The Marriage Bed Read Online Free PDF

grief as if each one were a whip. He envied her that—the ability to cry. He never could.
    He was thirty-five years old, and the last time he had cried, he'd been seven. In the nursery at Hammond Park , staring into a glass bowl of trifle that had been brought to him for dessert. He had listened to his nanny as she had broken the news to him about his sister, Kate. He remembered how the tears had rolled down his face, and how the colors of jam and cream and custard had all blurred and swirled together. He loathed trifle to this very day.
    He listened to Connie's sobs, and he wanted to do that, too. Lie down, bury his face in the cool grass, and feel the cathartic relief of bawling like a baby. But his eyes were dry, his stomach felt like lead, he wanted to cut his heart out. He curled his fingers into the turf on either side of his hips, set his jaw and did not move.
    They sat there for a long time before she finally lifted her head. "What will happen to Hammond Park now?" she asked, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Bertram will inherit everything after you, won't he?"
    "Not if I can help it." He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. "Besides, if Bertie ever becomes the viscount after my death, he shall rue the day. For I vow to return as a ghost and haunt him."
    She almost laughed even as she dabbed at the tears in her eyes. "Is there any possibility you and your wife could reconcile?"
    "We already have," he lied. "Viola and I both know our duty. Pray do not burden yourself with concern for Hammond Park . Everything will turn out well."
    John spoke with far more assurance than he actually felt, for he knew that as far as Viola was concerned, duty would never be more important than love. And love for him was something Viola hadn't felt for a long, long time.

    One month later, John discovered just how right he had been about Viola's notions of love and duty. By the time he had finished helping Constance settle Percy's business affairs, the scarlet fever epi demic had subsided, the risk of infection was gone, and he was able to return to London . But when he arrived there, he found that his wife had not moved her things into his town house. Nor was she at Enderby , the villa in Chiswick outside London where she lived most of the year. The servants there did not know her destination, for she had taken only her maid and one footman with her, but John had a pretty fair notion of where she had gone.
    When he called at the Duke of Tremore's home in Grosvenor Square , his suspicion was confirmed. She had taken refuge there. He could envision Viola on Tremore's doorstep, asking to be sheltered from her shameful excuse for a husband.
    Tremore was as haughty toward him as ever. He came into the drawing room bearing the ducal countenance he reserved for recalcitrant servants, ill-mannered commoners, and John . What his brother-in-law still did not understand about him was that he had never been intimidated by all that hauteur.
    T hank fully, Tremore did not try to make polite conversation. He came straight to the point. "I assume you have come to see my sister."
    Not in a mood to be clever just now, he met the other man's hard gaze with an equally hard one of his own. "No," he answered, "I have come to fetch my wife ."
    * * *
    Viola stared at her brother in dismay. "So Hammond can just drag me off and there is nothing you can do?"
    Anthony looked back at her without replying. In his hazel eyes so like her own was a look she recognized, a look of many emotions she had seen before. Rage at Hammond , compassion for her situation, regret that he had allowed the marriage in the first place. But Viola also saw something else—inevitability.
    "How can I go with him?" she cried, feeling the chains of her marriage vows tightening around her like a noose around her neck. "After everything that has happened, how can I live with him as his wife again?"
    "You are his wife," her brother said, his voice