Lily Dalton - Never Desire a Duke

His lips twisted, and his eyes widened. “I can’t imagine why. I told you I never broke our vows.”

“And I believe you, but as you said, those remnants of your past still affect our future. My request for their names isn’t about suspicion or jealousy or so that I can behave vindictively. It’s just that if I am to drop my demand for a separation, I don’t want to be surprised again. Ambushed. You can’t know how it feels. Why, it’s sickening. One’s head fills with thunder, one’s face goes numb, and everyone in the room, even those that didn’t hear what was said, knows something is terribly wrong because the Duchess of Claxton looks as if she’s been kicked in the stomach.” Her hands clenched against the wool of her skirts. “Then there is the whole miserable aftermath of silence. Whispers and pity and ugh—even laughter. There are those who take pleasure in the whole scene.”

“I do understand.” He spoke quietly. “The same took place each time I accompanied my father into a room. He destroyed countless marriages, not just his own.” He drew his thumb along his upper lip, a pensive gesture. “Only people never laughed. They did not dare.”

“I am clearly not as terrifying as you and your father.”

He scowled. “But to tell you their names?”

Claxton wore a rather menacing face now, but she wasn’t going to back down. Of course, the idea of learning the names of his old lovers made her squeamish, but she would not enter any agreement with him to continue their marriage and bring an innocent, blameless child to life unless she gained the power and confidence to defend the two of them against attack.

Claxton wouldn’t always be there to ducally glare everyone into silence. He would be off again on some diplomatic duty or the other, or in Jamaica or elsewhere, leaving her alone with the same hungry sharks as before. She refused to return to London and the society she knew under the same terms as before.

“I don’t want you to say the names aloud.” She went to the small escritoire in the corner and rummaged in the drawer until she came away with a quill pen, ink, and paper. “Write them.”

She moved aside several of the dishes on the table and placed the writing implements in front of him.

“I don’t want to write them,” he answered obstinately. He crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to take possession of the quill.

She drew back. “Then things will proceed no further between you and me.”

“This is the only way?” he demanded, incredulous, glaring down at the blank page.

“The only way.”

He snatched the quill from her hand.

“Very well. As you wish.” Lips pressed thin, he extracted a penknife from his coat pocket and expertly trimmed the pen’s nib. Sophia shook the bottle of ink and after several efforts managed to twist the lid free.

“You’re certain this is what you want.” He scrutinized her.

“I am.”

“This is highly irregular,” he seethed. “I can think of no civilized circumstance wherein any lord of the realm would ever agree to comply with such an outrageous demand.”

She leaned forward, planting her hands on the table and staring him directly in the eye. “We are estranged spouses who’ve found themselves snowbound together. Who knows how long we will be trapped here together? If there is any time to be uncivilized or outrageous, it is now.”

Claxton blinked. Exhaled. Indeed, he perspired on his forehead and upper lip. Were there that many names that he would become so discomposed? Apparently so. He lifted the pen and immersed the nib, only to abandon the quill to the jar and throw himself back in the chair in clear agony.

“Hell and damnation,” he blustered. “I can’t be expected to remember them all. That’s almost twenty years of—”

“Quiet!” she blurted, silencing him with a hand, never wanting to hear the end of that sentence. “Limit the task, then, to those ladies with whom I might come into contact under social circumstances. At a ball, or at cards, or out shopping. That kind of thing.”

“Good God, Sophia,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “If you disliked me before, you will despise me now.”

“I told you, this isn’t about emotions or me liking you.” She said the words to convince herself as much as Claxton. “It’s about me being prepared to defend myself and your child in the future with dignity, no matter how unpleasant the circumstance.”

“My child,” he repeated quietly, closing his eyes. He breathed deeply. “My child.”

With that solemn utterance, the child that had seemed so real and alive in Sophia’s heart until the night before sprang to life again, even amid her self-warnings of caution.

By next year at Christmas, she might have a child of her own.

At last, Claxton appeared convinced. With both elbows on the table, he rubbed his hands over his face, looking suddenly very weary, with his jaw drawn tight and shadows beneath his eyes.

He took up the quill pen again. Sophia experienced a moment of pity. He looked so tortured and earnest, as if he wanted to please her. The pen’s tip moved over the page, bleeding its indigo ink to form one name. Then two. Three. Four. Sophia closed her eyes, but the scratching sounds continued, forever it seemed.

At last, he stopped writing.

“Do you have another page upon which I can write additional names?”

Sophia’s eyes flew open. “You can’t be serious.”

He glared at her darkly. “Of course I’m not. But you deserve a shock for forcing me to this.”

“Give me the list.” She extended her hand.

His eyes narrowed. “One moment, please. I just remembered another.”

With dramatic flair, he scrawled one more name at the bottom of the list before handing the sheet to her. “Merry Christmas, darling.”

“Are you certain that is all?”

“Quite certain.”

Sophia cleared her countenance of all emotion and inhaled deeply. It was important that she distance herself from the intelligence on the page and not lose her head if she recognized any of the names, for most assuredly she would.

If she was truly going to forgive and forget, for the purpose of endeavoring to have a child, she must learn to mute her emotional reactions.

Sophia looked at the paper. Her eyes moved over the first assemblage of letters written in her husband’s hand. Then the next. As her mind registered each name, little explosions went off inside her head, powder kegs of alarm. Each one growing larger. Louder. More catastrophic. Her eyes widened. A jagged breath escaped her lips.

Vane muttered a low curse. “I knew it.”

Before his very eyes, the lovely Sophia transformed into a dragon, complete with red glowing eyes and flames shooting out her nose. At least that’s how she appeared to him. And she’d never been more beautiful.

“You despicable man,” she shouted.

In that moment he knew without a doubt he’d lost whatever ground he had gained. Tenfold. For a moment, he felt guilty. Contrite. But then anger rippled up from inside him, ablaze. He launched up from the chair, coming to stand just before her. “You forced me to write the names, assuring me there was no other way to preserve our marriage. Now you call me despicable?”

“Yes,” she railed, shaking the list at him so violently the paper made crackling noises. “I am acquainted with each and every one of these ladies. Mrs. Pettijohn. I sit beside her at tea and cards every Tuesday afternoon. Lady Gatcombe. She sits in the opera box next to my grandfather’s all season long.”

“I cannot believe I agreed to this loathsome folly,” he muttered.

“Lady Noord—”

“Give me that.” He reached for the list—

“No!”

She twisted, holding it just out of his reach. He caught her around the waist, pulling her close against him. With her elbows and her back, Sophia attempted to push away, planting her buttocks—hell on fire, her sweet round buttocks—firmly against his groin. Which she seemed to realize the same moment he did.

She gasped and jerked round to face him, her arm bent behind her back in a vain attempt to keep the list from him, but with his arms, he crushed her against his chest and groped behind her—

“Claxton!”

Clearly not the list. He chuckled wickedly, low in his throat.

—until he found her wrist…her hand…and the damnable list clenched inside.

“Let go of it,” he uttered, his fingers prying at hers.

“I won’t.”

“I’m going to burn it.”

For a long moment they stood thusly entwined, pushing and pulling beside the fire, dancing an intimate dance. He felt her tremble against him and then sweetly…slowly…go limp in his arms, sinking against him. A little sigh of surrender broke from her lips.

“You just don’t know how it hurt to read those names,” she whispered.

Her capitulation transformed their struggle into an embrace. Her breasts, round and soft, pressed against his chest. His brain went instantly fuzzy. He didn’t release her because he very much liked her breasts exactly where they were, but he did ease his grip on her, sliding his hands over her back to hold her more gently. From somewhere in the fog of his desire, he realized if he wished her to stay there, he ought to cobble together some sort of soothing verbal response.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he assured. Well, he hadn’t. “You insisted.”

“I know, Claxton,” she murmured, peering up at him from beneath thick lashes. Her lips were parted and damp. Her silky hair hung down her back to graze the top of his hands.

He lowered his head nearer to hers. “Sophia.”