She blinked stinging eyes. Her words rushed forth in a scalding burn, “If you cannot abide to be in the same room with me mere days after our vows because I simply require time to acclimate myself to becoming wife and broodmare to a stranger, then how can—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands, nearly hauling her off her feet. “Would you stop nattering and allow me a word?”

She blinked.

His chest heaved an inch from her, emitting a heat that she felt dangerously drawn to. His furious gaze scoured her face, piercing, intent. She had never seen him this way. For a moment, she feared he would strike her.

Finally, he snarled, “Maybe I do hate you.”

She shuddered and closed her eyes against the glittering dislike in the pale green of his gaze.

His words pained her more than she could have expected, killed something inside her that she didn’t even know existed. Hope.

Somehow, since he’d entered her life, she had begun to hope again—for everything she’d thought lost when she’d given up her future for the sake of her sister and Nicholas.

Eyes still closed, she asked, “Why?”

He shook her, forcing her eyes open again. “Because you’ve made me hate Ian. My own flesh and blood.” He sucked in a ragged breath. “Because he had you first. He has you still. I’m glad that he’s gone . . . glad that it’s my turn with you.” He looked at her bleakly. “I don’t know who I blame more for that. You or me.”

Shock rippled through her. She read the hard glitter in his eyes, understood it for what it was now.

With a strangled groan, he hauled her the last inch separating them and kissed her with feverish desperation. His hands were everywhere all at once. He kissed her like he couldn’t get enough, like this would be his last taste of her.

After a shocked moment, she lifted her hands, cupped his face. A day’s growth of beard scratched her palms as she kissed him back, arching against him, mewling when even that wasn’t enough.

He’d avoided her because he wanted her? Because he felt guilty for wanting her? It had nothing to do with Adara. Elation swelled through her and she kissed him harder, deeper.

Men like him did not fit into her world. She wasn’t beautiful or charming or sophisticated . . . nothing about her should drive him to desire.

But somehow . . . she had. She did.

Still holding his face, thumbs caressing the hollows of his cheeks in small circles, she angled her head and tasted his tongue with sinuous strokes of her own.

He groaned into her mouth and broke away, holding her back even as she strained against him, panting, eager for his mouth, for the warm press of his body against hers again.

“Ian did this. Put you in my head, my blood. Somehow, listening to him all those years, I grew infatuated with the idea of you.”

You. Linnie.

Not me.

His words seized hold of her heart and twisted it. The seductive haze he wove on her dissolved in an instant.

“If you don’t want me to finish this, then go,” he said thickly. “Now.”

Breathing raggedly, she choked back a sob.

She wanted him with an intensity that vibrated in her bones. She’d never imagined she would want a man like this. Never thought she could have a man of her own. She’d sacrificed all hope for such a future. She’d made that choice the day she’d taken Nicholas into her arms.

Even as she’d never regretted that, she found herself wanting this. Wanting him.

Millie had warned her. Told her the wanting could be this . . . deep. This intense. Dangerous. Evie had scoffed at the idea, but here she stood, wanting, craving, desperate to have him love her . . .

Only he never would.

Even if by some miraculous occurrence, Spencer Lockhart, Lord Winters, could love his wife, he wouldn’t love her.

Because it wouldn’t be her.

Whatever he felt, he felt for Linnie—the woman he thought he had married.

With a pained blink, she stopped leaning toward him and stepped back—watched with her heart in her throat as his hands dropped limply to his sides. His eyes returned to their cool green, all that glittering heat banked, the stark need for her gone.

“Very well.” He continued, his voice strangely thick, “If I can’t have you, then stay the hell away. I tire of playing cat and mouse with you.”

“Send me home,” she blurted, desperate to remove herself from temptation, to keep the house of cards she had constructed from tumbling around her.

He stared at her coldly. “You are home.”

“You said I could live wherever I wish—”

“After a period of time,” he reminded.

He’d also said he would require an heir before he released her . . . but she had no intention of reminding him of that just now. “I want to see Nicholas—”

“We can send for him.”

“Why do you care so much if I remain here?”

A myriad of expressions crossed his face. “I can’t let you go.”

He couldn’t let Linnie go.

He was infatuated with her. Perhaps he even loved her. A miserable sob scalded the back of Evie’s throat. She whirled around and stalked to the door, feeling ridiculous. She had worried she had to contend with Adara. She was wrong. She only had the ghost of her sister to battle.

“You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“Perhaps you are,” he countered.

She glanced over her shoulder at him.

He crossed his arms over his impressive chest, a single dark brow arching in challenge. A sigh of wretched longing shuddered through her at the enticing sight.

If only he was right and it could be simple.

If only she could drop her guard and allow herself to love him. She wished it could be so simple . . . wished she could freely and openly love him.

If only he knew the truth.

And didn’t care.

That thought struck terror in her heart. Because he would care, of course. He would care that he had married the wrong sister. If he knew the truth, he would never again look at her with desire warm in his eyes. Men hated being made the fool. He could expose her to the world for her lies and take Nicholas away. Such a risk was inconceivable.

Resolve hardening her heart, she opened the door to her room and passed inside, wondering if it would not have been better to have never met him. To never know for herself the yearning a woman could feel for a man.

Secretly, in her heart, she had considered Linnie weak and stupid to ever let a handsome face addle her judgment and leave her compromised. And then she’d thought her sister even more stupid to continue to love the scoundrel after he’d abandoned her.

But now she knew.

Now she understood how one’s heart could overrule logic. Now she knew love.

She’d never been more miserable.

Chapter 20

Spencer watched her go with his heart lodged somewhere in his throat. He’d bared himself, exposed that ugly part of himself and admitted the feelings she roused in him. Feelings that had begun in the Crimea.

The guilt had been there from the start. Wanting her. Resenting a dead man, his cousin, his best friend. Which made him one miserable bastard. Especially because now that he’d met her, married her, come to know her, he was more infatuated with her than ever.

Cursing, he dragged a hand through his hair and dropped down on his bed. He should release her. He’d given her the protection of his name, lifelong security. She wasn’t his to keep—marriage or no. She wanted to go home. He should just let her return to her rustic little village.

Tossing one hand over his forehead, he stared at the dark canopy above him, wondering when precisely he had swerved off the honorable path and into lust with a woman he had assured himself would be nothing more than a point of duty to check off his life’s list.

When exactly had he fallen in love?

Evie’s steps slowed as she neared the kitchen, Adara’s peevish tones a grating grind on her ears. She stopped in the threshold, observing Adara wag a paper before Cook, hostility emanating from the gesture.

“Pray explain. I don’t understand why we cannot serve the lamb tonight.”

“My lady,” Cook began, the worn lines of her face looking especially haggard.

Dressed in a purple velvet riding habit trimmed in ermine, Adara looked like something out of a fashion plate.

“Lamb isn’t to be had this time of year.”

Adara’s gold ringlets jiggled above her ears. “I am certain you are just trying to be difficult!”

With a slight clearing of her throat, Evie made her presence known and suggested, “Perhaps I should plan the evening’s menu and spare you the upset?”

Adara swerved to face her, her chocolate-brown eyes narrowing. “Evelyn,” she murmured silkily. “That won’t be necessary. I have a great deal of experience in such matters—”

“As do I,” Evie smoothly inserted. “And the task falls to me as the lady of the house, after all. I have no wish to impose on you. You’re our guest. It’s been unpardonably rude of me to allow you the chore for this long.”

The Cook looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed, lips slightly sagging.

Adara blinked her eyes in seeming innocence. “Oh, but I live to be obliging! And come, Evelyn—you’re a newlywed. Surely you have other things to occupy your time.” The little witch. She knew Evie had more time on her hands than she knew what to do with, that Spencer left her woefully alone. Evie had scarcely seen him long enough to exchange greetings in the last week.

His startling confession still rang in her head.

Because you’ve made me hate Ian. My own flesh and blood. Because he had you first. He has you still. I’m glad that he’s gone . . . glad that it’s my turn with you.

He wasn’t immune to her, wasn’t numb. No matter what Adara would have her think.

And yet, he still avoided her. Following such a confession, she thought he might try his hand at seducing her again. A seduction she might no longer resist.

She didn’t know what to think about him. She only knew she did. Constantly. From the moment she woke, to the minute she fell asleep every night.

With a polite smile, she turned her attention to Cook. “The lovely shepherd’s pie you prepared my first night here would be tasty on such a frigid day.”

Cook bobbed her head. “Yes, m’lady.”

Triumph swelled in Evie’s chest. A small skirmish to be sure, but she felt she had gained some leverage in her battle to assume her role as lady of the house. For as long as she was here at any rate.

“Shepherd’s pie?” Adara’s lip curled in scorn. “Peasant fare?”

“It’s Spencer’s favorite dish.”

Adara’s face mottled, but she possessed the good sense to hold her tongue.

Evie stepped beside Cook, and together they arrived at the rest of the menu. Adara watched silently. From the corner of her eye, Evie noticed her white-knuckled fist.

“Might I suggest a claret to complement the evening? The cellar boasts a fine assortment.” Adara’s voice was silk.

Evie blinked at the unexpected kindness, uncertain. Still, it was not an olive branch she could ignore. “That would be lovely.”

“Come then.” Turning, Adara floated from the kitchen. Evie followed her down the steps and into another corridor, this one narrower and lined with several pantries and closets. A door loomed at the far end.

Adara unlatched it. “I believe the clarets line the right wall.” She held the door wide with her body and motioned Evie ahead of her. “Go on. Choose whatever suits you.”

Evie peered down the shadowy stairwell. A great clamminess rose up from the deep interior to caress her cheeks. “Perhaps you would like to select—”

“Of course not. As you said, the task falls to the lady of the house.”

Evie descended the first stone-slick step. The light from behind her illuminated her path to the bottom of the stairs and the first few racks of wine and large vats. Beyond that, swirling darkness. Her throat thickened. “I really would not mind if you—”