Chapter 6

“Your terms?” Matthew asked. “Surely, I misheard you.”

Lady Tabitha smiled sweetly. “You did not mishear me,” she said.

There was something strange about her. Moments before, she had been sharp and sullen, but now, there was a slyness about her that he had only seen glimpses of before. It was intriguing. He fought down a fissure of excitement as he tried to anticipate what the change in demeanour might indicate.

“Why do you assume that you are allowed terms?” he asked.

“Is there any reason I should not be?”

“You are in no position to negotiate,” Matthew replied. “You need to marry me quickly. However, I do not necessarily need you. As you have said, many young ladies would like to become Duchess of Hillsburgh.”

“But you said you want an heir quickly,” Lady Tabitha countered. “I can be wed quicker to you than any of them. Besides, a broken engagement will not make you particularly appealing. In time, I am sure that your reputation would be repaired, but not as quickly as you might like. Besides, if you expect me to fulfill my weekly marriage bed duties.”

“Weekly?”

“You said that you want an heir quickly,” she said. “Weekly encounters should surely do it.”

“Daily encounters,” he said. “I said quickly. The more frequently you perform your marriage bed duties, the more quickly you will produce my heir.”

The idea was more appealing than he wanted it to be. His eyes fell on the round swell of her breasts above the bodice of her pale blue gown. He thought of what it would be like to pull her gown from her shoulders and bare her form on their wedding night.

Would she be shy and vulnerable, like on that first meeting when she tripped when greeting him? Or would she be like she was now, strange, brazen, and trying to assert her power in a situation where they both knew she had so little?

“If we are having an amorous congress every day, how will we manage to fulfill all our other obligations?” she asked. “You are beginning to make being the Duchess of Hillsburgh sound like quite a commitment.”

He laughed despite himself. “Are you surprised to learn that marriage is a commitment?”

“No,” she replied. “I accepted that I would have to commit to being your wife and that it would mean certain sacrifices, but I had not expected the duties of the marriage bed to be quite so frequent.”

“Only until you produce my heir.”

“How can I not, given how often you want to try?” she asked. “Given that we are going to spend so much time together, though, I think I do want romantic words to be part of my terms.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Otherwise, I imagine that those duties of the marriage bed will become quite a chore rather quickly.”

Matthew felt his lips twitch into a smile. He shook his head and stared at her, unsure what to do exactly with this young woman. “Since when do young ladies speak so brazenly about the marriage bed?”

“Since their betrothed ones decide to speak so bluntly about having heirs as quickly as possible,” Lady Tabitha replied. “I am showing you that I can keep pace, Your Grace.”

“Well done,” he said.

Her expression brightened, and she looked just like a cat who had stumbled upon a bowl of cream. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

He nodded, acknowledging her gratitude.

Lady Tabitha sipped her tea, and for a heartbeat, they sat in almost companionable silence. She would not bore him; that much was clear. Matthew could not decide if that was for better or worse. Perhaps his mother and sister were right, and he had been a recluse for too long. Surely, that was the only reason why he found Lady Tabitha to be so charming. It was only that he had been so long deprived of any company, save for his relatives and the staff, that anyone was endlessly amusing.

“I do not want to make the same mistake that I made with Cas—with that gentleman,” Lady Tabitha said.

Matthew had caught that quickly cut, half-spoken name. Cas—

Who was that? Was it a lord he knew?

Lady Tabitha cleared her throat. Matthew silently decided to contemplate the name later; he would see if he could guess the identity of Lady Tabitha’s previous paramour.

“That said,” Lady Tabitha continued, “I find you to be interesting. You are an odd man. Unpredictable.”

“Am I?”

“You are, and I like that.” She paused, considering him for a long moment. “We may never love one another, but I do wonder if we might be friends of a sort. What do you think?”

“Do you typically try to produce heirs with your friends?” he asked.

“Friends with an unusual, daily pastime,” she countered.

She sounded very serious, and Matthew felt his easy smile fade. Friends with such an intimate pastime sounded a little too like—

Like having a wife who he loved. Like having a love match. Like how he and Rosemary had always acted with one another. She had been his dearest friend, his lover, his everything. In the days following her absence, he had felt like the entire world stopped. Nothing had mattered any longer.

He drew in a sharp breath and tried to force his easy smile back on his face. If he did not, he suspected that Lady Tabitha would notice, and he did not wish to reveal his innermost feelings to her. They still scarcely knew one another.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “We shall have to wait and see how our marriage progresses.”

“My terms dictate that we should try.”

“I agree to try.”

Those were empty words, and he knew it. Matthew wanted nothing to do with this young woman aside from producing an heir for the dukedom. He lied only to spare her feelings because when she looked at him with that soft, inquisitive expression and those steel-bright eyes, Matthew could not bring himself to be truly cruel to her. He might jest and tease and taunt, but he knew instinctively that he could not bear to be so unkind to her.

“I am pleased to hear it,” she said. “It seems as though we may have an excellent partnership in the future.”

A partnership. What a strange way of wording what they were going to have.

“I suppose,” he agreed.

“So it seems as though we ought to know something about one another,” Lady Tabitha said. “What do you enjoy, Your Grace? Aside from games, that is.”

“Games?”

“It seems to me that you are playing one of some sort,” she said. “Only I have not yet discovered all the rules to it. With practice, however, I am sure that I shall.”

He chuckled. “I do enjoy games. Mostly cards.”

“You are careful with your gambling,” she mused.

“Why do you say so?”

“My parents would have told me if you were impoverished,” Lady Tabitha said.

He grinned. “Perhaps I merely hide my poverty well.”

“And you spent what little money you have bringing me here,” she said, gesturing to the lavish tearoom around them. “What you do not have in sweet words, you have in gestures. Is that it?”

He chuckled, genuinely amused. “You caught me. Do not tell anyone of my terrible secret, or I shall be most vexed with you.”

“If you do not reveal mine, I promise to keep yours.”

Lady Tabitha sipped her tea, and Matthew considered her in silence for a long moment. It was not his place to ask, but he was dreadfully curious. He told himself that it was only right that he knew some details about Lady Tabitha’s unique situation. After all, they were to be wed.

“Did you love him?” Matthew asked.

“Who?”

“The gentleman who you were found with,” he clarified. “You must have been fond of him and trusted him greatly to let him take you into a darkened room unaccompanied.”

Lady Tabitha slowly nodded. She placed aside her cup of tea and clasped her hands in her lap. “I was fond of him. I thought that he might someday marry me.”

“Did you arrange to be caught, hoping to ensnare him?”

Her horrified expression answered the question well enough.

“I have seen such happen,” Matthew explained. “I noticed that you did not wed him, which means that he refused to be honourable. I imagine it was quite a betrayal.”

“It was, but that was not …” Lady Tabitha trailed off. “That was not the worst of it.”

“What was?”

“We were found by one of his drunken friends,” Lady Tabitha said, “and he—he assumed that this gentleman would be alone and in the company of a different woman. He called out her name.”

“Ah.”

“And my suitor could not explain why his friend would assume that he was in the company of any woman except me. I assume that he was either unfaithful or else lied about how I was the only woman he ever loved.”

Matthew frowned. “Sometimes, men do exaggerate when they say such sweet things to their lovers.”

Lady Tabitha nodded. “I know. But it is less conceivable why he would call another woman’s name. Is it not?”

Matthew inwardly winced and nodded his agreement. “I am sorry that he dishonoured you in such a way.”

“You do not blame me for being alone with him?” Lady Tabitha asked.

“No. You are young,” he replied. “Most of the ton has a few youthful indiscretions. It is only a matter of whether or not they are caught in their indiscretions.”

“That is kind of you to say.”

She looked vulnerable again, shy even. Matthew’s gaze lingered on her right shoulder. She was such an elegant and slight creature. Everything about her was soft and smooth, begging to be touched by his palms and caressed by his fingertips. Matthew forced down the lump that rose in his throat. He thought of Rosemary and how his hands had traced along her slender body.

She had always responded to his touch with great enthusiasm. When he cupped her breasts, she arched into him, bidding him to touch her more firmly. As Matthew had spread her legs and trailed kisses along the insides of her thighs, Rosemary had always groaned and rocked her hips upwards, desperate and eager for him to kiss her everywhere.

He looked at Lady Tabitha. She was not like Rosemary. With her straight, black hair and dark eyes, Rosemary had always been what the ton called an exotic beauty, but Lady Tabitha was so pale and conventionally lovely. An English rose if there ever was one. He wondered if she would react with as much eagerness, and the thought of taking her to bed daily filled him with a pulse of energy.

“But it is done,” Lady Tabitha said. “I am ready for us now. I foresee us having a long and fruitful marriage.”

Fruitful, indeed. “Agreed.”

A sharp splinter of guilt lodged in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Rosemary would want him to be faithful to her. She would never want him to give up hope on her, and although Matthew recognized the wisdom of this decision, agreeing to marry Lady Tabitha still felt like an insult to Rosemary.

Worse, even thinking of Rosemary did nothing to lessen his burning need for this young woman. He needed to produce an heir, necessitating participation in the marriage bed. Matthew felt as though that would have been harmless.

If it had just been a duty, delivered without any emotion or interest, Matthew might not have felt as guilty as he did. Most regrettably, he was a passionate creature, and the more he looked at Lady Tabitha, the more he relished their eventual coupling.

And more than a little of that anticipation came not from his desire to have an heir but to have this woman beneath him, her moans heavy in the air as he left her sharp tongue at a loss for words.