Meggie frowned at him and began rearranging the scones on the platter. “Oh, stop looking like a whipped dog, William. Would you like tea?”
He nodded and managed to slink all the way across the huge room to stand behind a very old wing chair that Meggie planned to replace just as soon as—She frowned into her teacup. She had to go to Dublin to the Gibbs Furniture Warehouse. She wondered what her husband of three weeks would say when she asked him about that.
“I say, that’s your father, Meggie. The vicar.”
“That’s right. You caused a very fine mess, William, and he was the one to resolve it, he and your brother.”
“What is this?” Libby said. “What did you do this time, dearest?”
“Mother, I haven’t done a single thing since I’ve gotten home. Lord Kipper, you promised you would show me your new hunter. I should very much like to see it, sir.”
“Since your mother bought it off me for your birthday, I suppose you can see it.”
“The new hunter, Mother?” At Libby’s nod, William swooped down on her and nearly crushed her into the sofa, so exuberant was he with his hugs.
“You are a good boy, William,” she said, kissing his cheek, “you always have been.”
Meggie nearly turned blue she held her breath so long so that she wouldn’t say anything.
Near midnight, when Thomas finally came into her bed, making his way quietly from his own bedchamber, Meggie said from the depths of the goose down, “Thomas, we must go to the furniture warehouse in Dublin.”
He jumped a good foot.
To her delight, after he paced the room three times, he turned back toward the bed on his bare heel, frowned, and nodded. “All right. You’ll probably be safer in Dublin than here. Make your lists, Meggie, and we will leave when you’re ready.”
“Would you like to come lie beside me and we can discuss it?”
He looked over at his wife. She was sitting up now and she wasn’t wearing one of her usual white muslin nightgowns. She was wearing something that looked sinful, the color of a peach, and fit her so well he could clearly see her breasts. He was so hard he hurt. By the time he reached the bed, he was harder than Lord Kipper’s pipe stem.
He stopped cold. “No.”
“No what?”
“I want you, Meggie. You can look at me and I am incapable of hiding it from you.”
“I am your wife. I want you as well. Please, Thomas, if you can’t tell me what’s bothering you, can’t you at least come here and make love to me?”
He felt himself shaking, beginning at his feet, those shakes working their way up. “You’re trying to seduce me,” he said slowly, the shakes now to his knees.
“Well, yes,” she said, and smiled at him. “If you won’t talk to me about what’s bothering you, why then, I might as well enjoy you in other ways.”
She’d brushed her hair out and it was curling and falling down her back and over her right shoulder, framing her right breast, her hair and that wicked nightgown she was wearing that was now in danger of falling off her right shoulder.
He swallowed. “If a man doesn’t have pride, he has very little.”
“Pride? Whatever are you talking about?”
He said at nearly a shout because it had been festering inside him for so very long now, and he just couldn’t hold it in anymore, it was corroding his innards, “Jeremy, that damned almost cousin of yours! That’s what I’m talking about, as if you didn’t know.
“You betrayed me in your heart, Meggie. You married me when you knew you loved him, and you still love that damned bastard, and here he is married and will have a child soon. You married me because you couldn’t have him and thus it didn’t matter to you. I knew you didn’t love me, but I thought I could bring you around. But it had nothing to do with anything, did it?
“I was the fool who was ready to offer you everything. Did you even hesitate, Meggie? Did you feel the least bit guilty when you agreed to marry me? I don’t think much of you for doing that, Meggie, I really don’t.”