his knees and shook his head and looked positively delighted.

“Are you quite done?”

“Yes, yes,” Theodore said, sobering up. Only then he caught Magnus’ eyes once more and double over in laughter for a second time.

“Now, really...”

“I am sorry,” Theodore cried out through the tears and laughter. “Truly, I know it is a sensitive topic, but you must see things from this side. My, oh my, Magnus...” He took a deep breath and wiped away the tears. “Were you always this much fun? Or has marriage changed you.”

“I did not come here to be mocked.”

“And yet mocking you is the only possible outcome. I would almost say you were a sucker for self-punishment. According to your tales of marriage, you certainly are.”

“I don’t know why I tell you anything.”

“As I said, a sucker for self-punishment,” Theodore chided Mangus. “That, and you have nobody else to tell. Make some more friends if it please you. Ones who fear you, as nearly everybody else this side of the Channel seem to.”

Only Theodore would dare speak to Magnus this way. And strangely, despite Magnus’ current antipathy toward his best friend, he rather liked it. The problem with being a duke was that most people were either scared of you, or wanted something out of you, both outcomes leading them to do and say as they thought you wanted to hear, not what you needed to. Theodore was one of the few people in Magnus’ life who treated him as an equal.

They had been friends since childhood, a friendship which had faltered when Magnus fled across the ocean to the Americas, but one that had picked up right where it left off upon his return. Magnus had changed a lot in the years he had been away. He had become more hardened. More serious. More discerning and distrusting of others. Theodore, on the other hand, was the exact same.

He was blonde of hair and boyish in the face. Slightly stocky but trending toward muscular as he was a renowned horseman and spent his spare time rearing them as if he was a stablemaster and not an earl. The type of man that everyone just seemed to like, Magnus had always been privately pleased that Theodore seemed to covet their friendship nearly as much as Magnus did.

That was the only reason that Magnus had felt comfortable in coming to see him this evening. Desperate to get out of the house. Desperate to unload his woes on another. Desperate for answers, that's what! He sought his best friend and regaled him with tales of married life... perhaps going into a little too much detail, as evidenced by his friend’s mockery.

“Tell me it is not as bad as I think,” Magnus sighed. He had in his right hand a tumbler of whiskey, but he hadn’t so much as taken a sip, such was his state of mind.

“Oh, it is worse than that,” Theodore jested as he took a sip of his own drink. They were in the drawing room of Theodore’s manor, sitting by the fire. “You are attracted to your wife! What a nightmare to behold.”

Magnus sneered. “You know things are not that simple.”

“Only because you choose to make them complicated.”

“As I have explained,” he sighed. “When Diana and I entered into this marriage, it was promised that it would be for convenience only.” Theodore was the only other person in the world who knew of this arrangement, another testament to how much he trusted the man. “My nieces are what matter, and I made this perfectly clear.”

“And your lovely wife?” Theodore asked with another sip. “Is she in agreement? By the sounds of it, she might wish to reassess the tenants of the arrangement. Just as you clearly do,” he added with a wink.

Magnus looked at his friend flatly. “And as I explained, I do not wish to force myself upon her – as I have done consistently. For all I know, she reviles me but has felt obliged to indulge with my tenacious actions because she thinks she must! I have not given her a choice, truth be told.”

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