will suffice. But any danger I might offer to her chastity would have only been caused by proximity, and that will no longer be an issue.”
Did he imagine he saw disappointment on that coldly beautiful face? It couldn’t be, since he was doing precisely as she demanded. She was right—Melisande offered a delicious temptation, but it was the kind best avoided. He already knew she wasn’t an adventurous widow looking to alleviate her banked frustrations, despite her one foray into an affaire. She was a woman to marry, and she was a far cry from anyone he’d want to spend the rest of his life with. She wouldn’t be ignored, left in the countryside while he pursued his own pleasures and interests. He was looking for boredom and placidity in a wife, two characteristics Lady Carstairs was sorely lacking. She was also, most likely, barren, and his only reason to marry was to provide an heir.
No, he had no lasting interest in Melisande Carstairs, no matter how incredibly tempting he found her, no matter how the sound of her strangled cry when he brought her to climax kept reverberating in his brain and stirring in his loins.
Mrs. Cadbury was still watching him, her expression dubious. It was no surprise that she didn’t believe him—he was having a difficult time believing it himself. But he was a man with his own twisted honor, and he had no desire to make someone else’s life a misery simply to assuage an itch.
The strained ankle had been a blessing in disguise. He had come perilously close to shagging her a number of times today, and the longer he was around her the more overpowering that urge was.
Suddenly he could bear the schoolroom-like parlor no longer and set his words in a cool voice. “Good evening, Mrs. Cadbury. Look after her.” And he was gone, cursing himself as he went.
It wasn’t until he was on the street that he realized how absurd his grand exit was. He hadn’t bothered to have his mount retrieved, and he had two choices—go back into the house sheepishly and demand his horse, or go wandering behind to the mews and find where their rides had been stabled.
Or the third choice, which was the one he took. He could send a servant for Bucephalus. In the mean-time he desperately needed to clear his head, and a cool spring night was the way to do it.
He didn’t like mysteries, any more than he liked emotions, weaknesses or unsatisfied lust. And he had absolutely no idea why he reacted so strongly to Melisande Carstairs. After all, she was no great beauty. She dressed badly, her hair was usually scraped back away from her face, and she had the most disconcerting habit of looking one directly in the eyes, rather than lowering her own in either a shy or provocative glance. He could think of a dozen women far more beautiful than she was, without her unsettling, straightforward demeanor.
And it wasn’t as if she reminded him of the women in his life. Genevieve, his poor, mad fiancée who had eventually killed herself in a horrific public scene, was an exquisite, unstable beauty with coal-black hair and brilliant eyes, and he’d been young and totally besotted, until her madness had come to the fore. He seldom thought about her anymore, the memory too painful. If he had been wise enough to keep her in his memory, his own sister might not be married to Genevieve’s brother, the wretched Scorpion, a man he considered to be a villain and a monster. His sister might not be lost to him now.
Annis had been sweet but strong-minded, totally devoted to him. Barbara had been the opposite, a force of nature with the appetites of a sailor and the sweetness of a rutting boar. What he’d thought had been passion for him had instead been passion for anything between her legs.
But Melisande was nothing like the women he had loved, all of them diamonds of the first water. She was pleasant-looking but not much more, though the night he had taken her to the Elsmeres’ rout she had been astonishingly lovely. Much as he wished, he couldn’t dismiss her opinions as ill-informed, mad or wrongheaded, and he had no intention of spending the rest of his life having to consider someone else’s point of view.
Because that was what he would have to do. Mrs. Cadbury was right; Melisande was a woman to marry. And marriage to her would