Read The Marriage Bed for Free Online Page A

grieved to hear of your cousin's death. Please accept my condolences."
    He stiffened at her words, the wound still too fresh for him to react with conventional poise at a reminder of it. He swallowed hard, and it took him a moment to reply. "T hank you."
    He had only met the Duchess of Tremore a few times, but she had always seemed to him to be a sensitive, perceptive woman, and she must have seen something of what he felt. At once, she turned the conversation to trivial topics, and to John 's relief, her husband played along.
    They sat down in the gilded, petit-point chairs and discussed the weather, the events of the season, and their mutual acquaintance, Dylan Moore—his marriage the previous autumn and the upcoming performance of his new symphony at Covent Garden . But when half an hour went by and Viola still had not joined them, John 's patience began to wear thin.
    At an opportune moment, he turned the conversation to his wife. "Forgive me," he said to the duchess, "but the viscountess and I must be on our way shortly. I wonder if you might have a footman take her trunks downstairs? "
    "I will see if Viola has packed her trunks," she said, and the difference between her words and John 's request confirmed his suspicion. He was in for a fight.
    The duchess stood up and both men did the same, bowing as she left them. In the wake of her departure, he and the duke moved to opposite sides of the room as if by tacit agreement to keep as far away from each other as possible. Neither sat down again and neither one of them spoke. The tension in the air was thick and heavy, like the hot stillness of an August afternoon just before the storm breaks.
    Nearly nine years since he had last been in this room. The windows were still topped with gold silk valances, just as he remembered. The walls were still painted white, with the same gilded moldings and intricate plaster work. Blue and green tapestries hung on the walls and the same blue, gold, and claret Axminster carpet covered the floor. Tremore was a traditional man. He never changed anything. John felt the strange sensation that he had stepped back in time.
    He turned to the tall, narrow windows that looked out over Grosvenor Square . He stared through the glass, down to the oval park below, watching the carriages roll along the street that curved around the soft grass and elm trees. Opulent carriages of the ton's most prominent families, their occupants no doubt were on their way home from an afternoon of making calls. He knew it must be nigh on six o'clock .
    His own landau, open to the fine spring afternoon, stood directly below, a carriage as luxurious as any that passed it. That had not always been the case. The last time he looked out of these windows, his carriage and his circumstances had been vastly different.
    Standing here now, so many years later, he could still remember the man he'd been then, a man who had inherited not only his father's title and estates, but his father's enormous debts as well, a man showered with the duties of a peer and no means with which to fulfill them.
    Before his father's death, he had been like most young gentlemen of his acquaintance—feckless, foolish, and so bloody irresponsible. A man who spent every shilling of his allowance with no thought to where it came from, with no idea that the funds his father sent him were all on credit.
    He rested his forehead on the window glass. That London season nine years ago, he'd still been reeling from the shock of discovering that being a peer had responsibilities, ones his parent had so shamelessly ignored. Creditors that needed to be reimbursed. Drains that needed repair to alleviate the typhoid outbreak among his tenants. Animals that had to be fed, crops that had to be planted, and servants who needed to be paid the months of back wages owed them. Looking at his tenants and his servants then, he had known they were taking his measure with cynical eyes, regarding him as not much of an