Chapter 21

The whole three blocks to Kelbourne House, Torie counseled herself to keep her temper. She would calmly explain that her husband

could not shame her by keeping a mistress in public or private.

Ever. Never. Not at all. In fact, he had to go over there and get rid of that horrible diamond-bedecked—

No.

She took a deep breath. She was used to charming men, so why couldn't she seem to do it with Dom? With him, she lost her temper

in a moment, and then he started kissing her, and then...

He got his way, all too often.

The Kelbourne butler opened the door with gratifying speed before she reached the top of the steps. "Miss Torie," Flitwick

said, welcoming her inside. "May I take your parasol? Lord Kelbourne is in his study, if you'd like to greet him."

"Good morning, Flitwick," Torie said, handing him her gloves and unpinning her hat. "How are the twins?"

"They spent the morning in Hyde Park, as you suggested. Miss Florence brought home several earthworms, much to Nanny Bracknell's

disapproval."

"What does Florence intend to do with them?"

"Paint them," Flitwick said, his eyes twinkling. "She has decided to eschew rabbits and try an animal that remains on the

ground."

"A very sensible decision," Torie said. "I shall greet Lord Kelbourne. You needn't announce me, Flitwick."

When she pushed open the door to Dominic's study, she froze for a moment, trying to determine why a mere glimpse of the man had such a heady effect on her. He was seated behind a huge walnut desk, his head bent over a letter.

True, he was unfairly beautiful; his cheekbones made him look as sensitive as one of the carved stone angels she stared at

in church.

Sensitive? Ha. She couldn't have found someone more insensitive. More bellicose.

Just now he was writing quickly because he was also so competent at everything he did. As well as passionate and self-assured.

"Are you coming in?" he asked, finishing his line.

"Yes," she said shakily, moving away from the door and shutting it behind her.

He jumped to his feet, his eyes hungry. "I thought you were Flitwick," he said, moving around his desk.

Torie instinctively reacted to his expression—and then loathed him, and her own response. How could he feel scorching lust

for two women at once? Was she benefiting from Gianna's sensuality, or was he taking all the desire that flared between them

and returning to Gianna's bed?

How could she want a man who was bedding another?

She forced herself to smile and curtsy. "Dom."

He bowed. "I thought we'd moved away from formal salutations."

"I did call you Dom," she murmured, allowing him to steer her to a couch. As they sat down, he brushed tendrils of hair from

around her face and dropped a kiss on her nose.

"May I kiss you?"

"I'd rather not," she said, looking at her hands as she reminded herself not to lose her temper, remain calm, be charming, be...

All that.

For the first time in her life, she wished she'd asked Leonora for lessons on pretending to be a lady.

"What's the matter?" He shifted closer, his hip touching hers. "Where's your betrothal ring?"

Torie blinked. "I left it on the windowsill because I was painting this morning. I'll retrieve it as soon as I go home. No

need to worry, as servants never enter my studio."

"I shall be very glad when you are living under my roof with servants who will enter your studio," Dominic said.

Torie edged away from his hip and said, "I realized that before we marry, we should have the same conversation you had with

Leonora."

"Which conversation?"

"Don't you remember how horrified you were that she shared details with me?"

Dominic was having trouble paying attention.

Torie was wearing crimson lip color, precisely the same shade her lush mouth turned when reddened by his kisses. Less than

a day until they married. Hardly more than twenty-four hours. Then he'd have her in his home, in his bed. His arms.

Making that needy sound in the back of her throat as he put her on the bed and worshipped her body.

He had never found himself in the grip of a craving this intense. He no sooner began listening to a speech in the Lords before

his thoughts were interrupted by an image of the two of them entwined on white sheets, his hand woven into her thick hair

as she—

"I apologize," he said, clearing his throat. "What conversation did I have with Leonora?"

"Regarding unfaithfulness," Torie prompted.

He frowned. "What about it?"

"I won't countenance adultery," she said, casting him a glance from under her long lashes. "By which I mean," she clarified,

"I would feel hurt and angry if you had an affair. Everyone would... everyone would talk."

"I agree," he said.

"If you're going to strut around half-naked, you'll do it in front of me and no one else."

Lewd thoughts flashed through Dominic's head. "Agreed," he growled. "The same is true for you. You'll be faithful to me."

It was a statement, not a command. Torie was infuriating, mischievous, exquisite— loyal . He was pretty sure that she was marrying him out of loyalty to the twins, out of love for them. He respected that.

Perhaps even loyalty to her father. He didn't respect that, but he'd take it.

He had a bone-deep belief that she would never break her vows.

"I will be faithful as long as you are," Torie agreed. "But what about your mistress?" She raised her stubborn little chin

and fixed him with an imperious glare. "You told my sister that a mistress doesn't count. I think a woman such as that does count, as I made clear in our discussion of Odysseus's infidelities."

Dominic felt a flare of irritation at her presumptive tone. She didn't understand the private life of gentlemen. "I have never

visited a brothel—"

Incredulity flickered across Torie's eyes. "Am I supposed to celebrate your self-denial?"

He cleared his throat. "There are illnesses—"

"Syphilis, for example," she cut in. "Otherwise known as the pox. Which, by the way, is not limited to the women who work

in brothels. Mistresses are just as vulnerable. As are wives ." She spat the last word.

This conversation was getting out of hand, and Dominic could feel his temper flaring. The last thing he wanted was a wife

who told him what to do, who curtailed what he did or who he spent time with. Who sought to control his behavior. He'd had

enough of that from his father, and from the moment the former viscount died, Dominic had never again allowed himself to be

leashed.

"The Duke of Queensberry has a mistress," he said flatly. "Did you have this conversation with him?" The moment he asked,

he realized that the duke would promise anything to marry Torie. The man was absurdly infatuated.

"If you keep a mistress, I shall take a lover." Her blue eyes darkened to a seething lavender. He recognized that sign from

the months of their betrothal: his fiancée had a temper like a bonfire.

"My wife will never take a lover," he told her, keeping his voice even. No one— no one —sparked his temper the way Torie did. Those idiots in the House of Lords had nothing on her.

Torie shrugged, fanning his irritation. "It's up to you. If you satisfy yourself in someone else's bed, why shouldn't I? It's

only fair. Logical."

"That isn't how it's done."

"I don't give a damn how it's done," she flared. "When you tire of our bed and caper in some other woman's chamber, you can be damn certain that I will issue an invitation to mine."

"We will share a bedchamber," Dominic snarled, his voice ragged. "You'll sleep with me every night, so I know where you are."

She scowled at him. "I'm not the unfaithful one. You are."

Dominic was fighting the conviction that no wife should command her husband's private life. It was shameful. Raw emotion caught

him by the throat, an offensive experience.

"No one tells me what to do," he stated.

Torie raised an eyebrow. "Maturity often brings new experiences," she said coolly. "I am merely informing you of the consequences

of your own actions, so you understand them." She leaned forward and caught his eyes.

"If you ever humiliate me the way you did last night, flaunting your diamond-clad mistress before my acquaintances, you will never know who fathered your children. I am not my sister, reluctant to damage her reputation as a perfect lady. Think of me as

more akin to your sister!"

Dominic's face closed like a steel trap. "Humiliate you?" he repeated, his voice grating.

"Vauxhall?" she demanded.

His heart skipped a beat, curses rocketing through his head.

"Those gossip columns you claim to know nothing about?" she fired at him. "You and your Italian friend will be front and center in every single one this morning. Luckily for me, I can't read them—but then, I have no need to.

I've already heard from one friend, and I'm sure many more will give me their condolences. They will wait until tomorrow,

at our wedding !"

Dominic digested that with a stab of remorse. No, a tidal wave of remorse. He'd been an idiot. Again.

"You were intentionally disrespectful of me and our impending wedding," Torie said scathingly.

"I had no such intention," he said, voice rasping. "I suppose people showed particular interest because of the wedding." What

in the hell had he been thinking? He hadn't been thinking. Hadn't thought clearly in days, to be honest. He had been too focused

on Torie, which was ironic now.

"Precisely the same interest they paid us at the theater, so don't pretend that you didn't anticipate it," she retorted. "I

told you long ago that reporters dog your mistress." Fury vibrated in her voice. "The fact that you bedecked that woman in

diamonds and took her to Vauxhall—which is regularly attended by the fashionable world, including myself—was fascinating to

all."

Color had ebbed from her face, leaving crimson lips against skin that was the precise shade of wallpaper paste.

Gianna had summoned him to Vauxhall, and he had thought... well, it didn't matter what he thought, because he hadn't considered

the consequence. Torie was furious, but more than that, she was shamed, her eyes raw with humiliation.

"Yes, this does feel worse than being labeled a silly butterfly," she said, confirming his thought. "Oh God, I wish I had

married Queensberry. He would never have done this."

The longing in her voice shattered Dominic's haze of self-condemnation. His brain snapped into cold calculations, precisely

as it did when he was thwarted in debate. He'd fucked up . For a moment, he considered Gianna's motives for asking him to meet her in Vauxhall—and pushed that thought away.

Torie was looking at him like an enemy. That skewered him through the gut. In the last few months, he'd felt as if he'd made

a friend for the first time in his life. They didn't agree on much, but he enjoyed skirmishes over the Odyssey far more than fights over moral issues in Lords that felt, to him, as if only one side was ethical.

Now that friend was justifiably looking at him with a combination of distaste, disappointment, and rage.

"We are due to marry tomorrow morning," she told him. "I'll offer you a choice. Either we break it off here, or we wait to

consummate the marriage until you are finished with your other relationship and free to concentrate on your wife."

His eyes narrowed. Choice? It was an order. That maddening thought battled with the equally maddening hunger for her that

turned his bones to molten lead. The pulse of it beat in his blood, in his bones—in his groin.

At the same time, his pride was outraged. His manhood. He could hear his father's harsh voice in his mind, squawking with

laughter at any man who let himself be dictated to by a woman, especially by a wife.

"That is not a choice, but an ultimatum."

Her chin took on the challenging slant that had grown familiar. Her willful mouth tightened in the corners.

"An ultimatum would be if I insisted you discharge your mistress before we marry. I am giving you a choice. At some point, you may become tired of champagne for breakfast and feel like joining your wife for a simple cup of tea. Or you may not. Until then, I shall remain your nanny, which is, by the way, how you treat me when you aren't kissing me. There will be no kissing the nanny in dark corners."

She pressed a hand to her waist. Dominic knew that gesture; Torie's stomach was churning with the strength of her feelings.

"You don't want to consummate our marriage?" he demanded, incredulous.

"I will never share my husband with another woman," Torie stated, her eyes glittering at him. "You scarcely envision me as

a wife anyway. Face it: in your mind, I'm a glorified nursemaid, albeit with some extracurricular capering. Except that now

I understand that you have other bedrooms to caper in."

"I do not think of your role in my life that way!"

Her lip curled. "As your wife, I am supposed to make no demands and set down no rules. We might occasionally entertain, but

the invitations would come from you, and the arrangements needn't strain my pitiful brain. You'll be out most nights, so I

should feel free to ‘join the children in the nursery,' which implies you think that I will be humbly waiting at home for

you." She laughed.

Her hand slipped away from her stomach: not calm, but better.

"I didn't mean it that way," Dominic said, trying to remember precisely what he'd said.

"Yes, you did. Really, you must stop denying statements for which there's so much evidence," she retorted. "I don't blame you. You find me addled, but you're fond of me, and protective too. I learned long ago to separate people's motives and their assessments."

"You are completely misunderstanding my opinion of you."

"My point is that you have declared over and over that you don't want me to be ashamed. You insisted my own sister couldn't

attend the wedding in case she said something slighting to me. And yet you arranged it so that the entire congregation of the cathedral—every single person—will be tittering about your relationship

with Gianna while you vow, supposedly, to be faithful to me. That was worse than anything my sister could have said!"

Dominic wanted to thunder a denial—but he was the one in the wrong. He didn't have the moral high ground the way he did in

the House of Lords.

"You shamed me just before we are to marry," Torie said, her voice breaking. "That says to me that your relationship with

Gianna is stronger than ours." Her eyes were shining with tears. "It says that your fondness for me is as shallow as a puddle."

"That isn't true," Dominic said hoarsely, feeling as if he were drowning. "I do care for you, and I am deeply regretful of

my thoughtless behavior last night." He took her ringless hand in his, hoping that it wasn't a sign. "Please believe that

I had no intention of disrespecting you. I didn't think of the consequences, or I would never have agreed to go to Vauxhall."

Her eyes searched his face, and to his relief, they softened. "People thought you were deliberately humiliating me, but I

hated to believe it."

"I would never do that," he growled.

"You are too fond of me to be so cruel. I told Clara that."

The words stabbed him. "I apologize."

He was solidly on the wrong side of the moral fence, and it felt—horrible. "My only excuse is that I didn't think about gossip.

Or reporters. The opinions of ladylike matrons are meaningless to me. They don't matter."

"My feelings matter to me," Torie said, her hand going back to her stomach.

"Of course," he said raggedly. He'd done it again , said the wrong thing. Defended the indefensible. "I didn't mean that."

"At least we're being honest with each other now, more than we ever were before." Her voice had a jaundiced undertone that

he hated. "I suspect that your relationship with Gianna is the longest and deepest you have had in your life."

Dominic's lifelong dedication to honesty stifled his response. She wasn't wrong. He and Gianna went back years.

He had never made male friends the way other gentlemen did. His father had been a beast and kept him away from boys his own

age. His sister had flitted here and there, unable to stay in one place. They'd had no real bond.

When he couldn't bring himself to lie, Torie said heavily, "I do know that you have been together for more years than I've

known you. I always thought men liked variety in the bedchamber, but you have been faithful to her, presumably."

"Yes."

His father's commands were clashing with the disdainful expression in Torie's eyes. Her ultimatum was unacceptable. Giving

in would be shaming.

But then, he had shamed her... His mind went into a dizzying spiral, trying to calculate the best option, the argument that would satisfy her and preserve his integrity.

"Since you're referring to your mistress, I shall not congratulate you for your fidelity," Torie said with devastating frankness.

"I am not yet married," Dominic said, his father's barking voice echoing in his head so strongly that he fancied it could

be heard in the room.

"As of tomorrow, your relationship, if one can call it that, will become adulterous," she retorted. "Vows are vows. I've never

heard a proviso in the Anglican marriage ceremony excusing paid intimacies, have you? ‘With my body I thee worship' doesn't

have the addendum, ‘except when I'm worshipping someone else's body.'"

"You've made your point," Dominic said. He was hanging on to his temper by a straw, aware it was flaring high out of guilt.

Because he was the villain. He was the man whose wife would be mocked all over London. The cathedral would indeed be crammed with people

coming to whisper, gloat, and laugh.

"You and I will not sleep together until you agree to stay out of Miss Peccati's bedchamber," Torie repeated.

Dominic opened his mouth to tell her—

She cut him off. "Furthermore, if I ever discover you have taken another mistress, I shall take a lover, whether or not I

have provided you with heirs. As I already informed you."

A low growl came from his chest. He had to leave the room; he was about to erupt, and when he lost his temper, he invariably

said things he didn't mean. It had become the hard and fast rule of his adult life: leave before you shout.

Unless in Parliament, of course.

"If you don't agree to that, I will jilt you here and now. I will take it upon myself to explain it to Florence and Val. It

will break their hearts, but they will understand—and after that discussion, we can return adultery to the Prohibited List,

if you'd like. It's bad enough that I'm agreeing to marry someone like you, but if we don't even begin with an even playing

field? I simply can't do it. I don't think I could ever love you."

What did she mean by "someone like you?" Cold, self-absorbed, and unfaithful, presumably?

He didn't want her to clarify that sentence.

"What's more, if we consummate this marriage, I can't promise that we'll have two sons. I don't know how Leanora thought she

could. We might have two daughters. We might have only one. We might have seven."

"Seven!"

"Or none. People never seem to consider the fact that some couples are not immediately fruitful." She narrowed her eyes. "It

might be years until you are free to buy yourself variety in the bedchamber. You might want to keep that in mind when making your choice,

as well as the possibility that I may prove to be barren, which would curtail any cavorting in other women's chambers."

Dominic was a consummate debater, skilled at knowing when to hold his fire. There was no point in arguing until they were

able to consummate the marriage. Tomorrow.

Part of him couldn't believe that she hadn't already jilted him. If he let go with the howl in his chest... His blood was pounding through his veins so hard that he could hear it in his ears. He had to leave the room.

She'd jilt him if he shouted. He knew it.

"I agree to your terms," he said abruptly. "Your ultimatum," he added, just so they both knew he'd given in under protest.

He had to make certain that didn't become a habit. He certainly wouldn't obey her routinely.

Just now and then, since conceding a losing battle was sometimes the best way to win the war.