Page 37 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

She shut her eyes, folded both hands over them. The darkness did not help: She could still see him, still feel him. After a year, a decade, a century, he muttered, “And I’m not angry, curse you,” and the air moved and the door slammed and she was alone again.

Slowly, Cassandra lowered her hands and curled them into the bedclothes, resisting the sinful urge to touch those parts of her body that still clamored for the man. The room was too empty and the floor was a thousand miles away and she did not know herself anymore.

She scrambled off the bed and to the door, but froze with her hand on the latch. If she went into his room, she would—what? Put her arms around him, hold him, have him hold her.

If she went into his room, he would say something unkind, mock her, turn her away.

Instead, she stood and breathed herself calm, then went to her writing desk and composed a note: “Dear Lady Treyford,” she wrote.

Chapter 9

It was not enough for the blasted woman to colonize his house. Now she’d colonized his mind too.

The next day, Joshua kept himself busy with meetings in the City and inspections at the dock—places he was sure not to encounter his wife—but his every moment was invaded by her image.

Stroking his hand. Gaping at his naked body.

Waiting for his kiss, eyes closed, lips parted.

So bloody tempting.

Stupid, stupid,stupididea to go to her room last night. “Nothing but a bit of harmless entertainment,” he had told himself, and was idiot enough to believe the lie.

Somehow he made it to the evening without losing his mind and settled down in his study with a report on sanitation, while Das scanned the day’s correspondence before returning to his lodgings. Joshua should have been safe—Cassandra was out with her friends—but the words on the page turned to gibberish before they hit his brain.

Because his brain was occupied, byher: the hurt in her eyes, the tenderness in her hands, the softness of her cheek.

This never happened. Never. The one certainty in his life was that he could focus on his work and shut out the world. Yet Cassandra…She had infiltrated his brain by being so welcoming and honorable and courageous and caring and—Bloody self-righteous, is what she was. So smug, thinking she knew him, making him feel like an utter villainous blackguard. Well, he was a villainous blackguard, wasn’t he, because he was human. He did stupid, unkind things. He made mistakes. Whereas she was so bloody perfect, wasn’t she? She never did anything wrong, never lost control of her tongue or took leave of her senses or let emotion get the better of her.

He could have kissed her.

Kissed her, removed that silly nightcap and ugly bed jacket and everything else she seemed to need just to sleep. Kissed her, lain her down on that pink bedcover, under that pink canopy, and explored her pink—

“We need to go to Liverpool,” he said to Das. He leaped out of his chair, paced to the fire, grabbed the poker, jabbed at the coals. “Still have to help Putney sort out the problem with the competitors. We can leave tomorrow.”

Obvious solution, really.

If he’d taken that packet to Liverpool as planned, none of this would have happened. He simply had to put his life back to the way it was before, which was exactly the way he wanted it. Careless of him, to let her disrupt it. He could go on like this for years, traveling and trading and working. Years and years and years.

Years.

And years.

And years.

“Putney fixed it himself,” Das said absently, not looking up from the papers he was studying.

“He what?”

“Letter’s over there.”

Das made no move to get it. Splendid. Even Das was acting oddly.

Joshua dumped the poker, grabbed the letter, scanned it. Curse it. Putneyhadfound a solution. Good one, too.

“Why the blazes did he have to go and fix it?” he muttered.

“Heisyour Secretary In Charge Of Everything That Happens In Liverpool And Manchester.”

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