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upon her mouth. She wanted the intimacy of a physical union. She wanted her husband and his love and a future for her marriage.
    Marcus did not try the door again. There was only a silence, a silence in which Ellen had never felt more alone. What had been a means to communicate how very badly he had treated her felt a lot like cruel revenge. She hugged her arms around herself and silently wept.

Chapter Four
    The tension in the breakfast room the next morning was palpable. Ellen was dressed in a pale blue silk with a neckline that was so low that the creamy swell of her breasts threatened to spill over it. The sunlight flooding the room picked golden highlights in the deep sherry of her hair, which had been arranged in a pile of curls and showed off her slender neck. She looked pale, he thought. Even the hint of powdered blush she had touched upon her cheeks did little to disguise it. And her manner was different. Not blasé and unconcerned as it had been since her arrival back in London. He waved away the footman from the room and topped up her coffee cup before pouring one for himself.
    ‘Last night,’ he said. He did not know why she had taken him right up to the brink before refusing him, but having spent half the night brooding upon it, he had an idea. She had teased him, toyed with him, tortured him with deliberation until there was a constant aching throb between his legs.
    She sipped at the coffee but did not look at him.
    ‘Oh, that,’ she said in a casual tone, as if it were nothing of importance, but he could see the way she bit at her lower lip. In punishing him she did not realise how she punished herself. She did not understand the depth and layering of the desire and feeling that was between them. He was only starting to realise that himself. He only now saw what he had almost let slip through his fingers.
    ‘Yes, that. We need to talk, Ellen.’
    He saw the sudden tremble of the cup within her hand, saw the way she set the cup down so suddenly that it clanked against the saucer, and a small wave of coffee sloshed over the edge.
    ‘We have nothing to talk about.’ She smiled a feigned teasing smile that did not even begin to hide the shadows and unhappiness behind her eyes. And he knew that she was not so unaffected by the start of their marriage as she had pretended. ‘Besides,’ she said in a false bright tone, ‘I thought I would go shopping. Madame Boisseron showed me the most glorious evening gown. Deep fuchsia pink with a diaphanous bodice. Apparently it is the new and daring fashion to wear it with the barest of underclothing.’ She forced the smile again and got to her feet. But when she would have walked away he caught her back.
    ‘Ellen.’
    ‘No.’ She shook her head, denying him and everything that was roaring between them. His arm snaked around her waist, anchoring her to him. He stared down into her face and the teasing bold expression faltered and slipped away. She averted her eyes, refused to look at him, but Marcus captured her chin, tilting her face to him. And when she looked at him he was shocked by the ache of emotion he saw there. Very gently he reached his lips to hers and kissed her. It was a tender kiss, a kiss to salve the misery he saw in her eyes. A kiss to woo her. The kiss he should have given her as his new bride. She looked up at him and in her gaze was a raw honesty that seemed to reach into his chest and squeeze tight at his heart. Something passed between them, something that touched heart and soul and body. Something that he could not define yet knew was of integral importance. An infinitesimal shift from which there was no going back. And he knew from the way she was looking at him that she felt it, too.
    ‘Marcus,’ she whispered and he could hear the uncertainty in her voice.
    Their mouths edged closer. He could feel the soft press of her breasts against his chest, feel the slide of her arms around his neck.

    He kissed her gently at first, tentatively,