A Brooding Beauty by Jillian Eaton
Chapter One
“Marcus, I want a divorce.”
Marcus William Thomas Windfair, the seventh Duke of Kensington, looked up from his ledgers to stare dispassionately at his wife. She gazed back at him unflinchingly, her rosebud mouth set in an uncompromising line and her sapphire blue eyes alight with a stubborn glow he knew only too well.
When Marcus first met Catherine Nettle at her debut ball four years ago she had been the most fetching girl in the room. He had been drawn to her almost immediately, entranced by the bewitching curve of her lips and the musical sound of her laughter. Unfortunately, womanhood had only served to take his wife from enchanting to breathtakingly beautiful.
She was petite, almost ethereally so, with a willow like build, soft ivory skin, and a tousled waterfall of gleaming blond hair. This morning she was dressed in a blue gown that accentuated her nipped in waist and delicate features. Her hair was swept back in a loose chignon and pearl earrings hung daintily from her ears. The earrings had been his wedding gift to her, and she had taken to wearing them only when she wanted something.
“No,” he said flatly before turning his attention back to the row of figures he had been calculating. A slim hand descended on his desk, grasped the ledger, and plucked it away. “Catherine,” he sighed. “You are being childish. I do not have time for one of your tantrums this morning.”
“Tantrums?” A golden eyebrow shot up. “I do not have tantrums, darling, I have moods. Now I have all the paperwork in order. All I need is your signature.”
“For the third time,” Marcus grinded out, “we are not getting divorced. It is simply not done. Now give me the ledger and get the bloody hell out of my study.”
“Not done often,” Catherine corrected him, holding the ledger just out of reach. “But it is done. We do not love each other, Marcus. We never have.” She gazed at him beseechingly; her blue eyes swirling with emotion.
Marcus wondered absently if she would begin to cry. Catherine was a magnificent actress, a talent he unfortunately had not discovered until after they were wed. Following their first tumultuous year of marriage they had more or less gone their separate ways. He lived at Kensington estate during the winter months while she flitted from ball to ball in London, and she came to the country with the rest of the Ton during the summer while he conducted his business from the city. It was a convenient arrangement. Or at least it had been until she got the ridiculous notion of divorce stuck in her head.
For the past two weeks she had hounded him like a dog worrying a bone, even going so far as to follow him from London to Kensington, something she had vowed never to do barring some kind of life threatening accident, where upon she had informed him she would most gladly come to the country to attend his funeral.
With distance between them Marcus could begin to forget what his wife smelled like. What she tasted like. He could focus on her bad traits, of which there were certainly plenty to choose from. He could even begin to ignore the pitiable, embarrassing fact that he was still irrevocably in love with a woman who, by all accounts, despised the very ground he walked on.
Now, however, she was there every time he turned around. In his study, in the dining room at dinner, in the stables with his favorite mare. She had become a second shadow, one he neither needed nor wanted. His wife was driving him mad.
“I will be leaving to visit Woodsgate on the morrow,” he said as sudden inspiration struck. Wondering why he had not thought of it sooner, his mouth curved in a faint smile. Catherine may have left the luxury of her London townhouse to follow him out to the country, but she would never traipse halfway across Scotland to go to Woodsgate, a small, downtrodden fifty acre hunting lodge that had been left to him by a distant uncle. “I do not know how long I will be gone. It would probably be best if you returned to London in my absence.”
“Woodsgate?” Catherine echoed. Her lips parted in dismay. “What in heaven’s name for? You have not been there for nearly two years.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You would not be going there to avoid me, would you Marcus? That would be very ill mannered of you.”
“And what if I am?” he snapped, standing in one smooth motion to lean into his desk with long arms well muscled from years of riding. “What are you doing here, Catherine? What is all of this? I have told you, there will be no divorce and that is the end of it! Now do as I say and get out.”