The Marriage Lesson Read online

  He propped his hip on the desk and sipped thoughtfully.

  They’d left tonight’s festivities earlier than usual and she’d been pleasant enough to him on the ride home. Unfailingly pleasant. Annoyingly pleasant. Pleasant to the point where he had to fight the urge to squirm in his seat and Becky and Jocelyn had traded wary glances. Only Lady Louella had seemed oblivious to the underlying tension in the carriage.

  Thomas had always considered himself a man of both honor and courage. However, tonight discretion seemed wise, and if it was cowardly to avoid Marianne, well, he could live with that. He’d vanished the moment they’d arrived home and headed for his club to wait until it was safe to return. He hoped Marianne was fast asleep by now.

  He started for the door, taking his glass with him. If his luck held, he could avoid her until late in the morning or, even better, late in the day. By then she would be calm and rational and more than willing to listen to his explanation and, yes, his apology.

  He heaved a resigned sigh and headed up the stairs. If she knew what he suspected she knew—and frankly he couldn’t think of anything else he might have done—there was little chance any amount of time would assuage her ire unless, of course, he could put off speaking to her for weeks, maybe even months. No, in this instance years would not be long enough.

  He needed a plan. And it had better be smarter than his last plan. At the very least, he needed an idea of what he would say to her. A sound defense of his actions. Oh, certainly he’d already recognized that he had no legitimate defense. Still, he’d done what he thought was best. For him if not necessarily for her. Not that she’d accept that kind of thinking. Perhaps he’d grovel and beg her forgiveness.

  His mood brightened. He’d never yet met a woman who did not respond well to abject apologies and sincere groveling. And if he went so far as to admit he had, perhaps, been wrong . . . The very thought made him cringe—not merely at the idea of saying the words but at his suspicion that she’d never let him forget this little mistake.

  Still, he did realize he deserved whatever it was he got.

  He simply hoped he survived it.

  Marianne awoke with a start. For a moment she couldn’t remember why she was sleeping in the chair in her room, or why there was a candle still burning. Of course. She narrowed her eyes. She’d been waiting for Thomas to return home.

  She had hoped to meet him in the library, but his valet informed her, in response to as casual an inquiry as she could muster, that His Lordship was out for the remainder of the evening. No doubt with the express purpose of consuming a great deal of liquor. Good. He would need the false courage.

  She slid her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose and got to her feet. In truth she could use a bit of false courage herself. It was a long way from her chamber to Thomas’s and there were far too many unknowns that could be flitting through the halls of an old house. At least in the mind of an imaginative woman. She pulled her robe tighter around her, grabbed the candlestick and headed for the door.

  Thomas knew she was angry. She’d seen it in the wary look in his eye. She doubted he knew precisely what she had discovered, or perhaps he realized full well his crime. Or possibly there was something besides attempting to market her to the most tedious men in society he was guilty of.

  She quietly opened her door and glanced up and down the hall. Starlight glowed through tall windows at either ends of the long passageway.

  Marianne crept down the hall carefully and cringed with each step on a creaking floorboard. No one was about at this hour and the chances of someone waking were slim. Still, she had no desire to encounter anyone who might demand to know what she was about.

  She was fairly certain she knew which rooms were Thomas’s. She’d seen his valet enter and leave any number of times during her stay. He was in the wing opposite hers, down the enclosed corridor, past the staircases that flanked the open gallery overlooking the first floor and nearly at the end of the hall.

  With each step down the dark passageway her anger dimmed, replaced by unease. The candle threw shadows that swelled and menaced. She drew a breath for courage and refused to consider how eerie Effington House was at night. She firmly ignored the thought in the back of her mind as to how many Effingtons, the very ones peering down at her from paintings lining the walls, had through the years died here. Peacefully and in their beds of old age, she hoped. And she absolutely refused to entertain the idea that some of them might linger still.

  Her heart thudded in her chest and by the time she reached Thomas’s door she was certain something unseen was following her. She yanked opened his door without knocking, stepped inside and barely had the presence of mind not to slam it behind her. She leaned back against it and breathed hard, fighting the unreasonable terror that had gripped her in the last endless stretch of the corridor.

  When her heart had finally slowed to a more natural rhythm, she glanced around. Thomas’s room was overly large, as befitted a future duke. Large, dark furnishings threw equally large, dark shadows. A huge bed dominated the space. Carved posters climbed upward to meet an ornate cornice. The bed hangings were left open. It was, as best she could tell with the light from the candle and the low glow from the fireplace, an exceedingly exotic room. No. An exceedingly male room.

  An odd sort of snorting sound emanated from the vicinity of the bed. Cautiously, she stepped closer.

  Thomas lay sprawled on his stomach, stretched diagonally across the bed. His face was turned toward her, one arm dangling over the edge of the bed. The bedclothes were pushed down to his waist, exposing a firmly muscled back. She swallowed hard. The future duke apparently saw no need for extensive nightclothes.

  “Thomas,” she said tentatively.

  He blew out a long breath in response.

  She studied him with detached curiosity. He was the first practically naked man she’d ever seen. And definitely the first man, with clothes or without, she’d ever seen in a bed. Even with her lack of experience, she could certainly see he was a fine specimen of the male gender. The candlelight played across the hard lines of his back and she had the most ridiculous urge to run her fingers over his skin. Her hand reached out on its own accord. His flesh would be warm and smooth and inviting and—

  She jerked back and heat flushed up her face. This was not her purpose here! At least, she amended, not tonight.

  “Thomas,” she said in a low, sharp voice.

  He snorted.

  She stepped closer and shoved tentatively at his shoulder. “Thomas.”

  He murmured.

  This was not working. She’d already raised her voice as much as she thought prudent. After all, Thomas was the only one she wanted to awaken. Maybe she hadn’t pushed him hard enough? Who would have thought the man would be so obstinate even when he slept?

  She set the candle on a table by his bed, next to a nearly full glass of brandy. She sniffed in disdain. No wonder she couldn’t wake him.

  False courage.

  Why not? She shrugged, picked up the glass, took a healthy swallow and replaced it on the table.

  She pulled in a deep breath, placed both hands firmly on his shoulder, his flesh every bit as warm as she thought it would be, and pushed hard.

  He muttered something unintelligible and rolled onto his back. He flung his forearm over his eyes, the covers slipping lower to hang on his hips.

  For a moment she could do nothing more than stare. His shoulders were broader than she’d realized. His chest, an intriguing landscape of firm planes and shallow valleys, glowed in the candlelight. A smattering of dark hair trailed from his chest to disappear beneath the sheets.

  She grabbed for the brandy and took a bracing swallow. And one more just for good measure. Regardless of the man’s obvious charms—and at this moment they were extremely obvious—she was not in his room for a lesson in life or in anything else. No, he was the one who needed to be taught a lesson. He was the one who needed to learn that even the son of a duke couldn’t ben
d people’s lives to suit his own purposes, to make his own life more convenient.

  Without a second thought, she stepped closer and upended the glass high over his face. A trickle of brandy, not enough for a decent mouthful, barely more than a few drops, really, splashed on his lips. Damnation. She looked at the goblet. Surely she hadn’t drank it all? She shook the glass and another drop fell. His nose wrinkled and his lips smacked.

  She’d laugh if she wasn’t so vexed with him. Still, she stifled a smile; it was rather amusing. He could drink even in his sleep. There was probably not a great call for a skill like that, yet she supposed it could come in useful. She snickered, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Stop it this minute!

  She had to pull herself together. She was angry with him, deservedly, justifiably angry, and it would not do for him to wake up to find her laughing. If she could get him to wake up at all. There had to be a way short of screaming in his ear and jumping up and down on his bed. And while that had a certain amount of appeal, it probably wasn’t the best idea.

  If there’d only been more brandy left in the glass. She looked around the room. It was really rather spartan, at least when it came to the kind of decorative bits and pieces found in a woman’s room. She spotted several things she could probably drop on his head, but she’d prefer not to seriously injure him. At least not while he slept. There were a couple of books on the dresser—poetry, no doubt—but she’d hate to damage a book, and God knows what a heavy tome would do to the sleeping marquess. There were a few other items—matching silver candlesticks on the mantel, an Argand lamp on the dresser next to a pitcher. None of which she could drop on his head.

  Her gaze lingered on the pitcher. Surely it was empty? Unless, of course, a servant had filled it in anticipation of his lordship’s late-night return. It was certainly worth investigating.

  She strolled over to the dresser in a casual manner, as if to convince anyone who might be watching her intentions were completely innocent, and giggled at the idea. At once it struck her that this really was something of an adventure. Oh, not as grand an adventure as searching for ancient treasure in Egypt or even drifting down a canal in Venice, but a minor adventure nonetheless.

  She picked up the pitcher and hefted it in her hand. A respectable amount of water sloshed in a satisfactory manner. She grinned. This would do nicely.

  She stepped back to the bed and held the pitcher over Thomas’s face. That would wake him. She moved the pitcher to hover over his stomach. That would wake him as well. She shifted the pitcher once again. Of course, if a cool splash of water hit him on that part of his anatomy—from what she’d heard through the years, anyway—he would not only awaken but probably be quite alert. On further thought, she hadn’t had that much false courage. She repositioned the pitcher once more, aimed for his head and poured.

  Maybe her previous attempts had already partially awakened him. Or perhaps he’d been dreaming of shipwrecks and was primed to struggle for air. Or the water could have been a bit cooler than she’d anticipated, but Thomas came to life with a roar. His arms flailed, striking the pitcher. It flew toward the foot of the bed, effectively dousing him from head to toe. He leapt out of bed, his eyes wide with confusion.

  “What . . . what . . . ” he sputtered.

  She stared.

  The future duke apparently saw no need for nightclothes at all.

  Marianne stammered. “You’re . . . you’re . . . ”

  “I’m soaked.” He glared at her.

  “You’re naked.” She gasped. As much as she knew she shouldn’t—and she did try not to, but she’d never seen a naked man before, wet or dry—her gaze slipped lower to take in the full sight of him. And a rather startling, although not unpleasant, sight he was.

  “Turn around,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Her gaze jerked back to his. Heat flushed her cheeks. “Oh. Certainly. Of course.”

  She didn’t move. He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face away from him. “Stay.”

  At once the commanding tone of his voice reminded her precisely why she’d come to his room in the middle of the night. “Do not speak to me like that, Thomas. I am not a dog to be ordered about.”

  “What are you doing here?” She sensed him moving behind her.

  “I have a matter of some importance to discuss with you.”

  “Now?” He paused and she could practically hear him thinking. His tone was guarded and considerably calmer. “It couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “It most certainly could not.” She huffed. “If you have sufficiently recovered your modesty, I should like to turn around now.”

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  She turned to face him. He’d donned a dressing gown and stood leaning against one of the bedposts, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Why are you in my rooms?” He wasted no time getting to the point, and neither would she.

  “Why have you sent notes to the dullest, stiffest, stodgiest men in London encouraging their pursuit of me?”

  “They’re respectable, not dull.”

  “Hah! Even you don’t believe that.”

  “I do.” He had the nerve to sound indignant.

  “Then name one of them who is not one of the most tedious men on earth.”

  “Just one?” he said in a haughty manner. “Very well.”

  A moment passed. Then another. “I’m waiting.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  She folded her arms, mimicking his stance. “Well?”

  “Give me a moment.”

  “I have.”

  “The specific name escapes me, but . . . ” He blew a long breath. “All right. I admit it. They are not perhaps the most exciting—”

  “Perhaps?” She glared. “They are dull, stiff and stodgy. But you know full well that’s not the worst of it.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not,” he muttered.

  “You practically hawked me to these men.” She stepped to him and poked her finger at his chest. “You might as well have taken out an advertisement in the papers. Or put me on a little cart and gone door to door.” She jabbed again.

  “Ouch.”

  “Or set up a stall in the market.” She stabbed him hard.

  “Stop that.” He grabbed her hand. “It hurts.”

  “Good! I want it to hurt.” She turned on her heel and stepped away, then turned back. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to discover your admirers, such as they are, have been prompted to seek out your company?”

  “Marianne.” He stepped toward her. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Or how humiliating it is to realize that it wasn’t your particular charms that had enticed them but your dowry and family connections?” Angry tears fogged her eyes.

  “It was a horrible mistake on my part.”

  “Or how painful it is to learn someone you trusted, someone you care for, has so little regard for your own desires he would go to such lengths to get you off his hands?”

  “I am truly sorry. It was wrong of me.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  “No, after that.”

  He sighed. “I was wrong.”

  “Say it again.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “How wrong?”

  “Completely and totally wrong,” he said sharply. “Is that good enough?”

  “For now,” she snapped.

  Her gaze met his, and for a long moment they stared in silence.

  “I must say, though”—the corners of his lips twitched as if he were holding back a smile— “it was the most amusing thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “What was?”

  “The way all those eminently respectable gentlemen were falling at your feet.” He chuckled. “You fended them off beautifully.”

  “I fail to see the amusement in that,” she said loftily.

  “Come, now, Marianne, admit it. You can
see the humor in the situation.”

  “I most certainly cannot.”

  “It was as enjoyable as watching a farce at Covent Garden. Or a comedy by Shakespeare.” He stepped closer and pulled her into his arms, deftly turning her to press her back against his chest. Her stomach tensed at the contact. “Surely you can see it?”

  “What are you doing?” She struggled to keep her voice level.

  “Shh. The play is about to begin.” He waved his free hand in a wide gesture at the far wall. “There, on the stage, our heroine enters.”

  “You’re mad, Thomas. I knew it on that first night,” she muttered, trying to maintain her annoyance. Nearly impossible, as she was all too aware of his body pressed against hers.

  He ignored her. “She is lovely but far too stubborn for her own good, with an insane desire for indepen-dence and adventure.”

  “It’s not insane.” Her protest was weak.

  “And here come the eager suitors.” He waved at the other side of the unseen stage. “Oh, dear.”

  “What is it?” she asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

  “They will never do.” He heaved a deep sigh.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, just look at them.” He pointed. “That one is too plump. That one too short. That one has more hair on his knuckles than on his head.”

  “But surely our heroine is not so shallow as to reject a gentleman simply because of his appearance?”

  “Of course not,” he said indignantly. “She is a heroine, after all. However, they all have one flaw she cannot abide.”

  She stifled a smile and relaxed against him. “They are boring?”

  “Exactly.” She felt him shrug. “There is not an adventurous bone in their collective bodies.”