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

‘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?’

‘If you don’t, then I will confront your father.’

There was a wealth of warning in the words the deep voice uttered and no drawl to soften them. Swirling round in a flurry of skirts, Amanda tossed him a cool glance askance. ‘Then for the time being don’t get any high-minded ideas that you’re any better than any other hired help.’ She was about to walk away, but whirled round when Kit’s hand suddenly shot out and gripped her arm like a vice.

‘I am trying to be patient with you, Amanda,’ he said quietly, ‘but you’re trying me sorely. Now listen to me and don’t anger me. For the present I am happy to work for your father. I shall train his horses and train them well, but I will not be treated like an underling. Rest assured that, despite my time spent in the Smoky Mountains with the Cherokee, I am quite civilised. I will not be dictated to by anybody—especially not by my own wife, whose schooling in manners appears to be somewhat lacking. I trust I’ve made myself abundantly clear?’

Amanda yanked her arm from his grasp, her eyes spitting fire. ‘Perfectly. Good day to you, Mr Benedict.’

‘And good day to you, my loving wife. A pleasure meeting you again.’ He chuckled aloud as he watched and admired the indignant sway of her hips as she left him, which, to his sceptical mind, was the most piquant of provocations. It was clear that a submissive, compliant wife Amanda was not. She was like a vixen, fierce and ready to fight, and he thanked God for it; he wanted her to match him strength for strength, as an equal, and in that, he was not going to be disappointed. But first he must show her that no matter how hard and furiously she fought against him, she was his wife.

He grinned broadly, totally assured in his arrogant masculinity that he would have his way, no matter what.

Kit’s low, mocking laughter followed Amanda all the way back to the house and for a long time after. Cursing beneath her breath, she fed her wrath as she stalked homeward with her fists clenched by her sides. Be damned if she’d discuss their marriage any further, not until she’d had time to face the rest of her emotions and consider the best way forward. The matter was complicated, but it must be resolved somehow.

The trouble was that since her marriage, which had brought her independence, she had become herself again and valued her freedom, and she was regretful and resentful that she would now have to set it all aside. She realised she wasn’t being fair to Kit—but then life wasn’t always fair, and her father had been right when he had said that to succeed in life you had to be ruthless. He might have been referring to the world of business, but Amanda would apply it to her personal life.

Still fuming silently to herself and a mass of conflicting emotions, she found her father in the hall still waiting for his lawyer to arrive. Amanda appeared before him looking for all the world like she’d like to commit murder and proceeded to speak without thinking, to act without considering the consequences.

‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she flared when he enquired why she was looking as cross as a bucket full of crabs, ‘but I think Mr Benedict is overbearing. He is also insufferably arrogant and I cannot see why you like him. You must dismiss him at once and find someone else.’

Henry looked at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. His daughter seemed to be in the grip of a fury and to have lost all reasonableness. Her anger was out of all proportion to what appeared to be a perfectly normal and innocent situation.