Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(28)

“I’ll send her to you when she is done.” He looked at her, his eyes cold as the North Sea. “I have no further need of you. Go.”

She fought to keep herself from flinching. That was a dismissal. A rude dismissal.

They were married. Surely it was permissible for a wife to help with a husband’s bath? But one look at his forbidding expression put paid to that idea. He acted as if he could no longer stand her touch.

As if he might be repelled by her touch.

Iris raised her chin, trying not to let her hurt show.

She met his eyes and said, “Nicoletta, please go to the dressing room. I would like a word with my husband.”

The maidservant froze, her hands hovering over the duke’s chest. She looked between Iris and Dyemore.

Dyemore nodded.

Nicoletta dropped her washrag into the bowl of water and hastily left the room.

Iris waited until the dressing room door shut and then turned to the duke. “I’m your wife, sir, not your dog. I will not be sent away as if I’d soiled the rug.”

Raphael watched Iris. She held herself stiffly—proudly.

He admired her daring even as he felt his ire rise at her questioning him. He didn’t wish to be tempted by her anymore. Arguing with her would hardly help the matter.

“I beg your pardon if you think I addressed you as if you were a bitch,” he said with gritted teeth. “But my protest remains the same. You needn’t wash me.”

“And if I want to?” The color was rising in her cheeks, and he couldn’t help but think how lovely it made her. She looked like a woman in passion.

That was not a productive thought. “This discussion is—”

“Why don’t you want me to touch you?” she demanded.

“Why should you wish to?” he asked bluntly. His patience was wearing thin. “My face is disgusting. I saw how you flinched—please do not deny it, madam.”

“I’m sorry if I flinched,” she whispered. “I don’t find your scar disgusting. I don’t find you disgusting. And since that is the case, it seems to me that I should be able to touch you if it pleases me.”

He sneered. “I don’t know why touching me would please you.”

“Don’t you?” Her blush had grown rosy. She was obviously embarrassed by this discussion, but she still held his gaze. “I’d think you’d be happy your wife was interested in your body. After all”—her voice lowered—“we will share a bed as man and wife.”

His stomach plummeted and he looked away from her.

“We will be sharing a bed, won’t we?” she demanded, and her voice was closer.

She’d stepped nearer to him.

He raised his eyes, pinning her with his gaze. She had a hand half-raised, reaching to touch him again.

He caught her hand in his just in time.

“Of course we’ll share a bed,” he replied, his voice hard. He couldn’t afford to show weakness here. “But we will do nothing else.”

She blinked, looking confused. “You mean—”

“I mean you’ll not be bothered by me,” he gritted out. Did she have no idea how tenuous his hold on his control was? He held himself in check only by the merest thread. Had he not been weakened by the fever, he might grab her and pull her into his bed, into his lap. Lick across her lips and down her tender neck. Pull the fichu from her bodice and trail his teeth across the pretty swells of her breasts. And then …

No.

No.

He’d vowed that he wouldn’t corrupt her, and he’d keep that vow no matter what it cost him.

“I … I don’t understand.” She sounded hurt, as if he’d insinuated that the problem lay with her. “You married me. Why would you do that if I disgust you so much you won’t even bed me?”

He should correct her. Tell her that she had it completely—comically—wrong. But to do so would result in her asking more questions.

Questions he most definitely did not want to answer—now or ever.

Perhaps it was better this way.

“I married you to save your life,” he lied, his voice flat, and even as he did so he could feel the ice forming over his skin, chilling him to the bone. Making his heart still. “Nothing else.”

She staggered as if he’d run a sword through her belly. “But … but you kissed me. Surely—”

“I was feverish,” he drawled. Blackness shrouded his soul. “Not in my right mind.”

She stared at him a moment, her blue-gray eyes devastated, and then she drew herself up, proud and strong. “I see. If you’ll excuse me, then, I’ll go fetch Ubertino.”

She turned and swept from the room.

Taking all light with her.

Iris blinked back tears as she left the bedroom, which was, frankly, pure foolishness. She hardly knew Dyemore—had been married to him only a matter of days. There was no reason for her to take his rejection of her so much to heart. He’d married her to protect her. She’d married him because she’d had no choice.

It was all quite logical, really, and had nothing whatsoever to do with sexual desire—or lack thereof.

She fought down an impulse to kick a side table as she passed by.

The problem was that she had thought, when she and Dyemore had discussed Polybius, that they might find some common thread of friendship. That this marriage, however hastily and badly begun, might have a chance of becoming palatable.