There was nothing tentative in this beautiful woman, nothing timid or small. She was wild and passionate, and when she came to her toes, one gloved hand snaking up and around the back of his neck, reaching, pulling him down, pressing closer, offering herself to him, he recognized that it was not she who was ruined.
It was he.
He lifted his lips at the thought, turning her face to the light, looking down at her closed eyes, at her parted lips, the flush on her cheeks that spread lower, over the pale rise of her breasts. She was a portrait of pleasure.
Her dark lashes lifted, and what he saw there, mixed with desire and surprise, was his future. His wife.
Chapter 5
Seraphina Surfaces Armed with American!
August 22, 1836
The Singing Sparrow
Covent Garden
“So, to be clear, you told him you were having an affair.”
Sera set the box of tapered candles down and looked to the American leaning on the bar of The Singing Sparrow, Covent Garden’s newest tavern. She’d discovered Caleb Calhoun in a similar tavern in Boston, Massachusetts, half a day after her ship from London had made port.
She’d been in search of real, warm food—something better than the cured meat and pickled veg that had played the role of sustenance during the month-long transatlantic journey—and she’d been pointed in the direction of The Bell in Hand tavern, three doors down from the rooms she’d let while she considered her next move.
The American had come off his chair when she’d entered, looming large alongside a handful of other, less imposing and more dangerous characters, making himself her protector that day. And the next. And the next.
And soon, he wasn’t simply an American, but her employer. Then, her business partner. And then, the dearest friend she’d ever had. Soon, the only person in the world who knew everything about her, and the only one who demanded nothing of her.
That he was also the only one who kept her honest was one of his lesser points at this particular moment. Nevertheless, she soldiered on. “I did not tell him that.”
Sera did not like the way Caleb leveled her with a frank green gaze, as though it were a perfectly simple question and she’d provided an unacceptable answer. “I didn’t!” she insisted. “Not really.”
“Not really,” Caleb repeated. “Sera, I don’t like the idea of being murdered by some aristocrat without warning.”
“Do you think many people enjoy the idea of their own murder?”
He cut her a look—one she imagined brothers reserved for their most insufferable sisters. “There are days when I am not opposed to the idea of yours. Particularly if your lovelorn duke is coming after me.”
“I assure you. He is not lovelorn.” He’d looked the very opposite three days earlier. He’d looked positively unmoved that she’d turned up.
Caleb grunted.
Sera ignored the tacit disagreement. “It’s not as though I named a man and provided physical description. I simply suggested that if he wished to divorce me on the grounds of adultery, I would not be opposed to such a solution.”
“That’s the kind of semantic argument an Englishwoman would use.”
She cut him a look. “I am an Englishwoman.”
“No one ever said you couldn’t try a bit harder to throw off the yoke, darlin’.”
“Please. Everyone knows that half the divorces granted by Parliament are done so after husbands and wives collude. I am more than happy to play the adulteress if it will help get me this place.”
Which it would. The moment the marriage was dissolved, The Singing Sparrow was hers, and she could begin anew. Without the past and the ghosts of it that haunted her.
“All they have to do is see you slinging a drink or two, and they’ll all believe you’re properly fallen,” Caleb replied.
“A girl can dream.” She toasted him and drank. “I’m not a very good duchess, am I?”
“I don’t know much about duchesses, but what I can tell you is that you’re nothing like you were when you wandered in off the street like a lost lamb, so there’s hope for you yet,” he allowed, crossing his arms over his wide chest. “But returning to the topic at hand, you implied we were having an affair.”
“I did not. I simply stated a fact. If he inferred such a thing . . .”
Caleb laughed. “Then he simply did what you’d intended. And when he discovers who landed on the docks beside you . . . I’m at the receiving end of the duke’s wrath. And then we shall have to fight. And then—” He waved a hand dramatically. “We shall have no choice but to be at war again.”
“You do realize that you are not an ambassador of any kind, do you not?” Sera lifted the box of candles and weaved between the tables scattered throughout the empty tavern, straightening the chairs. “I can’t be responsible for what the man thinks, Caleb,” she said, the words loud enough to travel through the empty room. “But I can say that I don’t imagine he’ll care enough about my actions in the last three years to be much trouble.”
Caleb gave a little disbelieving snort. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Sera ignored the coarse language. “If he is angry, it will have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with how I’ve ruined his precious legacy. Again. I wouldn’t worry about your face. Which isn’t really that handsome,” she teased. “No one likes a broken nose.”
“Every woman likes a broken nose, kitten. And besides, I can take any toff who comes my way.” Sera smiled at the words, and at the description of her husband, who, despite being the most aristocratic man she’d ever known, was decidedly un-tofflike. Caleb continued as she ascended the steps to the little stage at the far end of the room. “In fact, I look forward to seeing the bastard. I’d like to teach him a lesson.”
Sera reached up to remove the stubs of beeswax candles in one of the enormous candelabra flanking it. “Unfortunately, Mr. Calhoun, I highly doubt you’ll have a chance to meet him.”
“He’ll come looking for you.”
“Care to wager?” she teased. “Fifty dollars says he’s left town with the rest of London, and I shall have to seek him out to get my tavern.”
“I think you mean the rest of London’s spoiled, moneyed set.” Caleb opened a small, secret compartment in the bar and lifted out a box of tobacco and papers, making a show of rolling a cheroot. “The lords of the manor head home to check on their serfs?”
Sera laughed softly. “Something like that. Though escaping the stench of London is likely a more accurate description of what’s happened.”
“Bah,” Caleb scoffed. “The stink of a city is how you know it is alive.”
She headed for the matching candelabra on the opposite side of the stage, replacing candlesticks with precision. “You would make a terrible member of the aristocracy.”
His laugh boomed through the room. “I’ve no doubt of that, love. You’ve got yourself a bet. Fifty dollars says your man walks through that door by week’s end.”
She didn’t like the certainty in her friend’s voice. As though he’d already won the bet. And she liked his next point even less. “Either way, Duchess, it’s time we get to work, don’t you think? You need that man to agree, and you need this place to be the best Covent Garden has ever seen, so the moment it is yours, it is legend. So, how do you get his agreement?”
She’d have to see him again, even if she didn’t want to. Even if she didn’t want to face him, handsome as ever and somehow entirely changed.
Caleb added, “We’ve been here for seven weeks and I’m already itching to get back on American soil.”
She looked up, squinting into the darkness. “You could go, you know. You don’t have to . . .”
She trailed off, not knowing how to finish. Caleb had done so much. He’d protected her when he found her, broken and alone in a city—a country—a continent—she’d never known. And he’d helped her find her feet again. Her strength. He’d given her reason to smile again. And then he’d gi
ven her purpose. And when she’d decided it was time for her to return to England and begin anew, he’d packed his bags without hesitation.
Sera shook her head and repeated herself. “You don’t have to.”
He lit the cheroot, and the orange tip glowed in the dimly lit space. “And yet, here I am. A remarkable man, don’t you think?”
She raised a brow. “A model of modesty, most certainly.”
“So. When do we serve your idiot husband his ass?”
She laughed at the words, spoken with unadulterated glee. “I feel that you might not get that opportunity.”
“You don’t think he’ll give you the divorce?” She could see his wide, furrowed brow even from a distance. “Then you return with me, and start fresh in Boston.”
If only it were so easy. If only she’d been connected to the city across the sea—bustling with new victory and the promise of a young country. She’d come to love Boston for its hope and its people and Caleb. But it had never been London.
It had never felt like home.
She picked at the round, heavy candle stub in her hand, extracting the wick and rolling it between thumb and forefinger, watching the black char mark her skin. “He’ll give me the divorce,” she said, knowing that Malcolm likely wanted nothing more than to be rid of her. “But I imagine he’ll do so with a fair amount of punishment.”
Caleb came off the bar then, moving toward her, broad shoulders and wide jaw that marked his rough, colonial upbringing long before he opened his mouth and revealed his uncultured accent. He was an animal in a cage here, in this world governed by rules he found at best inane and at worst unconscionable.
“You don’t deserve his punishment.”
She raised a brow. “I left him, Caleb.”
“He left you first.”
She smiled at that. “Not in any way that mattered.”
“In every way that mattered,” he scoffed.
She sighed. “Duchesses don’t leave,” she explained for the dozenth time. The hundredth. “Certainly not without providing an heir.”
Not even when an heir was impossible.
“They should do when their husband has exiled them,” he replied. “Remaining is bollocks.”
“No, it’s British.”
He cursed round and vicious. “Yet another reason you lot deserved the ass-kicking we gave you.”
“You should find passage on the next ship out. You’ve a life to return to.” She tried for humor. “You’re not getting any younger, friend. It’s time to find a woman who will put up with you.”
“As though that will ever happen.” Of course, it would. Caleb Calhoun was one of the most charming men Seraphina had ever known. He stopped at the edge of the stage, looking up at her, his green eyes serious. “I keep my promises, Dove. I’ll see you through the divorce. I’ll see this place successful and yours. And then I’ll leave, and happily accept my monthly proceeds.”
She grinned. “I shall sleep well knowing that my money will come as a comfort.”
“Our money, partner.”
Within a month of meeting, Sera and Caleb had purchased another Boston pub, and another and another. Between his instinct for location and hers for what made a tavern impossible to leave, they’d put several of Boston’s longest-standing establishments out of business before deciding that London would be their next conquest.
They’d purchased the pub within forty-eight hours of disembarking on the banks of the Thames, after setting their sights on Covent Garden—a neighborhood dominated by a pair of brothers and chock full of low, dark taverns said to host a floating underground fighting ring. Though Sera and Caleb had no interest in competing with a fight club, they did see opportunity for a proper pub in the area. Something like the pubs that were taking Boston and New York by storm. Something with entertainment.
The Singing Sparrow was the obvious answer. An equal partnership between the two, or as equal as one could be while Sera was married. Which was to say, it was an equal partnership between Caleb and Sera’s husband, though the Duke of Haven was blissfully ignorant of this particular holding. Under British law, however, married women could not own property or business. Their husbands owned everything . . . including them.
Divorce was the only way Sera would ever own this business—the only thing she’d cared about in nearly three years, and the key to her self-sufficiency. To her freedom.
The only way she’d ever take back the life he’d stolen from her.
The life he’d chased her from.
Get out.
Tears came, unbidden. Unwanted. How many times had she remembered his words—the cruel disavowal in them, the aloof disdain, as though she were nothing to him—and drawn strength from them?
How often had she vowed to claim her future even as he owned her past?
And somehow, a half an hour with him erased all the strength she’d worked to build. She took a deep breath and looked away, into a dark corner of the pub. “I’ll be damned if he’ll make me weak again.”
Caleb did not hesitate. He never did. It was a failing of his being American. “He can only make you weak if you allow it.” Her gaze snapped to his. “You stand strong and remember why you’re here. And if he punishes you, you punish him right back. But I’ll tell you one thing, if he’s all you’ve described, he’s going to give you a fight for the divorce.”
For all he knew about her past, he had never witnessed it. She shook her head. “He hates me.” The words were honest and real—words she’d clung to every time she’d doubted herself in the last three years. Which was often.
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you.”
Memory flashed, Malcolm’s fingers running over her skin earlier in the week, the shiver of anticipation that came with the touch, the way Sera had ached to lean into it. To the memory of it. To the way those fingers had once made her sing.
To the way they had made her feel for the first time in years.
Not that she was interested in feeling.
And besides, “Want isn’t worth the trouble.”
“God knows that’s true,” Caleb said, dry as sand. “But no one has ever said men cared for the truth.” Though he hid it well, Caleb nursed his own broken heart. A lost love, never to be regained. “I don’t know much, darlin’, but I know that you deserve better than whatever that dandy aristocrat could have given you.”
What a good man Caleb was. Decent and proud and with a heart bigger than any she’d ever known. She sighed. “Why couldn’t it have been you?”
He shrugged a shoulder and took another long puff at his cheroot. “Timing.”
She smiled. “If only you’d been here three years ago.”
He gave a little laugh. “I could’ve used you there five years ago.”
Sera reached for her friend’s face, placing her hand on his strong, stubbled cheek, tilting his chin up until his gaze met hers. “If you could erase it—all of it—all of her—would you?”
He did not hesitate. “Hell yes. You?”
His hand came to cover hers at his cheek as she let herself consider the question. She’d lost so much. Her love, her life, the promise of her future. So much loss that her heart ached even at the hint of the thought of it.
If she could take it back, she would. Without doubt.
Caleb saw the answer in her eyes, and squeezed her hand in camaraderie. He lifted his chin in the direction of the center of the raised platform. “Show me how it feels up there, Sparrow.”
She turned in a slow circle on the stage, trying to put the events of the last day from her mind, wanting to lose herself here. “I am not painted.” She never sang without her disguise—even in Covent Garden, someone might recognize a Dangerous Daughter.
“There’s no audience.”
“Another reason not to sing.”
“Pah,” he said. “You don’t need an audience.”
She smiled. “It helps.”
“Sing for me, then.”
“I’ve an
excellent one for you, as a matter of fact.” She placed one fisted hand on her waist and listing to the side, belted out a raucous verse from a song she’d learned from the sailors on the ship that had returned her to London. “Let every man here drink up his full bumper. Let every man here drink up his full glass.”
She stopped, but Caleb didn’t laugh. Instead, he waited, arms crossed, for her to finish. She straightened. “And let us be jolly and drown melancholy, drink a health to each beautiful, true-hearted lass.”
He nodded. “You shall own London’s hearts in mere weeks. What else have you got?”
She hadn’t planned to sing. Not honestly. Not from her heart. But she did then, sliding from the shanty into another, less playful melody, slower, filled with the melancholy she’d just vowed to drown. “Oft in the stilly night, ere slumber’s chain has bound me, fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”
The song was Caleb’s favorite and one of hers, as well—a tribute to memory and childhood and love and loss. And when she sang it, it was always about the life she might have had, if only things were different. The life she allowed herself to consider only in slumber.
There were few places better than an empty, dark tavern to sing, the notes clear in the silence, unhindered by clinking glasses and wild chatter and scraping chairs, the melody finding purchase in the dark corners of the room, fading to whispers, making memories in the walls to be recalled by strangers.
She closed her eyes and let herself fill the room. And for a few, short moments, the Sparrow was free.
Caleb did not applaud when she finished. He simply waited for her to return to the moment, and then he said, “The bastards who spout shit about it being better to have loved and lost have either never loved or never lost.”
She laughed at the crass words and came toward him. “Shall we drink to that?”
“With pleasure.” He dropped his hands to her waist and lifted her from the stage.
Her feet had barely touched the floor when the main door to the tavern opened, letting in a flood of late-afternoon sunlight. Caleb’s gaze flickered past her to the imposing figure in the doorway. “You owe me fifty dollars, Duchess.”
The Day of the Duchess Page 5