Page 18 of Married to the Forbidden Duke
“Langford?” Denshire asked suddenly, frowning at him. “Are you well, old boy?”
He put the glass aside and pursed his lips as he stared at the leaping flames of the fire. “I’ll do my best to win her over. If she forgives me, she’ll have no reason to speak out against me. And perhaps she’ll enjoy throwing a ball. It’ll certainly be more than she has done before.”
“She is a lady. Don’t the fairer sex live for that sort of thing?”
“Truthfully, Tom,” Frederick said, suddenly exhausted, “I haven’t the faintest what she lives for.”
Alice was in the middle of writing a letter to her aunt, outlining in no uncertain terms how married life had been thus far, when the door opened and Frederick stood in the doorway to theroom. She had taken over one of the back parlors as a sitting room where she could write and read.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted, a trifle awkwardly.
She placed her pen down. “Is there something you would like to say to me?”
He advanced a few more steps into the room, watching her with a wariness that was warranted. These past few days, she’d been accustoming herself to London again—the noise of it, the smoke that sometimes hung over the rooftops, and the knowledge that she could leave the house and go wherever she pleased—but she had yet to do anything about her husband problem.
She turned to look at him now. The room felt significantly smaller with him in it, and his eyes were hooded. Unreadable.
Odd. She’d thought for certain he would order her around as his little wife before now. But perhaps he was here to finally make it clear.
“May I sit?” he asked politely.
She arched a brow. “I am certain you are aware this is your house, Your Grace. You may do whatever you please.”
“Call me Frederick.”
“I would rather not.”
His gaze fell to her leg, and she recalled the last time they’d had any real conversation—when she had all but fallen in front of him. Her cheeks bloomed with heat, and she detested the feel of his eyes on her. It made her skin too warm underneath her clothes, the brush of the fabric so sensitized she felt as though she would be happier with everything thrown off.
“I… intend to arrange for a physician to visit you,” he began awkwardly once more. “A specialist from Harley Street. Perhaps there is nothing to be done about your leg, but I think it would be prudent to check.”
More shame piled into her cheeks, igniting the rage in her chest—the anger that was always so close to the surface, so ready to burst. She had spent so long being angry, it was second nature to her.
“Why, ashamed of your crippled wife?” she muttered.
His gaze rose to hers, and the chill in that particular shade of blue made her heart clench. Her stomach flipped. She felt almost dizzy.
“I would prefer it if you did not put words in my mouth,” he said evenly.
She’d had enough of his calm, his evenness. She wanted to see cruelty in him, darkness that stained his soul as thoroughly as it stained hers.
“I know you’re thinking it,” she hissed, so viciously his eyes widened in surprise. “I know it is what everyone thinks when they see me. It’s either pity or disgust. So which is it,Your Grace?”
“You wish to know what I see in you?” he asked, and finally, his composure cracked. A flush appeared, high on his cheeks, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Proof that he was human, after all.
Proof she could break him.
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
He crossed the room to stand before her. Until then, seated as she was, she had never appreciated his full height. Hetoweredover her. If he wished, he could do whatever he desired to her, and she would be powerless to stop him. As it was, her heart thundered at the way he lowered his face closer to hers.
Fear. There it was. The barest dregs of fear, left over from her general fear of what he could be capable of.
But underneath that was something else, red-hot and intrigued.
“I see a young lady who has survived despite the odds. I see fierce anger, and I see hurt. And more than that, I see my wife. She is beautiful and determined, and she is capable of whatever she puts her mind to, as she has shown me innumerable times, not least when she showed up to crash my wedding.” He caught her chin, not gently. “The question is, what is she going to put her mind to now? Is itruiningme?”
