Five short days later they returned to Kensington and Marcus had resumed his strenuous work schedule. Unlike many of his peers, he understood that industrialization was growing and times were changing. He did not want to merely sit around and use up everything his ancestors had gotten him by way of titles and bloodlines; he wanted to invest in new inventions and new ideas. For that, he needed to go to America.
He had not planned on being away from his new bride for so long. When he received Catherine’s letters he had browsed through them and put them away in his desk drawer, too preoccupied to read them in their entirety. Perhaps if he had he would have been prepared for what he would face upon his return. As it was, when he came back to discover his wife was not at Kensington where he had left her, but was rather in London indulging in a myriad of tête-à-têtes with unmarried (and a few married) men, his fury and jealousy had known no bounds. He had left her in the city with barely a word spoken between them, and thus their separation had begun.
The woman had cuckolded him in front of every peer in London, and she wanted a divorce. Draining the rest of his scotch in one hard swallow, Marcus rose a bit unsteadily to fill his glass again.
He was about to sit back down when the front door came crashing open and Catherine, soaked to the bone with her hair and clothes in wild disarray, stumbled inside.
Chapter Three
Woodsgate was exactly as Catherine remembered it. Small and rustic, the front door opened directly into the sitting room which was currently alight with a roaring fire from the floor to ceiling stone fireplace. Marcus’ mahogany desk, an exact replicate of the one in Kensington, occupied one corner while leather furniture sprawled in haphazard array across the rest of the room. Several bear skin rugs in varying shades of brown and black, trophies left behind by the late Earl of Kensington, Marcus’ Uncle, covered the floor.
Stepping carefully around the largest rug – she had never abided dead things in the house – Catherine pushed her hair back from her eyes, swept up the bedraggled sleeves of her dress, and untied her cloak before letting it fall unceremoniously to the floor. Linking her arms behind her back in an attempt to disguise the trembling of her frozen fingers, she drew a deep breath and finally turned to face her husband.
“The damn coachman left me five miles down the road,” she explained stiffly. “I had to walk the rest of the way.”
“Catherine?” The shock in Marcus’ voice mirrored the shock on his face. He set his glass aside and stood up slowly, bracing his arms against the sides of his chair. “What the hell are you doing here?” His dark eyebrows shot together. “How did you get here?”
The man was foxed, she decided instantly. It came as no surprise. Marcus did like his drink, more so now than ever before. It caused her guilt to know that their separation had driven him to the bottle, but it was only one more reason for them to divorce and get on with their lives. “I told you… the coachman stranded me on the side of the road. You will have to go back for my trunks in the morning. If they are not already stolen by then,” she finished darkly.
Marcus gazed down suspiciously into his half empty glass.
“Oh for the love of…” In three quick strides Catherine marched across the room, plucked the glass from his fingers, and threw it with all her might. She wasn’t usually so volatile, but these were extenuating circumstances.
Marcus watched the glass shatter against the stone fireplace in tight lipped disapproval, and when he spun to glare at her grim recognition gleamed in his eyes.
“That’s right, darling. I am really here,” Catherine said snidely.
“Get the hell out,” he said in a voice so deceptively soft it raised the hairs on the back of Catherine’s neck. Perhaps he was not quite as foxed as she had initially thought. Muscles coiled and tightened along the length of his arms and shoulders, making her acutely aware that the only thing her husband wore besides a pair of tightly fitted breeches was a thin cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows and the front unbuttoned down to his chest.
The room grew silent except for the crackle of the fire and the quiet drip drip drip of water as it fell from her skirts and began to form a puddle on one of the bearskin rugs. Faced with the prospect of staring down her infuriated husband, Catherine could now admit it had been a ridiculously poor idea to come here in the first place. Marcus would have been forced to return to Kensington eventually and she would have been far more comfortable waiting for him at the estate with her own maid and a cook and clothes that weren’t soaked through to the skin and – no, it was best not to think about it. She would leave first thing in the morning, but she was not letting her husband throw her out in the middle of the night. The very thought of going back out into the wet and the cold made her shudder, and she thought longingly of her nice dry clothes carefully packed away in her poor abandoned trunks.