All About Seduction(3)

Her husband stood and shuffled over to the window. Her eyes narrowed, but she fought to find the numb place that allowed her to get through each day. To allow the disappointment to rule her only left a bitter taste in her mouth. Nothing could change her barrenness.

“You are my third wife without issue, and your sisters have all produced children. The fault does not lie with you.”

Her ears rang as if they had been clapped soundly. As long as a man could do his part, the failure to conceive was always blamed on the woman. Her mouth worked, but she couldn’t force out the demurral she should voice.

He swallowed a shaky gulp. “I consulted with a London physician some time ago, and he told me I am sterile.”

Caroline gasped. “How could he know?”

Mr. Broadhurst’s shoulders stooped forward and his head bowed. He cleared his throat several times and coughed into his sleeve. “He looked at my fluid under a microscope. He said I had no seed.”

She didn’t want to know that much detail. Her face burned, yet her hands felt like they’d been submerged in the coldest of well water. It wasn’t her fault? She’d been shouldering the blame for years—believing that the failure to conceive was some infirmity of hers or her inability to happily tolerate the necessary union. But the fault was all along her husband’s?

How long had he known? Tightness boiled in her chest. How long had she suffered the indignity of his nighttime visits after he learned he could not father a child? Hoping the twilight masked the heady emotions tumbling through her, she looked away.

“I have written to your brother and he has agreed to bring a few of his friends for a hunting party.”

“What?” Caroline half rose from her seat. Her husband had never cared for her brother, and to invite him and his cronies to invade their quiet home was unnerving. She could guess what he wanted, but it didn’t comport with their weekly hours in church, with the moral man she thought her husband was.

“Any child born of your loins would by law be mine and would carry my name. I would claim a son as a miracle God has granted in my last years.”

Her heart thumped erratically as her legs turned to pudding. She sank back down onto her seat. No, this couldn’t be happening.

He was sanctioning an affair, but she recoiled, with every fiber tightening in protest. Duty required that she submit to her husband, but never to any other man.

“I have already told the housekeeper to stock extra provisions. The men will arrive a week hence.”

“No,” whispered Caroline, her throat too tight to allow out more than the faintest breath.

“If there is any particular friend of your brother’s you want invited, send word.”

Unbidden, the faces of the men her brother comported himself with flashed in her mind’s eye, and quickly she rejected each one. Between his portly political friends or his sporting cronies, not a single man was the least bit interesting to her, let alone one she would consider in that manner. “I do not wish for them to come.”

Stars above, what had Mr. Broadhurst told her brother?

“They will be robust young men, men of your ilk. All you must do is lie with one of them and conceive a child. I know that my age has been disagreeable to you.”

A memory of a millworker with too-long dark hair her fingers always itched to brush off his forehead flashed in her mind. She shook her head, willing the completely unsuitable image away. Dear God, what was wrong with her? The whole idea was preposterous, crass and utterly unthinkable.

“No!” Caroline popped out of her chair, no longer able to sit. The act of conception was disgusting. To endure it when it was not an obligation of marriage—well, it was a gross indignity.

“Mrs. Broadhurst, please.”

Mr. Broadhurst never asked, never used the word please. He was always in command of his business, his household, and even her. Staring at him as if he were a foreign creature, she shook her head while backing toward the door. Her heart tried to pound out of her chest and she couldn’t catch her breath. She needed to lie down or loosen her stays before she swooned.

“Mrs. Broadhur—Caroline, I’m begging you.” Mr. Broadhurst took a step toward her.

Caroline felt for the doorknob behind her back. “It would be a sin.”

He thrust out his chin and glared at her. “You did not come to me with so much religion. I only ask you to behave as your sisters have. Have I ever asked anything else of you?”

She had been a perfect wife, caring, modest, and always a lady in every way, and this was how she was repaid? No gentleman would ask this of her, but then Mr. Broadhurst was not a gentleman other than by money. Perhaps he didn’t understand the magnitude of what he was asking. Her sisters with their faithless marriages must have given him a distorted view of what was acceptable in aristocratic circles.