Page 27 of Dangerous

The marquess ignored the other man’s improper reference to pregnancy and looked from the towering baron to Mia, his pale eyes darkening, as if he were imagining putting her in such a condition.

Would she ever stop blushing? Mia looked away from her husband and caught the baron staring at her with a knowing smirk. She scowled up at him and shook her head.

Ramsay’s booming laugh once again shook the room and Mia wondered if it was too late to kick him.

Chapter Nine

Adam settled his wife on the forward-facing seat and took the one across from her. He noticed, for the first time, faint smudges beneath her large green eyes. “You are tired, my lady?”

“A little. But I am relieved to have the ceremony over. I am looking forward to seeing your house.” She gazed out the window into the darkening streets.

“It is your house, now, as well,” he reminded her, admiring the graceful line of her neck.

“Yes, of course.” She smiled and turned back to him, folding her hands in her lap. Her pale green gown was simple and becoming. It was modestly cut, displaying only the upper slopes of her small breasts. In the half-light she looked like a much younger woman, until the carriage passed beneath a lantern and illuminated her green eyes—eyes that usually sparkled with sinful, wicked things but now appeared tired and lackluster.

Adam cleared his throat. “I understand several of your servants have already settled in.” He’d seen the hulking blond footman transporting boxes and portmanteaus into his house only this morning.

“Yes, my lord.” Her compliant words matched her submissive look.

Adam was skilled at reading people’s faces, part of what made him such an excellent card player. His new wife had several small, but telling looks. Like the one she had just given him. Whenever she widened her eyes and followed it with an innocent lowering of her gaze, he knew she was attempting to divert her listener away from something she wished to conceal. Was she trying to hide something about the footman?

“I have not brought many servants with me, my lord. LaValle, my maid, and Paley and Gamble, the footmen who served me at my father’s house.”

Adam remained silent, a tactic that rarely failed to bear results.

“I believe your butler has already found room for them.”

“Hill is very efficient.”

A long pause inserted itself.

“You keep quite a large staff at Exley House, my lord?”

“Yes.” He was amused by her attempt to draw the conversation away from her handsome servant, but he would not aid her in the effort. He could see she waited for him to expand his one-word answer. When he didn’t, she filled the brittle silence.

“Will that change now that we are going to the country?”

“All but a few of my servants will remain in London to keep the house prepared for my return.” Adam would swear she was pleased by his words. That was interesting, not to mention somewhat humbling. So, she was eager for him to leave her at Exham and return to London. He supposed it was no less than he deserved.

Adam watched her silent profile, aware that he should be speaking to her, telling her about her new home, talking about the weather, anything but sitting here and brooding. He was behaving even more disobligingly than usual but he could not seem to stop himself. He knew the reason why, too, even though he’d spent the last ten days first denying it and then fighting it. He was obsessed by her—at least by the thought of bedding her—and it scared him. More than anything had scared him in a long, long time.

He had hoped—foolishly, it now seemed—that time away from her before their wedding would help to cool his ardor. When that had not been enough to drive her from his thoughts, he’d gone to Susannah, a decision that had been ill-conceived, to say the least. The only thing to come out of that evening, other than a rather large gash on his forehead from the vase Susannah had hurled at him, was the realization their union was over.

He’d not planned to end his association with the tempestuous actress after he’d married. Why should he? The marriage he and his wife had planned was nothing more than a business arrangement. But kissing Susannah had been like eating sawdust and Adam knew it would be the same with any woman but one. At least until he’d bedded the green-eyed witch.

Adam studied the diminutive enigma seated across from him and was seized by a ferocious desire to lift her skirts and take her before they even reached Exley House. It was his legal right to do so. She was his, body and soul. And he was so bloody hard for her it was torture. He could pull her onto his lap and put an end to the quasi-erect state he’d been in for days.

His body ached with the primitive desire to possess her but his mind was appalled at the chaos of his emotions. He needed to rein in the rampaging lust, not to mention the ridiculous jealousy that assailed him like a hail of arrows every time another man even looked at her. He’d even wanted to hurt Ramsay when he’d seen how familiarly he’d treated Mia earlier. Adam frowned. And just what the hell had the two of them been talking about so intently?

And then there was that bloody footman. Adam bit back a groan. He was in danger of making himself mad about his wife’s relationship—real or imagined—with her lummox of a footman.

Adam set his jaw. This interminable carriage ride would be the last time he permitted such mental disorder. He would bed the woman and they would leave for Exham in a few days. He would deposit her in the country, as she clearly wished for him to do, and visit her every four or five weeks until she was breeding. The sooner he got her with child, the sooner he could stay away from her and the unnerving effect she had on him and resume his quiet, predictable existence.

* * *

Mia gazed out the darkened window, her mind on the man across from her. She was not accustomed to spending so much time with a man and certainly not with one who was so quiet and inscrutable.

The sultan had been simple in his wants if not always easy with his demands. She’d pleasured him or submitted to him and then returned to the comfort of the harem. Baba Hassan did not expect or desire conversation from a woman, quite the reverse. He had usually become displeased when faced with a garrulous woman.