“Three years,” Margaret said, her voice slicing cleanly through the high-ceilinged drawing room. “Three years of marriage, and you are telling me my son still hasn’t touched you?”

Rebecca Perry sat very still on the edge of the sofa, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She did not lift her eyes. She had learned, long ago, that silence offended the Bradfords less than the truth.

Margaret stared at her as though she were something unsightly left on polished marble.

“My God,” she said, with a short, humorless laugh. “What exactly have you been doing in this house? Wearing his name, spending his money, playing the devoted wife—yet you cannot even manage the one thing expected of you?”

Rebecca’s fingers tightened once, barely enough to crease the thin medical report resting beneath them.

Margaret had already turned toward the hall when she stopped and looked back.

“Tonight,” she said, each word measured and merciless, “you will make this marriage real. If my son walks out of that bedroom untouched again, your things will be outside by breakfast.”

The front door closed behind her with a soft, expensive click.

For a long moment, Rebecca remained where she was.

Then she looked down at the doctor’s report in her hand. The paper had gone warm from her grip, its neat black letters suddenly blurred and meaningless.

A bitter curve touched her mouth.

How ridiculous, she thought, to have needed proof for something no one had ever cared to believe.

She crushed the report into a ball, dropped it into the wastebasket, and went upstairs to the bedroom she had shared with Vance Bradford for three years in name only.

The bedroom was far too large.

There was room enough, Rebecca sometimes thought, for another bed to be placed between them. Not that it would have made much difference. The one they shared was already divided with a precision no wall could improve upon.

Vance slept on the right side, always turned toward the windows, his broad back facing her like a closed door. Rebecca slept on the left, close enough to feel the shift of the mattress when he moved, close enough to hear his breathing in the dark—and still further from him than any stranger had ever been.

Tonight, he came home earlier than usual.

He stood before the mirror, loosening his tie with the same calm, practiced ease he brought to boardrooms, charity dinners, and every room in which people expected a Bradford heir to be flawless. At twenty-six, Vance Bradford had learned how to make power look effortless.

Only with her did that ease become distance.

“What would you like for dinner?” he asked.

His voice was gentle. It always was. That was the worst part.

Rebecca stood by the bathroom door in her nightdress, her damp hair falling over one shoulder. Once, years ago, she might have wondered whether he noticed. She had tried silk. Lace. Bare shoulders. Bare skin. She had tried shyness, confidence, patience, and the kind of quiet devotion no one ever thanked a woman for.

Eventually, she had learned the truth.

It did not matter what she wore.

It did not matter what she offered.

“Rebecca?” Vance turned slightly when she did not answer.

She drew a breath and crossed the room.

He sat on the edge of the bed, working one cufflink free. The gesture was so ordinary, so familiar, that for one terrible second she nearly lost her nerve.

“Vance.”

His fingers paused.

“I want…” She stopped. The words sat in her throat, sharp and humiliating. She could not say them. Not like that. Not after three years of pretending dignity could survive this marriage.

So she said, “I want us to be husband and wife.”

The silence that followed was soft, and endless.

Rebecca could hear the faint tick of the clock on his bedside table. She could hear her own heart, beating too hard for a woman who was trying very carefully not to beg.

Vance looked at her.

“You are my wife,” he said at last.

There it was again. That careful kindness. That patient tone one used with someone fragile, someone unreasonable.

Rebecca lifted her eyes to his. His were a clear, beautiful grey-blue, untouched by panic, untouched by desire. Untouched by her.

“I have been your wife for three years,” she said. “In every way except the one that makes it true.”

His expression changed, but only slightly.

“Rebecca—”

“I want a child,” she said, before he could soften the words into something harmless. Her hands closed around the hem of her nightdress. “I want you to touch me.”

The last words came out almost soundless.

But he heard them.

For the first time that night, something in him went still.

Then Vance rose from the bed and walked to the window. He did not look at her when he spoke.

“You’re upset.”

“I’m not.”

“You’ve had a long day.”

“I said I’m not upset.”

Her voice surprised even her. It was too quick, too thin, stretched tight over something breaking.

He turned back then, and the look on his face nearly undid her. Not anger. Not disgust. If it had been either of those, perhaps she could have hated him.

But Vance only looked pained.

“Marriage is more than that,” he said quietly.

Rebecca stared at him.

“Then tell me what it is.”

He said nothing.

“I wait for you every night. I sit beside you at dinners where no one speaks to me unless they want something from you. I remember which shirt you prefer for morning meetings. I stay awake when you’re ill. I smile when your mother looks through me as if I’m furniture she regrets buying.” Her voice did not rise. That was the strange thing. “I have done everything a wife is supposed to do.”

She swallowed.

“So why am I the only part of this marriage you refuse to touch?”

For a moment, Vance looked as though she had struck him.

Then he came toward her.

Rebecca hated herself for the way her body responded to those few steps. Hated the helpless, treacherous hope that rose in her before he had earned it.

He reached out and brushed a damp strand of hair away from her cheek.

His touch was gentle.

It always was.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my fault. Not yours.”

Rebecca closed her eyes.

Three years. The same words, offered like a bandage over a wound he never intended to heal.

She had once believed him. She had believed there was grief in him, or guilt, or some old ache he could not name. She had told herself that patience was love in its most difficult form.

But gratitude was not desire.

Pity was not love.

And no amount of tenderness could warm a bed where one person was always turning away.

His hand began to fall.

Rebecca caught it.

The movement was sudden enough to surprise them both. Her fingers closed around his wrist, tight and trembling.

Vance looked down at their joined hands, then back at her.

“Rebecca.”

The warning in his voice was soft. Almost kind.

That kindness destroyed her.

“Just tonight,” she whispered.

Her throat burned. Her pride had nowhere left to stand.

“Please, Vance.” She forced herself to look at him, though every second of it stripped something from her. “I want to know what it feels like to be wanted by my husband.”