Free When the Duke Returns by Eloisa James

stay up half the night stitching seams for the poor. But when you aren’t engaged in charitable activities, you knot silk laces that are as light as cobwebs.”
    â€œWhat?” she said faintly, dropping back into her chair.
    â€œLight as cobwebs,” Cosway repeated, reseating himself as well. “I remember actually considering whether I should request further details. I was establishing a weaving factory in India.”
    â€œYou were— what ?”
    â€œWeaving. You know, silks.”
    â€œI thought you were wandering around the Nile.”
    â€œWell, that too. But I’m afflicted by curiosity. I can’t go to a new place without wanting to figure out how things are made, and how they might be made better. That leads to shipping them here and there, generally back to England for sale.”
    â€œYou’re a merchant,” Isidore said flatly. “Does your mother know of this development?”
    He thought about it. “I have no idea. I expect not.”
    â€œI truly feel sorry for her. You do realize that I wasn’t even living with her during the time when she wrote all those letters describing my domestic virtues?”
    â€œA revelation I find, sadly, unsurprising. I’m afraid my arrival has been a terrible shock to my mother. All the time she was sending me letters about my submissive, chaste wife—”
    â€œI am chaste!” Isidore flashed.
    He met her eyes. “I know that.”
    A flare of heat went straight down her back to her legs. “So you thought I was a meek little Puritan—”
    â€œTame,” he said, nodding. There was an annoying hint of a smile in his eyes. “Meek and obedient.”
    â€œYour mother has much to answer for.”
    â€œI formed a picture of our marriage based on that wife.”
    â€œWho doesn’t exist.”
    He nodded, but his face sobered. “You’re obviously far more intelligent than the pliable woman my mother described, Isidore. So I have to tell you that from whatI’ve seen in the world, the best marriages are those in which a man’s wife is—well, biddable.”
    Isidore felt her temper rising again but pushed it down. What could she expect? He may not have the outward trappings of an English gentleman, but he was voicing what many a man believed.
    â€œI agree,” she said. “Although I would broaden the category. Were I to choose my own spouse, for example, I would like him to be, shall we say, civilized?”
    His teeth were very white against his golden skin when he smiled. “Meek and obedient, in other words?”
    â€œThose are not popular words among men. But I could see myself with a husband who was more quiet than myself. I have—” she coughed “—a terrible temper.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œAll this sarcasm can’t be good for you,” she said. “You told me in the carriage that you like your every utterance to be straightforward.”
    He laughed. “I can see you riding roughshod over some poor devil of a husband.”
    â€œI wouldn’t,” she said, stung. “We could simply discuss things together. And come to an agreement that didn’t involve my opinion losing ground to his simply because I was his wife.”
    â€œThat’s reasonable. But the truth of it is that you would smile at him, and crook your finger, and the man would come to you as tame as a lapdog.”
    Isidore shook her head. “It’s not the sort of relationship you would understand.”
    â€œI shall enjoy seeing you engage in it. If we annul our marriage and I can watch some other fellow experiencing it with you. Naturally I would repay your dowry with ample interest.”
    So he didn’t want to come anywhere near her. Isidore was so stoked by rage that she could hardly speak. Shewas being rejected— rejected!— by her husband after waiting for him for years. She got up again and walked a few