The Look of Love

by Kelly, Julia

  “Sir Kier goes on in rather more explicit detail than I would’ve wished to describe how Ina tempted him to a private room with a mind to seduce him,” said Lady Sophia.

  “That’s not true,” Ina said, but her voice was meek from the mortification pooling in her. It had been naive to think that marrying Gavin would absolve her when a man like Sir Kier was out in the world, threatening her peace.

  “You can’t trust a word that man says. He tried to ruin Ina when she wanted no part of it,” said Gavin.

  “He succeeded by all accounts.” Lady Sophia turned to her. “Were you really so eager that you let him defile you in Mrs. Moira Sullivan’s library?”

  “Whatever he wrote to you, I didn’t do. You have to believe me,” Ina said, her arms hugging her stomach as though she could hold in the hurt.

  Lady Sophia sneered. “Who would believe the word of the daughter of a Scottish upstart?”

  “What do you know of my family?”

  “Do you think I wouldn’t have made inquiries about the family my son had married into?” The dowager laughed. “Do you want to know what they say about your wife behind your back, Gavin?”

  “Mother,” Gavin warned, but there was a resignation in his voice that pierced Ina’s heart.

  “They all think she was terrified of being a spinster and seduced you and you’re fool enough to have fallen for it.”

  For a moment, Ina thought Gavin might rise to her defense once again, but instead he sighed, his shoulders sagging as though he was tired of carrying the burden of defending her.

  All these years Ina had assumed he liked that she was a little different from the other ladies he’d met in Edinburgh, finding her at the very least diverting. But diverting wasn’t desirable. Men didn’t marry women who entertained them at parties because of their outrageous opinions or who made them belly laugh when they were out riding.

  Wretchedness wrapped around her heart. Men like Gavin were friends with her but they wanted to marry Grace. If she hadn’t forced him to marry her, he would have been free to wed Grace. The woman he actually loved. The one who would give him the sort of love he deserved—sweet and unconditional, with none of the complications Ina dragged along behind her.

  “Sir Kier goes on to write that one club has taken bets on how long it’ll be before Ina cuckolds you just like her mother did her father,” said Lady Sophia.

  Rage came loose in Ina at hearing her mother—the merry, laughing woman she hardly remembered but still loved—disparaged so openly. Every bit of slander stung, but Ina had learned long ago to hold that all in. Showing her pain would only give the cruel ladies and their laughing gentlemen more fuel. Yet here she was, standing before the woman whose son she’d married, enduring the same insults. She would no longer tolerate it, and so she steeled herself for battle.

  “You are free to malign me, but don’t you dare say another word about my mother. She loved me and she was kind,” Ina said, her voice shaking.

  “She was also no better than a common whore,” said Lady Sophia, determined to turn her mother into a weapon to use against Ina. “Her affairs were the thing of legend, according to Sir Kier, because she was far from discreet. Closed curtains in boxes at the opera and theater. Champagne-fueled parties in a bachelor’s apartments. She ran with a fast crowd.”

  “I won’t deny that my mother enjoyed her life, but her greatest flaw was that she wasn’t conventional.” Ina was practically yelling now. “Her friends will tell you she never once strayed from my father, even though they made each other miserable.”

  “Where there is smoke, there is fire,” said Grace.

  Ina whirled around and glared at her sister-in-law. “And where there is rumor there’s often cowardice. Society enjoys nothing more than whispering about women who dare to break the rules.”

  “This conversation ends now, Mother,” said Gavin. “Ina and I are married. There’s no changing that.”

  Her cheeks burned and her hope withered a little more. They were married and there was nothing he could do about it even if he wanted to. He was stuck with a thoroughly unsuitable wife. One he didn’t want, who’d bring speculation and gossip to Oak Park’s front door.

  She wanted the floor to swallow her up and take her away from this place. Anything to stop the nightmare of having to relive this moment in front of the mother-in-law who already despised her and the sister-in-law she could never live up to.

  “I’ll not live under this roof with her any longer,” said Lady Sophia.

  “Then you can leave,” said Gavin.

  “Gavin, please stop and consider what you’re asking,” Grace said, stepping forward to place a gentle hand on his forearm. It made Ina want to rip Grace’s hand right off her husband’s arm.

  His eyes fell to Grace’s fingers that toyed with the fabric of his sleeve. “I am.”

  “There will never be a moment’s peace between your mother and you again,” said Grace.

  “What a great loss,” muttered Ina under her breath.

  Grace stuck her nose up in the air. “You couldn’t begin to understand.”

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Grace, but there’s no point in trying to save what’s already broken,” Gavin said, removing his sister-in-law’s hand from his arm.

  “Mother, tomorrow morning Harper will arrange for the remainder of your things to be brought to the dower house,” said Gavin. “I’m tired of the delays and excuses. Ina and I will move into our proper apartments tomorrow afternoon, and that is where we’ll live.”

  “No,” Ina whispered, but he didn’t turn to her.

  “My solicitor will see that you’re well provided for, Mother,” he continued. “You may direct all communications for me through him, but there should be no reason for us to speak again.”

  His mother sat stiffly in her chair, her eyes trained on her son. Finally she gave a stiff nod. “If that’s what you wish.”

  “It is,” he said.

  The grand lady rose. “I’ve never thought it possible, but right now you look more like your father than ever before. You may actually show some promise, Gavin.”

  Ina moved protectively to him, but he waved her off. Still, there was no mistaking the tremble of his hand.

  “Grace, we will discuss your future at a later date,” he said before finally turning to Ina. “We need to talk. Privately.”

  They did indeed.

  Chapter Twenty

  INA CLIMBED THE stairs behind her husband, ready to fight. Despite being stronger than most women of her class thanks to her days spent sculpting, she had no interest in physical altercations. Her weapons of choice were words, and her fury over her wishes being brushed aside was honing the spears she’d throw at Gavin more with every passing moment.

  Never once did Gavin look back at her as they climbed the stairs. When they reached their rooms, he stopped at his door. “Your rooms or mine?”

  “Does it matter?” she asked. Either way this would be ugly, and this time it wouldn’t fizzle out and end with a stolen afternoon between the sheets. They were going to have this out one way or another.

  “My room then,” he said.

  He opened the door and stood back. When she walked by, she caught his scent. Normally it would entice her to wrap her arms around him, but instead she hugged them tight across her chest. If she touched him, she might lose some of her anger and right now she wanted to gather it all to her chest and revel in it.

  She’d never liked Gavin’s room in the west wing, no matter what Grace had said about the views of the sea. It was cold and devoid of anything that resembled comfort—fitting for this horrible house they were stuck with. The grand carved bed that dominated the room was too ostentatious, and so were the huge gilt-framed mirror and imposing paintings of ancestors past. It was impossible to catch a breath in this stuffy space with its walls that seemed
to close in around her.

  “Will you sit?” Gavin asked, gesturing to the large settee where he’d knelt between her legs and made her cry out with just his tongue a few nights before.

  She rolled her shoulders back. “No.”

  “So it’s to be one of those conversations?” he asked.

  “It won’t be a conversation,” she warned. It was a fight she wanted. A fight for her choices. For her home.

  “You’re angry.”

  Her gaze cut over to him. “I am.”

  “At me?” he asked, his voice infuriatingly detached.

  “I’m angry at your mother and sister-in-law for their meanness. At your father and your brother for dying. But mostly I’m furious with you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She stared at him as though he was mad. “Why? You must be joking.”

  “I want to be sure we’re having the same fight, because there are a few things I could take you to task for right now too.”

  “Why don’t we start with the idea that you’re going to move into your father’s rooms and I’ll move in to your mother’s and live there?”

  He threw his hands up. “That? You’re angry about that? It was just something I said to show my mother I was serious.”

  “You sounded serious to me too,” she pushed.

  “I was trying to convince my mother out of the house so that you would be more comfortable,” he said, letting out an exasperated sound. “Do you think I want to disrespect a grieving widow and tell her she no longer has a home in the house she’s known for more than forty years?”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

  He gripped his hair by the roots and pulled in frustration. “She attacked you!”

  “She’s been attacking me for days now, but you’ve been too preoccupied to notice,” she said.

  “I’ve been trying to dig the estate out of this mess so I can stop worrying. It’s my duty.”

  “You have a duty to me too,” she said. “I’m your wife.”

  “So be my wife. Support me in this. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, Ina,” he said, sounding weary.

  “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened and this responsibility that’s fallen to you—I truly am—but I’m miserable here, Gavin.” Her voice broke as she finally said the words that had been running through her mind every waking hour. “I’m losing who I am the longer I stay here.”

  “We haven’t even been here a month,” he said.

  “You say that and yet every time we speak you delay our return. Now you’re making it sound as though we’re never going to return. As though we’re going to live here. You even said you think I should delay entering the Royal Sculpture Society exhibition.”

  “That was a mistake,” he said. “We can move your studio here. Norris and Harper can make the arrangements and you can still enter.”

  “And what of my plans to reveal who I am once the judging is completed?” she asked with a cocked brow. “What will your mother think of that?”

  He pursed his lips and she could see him turning over the consequences of what her announcement would mean. Headlines about her. Vitriol from people who objected to her work—let alone Leander’s nudity. Laughter from men who thought Gavin was too emasculated to control his wife. When they’d just been Mr. and Mrs. Barrett of Edinburgh such a daring announcement had been one thing. Now that they were Sir Gavin and Lady Barrett of Oak Park with a house in London and connections it was entirely different.

  “Hang what my mother thinks. I’ll support whatever decision you make,” he finally said, but his answer had been too long in coming. She’d seen his reservation. She knew that the steadfast support he’d once given her had changed. The realization that she was losing her Gavin lanced through her. The man standing in front of her was becoming more Sir Gavin every day.

  “It isn’t enough. I don’t want to move my studio,” she said quietly. “I like my studio in our home. I don’t feel like an impostor being judged for every little thing she does when I’m there.”

  “You’re not an impostor.”

  She shook her head. “Stop trying to placate me like I’m a china-doll wife you can put up on a shelf and take out to play with when you feel like it.”

  “When have I ever treated you like that?” he asked.

  “Right now. I don’t want to manage a household like Oak Park or receive endless callers or play my part in county society. I don’t want to go to London for the season and try to care about Ascot or any of the other rubbish that we’re expected to do now. I have greater ambitions than being a baronet’s wife, Gavin.”

  A flash of anger. “You are a baronet’s wife whether you like it or not.”

  “Right now I’m finding I don’t like it at all,” she shot back.

  “I should never have let that Sullivan woman rope me into this ludicrous excuse for a marriage. I don’t know what I was thinking. Oh, that’s right. I was hoping to save you.”

  “I didn’t need saving,” she said, even though they both knew that wasn’t true. The injustice of it still infuriated her, but she couldn’t regret it. Even in the depths of a fight, she still had Gavin, and these few short weeks of their marriage had changed her so much for the better. That was why it hurt so badly that she could feel them growing farther and farther apart as the days went on.

  “You don’t need to remind me how little you need me. I’m constantly made aware of the fact that I was only slotted into the role of husband because I was conveniently there on the night. I didn’t even propose to you. You took it upon yourself to propose to me,” he said with a bitter laugh.

  “I should never have asked you to do any of this. You’d be happier now,” she said.

  He turned sharply on his heel, his gaze boring into her. “What do you mean?”

  “I know about Grace,” she blurted out so fast he looked stunned.

  “What do you know about Grace?” he asked.

  “I know what you were to each other once and how your families conspired to work against you and on your brother’s behalf. I also know that had I not stolen away to Mrs. Sullivan’s library, you would’ve been free to marry her now.”

  He stared at her, his gaze hard and unforgiving, and every little bit of guilt she’d held close to her chest burst forth like water from a dam that had breached its barriers.

  When he finally spoke, his words were dangerously quiet. “Is that what you really think of me? That I’m some pathetic man who’s still fixated on the woman who threw him over ten years ago? That I would want my brother’s widow less than a month after he died?”

  “I—”

  Anger pulsed off of him. “You think I’d bring my wife to live under the same roof as a woman I loved? That I would ever be that cruel?”

  The argument had somehow turned on her, and now Ina was scrambling to defend herself.

  “You could never have understood that circumstances would’ve been like this,” she said.

  “That’s exactly right. There was no way that I would’ve guessed my brother would’ve died at the same time as my father, leaving me heir to an estate I don’t want, with a title I don’t need. I can tell you with no hesitation that my love for Grace, while powerful, was the love of an eighteen-year-old boy. I could barely see outside of myself far enough to know that she could never return any degree of their affection. She didn’t want me.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want you?” she asked, suddenly defensive on his behalf.

  He laughed, the sound bitter and short. “I’ve only loved twice in my life, but I’ve asked myself the same question about both women.”

  Loved twice? Her head was spinning, unable to process everything.

  “I’m sorry that I forced you—”

  “Enough! I’m not an object of your pity. I’m a man who’s fully c
apable of making his own decisions about what happens to my life. Don’t you think that if I didn’t want to marry you I could’ve said no?”

  Oh God, she hadn’t. She’d been so wrapped up in her own embarrassment and angry at the injustice of them being forced to marry that she’d hardly thought that perhaps he might want to marry her. That he too might have gained something in their marriage.

  “I tolerated a great many things from you when I was your friend, Ina. You don’t understand what it was to stand back and watch you paraded in front of every eligible man in Edinburgh so long as he had four thousand pounds a year to his name and some modicum of respectability.” He was pacing the room now. “Notice how your aunt never put you in front of me. A second son with no fortune. I was never good enough.”

  “We were friends,” she said, still reeling from the idea that Gavin might’ve harbored some feelings for her.

  “Friends sometimes marry, Ina. Some might even say that’s the most rational way to approach the whole matter of marriage, because at least you might stand a chance of getting along years down the line. But that was never going to be us, was it?”

  “I never knew you’d considered marrying me.” Then again, she’d never really considered marrying anyone at all until she’d had to.

  “I can assure you that if I’d had the means, I would’ve been the first man to ask for your hand.” Any softness about his expression had fallen away, and his voice was low with a fierceness that frightened her. “If circumstances had been different, I never would’ve been your friend. I never would’ve been put off to the sideline to be forgotten. I would’ve made myself the man that you ran to, the one you so wanted with every little bit of your soul that you could hardly bear it any longer. I would’ve fought and scrapped for the chance to win your love.”

  She sucked her breath in, startled by the intensity of his words. It was almost too much, a complete shift in everything she’d known in her world.

  “Why did you never tell me?” she asked.

  He laughed again. “And have you run screaming from me? I’m many things, but I’m not an idiot.”