“You are deep in your cups.”
“I am not. I am…” He looked up at the ceiling. “Relaxed.”
“You cannot even stand without swaying.”
He straightened his spine while rocking side to side.
“I have had a few glasses of brandy. It is what men do at their clubs. We drink. We talk. We come home to our wives.”
“You come home smelling of other women’s perfume and expect me to… submit to you.”
She had not meant to say it so boorishly. His mouth closed. He set the vial down on the table with a click.
“I did not touch them.” His voice dropped. “I did not touch a single one of them. They wanted to. They tried to. But I sat in my chair, and I drank my brandy, and I thought about you. You. In this bed. Waiting.”
“I was not waiting.”
“You were asleep, then. Which means you were in bed. Which is…” He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress. “I admit I was aroused, but at the thought of you, not them. I think I still am.” He looked down at himself then back up at her. “I did not touch them, Violet. I want that noted.”
“I have noted it.”
“So.” He turned toward her.
“So nothing. I have told you no.”
“But I did not touch them.” His voice was louder. “A man resists temptation, comes home to his wife, and his wife says no. That is not... that is not fair.”
“Fair,” she repeated.
She looked at him now, at the heavy slope of his shoulders, the muscles on his back. He half turned and his brows were still furrowed, waiting for an answer.
“You hardly touch me either,” she said.
“What?”
“You come to my bed. You use the oil. You do what you came to do. You leave. You have touched me twice, and both times your eyes were open and looking at nothing.”
A coal broke apart in the grate. Violet stared at the burning logs.
“We have a contract,” he said at last. His voice had gone careful.
“Obviously.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, obviously?”
She pulled the covers tighter around herself. “I mean that I am aware of what we have, what we are to each other, Your Grace. You need not remind me.”
“Then…” He opened his hands as though the logic should be plain. “Then what is the difficulty?”
She looked at this man who had married her for the use of her body and the hope of an heir, naked and drunk in her bed, with another woman’s scent on him, and so fixed on the question of her difficulty that it had not occurred to himhemight be the source of the difficulty and the solution.
“I have accepted Lady Carstairs’s invitation to her annual ball. Sarah tells me it is important that we attend.”
His head came up. Alarm, dulled by the brandy, appeared on his face. His features settled into a frown he could not fully organise. His head fell back onto the mattress, his face sinking into it. “Carstairs.” His muffled word came out as if he was tasting something off. “You should not have accepted without consulting me.”
“You were not at home to consult, and Sarah said they were an affluent family we must acquaint ourselves with.”
A sound came out of him, something likePfft. “Send your regrets.”