The Marriage Bed by Laura Lee Guhrke Read Free Book Online Page B

talents and lovemaking prowess I have had to hear about."
    "I am not with Emma Rawlins, and have not been with her for three months. Your recount of the gossip is a bit behind the times."
    "You care nothing for the humiliation I have endured at your hands."
    "I took my pleasure where I could find it after you turned me away," he shot back, hating the way she made him into a villain for fulfilling masculine needs that were natural and just when she had been unwilling to do so. "For God's sake, I'm a man, Viola! What did you expect me to do? Come to your bedside and beg? Become a monk for eight years? Wear a hair shirt and flog myself daily because I did what I had to do?"
    "What you had to do?" she repeated with disdain. "Marry me for my money, you mean."
    "Yes!" he shouted, pushed beyond endurance. "Yes, I married a woman with a dowry and income to save my estates from ruin. I made what I thought was a sensible marriage to a girl I both liked and desired. When that girl turned me out of her bed, trying to manipulate me with tears and guilt, I went elsewhere. In my position, any other man would have done the same."
    "Foolish of me, but I once thought you were better than any other man."
    "I know you did." He looked at the woman whose face was filled with loathing, and the lovely, vulnerable girl in the doorway flashed through his mind again, a girl with all the lights of the sun in her hair and all the adoration in the world in her eyes. All for him and the pedestal she had put him on. Hating him now because he had fallen off, because he had stopped being a hero and had become a flawed and ordinary man. His flash of anger dissipated as quickly as it had come. "What do you want me to say, Viola?"
    "I don't want you to say anything. I just want you to go away. Bertram has two sons. Let him inherit after you."
    "I cannot. I will not."
    "Then we are back where we started."
    Yes, they were, and he was tired of it—tired of the round and round discussions and tit-for-tat accusations, stony silences and separate beds that kept bringing them back to the same problem. No more.
    He hardened his resolve. "We started our life together nine years ago, and circumstances now force us to resume that life. The only point open for discussion is which house we shall do it in. Enderby is six miles out of London, which is less convenient, but my house in town is equipped as if for a bachelor and is therefore somewhat spartan , so—"
    "I don't even know you anymore." She shook her head, staring at him in horror. "In fact, I never really knew you at all. I cannot live with you as your wife again after all that has happened between us."
    "Nothing has been happening between us. I believe that is the material point."
    "And you expect me to go along with this?"
    He met her appalled and angry gaze. "I do not just expect it, Viola. I demand it. Tomorrow is Sunday, so have your trunks packed and ready on Monday. I will be here to fetch you at two o'clock ."
    He turned and walked toward the door. He wasn't halfway across the room before she spoke. 'Don't you see that this will never work?" she called after him, bringing him to a halt. "Don't you remember what it was like? Living as husband and wife was hell for both of us."
    "Was it?" John turned to look at her, his mind calling forth recollections of the times over the years when they had lived together. But it was not the later years, when they spent a few months together during the season for the sake of appearances that he remembered, for during those times, they had never spoken and almost never saw each other.
    No, what came to his mind now when he looked at his wife were the early days. Back then they had scrapped and fought, like any newly wedded pair, probably more than most, in fact, for they both had strong wills and strong opinions. But he didn't remember their life becoming hellish until she turned him out of bed. He slid his gaze down the length of his wife's figure, and for the life of him,