The Rakehell of Roth (Everleigh Sisters #2) - Amalie Howard Page 0,14

accounts. Hence his rumpled appearance, though she wouldn’t know that.

A tiny grin touched her lips, throwing him for a loop.

Did she find something amusing?

“What’s wrong with me staying here?” she asked innocently, though her arctic eyes warred with her soft words. For some reason, Winter had the feeling his wife was furious, though nothing showed in her calm demeanor…except for those eyes that glittered like sharpened ice, threatening to dagger him at any moment. The contradiction thrilled him and irritated him all at once, sliding under his skin like silk over a blade.

“It’s a gentleman’s residence.”

“Naturally,” his wife interrupted, retrieving her cloak and bonnet from Ludlow, who stood with his mouth uncharacteristically agape. She favored the butler with a sweet smile that made him snap to attention, a smitten look clouding his normally austere features. “You are right, my lord. I do intend to stay at Vance House.” Her mouth curved more as she turned back toward Winter, the decadent curve of those plump lips knocking him like a hammer to the ribs. “Your father insisted, of course. But I wanted to inform you myself that I was in town.”

Winter scowled at the mention of the duke, his eyes narrowing at the fact that his father had known of his wife’s visit. “Why are you here, Isobel?”

“A marchioness should be at her husband’s side, don’t you think?” A pair of brilliant, jewel-hard eyes speared him, daring him to challenge her. “I’m here for the season.”

“The season?” he echoed, his brain slow on the uptake.

“Yes.” His marchioness smiled, that full pout twisting in a way that made him suddenly want to do untoward, debauched things to it. “We wouldn’t want the ton to think you’ve lost your touch, would we, Winter?”

His eyes narrowed. “In what way?”

“That the Marquess of Roth can’t handle his own wife.”

The words registered like fired shots. Winter blinked. Did his prim, shy bride just insult his masculinity? But then something like excitement licked up his spine. Strangely, it was the most alive he’d felt in months. Years. A slow grin replaced his scowl. His demure kitten had grown into a feline with razor-sharp claws, but whatever game his little wife intended to play, Winter would see it won.

And then he would send her back to Chelmsford.

“Trust me, love, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

The Marchioness of Roth turned in a vicious whirl of satin skirts and glanced over her shoulder in the doorway, a sultry gaze boring into his, one that promised both satisfaction and destruction in equal measure. “Prove it then, love.”

She made those four parting words sound like a gauntlet: See you at dawn.

Winter stood there, stunned, for several loud heartbeats after his wife had left, leaving shrapnel in her wake.

Ludlow pinned him with a gratified expression. “So, roses to Vance House, then, my lord?”

“Sod off, Ludlow.”

From the look of his wife, he was going to need a lot more than roses.

Chapter Four

In matters of seduction, Dearest Friend, the easiest way to catch an unattached gentleman’s eye is with confidence. Subtlety is for spinsters.

– Lady Darcy

Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.

Isobel sat straight up in the unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, her heart pounding from the dregs of her nightmare, trying to orient herself. She wasn’t in her bedchamber at home, at Kendrick Abbey. She was at Vance House. In London. Where her scoundrel of a husband was actively sowing his no-good oats, as was evident from the dreadful shape she’d witnessed him in last night. And where she’d effectively called him out in no uncertain terms.

The nightmare was real, then.

She sighed and slumped back down. From the accounts she’d read in the scandal sheets, Isobel had fully expected Winter to be living a bachelor lifestyle. What she hadn’t expected was the shocking, nerve-shattering effect he’d had on her. Or the fact that he had no jowls to speak of at all. And the tiny detail that three years later, he was still the most sinfully attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on.

Botheration.

She’d returned to the duke’s residence seething after her spontaneous visit to Audley Street, and not much of her anger had drained away overnight. She was still furious. Her husband had looked like he’d just crawled out of bed. In the middle of the afternoon. Whose bed was a question she did not want to dwell upon.

Lamentably, Winter looked no worse for wear. In fact, those years looked unfairly good on his lanky frame—filling him out in places and hardening him in others.