“They are pink.”

“They’re blue.”

He moved his hand to her shoulder, and stroked the creamy expanse of skin with his thumb. The heat of her flesh burned through his fingertips, and spread up his arm, igniting a hunger such as he had not felt in years. For so long he had been numb and frozen inside. To feel this heat, to desire to burn with her touch, to want so desperately to be scorched inside her…He relished all of it.

“Blue flowers, Pel.” His voice was huskier than he’d like. “I’ve found people tend to take for granted the things they see every day. But just because one fails to see something, does not mean it isn’t there.”

Goose bumps prickled her skin. He felt them, even through the calluses on his fingertips.

“Please.” She brushed his hand away. “Don’t lie, and say pretty things, and attempt to make the past into what you wish it to be in the present. We were nothing to each other, nothing. And I wanted it that way. I liked it that way.” She tugged off the ring, and set it on the counter.

“Why?”

“Why?” she parroted.

“Yes, my lovely wife, why? Why did you like our marriage as a sham?”

Her eyes shot daggers at him. “You liked it as a sham, too.”

Gerard smiled. “I know the reasons why I liked it, but we are talking about you.”

“Here you are, Lord Grayson,” the clerk said with a wide smile.

Cursing inwardly at the interruption, Gerard dipped the proffered quill in ink and signed the bill. He waited until the ring was boxed and tucked into his inner coat pocket before glancing at Isabel. As she had in the tailor’s, she stood staring out the window with a ramrod straight spine, every inch of her voluptuous form betraying her anger. He shook his head, and could not help but think that all the restrained passion in her was untapped. What the devil was Hargreaves doing, or more likely not doing, that left her so volatile? Another man might see the rigidness of her spine, and be discouraged. Gerard took it as a sign of hope.