“It will be fine. Now, I believe as I entered the room, that you were attempting to brush your hair and finding yourself not up to the task,” he said. “I’ll help you and perhaps fashion a braid for you that won’t give way through the night.”
She wanted to protest. He could see it on her face, but the desire to have her hair free of snarls must have outweighed her reasons for protesting. After a long moment, she rose and retrieved her brush from near the washstand and placed it in his hand. “It’ll be worse tomorrow morning if we don’t see to it tonight,” she said. “Thank you, my—Cornelius.”
It had been a slip of the tongue for her, an amalgamation of his title and his name. Regardless, he found he rather liked being called her Cornelius. But he didn’t comment on it. The tentative peace between them was too fragile for that. Rising to his feet, he moved behind the chair she’d just reclaimed. It was, on the surface, a simple and mundane task. But the reality of it was completely different. Feeling the silken strands of her hair sliding through his fingers, brushing against the soft skin of her neck, it took all of his control and significant willpower to restrain himself.
The kiss from the morning had replayed itself in his mind dozens of times. Every time he looked at her, he thought of it. And now, touching her, he was desperate to repeat the experience again. But it was not the place or time. She was beyond exhausted and they both needed rest.
Finally, the task was done and he stepped away and she rose. He watched as she moved toward the bed and turned the covers back.
“We could share the bed, Cornelius,” she said.
And he’d surely die of wanting her. He could well be the first man in history to shuffle off the mortal coil from the complications of unfulfilled lust. “That is preposterous.”
“We’re to be married, Cornelius. And you yourself stated that this will be a real marriage. We will be sharing a bed soon enough.”
He would be honest with her. It was something he had decided from the moment he had accepted the fact that their only course of action was to wed. He would not have lies in his marriage. “I am attempting to hold fast to my honor and be the kind of man that I have always striven to be. But you are more tempting than you realize, Primrose, and I am far weaker than I ever thought,” Cornelius confessed.
“And I am too exhausted to be seduced, Lord Ambrose… even by you,” she said. “We will sleep. And if you attempt to do anything more than that, I will toss you onto the floor and you may sleep with your feet in the hall and your head under the bed if necessary.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Fair enough,” Cornelius agreed. It was going to be a hellish night, but he would survive it. Possibly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Prim awoke slowly. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but the darkness was beginning to fade, replaced by a cool glow that promised morning was soon to come. She was warm, impossibly so. And she realized that the heat was emanating from the body beside hers. Opening her eyes, she found herself staring at the whiskered jawline of her husband-to-be. He lay on his back, one arm above his head and the other draped across his abdomen. The fabric of his shirt was stretched taut over the muscles of his arms and chest.
As if he felt her gaze upon him, he stirred, turning his face toward her.
“Good morning, Primrose,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“Good morning, Cornelius.”
After those initial greetings, they fell silent once more. Prim looked away first, her gaze drifting back up to the ceiling where it traced a meandering crack in the plaster that she had not noted before. Anything was better than looking over at him, and thinking about just how close they were, how she could feel the press of his hip against hers and the unbearable heat of his body burning through the thin fabric of her chemise.
Finally, after a long moment, Cornelius broke the silence. “This is a bit awkward, isn’t it?”
She smiled at that, relieved that he was at least willing to acknowledge it. “It is. I didn’t really think about this part of it when I suggested you should sleep here with me last night.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad I didn’t spend the night on the floor. It’s rather cold in here now that the fire has died out.”
It had been offered companionably, no censure, no double entendre, no presumption of anything more than she was willing to give. “Thank you, Cornelius,” Prim said softly, overwhelmed by his kindness, his understanding and the fact that, perhaps for the first time in her life, she felt she might be able to trust someone who was not her sister or brother.
“For what?” he asked.
“For being a gentleman. Not just by birth but by deed. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a man quite like you and I don’t know what to make of it.”
He frowned, his brows drawing together in consternation. “Primrose, I’d like to say that I’m unique, but the truth is I’m not. There are other men in the world who are honorable and good. It pains me to think that your life has seen you encounter so few of them.”
“I think I’ve seen the worst side of a lot of things,” she said. “But I let myself forget that is only one side of it.”
He rolled onto his side, facing her. “It’s an easy enough thing to do,” he said. “For the longest time, I saw only my father’s flaws. They were many in number. But he had the capacity for kindness as well, and a sense of fairness that I never really understood about him until I saw the way he stood by Lord Wolverton when he was accused of the murder of his first wife. My father was steadfast in his belief in Wolverton’s innocence, and rightly so, when everyone else believed him guilty.”
“He seemed like a very kind man and Lady Wolverton seemed lovely, as well. Generous and giving… and not in that false, pious and self-aggrandizing way that Lady Linden had been.”
“Lady Linden was the woman you were going to work for as a house maid?” He asked.
She grimaced. “Yes. I didn’t really want to work for her but I felt we had no choice. We were struggling to keep food on the table and taking in sewing only went so far. Hiring me was simply a good deed for her to boast of to the other ladies in the village. It was some sort of strange competition between them to see who could outdo the others with their charitable contributions or acts of mercy. I shouldn’t complain. If it hadn’t been for those women we would not have survived in Devonshire as long as we did.”
They grew silent then, the moment stretching between them. The awareness of just how near they were, of just how few layers of cloth separated them. Finally, he rolled away and stood up.
“We should get up and begin the day’s journey,” he said. “We’ve a long way yet to travel and it won’t be easy for you.”
“Yes, I suppose we should begin the day,” Prim agreed. The tension that now existed between them had seemed to develop spontaneously, a split second of awareness shattering the companionable quality of their conversation and turning it into something strained and loaded with portent. But she didn’t mind, she realized. That tension brought with it anticipation and that anticipation, maddening as it might be, was also strangely exciting and felt just a little bit wicked.
He rose first, climbing from the bed, donning his coat in one swift movement and running his hands through his hair. Within less than a minute, he was out the door, muttering something about breaking their fast. Once more, Prim was left in privacy to dress.
*
Cornelius didn’t slam the door. He did, however, cross to the opposite wall and press his forehead against the cool plaster and pray for some end to his lust-fueled torture. Lying there beside her in that bed, feeling the softness of her body next to his, and all the while making inane conversation so that she wouldn’t see just how terrible his thoughts were.
God, but he wanted her. He wanted her like he’d never wanted anything in his life. For a man who’d never known desperation, he’d taken to it like a duck to water, it seemed. He’d been in a constant state of it from the first moment he’d set
his gaze upon her. Every encounter only made it worse. Not a minute of the day passed that he did not ache for her.
But it wasn’t just desire. As much as he wanted to make love to her, he wanted her to be his to touch, to hold, to care for. She was so impossibly strong, had such determination and fortitude, and yet he wanted to give her the opportunity to count on someone other than herself.
“Get food, Cornelius. Get the food, get the carriage ready, and be done with this before you go mad,” he muttered to himself and banged his forehead lightly against the wall. Perhaps a small bit of head trauma would dull the misery of unrequited lust and camouflage the fact that he’d transformed into a lovesick calf.
No sooner had he finished his pep talk than one of the serving girls rounded the corner. She paused long enough to look at him as if he were a madman and then gave him the widest berth that the narrow corridor would permit.
“Perfect,” he muttered. “Just bloody perfect.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They had reached London. It had been yet another long and wearying day on the road, trapped in the confines of the carriage with the man who was to be her husband, though they hardly knew one another.
She should have been happy. Marrying a man of wealth, privilege and prestige would afford her the kind of life that she and Hyacinth had dreamed of as children. How many nights had the two of them lain on that small pallet in the corner of the single room that had been their home when they were small girls and whispered of such things? Even then it had been nothing more than a fantasy. As a small child, Prim had recognized the extreme unlikelihood of her life ever undergoing such a transformation. Princes and handsome knights who came riding up on white horses were only stories for children. While she might have been only a girl of seven at the time, she had not been a child. No one who witnessed what she and Hyacinth witnessed there could ever be described as children. That word implied a kind of innocence and hope that neither of them had been able to cling to in that place.
Prim shuddered slightly, recalling the dark desperation of those days. She didn’t often allow herself to think of them. Drawing herself back to the present, she surveyed her surroundings carefully.
It was evening, the lamp lighters meandering the streets to light each one in the better neighborhoods. For Prim, it was a revelation. She was seeing a section of London that she never had. Less than a mile cross country, though significantly more through the winding streets of the city, from the hovel where she and Hyacinth had lived for so long with her mother and then with Lila as a baby, it was difficult to imagine that they were in the same city. There were parks and green spaces, perfectly manicured and lovely even in the fading light. The houses were bright and cheerful, candles and oil lamps gleaming through the windows.
While the air was still thick with smoke from thousands of chimneys, it was not the dirty, dingy and terrifying city of her memory. Not in Mayfair at any rate.
“You act as if you have never seen London before,” Cornelius said softly, his deep voice filling the small space of the carriage.
It had been at her behest that he’d shared her bed the night before. It had not seemed such a remarkable thing in the moment. She had been sharing a bed her whole life with her sisters and with Rowan. Practicality had inspired her decision, but had she known just how different it would be, how much it would increase her already dangerous awareness of him to be in such close proximity, in such an intimate space, for so long, she would never have suggested it.
“I suppose in some ways I have not. I daresay, I could take you to the Devil’s Acre and you would seem as if you had never seen London either,” she replied. It wasn’t a reprimand, but an observation. They were from completely different worlds, despite their current circumstances, and could not have had less in common in terms of their experiences in life.
“Touché,” he replied. “It’s a miracle the lot of you survived that place. Not just the criminal element. But it is rife with disease.”
“Any place where people live in such cramped quarters is rife with disease.” Prim looked out the window once more, noting a woman walking by on the arm of a man. There was something about her, the tilt of her head, the too loud peal of her laughter—she was not his wife. A mistress perhaps. A courtesan or a demirep. But not a respectable woman. “Perhaps there is not such a great difference between the Devil’s Acre and Mayfair, after all. Men are still men and women are still a thing to be bought and bartered, it seems.”
Her comment must have rattled him for he turned to gaze out the window himself at the passing couple. Trapped as they were in the slow moving evening traffic, they were still in view. “Not all men are without honor and not all women who have entered such a life have done it blindly. There are no absolutes in this world, though I once thought that to be true.”
There was something sad in his tone, something that hinted at regret. Curious, Prim asked, “And how is that you came to recognize your grave error in judgment?”
“My father… he was not a good man. He was thoughtless, irresponsible, bent on self-destruction. And yet he was generous to a fault. He would help any man he considered a friend, or any woman. The fact that he has not cared for all the children that he sired was not out of miserliness or meanness or lack of feeling. It was simply that he forgot. That something shiny, or more likely someone pretty, was in front of him, and other things passed to the back of his mind. Never to be thought of again, unless someone broached the topic.”
“And you think that does not make him a bad man?”
“No. I’ve come to the shocking realization after judging him so harshly for most of my life that I think my father was a lonely man. Everything he did was an attempt to distract himself from that, to mask the pain of it with women and drink and carousing. He was not a good man, but he was not an entirely wicked one either.”
“And you, Cornelius Garrett, Lord Ambrose… what manner of man are you?” Prim demanded. She had her own thoughts, but she knew that he was tortured by his past. It would likely color his answer.
“I am a murderer. Regardless of my reasons, I took another man’s life.”
“A man who was a threat to those you cared for! What of the soldiers at the front line? They kill in battle, for king and for country, and to save their brothers-in-arms. Would you hold them to the same standard you are marking for yourself?”
“It’s hardly the same,” he protested.
“It’s hardly different,” Prim insisted. He seemed determined to view himself poorly, no matter what was said. “You should take some of the mercy you are so willing to grant the memory of your father and spare some for yourself. You are no less deserving of it.”
“And are you no less deserving of it than your mother was? Do you not judge everything you say and do by the distance you wish to keep between her fate and your own?”
His words had been a challenge, tossed out between them and demanding an answer. Prim’s lips pursed for a moment, and then she replied, “Touché.”
“We are not at war, Primrose. Despite our barbs, I would not have it be so… but these are painful subjects. The wounds are deep and jagged, and I think, for now, best left alone,” he said.
“Perhaps you are right. What are we to do now? I’ve never been married. I don’t even know where to start,” she admitted.
*
Cornelius smiled in the ever growing darkness inside the carriage. It was a peace offering, an olive branch in the form of a change in subject. He’d take it gladly. “I shall take you to Madame Le Faye tomorrow… and while you are being fitted for gowns and all the necessary fripperies, I shall set about procuring a special license and making an appointment at a church. Do you have a preference?”
“I’ve never been to church all that much either,” she admitted. “Certainly not in London. We’d have been tossed out given how notorious my mother was and the fact that we were dressed little better than beggars. It doesn’t matter. You choose.”
�
��St. Martin’s in the Fields is close by and smaller than St. Paul’s to be sure, though not as grand.”
“Grand hardly matters,” she replied breezily. “We are unlikely to have guests, after all, outside of family.”
It shouldn’t have been that way for her, he thought. So much of her life had been cheated already. Poverty, working from dawn till dark to provide for her siblings, worrying constantly about how to survive without sacrificing herself fully to the demons of her past—and now she would have a havy-cavy wedding to a man she barely knew. Regardless of how their marriage was to begin, he hoped that as it continued, they would find some contentment with one another at least.
“We will schedule the ceremony for three days hence,” he said. “That will give you time to have something suitable to wear prepared for you and also for your siblings and Arabella to arrive.”
“And in the meantime, we reside in your townhouse without a chaperone,” she mused.
He didn’t want to be insulted by it. But the nature of his intentions and the nature of his true desires were just disparate enough for him to recognize that her wariness was wise. “There are servants in the house. You will be perfectly safe, Primrose.”
“Safe isn’t the issue, Cornelius. I’m not afraid of you. But if the point of our marrying is to avoid scandal, it hardly seems wise to court it.”
“Most people have not yet returned to town. We have another two weeks at least before the season begins in full. It won’t be an issue,” he explained.
“And Lord Samford? Do you think he’ll figure out where we’ve gone?”
Cornelius was counting on it. They might remain unobtrusive for the time being, but as soon as the ceremony was complete, the gossips’ tongues would wag so fiercely they might manage to clear London of its fog. But the carriage was slowing further, easing to a stop before his townhouse on Curzon Street. The last thing he wanted was to be heard discussing the man on the street. It would only fuel the fires of his suspicion and paranoia.
The Awakening of Lord Ambrose (The Lost Lords Book 6) Page 15