by Tessa Dare
His wanderings through the London streets by night proved just how well children took to him. Screaming terror was the most common reaction, with mute horror following close behind. The Mad Duchess had nothing on the Monster Duke.
He sucked on the sweet. “I will, of course, expect regular assurances of his well-being and education through correspondence.”
“Correspondence? You would raise your own son through the post?”
“I’ll be occupied. In London, and at the other estates. Besides, you’ve a surfeit of affection and bossiness. I don’t expect you’ll require my hand in his raising at all. My heir—”
“Your son.”
“—will be far better off in your keeping.”
“What if I don’t agree?” she asked. “What if I wish for him to know you? What if he wishes to not only know you, but love you, the way you loved your own father?”
Impossible.
Ash’s son could never admire him the way Ash had worshipped his own father. His father had been unfailingly wise, good-natured, and patient. Not ill-tempered and bitter, as Ash had become.
His father had been strong. Able to lift his son onto his shoulders without wincing.
His father had possessed a handsome, noble face. A face that had never failed to make Ash feel protected and secure. If Ash couldn’t give his own son that bone-deep feeling of safety, it was better that he stay away.
“No more chatter. Go to sleep.”
Within a few minutes, however, she did begin to chatter. This time, not with her lips and tongue—but with her teeth. Soon the entire settee began to shake. She was shivering like a struck tuning fork.
“Emma?” He slid toward her side of the settee. She’d drawn her feet up under her skirts, hugging her knees to her chest.
“S-s-sorry. It will stop in a m-minute.”
“It’s not that cold,” he said, as if he could reason her out of it.
“I’m always c-cold. I can’t help it.”
Yes, he recalled the five blankets.
Ash took her in his arms, holding her tight to share his warmth with her. Good Lord. She was trembling violently from head to toe. This couldn’t be a result of the weather. He laid his wrist to her brow. She didn’t feel feverish.
Only one explanation remained. She was frightened. His little wife, who didn’t fear dukes or footpads, was scared out of her wits.
“Is it the darkness?” he asked.
“N-no. It’s . . .” She clung to his waistcoat. “This just h-happens sometimes.”
He tightened his arms about her. “I’m here,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
He didn’t ask her any further questions, but he couldn’t help but think them. His gut told him this wasn’t just a quirk of her character. It had an origin. Something, or someone, had caused it.
Emma, Emma. What is it that happened to you?
And who can I throttle to make it better?
After several minutes, her shivering began to ease. So did the worry in Ash’s stomach. He’d been so concerned, he’d begun to consider attempting to carry her into the village for help.
“Attempting” being the infuriating word in that sentence. With the injuries to his shoulder, he didn’t think he could manage to carry her half that distance. Damn it, he despised feeling so useless.
“I’m better now. Thank you.”
She attempted to slip out of his embrace, but Ash was having none of it. He cinched his good arm tight. At least he could do that much. “Sleep.”
It wasn’t long before she obeyed. All that shivering had sapped the last of her energy, no doubt. Ash was left alone in the dark silence with his thoughts.
This excursion had gone all wrong. She was meant to be enthralled with the prospect of an idyllic country life without him, and he was supposed to remind himself of his original intentions. Marry her, impregnate her, tuck her away in the country, and reunite with his heir a dozen or so years down the line.
Instead, now she was tucked securely under his arm, and he didn’t want to let her go. To make it worse, he couldn’t stop sniffing her hair. It smelled like honeysuckle. He hated that he knew that.
He should have blamed Jonas, or the entirety of his staff. But in truth, this was his fault.
Like everything else in his life, it had backfired in spectacular fashion.
Emma woke with a start.
Where was she?
Oh, yes. Tucked under her husband’s arm. Bang in the middle of a disaster.
When she thought of her pitiful trembling last night, she cringed. Of all the times for one of those episodes to strike. In the past year, she’d suffered only a few bouts of the violent shivering, and the last one had been several months past. She’d thought perhaps they’d finally gone away.
Apparently not.
She turned her head stealthily and looked up at him. He was still asleep, thank goodness. His spare hand lay neatly on his chest. His legs were outstretched in an arrow-straight line, crossed at the ankles. The pose was very male, very military, and it made Emma acutely aware of her own ungainly sprawl of limbs. It wasn’t only his posture that made her self-conscious. Why was it that men woke up looking just as handsome as they had when falling asleep—if not more so? Ruffled hair, an attractive shadow of whiskers. It wasn’t fair.
Sliding out from under his arm, she made a few hasty efforts to repair her own appearance. She quickly unpinned her hair, combing it with her fingers, and pinched color back into her cheeks.
When he stirred, she flopped down on the opposite side of the settee, laying her cheek atop her hands and pretending to be asleep. When she was certain he’d awoken enough to notice, she allowed her eyelashes to open with a gentle flutter. She rose to a sitting position, stretching her arms overhead in a gentle salute to the rosy dawn. Then she shook out her hair, letting it tumble about her shoulders in waves.
She cast him a shy smile and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Good morning.”
His gaze roamed her face and body.
Why yes, I do wake up this beautiful every morning. When you leave me at night, you should know this is what you’re missing.
He scratched behind his ear like a flea-bitten dog and yawned loudly before reaching for his boot. “I’m dying for a piss.”
Emma blew out her breath. Fine. Sleeping Beauty and her prince they were not.
In that case, she would stop pretending. “That was the worst night imaginable.”
He shoved one foot into its boot. “If that’s the worst you can imagine, your imagination is lacking.”
“It’s hyperbole,” she said. “You know what I mean. It was terrible.”
“Perhaps. But we survived it, didn’t we.”
He rose to his feet and offered her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet.
“You’re right.” She tried to smooth the wrinkles from her skirt. “I’ve been through worse in the past, and I know you have, too. At least we had each other.”
His gaze changed, the way it did in rare moments. Their icy blue melted to pools of deep, unspoken emotion. Compelling and dangerous. She was drawn to them. She could drown in them.
“Emma, you—” He broke off and began again. “Just don’t get used to it. That’s all.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” she lied.
“Good.”
Emma had no logical reason to feel hurt by his words, but she did.
The rumble of carriage wheels coming down the drive rescued them from the charged silence.
He tugged on his waistcoat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some eviscerating to do.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Come in, come in. I’m so glad you’re here.” Emma handed Alexandra’s rain-spattered cloak to the maid. “I can’t believe you came in such a downpour.”
“I’m always punctual,” Alexandra said, taming the rain-frizzled wisps of her black hair.
“Yes, I suppose you would be.”
“I’ve
brought the chronometer.” She opened her valise on a nearby bench, withdrawing a brass instrument that looked like a giant’s pocket watch. “I can assure you, the time is accurate to the second. I take it to Greenwich once a fortnight to be synchronized at the meridian, and once a year it’s calibrated by—”
“You don’t need to sell me on your services, Alex. I have every confidence.”
Alexandra smiled. “Thank you.”
Emma drew her into the sitting room. “First, tea. You need something to warm you after coming in from that rain. Then we’ll make a survey of the house and take an inventory of the timepieces.”
“You needn’t do that. The housekeeper can take me around.”
“Believe me, it will be a useful exercise. There are wings of this place even I’m not familiar with yet.”
“Yes, but in the other fine houses, I only set one or two clocks, and then the butler—”
Emma cut her off. “This is not one of the other fine houses. You alone will set each and every timepiece in the house. Weekly. And you will bill us at three times your usual rate.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Very well, then. We’ll multiply it by five.” The maid brought in a tray with cups and a teapot. Emma waited until she’d left, then lifted the pot to pour. “I know—all too well—what it’s like to be an unmarried young woman in London, working for a living at criminally low wages.”
Alexandra accepted the teacup and stared into it. “If you’d truly like to do me a favor . . .”
“Anything.”
“I need a new walking dress. Something a bit smarter, for when I go calling on potential customers. Perhaps you’d be so good as to advise me on the style, or help me select the fabric?”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll sew it for you myself.” She held off Alexandra’s objection. “I would love nothing more.”
“It’s too much.”
“Not at all. Other ladies have the pianoforte or watercolors. My one accomplishment is dressmaking. Strange as it sounds, I miss the challenge. It’s you who’d be doing me a favor.”
Many of the ladies who visited Madame’s had been elegant and fashionable to begin with—but Emma’s favorites were the ones who weren’t. The quiet girls, the spinsters, the simply overlooked. Dressmaking wasn’t superficial with them. A well-made, flattering gown had the ability to draw forth inner qualities: not only loveliness, but confidence.
Alexandra Mountbatten was a beauty in hiding.
“If you insist,” she said shyly.
“I insist. I’ll only need to take your measurements, and then I’ll draw up a few sketches.”
“Goodness. We had better see to the clocks before all that.”
They began a survey of the house. It became clear after just a few rooms that this was going to take a bit of time. The drawing room alone had three clocks: one standing, one ormolu, and one a sort of Viennese fancywork with a dancing couple who twirled on the hour.
They worked their way through the morning room, the music room, and the dining room. Alex kept notes of every timepiece, room by room.
When they came to the door of the ballroom, Emma stopped and pressed her ear to the door. Clanging and intermittent grunting could be heard from within.
“We’ll come back to that one later,” she whispered, steering Alex back down the corridor to the safety of the entrance hall.
They made their way upstairs, where Emma struggled to remember the names of all the guest bedchambers. Some were easy, like the Rose Room and the Green Suite, but they had to resort to making up names for the rest: the Unsettling Portrait Room, the Hideous Wallpaper Annex, and the Suite of Ridiculous Size.
“What’s this one?” Alex opened the next door. “Oh, it’s the grandest yet.”
“These are the duke’s rooms.”
Emma paused in the corridor. She hadn’t been prepared for this. To be honest, she only knew these rooms to be her husband’s because they were just down the corridor from hers. She’d never been inside them, and she was embarrassed to admit it. Even to Alex.
She shouldn’t be ashamed to enter, should she? She was mistress of the house, after all. It was no intrusion for her to come in and inventory the clocks. It wasn’t as though she meant to rifle through his chest of drawers and sniff his laundry.
Besides, she knew him to be downstairs—clanging and grunting with poor Khan. Lord, what suffering he inflicted on the man.
Emma moved into the room, pretending to have the same confidence she’d shown when exploring the others.
Alexandra scribbled in her carnet, taking note of the clock on the mantel of the antechamber before proceeding into the bedroom. There, she peered at the small timepiece at his bedside.
“Is there a clock in the dressing room?” Alex asked.
“I don’t . . .” Emma cursed her own ignorance. Rather than admit it, she plowed forward in false surety. “I meant to say, no. There isn’t.”
“Did you want me to set the pocket watch?”
“The pocket watch?”
Alexandra nodded toward the washstand. To the side of the basin and ewer stood a military rank of gentleman’s toiletries: tooth powder, shaving soap and razor, cologne, a linen towel . . . and at the end of those, a silver tray holding a stickpin, pocket watch, and an assortment of shillings and pence.
“I’m not certain,” Emma said, unwilling to go that far. “I’ll ask him about it later.”
Her gaze tracked back to that shaving soap and razor. She’d never stopped to consider it before, but it must be astoundingly difficult for him to shave around his scars. Yet he did so anyway, every day. Every evening, too, come to think of it. When he suckled her breasts or settled between her thighs—her skin heated at the memories—she never felt the scrape of whiskers against her skin.
Did he go to all that trouble just for her?
The thought was deeply stirring. She felt her body softening in unconnected places. The corners of her mouth. Her knees. Her heart.
To distract herself, she wandered to a corner of the antechamber, where a Holland cloth had been draped over some tall, narrow furnishing. Could it be another clock, out of use? If so, Emma hoped it needed repair. She could pay Alex a frightful sum for mending it.
However, when she pulled the cloth aside, she did not discover a clock behind it.
She found a mirror.
A full-length looking glass in a gilt oval frame, cracked to pieces. A spiderweb of splinters radiated from the center. Each shard reflected at a different angle, piecing her image into a patchwork Emma.
She touched her fingertips to the center of the shattered web. It looked as if someone—a strong, tall someone—had driven his fist into the glass.
A lump rose in her throat.
Alexandra tugged at her elbow. “Emma, someone’s coming.”
Oh, no.
Someone was coming. Worse by far, she knew who it must be. Steps that heavy could only belong to one person in this house.
The duke.
“We should move on anyhow,” Alexandra said.
Emma whirled in place, desperate. If they left the suite now, they would confront him in the corridor—and he would be suspicious of her intent. Displeased, or even furious.
A door creaked. He’d entered through the antechamber.
Emma grabbed Alexandra by the wrist and tugged her to the other side of the room. Together, they dove behind a settee.
“Why are we hiding?” Alexandra whispered. “It’s your house. Your husband.”
“I know.” Emma fluttered her hands. “But I panicked.”
“I suppose we’re stuck now. Let’s hope he doesn’t mean to stay.”
Emma put a finger to her lips for silence as the duke’s footsteps moved into the bedchamber. The room fell almost silent. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she peeked around the corner of the settee. His back was to her, and he—
God have mercy. He was disrobing.
She slunk back to
the other side of the settee and quietly thunked her head against the upholstery.
Why, why, why? Why now, why here?
Well, she supposed “here” was the logical place to disrobe, it being his bedchamber. But that answer did nothing to assuage her rueful, silent bemoaning of the entire situation. She had never felt so stupid.
“What is it?” Alexandra whispered.
Frantic, Emma made every hand signal she knew to indicate the need for absolute silence. She probably invented a few new ones, as well.
Remain calm, she told herself. Most likely he’d only come up to exchange his coat, or retrieve his watch or some other small item. Otherwise, wouldn’t he ring for his valet?
After waiting through twenty heartbeats—which likely added up to four seconds on Alexandra’s chronometer—she peeked again.
Oh, Lord. He’d tossed aside the coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and—as she watched—tugged his shirt free of his breeches and pulled it over his head.
Her pulse stopped—and then began again as a low, painful throb.
Dear heavens.
The left side of him was muscled and sculpted and Roman-godlike and all the other descriptors a woman could muster to signal attractiveness and sheer, raw lust. That ridge between his flank and his hip alone . . . the way his trousers rode it, dipping to reveal an enticing glimpse of taut, firm backside.
Emma wished she could claim she was riveted to that sight. All the places where he was strong and perfect. She wished her gaze had never wandered to the wounded side of him and stubbornly stuck there.
But it had.
And now she couldn’t look away.
The injuries he wore on his face were only the beginning. His torso bore a long, angry swath of scars that snaked from his neck, down the right side of his shoulder and chest, and then blazed around his ribs to end at the small of his back.
As he splashed water over his face and neck, the rivulets followed a tortuous path downward. His flesh was raised and twisting, as gnarled as the bark of ancient tree. Warring scars tugged at each other with aggressive fingers. And then there were a few bits of him that were simply . . . missing. Depressions that deepened into hollows, where fire had carved him away to sinew and bone.