Page 6 of Cold November Rake

"Pardon me?" He stepped forward, his face, which she remembered as jovial, gentle, and boyish, now turned thunderous, his bright blue eyes darkening like a gathering storm.

"You left me on our wedding night. Alone! In your large, empty house, with servants I hadn't even been introduced to properly."

"I returned⁠—"

"After a fortnight!"

"—and you had run off!"

"I left you a note. I wrote you letters."

"Yes, bragging about your travels and your numerous suitors."

"I waited for you to come for me."

He let out a laugh that bordered on hysterical.

"Not very long," he finally said.

How dare he? After toying with her, leaving her waiting for him in Norway and never coming. Never writing her another letter.

She had risen every dawn for weeks to walk down to the harbor and watch the ships come in, because he had promised.

She let out a breath. She didn't want to argue about it any longer. New leaf. New life.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "It is all in the past, and I wish to move forward."

"There is no forward, Temperance."

"I am your wife, you are my husband; there is no way but forward. Besides—" She took a step closer to him, stopping mere inches away.

As she stood before him, a sweet scent wafted off the fine wool of his evening coat.

A sharp pang sliced through Temperance's chest.

Rose water.

It was not a gentleman's cologne.

He was out with a woman tonight. His mistress.

The real reason, she surmised, that his letters had stopped. That he never came to claim her, like he had promised.

She swallowed the pain in her chest.

"Besides," she repeated, licking her drying lips. God, she was getting nervous. She had no idea how he would react to this last part—the part she had rehearsed in the carriage all the way from Wiltshire. "You are an earl."

"Yes, I am. Therefore, I have business in London and you do not. So I wish we'd go back to the prior arrangement where we don't see each other."

She refused to cower before his cold demeanor. Instead, she took another half-step toward him. "That would not do. You are an earl."

"You said that already."

"Which means you need an heir. And I am here t-to..." Her voice cracked. Oh, drat it, Temperance, just say it. "I am here to supply you with one."

Sutton choked on air. He coughed into his sleeve, then narrowed his eyes on her. "Do you mean you are with child and are here to pass off another man's offspring as mine?"

Temperance gasped, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. She couldn't believe the venom in his voice and his implication that she had been unfaithful to him when she had been anything but, and he had been openly parading his mistress at every opportunity.