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looking at them with a sort of amused indulgence that suggested they were seen as a newly married
couple living through a honeymoon. And in many ways they were. Stephanie found that even her need for
quietness and privacy was waning. A couple of times during the evenings after dinner she had retired to
her own sitting room with a book, feeling the need to be away from his eyes and his voice. Feeling the
need to beherself . And yet the second time it happened, remembering how the first time she had been
unable to concentrate on her reading or do any constructive thinking either, she took her book and went
back downstairs. She found him in the library, also reading.
"May I join you?" she asked.
He had got to his feet as she entered; he always stood when she came into a room. He was always the
perfect gentleman.
"Of course, my dear," he said, indicating the comfortable-looking leather chair on the opposite side of
the fireplace from his. He waited for her to seat herself before resuming his own place.
At first she was self-conscious and read and reread the same paragraph without comprehending a single
word. But after a while she looked up with a slight start, wondering for how long she had been absorbed
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in her book. He was reclined in his chair, looking very comfortable, clearly absorbed in his own reading.
They sat, silently reading, for a few hours before he put his book down and suggested that she ring for
the tea tray.
It had been a strangely seductive evening. They had not spoken, and yet his very presence had relaxed
her and enabled her to enjoy one of her favorite pastimes.
"It is getting late," he said and half smiled.
She glanced at the clock on the mantel. They would drink their tea, and it would be time for bed.Within
the next hour& She felt the now familiar aching sensation in her womb and between her thighs.
"I am sorry," she said, getting to her feet. "I have been neglecting my duty." But his words had not been
scolding, and her answer had not been apologetic.
Sometimes she wondered why they were not completely happy. She would look back on her life with
the Burnabys and shudder inwardly. She would picture life alone and free and independent atSindonPark
she knew he would not try to stop her from going there if she decided to do so and felt a bleak chill.
Byher own request their marriage had continued to be a real marriage. She was proving both to her
husband and to herself that she was capable of being his duchess. They communicated. She knew that
she pleased him in bed. He pleased her there too. It was too soon to know whether she had conceived
during this first month of their marriage she had had her monthly period only just before her wedding
and did not know yet if the next one would happen. But he had come to her each night except the
second. She loved perhaps best of all, although it came at the end of what she never wanted to end, the
heat of his seed passing deep inside from him into her.
Yet there was in both of them at the end of their first month together a sense of waiting a sense of a
decision yet to be made. It was strange, perhaps. They were married. The decision had been made. She
was his property, to do with as he wished. She had vowed obedience and would not break her vow. But
she knew that there was a decision to be made and that he would allow her to make it and would live by
whatever she decided.
She was perhaps unique among women.
She was married, yet she was free.
She did not have that freedom by right. He had given it to her.
It was a thought that made her angry at first. Why could women not be free as men were free? Why did
they have no right to freedom?
But it was also a thought that began to dominate herthinking, that began to haunt her night and day. He
had her in his possession. All the forces of law and religion as well as his superior masculine
strength were behind him to back up his claims. No one no one would ever blame him for holding
on to her for the rest of their lives and forcing her into submission to his will. Yet he had given her her
freedom. He had exposed himself to the possibility of censure and ridicule he would receive both in
plenty if he allowed her to leave him and given her freedom.
He had treated her during that journey to Hampshire with contempt veiled in courtesy. He had been no
different from anyone else she had seen while dressed in those clothes. He had judged by appearances
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and had dismissed everything she had said, everything shewas, with an amused cynicism. He had been
quite prepared to amuse himself with her during their nights on the road and to set her up in some love
nest for his future pleasure.
Her shock at being so dismissed as a person deserving a hearing, deserving some respect, was still
deep.
But hehadhelped her. And hehadbeen courteous. And he hadnottried to force himself upon her once she
had uttered that one word no. And finally, when he had fallen into his own trap, he had taken the
consequences with his characteristic courtesy and sense of honor.
And now he wasstillgiving her the choice of saying no. No to whatever he wished to do to her or with
her.No to being his wife in anything but name.No to living with him.
And even when they were still atSindonPark, he had insisted that the marriage contract state that her
inheritance remain independently hers.
Sometimes it seemed foolish and childish and even downright insane to refuse to forgive him.
Sometimes when his body was joined with hers in her bed, she would hold him with tenderness and try
to persuade herself that it was merely with pleasure and that it was a pleasure she took for herself without
regard to the pleasure he might be taking too.
But it was tenderness.
She was not sure that she could allow herself to feel tenderness for him. She was not sure she could
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