Page 83 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“You had made yourself perfectly clear, my lord. There was no purpose in staying.”
“No,” he said. “I made an utter arse of myself. I was hurt and ashamed. I felt so bloody rejected and lonely, and I didn’t know how I was meant to mend the rift between us, and then you werethereand I lashed out at you for making me feel that way. And then—then I realized thatyoumust have felt that way all along, and you had handled it with far more grace than I.”
But she had never had a choice. What had she to offerbutgrace? Time and time again, she had extended it to him, and he had crushed it and denied it until the only thing she had had left to offer wasabsence. Rather than provoking his dismissal, his irritation, she had retreated, once again giving him precisely what he had asked for.
Thiswas what had come of hiscivilmarriage. God, but it was a cold and lonely thing.
She took a sharp, tremulous breath. “I was happier in Hatfield,” she said, and he flinched to hear it. Happier in a decrepit house, mere inches from abject poverty, living in fear that her spendthrift father would come home and make a shambles of her household once more—and still she had beenhappier. He had made their marriage such a misery that she would flee back there once more only to escape him.
And still, he heard himself admitting, “I was, too.”
For the first time she looked at him—looked at him fully, those dark eyes widened with surprise. Above them, an ominous rumble chased across the sky, rippling through the clouds like a pebble tossed into a lake. The brisk breeze had burned a pinkness into her cheeks, chapped her lips. The humidity thick in the air from the oncoming rain had frizzed at her hair, provoking wild little curls, and still she looked so beautiful to him.
“I want to explain myself to you,” he said, tightening his grip on the handle of his umbrella. “I want arealmarriage. I want you to come home and be my wife. I want to make you happy. And I am not above bargaining for the opportunity.”
Confusion settled in the pleat of her brow—until the sky split open and a heavy rain poured forth. In the distance, Joanna shrieked, righting from her pinwheel to come racing back toward them. What few other people had been foolish enough to stroll the park in this weather scattered, seeking shelter. Luke snapped his umbrella open, striding closer to catch Lizzie beneath the shelter of it before she could be soaked to the skin.
“Come home with me,” he said. “Give me just one more chance to be the sort of husband you deserve, and I’ll not squander it.”
It was the rain that forced her to stay there with him, and nothing more. “My home is in Hatfield,” she said, and her eyes shied away from his. But there was the hurt he’d given her in her stiff posture, in the bent line of her neck.
“I will take you to Hatfield, if that is what you want,” he said. “Butmyhome is wherever you are.” Had her lashes flickered, just a little? Damp and spiky with the first pass of rain that had washed over her before he had gotten her beneath the umbrella, they framed her eyes in an inky fan. There was suspicion in those dark eyes, and pain, and a host of other conflicted emotions.
Her lips parted—
Jo’s footsteps thundered along the grass as she drew near, practically throwing herself beneath the shelter of the umbrella. Her teeth chattered in the cold.
The moment had passed, shattered as abruptly as it had come. Shehadweakened, however briefly, but she seemed distraught by it, her lips pursing, chin firming resolutely. She laid her palm on Jo’s shoulder, as if the child’s presence brought her strength.
“No, thank you, my lord,” she said at last. “Jo and I must be on our way back to Ambrosia.”Alone, he assumed. She would not accept a ride in his carriage, would not welcome his company even for the promise of an umbrella to shield them from the rain.
Luke muffled a regretful sigh in his palm. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” he said. “But I’m not above using it against you, if that is what it takes. Ididwarn you—and I amthatdesperate.” He lifted his hand, letting it settle between them in an inquisitive gesture. “Which wayisAmbrosia, Lizzie?”
He watched the question hit her, watched the flood of realization come upon her, watched her dart her head about, looking through the thick of the rain for something—anything—she recognized.
Heard Jo murmur, “Lizzie? I’mcold.”
And knew he had won.
Chapter Thirty One
Lizzie shivered there in the marble-floored foyer of the house in which she had spent so many unhappy days. She had edged no further than necessary inside the door—just enough for the footman to shut it behind her—and that only because the lash of the rain had followed them in, and both her pelisse and Joanna’s had been soaked. Luke might have manipulated her back here, but she did not intend to stay beyond what time it took to wait out the deluge.
Things happened around her in a strange, frenetic blur. Luke barked out orders, and suddenly there was a whirlwind of activity: a maid swept Joanna away upstairs to dry off and change; a footman came running with a thick, soft blanket; the butler wheeled a tea service into the drawing room.
Luke began to unbutton her pelisse, which was now mostly saturated with rainwater.
She swatted at his fingers with icy hands. “Stop that.”
His lips pulled down into an irritable scowl, and he persisted despite her efforts. “You’re allowed to be angry,” he said. “I manipulated you. I’m not even sorry about it. But you’renotallowed to freeze to death in our foyer.”
There went the pelisse, stripped straight off her shoulders. Luke flung it away as if it had offended him, and a moment later he wrapped her in the blanket that the footman had held out to him, so tightly her arms were practically bound to her sides beneath it.
“You can be warmandangry,” he said, steering her toward the drawing room, and the wet soles of her shoes skidded across the floor. “In fact, I would prefer it. I wish you had shouted at me, Lizzie. I deserved it.”
“For which offense?” The words emerged before she could stop them, pressing through teeth that chattered with the chill.
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I deserve that, too,” he said, his voice faintly wistful. “Come. Sit by the fire. Have some tea.”
