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to produce some heirs of his own." Even as she spoke she wished she could simply stop and bite down hard on her tongue. She felt as if her cheeks had burst into flames. She had been trying to understand clearly his motives for marrying her—and had unfortunately thought aloud.
    "Indeed, my lady?" The tenor lightness of his voice did not at all match his dark, satanic looks, she thought. At the moment it was quite soft—but deadly cold. "Are you volunteering your services?"
    She found herself desperately and deliberately wondering if he had tied the intricate knot of his neckcloth himself or if his valet had done it for him. She lowered her eyes to it. She had lain awake last night wondering, among other things, if… His words now seemed to indicate that he had not intended that to be one of her duties during the coming weeks.
    "You are my wife." His voice was still soft and pleasant—and seemingly chiseled out of the ice of the North Pole.
    "Yes, sir." She knew very well that his valet must have helped him into his coat. He could never have shrugged into it himself. It fit him like a second skin and displayed admirably the breadth of his shoulders. She wondered if the famous and very expensive Western was his tailor.
    "We are going to have to stop early," he said, looking past her to the window and narrowing his eyes again. "Confound it, it is raining again and heavily too."
    She found the rain a welcome relief from the direction the conversation had taken. It was something—one of about a hundred questions—she ought to have asked yesterday before agreeing to anything, certainly before signing any papers. But she had not thought of it until much later, until she was sitting at home darning Philip's stockings, in fact. But then she could hardly have asked the question anyway—"Do you intend to bed me, sir?" The very thought of asking such a thing aloud could turn her alternately hot and cold.
    He was very handsome and even rather alarmingly attractive. He was also quite unpleasant. Quite undesirable as either a husband or a I—or a lover.
    If it did not happen, of course—and fortunately it seemed very unlikely that it would—then she would go through life without ever knowing what it felt like to be fully a wife. She would never have children of her own. It was something she had fully expected for a long time—certainly since Papa's death and her understanding of the family's poverty. It was also something that seemed even more depressing now that there was no doubt at all, now that there was no hope… She would have liked to know… She thought she knew what happened, but knowing such a thing and experiencing it were vastly different things, she supposed. But the trend of her thoughts distressed her. They were not the thoughts of a proper lady.
    The rain became first heavy and then heavier and finally torrential. The road became a light brown sea of mud, and it was impossible to see more than a few yards from the windows of the carriage. After fifteen minutes of very slow progress and some alarming slithering, the carriage turned into the cobbled yard of a wayside inn that was not at all the sort of establishment one might expect the Marquess of Staunton, heir to a dukedom, to patronize. At least, that was what his disdainful expression told Charity as they waited for the door to be opened and the steps to be set down.
    She thought of what Lord Rowling had said of rainy wedding days. If he was correct, theirs should be the most blissful marriage in the history of the world. She smiled rather ruefully to herself.
    She was hurried inside the dark, low-ceilinged taproom of the inn beneath a large black umbrella that the marquess held over her head. She stood shaking the water from the hem of her dress and cloak while he talked with the innkeeper, an enormous man who looked more irritated than delighted at the unexpected business the rain was bringing to his inn.
    "Come," her husband said finally, turning back to her