***
“When should I have told you?” Emm stood before him, placed on the mat like a naughty child before the headmaster. It was petty, Cal knew, but he was feeling petty and cross. He hadn’t a wink of sleep, and when he’d looked in on her this morning he’d found her sleeping the sleep of the just, looking rumpled and delectable. And infuriatingly, deceptively innocent.
It had put him in a fine temper, because of course what he wanted was to pull back the covers and take her again. And again.
But just because his body was rampant and aching with desire for her didn’t mean he’d let her undermine his common sense or self-discipline. A man should be master in his own house.
A night of sleep hadn’t made her the least bit more amenable or apologetic. She seemed almost indignant at his question. “When? The day you proposed? You took me so much by surprise—two minutes beforehand you’d offered me a job as a chaperone. I could hardly even believe your proposal was serious.”
“If you recall, we spoke the next morning, madam.”
“No,youdid most of the speaking that day. You set out the conditions for our marriage, what you expected me to do. You never once mentioned a requirement for virginity.”
“Because it was understood,” he grated. Of course it was.Brideandvirginalwere practically interchangeable terms.
“You never asked me a single thing about myself—not about who I was, about who my family was—”
“You told me you had no family.”
“And you never wondered why? Or thought to ask how I’d come to be working at Miss Mallard’s, when I’d attended the seminary as a pupil?”
“I assumed—”
“Yes, you assumed.” She was pacing now, back and forth.“You assumed I’d fill the position you wanted, perform the duties you required of me, undertake the care and protection of your sisters and niece and launch them on the marriage mart—and I will. Leaving you free to pursue your ‘important government duties’ elsewhere.”
He clenched his jaw. There was some justice in what she said, but—
“It wasn’tmeyou wanted, it was a convenient wife. And that’s what you got. But now you want more—you want aperfectwife. Well, I’m not perfect, but Iwilldo right by your sisters and niece. And I will do right by you.”
“I didn’t mean—” He hadn’t meant to insult her integrity, but was it too much for a husband to ask who’d deflowered his bride?
“After you left that day, I realized I probably should have told you then, but you’d gone to London. And then, because of your desire to have a quick wedding, by the time you returned, the invitations had gone out, the school was in a frenzy of anticipation and everything was arranged. And when I finally did see you, it was at the church. What was I to do, ask you to step into the vestry and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not a virgin’?”
“No, of course not, but—” he began irritably. How did women do it? She made it sound like it was all his fault.
“Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that it wasn’t relevant.”
He almost choked. “Notrelevant?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Surely the whole reason for wishing a bride to be a virgin on her wedding day is so that the groom can be assured that any child resulting from the marriage is his. Well, it’s almost ten years since I had congress with a man, and I cannot possibly be pregnant.” A faint blush stole across her cheeks. “Not unless last night...”
She lifted her chin. “But if my word is not good enough, you can refrain from... any further efforts to conceive until my monthly courses have passed.”
Cal couldn’t fault her logic. But he wasn’t going to last a month, not knowing she was in the next room, all soft and lissome... coming alight for him at the merest touch.
“And if you conceived a child last night?”
She lifted her chin and said almost defiantly, “Then I will count myself most fortunate.”
“You want a child, then?”
Her eyes went dark and dreamy. “It is my dearest wish,” she said softly.
That was something, then. Cal was tempted to whisk her back upstairs and get to work on giving her one, but he had a position to maintain. And he wasn’t going to let her get off too lightly. She hadn’t bent an inch, damn her. She hadn’t yet apologized or told him who her lover had been.
“You still haven’t told me who he was.” His voice was quiet, but he hoped she heard the underlying steel beneath it. He would not give up until he knew.
There was a short silence and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse to tell him. Again.
