"Oh? Your betrothed is very kind," she said distantly.
"It's hardly kindess to pay a duty visit to her fiance's newly acquired relative, who also happens to be living under his roof."
"No, I suppose not," Juliana mused. "Is she aware, I wonder, that this newly acquired relative is also installed in the duchess's apartments?"
"Don't be absurd."
Juliana plaited the coverlet with busy fingers. "I presume I'll be moved elsewhere once your marriage is celebrated… or will this arrangement be terminated when I conceive your child?"
"You seem determined to quarrel with me this morning," Tarquin observed. "I woke up half an hour ago feeling as if I'd been touched by magic." His voice deepened, his eyes glowed, and his mouth curved in a smile of rich sensual pleasure. "The memory of you was on my skin, running in my blood."
Leaning over her, he planted his hands on the pillow on either side of her head. Juliana couldn't tear her eyes from his, so close to her now, compelling her response. His breath was warm on her cheek, his mouth poised above hers… poised for an eternity until, with a little moan of defeat, she grasped his face with her hands and pulled his mouth to hers. She kissed him hungrily, pushing her tongue into his mouth, tasting him, drawing his own special scent into her lungs. He kept himself still for her exploration, leaving her with the initiative, until, breathless, she released his face and moved her mouth from his.
"A much more pleasing greeting," Tarquin said, smiling "Are you always bad-tempered in the morning? Or did you not get enough sleep last night?"
"My questions were perfectly reasonable," Juliana replied, but her voice was low and sweet, her mouth soft, her eyes aglow.
He sat down on the bed beside her. "Maybe I should have mentioned before that I was to be married, but I really didn't think it important. No matter what our arrangements are my dear, I must be married at some point. And no matter what I might prefer," he added a trifle ruefully, "I have a family duty."
"Would you rather not marry Lady Lydia?" Juliana forgot her own concerns in this much more intriguing question.
"It's a marriage of convenience." lie explained evenly. "In my position one does not wed for anything else. For amusement, passion-love, even-one keeps a mistress. Surely that doesn't come as a surprise?"
"No, I suppose not. Do you have other mistresses? Someone… someone you love, perhaps?" Her fingers were busier than ever with the counterpane, and she couldn't look up at him.
All expression died out of Tarquin's eyes; his face became blank, featureless. "Love, my dear, is a luxury a man in my position must learn to do without."
She looked up now, startled at the bitterness she sensed beneath his flat tone. "Why must you learn to do without it?"
"What an inquisitive child you are." He looked at her for a moment in silence as she gazed back at him with frank curiosity. "If a man has power and wealth, he can never really trust the sincerity of those around him. Perhaps it takes a certain amount of trust to be able to love," he said simply.
"How wretched!" Juliana reached a hand to touch his as it rested on the bed. "Have people pretended to love you, then, but all they wanted was what you could give them?"
He looked down at her hand curled over his. Such an instinctive and generous gesture of comfort, he thought, gently sliding his hand out from under hers. "When I was young and foolish," he said lightly. "But I learned my lesson."
"At least people pretended to like you," Juliana said thoughtfully. "No one even pretended to like me. I don't know which would be worse."
"Of course people liked you," he protested, shocked despite his own cynicism at this matter-of-fact statement from one so young and appealing.
Juliana shook her head. "No," she stated. "I wasn't what anyone wanted, except Sir John, of course. I do think he genuinely liked me… or perhaps it was only lust. George said he was a perverted old man who lusted after schoolgirls."
Tarquin leaned over and caught her chin on the tip of his finger, lifting it to meet his steady gaze. " I like you. Juliana."
Her eyes gazed into his, searching for evidence of the kindly lie beneath the surface. She couldn't see it; in fact, his eyes were suddenly unreadable, glittering with a strange intensity that made her uncomfortable. She blundered onto a new tack, shattering the mesmerizing focus like a sheet of crystal under a fork of lightning.
''So when Lady Lydia becomes your duchess, where had you intended to put me?"
Tarquin dropped her chin, the strange mood broken. "I hadn't intended to put you anywhere. Of course, if you produce an heir to Edgecombe, you will move to your own suite of apartments, both in this house and at Redmayne Abbey. Where you choose to be will be entirely up to you. If you wish to leave this house and set up your own establishment, then you may do so; the child, however, will remain here."
"And if I do not have a child?"
"I thought we had discussed this with Copplethwaite," he said, impatiently now.
"The question of your marriage was not raised."
With an air of forbearance, he began to enumerate points on his fingers. "After my marriage… after your husband's death… whether or not.you have a child, you will be free to take up residence at Edgecombe Court as the viscount's widow. However, the child, if there is one, will remain under my roof. If there is no child, the arrangement is perfectly simple. If there is, and you choose to live elsewhere, you will have generous access to the child. I thought that had all been made clear."
"I daresay I'm a trifle slow-witted, Your Grace."
"And the moon is made of cheese."
Juliana fought a silent battle to keep her bitter resentment hidden. All her instincts rebelled against this cold, rational disposition of maternal rights. Supposing she and the duke fell out irrevocably, had some dreadful quarrel that couldn't be papered over? How was she to continue under his roof in such circumstances? And how could she possibly move out and leave her own child behind?
But of course, for the Duke of Redmayne, both she and the child were possessions. Women were bought and sold at all levels of society. Starving men sold their wives in the marketplace for bread. Royal princesses were shipped to foreign courts like so much cattle, to breed and thus cement alliances, to join lands and armies and treasure chests. She'd known all this since she'd been aware of a world outside the nursery. But how hard it was to see herself that way.
Tarquin was regarding her with a quizzical frown. When she remained quiet, he gently changed the subject: "Do you have plans for today?"
The question startled her. She'd been ruled by others all her life-ruled and confined in the house on Russell Street. It hadn't occurred to her that freedom to do what she pleased and go wherever she fancied would be one of the rewards for this oblique slavery.
"I hadn't thought."
"Do you ride?"
"Why, yes. In winter in Hampshire it was the only way to travel when the roads were mired."
"Would you like a riding horse?"
"But where is there to ride?"
"Hyde Park for the sedate variety. But Richmond provides more excitement." Her delighted surprise at this turn of the conversation sent a dart of pleasure through him. How easy she was to please. And also to hurt, he reminded himself, but he quickly suppressed that thought. "If you wish, I'll procure you a horse from Tattersalls this morning."