Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion. Louise Allen

to keep. And I decided that at least I could keep the one I made you about you having your own room.’

      ‘I...I...I didn’t realise. I thought you were just bored with me.’

      ‘Bored? How could you possibly think I was bored when I couldn’t keep my hands off you?’

      ‘You’d started managing to keep your hands off me until night-time,’ she flashed back at him. ‘When at one time you’d pounce on me anywhere in the house, at any time of day.’

      ‘Well, that was before the servants came back. You got so upset when Brownlow almost caught us in the drawing room that I thought I’d better rein back a bit. I was trying,’ he said grimly, ‘to spare your blushes.’

      ‘Spare my blushes?’ She pressed her hands to her mouth. ‘You are saying it was my fault? My stupid fault for being so—’

      ‘Now stop right there,’ he said sternly. ‘I knew you were shy when I married you. I don’t mind only making love to you in a bedroom, if that’s where you feel most at ease. I’m only sorry I gave you the impression I was getting tired of you. I don’t think I ever could. These past weeks, with you gone...nothing has been right.’

      ‘B-but surely... I mean, you have Julia home now. That was the whole purpose of marrying me, wasn’t it? To give her a secure home.’

      ‘Funny, that. The moment she got to Mayfield I realised it was your home just as much as hers. And I didn’t want her making you unhappy, by throwing the kind of tantrums that had reduced Lady Peverell to the state she was in. You have no idea how hard I worked to bring her round, to improve her mood, to persuade her to try to make friends with you.’

      ‘You...you did? That was what you were doing with your sister all day and every day? I thought...I thought...’ Her face flamed. ‘I just thought you preferred her company to mine....’

      ‘Prefer her company? Are you mad?’ He looked at her pinched, wary expression and realised it was past time he came clean.

      ‘Mary, don’t you have any idea how lovely you are? How alluring? How much I...?’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. What if he said the words and she took them as a breach of trust? What if she didn’t want anything but the cool, practical arrangement they’d agreed on? She was a cool, practical kind of woman, after all. But dammit, if he didn’t say anything at all, they’d be right back where they started.

      ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, with a swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach as though he was about to jump a five-barred gate with a sheer drop on the other side, ‘it felt as though you’d cut out a part of me and taken it with you when you left.’

      She looked confused. Pleased would have been his choice, but at least confused was better than affronted.

      ‘But you said...’ she began speaking hesitantly. ‘You said you’d only come up here because it was the right thing to do, on my first visit to London as your wife. That you’d come to arrange my Court presentation. To...’ she drew in a breath, and looked at him with huge, wounded eyes ‘...make sure I didn’t fall in with the wrong sort of people.’

      ‘Dash it, did it sound as bad as that?’ He got up, went round to her chair and dropped to his knees at her feet. ‘I warned you I don’t have a way with words. Whatever I mean to say always seems to come out wrong, around you. And I didn’t want to blurt out the truth with all those people there, anyway. And then I thought you were still angry with me. You didn’t seem a bit pleased to see me....’

      ‘I was. Very pleased. But then you looked so cross, too. And I couldn’t forget that horrid note I left. I was sure you must be mad as fire about that. And then you said all that about coming to make sure I wasn’t getting in a tangle, and I...’

      ‘Gave as good as you got.’ He sighed. ‘I know all about going off at half-cock, Mary. I’ve been doing it most of my life. It’s only of late that I’ve learned it’s better to count to ten or so before letting rip.’

      ‘I never even knew I had a temper, until I married you.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! I didn’t mean it like that....’

      ‘No, well...’ He shrugged and leaned back on his heels. ‘You have a lot to contend with, don’t you? You made that quite clear in that list you wrote.’

      ‘Please, please don’t bring that up! I put some quite dreadful things in it. Things I didn’t mean. You are kind. Nobody else has ever given me their coat to shelter me from rain. And when I think of you going round the house without your shirt to get more coal, so as not to take a single covering off me...’ She leaned forward, and placed one palm against his cheek. ‘And you did consider my opinions, too. You asked me if I wanted to stay at Mayfield or remove to the Dog and Ferret...’

      ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have written any of those things at all, if I hadn’t made a stupid list of my own first.’ He covered her hand with his own. Enfolded it. Drew it to his chest. ‘That was my worst offence, in your eyes, wasn’t it?’

      She shook her head. ‘After a while I think I understood why you might have written it. The thought of getting married was so abhorrent to you that—’

      ‘That’s another thing you need to understand. Why it was so abhorrent. The thing is, you see, it changes people. That was what scared me. Julia’s mother, for instance. She was quiet and withdrawn all the time she was married to my father. And then she bloomed with Geoffries. She was like a different woman. Laughing all the time and full of energy. Her third husband turned her into a shell of what she’d been. And so I decided, if I had to get married, it would be to a woman who wouldn’t have the power to change me. A woman who’d accept me just as I am and let me carry on living the way I always had.’

      ‘I don’t want you to change, either,’ she said, gripping his hand hard. ‘In fact—’

      ‘Just hear me out,’ he said firmly, cutting her off before she had a chance to deflect him from his purpose. ‘I never meant you to ever know I’d written that stupid list. It was only a means to help me get my thoughts together. And my friends, seeing how low I was at the prospect of getting married, made it all into a bit of a joke. The thing is...’ he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it ‘...it was a meaningless piece of nonsense. Whereas the one you wrote...’

      Letting go of her hand, he dug into his pocket for the list she’d written.

      She gasped when he unfolded it and she saw what it was, her eyes widening in horror.

      ‘You raised some serious points,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Which I fully intend to answer.’

      ‘I really wish you wouldn’t! I’ve already said I was wrong about you being unkind and inconsiderate.’

      ‘We’ll skip over the bit about not having any money as well then, shall we?’

      Her hand flew to the pearls about her neck.

      ‘I know it was a bit wicked of me to buy jewels as well as the clothes you promised me...’

      ‘You really are the most absurd creature,’ he said with a tender smile. ‘If you wanted to punish me by squandering money on jewels—and I wouldn’t blame you if you did—you should have bought diamonds.’ He glanced down at the note. ‘I was trying to amend my behaviour, you know. I was trying to think of what you wanted, and to treat you better. I just made a mull of it.’

      ‘Yes, yes, I see that now....’

      ‘And as for the bit about family...’ he looked down at her, sorrowfully ‘...I can see how my original list made it sound as if I don’t care about family. It was another stupid, selfish thing we wrote down when we were trying to see if there was some way to make marrying anyone slightly less unpalatable....’

      He cringed when he thought how crass his behaviour had been when he’d first started to match what he liked about her to the items on his list.

      ‘The