Page 40 of Kathryn

She raised her eyebrows at him yet again.

Gerrit wracked his brains; what more did she want?

She gave a huff of annoyance. “You do not return there in the summer?”

“I visit Spenwood at the start of the season.”

“Shooting season?”

What the devil else would it be? Thankfully, Gerrit did not speak that aloud. “Correct.”

“How long do you stay?”

“Six weeks.” Six long weeks of living with his mother, during which time he spent every moment out of doors either shooting or seeing to estate matters. Gerrit did not want to think about this year’s visit—and he certainly didn’t want to talk about it—until he was forced to do so. He reached for his fork.

“Are we coming to London next Season?”

He set down his fork. “I do not come to London for the Season, I come for the Session and to do my duty.” The sooner she realized there would be no endless rounds of vapid parties and balls, the better.

She turned her wine glass around and around and around, her gaze fixed on the patterns the foot made on the snowy damask. “But you will come for some part of the year?”

“Correct.”

“You will come, but I will not?”

“I have not given the matter any thought.” Gerrit experienced an unpleasant niggle at his not entirely truthful response. Kathryn was not only extremely beautiful, she was also wild to a fault. The last thing he wanted was to watch her ensorcel one man after another during the whirl of a London Season. Distasteful memories of Christina rose up in his head, and he felt his face settle into a scowl.

He thrust the unwanted reminders of his first marriage to the back of his mind and looked at his wife. Kathryn was not waiting for any answer from him. Instead, she was staring at her wine glass, lost in thought, which meant Gerrit could gorge unremarked on her lovely face.

Hers was a classical beauty made all the more stunningly vibrant by masses of burnished copper hair. The features on her heart-shaped face were finely drawn and delicate, from her large green eyes that tilted up at the outside corners like a cat to her perfect Cupid’s bow of a mouth.

They had socialized several times since their betrothal and Gerrit had discovered—to his growing unease—that he could not look at anyone else when she was in the same room. The urge to stare was even more powerful now that they were married, and she belonged to him.

She is mine, utterly and completely.

Gerrit’s mind was appalled by the potent throb of ownership that gripped him at the primitive thought, but his body rejoiced and thrummed with anticipation. Again and again, he tried to pry his gaze from her but could not. Christina had loathed and derided his tendency to fixate on whatever fascinated him. On one memorable occasion, she had hurled both invective and a half-eaten dish of raspberry fool at his head because she thought he had looked at her too long.

He was no longer an infatuated seventeen-year-old and had become adept at controlling his curiosity. At least he’d believed he had. But his new wife mesmerized him almost beyond bearing and the wall of detachment he had built brick by painstaking brick between himself and the rest of the world had begun to crumble where she was concerned.

The dark smudges beneath her huge green eyes did nothing to dim her loveliness. In fact, he thought they made her look even more beautiful, not to mention fragile and helpless, two things she most emphatically was not.

Now that he was no longer hostile—or at least not much—about the asinine kissing game that had forced their marriage, he marveled at what sort of mind would conceive of such a thing. He also burned with curiosity to know who else had been on that bloody list and how many of them she had kissed that night.

Christ, he was an idiot.

Gerrit pulled his uncharacteristically meandering thoughts back to her question about bringing her to London with him.

You have to bring her with you. She is too enticing to leave alone in the country. You’ll come back to find her with another man’s babe in her belly.

The thought ignited an unwanted possessive burning in his chest. It wasn’t jealousy, he assured himself. It was simple practicality. He’d already had one wife who’d fucked everything in breeches. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. Until she was breeding, he needed to keep her close enough to keep an eye on her.

“You will come with me to London,” he abruptly announced. Where I shall keep you on a short bloody leash.

Her eyes glittered like the emeralds they so resembled, and the nostrils of her pert nose flared, making him worry for a moment that he’d spoken that second part aloud.

Her mulish, offended expression was not difficult to decipher. Gerrit realized that he might have couched that more diplomatically. Well, it was too late now. Besides, the sooner she knew who held the whip hand and accepted their respective positions in this marriage—Gerrit to give the orders and Kathryn to obey them—the better it would be for both of them.

“And what if I do not wish to go with you?” she asked coolly.