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never ours. It was crystal clear from our wedding day that you didn’t want my help with them.”
    Edward snorted. “Help! As if you had one inkling in that rackety brain of yours how to be a mother. And this is my house. Don’t forget it.”
    She had quite enough. Recalling the satisfaction her next-door neighbor had after smashing statuary in her garden, Caroline snatched up the heavy pot of pelargonium and dropped it very close to Edward’s foot. “Get out! You gave me a life interest in this house, and my sole interest is to keep you out of it! If you are to lord your ownership over me, I’ll leave London. I have enough money now. I’m no longer dependent upon your scraps of generosity.”
    Edward opened his mouth, then shut it. The muscle in his cheek danced the tarantella. She had never seen him in such a towering rage, and was nearly giddy from it. It was time he felt as frustrated as she was.
    His next words were barely audible, yet deadly just the same. “I’ve already sent Ned home. You and I are going upstairs. Now.”
    “Are you mad? What will you do? Beat me to confess? I told you, I did not invite Ned here!”
    “You are still my wife, and you will obey me.”
    Caroline laughed a little wildly. The lack of sleep had softened his brain. “Now wait a minute. Last night you said you were going to divorce me. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind.”
    “I have not. But until the matter comes before the House of Lords, I expect to resume my marital rights. Not just for one night a year, but whenever I choose. I choose now. You will serve as my mistress.”
    “You are mad.”
    “If I am, you have driven me to it. I will get you out of my system one way or another.”
    Caroline clutched her gloves, feeling dizzy. “By—by forcing me? You are not that kind of man, Edward.”
    “I don’t believe much force will be necessary.” He smiled a perfectly dreadful smile.
    Caroline swallowed. Her cold, controlled husband had obviously lost his mind. “I will not cooperate.”
    “We’ll see about that.” Scooping her up, he carried her into the house.

Chapter 4
     

    “I’ve got you now, my fine filly, and soon you’ll be ridden hard and put away wet,” Lord Carrolton exclaimed, a leer upon his long, lecherous countenance.
    Catriona careened down the staircase of Carrolton Manor, praying for someone to save her.
    —The Maid’s Master
     

    T he little hellcat had bitten him. And she was not as easy to carry as she used to be. He’d noticed last night she was rounder and deliciously soft. But he adored every inch of her alabaster skin, skin so fine he could watch blue veins pulse, skin so pearlescent she nearly glowed in the dark. It was not dark now, of course, not even noon on a rainy spring day. She had lied to him, betrayed him, tricked him, yet still he couldn’t wait to sink himself deep within her pink folds.
    But he needed to catch her first. She had locked herself in her dressing room as soon as he tossed her onto the bed, scrambling like a cat and twisting about the room, flinging the odd object at him. He avoided the shattered vase and brushed the rice powder from his jacket, then hung it neatly on the chair beside her desk. A notebook lay open, her careless loopy writing covering one-third of the page. He didn’t have his spectacles with him, and wouldn’t read her nonsense even if he did. Beth had told him, with a triumphant big-sister smirk, that Caroline seemed fond of killing off rangy, pompous, dark-haired aristocrats in her books. It would be unlucky to read about his premature demise.
    Hell and damnation. What had come over him in the garden? There she sat, a red lily in the midst of pastel blooms, taunting him. She had been so haughty about Ned and the house he’d simply snapped. He had wanted somehow to teach her something. He wasn’t sure what—his mastery, his domination, his perfect rightness . What he had proposed to her had shocked him as much as it shocked her.