Anna Campbell: Seven Nights In A Rogue's Bed

Her existence sounded like drudgery. And lonely. But he made himself smile. “So what prompted my cousin’s sudden bibliophilia?”

“He’s selling what’s left, of course. Surely you know how close to the wind he’s sailing. The last of Roberta’s dowry went earlier this year in some scheme for South Seas emerald mining.”

“My cousin never had the touch in business.”

She cast him a disapproving look. “No need to sound so smug. You know he’s reckless to compete with you.”

“If he’d cut his coat to fit his cloth when he inherited, he could have lived perfectly comfortably at Barstowe Hall.” Jonas was deliberately disingenuous. William was a heaving mass of jealousy, conceit, and bluster. He’d never accept life as a quiet country squire while his bastard cousin turned the world on its ear. “The man’s his own worst enemy.”

“I’d feel no compunction gloating over William’s disasters if my sister and nephews weren’t plunged into penury with him.”

“What about your penury? You’re damned quick to care about the fate of Roberta and her brats.”

She raised her chin. “In two months, I turn twenty-five. William’s guardianship ends and I’ll receive an allowance from my father’s will. It’s not much—a plutocrat like you would scoff—but it will establish me away from my brother-in-law’s tantrums. I have plans for a useful future. I intend to set up a house of my own and teach indigent girls to read so they can make their way in the world.”

The idea of Sidonie slaving her life away as a spinster schoolmistress struck him as a tragic waste, but he knew better than to say so. He’d caught the militant light in her eye when she mentioned the unappealing scheme. “I’m surprised William hasn’t married you off. Especially if you already have a dowry.”

“I meant it when I said I’d never wed.” Whatever she saw in his smile, it discomfited her enough to make her try to shift away. He didn’t let her go. He began to suffer the alarming fantasy that he’d never let her go.

“Not all husbands are like William. Or like your father.”

Her expression turned bleak. “It’s pure luck, though, isn’t it? The law gives a husband ownership of his wife. I value my judgment too dearly to sacrifice it to another’s. And there’s no escape—the contract binds until death. A married woman is little better than a slave.”

“Not an opinion popular at Almack’s.”

She shrugged. “For six years, I’ve lived as William’s pensioner and watched him brag and bully. Even though my sister’s dowry was all that kept clothes on his back. Unmarried, I’m at the mercy of nobody’s mistakes but my own.”

“Don’t you want children?”

“Not at the cost of freedom.”

He frowned. “Such a solitary path you map. What about love?”

“Love?” She spat the word as though it tasted sour. “You surprise me, Merrick. I doubted you’d acknowledge the concept.”

“Astonishing, isn’t it?”

He waited for some derisive comment, but she remained silent. Perhaps because of that silence, he lifted the veil on the bitter truth he never mentioned. Ever. “I’m not a fool. I’ve seen devotion. My father loved my mother till the day he died. His heart broke when he lost her. And his heart broke anew every time the world called her ‘whore’.”

Damn it, he’d said too much. Revealed too much. He knew it the moment he saw Sidonie’s face whiten with distress. All his life he’d survived by standing alone, relying on nobody but himself. Yet these uncharacteristic confidences placed him even further under Sidonie’s spell.

He needed to remember that isolation offered safety, whatever the appeal of pansy eyes and soft female compassion.

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