He took a step toward her, but stopped. “Force you,” he jeered softly. “But yes. You would think that.” His voice was icy enough to freeze a sea. “I don’t go round violating women, Harriet.” His gaze swept over her with such contempt, she felt his disdain in the pit of her stomach. “So I suggest we don’t consummate this marriage until you come to me,” he said. “And you’ll make it so clear that you are willing, even the kind of brute you take me for could not mistake it.”
He left, and the chamber door fell shut behind him with a bang.
A high-pitched noise wailed in her ears. In a state of detachment, she thought she should probably fall onto the bed and sob. But she didn’t move, and her eyes were dry. He had confessed. It confirmed her role as a silly pawn, but it brought a measure of calm—a cold, brittle calm, but it at least allowed her think. She went to the vanity table and opened the jewelry box he had gifted her. A bracelet, two fingers wide, comprised of four strands of golden chains linking pearls and gemstones. Elegant, yet whimsical. The dull light couldn’t dim the rich blue of the sapphires and the glow of the rubies. In the sun, the piece would have shimmered beautifully on her wrist, complementing her coloring perfectly, and the woman she had been five minutes ago would have felt a great twinge of misery in her heart for all the things that could have been. Now, she only saw opportunity. She had never paid attention to the price of things, but she was still aware that she was holding a small fortune in her palm and that the gems and pearls could probably be pried without too much effort from their gold settings. Jewels—a woman’s portable bank account since the beginning of time. Or at least ever since they made it difficult for wives to hold money and an actual account in their own name. It was why they bartered their favors or turned a blind eye in exchange for necklaces and rings and diamond hairpins, and endured being called little magpies for hoarding trinkets. Her trinkets would keep her in good stead all the way to southern France.
The corridors rushed past in silence as Lucian put distance between himself and his wife’s bedchamber. If you force me, I will scream. He wanted to punch a wall. He hadn’t intended for her to find out, and now he knew why: it was ugly as hell. It had sliced any friendliness between them to ribbons just when he had realized it was something he might want. And he’d have her only when she approached him for it? He’d now wait for the next one hundred years to be inside his wife—when the whole purpose of this damned marriage had been the production of Greenfield grandchildren … Just then he caught sight of himself in the large mirror on the wall across from the entrance doors, his snarling visage a feral sight beneath his disheveled black hair.
“Well, fuck me.” His first official social function at the exchequer, and he looked like a demon.
“Matthews,” he roared.
His voice was still reverberating off the walls as Matthews hurried from one of the corridors. “Sir?”
“Tell Nicolas to get the two-in-hand ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell Carson to keep an eye on Mrs. Blackstone’s chamber door—if she leaves, he’s to escort her.”
Matthews’s brows pulled together before he schooled his expression to neutrality. “As you wish, sir.”
“And have a tray brought to her from the kitchen.”
He had time to control his temper during the carriage ride to Westminster. Julien Greenfield awaited him in the pillared reception room of number ten Downing Street, masking whatever grudge or lethal loathing he might still nurse against his son-in-law with a jovial demeanor. He had the cheek to ask about Harriet’s well-being as if he cared, and Lucian lied straight to his face that she was doing just fine. The dinner was a success; Greenfield introduced him to Prime Minister Gladstone, who also happened to be chancellor of the exchequer, and they took each other’s measure under the pretense of discussing the latest upheaval in the British wool market, forever caused by Americans imposing outrageous import tariffs on British wool while trying to flood the British market with lower-quality but vastly cheaper wool. But frankly, he gave no damn about wool tonight, and by the time he’d boarded the coach again, his jaw ached from consistent clenching. Lifelong ambitions were coming to fruition as planned, and here he was feeling in a black mood the moment he entered his house. He changed from his dinner attire into his exercise clothes, went to saddle his roan, and took course to East London.
He returned to Belgravia a few hours later, his face and body sore and his mood still foul. He scrubbed himself in the shower, and after half a bar of soap, the water circling the drain still seemed tinged with gray. All the mirrors were blind when he finally emerged from the cubicle.