by Laura Landon
Both men laughed. “I should say not,” Baron Farley said. “And this time she could have it all without the boundaries of marriage.”
The pressure in Jessica’s chest tightened. She tried to swallow twice before she could make her throat work. Melinda tugged on her arm, trying to gain her attention, but she ignored her.
Simon was in love with another woman. Someone he intended to make his mistress.
Melinda tapped her arm again, and Jessica slowly turned toward her. Sanjay had returned and was waiting for permission to go home. He looked first at the three men now standing in front of the wooden bench, then looked back at her. There was a frown on his face.
“Is everything all right, missy?”
Jessica wanted to answer, but she could not make her voice work. She could only nod her head and sit back in the seat of the carriage with her hands clenched.
“Jessica. What is it?” Melinda said, reaching across the seat to hold Jessica’s hands. “What were those three men saying?”
“Nothing. Nothing important.” Jessica closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Are we ready, Sanjay?”
“Yes, missy. I will take us home now.”
Sanjay leaped to the top of the carriage with the driver, and Jessica leaned back against the soft maroon leather seats when the carriage lurched forward. Melinda asked twice more what was wrong, but how could Jessica tell her she’d just had her worst fears voiced out loud? How could she tell her she’d just seen three of Simon’s peers confirm that there was another woman in her husband’s life? And that Simon would probably send her away, or even worse, put her away so she would not find out about his mistress.
The tightness in her chest gripped harder. She’d told herself it wasn’t safe to develop feelings for her husband, but how could she not care for him a little after the night she’d spent in his arms? How could she not care a little when she could still feel his strong, warm body covering hers, or relive the gentleness of his touch as he took her? How was it possible not to care just a little for someone with whom you shared something so special?
Jessica closed her eyes and worried her lower lip. It was far too late to stop herself from developing feelings for him. She already cared for him more than was wise.
They drove the short distance to Melinda’s town house in silence. When they arrived, Jessica thanked her friend for all her help, then waited in the closed carriage while Sanjay escorted Melinda to the door. It didn’t take long, and they were again on their way.
As the carriage rolled over the cobblestone streets, she played the conversation she’d seen over and over in her mind. Everything the three men had said was true. She was plain and ordinary to look at. Simon had only married her for her money. He had come to her bed only because he was obligated, because it was necessary for him to produce an heir. As soon as he was assured his seed grew within her, he would undoubtedly never touch her again.
Jessica tried to calm the fury building within her. How naive she had been to think there was not another woman in Simon’s life. How naive she had been to think he could ever want her. How naive she had been to think he would be satisfied with a deaf woman as his wife.
Jessica fisted her hands in her lap. It was a known fact that many of Simon’s peers kept mistresses. She’d thought this would not matter to her. As long as she was free to create her gowns, she could survive. As long as she could support herself with her creations, she would manage. But that was not the way it would be. He could not take the chance of running into his wife while escorting his mistress around London. He would want to send her away.
Jessica’s fear grew greater, her determination more resolved. She would not last a week if she were relegated to some obscure country manor so her husband was free to be with someone he still loved.
She had to protect herself. She had to have the home he’d promised to give her before they had married. She had to have a place to call her own if—when—he left her for this Rosalind.
When the carriage pulled up in front of Simon’s town house, Jessica almost jumped out before Sanjay had a chance to help her. The desperation she felt rushed through her veins as she raced up the walk and through the door Hodgekiss held open.
“Is the master in his study, Hodgekiss?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady. The Earl of Collingsworth and Mr. Cambden left a short while ago. The master is still working.”
“Thank you,” Jessica said, walking to the door. She knocked once and lifted the handle.
Simon looked up.
A look of concern replaced the smile on his face. “What is wrong, Jessica?”
He rose from his chair and took one step around the desk. Her raised hand stopped him. “I would like to speak to you. It’s important.”
The worry on his face deepened. “Has something happened?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “I only need to speak with you.”
Jessica tried to relax her fingers when she saw his gaze focus on the tight fists she made at her side.
He took another step toward her, and she instinctively stepped back. She didn’t know why. She wasn’t afraid of him. She never had been.
She pushed aside her desire for him to put his arms around her and hold her. Something warned her she needed a certain amount of space to separate them.
“Very well,” he said, stepping back behind the desk. He pointed to a chair in front of the desk where he intended for her to sit. “Now, what is so important that you could not even take time to remove your cloak and gloves before you came to speak to me?”
Jessica looked at the gloves still on her hands and pushed her fingers deeper into the folds of her cloak. She lifted her shoulders and took in a deep breath. “I would like to speak to you about the demand I made before I agreed to marry you.”
“The demand?” The confusion on his face was obvious. So was the irritation.
“The house you promised you would provide for me.”
“You have a house, Jesse. This house. Our house. You will not live anywhere but with me.”
“You promised me a house that I could call my own.”
“Bloody hell,” he said, placing his palms fat on the top of the desk.
With a quick jerk, he shoved his chair away from the desk and stood. He braced his arms and glared down at her with the most menacing look Jessica had ever seen.
“What the hell has brought this on? What happened while you were out that made you think of demanding a house?”
She stood to face him. “Nothing. It’s just that I need to know that I have a home of my own when…if I am no longer satisfied here.”
“With what aren’t you satisfied, Jessica? The house?”
“It’s not the house,” she answered, keeping a brave front.
“The furnishings? The servants?”
“No.”
“With me?”
She couldn’t answer.
Simon took three angry steps around the desk and stood directly in front of her. “Don’t tell me you’re not satisfied, wife. Not after what happened between us last night.”
Jessica’s face burned faming hot. “That has nothing to do with anything. What happened wasn’t real. It was—”
“Oh, it was real, wife. No amount of pretending can convince you it wasn’t.”
Jessica’s heart beat faster. He could not go back on his word. She would not let him. “You promised. You promised I would have a house of my own.”
“I bloody well know what I promised, wife. I have not forgotten. But I want to know what happened that made having your own house suddenly so damned important?”
“It just is,” Jessica shouted.
Simon grabbed her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “What is behind this, dammit!”
Jessica wanted to strike the man who’d vowed to be her husband. “Who is Rosalind?”
Simon dropped his hands to his sides and took a step back from her. Fury blazed in his eyes, and anger tightened th
e muscles of his face. “Bloody hell.”
Jessica watched Simon’s reaction to Rosalind’s name with a sense of devastation. Spikes of black anger flashed in his eyes before he turned his back to her.
A knot twisted in the pit of her stomach. She’d prayed what she’d heard had been nothing more than idle gossip, male boasting. Now she knew it was not. Now she knew the comments linking Simon to a beautiful woman he had loved in the past—probably still loved today—were true.
She took several deep breaths. She’d known from the beginning there was little chance he could ever love her, but she’d hoped that in time their relationship would develop. Perhaps even into affection. Now she knew that would never happen. Simon was in love with someone else. A woman named Rosalind.
He braced one hand against the window frame while he stared out into the sunshine. The sunshine didn’t reach them. Instead, an ominous darkness engulfed the space that separated them.
She focused on the ramrod straight line of his spine; his taut, muscular legs; and the white-knuckled fist clenched behind his back. He did not move. She assumed he was formulating an acceptable explanation. After all, how many men found it easy to explain the woman they intended to take as a mistress to their wife?
She could see each heaving breath he took. His shoulders broadened and the smooth material of his white lawn shirt stretched across the rippling muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. When he turned around, the determined fierceness she saw frightened her.
“Who told you about Rosalind?”
“Her name was mentioned.”
The hostility in his eyes turned harsher. “You will never speak of her again. Do you understand?”
The severe look on Simon’s face wrapped her heart in a blanket of dread.
He turned away from her and stared out the window again as if looking the other way would put a halt to their conversation.
“Do you still love her?”
Simon spun around to face her, his hooded eyes dark and angry. “Do not enter that part of my life, Jessica. She has nothing to do with us.”
“Doesn’t she?”
Simon pounded a fist on the top of the desk. “No! She was part of my disastrous past. You are my wife now. That is all that should matter.”
Heaven help her, she could not let it die. She could not pretend it didn’t matter. Her whole future rested on the woman named Rosalind and whether or not Simon still loved her.
“What is Rosalind to you, Simon?”
He stood before her, his body rigid and tall, resignedly stoic in stature. For a long moment he didn’t answer. When he did, his straightforward gaze pierced her to her very soul.
“Nothing. She is nothing to me.”
Simon’s words were as bleak as the look in his eyes. If only he would answer her outright. If only he would explain what Rosalind meant to him. His evasiveness had only one meaning. It was an admission that he loved her, but something had happened to stop him from marrying her. Perhaps the loss of his money.
Jessica struggled to keep her emotions from running wild. She tried to keep her fears at bay. Money was no longer a problem for Simon. Only an unwanted wife. Heaven help her.
She prepared herself to battle him further, to challenge him and the lies he wanted her to believe, but suddenly he changed. The rigid bearing of his stern carriage slackened, then yielded in relaxed resignation. For the first time ever, he looked defeated. With tentative footsteps, he crossed the room and stood before her.
His look was softer, more conciliatory. She braced her shoulders, refusing to let his nearness affect her. She could not trust him, or herself. She could not fall prey to his charms.
He lifted her chin with his fingers. “I will not let Rosalind come between us. I want you to forget you ever heard her name. Whatever was between us died a long time ago.”
“But—”
“No, Jessica. You must trust me in this. Anything you read on anyone’s lips is nothing but vicious gossip and speculation. Do you understand?”
Jessica nodded, ignoring the first cold tremor that traversed her spine.
“Rosalind belongs in the past, and that is where she will stay. You need not concern yourself with her ever again.”
Jessica fought to control the voice that screamed in her head. She fought to control the devastation that threatened to consume her. She thought Colin was her only threat. She’d prayed Simon would be her salvation. Now she knew she could rely only on herself.
Simon reached for her and grasped her by the shoulders. There was a look of desperation in his eyes, a tenacious bond in the way he held her. “You shall have your house, Jessica. I will send for Ira first thing in the morning, and you can discuss the details with him to your satisfaction. But you will never leave me.”
He cupped her face between his hands and tilted her head so she could see every word he spoke. “If a house of your own will make you feel safer, you will have what you want. But I will hear no more talk of separate homes, or separate lives, or separate beds. You are my wife. You must trust me to look after you and keep you safe.”
He pulled her close to him and then lowered his head and covered her lips with his own. His kiss was harsh and demanding. Passionate and consuming.
No matter how hard she tried to fight the effect of his hands caressing her and his lips touching hers, she could not. His mastery over her was too complete. Her need to be held by him too overpowering.
Her husband had already awakened needs she thought were forever dead. He’d aroused passions she ached to have assuaged.
Heaven help her. She was doomed if she allowed herself to care for him.
She was on a course with certain disaster because she already did.
Chapter 16
Simon paced back and forth the length of the drawing room, then turned and paced the room again, waiting for Jessica to come downstairs so they could go to the ball. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught James watching him. The amused grin on the Duke of Collingsworth’s face broadened, and Simon leveled him the most ferocious scowl he could muster. To his abject frustration, his longtime friend answered with a burst of laughter.
“Heavens, Northcote. Just watching you is exhausting. By the time we get to the ball, I’ll be too tired to even dance one dance with my wife.” Collingsworth crossed one ankle atop his other knee and curved his arm over the back of the sofa. “Surely you aren’t concerned with the ton’s reaction as to how Jessica will look?”
“What kind of arrogant fool do you think I am? I have never cared one whit what the ton thinks about looks. I only want to introduce the Countess of Northcote into society and assure my peers that my wife and I intend to take our rightful places among them.”
“And you do not trust that your wife will look the part?”
Simon poured a very small amount of brandy into a snifter and stared at the golden liquid swirling in the glass. “I would be proud of her even if she were barefooted and garbed in homespun cloth.” A picture of Jessica garbed just that way flashed before his eyes. A picture of her standing in the middle of their bedroom, as she had last night, her bare toes curled beneath the simple, homemade nightdress that hung to her narrow ankles, and long chestnut-brown hair cascading over her shoulders and past her waist. A warm heat coursed through his veins as he remembered the way she’d opened her arms to him and held him close to her. The way she’d given herself to him.
“I have little to fear concerning her looks,” he said, mentally shaking himself. “That famous dressmaker, Madame Lamont, arrived early this morning, sporting a whole entourage of fitters and seamstresses. Before they were finished, your wife’s lady’s maid arrived, armed with hair irons and sweet-smelling soaps and face powders. She was ready to ‘face the difficult challenge,’ as she so bluntly put it.
“All day long, servants rushed up and down the stairs carrying armloads of towels and hot water and feminine things to be pressed, and more hot water and more frilly things to be pressed.”
Simon threw the brandy down his throat and let the liquid blaze a path all the way down. “Hell yes. What are they doing to her? Other than her outdated clothing, she is perfect. She doesn’t need to be painted up like a phony actress on a stage or made up to be a fake china doll everyone is afraid to touch. She needs to stay exactly as she is. I don’t want her changed.”
Simon gave his friend a most severe glare when the Duke of Collingsworth roared with laughter. “I swear, Simon. I can see that marriage to Jessica has already changed you.”
“I have not changed in the least,” he said, rubbing his hand over his smooth jaw. “I just don’t want her altered. And I don’t want her to be put through any more than she already has been. Attending the ball tonight will demand enough from her.”
Simon did not wait for his friend to comment. He walked to the far window and looked out onto the terrace and the garden beyond. “I have not seen a lot of kindness in my life. My mother died too soon for me to remember much of a female’s tenderness. Very seldom could Father tear himself away from his gaming and carousing and endless round of parties and balls to show me much more interest than he showed the butler or his valet.”
Simon locked his hands behind his back and filled his lungs with a deep breath. “I would be lying if I told you I didn’t resent him and the way he lived. At times I even hated him. Especially after Rosalind.”
Simon turned. “That’s why tonight is so important. It’s important that I face the ton and stand proudly before them as I was unable to do the whole time while my father was alive.” Simon fisted his hands. “But I know how terrified Jessica is. She’s only doing this because I’m forcing her. She’s terrified that someone will find out she cannot hear and she’ll be labeled the freak she thinks she is.”
Simon sat in the chair opposite James. “You’ve known her for some time, James. She went to the balls, did she not?”