LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      This picture of domestic bliss should have sent Alistair, Duke of Dunstan, haring off for a brandy at his club. Instead, standing in the shadows outside his wife’s withdrawing room, watching her delicately ply her needle, he wanted...more. A painful twisting in his chest for something he could not name, along with the far more easily controlled inconvenience of lust. When he really should not want anything at all.

      A bitter smile pulled at his lips. The only woman he’d wanted this badly in years he couldn’t have because she was his wife.

      What the devil had he been thinking when he’d offered marriage? A question he’d asked himself more than once these past two weeks. He didn’t need a wife. Hadn’t wanted one. Why be tied to one woman when any number of them, from princess to pauper, were ready to fall into his bed? Marriage was his worst idea ever.

      And he’d had more than his share of bad ideas.

      If she ever learned the truth, she likely would turn away in disgust.

      Of course, he hadn’t been thinking the night he’d met her. At least not with the brain atop his shoulders. Drunk on the aftermath of exquisite passion, the legend of the Dunstan rubies had put words in his mouth he would never have uttered had his mind been in full working order. Pride hadn’t permitted a retraction.

      A Dunstan never went back on his word. That was something he should have recalled before he’d opened his mouth, having sworn years ago to put old mistakes right. Mistakes that made marriage out of the question. And yet here he was...married.

      He lingered in the dark, out of sight, when he should have walked away.

      Her head bent towards the light of the candle, her gaze fixed on her needle, Julia might have been posing for a portrait. From this vantage point, he had a perfect view of her profile. A small straight nose, a high intelligent forehead, a seductively elegant neck rising from a gown of the finest pale blue silk. A gown that covered a body every curve and swell of which he knew intimately.

      He would not think about that. An odd longing clutched at his heart. What would it be like, just for once, to bask in a woman’s affection?

      Affection. His lip curled at the word. He had never known it and didn’t want it. Men who craved affection were weaklings, led around by the nose, or some other part of their anatomy. He only had to look at his father with Isobel to know better. After Alistair’s own mother’s death, his father had been a pawn to Isobel’s queen. Alistair had had a few happy years with his half-brother, but eventually, to please Isobel, his father sent Alistair away to school for being sullen and difficult with his new mama, while keeping Isobel’s precious son close to home.

      At first, in hopes of being allowed to come home, he’d been the perfect student. As time went on, and he realised it wasn’t working, he’d instinctively taken the opposite tack, getting into every sort of scrape available to a wealthy young man away at university. Until finally, the bagwig had sent him down.

      He’d been so glad to get home he’d even tried to be nice to his stepmama. It hadn’t done him a bit of good.

      Within a month Alistair had found himself with a boring elderly scholar as bear leader and a ticket to France. His father had seen the Treaty of Amiens as the perfect opportunity to send Alistair on his Grand Tour.

      Too bad the peace had ended less than six months later, leaving Alistair stranded in Italy and trying to avoid being arrested by Napoleon’s soldiers.

      By the time he’d made it home, his father was dead and Alistair’s youthful missteps had caught up to him with a vengeance he would never have foreseen.

      Now, to top it all off, like some soft-hearted fool, he’d married Julia. He should have given her the money she’d needed and sent her on her way instead of entering into a hollow shell of a marriage. Had he been any sort of honourable man, he would never have bid on her and bedded her in the first place.

      He’d known at first glance she was not usual bordello fare. Known it deep in a part of him he’d thought long dead. A part that was a mere shadow of the decency and honour he’d once taken for granted. A part he’d been ignoring for years, while denying himself nothing except a family. The one thing he certainly neither deserved nor wanted.

      Somehow that little corner of his brain, inexplicably overcome by the sight of her lovely body draped with blood-red rubies, had caused words to spill from his lips. Marry me. They rang in his ears even now.

      Lunacy.

      Devil take it. He couldn’t even use overindulgence as an excuse for replacing the carte blanche he’d first intended with an honourable offer. He’d been nowhere near cup shot.

      The only reason he could attribute to that particular piece of madness was his desire to put his stepmother in her proper place for all time. To force her into the role of Dowager instead of allowing her to swan about as the reigning Duchess.

      At least marriage had given him the satisfaction of imagining Isobel’s rage and fear at the thought that her darling son Luke would be supplanted as heir by a child of Alistair’s marriage.

      Revenge, though, was not as sweet as he’d expected. Julia was too nice, too good, to have been dragged into a cold marriage of convenience. At least, she appeared so, up until now, but as Alistair knew to his cost women were not to be trusted. He’d learnt that the hard way.

      In the meantime, it pleased him to torment his stepmother, despite that there would be no resulting children from his marriage. Not when he already had a son.

      He let go a breath of impatience. He should not be lingering here.

      Julia lifted her head from her work, glancing towards the door. ‘Your Grace?’

      He ground his teeth at the sound of his title on her lips. She’d taken to using it since the day after their wedding ball when the ton had turned up to meet his new bride. No doubt every female of that august group had blistered Julia’s ears with stories of his depraved and dissolute past. That, compounded by his coldness towards her, must have brought home to her what a bad bargain she’d struck.

      When he made no response, she looked down at the work on her lap with a shake of her head, clearly thinking she’d been mistaken.

      This was his opportunity to beat the retreat and head off to his club.

      What was he, then? A coward to be outfaced by a woman? His wife no less?

      He strode into the room.

      She looked up with a hesitant smile. Despite the shadows in her eyes, beauty shone in that smile. A welcome full of hope and promise. Her lips were lovely. Full and soft. Kissable. Sinful temptation, like the rest of her slender body with its graceful curves and its power to make him lose reason. Her skin was as soft as silk, he recalled, her limbs long and elegant, yet softly formed. He bit back a curse.

      ‘Good evening, Your Grace.’ A calm cool voice with a throaty, inviting quality that, like the rest of her, called to him on a visceral level. He could not hear her voice without recalling the passion of their night together. He half turned so she would not guess at the interest she aroused and propped an elbow on the back of the chair facing her across the hearth.

      ‘Good evening, my lady.’ He deliberately curled his lip, dropping his gaze to the scrap of cloth covered in coloured shapes and patterns in her lap. ‘What a picture of domesticity you are, my dear. It always astonishes me, the kind of things you ladies like to do with your hands.’ When they could be making so much better use of them.

      Hades,

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