What a Lady Wants

by Victoria Alexander

  “No.” Felicity watched the tall, handsome man who would soon be her husband. He was indeed utterly charming and most engaging. Why, any woman not long dead in her grave would be hard-pressed not to succumb to that knowing smile and the wicked twinkle in his eye. Still, she had a dreadful feeling of impending doom. “No.” She sighed. “I don’t suppose I do.”

  “It’s a sad state of affairs when the most notable thing about your own wedding is the unexpected discovery that your parents are old friends,” Felicity said under her breath.

  Nigel glanced at her from his seat on the other side of the carriage. “My apologies, did you say something?”

  She bit back a sarcastic retort and instead smiled pleasantly. “No, nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Her new husband smiled in an absent manner and turned his attention back to the passing scenery.

  Felicity clenched her jaw and stared unseeing at the streets outside the carriage. It was a short ride from her house to Nigel’s town house, her new home, and while she wasn’t at all sure what awaited her there, she was impatient to be alone with her husband and at last find out what he’d been planning. She had no doubt he was planning something. Wicked little head was right. She’d had quite enough, thank you, of the overly polite, well-mannered Nigel he had abruptly become.

  He had been practically perfect last night, charming and quite delightful. But she hadn’t had so much as a moment alone with him. His behavior toward her had been pleasant enough in an impersonal sort of way. The flirtatious Nigel who had stolen her heart was nowhere to be seen. Immediately after dinner, he had claimed there was much he needed to settle before the wedding, made his excuses to all, kissed her blasted hand again, and taken his leave. Felicity hadn’t next seen him until the ceremony today.

  The wedding itself was something of a miracle. She wasn’t sure how it all had been arranged but Mother had long said if one had enough power and money, one could do practically anything. Between her mother the countess and her mother-in-law the viscountess, there was enough money and power to move continents. Remarkably, it had been a lovely occasion with far more guests than Felicity had expected, including Eugenia and her husband. Eugenia had wisely restrained from saying anything even remotely suggesting she had predicted Felicity would come to this end, and Felicity was most grateful for that. The ceremony was brief, concluding with a terribly proper and quite disappointing kiss between the newly wedded couple, then a too long luncheon with endless toasts and well wishes. Nigel had been, through it all, the perfect groom, the perfect match, the perfect everything. She should have shot him when she’d had the chance.

  Last night she’d been nervous and apprehensive about being with Nigel again. Today she been confused and more than a little concerned about his state of mind. Now she was annoyed, frustrated, and angry.

  The carriage pulled up to a pleasant, well-tended house in a terrace near Russell Square. Felicity knew it had recently undergone repairs, and although most of her things had been brought here yesterday, she had yet to see it for herself. Nigel helped her from the carriage, and she resisted the urge to slap his hand away.

  Blast it all, his wasn’t the only life that had been abruptly rearranged. Certainly she had always wished to marry. And yes, he was the one she had wanted to marry. And indeed she truly believed they were fated to be together. One could say as well that she and his sister had plotted to bring him to this point, although it was a meager plot. Felicity hadn’t followed Madeline’s advice well at all, and giving him no choice but to marry was never part of their plan. Regardless, she hadn’t wanted Nigel this way. She’d been as reluctant to marry him under these circumstances as he’d been to marry her. Well, perhaps not quite as reluctant, but reluctant. And she’d had no more choice in the matter than he had. Why, she should be the one to be aloof and remote and perfectly polite. And treat him as if he were a stranger.

  Nigel escorted her into the house. In the front entry his staff lined up to be introduced, although staff was not entirely accurate. Aside from Nigel’s longtime valet, there were a half-dozen servants on loan from Lady Cavendish. Nigel’s mother had explained that most of Nigel’s servants had found new positions after the flood. One of Felicity’s first duties as the lady of the house would be to hire a new staff.

  After the introductions, Felicity turned to her husband. “Would you show me around?”

  “I’m certain Mrs. Fleming”—Nigel gestured at the assistant house keeper from Cavendish House—“would be happy to accommodate you.”

  The servants exchanged glances. Felicity gritted her teeth but kept a smile on her face. “I would much prefer that you do so.”

  “As you wish.” He dismissed the servants, then led her to a door off the entry and pushed it open. “This is the dining room.”

  It was a lovely, warm, wood-paneled room with a sideboard, a large table, and seating for perhaps a dozen people. Felicity had the distinct impression that it was seldom used.

  “Very nice,” she said, noting what changes needed to be made to properly entertain.

  The only other room on the ground floor was a library. Not as large or elaborate as her father’s or the one at Cavendish House, it was still well furnished and lined with book-filled shelves reaching nearly to the ceiling. Felicity wondered how many Nigel had actually read. There was a faint odor of tobacco and musty pages in the air. It was a pleasant smell, reminiscent of companionable evenings in front of the fire with a good book or a game of chess. Or cards.

  “I like this room a great deal and I like it as it is. This room,” Nigel said firmly, “is not to be touched.”

  She raised a brow. “Touched?”

  “Changed. I expect you will wish to make any number of changes in the house. It’s your right, after all, and I have no objection. When I originally purchased the house it was fully furnished, and I never got around to making any significant changes. Then there was the flood. While the repairs have been completed, there’s a great deal that still needs to be done.” He waved absently. “Furnishings and the like.”

  “I think this room is perfect just as it is.” She shook her head. “I see no reason to change it.”

  “Good.” He turned and led her up the stairs to the spacious first floor landing and pushed open large double doors. “This is the front parlor.” He nodded at a set of matching doors on the connecting wall. “It opens to the back parlor.”

  “How convenient,” she murmured and stepped into the room. It was a good-sized room, and she noted that with the doors to the back parlor opened, the space would nearly double. The walls were freshly plastered and painted, the woodwork pristine, and the fireplace mantel newly installed. She glanced at her husband. “It’s empty.”

  “These rooms and those on the second floor were the ones most seriously damaged. I am scarcely ever here and I tend to take most of my meals out so the lack of furnishings is of no concern to me.” He smiled politely. “I’m certain my sister or my mother would be happy to assist you in purchasing what ever you wish.”

  “What ever I wish?” She stared at him. “You want no say in how I furnish these rooms?”

  He shrugged. “I have every confidence you will do an excellent job.”

  “I’m so pleased I have your confidence,” she snapped, turned on her heel, and stepped back into the hall. “I assume the bedrooms are upstairs?”

  He nodded.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are they unfurnished as well?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She started up the stairs, Nigel trailing behind her. It wasn’t the lack of furnishings that infuriated her, she was well up to the task of refurbishing the house, but his overly polite demeanor. His aloof manner. As if he didn’t care. About the house. About her. She refused to consider the idea that perhaps he didn’t.

  She pushed open the first door she came to.

  “This is my room,” he said behind her.

  This room too had been freshly painted and did hold a large clothespr
ess, a wing chair, and an enormous, heavily carved bed, which simply reeked of scandalous adventure. Still, there was a temporary air about the place. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Excluding the months the house was under repair?” He thought for a moment. “Six or seven years, I think.”

  “You’ve certainly left your mark on it.”

  “I said I am rarely here.” He nodded at a door beside the clothespress. “That door is to the dressing room, which connects to the second bedroom. Your room.”

  “My room?” She started toward the dressing room. “And is my room furnished as well?”

  “I don’t know that furnished is the appropriate word,” he murmured after her.

  She pushed open the door to her room and pulled up short. There was indeed a wardrobe here but that was all, unless one counted the stacks of boxes filled with her things, the telescope planted in the center of the room, and her prized celestial globe as furnishings. “There’s no bed, Nigel.” She whirled around and faced him. “Where I am to sleep?”

  “I thought you would sleep in my bed,” he said coolly.

  “With you?” She scoffed. “Not bloody likely.”

  He raised a brow. “Felicity, your language. I’m shocked.” He paused for a moment. “You’re perfectly safe. I have no intention of sleeping there.”

  “Where do you intend to sleep?”

  “Elsewhere. I haven’t decided yet. I thought I might take a room at my club.”

  “You don’t plan to stay in this house?” Her eyes widened. “This is your home. Our home now. And you are my husband.”

  “And you are my wife. Yet a moment ago you said you would not share my bed.”

  “It was the only weapon at my disposal. Not that it seems to have mattered.” She waved off the comment. “I was angry. I’m still angry.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why should you be angry?”

  “Why? Oh, let me think.” She pushed past him and stalked back into his room. “First of all, you’ve scarcely said more than a handful of words to me, with the exception of our marriage vows, since the night you fell off the balcony. You’ve treated me as if I were a stranger. A stranger you have no desire to know. And in spite of the fact that you have said, with alarming frequency I might add, how much you want me, you don’t even plan to”—she gestured at the bed—“make a proper wife of me.”

  “I didn’t say that exactly.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the doorjamb.

  “You said you were going to sleep elsewhere.”

  “The pertinent word there is sleep.”

  “Oh, I see. You intend to…to…enjoy yourself—”

  “I rather hope you’ll enjoy it as well,” he said with his familiar wicked smile.

  “—and then be off to wherever it is you intend to go? Absolutely not.” She shook her head. “I will not be treated the way you have treated women in the past. Having your way with them, then it’s off to your club or your friends or the next woman. Usually with a husband in close pursuit and, no doubt, a parrot thrown in for good mea sure.”

  “You know a great deal about me.” His tone was somber, but there was a definite gleam of amusement in his eye.

  “Don’t think this is funny because it’s not. You’ve been most unpleasant, really quite horrible and—”

  “I know and I am sorry,” he said quietly.

  “And thinking of no one but yourself—”

  “My behavior has been unforgivable.”

  “And never for a moment realizing or admitting or understanding that I am in this as deeply as you are!”

  He nodded. “I’ve been a cad.”

  “Admitting it doesn’t negate the fact of it.” She stared at him. “Just tell me why. At least give me that.”

  “I don’t know.” He blew a long breath. “As much as I would prefer not to be, I am still, well, angry.”

  “At me?”

  “At everything. At the circumstances we find ourselves in. At”—he rolled his gaze toward the ceiling—“fate, if you will.”

  “I’m not especially delighted with fate at the moment myself,” she said under her breath. “This is not what I’d had in mind.”

  “I feel as though my life is out of my hands, Felicity. As if I no longer have any say whatsoever over my future. Over anything. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, and I don’t like it.”

  “Well, that’s that then, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “We can’t have you unhappy, can we? To hell with how I feel.”

  A hint of a smile curved the corners of his mouth. She wanted to smack him. “Did you know you have the most appalling language when you’re angry?”

  “Apparently you bring out qualities in me I never suspected. Of course, I can’t remember anyone ever treating me as badly or making me as angry before.”

  “I shall certainly remember this and try not to anger you in the future.” He shook his head in a solemn manner. “It would be a bad influence on the children, you know.”

  “There shall be no children. There shall be no future. I have changed my mind,” she said in a lofty manner. “I don’t want to marry you after all.”

  He chuckled. “I’m afraid it’s too late.”

  “Don’t be absurd. We’ve not even been married a full day yet. Nothing has been done that cannot be undone.”

  He stared at her in amused disbelief. “This cannot be undone. Surely you understand that?”

  “Nonsense, Nigel. There are ways. There must be. What about annulment? If we don’t”—she waved at the bed—“share.”

  “Not—” he gestured with a dramatic flourish toward the bed—“sharing is not grounds for annulment. Admittedly, Ruskin’s wife is arguing the absence of sharing but then they’ve been married for six years, so the circumstances are entirely different. We’ve scarcely been married for six hours. However, not being able to share by one party or another is grounds.”

  “What?” She drew her brows together in confusion. Abruptly it dawned on Felicity exactly what he meant. What she hadn’t learned on the continent, her mother had filled in. “Oh, I see.” In spite of herself, she glanced at his trousers. “I don’t suppose you—”

  “Are you insane? I am not going to publicly admit to anyone that I cannot share.”

  She shrugged. “No one would believe it anyway. There is that reputation of yours.”

  “Who would have imagined it would one day come in handy.”

  “For you,” she snapped, then drew a deep breath. “I don’t want you to feel frustration or anger or that your life is out of your control. I don’t want to feel any of that either. I had thought, or rather I had hoped that…”

  “Go on.”

  “As we are in this together, I hoped we could weather it together. You might well feel you have no say in the decisions that now affect your life, but I feel”—she met his gaze directly—“that I have been abandoned.”

  “I did marry you.”

  “Certainly you haven’t fled the country; that’s not what I meant. Oh, I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at him. “You’ve been remote and cold and impersonal. It’s most unpleasant and frightening as well to think I am now married to a man who not only doesn’t wish to be married but wants nothing to do with me.”

  “I see.” He studied her for a long moment. “That’s rather unfair, isn’t it?”

  “Regardless, I won’t apologize for it. It’s how I feel. How you have made me feel.”

  “No, I mean it’s unfair of me.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said staunchly. “Unfair and undeserved.”

  “For that you have my apologies.” He blew a long breath. “But I am not ready to change my life. Nor do I wish to do so.”

  She glanced around the room. “Yes, well I can see where change of any sort might be difficult for you.”

  He bit back a smile.

  She raised a brow. “Am I amusing you?”

  �
��No. Or rather yes. I find your passion amusing.” An intriguing look showed in his eye. “And quite provocative.”

  At once the mood in the room changed, charged with something very much like anticipation. Or desire. Dear Lord, as angry as he had made her, she still wanted him. Perhaps deep down inside she was a tart. Perhaps that’s why fate had intended her for Nigel, a man who definitely appreciated a good tart.

  “There is a benefit to all this, you know.” His voice was warm and smooth, and he stepped toward her.

  “A benefit?” She resisted the urge to step back. “What might that be?”

  His gaze skimmed over her in an assessing manner, and she had the distinct impression she had just been seen without benefit of clothing. “I have always been fond of married women.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She studied him with a slow and measured look. “What a remarkable coincidence, Mr. Cavendish. Today I find myself a married woman.”

  “Do you?” He moved closer, his gaze dropped to her lips and back to her eyes. “And do you have, oh, an arrangement with your husband?”

  “An arrangement?” She swallowed hard. “What sort of arrangement?”

  “You know the kind of thing.” He rested his hands on her shoulders, then skimmed them up and down her arms in a slow and deliberate manner. “Where you and he go your separate ways as regards to”—he leaned closer and kissed the side of her neck—“amusements.”

  She choked. “Amusements?”

  “Um-hm.” He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her closer, his lips murmured against her neck. “Of an intimate nature.”

  She closed her eyes and lost herself in the feel of his lips on her skin. He had the most remarkable lips. “I don’t know.”

  He pushed the jacket of her dress off her shoulders and it fell to the floor, and still he continued to nibble on her neck. “You don’t know what?”

  “If I have an arrangement.” His hands played over her back. Abruptly she felt cool air and realized he had undone the hooks on the back of her bodice with a skill any lady’s maid would envy. “Is it necessary?”

  “No.” He smoothly drew her bodice off and tossed it aside, then bent to kiss the hollow of her throat. “But preferable.”