mean to say my wife has anything to do with your eyebrows, or that she has designs upon your eyebrows…”
He trailed off, realizing he was only digging his own verbal grave deeper by the moment.
“Mr. Decker?” Macfie raised both bushy red brows in question.
“Yes?” it was his turn to snap, his ears going hot.
“I think it is a verra wonderful thing, tae be smitten with yer lady,” the brawny Scotsman told him.
Bloody hell. Now, his cheeks were hot, too. “I am not smitten with Mrs. Decker.”
Right. Who was he trying to fool? He was completely smitten with his wife.
And her magical cunny.
And her ravishing lips.
And her beautiful bubbies, so pale and smooth.
Not to mention her laughter, her smile, her clever sense of humor, those exquisitely responsive nipples of hers…
Glaring at Macfie, he stalked from his office.
“I will not be returning today, Macfie,” he called over his shoulder. “Do not expect me.”
His aide-de-camp’s laughter followed him as he made a hasty exit from his offices.
In the carriage, he found the cream ice as promised—strawberry—and the ice packed tightly around it in reasonably good shape despite the warmth in the carriage. As his driver delivered him back to his townhome on Grosvenor Square—an address so chosen to disturb the peers who looked down their noses at him—Decker told himself he had not spent each of the days since marrying Jo caught up in her.
And then he depleted another few minutes arguing with himself that he needed to find other means of distraction. His club, for instance, which he had abandoned following his nuptials. Yes, he ought to go there. Some time away from Jo would be revitalizing. Restorative. The means by which he could end this unfortunate hold she had upon him.
But by the time his carriage arrived at his home, he found himself clutching the pail of cream ice like a loyal servant about to make a delivery to his mistress. And he found himself imagining where he would find her. The music room? The library? The salon she favored as her sitting room?
He leapt to the pavements before the carriage had reached a complete stop, so eager was he to meet her. Decker did his best not to jog up the walk. He was greeted at the door by his redoubtable butler.
“Where is Mrs. Decker?” he asked without preamble.
Yes, he had lost all his pride. Swallowed it down. He told himself it was his cock doing the talking, this incessant need for her that was driving him to distraction.
“She is not at home, sir,” Rhees told him, utterly devoid of expression.
Not at home?
What the hell?
“Right you are, Rhees,” he bluffed brightly, as if his soul were not dying a slow and hideous death inside. “I had forgotten Mrs. Decker had plans today.”
Plans? She had plans? Where and with whom? She had spoken not a word of it this morning, not after he had made love to her in his bed, not when they had breakfasted, and not before their customary farewell—a lengthy kiss—prior to his departure.
It was not that he did not trust her. Of course he trusted her. And it was not that he did not want her to pursue her own amusements during her day. Of course he did. But it was that…he had expected her to be awaiting him.
And she was not here. Quite the blow, that.
Disappointment suffused him, along with further vexation that he had become so caught up in his wife. Had he learned nothing from his past?
Stupid damned fool.
Grimly, he stalked past his butler, clutching the cream ice like spoils of war.
He was going to eat all the bloody stuff himself.
“You look utterly miserable, darling,” Callie observed, rather unkindly.
“As if you just watched a carriage run over a puppy,” added Lady Helena.
Jo frowned at both of them. “Et tu, Brute? The two of you are supposed to be my friends.”
Callie, Lady Helena, and Jo had gathered for tea at Callie’s home, a long-overdue social gathering in the wake of Jo’s nuptials.
“It is because we are your friends that we are telling you that you look as if you are about to attend a funeral,” Callie said.
“Or as if someone has just drowned your favorite kitten,” Lady Helena chimed in.
“What a grim lot you are,” Jo grumbled. “Cease with your bleak similes, if you please.”
“You ought to be on your honeymoon,” Callie observed. “And yet, you are here in London. Is that the reason?”
Her honeymoon with Decker was something of a bitter subject for Jo.