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She wondered if it were her wifely duty to demand sex so as to ease his conscience. But the night would come soon enough. "Can we really?" Serena asked. "I would like to see how money is made."

"By luck or hard work, I think," he commented dryly.

"And how would you know, my lord?" she teased.

He laughed. "Just you wait. Being of the peerage is no sinecure, as you'll find out."

They proceeded to Tower Hill in good accord.

Once in the Mint, Serena watched wide-eyed as a machine flung out one hundred glittering coins a minute. "Good heavens. What do they do with so much money?"

"The government uses it to pay its debts, and then we all use it to do the same."

"But where does it come from?"

"Gold and silver mines around the world." She would have asked more questions, but he put a finger to her lips. "Don't look too closely at the concept or it'll disappear like a fairy treasure."

Serena thought perhaps happiness was like that. She was happy at this moment, but it did not bear close scrutiny.

"How strange money is," she said as they strolled on. "Important and yet silly. After all, bank notes are just pieces of paper. They are worth nothing."

"Words are worth nothing, unless backed by good faith."

His words and tone lingered in her mind all the way back to Hertford Street. Serena wanted to ignore that hint of trouble and cling to her fragile happiness, but it was not in her nature to choose to be blind.

When they were alone, she challenged him. "Do you doubt my good faith, Francis?"

He gave her a somber look but answered frankly. "I don't know. You seem to keep part of yourself contained, away from me."

"We have only been wed two days," she protested. "And before that, we scarce knew each other at all."

"True." But his somberness did not lift.

Serena saw her happiness disappear as she had feared it would, swallowed by his very reasonable doubts. She pleaded a need to rest and went to lie on her bed, half hoping that he would come and let her give the one gift she had to offer.

He did not, and she recognized wryly he would never intrude upon her when she had pleaded tiredness. He was too much a gentleman. A gentle man, she mused. A precious treasure, that. Everything was so complicated, so different from what she had known.

Life would be a good deal simpler if her husband were not so kind and sensitive, but she couldn't regret those qualities.

When they gathered for dinner that evening, Arabella announced that she intended to leave Hertford Street the next morning to stay with her friend Maud for the rest of her time in London.

"Goodness, Aunt," said Francis dryly. "Are you confident, then, that Serena is safe in my male clutches?"

"Puppy!" snorted Arabella. "I'll still be around, won't I, if she needs me."

"I wouldn't worry," said Francis. "She's a Rogue by marriage, and I've already written to tell Beth Arden of this development."

Serena noted the name with surprise, but said nothing. She was afraid to hope.

The three of them talked desultorily of economic and political affairs for a while, and then Arabella again managed an excuse to retire early, as she had on their wedding night.

As Francis rose to open the door for his aunt, he said, "I'm growing alarmed at your sudden lack of stamina, Aunt. Would you like me to obtain a restorative tonic for you?"

"If you find one, take it yourself. You'll soon need it, I suspect."

At the sudden rise of color in her husband's cheeks, Serena ducked her head to hide a grin. Arabella was a gem. If only Francis's mother were like her.

Serena was not at all reluctant to contribute to her husband's exhaustion, however, and soon announced that she, too, felt ready to retire. She was careful
not
to mention tiredness. Francis went up with her to her room and even entered.

Serena waited, thinking he might want to begin their amours from this point, perhaps by undressing her. He did nothing, however, and so she went into her dressing room and summoned her maid to help her prepare for bed.

She wished he had begun to make love to her immediately, for now she found some of her nervousness returning. She had to face the fact that Francis had not been entirely pleased with her behavior on their wedding night. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure how to improve upon it. She could writhe and moan for him, but it seemed so deceitful.

When the maid had finished her work, Serena studied herself in the mirror. At least she had a new nightgown now. Having been bought ready-made, it wasn't a special garment—better ones had been ordered—but it was of finer lawn than the one she had worn before, and prettily trimmed with lace and ribbon at the high neck and cuffs.

The door opened and he came in. Serena tried not to show how startled she was. Despite his kindness, every time he did something the slightest bit unusual she tensed for an unpleasant surprise. It was not fair of her.

He was fully dressed, but must have been to his own room, for he now had a glass of brandy in his hand. He looked at her, and something in his expression sent a tiny shiver of unease across her shoulders. She tried to tell herself that it was her own disordered sensitivities, but couldn't.

Something was wrong.

The maid had already brushed her hair, but now Serena sat at her dressing table and picked up her brush again, nervously seeking a way to break the silence. "You mentioned Beth Arden," she said. "You mean Beth Armitage?"

He came over and took the brush, then began to brush out her hair himself. "As was, yes. Her husband is a friend of mine."

His gentle action was at odds with a tension in him.

"Does that mean I will meet her?"

"I have no doubt of it."

The dark edge to the comment could not be ignored. "You do not approve, my lord?"

He let out an impatient breath. "Serena, stop looking at me like a puppy expecting to be kicked. If I even thought of forbidding you and Beth from meeting, she'd have my head."

Nervous in the face of his anger, Serena said quickly, "What is all this about rogues, my lord? It sounds very wicked."

"Not really." Despite his tension, his brush strokes were slow and gentle. "We were a schoolboy group, gathered to present a united front against bullies. Now we're just friends, but if any of us has a problem, he knows he can go to the others for help. Nicholas—he was our leader—when Nicholas married he decreed that wives would be members, too. Thus far we have Nicholas's wife Eleanor, Lucien's Beth, and Leander's new bride, though I haven't met her. And perhaps Blanche."

Serena picked up anxiously on that. "Why perhaps Blanche?" Was there a wife who wasn't accepted?

He made a few more sweeping strokes down the length of her hair. "Blanche Hardcastle is a mistress, not a wife." He tossed down the brush and moved away. "Nicholas would have my guts. Of course she's a Rogue."

"Oh." Nervously, Serena began to divide and plait her hair, still watching him in the mirror. "Would I have been a Rogue as your mistress?"

"Yes. Though I'm not sure what would have happened when I married." He paced the room restlessly.

Serena turned to stare at him in astonishment, a sick feeling invading her stomach. "Did you plan to marry?"

He froze and glanced at her. "A man such as I must marry."

"I mean, did you have immediate plans to marry?"

She thought he would not answer, but he sighed. "There will probably be talk, so you might as well know. I was on the point on proposing to Lady Anne Peckworth."

Serena felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach. She'd never even considered this possibility. "Oh, Francis, I'm so sorry."

"I told you to stop saying you're sorry."

"But—"

"No. It's done. It's over. Anne will soon find another husband. She's the daughter of a duke and possessed of a very large dowry."

Serena turned back to the mirror, but she saw it through a film of tears. How could she bear this?
I'm sorry,
she said, but she said it silently, and continued mechanically to plait her hair. She saw him drain his brandy glass.

She rose wearily to go into her bedroom. He blocked her way to the door. She tried not to mind the way his eyes roamed over her—it was his right—but tonight there was an expression in them that she couldn't like.

"You look like a damned schoolgirl," he said.

Serena looked in the mirror and her heart sank. He was right. She'd picked this garment because it appealed to her, but she saw that it was all wrong. It was like the ones she had worn at Miss Mallory's before her first marriage.

And why had she completed the picture by plaiting her hair into two childish braids? Perhaps it had been the talk of Beth Armitage. This had been how they had looked as they sat on their beds in the night, sharing hopes and secrets....

"I'm sorry," she muttered, and hurried to the dressing table to unravel her hair. Her hands shook slightly and her lips trembled. Now she'd angered him... and after he'd been so kind to her. And she'd ruined his chance to marry the woman of his choice.

"I don't suppose it matters."

The door clicked as he closed it behind him. He'd gone to his own room. Would he come to her tonight? Did she want him to?

Serena stilled her frantic hands and rested her head on her knuckles.

He didn't want to be married to her, and she didn't want to be married to him—not like this, at least. She wanted to be innocent again, which was why she had bought this ridiculous nightgown.

She wanted to be fifteen again and excited about the school play. She wanted to flirt with young men like the ones in Summer St. Martin. She wanted to drift slowly into innocent love.

She wanted to join a husband in the marriage bed with some sense of wonder left, able to explore the possibilities of delight together. Instead, there was nothing he could show her that she did not know, and that she did not have reason to hate.

Not true, she told herself, straightening her spine.

Last night he had shown her the delights of tenderness and of giving.

But he'd wanted to marry Lady Anne Peckworth, she thought bleakly. All that tenderness should have been for her.

Serena dragged loose the bow at her throat, opening the neckline of the nightgown as far as it would go, then shook her head to spread her hair around her. Having done the best she could, she pushed wearily up from the bench and went to get into the bed.

She hadn't really expected him to join her, but he did, dressed this time in a long blue banyan with apparently nothing beneath it. She had judged wrongly again. She should have removed her nightgown entirely. Nonetheless, she found her heart pattering with a mixture of anxiety and tangled anticipation.

He put out the candles and tended the fire, his movements sure and deft. Serena decided she could gain endless pleasure from just watching her husband. He slipped off his banyan, but she only had a glimpse of his body before he joined her in the bed. Instead of touching her, he lay on his back in silence.

Minutes passed.

Was this normal? Serena had never in her life shared a bed with a man without some sort of sex. Not even, she thought wildly, when the man was a chance-met stranger.

Was she supposed to do something? She could sense a tension in him, pulsing over toward her through the air. She couldn't bear it. She reached out to touch him soothingly.

He moved suddenly. He covered her, pushed apart her thighs, and entered her in one rough movement.

Serena tensed in shock. He froze and muttered something. Immediately, she relaxed and welcomed him. She willingly offered her skills and gripped his buttocks to show that he was welcome. Of their own volition, her fingers flexed on his taut muscles there, massaging as he began to thrust into her.

He took his pleasure in silence, without a touch of mouth or hands, then, after a shuddering moment, rolled off her and turned away. "Good night," he said.

"Good night," said Serena into the dark.

Chapter 11