Rogue in the Regency Ballroom: Rogue's Widow, Gentleman's Wife / A Scoundrel of Consequence

‘She is well—and happy with Victoria. Sky is a resilient child; apart from missing me, the removal from everything and everyone familiar to her has left her with no apparent ill effects.’

‘I’m happy to hear that. So what now? What are your plans?’

‘I’ve returned to England to reclaim the life I was raised to live—and to become reacquainted with my wife. I do not expect you to fling yourself into my arms and weep tears of joy on my return, but to hear you say that you are pleased to see me would have a nice ring to it.’

Amanda stiffened. ‘You speak as if you have already decided the course of our future.’

Christopher passed his hazel, dancing eyes over her face, heedful of the wrath gathering pace in her expression. ‘I have. You are my wife, after all.’ His voice was soft, though knowingly chiding.

As dearly as Amanda wished to fling an angry denial in his face, she could not. The truth of it stung, but she was determined she would have it otherwise. ‘In name only. You did me a great service in exchanging marriage vows and so making it possible for me to escape an intolerable situation at the time. I am grateful to you for that, but that is where it must end. I did as you asked and brought your child safely to England. Be content with that and let us put an end to the charade—the pretence that there can ever be anything between us.’

Kit’s hazel eyes were suddenly cold under the dark flare of his brows. ‘Believe me, Amanda, it is no pretence. We made a pact. Part of our bargain was that our marriage would be legal and binding for the time I have left to live—and I fully intend to be around until I’m ninety. On my reprieve I hoped I wasn’t mistaken in you, and that you were the type who would keep a bargain, who wouldn’t forget important promises, whose word when given meant something, which to me was as binding as the marriage vow itself. When I came back to England and thought of you and Sky waiting, I thought I had something to come home to. You promised me that if I succeeded in securing my freedom, you would acknowledge me as your husband and become my wife in truth. All this was in return for my name—my family name, a name I honour.’

‘Then do you set so little worth on your family’s honour that you will hold me to an arrangement made in desperation?’

‘My family’s honour!’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘If you knew anything about my family’s honour, you would close your mouth rather than ask such a damning question.’

Amanda was momentarily taken aback by the ferocity of his statement. She was curious as to where the remark had come from, but quickly thrust it from her mind. ‘I know nothing of your family and care not at all. I am only interested in putting an end to the arrangement we made.’

‘So you do not deny that we made a pact?’

‘No, that I cannot do,’ she lashed out in anger, with a thrust to her chin that told him she was ready to fight. ‘I know I am bound by my word, but it is hard for me.’

‘You belong to me, Amanda.’

‘That is a matter of opinion. Yes, we had an arrangement, an arrangement that profited us both. I cannot yield to a man who, at best, is a stranger to me.’

Christopher peered at her closely and took note of her sudden uneasiness. ‘I will not always be a stranger. I delivered on our bargain, only to find you reneging on your vow. Do not imagine that you can rescript the rules to suit yourself. How do you feel now you find I am alive?’

‘Cheated,’ she spat. ‘Cheated—and I want no part of you.’

‘Come now, Amanda, why so hostile? We have a lot to discuss, you and I.’

Mutinously she glared at him. ‘I have nothing to discuss with you. Nothing at all. You were supposed to hang, leaving me a widow. This was not part of my plan. I did not want this.’

The hazel eyes sparked. ‘You mean you want me dead?’

‘Yes—I mean, no— Oh, I am so confused I don’t know what I mean. I just want you to go away—to leave me alone. I don’t want a husband.’

‘Be that as it may, Amanda,’ he said lazily, ‘but you have a husband—and he is not going to go away.’

‘He will if I have my way. I don’t want you. You will not have me. What are you doing here anyway? How have you managed to wheedle your way into my father’s favour?’

‘Our mutual interest in horses.’

‘I advise you to have a care. Father will treat you with the same courtesy he shows to anyone in his employ—as long as he has no inkling that there is anything except casual friendship between the two of us. If he so much as suspects there is anything between us, he will treat you with freezing contempt.’

‘I’ll risk it.’ Beneath a raised quizzical brow his gaze travelled over her beautifully cut coat of dark blue-coloured tweed that flared out from the waist over her high-necked grey dress. ‘I was under the impression that a period of one year’s mourning is customary after the death of one’s immediate family,’ he remarked with underlying sarcasm.

‘I am in half-mourning. I do try to observe the rules even though I can see no point in doing so. After all, I am no grieving widow. How dare you come here? You cannot stay. You must leave at once.’

‘Your father has hired me to train his horses. I aim to do just that.’

Amanda didn’t believe him. His meeting with her father had been by design rather than chance, this she was sure of—so what did he want? Could he be bribed to go away?

His face hardened, as if he had read her thoughts. ‘Do not think you can buy me off, Amanda. No amount of money you offer will tempt me to disappear now that I have found you.’

‘Why not? Your promise to stay out of my life in exchange for a few thousand pounds seems fair enough trade to me.’

‘I am not going to go away, so you’d save yourself a great deal of trouble and heartache if you got used to having me around. I will make it impossible for you to ignore me. Everywhere you go you will be aware of me, of my presence, watching you.’

‘Like a rat nibbling away at a floorboard, you mean.’

He laughed softly. ‘Aye—with flawless success.’

The olive green eyes narrowed in a glare. ‘You’re pigheaded, arrogant and impossibly conceited, Kit Benedict. I will not be your wife.’

‘There I must contradict you. Pigheaded I may be, but you are my wife.’

‘And you seem to take a special delight in reminding me,’ she remarked drily. ‘I am your wife in name only.’

‘Which I intend to rectify as soon as can be.’ His lips curled into a rakish smile as his eyes captured hers. ‘I’m already looking forward to it. I find the mere thought of marriage to you most entertaining. I think we shall do very well together. You’re looking beautiful, Amanda. Just as I remembered.’

‘And you’re looking disgustingly smug and self-righteous.’

Leaning back against the fence, he folded his arms across his broad chest, grinning leisurely as his perusal swept her. ‘I have plenty to be smug about. I am a man, Amanda,’ he assured her softly, the laughter gone from his voice, ‘with all the desires, all the needs of a man. When you came to my prison cell, when I first saw you, you were so beautiful it tortured me. You captured my thoughts, my dreams, my fancy, and when you left me I became hopelessly entangled in my desires for you. You made me want, made me yearn for things I could not have. Now I can. I want you.’

Amanda was taken aback by his blunt honesty. ‘I am surprised. I never imagined I had made so deep an impression.’

‘The very knowledge that you are here with me now makes me even more determined to find a way of breaching that barrier of thorns you have wound about yourself.’ As her husband, he could insist she kept her side of the bargain, but some inbuilt sense of chivalry prevented him from doing so, dictating that if she came to him under duress it would only increase her resentment. ‘Yet I must accept the fact that your shock of finding me alive has been great and that you are confused. I have no wish to cause you any embarrassment. I even gave your father an assumed name.’

‘How thoughtful of you, but it isn’t assumed, is it? You’ve merely omitted your surname.’

‘Which I share with you.’

‘I have no wish for my father to find out who you are. He has no idea. It would distress him terribly.’

Kit’s eyes grew warm as he gave her a lazy smile. ‘I am no black-hearted villain, and I accept there are times when it is expedient to hold back the truth—for the present. However, you, my dear Amanda—’

Her expression was mutinous. ‘I am not your dear anything.’

‘As I was saying, you, my dear Amanda, seem to have a penchant for self-destruction. Better to have told your father the truth in the first place. He will find out one day, that I promise you. We are man and wife and must live as man and wife.’ He shrugged. ‘That equation seems perfectly logical to me, though not apparently to you. You are going to be difficult?’

‘I am going to be impossible.’

He smiled at that, not in the least discouraged. ‘Then it should be interesting getting to know one another. In time I shall insist on you becoming my wife in truth.’

‘And if I don’t comply?’