Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(21)

Her conscience pricked her then, an unwanted reminder that she had forced his hand, had encouraged him when no lady would have. It didn’t matter that he’d been circling her like a shark for the last month. She needn’t have lured him into the moonlit garden. Needn’t have dared him.

Take your turn.

And his response? I believe I will.

The reminder sent a frisson of something foreign down her spine. Something delightful and frightening all at once. She clasped her hands tightly at her waist. At any moment, a knock would sound on the door adjoining the chamber in which she now stood to his.

She could not think of the handsome room surrounding her as hers. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Everything had happened with far too much haste, and now Daisy couldn’t help but feel herself mired in a dream from which she would soon wake.

After their simple vows at the registrar’s, they had ridden in awkward silence to the duke’s home. Now her home. He’d performed a perfunctory introduction to his domestics. They’d shared tea and some muffins Daisy had been too nervous to sample beyond a tiny nibble.

The duke had hardly touched his tea and muffin either. Instead, a flush had stained his throat, drawing her attention to his pronounced Adam’s apple. The absurd thought had flitted through her mind to press a kiss there, to bury her nose in his neck and inhale deeply of the strong, masculine scent of him.

“We will need to… render this union,” he had announced abruptly. “I’m sorry, for I know this has all transpired with unaccustomed rapidity. But given your father’s treatment of you, and the fact that he will oppose an alliance between us, I cannot think of any other way.”

His words had rattled about in her mind like pins in a seamstress’s box. A noisy jangle until they found their home in her skin. Render. Union. He meant they would consummate. And of course they would. After all, they were married. She was his duchess. Everything had been properly done.

Except he remained a stranger to her. Likewise, he little knew her. Daisy had been wearing the mantle of accomplished flirt for so long in the absence of her father’s tyranny that she’d neglected to contemplate the ultimate consequences of her actions.

Playing a role was one thing. Becoming a wife was another.

“Can we not delay, Your Grace?” she had asked.

His regard had been frank, verging on grim. “Do you wish to give your father any means of dissolving this union?”

“No,” she had whispered, staring down at the perfect circle of fragrant tea awaiting her consumption. The porcelain of her teacup was thin and delicate, at least a century old, and embellished with his family coat of arms. A reminder that regardless of how much wealth her father had amassed with his tireless greed, the Trent duchy was the sort of ancient privilege the Vanreids could never aspire to reach.

The duke had replaced his cup in its saucer with nary a sound. “Then we would be best served to rule out any means as expediently as possible.”

Such a cool, emotionless method of announcing to her that they would consummate their marriage, Daisy thought now as she continued to stare at her reflection. And just then, the much-awaited knock sounded at the door.





“Enter.”

Her voice lacked its ordinary note of confidence. Gone too was the sensual, almost smoky quality that inevitably led to him thinking the wrong sort of thoughts. Thoughts that involved creamy skin, lush breasts, a prettily nipped waist, and full hips. Thoughts that wondered at the precise shade of her nipples. It had been dark, after all, in the gardens at the Darlington ball. The moonlight had bathed her in an ethereal silver, goddess-like glow.

Damn it to hell. What was he doing, waxing on about her in such a fashion? He wasn’t meant to consummate their union. He was meant to keep up the pretense before his household so that there would be no question. So that her bastard of a father couldn’t attempt to delegitimize the marriage.

So that their falsehood of a union would appear genuine. A love match rather than a means for him to gain access to Vanreid and any information Daisy possessed about his businesses.

Sebastian hesitated for a few breaths, willing his fierce arousal to abate, before opening the door to the chamber adjoining his. The duchess’s chamber. Somehow, it was easier to think of it in those terms than to call it hers.

To call it Daisy’s.

For given the circumstances, that seemed altogether wrong. And far too intimate for a woman who was a pawn, a woman whose presence and memory both would eventually be expunged from the home. From Sebastian himself.

How? Something—some inner devil—asked the question before he could dismiss it. How could he ever forget her? Jesus, he was very much afraid that he could not, no matter how he tried.

It took every bit of training he had to maintain his calm and purpose as he entered the room. She stood, completely dressed in the same, smart green gown she’d worn to wed him. Her golden tresses were still confined in an elaborate coil of braids. Her eyes widened as he crossed the chamber to her, and her fingers laced together at her wasp waist as though in prayer.

Two thoughts struck him in rapid succession.

Her beauty made him ache.

She was nervous.

He stopped with only a few paces between them, near enough that he caught a whiff of bergamot. Suspicion sliced into him, mingling with lust. She appeared as jittery as a wild hare, about to race away for a hiding place should he make one false step. Were her nerves those of a chaste bride who’d just married a stranger? Or was her conscience bringing her an unwanted pang of guilt at her deception? The possibilities were plain, an odd dichotomy. Either she knew what her father planned and she was a part of an intricate scheme to infiltrate the League, or she was an innocent being used by both sides.