The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring by Mary Balogh

command to bend over the desk for the painful and never brief caning.
    He could not count the number of times he had been caned by his father. Neither could he count the number of times his father had shown him affection, since there were no such numbers to count.
    He might have forgiven his father’s harshness toward himself—perhaps. But the duke had shown no love to anyone—not even to his wife, who had borne him thirteen children and had miscarried four others. And his grace had expressed only impatience and irritability when his eldest son had tried to persuade him to see his youngest daughter after her birth—and after the duchess’s death.
    It had been one of his reasons for leaving home.
    He had come to hate his resemblance to his father—the outer resemblance and, more important, the inner resemblance. He had come to hate himself. Until he had freed himself. He was free now. He had come back when summoned, but he had come on his own terms. The Duke of Withingsby no longer had any power over him.
    But devil take it, he thought as he took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time, that dome was pressing down on his shoulders again.
    T HE APARTMENTS HE had occupied from the time he left the nursery until the time he left home had been preparedfor him again. They must have been kept for him all this time, he thought. His declaration that he was leaving, never to return, had been disregarded—and indeed, here he was, back again. He had rather expected that the apartments would have been given to William and Claudia. But apparently not. They must be in some lesser apartment.
    He found his wife in the private sitting room. She was standing at the window, looking out, though she turned her head as soon as he opened the door. The room, which he had never used, looked strangely cozy and lived-in and feminine, he thought, though nothing had changed in it except for the fact that she was standing there. It was a woman’s room, he realized, or a room that needed a woman’s presence.
    It seemed suddenly strange to have a woman—a wife—in these long-familiar rooms.
    For the first time since he had known her she was not wearing brown. She had changed into a high-waisted dress of sprigged muslin. It looked somewhat faded from many washings. Her hair was simply styled and knotted behind. It was lighter in color than he had thought at first. She looked, he thought, like someone’s poor relation—a very poor relation. She also looked surprisingly young and pretty. She had a trim figure—a rather enticing figure, as he remembered clearly from his exploration of it the night before.
    “The view is magnificent,” she said.
    “Yes.” He crossed the room to stand beside her. He had always been somewhat oppressed by the house. In the outdoors he had known freedom—or the illusion of freedom. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the lake, turning it to dull gold. The woods beyond—his boyhood playground and enchanted land—were dark and inviting.
    “You are very like your father.” She was looking at his profile rather than out the window.
    “Yes.” His jaw tightened.
    “And you hate being like him,” she said quietly. “I am sorry I stated the obvious.”
    He did not like her insights, her attempts to read his character and his mind. He shared himself with no one, ever—not even his closest male friends. She must understand that she was not to be allowed a wife’s privilege of probing into every corner of his life—the very idea was nauseating. She must be reminded that theirs was purely a business arrangement.
    “I married you and I brought you here, as you very well know,” he said, turning to look at her—she looked very directly back with those splendid blue eyes of hers, “to prove to his grace that I live my own life my own way. No one is allowed to direct my life for me and no one is invited to intrude on my privacy. I am the Duke of Withingsby’s heir—nothing but my death can change that. But