"At least people pretended to like you," Juliana said thoughtfully. "No one even pretended to like me. I don't know which would be worse."
"Of course people liked you," he protested, shocked despite his own cynicism at this matter-of-fact statement from one so young and appealing.
Juliana shook her head. "No," she stated. "I wasn't what anyone wanted, except Sir John, of course. I do think he genuinely liked me… or perhaps it was only lust. George said he was a perverted old man who lusted after schoolgirls."
Tarquin leaned over and caught her chin on the tip of his finger, lifting it to meet his steady gaze. " I like you. Juliana."
Her eyes gazed into his, searching for evidence of the kindly lie beneath the surface. She couldn't see it; in fact, his eyes were suddenly unreadable, glittering with a strange intensity that made her uncomfortable. She blundered onto a new tack, shattering the mesmerizing focus like a sheet of crystal under a fork of lightning.
''So when Lady Lydia becomes your duchess, where had you intended to put me?"
Tarquin dropped her chin, the strange mood broken. "I hadn't intended to put you anywhere. Of course, if you produce an heir to Edgecombe, you will move to your own suite of apartments, both in this house and at Redmayne Abbey. Where you choose to be will be entirely up to you. If you wish to leave this house and set up your own establishment, then you may do so; the child, however, will remain here."
"And if I do not have a child?"
"I thought we had discussed this with Copplethwaite," he said, impatiently now.
"The question of your marriage was not raised."
With an air of forbearance, he began to enumerate points on his fingers. "After my marriage… after your husband's death… whether or not.you have a child, you will be free to take up residence at Edgecombe Court as the viscount's widow. However, the child, if there is one, will remain under my roof. If there is no child, the arrangement is perfectly simple. If there is, and you choose to live elsewhere, you will have generous access to the child. I thought that had all been made clear."
"I daresay I'm a trifle slow-witted, Your Grace."
"And the moon is made of cheese."
Juliana fought a silent battle to keep her bitter resentment hidden. All her instincts rebelled against this cold, rational disposition of maternal rights. Supposing she and the duke fell out irrevocably, had some dreadful quarrel that couldn't be papered over? How was she to continue under his roof in such circumstances? And how could she possibly move out and leave her own child behind?
But of course, for the Duke of Redmayne, both she and the child were possessions. Women were bought and sold at all levels of society. Starving men sold their wives in the marketplace for bread. Royal princesses were shipped to foreign courts like so much cattle, to breed and thus cement alliances, to join lands and armies and treasure chests. She'd known all this since she'd been aware of a world outside the nursery. But how hard it was to see herself that way.
Tarquin was regarding her with a quizzical frown. When she remained quiet, he gently changed the subject: "Do you have plans for today?"
The question startled her. She'd been ruled by others all her life-ruled and confined in the house on Russell Street. It hadn't occurred to her that freedom to do what she pleased and go wherever she fancied would be one of the rewards for this oblique slavery.
"I hadn't thought."
"Do you ride?"
"Why, yes. In winter in Hampshire it was the only way to travel when the roads were mired."
"Would you like a riding horse?"
"But where is there to ride?"
"Hyde Park for the sedate variety. But Richmond provides more excitement." Her delighted surprise at this turn of the conversation sent a dart of pleasure through him. How easy she was to please. And also to hurt, he reminded himself, but he quickly suppressed that thought. "If you wish, I'll procure you a horse from Tattersalls this morning."
"Oh, may I come too?" She threw aside the covers and leaped energetically to her feet, her nightgown flowing around her.
"I'm afraid not. Ladies do not frequent Tattersalls." His eyes fixed on the swell of her breasts, their dark crowns pressing against the thin bodice. "But you may trust me with the commission," he said slowly. "Take off your nightgown."
Juliana touched her tongue to her lips. "Someone might come in."
"Take it off." His voice was almost curt, but she didn't mistake the rasp of passion.
She unfastened the laces at her throat and drew the gown slowly up her body, sensing that he would enjoy a gradual unveiling. When she threw it aside and stood naked, his eyes devoured her, roaming hungrily over her body, but he made no attempt to reach for her.
"Turn around."
She did so slowly, facing the bed, feeling her skin warm and flushed with his scrutiny as if it were his hands, not his eyes, that were caressing her.
Tarquin unfastened his robe with one swift pull at the girdle and came up behind her. His hands slid around her waist, cupping the fullness of her breasts, and she could feel his turgid flesh pressing against her buttocks. Then his hands moved over her belly, traced the curve of her hips, stroked the cheeks of her buttocks.
Juliana caught her breath at the insinuating touch of his fingers sliding down the cleft of her bottom and between her thighs, opening the moist, heated furrow of her body. Lust flooded her loins, tightened her belly, sent the blood rushing through her veins. She moved against his fingers, her own hands sliding behind to caress his erect shaft until she could feel his breath swift and hot against the nape of her neck.
"Put your palms flat on the bed."
Juliana obeyed the soft, urgent command, aware of nothing now but his body against hers and her own aching core begging for the touch that would bring the cataclysm. His hands ran hard down her bent back, tracing the curve of her spine, then gripped her buttocks as he drove into her. It felt different-wildly, wonderfully different-his hard belly slapping against her buttocks with each powerful, rhythmic thrust that drove his flesh deeper and deeper inside her. She could hear her own little sobbing cries; her head dropped onto the rumpled sheets, her spine dipped. Her mouth was dry, the swirling void grew ever closer… the moment when her body would slip loose from its moorings. His fingers bit deep into the flesh of her hips and his name was on her lips, each syllable an assertion and a declaration of his pleasure.
Juliana fell slowly, as slowly as a feather drifting downward on a spring breeze. The void came up to meet her, and she was lost in its swirling sensate wonder. She toppled forward onto the bed and Tarquin came with her, his body pressed to her back, his hands now around her waist, holding her tightly as his own climax tore him asunder. His face was buried in the tangled flame-red hair on her neck, and his breath was hot and damp on her skin. The void receded and the tension left her limbs inch by inch, and her body took his weight as his strength washed from him with the receding wave of his own joy.
It was a long while before Tarquin eased himself upright onto his feet. He drew his robe together again and reached down to stroke Juliana's back. "Mignonne, come back."
"I can't. I'm lost," she mumbled into the coverlet. "That felt so different."
He bent over her and rolled her onto her back. He stroked her face with a fingertip, and his eyes were dark with the residue of passion and something that looked remarkably like puzzlement. "I don't know what you are," he said simply. He kissed her and then, quietly, he left her.
Juliana sat up slowly. Her body thrummed. At the moment she didn't know what she was either. A bride, a mistress… a whore? A woman, a girl? A person or a possession?