“Don’t you agree, Lady Arthur?”
Emmaline started. The duchess looked at her expectantly. The light of the chandeliers was suddenly too bright. The colors of the ladies’ gowns too garish. The scents of flowers, perfumes, champagne, and too many people in too little space threatened to overwhelm her. Through it all, the pressure of Arthur’s hand in hers, the gentle squeeze, and the understanding in his unforgettable grey eyes steadied her. Loving a man was dangerous. What she needed to do to make it right was complete madness.
“I am sorry, Your Grace, I was woolgathering.” She spoke the words by rote and forced herself to pay attention.
“I said men seem to have no trouble starting a scandal, but we women are usually the ones who have to finish it.”
“Or survive it,” Emmaline agreed. Arthur raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“I think you and Lord Arthur have done far better than mere survival, my lady.” Sir Stirling raised his wife’s hand to his lips. He looked from Arthur to Emmaline and smiled.
“I hope you are right, Sir Stirling. I truly do.”
Chapter Seven
From the moment she’d descended the stairs into the foyer, Emmaline had taken his breath away. Madame Fousco’s magnificent creation caressed his wife’s every curve with silk the color of a fine wine. The dangerous neckline was both a treat and a torment. The swells of her generous breasts crested the taut fabric like creamy ocean waves. Arthur enjoyed the view, but every man at the ball had enjoyed it as well.
And drove him nigh on to madness. He’d suffered it because, in spite of the snubs and snide remarks, Emmaline had enjoyed herself. Sir Stirling, his wife and her sisters and their spouses had embraced them. And when Arthur had held her in his arms in the waltz, she’d smiled and laughed and reveled in the dance. As ridiculous as it sounded, his chest filled with pride and some other almost painful emotion at the notion he’d given her even an hour or two of the joy any woman deserved.
Her joy had faded all too quickly. She’d refused him even one more dance. She’d eaten very little and conversed even less during supper. Something or someone had stolen her joy. Seated across from her in the carriage on their way home, Arthur saw a lady laden to the point of breaking with some unseen burden. He found it hard to breathe now for a completely different reason.
“Emmaline, what—”
“Why did you marry me?” Wrapped in a burgundy and gold cambric shawl, she sat in the corner of the carriage and stared at him, her face devoid of any feeling at all.
“What a question.” He tried for a carefree, teasing tone. “You married me for my charm and good looks. Ask Birdie.”
“That is why I married you.” She managed a little smile. “Why did you marry me?”
Even an average sailor had the sense to detect a storm brewing. “For your library and the services of the most unopinionated lady’s maid in London?”
Her smile faded. She turned her head toward the window.
“Emmaline, what has happened?” He reached for her hand and was startled to find it cold. He chaffed it between his. “What is this about?”
“Why can you not tell me, Arthur? You, at least, know why I married you. I have never denied my reasons.”
An odd pang lodged beneath his ribs. “Is that all I am to you now? A name and a roof over your head? A way to keep your books safe and give your maid a home?”
“No,” she turned to face him, her eyes bright as jewels in the carriage lamplight. “You are much more than that to me now.” She swallowed. “Very much more,” she whispered. “I am so grateful to—”
“I don’t want your gratitude, Emmaline,” he growled with far more anger than he’d intended. He didn’t even know why he was angry. Simply that he was. “I want… I don’t know what I want, but it isn’t gratitude. You owe me nothing.”
She gave a watery laugh. “You haven’t seen the bills for my wardrobe and the new drapes in your bedchamber.”
He chuckled. “I am not certain I want to see them now.” He tugged her hand and pulled her onto the seat next to him. “Whatever my reasons for marrying you, I am glad I did, Emmaline. Sir Stirling may have brokered this marriage for you, but I got the better bargain.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her, which put his hand in entirely too close proximity to her breast. She took a deep breath, which only made matters worse. He tipped her head up with his free hand.
“I don’t care about what people are saying. I don’t care what they think. You and I are in this marriage, no one else. I left the navy at the height of my career. You are not the only scandalous member of this family.”
Family.
Where had that come from?
He closed his eyes against a vision of Emmaline, and children, and the life he’d always wanted, of a country gentleman managing his estates.
He opened his eyes. To find hers swimming with tears.
“Arthur, I—” Her lips, soft and plump, trembled—begging to be kissed.
“Emmaline,” he breathed and answered her plea.
He touched his lips to hers and she ignited. Her fingers slid through his hair and stroked the back of his neck. A continuous flow of shives danced down his spine. He teased and tempted the seam of her lips. She opened to him at once and met his tongue stroke for stroke. She kissed with the perfect mix of siren and angel. Words swirled through his mind. Words he’d never thought to say to another human being.
Had it only been two weeks she’d been in his life? How had he lived before Emmaline? And how would he ever send her away?
He broke off the kiss and gazed into her flushed, passion-swept face. Why had he married her? He’d nearly forgotten. He wanted to forget. He pulled her onto his lap and leaned her across his arm to free her breasts from the tentative hold of her bodice. He cradled one in his hand and covered the other with his lips—flicking the nipple with his tongue before he drew it between his lips.
“Arthur,” she moaned. She cradled his head with her hands, drawing him closer.
He let his hand wander along her ribs and down her thigh. His fingers clutched the silk skirts and drew them up, baring her petal-soft flesh to his fingertips. In moments he found her center damp and pulsing with desire. Her gasps and mewling cries in time with the sounds of the carriage moving through the streets of London sent surges of desire through his body. He knew the moment she’d reached the stars and covered her cries with an all-consuming kiss.
And just in time too. The carriage slowed as they turned into Berkeley Square. Emmaline sat up, eyes wide, and began to wrestle with her bodice.
“Captain, you have done it again. Are you determined to scandalize that poor boy riding on the back of your carriage?”
“The boy must learn some time.” He pushed her hands away and with one final kiss to each, tucked her breasts back into her gown.
“Not from me,” she shrieked, her glare completely disarmed by the tumble of her wrecked coiffure half down her back. She tried to return to the seat opposite him.
“Not so fast, Lady Arthur.” He grabbed her waist and dragged her back into his lap.
“You only call me that when you are trying to get ’round me.” She struggled to rise. “My lord, he is coming to open the door.”
“We will finish this upstairs, my lady,” he murmured and then nipped her earlobe.
“Good.” She suddenly grew solemn. “I have something important to tell you and—”
“I wasn’t referring to our conversation,” he growled before he swept her into his arms and left the carriage.
She was still shrieking with indignant laughter when Hobbes, his butler, let them into the foyer. Poor man nearly swallowed his tongue. The two footmen, however, fairly beamed. He’d never been so happy and alive in his life. He started up the stairs, Emmaline still in his arms.
“My lord.”
“My lady.”
From the top of the stairs, Emmaline’s maid called to her, an urgent, almost fr
antic tone to her voice, before she hurried down toward her mistress.
From the side of the foyer leading to the library, Thaddeus Warren, his face as grim as Arthur had ever seen it stood with something very like one of Emmaline’s sketchbooks in his hand.
“Put me down, Arthur.” Her face ashen, her hand shaking as she pushed against his shoulder, Emmaline shared a look of such misery and fear with her maid it threatened to break his heart. “Put me down.”
He did as she asked, but held onto her hand as she went to meet Birdie at the bottom of the stairs. She looked back at him, a half smile on her lips.
“My lord, you need to see this,” Warren said firmly. He indicated the library.
Once she reached the foyer, the maid whispered urgently in Arthur’s wife’s ear, and as she did Emmaline’s face clouded and paled even more. She released his hand and walked past him toward Warren.
“I would prefer to discuss this with his lordship alone, my lady.”
“At least for the next few moments I am still mistress of this house, Mr. Warren.” She looked from him to Arthur. “Whatever truths need come to light, I will have all of them directly from the source.” No queen had ever evinced a fury so cold and deadly as his Emmaline in this moment. With the grace of a dancer she glided into the library as if walking to her execution—head up, no sign of fear.
His Emmaline.
His blood began to turn to ice. Whose execution was it in truth?
Emmaline fairly shook with rage—at her father, at herself, at Mr. Warren, and most of all at the husband, who only moments ago had held all her hopes for the future in his hands. How many times this evening had she started to tell him what his man of business now laid before him? She’d decided to tell him the truth.
Truth.
Everything about the man she’d married was a lie. And no betrayal by her father or any other man in her life had hurt so much. Her heart shredded with every beat. Her breath wheezed through her like a winter wind. How could she ever have believed in the fantasy the last few weeks had been?
“Emmaline.” How she hated the way he said her name. The dangerous, shadowy man from the cemetery stood before his desk, her tattered half-empty sketchbook in his hand. “Is there any way you might explain this that does not make you as guilty as your damned father for one of the biggest swindles in the history of England?”
She gathered every word Birdie had whispered to her in the foyer. They fueled her rage, a rage she needed to stand up to the pain and betrayal she saw in Arthur’s eyes. She knew what she’d done and why, but he’d betrayed her too. When this night was over, her life would be forever changed. If she was to survive, she had to pack away the heart she’d given him, or risk shattering into a million little pieces.
“My father was the swindler, my lord. But I have discovered just this evening he is not my only male relation who has ruined my life being a liar and a cheat.”
“You go too far, my lady,” Mr. Warren started.
Arthur stalked across the room, his face pale and stark in the candlelight. He shook the open sketchbook at her. “Your artistic talent is even greater than I believed, Miss Peachum. You drew this lottery ticket, did you not? I daresay there are ministers of the treasury who could not tell it from the real thing.” The page fluttered to the floor, like so much fairy dust and ash. “Your father had these printed and sold them to people who trusted him. Just as I trusted you.”
“Trusted me?” Emmaline bent to pick up the only work of art her father had ever seen as valuable. “Trusted me, my lord? When were you going to tell me, you were the one who purchased my furnishings, my clothes, my… chamber pots?”
Arthur and Mr. Warren exchanged a look.
Birdie stepped forward and placed the delicate lady’s pocket watch into Emmaline’s hand. “I went into the attics for find an old rug to cover the floor of my lady’s art room. It is cold in there. Everything from the Sloane Street house is in your attics, my lord.” She tossed a sneer at the silent, watchful man of business. “This one doesn’t give a whit about books. I heard him tell that toff of a butler so. He’s been in this room every day, all day, going through my lady’s books.”
“What did you hope to find, my lord?” Emmaline shoved the drawing into his chest. “The money my father supposedly hid before he was arrested? Reginald never held on to the take long enough to hide it. And he’d certainly never hide it where I might find it.”
Mr. Warren went to the desk and rifled through the drawers.
“Warren.” Arthur’s voice was a warning. “No.”
The man clenched the letter he’d drawn from the desk. Emmaline marched over and snatched it from him. She recognized the handwriting at once. More important, judging by the date his last letter, she realized at once to whom it was written. She laughed. The longer she looked at it, the longer she laughed. Loudly and with no attempt to sound ladylike or genteel.
My precious girl,
The key to riches can be found in the world of Leathwall’s library.
R
When she finally caught her breath, Emmaline slapped the note against her husband’s chest. “Is that why you married me, Captain? You thought my father’s last letter told me where to recover his ill-gotten gains? I was never his precious girl. The letter was to—”
“His mistress.”
She’d thought the look of betrayal in his eyes would hurt the worst. The look of pity as Arthur said those words hurt more.
“Then why, Arthur? Why did you marry me?”
He stared at her, the hated lottery ticket print she’d created in his hand. And then his eyes flicked for just a moment to the shelves where her beloved books stood in jumbled rows, put there by his man of business.
The world of Leathwall’s library
Lord Cedric Leathwall. Her grandfather. Her library. She’d married him to save her library. He’d married her to acquire it. The outings. The days of his attention from morning ’til night. It had all been a ruse to keep her out of the house, out of her library until Mr. Warren had gone through her books in search of a treasure her father had probably spent long before the Bow Street Runners came to take him.
“I was quite wrong about your charm, Lord Arthur.” She placed her mother’s watch on his desk and then worked to remove her earrings and the ruby pendant to place beside it. “It did pay the butcher. And it fooled the hell out of me. You actually made me believe you enjoyed my company.”
“What are you doing, Emmaline?”
“I will have little use for jewels in prison, my lord. I can only assume you intend to have me arrested for my criminal acts.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You are my wife. Of course, I shan’t have you arrested. How could you do it? How could you have helped him?”
“He was my father. Bad blood will out, my lord.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I didn’t believe you would be so cruel as to make me believe you saw me as an equal. We have both been disappointed.” She started for the doors.
He caught her arm and spun her around. “The men of my crew who sold out. Your father took their entire savings, all they had to show for years of service to king and country. It was my duty—”
“To marry a woman who could only bring shame to your name? To spend time with a woman in whom you had no interest, no trust, and believed to be a criminal’s accomplice? That makes you a far better son than I was a daughter, Lord Arthur. You used and betrayed a mere woman to do what was expected of you. And I copied a lottery ticket to perfection because it was expected of me.” Emmaline snatched her arm free and marched back to the desk. She tugged off her wedding band and dropped it on the polished mahogany surface. It spun on its edge and fell over with a sound she would hear in her sleep for years to come. “I hope you have earned the love of your men by what you have done. Not even this,”— she snatched the sketch from his hand, wadded it up, and dropped it at his feet— “earned my father’s love for me.”
; Dear God, she’d never hurt like this. The ache radiated from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. She waved Birdie ahead of her and forced herself to walk out of the library toward the stairs.
“Emmaline, wait.”
Walk. Her feet, traitorous as her heart, refused to move. She stopped, one foot on the bottom step, a hand on the balustrade. Birdie turned back, her head tilted in query. Emmaline shook her head and her maid continued up the stairs.
Arthur clasped her hand. She refused to look at him. She dared not.
“Emmaline, you must understand—”
“No, Arthur, there is no need for me to understand. Just as there is no reason for you to understand my reasons for using my talent when Reginald asked me. There is no need for me to understand anything.” She drew in a breath iced with sorrow and a pain that pulsed with every memory of every betrayal she’d ever endured. “I am only your wife in name, my lord. As I have served my purpose, can I assume you will allow me to withdraw to one of your country estates?” She finally looked at him, at his face so beloved before this moment. It would probably remain beloved until the day she died. More fool, she. “Surely there is one you never visit. I am certain that was your plan all along.”
Something moved in his eyes.
A dry sob crawled up her throat.
“Of course, it was. Goodbye, Arthur. I hope you find the money for your men’s sakes, but I hold out little hope. Money was the only thing Reginald Peachum ever truly loved, but like everything else he threw it all away.”
She shrugged off his hand and dragged herself up the stairs, stairs that seemed to grow more in number with each step she took.
“I will arrange to have your library sent to you, Emmaline.” His voice sounded raw, as if he were the one who was dying inside.
She refused to look back at him. She could not bear it. Just as she could not bear a single thing to remind her of him and the joy of the last two weeks. “Don’t trouble yourself, my lord.” Her voice broke. “I don’t want it. Not anymore.”
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