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‘I would be happy to give you a tour of the place as soon as I put on a clean shirt.’ To her utter dismay he was already untucking the one he was wearing. She caught the briefest glimpse of the skin of his abdomen and it was dusted with dark hair. Her eyes fixed to that area in the hope that she would see more of his body before she tore them away, disgusted at her own wayward thoughts.
‘Then kindly wait for me to leave. I have no desire to watch.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if you did. You might find it entertaining. Or educational.’ He shot her such an astute glance, his dark eyes practically smouldering, that she felt herself blush even hotter. He had known that she was looking at him wantonly. How mortifying was that? But then again, he was probably quite used to women looking at him and lusting after him. Not that she had been lusting exactly, it was more out of curiosity. Perhaps it was lustful curiosity? The man was devilishly handsome and knew it. In that wet shirt he looked delicious. It clung to his broad shoulders and chest, giving her a tantalising glimpse of the strength and power of his body. In places the fabric was almost transparent so she could definitely see that there was more of that intriguing dark hair that her fingers ached to explore.
Again she found her eyes drifting below his neck, but as she dragged them reluctantly back to his face the arrogant wretch was grinning unashamedly. Connie wanted to cover her burning face with her hands and curl up into a ball. She managed to paste a haughty expression on her face before she turned around and prepared to exit the room with as much fake dignity as she could muster. Lost for any suitable words, she stalked towards the door and yanked it open. She could still hear his deep chuckle after she slammed it shut behind her.
Constance did not blush prettily, Aaron realised. She positively glowed with abject mortification. Every inch of her visible, milky white skin had turned a most florid shade of pink. Two circular crimson spots had formed on her cheeks, as if they had been painted on with a brush, and her delicate, swanlike neck was covered in angry blotches. And with her vivid red hair already escaping the confines of its pins, tiny strands floated around her head like sparks rising from a bonfire. She had managed to create an entire spectrum of red above her neck in just a few seconds. Aaron had never seen anything quite like it.
She certainly had not looked anything like the ice maiden he had taken his vows next to or the firebrand he had fought with last night. Nor had she sounded like one. The woman who had just stormed out of his bedchamber was a completely different Constance altogether and one he doubted many people had ever seen. Rumpled, flummoxed, innocent Connie was a delight and Aaron could not help wondering if she blushed all the way down those glorious long legs of hers to the tips of her toes. Now that was a blush he would pay good money to see. To think he had brought about such an unexpected transformation just by attempting to take off his shirt—well, that was just too funny. He had only done it in the first place to remind her that she was overstepping boundaries and to get her to leave. Who knew that regal, haughty, argumentative Miss Stuart was easily embarrassed?
Not Miss Stuart, he corrected, she was Lady Constance Wincanton now. She had been positively outraged to have been called that, too. Those were two little things he would squirrel away as ammunition for the future. Aaron had a feeling he was going to need it. When he had sneaked past her room earlier, in a rare display of complete cowardice, he had just congratulated himself on his stealth. Then she had thrown the book at him.
Literally.
He had not expected that. The irony of that book’s title was not lost on him either. Connie could be quite shrewish when she put her mind to it.
But she was a blushing shrew. A shrew who was so loyal to her family that she had agreed to marry a man that she despised. A shrew who had cried in his arms because her fiancé was an idiot and one who had kissed him as if she had been born to do it. Despite all of the inconvenient aspects of his hasty marriage to Connie, Aaron could still not keep his mind off that kiss. His mind had wandered back to it repeatedly during his ride this morning and each time he caught himself thinking about it he was smiling. It had been such a long time since any of his smiles had been genuine that he had quite forgotten how invigorating one could be. And it had been a most spectacular kiss.
Catching himself smiling wistfully again, Aaron snatched a clean shirt from the wardrobe and then wound a fresh cravat around his neck. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could tame Connie, even if he wanted to, but he did need to find a way that they could live together. At least in the short term. He had made his father a promise. He might not want to father a child, but he wanted to put his father’s mind at ease. It was the least he could do after everything he had done. He had taken a life so it seemed only fair that he should make one.
Back in her own room, Connie frantically dabbed her hot face with cold water. How she hated being a redhead. Her pale skin provided no camouflage for the embarrassment that had flooded her face and he had seen it. Why did fate keep allowing Aaron Wincanton to see her when she was at her least composed? He had seen her tears, witnessed the first bloom of her passion, been present when her father had cruelly berated her and now he also knew that she was a complete innocent in all matters pertaining to men. At the grand old age of four and twenty, the mere prospect of seeing a man without his shirt on had sent her running for the hills red-faced. All of her perfectly constructed, haughty, uninterested and unflappable façade had disintegrated in seconds and, to add insult to injury, she was more than a little peeved that she had not been brave enough to stand her ground and feast her hungry eyes on the wretch’s nude torso. And that wretch had first called her the Ginger Amazonian. It was all too humiliating.
His knock at the door came too soon and Connie forced some steel into her backbone before she went to open it. Aaron completely filled the door frame and was smiling. Just that made her silly pulse speed up. His hair was still slightly damp, which encouraged it to curl up boyishly at the ends, but he was perfectly turned out in a fresh white shirt and dark black coat. He looked exactly like the arrogant and handsome devil that he was and she felt so very unattractive in comparison. Aside from the unflattering pink tinge to her face, her hair was a complete disaster and was wilfully refusing to do as it was told. Connie had never been any good at pinning her own hair into submission, but without a maid of her own she had had no other choice this morning and it showed. She was not really surprised that he had no interest in bedding her. Who would?
‘Are you ready for your tour Mrs Wincanton?’
‘Do not call me that!’ It made her sound like his property, which she was, damn him.
‘But you continue to call me Mr Wincanton, so I was merely trying to be polite. As you are constantly reminding me not to call you Connie, I confess I am now at a loss at what to call you—perhaps wife?’ His lips were curving upwards in an expression that he probably knew made him appear to be charming.
‘My name is Constance.’ Her voice sounded suitably clipped as she gave him her very best imperious stare. It usually withered the most insolent of gentlemen but it only served to make Aaron Wincanton grin. Of course, that drew her eyes to the twin dimples that appeared on either side of his irritatingly perfect face, providing her with two more thing that she wanted to touch. And taste. Good heavens, where did that thought come from?
He was still smiling. ‘I dislike the name Constance. It comes from the word constancy. That does not suit you at all.’
‘Constancy means steadfast and resolute. I am both of those things.’
He appeared to ponder this for a minute. As he was still blocking the door Connie had no option but to stand and wait for him to finish whatever it was he seemed intent on saying. He smelled delightful.
‘I looked the word up in the dictionary. It has many meanings, and whilst I agree you can be stubborn...’
‘Steadfast and resolute,’ she corrected automatically.
‘Constancy also means that something remains the same, no matter what the circumstances. You, Mrs Wincanton, are a seething cauldron of different emotions. I never quite know which to expect from one moment to the next. You are as changeable as the weather. Therefore, I simply refuse to call you Constance. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary. You do not like Mrs Wincanton and I could not help noticing that you winced a bit when I affectionately called you wife. So that leaves me with Connie, which was always my preferred choice.’
Connie was still reeling from being compared to a seething cauldron of emotions, but worried that he might elaborate on that observation more if she did not concede, so she rolled her eyes and looked down her nose at him. ‘Call me what you will.’
Finally, he stepped away from the door and offered her his arm. ‘Shall you call me Aaron or husband? Or perhaps my dear or my darling?’ His voice had dropped conspiratorially, giving it a seductive edge that set her traitorous pulse fluttering faster. Why did the man always have to resort to flirting? He must know that it was unsettling. Connie had never quite known how to react to it from anyone at the best of times, seeing it as a ruse to get to her dowry or as something disingenuous that was only done because that particular gentleman flirted out of habit. But from him, it was even worse. Whilst he did have a habit of flirting with every woman, he certainly was not flirting with her to get her dowry. It was too late for that. But when Aaron flirted with her, he had a way of staring deeply into her eyes as if he wanted to see into her very soul and truly understand her, which was a completely ridiculous notion. As if he cared one way or another about her soul. But he did have an intensity in his eyes that made her wonder nevertheless. It made her feel all at sea and so pathetically grateful that he had bestowed her with some attention that she did not quite know herself at all.
She limply took his arm, but avoided looking at him. It was easy to picture his smug expression well enough as she felt another ugly blush stain her wan face. ‘Lead the way, Aaron.’
And now he had just seen her be petulant, too—and she just knew that he was smiling.
Chapter Seven
Fortunately, their paths only crossed briefly for the next few days. Connie wiled away the hours reading or embroidering in her own little sitting room, a place that had become both her sanctuary as well as her prison, and longed to go outside and ride as her new husband did. Aaron, on the other hand, disappeared for several hours every morning, surveying the estate. It apparently took up a great deal of his thoughts as well because if he was not out riding around it, he was ensconced in the library or his bedchamber reading about farming methods or animal husbandry or some other such endeavour. But he never invaded her private space and she never invaded his.
Connie was hopelessly lonely. She missed her mother and her brother dreadfully and was desperate to speak to them, but the one letter she had written, and risked sending to Redbridge House, had been unceremoniously returned unopened. The Wincanton servants were polite but understandably wary of her and, because she did not have a particular maid designated to her yet, Connie’s only real conversations occurred with her husband. As they were still virtual strangers, and had been brought up to be mortal enemies, those conversations were hardly meaningful.
They met every evening for dinner, and occasionally over lunch, in the small family dining room. When they did, their interactions followed much the same pattern. He would flirt and she would parry haughtily until the pair of them were issuing mindless barbs to top the other. With nothing else to do, those interactions had quite become the highlight of Connie’s miserable day. Aside from that they had little to do with one another. Connie had not yet plucked up the courage to broach the subject of an annulment.
A maid disturbed her foray into self-pity. ‘Viscount Ardleigh requires your presence in his study, Lady Constance.’
Connie had been dreading the return of Aaron’s father. Now it appeared that he was here. ‘Is my husband back from his ride yet?’ Bizarrely, she did not want to face the viscount for the first time without Aaron, although it was a sorry state of affairs that she desperately wanted his comfort at all when he had made it quite plain he would never want hers.
‘Not yet, Lady Constance. Shall I send someone out to find him?’
Connie shook her head. Viscount Ardleigh would see that as cowardice on her part. No matter how terrified she really was about meeting that dreadful man on her own, she would rather walk over broken glass barefoot than let him know that. The last time she had laid eyes on the viscount he had been cruelly laughing at her ruination in front of a room full of onlookers and congratulating his son for doing it. She had been stunned and ashamed.
Vulnerable.
Pathetic.
This time, he would see the unyielding and defiant Constance Stuart.
With a deliberate lack of haste, Connie rose and made her way to the study. It was a room she had only glimpsed from the hallway and, like his bedchamber, Viscount Ardleigh had decorated the walls with the heads of dead animals. She found his love of taxidermy both disturbing, and a little intimidating, but fortunately it was only confined to those two rooms. Outside the door, Connie drew herself up to her full height and composed her features into an indifferent mask. First impressions were important and this one would serve to set the tone of her relationship with her father’s worst enemy.
‘Enter.’ The voice was deep and stern, not at all like his son’s seductive, mellow tones that turned her to pudding. Connie grasped the handle and glided inside with her hands folded primly in front of her and her nose ever so slightly in the air because, despite her unfortunate marriage, she was still a Stuart.
‘You wished to see me, my lord?’ Because politeness dictated that she defer to his title, she inclined her head as little as possible, then looked him straight in the eye. The first thing that she noticed was how like Aaron he was, except much older. The once-dark hair was now more grey than black—but the eyes were almost exact replicas. Almost. Where Aaron’s were warm and filled with mischief Viscount Ardleigh’s were hard and cold.
‘Come closer, girl, so that I can get a proper look at you.’ Her new father-in-law made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was looking her up and down. Connie did her best to endure his scrutiny stoically. ‘You are so very tall close up, aren’t you? But not a dead loss. You have quite good birthing hips and you look fertile enough. Turn around, girl.’
It was like being an insect under a magnifying glance and Connie refused to lower herself further. ‘I am not an exhibit in a side show, my lord, therefore I will not turn around and behave like one.’
His grey eyebrows lifted slightly at her refusal. ‘You have spirit, I will give you that, Constance Stuart, but I cannot pretend to be happy about this match. I had never thought to have to tolerate a Stuart under my roof. But Aaron is stubborn and I suppose your womb will do as well as any other woman’s. However, I must say I am pleased that your betrothal to the Marquis of Deal did not come to fruition, so I suppose I must be grateful for that. Your idiot father must be spitting feathers.’ His sharp, angry laugh grated.
There were a hundred spiteful retorts that she wanted to make so it was difficult to know which of his points to take umbrage with first. ‘I can assure you, quite emphatically, my lord, that I will not be the mother of your grandchildren.’
To her delight that seemed to bring him up short and he glared at her. ‘The servants have told me that you keep to your own chamber at night. That will have to stop, missy. I want a grandson!’
‘And I want to be a million miles away from you and your dreadful family. It seems that both of us are doomed to have to deal with some disappointment.’
Aaron had not been having a particularly good morning, not that any morning started particularly well any more. He had woken himself up with his own screaming an hour before dawn, drenched in sweat and tangled in the damp bedcovers. As usual, completely shaken and exhausted, he had crawled out of bed straight away to escape the images that haunted him. Bitter experience had taught him that he would not go back to sleep again, not with his heart pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer against his ribs and the horrifying memories so fresh in his mind that he could smell the metallic tang of blood as if he were still surrounded by it. Covered in it.
When he had first started having the nightmares after his regiment had stormed Ciudad Rodrigo, Aaron had thought that they would only be temporary. As the war went on, the business of keeping the rest of his men safe had occupied most of his time, the dreams still plaguing him infrequently. They had been awful when they came, but he had been able to separate them from his daily horrors, almost as if he had locked them in a box to keep them for another time. Unfortunately, his box bore a striking similarity to Pandora’s. As soon as his feet had stepped back on to English soil it had opened and steadfastly refused to close again. Every painful, horrifying memory had gushed out, demanding atonement. The nightmares were incessant and vivid, coming nightly with alarming regularity. To begin with it had bothered him. Now that he had been home for a few months when so many of his comrades had been left behind to rot in foreign soil, he accepted the nightly ordeal as penance. Under the circumstances, he deserved the torture. He had caused death, therefore like every murderer he should pay.
This morning, Aaron had washed and dressed quickly, saddled his own horse and had been galloping across the estate as the sun’s rays first appeared over the horizon. The exercise never made the horror disappear, but it did serve to exorcise the worst of it from his mind so that he could function. Just after dawn he had collided with one of the estate’s tenants and the man was not very happy. Once he had noisily aired his grievances Aaron conceded that the man made a valid argument. Apparently, under the terms of his tenancy agreement he had to grow whatever crop the estate wanted him to grow and had to use the seed given to him. Quite rightly, he had wanted to know why the promised seed had not yet been forthcoming, especially as it should have been sown weeks ago. Aaron wanted to know the answer, too, and had promised the poor fellow that he would seek out Thomas, the estate manager, but the man was nowhere to be found.
It confirmed all of Aaron’s worries about the future of the estate. He might not yet be an expert on farming, but even he could see that they were unlikely to turn a profit if their crop was so late in the ground. With a growing sense of foreboding, and to have more proof to take to his stubborn father, Aaron had spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon checking on the other tenants. All had similar complaints—however, for many the lack of seed was merely the tip of the iceberg. It also appeared that while their revenues were consistently falling each year, the rents that they were charged were rising significantly. Many farmers complained that they were close to not being able to afford to continue. Already, several farms lay abandoned, their fields choked with weeds that would not make any money. Such gross mismanagement was not going to turn around the estate’s ailing fortunes any time soon.
Aaron walked his horse into the stable yard, tired and completely worn down, but broke into a run the moment he spied his father’s carriage parked outside. The old man had come home early to spite him and probably to cause mischief. The last thing he wanted was his father rubbing Connie up the wrong way, especially as she was showing some signs of civility towards him. Both of them needed a mediator when they collided or likely all hell would soon break lose. Unfortunately, as soon as he stepped foot in the house he heard his father practically roar and realised that he was too late. Hell had already broken and was running loose all over his father’s study with its arms waving.
Aaron skidded to a halt outside the open door just in time to witness his fiery wife standing toe to toe and eye to eye with his snarling father. Her elegant hands were curled into her signature angry fists at her sides and Aaron found himself scanning the immediate vicinity for heavy objects in case she was tempted to throw something again. The woman had an excellent aim and a very strong arm. ‘I see you have already met?’ he said breezily as he walked towards them, smiling as if nothing whatsoever was amiss. Both sets of eyes swivelled angrily in his directions, but neither dropped their combative stance.
‘Your wife needs to learn her place, Aaron!’
‘Your father needs to learn some manners!’
Someone had to behave like an adult. ‘Sit down, the pair of you.’ To emphasise that his words were an order, not a request, Aaron forcefully pointed at two empty chairs with each of his hands.
Connie sniffed, but retreated regally to one of the chairs, sitting primly as if butter would not melt in her tart mouth. His father looked a little blue around the gills and his breathing was more laboured than Aaron wanted to hear, but once Connie was sat he reluctantly did the same. He was going to have to tell her, he realised, and hope that she understood. As difficult and beastly as his father was, he was in no state to endure daily combat, no matter how much he might deserve it.
‘Has anyone rung for tea?’ Convinced that the answer was going to be no, Aaron walked towards the bell pull and gave it a hefty tug before sitting down himself. ‘I appreciate that this is an awkward time for all of us,’ he began with forced calmness, ‘but we are a family now and, therefore, we must find a way to live together peaceably.’
‘Then I suggest that your father desists from treating me as if I am a brood mare up for purchase. He has done everything except check my teeth!’ Connie’s usually plump lips were drawn into a thin line and he could feel the outrage radiating off her, so incandescent was her barely controlled anger.
‘She says that she refuses to have your children, Aaron. How dare she?’
Aaron felt his spirits sink from despair to despondency. How typical that the pair of them would go for the most controversial of topics straight away. Even the most skilled of diplomats would struggle to find a way out of this bed of thorns and Aaron knew that there was absolutely nothing that he could say, here and now, that would please both of them. Under the circumstances, that left him with only one option and he just knew that he was going to pay dearly for it.
‘Connie, could you go to your room, please?’ Aaron tried to say it as kindly, yet as adamantly, as he could, but still her smart mouth opened to argue. Much as he hated to do it, he held up his hand to stop her. ‘I said go to your room, Constance! We will discuss this later.’ And he would probably feel the full weight of The Complete Farmer on his cranium, too, but it couldn’t be helped. Aaron had to separate them in order to deal with this issue effectively.
Connie’s green eyes widened, then he watched them harden into sharp emeralds as she glared back at him with barely disguised contempt. She stood abruptly and flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her exactly as a true shrew would.