“That’s right, my dear,” Lady Thornbury said in a coaxing voice. “There’s no need to decide every detail of your lives together—”
“Or apart,” Griffin interrupted in a grim voice, taking in the haunted look in Justine’s eyes. He knew she was feeling trapped, just as he was, but her distress clearly bordered on panic. Griffin might loathe the idea of life in the ton, but he was beginning to realize that he had no quarrel with having Justine in his life—either in the short or the long term. She clearly didn’t feel the same about him, though, and that bothered him more than he cared to admit.
“Yes, exactly,” Lady Thornbury said with an encouraging smile in Griffin’s direction, intentionally misunderstanding him. “Nothing about the future need be set in stone. But we do need to stop the gossip in its tracks and convince the ton that your marriage is both real and eminently respectable.”
“As you are eminently respectable, Justine,” Vivien chimed in.
Dominic leaned forward and took Justine’s hand, his craggy features softened by genuine affection. “Think of it as a short-term tactic rather than a long-term strategy. Once the gossip has died down and society has accepted you back into its arms, then you can decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.”
He looked at Griffin, silently asking for help. Griffin crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to manipulate Justine any more than she already had been. The decision had to be hers and hers alone. He would do whatever she wished, no matter how much he hated it. That much, at least, he could do for her.
Sighing, Dominic looked back at Justine. “Once we’ve gotten to the other side of this, I promise I’ll help you do whatever you want. But for now, I ask you to trust me.”
Halfheartedly, Justine tried to argue with him. But Griffin knew the battle had been lost the moment she realized her family would be deeply affected by her actions. For no matter how little regard she might have for herself or her security, Griffin had learned she would do just about anything to protect the people she loved.
Chapter Thirteen
“Now, missus, you leave everything to me,” Rose said, bustling Justine toward her bedroom door. “Mr. Griffin won’t want his new bride taking care of any babies tonight. I’m sure he’s got his mind on other things to do with little mites,” she said with a sly grin. “Like making them.”
Justine practically choked. “Rose, I’ve already explained this. Our marriage is one of convenience and nothing more. I’m sure Mr. Griffin doesn’t expect anything of the sort.”
When Rose crossed her arms over her breasts and raised her eyebrows in disbelief, Justine let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, I certainly don’t expect anything of the sort, and I’ve made that very clear to him.”
Rose let out a soft hoot of laughter. “Blimey, wish I could have heard that conversation. How did he take that?”
Justine scrunched up her nose. “Not very well, I think. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t find it easy to decipher his thoughts.”
“That’s Mr. Griffin, all right, keeping his cards close to his vest. Except when he’s right mad with someone.” Rose gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Then you can tell exactly what he’s feeling.”
“I’ve noticed,” Justine said.
She glanced back at the cradle where Stephen was finally sleeping. It had taken her an hour of rocking and pacing to get him to go down, and exhaustion dragged at her bones. More than anything, she wanted to crawl into bed and pull the linens over her head, forgetting that today had ever happened.
But as tired as she was, she suspected there was little chance of such relief.
Rose took her by the shoulders and again steered her to the door. “You look all fagged out, missus, so if Mr. Griffin don’t come knocking on your door tonight, I’m thinking you should get some sleep.”
Justine was about to thank her when Rose cut in with another devilish smile. “Because I’d bet a week’s wages that Mr. Griffin won’t wait much longer to join you in some bed sport, and then you’ll wish you had gotten as much sleep as you could.”
“Thank you for that image, Rose,” Justine responded drily.
She took one more glance in the baby’s direction and then slipped into her room. After quietly closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, trying to let the troubles of the day leach from her body and mind. Usually when life’s cares threatened to overwhelm her, Justine would tell herself that everything would be fine, and then she would mentally list all the reasons why that would be so. But after the last few days, she had neither the energy nor the logic for the customary exercise. In fact, she was having a great deal of trouble even imagining what life was going to look like either in the immediate future or in the weeks and months ahead.
Pushing herself off the door, she made for the bell pull. If she’d been thinking straight, she should have asked Rose to unbutton and unlace her, but she couldn’t bear any more teasing and innuendo. Rose was a good woman, but she seemed convinced that Justine and Griffin should and would eventually engage in marital relations. Not that Rose would ever use such a careful euphemism to describe what Justine’s increasingly unruly imagination insisted on conjuring up.
While she waited for Clara, the Phelps’ daughter and the household’s maid, she sat at her dressing table and began taking down her hair. The nervous excitement that had flushed her cheeks earlier in the day had disappeared, leaving her wan and heavy-eyed. She grimaced at herself in the mirror. No one could look less like a bride than she did right now.
Justine closed her eyes to keep at bay the resurgent emotions that had almost swamped her when Griffin took her hand during the short marriage ceremony. Although his handsome face had seemed cut from granite, showing no expression, his eyes had blazed with a possessiveness that made her shiver with surprise and anxiety. His fingers had tightened and his thumb had brushed across the pulse on the inside of her wrist, sending blood pumping frantically through her veins.
But then his gaze had narrowed and the odd look of triumph had faded from his eyes. He’d been very careful with her after that, treating her with kindness and solicitude for the rest of the day. Yes, he had teased her, calling her my love when Lady Thornbury raised the issue of her dinner party. Justine had wanted to scold him for that. But she also appreciated that he had tried to support her wishes, and had done what he could to convince the others that the worst course of action would be to go about in public in an effort to portray that their marriage was genuine.
She pressed her palms to her eyes. Why in God’s name was Dominic so insistent about all of this? She understood he was trying to protect her reputation, but part of her still believed that retreating to the country was her best option. If she lived in seclusion, surely the furor over her marriage to Griffin would pass, allowing her to get an annulment at some point. That did seem the most sensible course of action since it appeared her husband intended to leave England as soon as little Stephen’s situation was resolved. And if that was the case, Justine had no desire to spend the rest of her life in some kind of limbo—neither free nor truly married, tied to a man who had little interest in her but as a temporary companion to warm his bed as long as his interest lasted.
All in all, a depressing thought, although she couldn’t deduce if it was the idea of him leaving her a virtual widow while he flitted around the world that bothered her, or the very idea of him leaving at all. She had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter, and that was simply unacceptable.
Justine gave her eyes a quick rub and then opened them. Pulling her spine straight, she picked up her beautiful new brush and began stroking it through her hair. It didn’t matter how she felt, since Dominic and the others had all but taken that choice out of her hands, at least for now. When they pointed out how the scandal and gossip would hurt her family, Justine had realized they were right. The only way forward was for her and Griffin to put on a good front.
That her new husband was furious about the blatant attempts to make him resp
ectable was clear and to be expected. But what she hadn’t expected was his eventual capitulation to Dominic’s plans. That had surprised her. Griffin Steele did not strike her as the type of man to sacrifice his own needs and desires for anyone else, but it would appear that he had done just that for her.
A quick knock on the door pulled her out of her reverie. But before she could answer, the door opened and Griffin, clad only in trousers and the dressing gown he’d worn the other night, strolled into the room. Justine’s brush hand froze in midair as her gaze helplessly traveled over him, finally coming to a halt on his bare feet. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a man not properly shod in boots or shoes. Somehow, seeing Griffin’s naked, masculine feet seemed even more shocking than seeing him without a shirt.
She jerked her eyes up to meet his amused gaze. His dark eyes were warm with humor, and with something she was finally starting to recognize. In defiance of her assurances to Rose, it seemed that Griffin had come to claim his marital privileges. A silly, feminine part of her was thrilled, but another, much larger part, was horrified.
And not simply because she felt so physically unprepared. Justine couldn’t imagine there was a woman more emotionally ill-equipped to deal with a man like Griffin Steele than she.
“I thought you were Clara,” she said weakly.
“I know,” he said. “I told Clara I would be helping you tonight, and sent her off to bed.”
Justine glowered at him. “That was rather forward of you, don’t you think? And I most certainly do not need your help, sir.” She waved her hand, still tightly clenching the brush as if trying to shoo him away. “I do hope you don’t think something is going to happen between us tonight, because it’s not. I thought I was quite clear about that.”
He easily captured her wrist. “Right now, all I’m thinking about is why you keep running away from me. You dashed out of the dining room before you’d barely had anything to eat. I don’t bite, Justine.” He plucked the brush from her hand. “Not unless you want me to.”
When he stepped behind her and started to draw the brush through her hair, her heart jolted hard against her ribs. She started to stand, but he gently pushed her back onto the low seat.
“Don’t be a ninny,” he said. “I already gave my word that I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do. But I am your lawful husband. It’s perfectly respectable for me to help you get ready for bed.”
She let out a little snort as she stared at him in the mirror. “There’s nothing respectable about you at all, and you know it.”
A low, husky laugh, one that sent shivers down the backs of her legs, was his only answer. Deciding she was too tired to fight him—and taking him at his word that he wouldn’t force himself on her—she sighed and slowly relaxed, letting the soothing brushstrokes bleed the tension from the muscles of her face and neck.
“I love your hair,” he said after a minute or two. “It’s like velvet fire under my hands.”
“You’re welcome to it,” she said in a sleepy voice, her eyelids threatening to flutter shut.
“Ah, yes. I imagine you don’t like the attention it draws to you. Thus, all the ghastly caps.”
She sighed. “They’re not that bad. But it’s true that I’m not very fond of the color. My cousins teased me endlessly about it when I was a child, and I must say that some of the so-called gentlemen of the ton weren’t much better. They were always making jokes about whether I had an evil temper to match my hair.”
“Idiots,” he murmured, continuing his steady, smoothing strokes.
“Well, I thought so,” she said in a drowsy voice. “I was the most timid wallflower one could imagine. The last thing I wanted to do was draw anyone’s attention.”
Griffin put the brush down and deftly parted her hair into three, thick strands. “And why was that?” He started to crisscross the strands into a neat braid.
She stared at him in the mirror, taking in the calm concentration of his expression as he worked. “Where did you learn to play lady’s maid?”
He flashed a smile. “There’s very little I don’t know about a woman’s toilette, Justine.”
She scoffed. “I can imagine.”
“None of that, wife. Now answer my question. Why did you avoid calling attention to yourself, unlike most other girls? God knows you’re pretty enough. I would have thought all the young beaus of the ton—stupid and shallow as they are—would have perceived that much about you, at least.”
Her traitorous emotions preened at his offhand compliment, but since he was standing in her bedroom, partially undressed, she thought it best to ignore it.
“My father drew more than enough attention as it was. For a spy, he was a remarkably flamboyant man although, oddly enough, that worked in his favor. Uncle Dominic always said that Papa was so extravagant in his behavior that no one would believe for a minute that he worked for the Service. But neither my brother nor I much cared for the attention. People used to gossip about him and all his outrageous antics.”
“But your father was gone from London a great deal, was he not?” Griffin asked.
He bent over her shoulder to select a ribbon from a small dish on the table. Justine could feel the heat of his body all along her back, and when his silken-clad arm brushed against her shoulder, nerves made her stomach jump.
At least she told herself it was nerves.
“True, but my aunt wasn’t much better,” she said in a rush, trying to ignore the prickly sensations that shivered across her skin. “She was artistic, and quite radical in her politics.” Justine thought back to the noisy, lively salons her aunt used to host, ones stuffed full of artists and writers and everyone her grandfather used to call the wrong sorts of people. “Not that Aunt Elizabeth wasn’t a lovely and kind person, but she wasn’t always comfortable to live with.”
She met Griffin’s eyes in the mirror as he tied the ribbon at the end of her braid, and gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I know it makes me sound missish, but I used to live in terror that she would say something outrageous on the occasions when we were in polite company. She used to make my grandfather positively demented.”
“Ah, that would be your father’s father.”
She nodded. “Yes. Grandpapa hated gossip, and even the slightest hint of scandalous behavior. My uncle—the current viscount—also takes a rather dim view of that sort of thing,” she said with a sigh. “Not that I really blame him with several children to marry off.”
Uncle William would surely see her marriage to Griffin as a terrible misalliance that would reflect poorly on the family. Justine didn’t even want to think about the conversation she would surely have with him on that topic. He would be apoplectic.
Griffin rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. “Then I imagine your uncle will simply be enchanted to know you married me.”
Justine tried not to look too morose. “It’s not your fault, of course, but no, he won’t be very happy about it.”
“What a coil, to be sure, but not one that requires unraveling tonight. Come, up with you.”
His hands slipped to her waist. With one swift movement, he lifted her to her feet, leaving her blinking. Griffin was neither a brawny nor an excessively muscled man, but he possessed a lean masculinity. She was no lightweight, though, so he was obviously a great deal stronger than he appeared.
When his hands went to the back of her dress, she jumped, twisting around to bat at him. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
“I’m unbuttoning your dress, and then I’m going to loosen your stays,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Someone has to do it, unless you want to sleep in your clothes.” He turned her back around. “Now, stop putting up a fuss. Anyone would think you’re a silly chit instead of the mature, sober woman I know you to be.”
Justine couldn’t help it. She stuck her tongue out at his reflection in the mirror.
“Very mature,” he added.
She stood still while he swiftly u
nbuttoned her gown and loosened her stays. He didn’t linger or make a production out of it, and she found herself relaxing in his expert hands. For a man who could make her nerves skitter and dance with a simple touch or look, he was an oddly comforting person to be around. That didn’t make much sense, except for the fact that she knew she could say anything to him and he wouldn’t judge it amiss. And aside from wanting her in his bed—which she suspected was largely an automatic reaction to any woman under the age of fifty—he didn’t seem to expect much from her, either. If anything, he wanted to take care of her, and that was a novel sensation, indeed.
“There,” he said, giving her a little shove in the direction of the ornate Chinese screen in the corner. “Go put on your night rail and robe, and then I’ll tuck you into bed.”
She peered over her shoulder at him. “That won’t be necessary.”
He smiled. “I know, but I’m enjoying our conversation. And it is our wedding night, after all. You can at least talk to me.”
When she eyed him suspiciously, he held his hands up, palms out. “No tricks, I promise.”
She shrugged, taking him at his word. After all, what could be the harm? She had no intention of throwing herself at him, at least not tonight.
That errant thought had her stumbling over her feet. Where in heaven’s name had that come from?
Flustered, she hurried behind the screen and began yanking off her dress. It took an enormous effort to ignore the blood pounding through her veins in a mix of trepidation and excitement, and to ignore her heightened awareness of the man on the other side of the screen—a man with the reputation as a rake of the first order.
A man who was now her husband.
But as she slipped her stays from her body, she reminded herself that she’d not seen any indication of rakish behavior on his part, not since she’d arrived in his household. The opposite, in fact. True, he delighted in saying outrageous things, and he had kissed her. And then there was that late-night encounter in the kitchen. But he’d made no real effort to seduce her and had done everything in his power to protect her—as he clearly protected all the females under his care. If anything, his conduct had been both disciplined and restrained.
Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom Page 18