The Duke's Wife (The Three Mrs #3) - Jess Michaels Page 0,34
year being plain about your dislike. Except every so often.”
“Yes, you scolded me about my indecisiveness last night, and look where it led us.”
“To the settee, Abigail.” He tilted his head. “Did you dislike what I did to you there?”
“We got caught!” she burst out.
He shrugged. “Take that out of it for a moment. Did you like it when I touched you?”
“I hate you for putting me on the spot,” she grumbled.
“Noted. Answer the question, please. I don’t ask it to embarrass you or to win something over on you. It’s important to the position we find ourselves in.”
She gritted her teeth and refused to meet his gaze. “Yes, you pompous arse, I liked it. I liked it when you kissed me, I liked it when you dragged me to the end of the settee and put your hands up my skirt. I liked it when you made me…made me…”
“Come,” he supplied smoothly. “I made you come. And I’d very much like to do it again, because I liked it too.”
She sighed. “Well, that resolves nothing.”
“It doesn’t resolve everything,” he corrected, and then he walked away. “My second question has a more difficult answer, I would imagine.”
“And what is that?” she asked, watching him pace, sensing the tension increase in him. Her own heart rate increased accordingly.
He faced her. “Why do you hate me so much?”
Her eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected that. Nor for his expression to be so intense. Like the answer mattered somehow.
She drew in a few breaths. What she wanted to do was set him down, be sharp, escape him and all the things that swirled between them. All the things he still didn’t know.
But the time for such childish behavior was over. She had to be firm and clear and…and honest. At least as honest as she could be.
She motioned to the chairs they had abandoned a moment before. When they sat, she sighed. “We talked once about how you behaved when you first met me,” she began.
He shifted. “Yes, and I apologized for being accusatory toward you when it came to your husband’s bad deeds,” he said.
She nodded. “That meant a great deal to me,” she admitted. “But the reason I have been so contrary with you goes back to those first days and many of the days after. You see, you didn’t just accuse me of something and get on my bad side…you also did things. You acted out of anger, out of a desire to protect your sister and get revenge on a man you thought dead. But because of how you acted, how you let Erasmus’s actions be made public…I suffered.”
He straightened up. “We were trying to determine if there were even more wives.”
“You could have done that more discreetly,” Abigail whispered. “In some way, you wanted Erasmus to pay, for him to be shunned. But what it resulted in was all of us wives paying instead.” She leaned closer. “If someone had let it out publicly that your sister was involved with him, wouldn’t you have hated him too?”
“Yes,” he said softly.
She nodded. “And then there was your behavior afterward. You kept involving yourself in the situation. You kept showing up to give your opinions and share your thoughts and intrude and intrude and intrude.”
To her surprise, he gave a half-smile. “A bulldog, I have always been,” he admitted. “Though I hope you’ll admit, sometimes I might have been right about what I said or suggested.”
She hesitated, because this conversation wasn’t deteriorating into the argument she had believed it would. “Occasionally. I admit that under great duress.”
“I knew I had caused damage,” he said slowly. “To you and the other wives, but also to Rhys, a man I consider my brother. And I was trying to help. I was heavy-handed, though, or you felt I was. And I can understand that you might not have liked me for that.”
“And I was…cold to you,” she said. “And argumentative. And I can see that wouldn’t exactly endear me to you, either.”
He smiled. “On the contrary, I find your spark very endearing a good deal of the time. Your contempt was harder. But the fact that you challenge me is actually very interesting. Most don’t care.”
She sighed. “I don’t actually hate you, you know. I think it was a way to put my anger onto someone, because I couldn’t dump it onto Erasmus. And then it became a habit. And then it became a refuge.”