“Not for hours,” he repeated.
He smelled the same. Like fresh earth and dark spice. She tried not to breathe too deeply, afraid of what that familiar scent might do to her. “Soon.”
The weather. They discussed the weather.
“Come riding with me.” They’d never ridden together. There had been talk of it, a hundred years ago, promises that they would spend the summer here, at Highley, on horseback, discovering it together. And then they’d married, and they hadn’t been able to stomach each other.
Or, rather, he hadn’t been able to stomach her. She could not blame him for that, she supposed. Except, she had blamed him. Even before he’d turned to another whom he could stomach better.
She looked at him. “Why?”
He lifted a shoulder. Let it fall. “Because you like to ride and it is not raining yet.”
She shook her head. “What game you are playing?”
“No games,” he said. “I ride in the mornings.”
“Enjoy yourself,” she said. “I’m to have breakfast with my sisters and prepare for your suitors.” She paused. “Suitors? Suitesses? Is there a word for young women vying for the attention of a duke?”
“Wisteria.”
She raised a brow at the word, the kindest of the whispered names she and her sisters had been called. Pretty, smelled nice, and very good at climbing. “Not so quickly, Duke. We haven’t seen or scented them, yet.”
He did smile at that, full and handsome, and she hated the hint of pleasure in the curve of his lips. Hated that it ghosted through her, there and gone so quickly, she’d never have noticed it if she weren’t so aware of him. And why? He was nothing but a barrier between her and freedom.
“Your sisters cannot protect you all the time, you know. We shall have to interact at some point.”
She’d cloistered herself with them after their arrival the other day, attempting to forget that he was in the house even as they prepared for what was to come. “We don’t have to be alone to interact.”
He raised a brow. “Are you afraid to be alone with me?”
“Being alone with you has never worked out quite the way I imagined,” she said, knowing the words would be a blow.
The blow did not land as expected. “I think it worked out rather well, once or twice.”
Who was this man?
She tried again. “Oh, yes, Your Grace, being married to you has been the great wonder of my existence.”
He looked out the window. “Need I remind you that four women want a life with me so badly they are coming here to compete for it?”
She gave a little laugh. “You think that they want it? They don’t. They simply think they haven’t any other choice but to vie for your attention.” She hesitated, then, “How did you select the poor things?”
“It’s not so difficult to find unmarried women with an interest in marrying a duke.”
“Not even a duke who has been tied to scandal for years?”
“Not even that, surprisingly.”
It wasn’t surprising, though. He was handsome and young and rich and titled and any woman of sound mind would want him.
Not that she did. “And they were willing to wait until you had me declared dead? Husband hunting takes more patience than I recall.”
“You were a superior hunter.”
He didn’t mean the words the way they came, she knew. But they stung nonetheless, the reminder of the trap she’d lay. The mistake she’d made.
She looked away, back to the sun, edging over the fields. “Little do they know that in a matter of weeks, your attention will wander elsewhere.”
She hated herself for the bitterness in the words. After all that had happened, how was it that stumbling upon him with another woman was the only thing that seemed to matter?
Hated him even more when he said, “You left me—”
“You sent me away!” she said, unable to keep her voice from rising. “You stood in the house where we might have built a home, our wedding breakfast barely over, and you told me to leave you.” When he opened his mouth to reply, she found she was not through. “And do you know what is the great irony of it? The whole world thinks you ruined me before you married me, when the truth is that I was not ruined until after the fact. You ruined my hopes. My dreams. My future. You ruined my life. And I’ve had enough of that. I am here for one reason only, Your Grace. I want my life back. The one you stole.”
She was breathing heavily, full of anger that she rarely allowed release.
And damned if it didn’t feel good.
Even as she met his gaze and recognized his frustration. His anger. Good. She preferred him angry. Preferred to see her enemy. And they were enemies, were they not?
“If I stole your life, what did you do to mine? You disappeared, leaving all the world wondering where you’d gone. Imagining that I might have driven you away.”
She turned away again. “You did drive me away.” It was a lie, but she said it anyway, hoping it would hurt him.
Silence fell, and she ignored it, refusing to look at him, even when he said, “I worried you were dead. The doctors told me you might die. Do you have any idea how it felt to know you might have died?”
She did not hesitate. “I can only imagine you met the possibility with hope, considering you already had such a clear plan to replace me.”
She expected many responses to the smart retort—anger, sarcasm, dismissal. She received pure, unfettered honesty. “I never wished you dead.”
The words sent a wash of embarrassment through her before she could stop it. Even as she resisted the idea of allowing him to embarrass her. “No,” she said. “Only gone. So, let them come. And I shall give you what you wish. With pleasure.”
Only then did she realize that a small part of her wished he would acknowledge it, the fact that he’d breathed a sigh of relief on the day she’d disappeared. He did not.
“After you left, I—” He stopped, then began again. “That last day, when—” He stopped the moment Sera closed her eyes against the words and the memory that came with them. The keen sense of loss. The child she could not forget. The future she had lost. The love. She should have thanked him for stopping, but he did not give her time, instead changing tack. Repeating himself. “I never wished you dead.”
She knew that, of course. “You made me angry.” It was the closest she would come to apologizing for lashing out at him.
Malcolm laughed then, the sound low and full of charm, just as she remembered. “I’ve always done that rather well.”
She couldn’t help her answering smile. “That much is true.”
“Come riding with me,” he repeated himself. “Before the others arrive.”
He said “the others” as though it were perfectly normal that a passel of young women was about to descend to vie for the role of duchess—the role she currently held. She shook her head once more. He was too tempting, even now. Even when she knew the way this ended.
“I could insist,” he said. “Make it a condition of the divorce.”
“You could,” she replied. “But you shan’t.”
“How do you know that?”