The Christmas Secret Read Online Free Page B

from the desk, coming toward her. “Do you indeed want a child, Olivia? One might ask, if you desire one so completely as you would have me believe, then why on earth have you not borne one? Do you know what I think? I think you deceive me every day,” he said casually as he studied her face. “I think you seek to vex me in any way you might. You are surrounded by riches and staff, yet you never bring me joy, Olivia. You burden me with the troubles of your orphaned sister and expect me to somehow make them go away, as if by magic. You tricked me into marrying you, and the one thing I have asked of you, the one thing I have required for all the generosity I bestow on you, is to give me an heir. That is all I ask. An heir. Yet you do not conceive, and when you do, you abort them.”
    Olivia felt her knees bending a little with that last remark. “How dare you say such a vile thing,” she said roughly. “Dr. Egan said that I have done no harm to my body. I am an obedient wife—”
    “Obedient?” Edward said, surprised. He grinned. “Is that what you would call your performance in our marital bed? Obedient?”
    Olivia’s belly began to churn with her nerves. She wisely said nothing and tried to focus on a painting just over his shoulder. It was of an ancestor, sitting on a rock, staring at the artist while his dog gazed up at him. Olivia felt like that dog. She had to be ever vigilant, to watch everything Edward did.
    “I don’t find you the least bit obedient,” Edward observed. “I think you plot to remove my seed from your body.”
    Her trepidation was making her nauseous. “How can that be? You make me lie there and watch me so that I don’t move. How could I remove it?”
    “Women have a bevy of tricks at their disposal,” he said. His gaze began to wander her body. “Perhaps I have gone about this the wrong way,” he added thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am not seeking my marital rights as your husband as determinedly as I ought.” His gaze lingered on her bosom, and Olivia resisted the urge to cover her breasts with her arms. “Perhaps I have not been as forceful as is required.”
    “What do you mean?” Olivia asked, alarmed.
    He slowly lifted his gaze. “I mean, wife, that perhaps I have been too gentle in my desires. Perhaps you would make a more obedient wife if I were a more insistent husband.”
    Olivia’s heart leaped with fear. She looked to the door, gauging her chance at escape.
    Edward startled her with a caress of her cheek and then a hand to her shoulder and neck. “If your sister can get a child in her, there must be some way to put one in you.” He pressed his thumb lightly into the hollow of her throat. “If it is your desire that I do not turn your sister out, as I have every right to do, then you will find a way to give me an heir, Olivia. Do not think to defy me, either, for who will take the two of you in once I am done with you? Who? Your cousin in Wales with four mouths to feed? Your mother’s brother, who languishes in debtor’s prison? Think on that when you take your elixirs and herbs,” he said quietly, then released her with a shove backward. “Now go. I have work to do.”
    Olivia stumbled, catching herself on the arm of a chair. She watched Edward walk casually around to the chair at his desk, then hurried from the room before he could humiliate her further.

The Christmas Secret
     
    SECRETS OF HADLEY GREEN
     
    Julia London

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