Free Married to the Marquess by Rebecca Connolly Page A

his throat tighten, and he could not have spoken should he have wished to.
    “Knowing how the two of you feel about each other,” Moira continued, “I can only imagine how it must have felt for a woman who is as proud as she is to come and tell you that she needed you to stay. Did she really say that it was about your reputation?”
    He nodded slowly, his mind working as though through mud.
    A smile flickered across her lips. “I doubt she really thought that. Everybody knows how Society feels about you. It wasn’t about you at all, or at least, very little. She told you it would involve you because she couldn’t admit that she would be the only one affected, and considering the arrangement you have, she would be left here all alone to deal with the shame and the gossip and the rumors.”
    Derek opened his mouth, but Moira went on without giving him opportunity to answer.
    “She just lost her mother, Derek. Her mother . Yes, she was, by all accounts, a horrible woman, and nobody else misses her, but did you ever consider that Katherine might? I don’t care if she is the spawn of Hades, she deserves a little understanding from her husband , of all people.”
    “Moira,” Nathan said softly as he watched Derek.
    “I’m almost finished,” she assured him, still looking at Derek as well. “I’m not saying that she is blameless, Derek. But the fact remains that at this moment, your wife, whom you consider a tyrant and a cold-hearted witch, is upstairs in her room, refusing everything and everyone. I am asking you to put aside your need to spite her just for a while. Show her that there is a man with a heart inside her husband.”
    Derek could not move, could not breathe. He had never felt more ashamed of himself in his life. While he knew perfectly well that he was exactly the same height and weight and stature that he had been only moments before, at the moment he felt about three feet tall and barely the weight of a blade of grass. She could have knocked him over with a whisper.
    He felt Moira’s hand on his arm and found himself looking into those eyes of hers again. “I wouldn’t say these things if I didn’t like you, Derek,” she said with a smile. “You know that, right?”
    He nodded almost mechanically, but he did know it, and he liked Moira in return. He could not say it at the moment, though his throat worked as if it wanted to anyway.
    “But don’t think I won’t smack you later,” she said, her grin turning impish. “A good whack on the back of the head can do wonders for a man.” She looked around at the lot of them, then winked at her husband, who smiled broadly. Then she turned on her heel and left without looking back.
    For the longest time, nobody said a word. Then, because he could not stand silence, Colin said, “I don’t know that I will ever understand women, nor wives in particular, but I think that Moira might be the most terrifying woman I have ever met, including Katherine.”
    “And how I love her,” Nathan sighed proudly as he watched his wife stride away.
    “Shut up, Nate,” his friends replied in unison as they went back to the horses.
    Derek joined them, but he knew that Moira’s words would haunt him for quite some time. He vowed silently to himself that he would try harder to attempt to see beyond Kate’s prickly shell.
    But he couldn’t deny that he was more than a little nervous of what would happen if he did not fight back when Kate tossed her harpoons at him.
    With a tender rub to the back of his head, as if he could feel the threatened slap from Moira, he pushed the thoughts of his wife out for the time being.
    They would come back later, as would the guilt.
    If it ever left at all.

C hapter S ix

    K atherine very studiously avoided contact with anybody after her appalling behavior with Whitlock. She shut herself up in her room for the remainder of the day, went to sleep rather early, and woke rather late the next morning.
    She slowly made her way downstairs,