“Oh dear. Let’s go outside, then.”
Weaving through the crush of people, they eventually made their way through a wide set of sash windows leading to the Milton’s extensive gardens. The outdoor setting was truly spectacular, with a large marble fountain, lovingly tended rose beds and scattered statues all lit with hundreds of candles, yet the sculpted emerald hedges and large trees between the swept paths of pale white gravel gave the whole area a feeling of seclusion and intimacy too. If he were a whimsical type, he might say the place looked like the fairy grotto straight out of Mr. Shakespeare’s play.
A few minutes later they reached a small clearing with an empty, domed rotunda draped in lit candles, no more than ten feet wide, but perfect for his purposes.
“Here we are,” he said gruffly, as far in the distance the musicians played a few bars announcing the start of a rousing new tune.
She stared wistfully around. “I almost feel like we’re intruding. I wonder if this is a favorite spot of the Milton’s daughter.”
“Have you met her?”
“No. She’s rarely out. I’m not sure if that is her choice or her parents, because of her blindness. Such a shame, for I hear she is ravishingly beautiful, like her mother.”
Caleb took a deep breath. “Talking of families…I have things to say, Emma. They might be very hard to hear, but I can no longer leave them unsaid.”
“Go on.”
“Last week, I, ah, told you about Adam, but there is more.”
“I know,” she said simply, reaching up to cup his cheek.
He hesitated briefly, but spurred on by the warmth and gentle encouragement in her eyes, in her touch, he continued: “When we were lads, we had a dancing master.”
“The Italian.”
“Yes,” he replied, his gut beginning to churn. “He was soft-spoken. Affectionate…”
Emma stilled. “Too affectionate?”
He looked away. “Arms, shoulders, backs. I thought him strange but harmless, until the day he went much lower. I knocked his hand away and he never tried it again. I thought the matter done. I was a bloody damned criminally stupid fool.”
“Oh Caleb. What did the man do?”
Agony tore through him, stabbing like a thousand poisoned knives into an unhealed wound.
“Forced himself on my brother. Adam was only fourteen. And it was my fault. All my fault.”
Horror and fury enveloped her like a sodden woolen cloak, suffocating and relentless, at what the dancing master had done. From all Caleb had said tonight and last week when he lay so terribly cold in her arms, Adam clearly still carried deep scars from the event that sent him hurtling on a path of self-destruction.
She could only imagine the pain, the darkness that her brother-in-law couldn’t control, couldn’t entirely suppress. Her heart broke at the thought of Adam reaching out to strangers in the desire for some kind of personal contact while rejecting his brother, the man in his mind he held partially responsible for that black day. And for Caleb, her beloved darling Caleb, tormented with guilt and the unrelenting need to atone for the terrible wrong he felt he’d committed.
No wonder he refused to dance.
“Say something, Emma,” Caleb said hoarsely, his tanned face shockingly pale, his blue eyes unbearably haunted. “Please.”
Going up on her tiptoes, she cupped her hands around his cheeks and caressed the combination of smooth skin and scratchy stubble she had always loved.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Emma said again, more fiercely than she’d ever said anything in her life. “What that awful man did to Adam. It was sick and twisted and horrific, but it was something he chose to do and his sin to carry. You couldn’t have known he would do that. You were only sixteen yourself, Caleb. Just a boy. A good, kind and loving brother, and an exemplary son who grew into the finest of men and the best of soldiers.”
He shuddered, a raw groan torn from his throat as his shoulders slumped. Then he turned away from her, walking slowly into the rotunda and falling heavily onto a wooden bench.
Hitching up her skirts, she followed him.
“A decent soldier,” he continued finally, staring at the ground. “Maybe a good brother. But a terrible husband. Nowhere near the man you deserved.”
“Excuse me, I’m nowhere near saintly. And you’re not terrible, just crushed under a burden I had no knowledge of. Yes, my life amongst society has thus far been unpleasant. Yes, you hurt me badly with your long absences and unwillingness to tell me why, but Caleb, I forgive you. Can you forgive yourself?”
His gaze shot up to hers, the sheen in his eyes visible even in the muted candlelight.
“When Adam sank into his blackest times, it was easy to justify staying away. He hated London beyond words and refused to return for love or money. But the weeks turned into months, the months into years of battles and marching and watching out for him wherever we went. After a while, I didn’t…”
“Didn’t what?”
“I didn’t know how to come home to you. What would I say? What could I say? Especially when all the times I did return, I failed to give you the one thing you wanted most in the world.”
Emma froze in shock.
“You blamed yourself?” she said unsteadily, “All this time I thought the reason you stayed away was you blamed me for being unable to c-conceive. That you realized you married the wrong woman from the wrong class, regretted it utterly and would do anything to avoid me. Your mother made it constantly clear how she felt about our marriage and my failure to produce a child. I b-believed you felt the same. But I couldn’t ask that in a letter, not when you were at war and risking your life. And you stayed away more and more, then didn’t come back at all…”
“No,” he said, shaking his head emphatically. “It was never our marriage. I felt bound in my promise to Adam and couldn’t betray him, not when I’d already failed him so badly. Then I felt so damned guilty, all the bloody time, constantly torn between him and you. But you kept sending letters, and I thought…I hoped… you might still care for me. That was all I had. The thought of you, the only woman I wanted from the moment you fell into my father’s office looking like a fiery wood sprite who travelled by whirlwind.”
A single tear trickled down her cheek.
“I still look like that. I’ll probably look like that when I’m eighty. I’ll never be an elegant lady, no matter how hard I try.”
Turning toward her on the bench, he took her hands and held them tightly.
“I don’t care, I just want you. To see your face first thing in the morning and last thing at night, to brush your hair and immediately tangle it again in bed. To love and cherish you always, just like I promised in front of the bishop. But whether I can do any of these things is in your hands. This is the end of the six weeks, Emma. I made a bargain, and even if it kills me to do so, I will keep my word. I want you to be truly happy. If that isn’t with me…”
She rubbed one thumb over his taut knuckles, a tender grin curling her lips. Then pulled a hand free to dig into her reticule and retrieve a folded piece of paper.
“I wrote this last week. It’s a letter to Donald, declining his kind offer of a cottage.”
“You mean you’ll stay?” he said unevenly, his gaze achingly intent.
“Happiness is solely with you, Caleb Montclair, my husband, lover, friend and hair-tamer. Maybe we’ll have a baby, maybe we won’t, yet knowing you’ll be mine forever, that you’ll stay this time, the won’t doesn’t ache like it used to. But Frisky needs a brother, he can’t remain an only-kitten, he gets spoilt enough already.”
“I’ll be wanting to spoil you.”
At his grave tone, her eyes widened in alarm. “No shopping trips.”
“Gifts?”
“The occasional gif
t,” she said sternly.
Caleb didn’t reply, just delved into his jacket pocket for a flat, rectangular box. Inside on a bed of black velvet sat the most beautiful choker ever created, a single row of glittering heart-shaped emeralds and diamonds set in fine gold.
“Can I put it on you?”
Emma nodded, her breath catching when he fastened the necklace and brushed his lips across her bare shoulder.
“Take me home, Caleb. I need to spend the rest of the night in your arms.”
“You will,” he promised, getting to his feet. “But there is one more thing we must do first.”
“Which is?”
He held out a hand. “Mrs. Montclair, would you do me the honor of a dance? I’m afraid it’ll have to be a waltz, that is the only one I can do, er, well can do a little.”
Stunned joy bubbled to the tips of her toes.
He’d started learning to dance. For her.
“Why thank you, kind sir,” she said, with a teary smile. “A waltz would be delightful.”
“I must warn you, Mac is a bloody terrible teacher. Yells about his toes a lot. Fiercely protective of pot plants. Can’t sing a note, either.”
Emma bit her lip to halt a giggle as Caleb began to shuffle her awkwardly around the rotunda, gaze locked on the ground and muttering a staccato one-two-three beat. “I hope you recompensed him adequately.”
He stumbled and crushed her foot. Again. “What? Oh. Yes, now the highest paid valet in London.”
“Hmmm. On behalf of my toes, perhaps you could just hold me?”
“It’s almost like you’re implying,” Caleb said, grinning ruefully as he pulled her close, “more practice is needed before you trumpet my waltzing ability to all and sundry.”
“Perhaps a little more.”
Sighing in bliss as they swayed, she nearly swooned when his lips captured hers in the longest, sweetest kiss in the world.
Heaven was being in Caleb’s arms.
Surrounded by the magic of Midsummer night.
Never in his life had he felt such contentment.
Lifting the hand that wasn’t clamping Emma to his side, Caleb rubbed his eyes to rid them of grit and contemplated not ever getting out of bed again.
This morning he felt a pleasant weariness. Not the dread of uncertainty or time running out, nor the heavy burden of dark secrets, just the natural fatigue of a man who’d been kept up most of the night seeing to his deliciously insatiable wife.
Christ, the things they’d done. If he could move today it would be a miracle.
“Good. You’re awake.”
He glanced down at Emma, who looked back at him with pink cheeks and a remarkably specific glint in her eyes.
“Oh?” he said innocently. “Why is that? You wish to go shopping?”
“No.”
“For a walk?”
“No.”
“A ride?”
“That sounds more like it,” she practically purred, the sultry tone wrapping itself around his cock and nudging it awake.
Impossible. He’d come so many times in the night, hard, brutal climaxes that wrenched everything from him until he barely knew where or who he was. Not to mention the stinging scratches and grooves on his back and chest courtesy of Emma’s fingernails as she’d bucked and shuddered and screamed out her own orgasms.
“Have mercy, woman. You took all I had during the night. I’m empty.”
“That was then. This is now, Major. You have a great many nights to make up for.”
She balanced on one elbow, leaning over to flick her tongue across his nipple while one hand trailed lazily across his abdomen. Hot, drugging desire flared, and his cock began to harden.
Perhaps not quite empty.
He sighed heavily. “Very well, if you must shamelessly use me for your wanton amusement and gratification, I guess I must take the…ow. Damnation, Emma. Pinching is not at all the thing.”
“Insect,” she said blithely, as the tip of one finger circled his navel then darted further down. “You must take care, they are a plague on London.”
Groaning, he trapped her hand and in one swift, smooth movement, rolled her beneath him and settled between her thighs.
Cupping her cheek, he bent his head and took her mouth, long, slow hard kisses that left her lips plump and dark pink, while his now wide-awake cock teased her damp core. “Hello, wife. I’m going to—”
A sharp knock rattled the bedchamber door.
“The house better be burning down,” Caleb shouted furiously, so the person on the other side knew their future employment was in the gravest danger. Quickly, he slid back beside Emma and yanked the quilts up to cover their complete nakedness, but when the door opened, it wasn’t Mac or Susie or even another servant. It was his parents and Lucy, traipsing in like a damned brass band.
“Yes? For God’s sake, it’s barely morning.”
His mother sniffed. “It is ten o’clock, Caleb. And we couldn’t wait a moment longer to show you. Look! Look what finally arrived from the Lord Chancellor!”
“Your writ of summons, Caleb. Or should I say, Lord Brentwood!” added his father, beaming.
Emma tensed beside him as he reached out and took the thick sealed parchment from his mother. He felt rather tense himself, as he slid a thumb under the heavy red wax and opened the signed document. It indeed proclaimed that further to the petition presented to the Lord Chancellor by Lord and Lady Hugh Montclair on behalf of Major Caleb William Montclair, maternal grandson to the tenth Baron of Brentwood, he was formally acknowledged as the legitimate and undisputed heir presumptive to the title and would henceforth be recognized as the twelfth Baron of Brentwood and accorded all rights, honors and properties.
Hell. It was real.
“Well?” demanded his mother. “Aren’t you going to say something? This is most splendid news!”
“Yes. Please arrange at once to have a team of cleaning staff sent to Brentwood House. It needs a thorough top to toe. And know that future invitations into said townhouse will be entirely reliant on the public and private courtesy and respect you show the new baroness. If they are not given, you will not be welcome. Ever.”
She spluttered. “Caleb!”
“Good morning, Lady Hugh,” said Emma politely, a pointed dismissal.
The silence lengthened.
“Mother,” said Lucy, folding her arms. “Say something nice.”
His father coughed and inelegantly elbowed his seething spouse.
“Jemima,” said his mother eventually, so stiffly her lips barely moved. “I should…like it if you called me Jemima, Emma. And we would welcome an invitation to visit when your new home is ready to receive guests.”
“We’ll let you know,” he said, softening the words with a brief smile.
“Yes, come along, my dear,” said his father giving them a wink as he ushered her out the door. “The Brentwoods are eager to be alone. They want to practice. Like I always say, practice does a body good. We should probably go and refresh…”
Lucy shuddered. “I didn’t hear that. I don’t want to…ugh.”
“Perhaps you should go and see Richard,” said Emma.
“Ha! Never again. But I’ll tell the servants all the titled folk are engaging in acts of debauchery and shouldn’t be disturbed under any circumstances,” his sister finished with a grin and darted out the door.
It closed with a firm click and he groaned and fell back on the pillows.
“I’m adopted. I must be.”
“Unfortunately you all look far too much alike. My lord.”
Tugging her so she curled against his side, Caleb gently tilted her chin so she met his gaze. “What are you thinking, Emma? Nothing has changed since I told you I cannot do this alone. I need your help overseeing the barony.”
“I’m ver
y nervous,” she said softly. “It’s not a role I ever thought to have.”
“Neither did I. But without you, I’d probably be about as successful a baron as a waltzer.”
Emma’s lips twitched. “No. Nothing else you do could ever be that bad.”
In one swift movement he loomed over her, wrenching back the covers. “Saucy-tongued minx.”
“My name,” she said slowly, arching her lushly perfect body, “is Lady Brentwood. And now I’m wondering…”
“Yes?”
“How a lord makes love compared to a major.”
Acute relief swept through him. She was willing to try and make this new life work. One thing he knew for certain, as long as they were together, all things were possible.
“Allow me to show you.”
And he did.
Epilogue
September, 1815
Brentwood House was in an uproar.
Even from their bedchamber, Emma could hear Caleb interrogating the servants as to who might have dared bring a strawberry product into the house when it was expressly forbidden. If she weren’t feeling so wretched, she might have grinned. And gone downstairs to drag him away before each and every member of their staff handed in their resignation for the ridiculous and utterly false accusation.
Sighing, she petted Frisky and his new brother Bard, named for a unique ability to yowl between floors.
“Lady Brentwood…”
“Yes?” she said to Doctor Fenton, who stood a few feet away expertly crushing what smelled like peppermint and ginger with his palm-sized pestle and mortar.
“Beg pardon, but why does his lordship think you are suffering a berry episode?”
“Because he cannot imagine another reason why I might be so ill.”
“You haven’t told him?”
“Not yet,” she said softly. “I wanted to be very, very sure.”
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