She refused to look at him, even when his thigh and shoulder continually brushed hers and sent jolts of awareness through her body. Under no circumstances would she be lured closer by his casual touch, the clean, delicious scent of shaving soap. Of course this would all be infinitely easier if the image of Caleb in evening wear hadn’t already lodged immovably in her mind. He was devastating enough in his scarlet regimentals, but in perfectly tailored black trousers and jacket, starched white cravat and muted gold waistcoat he looked nothing short of sublime.
Not to mention angry. So very, very angry.
His shoulders were just as rigid as hers, his answers to questions perfunctory and clipped, even when Lucy sent dagger glares his way and baited him unmercifully.
“May I offer you some salmon, Emma?”
Startled, she attempted to smile at her father-in-law.
“No thank you, the beef is, ah, quite tasty.”
“Oh. You’re picking at it like a baby bird, I thought you didn’t like it. Perhaps some more champagne?”
“Yes please,” Emma said quickly, grateful for the temporary distraction of having her glass refilled, even if the sparkling delight wasn’t nearly potent enough to send her headfirst into blissful oblivion. Then she raised her glass in a quick salute.
Poor, dear man. Hugh was quite the eccentric, but had treated her kindly from the start, doubly so when her own papa tragically passed away three years ago. Tonight he had kept a valiantly unflagging stream of conversation regarding his latest purchase at Tattersall’s going through several courses commencing with soup, then beef, fish and vegetables, despite minimal contribution from anyone else. He could clearly sense the barely-leashed hostility in the room, but wasn’t sure which member of his family would crack first.
Returning her gaze to her untouched food, Emma winced as someone’s fork scraped harshly against a china plate. Surely the evening would end soon. A few mouthfuls of dessert and she could mumble an excuse and flee to a different wing of the house before Lady Hugh unleashed a tirade, Caleb casually revealed her future marital plans or Lucy declared outright war on her brother and heaved a dish of creamed asparagus at his head.
“Emma!”
At her mother-in-law’s irritated bark she dropped her knife, inwardly groaning as it clattered against the side of her plate, clipped the stem of her champagne glass and catapulted several sliced beans into her lap.
Oh, dear Lord.
“Yes, Lady Hugh?”
“Perhaps in lesser houses dining is done differently, but here we do not play with our food like a toddler in the nursery. We eat it. With our mouths—”
“Mother,” interjected Caleb tightly. “Not tonight.”
Lady Hugh frowned darkly.
“Yes, tonight. How on earth is she going to be a baroness worthy of the title when her table manners are no better than a farmhand’s?”
Stunned, Emma stared at the woman in utter disbelief.
Baroness? What on earth was she talking about?
Caleb wasn’t in line to inherit anything. Hugh was a second son, his ‘Lord’ was a courtesy title. Lady Hugh’s father had been a baron, but that title ended months ago when he and his two sons unfortunately succumbed to a terrible fever.
“Excuse me?” Emma said very, very carefully. “I’m not a baroness.”
Her mother-in-law rolled her eyes. “Not quite. We’re just awaiting government approval. Although that is practically guaranteed.”
“But how?” she burst out. “And what title?”
“My word, you’re a very foolish girl,” said Lady Hugh, her disgust plain. “My father’s, of course. Baron of Brentwood. The title is just in abeyance as it was created by a writ of summons, not a patent, so can be inherited by a grandson.”
Her head pounding and heartbeat thundering in unison, she turned to Caleb. He would have told her if such a staggering thing were possible. Surely. It would change everything.
“Caleb?”
His hand tightened around his wine glass. “I didn’t know myself. Not until Mother wrote me. I wanted to wait and tell you in private.”
Cold sweat trickled down her neck.
Oh God. It was true.
“Here now, Emma dear,” said Hugh quickly, his temples glistening with perspiration like a desperate entertainer trying to halt a rapidly departing audience. “You’ll be a splendid baroness, just splendid. Even the old leather rumps at my club think you’re delightful. Always saying to me, ‘dashed lovely gel, that Emma. So modest and respectable, patiently awaiting her good husband’s return. Soon you’ll have grandbabies aplenty to dandle on your knee! And I tell them, well yes, but Caleb and Emma might need some practice first, what? Isn’t that right, you two? Ha! Practice is good for the constitution, I say.”
Absolute silence enveloped the room until Lucy fixed a decidedly evil gaze on her father and said “Practice? Why Papa, whatever do you mean by that?”
Hugh gulped and eased a finger under his perfectly tied cravat. “Er…Caleb, m’boy. Care for an outing to White’s tomorrow for a drink and a few hands of cards before all the invitations start flooding in? You’ll be the most wanted man in London once the news is out that you’re home. Or must you go straight for the War Office, reports to give and whatnot?”
“I’m due to present a report on Wellington’s behalf in two days time—”
“Did Arthur give you a letter for me? I was just saying to your mother the other day, I’m so delighted at how marvelously he has done. If you had seen him at Eton, that Dublin accent and by jove, so awkward. But a loyal friend. Indeed, great chums we’ve been, nearly thirty-five years now.”
“Yes, Father, we know,” said Caleb patiently. “Everyone knows. And yes, I have a letter for you. But unfortunately I must decline your kind invitation to instead spend the day with my loving wife.”
Emma’s breath caught at the veiled sarcasm, and she forced a light laugh. “Don’t stay home on my account. By all means, spend time with your father.”
Caleb turned his head to smile at her, but his eyes were two chips of dark blue ice. “Nonsense, sweetheart. My place is at your side. Perhaps another day, Father?”
Nodding frantically, Hugh mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Of course, of course. You’re welcome to test out my new purchase if you and Emma want to trot off to Rotten Row. Lovely at this time of year.”
“That does sound agreeable. I’m very interested in seeing Emma’s favorite spots, acquainting myself with her friends, old…and new.”
Abruptly, Lucy cleared her throat. “Well,” she said brightly, her smile blinding. “You’ll certainly need to meet Donald then.”
Fingernails gouging her palms, Emma glared at her sister-in-law, for the first time actually contemplating leaping a table and committing violence. Unfortunately Lucy wasn’t even looking at her, but directly at Caleb, her eyes practically spitting flames.
“Donald?” said Cal nonchalantly, dabbing his mouth with a starched linen napkin. “Who is Donald?”
“Why, Emma’s dearest friend! How strange she never wrote you about him, they spend ever so much time together. Donald is a widower, and about to become a magistrate. A truly decent man, so very loyal and clever. And he is such a superb dancer.”
Remain calm. Remain calm.
Repeating the words over and over in his head, Caleb tugged off his boots and moved to his chamber’s washing water stand, before roughly unwinding the limp length of starched linen that had once been his cravat. Mac would have serious palpitations, but he had shut the door on his valet, and Emma’s maid, after the most bloody awful dinner in history finally ended.
Rubbing away the frown from his forehead, he instead stared hard at the small looking glass. Although he had been fiercely tempted to heave both his mother and Lucy over the dining room balcony and into a prickly shrub for their behavior, h
is sister had at least done him a service. He now possessed a name.
Donald. The man who thought nothing of creeping around a married woman entirely above his reach, the bastard who would be shortly offered the chance to leave London forever or face a dawn appointment, was named Donald.
Shucking off his jacket, he shook it out, the sound like the crack of a whip. Then he began slowly, methodically undoing the buttons on his waistcoat.
“Well, Caleb? Aren’t you going to s-say something?”
At the hitch in his wife’s voice, he glanced over his shoulder. Emma sat at her dressing table on the other side of the room, attacking her red curls with a brush so fiercely he could hear the snap and crackle. When they were first married, he used to tease her about ropes and burrs before removing the brush from her hand and carefully attending to the tangles in her unruly hair himself. Of course, brushing Emma’s hair always ended in bedsport so delicious it rendered his work useless; but the cycle allowed plenty of practice.
It was abundantly clear that wouldn’t be happening tonight. Or anytime soon. Not until this damned chasm-like rift was dealt with.
“Say something?” he said drily. “Very well. Have a care with your coiffure, Mrs. Montclair. Snatching yourself bald won’t endear you to…Donald.”
The silver-backed brush clattered loudly onto its tray.
“Don’t, Caleb.”
“I’m unclear as to your meaning, madam. Surely as your husband, I have a right to know about your dearest friend, the man you’ve been stepping out with frequently in my absence. Apparently everyone else is fully aware, why not me?”
Emma made a sound of frustration as she swiftly braided her hair and flipped it over her shoulder. “Why do you have to be so difficult?”
“Difficult?” His temper flared again, his fingers gripping the final waistcoat button so hard it tore free and bounced quietly on the thick rug. Tossing the garment away, he turned and stalked toward his wife until he stood barely two feet away from her. “Difficult? If you expect me to meekly let another man take my place in your bed and your life, you don’t know me at all, Emma.”
She stood, jabbing a finger into his chest, her eyes green fire. “Oh, so now you’re nearly a baron you remember you are a married man? Three years since you set foot in this house and you dare get angry with me?”
In a burst of fury, Caleb wrapped his hand around her pointing finger, tucked it into her palm and pushed it behind her back. As he forced her to arch upward she inhaled angrily, but before she could say another word, he reached out with his other hand, clasped the back of her neck, and crushed his lips onto hers.
Heaven. The taste of champagne and chocolate soufflé danced across his tongue and as Emma moaned in surrender, her mouth softening and opening under his, he wanted to devour her. Spend hours kissing, licking and biting her plump lower lip, her slender neck, then slowly work his way down until he reached the lush breasts currently pillowed against his chest. His wife’s red satin gown wasn’t nearly thick enough to hide her hardening nipples, and he groaned aloud at her choked whimpers of pleasure, his cock surging painfully against the fabric of his trousers.
Like a damned schoolboy with no control, his hips jerked forward. He arched Emma’s back further so he could grind his erection against the sweet spot between her legs, moving his hand from behind her neck to her front so he could slide his thumb down the bodice of her gown and rub a swollen nipple through the whisper-thin chemise.
She made a sobbing sound, her free hand splaying against his chest, then gripping a fistful of linen shirt to pull him closer.
Yes.
“Bed, Emma,” he whispered thickly. “It will be so, so good, just like old times. I’ll use my fingers and tongue until you’re dripping wet, until you can’t remember anything but how it feels when I’m inside you, harder and deeper, making you scream…Ow damn, it! What the hell did you do that for?”
Hopping backward, he glared at her, somehow swallowing several choice army words as the throbbing of his cock warred with a stinging burn in his toes, where the evil, demented woman had ground her slipper’s heel with unreasonable force.
She glared back at him, utterly unrepentant, although her breaths were harsh shallow pants, her cheeks flushed rosy pink.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want you.”
“So says the woman who just twined herself around me and moaned her pleasure in my arms.”
“Very well. I want more than passion. So much more. I wish to be mistress of my own home, and the freedom to be myself. A peaceful life.”
Caleb winced and ran a rough hand through his hair. His supposedly sharp mind, once able to swiftly assess and weigh options and hazards, had slowed to mud. Time. He needed time. She wasn’t indifferent to him, this was by no means decided.
“I can give you more,” he said haltingly, as the kernel of an idea began to form.
“No. We had our chance and failed. I couldn’t live the half-life we had, and I certainly can’t stay trapped even further in the ton as a baroness with doubly rigid rules and expectations.”
“Wait. Wait. For a start, once I inherit we’ll have our own home. The Brentwood townhouse is a few blocks from here. And I only ever want you to be you, the tabbies be damned. Give us a chance, Emma.”
She tilted her head warily. “Why? You didn’t.”
Caleb forced an easy smile onto his face, as though he wasn’t about to take the biggest, riskiest gamble of his life. “It’s been three years. Obviously we need some time to…get to know each other again. Out of bed.”
“I’m not sure that is a good idea,” she said, but he heard a slight waver in her voice and pressed onwards.
“Give me six weeks. One for each year we’ve been married. If by Midsummer’s night you still wish for a separation and to retire to the country, I’ll grant the request.”
Emma inhaled sharply. “But what about the title? You’d need an heir.”
“I have one. Adam.”
Silence filled the bedchamber, the longest, gut-roiling, teeth-grinding silence ever, but he kept his gaze firmly fixed on her face, willing her to agree.
“Very well,” she conceded eventually, her expression maddeningly unreadable. “Six weeks.”
Relief nearly sent him to his knees, but there was no time to dwell on the victory.
Some way, somehow, he had to win back his wife.
Chapter Three
Week One
The shops in Mayfair were doing a roaring trade, but Emma barely noticed the beautifully arranged window displays of gowns, bonnets and Brussels lace.
Her mind was still awhirl, had been since she’d agreed to Caleb’s marriage bargain.
Six weeks. Surely she could manage that. Especially considering her husband had promised he wouldn’t make love to her unless she expressly asked him to, and that was definitely not going to happen. Not after the bedchamber incident, where she had oh-so-nearly succumbed to his kisses, to the heady caresses that left her burning yet hollow inside.
Never again would she expose her heart and soul for trampling like that. Caleb made sweet promises now, but what about when he realized exactly how unsuited she was to the pending position of baroness? That their lack of children was entirely her fault? Being swept off her feet then abandoned had been crushing enough the first time. If it happened again, she might never recover.
“You look troubled, Emma. What’s on your mind?”
Startled, she blinked up at Caleb and almost tripped over the hem of her peach-striped walking dress. Infuriating man. She needed to pay attention. Then again, if she marched face first into a lamppost, perhaps she could take to her bed with a witch hazel compress until Midsummer’s night.
“Nothing but the desperate need for, ah, a new bonnet,” she lied awkwardly, trying not to allow her cheeks to turn the shade of tomato-red that clashed
horribly with her hair.
“Indeed?” he said, one eyebrow raised. “Never thought a visit to the milliner turned a lady pale. Isn’t bonnet shopping supposed to be a pleasant activity?”
“For some women perhaps. But they always make comments about my hair, as if I am unaware of the color or texture of it. Then they want to decorate me with peacock feathers and yards of heavy fabric to hide it. Or have someone cut—”
“No.”
“No what?”
“Your hair is fine the way it is. If your milliner can’t find or create a bonnet to suit, we’ll find someone else who can.”
She blinked at him again, torn between wanting to grin at his irritable pronouncement and running to find someone who could cut off her troublesome curls at the nape.
“Quite.”
“What about this one?” he said after a few more minutes, naturally pointing to the most exclusive and shockingly expensive shop in Mayfair. “Looks like some adequate wares in the window.”
Adequate. Swallowing a snort, Emma tried not to salivate at the exquisite bonnets on display. No garish feathers, colors or oversized turbans here, just an assortment of elegant, one of a kind confections only worn by the leading ladies of London society.
“I don’t know,” she said, wrenching her gaze away from acute temptation. “This is a frightfully expensive shop. I usually go to one down the other end of the street.”
“Oh dear. Unfortunately I’m too fatigued to walk that far.”
“Really? For a man who used to march hundreds of miles each week, that was rather fast.”
Caleb shrugged. “What can I say, must be the sweet London air. But I need to sit down immediately.”
And just like that, he took her hand and tugged her into bonnet paradise.
Sucking in a deep breath, Emma gazed in awe around the shop she had often walked past but never dared enter. It looked more like a duchess’ private salon: pristine white silk on the walls, white satin-covered chaises with pale blue velvet cushions, and an oversized and luxuriously thick matching Aubusson rug on the floor.
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