His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  And he said, as he slowed their steps, wound the dance down to a halt and let her settle back upon both feet, “Poppy, I believe you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.”

  He felt the shock of the words tumble through her and the startled expression that flickered across her face led to the disquieting realization that it was likely the first time she’d heard such a thing, perhaps the first time someone else had offered her such an assessment. Her brows knitted, her lashes shading eyes that had gone dark and pensive. She was retreating again, and he didn’t want to witness it, to let her withdraw behind her barriers without at least an attempt at collapsing them.

  Before she could pull away, he slipped his hand from her waist to her back and pulled—and she came tripping into his arms with a gasp, poised on her toes, prepared to launch into a protest. Her palms had landed on his chest, and she braced herself to push away. Before she could recover her balance, he banded right arm at her back and slid the fingers of his left hand into her loose hair, burying them in the cool silk of it.

  His lips touched her temple, and she froze, her arms shaking for a moment before they collapsed beneath her, trapping her against his chest in the circle of his arms. An awkward little sound rose in her throat, and he felt the huff of her breath escape against his chin.

  Her hair was so soft and sleek; he could wind his fingers in it and not worry about brittle, overly-ironed strands breaking off in them. It smelled fresh and clean, absent any of those flowery fragrances that women seemed to favor. It was one more thing uniquely her—like her ink-stained fingertips, or her waspish tongue, or those maddening little gold flecks in her eyes. His lips meandered down her cheek, enjoying the softness of her skin, the way her breaths staggered in her throat.

  “What are you doing?” she squeaked, her voice relieved of its former stridence. Her fingernails curled into the front of his shirt, the scratching sound burning in his ears.

  “Kissing my wife,” he murmured against her ear. “Really, Poppy, and here I had thought you had such keen observational skills.”

  She was too easily provoked; he felt the tensing of her muscles, and the instant she lifted her head to give him the dressing-down he so richly deserved, he slanted his mouth across her, swallowing the surprised little sound she made. For a moment—one brief, glorious moment—she let him kiss her. It might simply have been shock, or surprise, or her terrible, wonderful curiosity—but her mouth trembled beneath his, her lips parted, and she went lax against him, her body settling against his like a drowsy kitten. For a moment he was free to rub the shining strands of her hair between his fingers, savoring the silky slide of them. For a moment he clasped his hand over her hip, and she did not flinch away from his touch.

  For a moment she inadvertently taunted him with the pleasure they might have found in one another had he not set them at odds from the very beginning of their marriage.

  And then she was pushing away from him, and he mourned the loss of her even as the cool air swept between them, erasing the last traces of the heat of her body against his.

  “My lord—”

  The curt, distancing form of address set his teeth on edge, but he released her and stepped away. “Tomorrow, then,” he interrupted, turning aside lest she, with her novelist’s eye, see too clearly how deeply so simple a kiss had affected him.

  “To—tomorrow?”

  “The ball. The waltz.” He gestured vaguely with one hand, swiped the other over his lips where he could still taste her. “You did promise.” He risked a glance at her, and experienced a frisson of pure pleasure to see that she had not been unaffected—she blinked in the low light, her eyes dazed. Her breaths were uneven, hitching just a bit in her chest. Her hands curled just as they had into his shirtfront, the instinctive motion still caught in her fingers.

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated as he crossed the floors toward the connecting door. Good. Let her think about that in her cold, lonely bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Poppy stared at the ball gown hanging in her dressing room, a sense of impending disaster hanging over her head like a storm cloud. For a few hours she had been contemplating pleading a headache, perhaps sending a note with a housemaid to her husband expressing her regrets. But she doubted that he would believe it—and with no lock on the connecting door between their rooms, she also suspected that he might simply test the veracity of her claim.

  It was the coward’s way out, besides. And as loath as she was to admit such a thing, she was beginning to believe he might actually be correct—the longer she hid away, the harder it would be to show her face in society once again. And she would have to do so eventually, if only for Victoria and Isobel’s sake.

  Still, the pale yellow gown that hung in the dressing room taunted her from its hanger. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would ever have chosen for herself, but she’d worn such dark, unassuming colors for so long that they had simply become a part of her. This was a gown meant for a fashionable lady, a social butterfly, and that had never been Poppy.

  A knock at the door startled her out of her flustered thoughts, and she experienced a flutter of panic that it might be Westwood come to tell her to dress—but the two times he’d entered her room, he’d not bothered knocking. It had to be Mrs. Sedgwick, then.

  “Come in,” she called over her shoulder, studying the gown intently. She would have to ask Mrs. Sedgwick to send someone to come help her into it, she supposed.

  There was a flurry of movement within the room, just outside her dressing room, and then a familiar voice—Jilly’s voice—called out, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve come to prepare for the ball with you, and I’ve brought my lady’s maid. David says you haven’t found one yet, and Mary is a wonder with hair.”

  In truth, Poppy hadn’t even thought of hiring a lady’s maid. She had pinned up her own hair, and on the occasions that she had donned a gown with inconvenient buttons, then she had simply rung for a maid to help her do them up.

  Still, she found herself oddly grateful for Jilly’s presence. The duchess’ delightful chatter kept her from dwelling too long on the myriad unpleasantness that was likely to ensue.

  “Thank you, but I thought I would do my own hair,” Poppy said. There were several suspicious sounds from the room outside, as of a number of things being arranged onto every available surface, and Poppy began to suspect that this process would be a bit more arduous than she had thought. Victoria and Isobel did tend to spend a significant portion of their evenings, when engaged, in preparation.

  Jilly stepped into the dressing room. “I hope you will not take offense,” she said, “but a softer style would go better with your gown. I assure you, Mary will work wonders.” In her hand she held a box, which she offered to Poppy. “David said he thought it likely you would need slippers, so I had a pair made up for you.”

  For an instant Poppy wondered if Westwood had arranged for all of this—for Jilly to shepherd her through preparing for the first ball where she would not be simply a chaperone, perhaps even to ensure she would appear as agreed. She didn’t know whether she ought to be exasperated or grateful. Still, it was comforting, even if contrived.

  Mary, Jilly’s lady’s maid, poked her head into the dressing room. “Beg pardon, my lady, but will you be wanting curls? I should get the tongs heated, if so.”

  “Mary, don’t you dare touch her hair with those tongs!” Jilly admonished. “I abhor the stench of scorched hair, and she doesn’t need any insipid curls.” This, coming from the duchess whose copper hair was a mass of them.

  “But, ma’am, don’t you think she ought to decide? Perhaps she’d like curls,” Mary shot back, and Poppy watched, fascinated, the interplay between the two.

  Jilly snagged Mary by the sleeve, dragging her into the dressing room. “Here,” she said. “Here’s her gown—tell me, do you think curls would suit it?”

  “Oh,” Mary whispered. “No, I think not.” She patted Jilly’s arm absently and wandered again out of
the dressing room, muttering, “Where did I put those ribbons?”

  Jilly offered Poppy a smile and said, “Relax. I promise you are in good hands.”

  ∞∞∞

  David had gone on ahead to the Throckmorton ball, Victoria and Isobel in tow. He had wanted to stay behind and escort Poppy himself, but Jilly had demanded he absent himself as soon as he’d entered the room to gauge their progress.

  Of course he had failed to knock, and had burst into the room when Poppy had been in only a chemise and petticoats, surprising her into a startled shriek. He could have pointed out that he’d seen her in less—her nightgown had been more revealing, after all—but somehow he didn’t think she had been in any state to appreciate the thought. Still, he’d managed to slip a jewelry box into Jilly’s hands before she’d slammed the door in his face.

  Victoria and Isobel had taken poorly the role reversal of waiting on their sister to be ready. In their gowns of ice blue and lilac, they’d been a dizzying blur of color as they had skittered back and forth in the foyer, pacing anxiously until at last he’d been elected to put them out of their misery and go on ahead to the ball, since it seemed as if Jilly and Poppy would not soon be emerging.

  And thus the first sight of his new bride had been when she had arrived at last with Jilly, and they had come arm in arm down the stairs leading into the ballroom. To the untrained eye, Poppy would appear to be handling her nerves well enough, but David could see the faint jerky hesitance in her movements, the way she cast her gaze downward—not modestly, but fearfully.

  Her hair had been tamed into an elegant style, a crown of braids woven with a thin yellow ribbon wreathing her head and ending in a soft bun gathered at the nape of her neck. A few charming wisps had been left free to frame her face, but they lacked the stiff perfection of the omnipresent curls favored by ladies currently, and the result was something infinitely more refined.

  Her gown was a delicate butter yellow, contrasting starkly with her dark hair, wrought of several layers of near-transparent silk that seemed to float about her as she moved. The sleeves were short, baring several inches of pale, smooth skin above the line of her evening gloves. The neckline was modest by any standard, but trimmed in thin gold ribbon that drew the eye to her throat, which was adorned with the string of pearls he’d given Jilly for Poppy to wear.

  She looked regal, and she made every other lady with their artfully-arranged curls and their frills and flounces and daringly-cut bodices look tawdry in comparison. She didn’t require bows or silk flowers or any such adornments to catch a man’s eye. Her natural elegance was enhancement enough. She looked like she’d been born to a ballroom, moving through the crowd at Jilly’s side with the understated grace of a woman who knew she didn’t have to be anything other than she was to have men falling at her feet.

  She didn’t know it, of course. The smile that was pasted on her face was in imminent danger of cracking, and her eyes drifted about the ballroom rather than lingering on any one person, as if she sought to avoid the searching stares.

  The room did not wind down into a reverent hush—the quartet played on, the dancers moved through their steps. But Poppy had caught no small amount of attention anyway, and David heard a low murmur sweep through the crowd. As Jilly spotted him and began a slow progress toward his corner of the room, he saw Poppy turn to give a longing glance to the side of the room, where a number of chairs had been set up for the chaperones, as if she wished once more to be among them, invisible once again.

  Had he imagined but that the crowd had parted for the two women? Of course Jilly was quite popular, a much-admired and fashionable duchess with whom everyone wished to curry favor, but Poppy was an unknown, a woman who had been perceived to have schemed her way into the aristocracy. Still, that did not prevent the stares that followed her, the wide, disbelieving eyes that someone who had once been so overlooked, deemed to be a severe, frumpy sort of woman had turned up to her first true ball dressed to the nines and looking—

  Delectable. Like a lemon tart, sweet and sharp at once, mouthwatering in her yellow gown that floated across the floor with every step she took, her figure no longer camouflaged beneath her heavy gowns. The current mode flattered her slender form, emphasized her narrow hips. Her neat, trim figure made Elaine’s low-cut, one-deep-breath-shy-of-scandalous gowns look very nearly tasteless by comparison, and for the life of him David couldn’t recall why he had ever favored women with breasts the size of cantaloupes when Poppy’s modestly covered breasts speared him with the breathless excitement of a child on Christmas morning, eager to tear into wrapping paper to reveal the treasures hidden beneath.

  It would be so easy to slip those tiny sleeves down over her arms, peel the silk away from her body and bare her to his avid gaze.

  Not that she would let him. And if he continued to allow his mind to wander along those lines, he would make an embarrassment of himself in front of God and everyone.

  “And here’s David.” Jilly’s voice broke through his lustful haze as they appeared just a few feet before him at last. She had maintained a solid hold on Poppy’s arm with her own threaded through it, as though she, too, had entertained the notion that Poppy might have given into the temptation to turn tail and flee had she been so permitted. Now, however, she unlinked their arms and caught up Poppy’s hand instead to convey her to him.

  He did not begrudge Poppy her startled expression; Jilly could be a force of nature when she set her mind to it. It was why he had asked Jilly to guide Poppy through what she had surely worked up in her mind as quite an ordeal—she’d buckled beneath the weight of Jilly’s pressure once before, and he’d figured she could use a bit of friendly female company.

  It also hadn’t hurt matters, such as they were, to be seen in the company of her popular sister-in-law, to have whatever bits of gossip that might have flown about the room silenced in the face of Jilly’s clear approval.

  He reached for Poppy’s hand, offering her a winning smile and as he brushed a kiss over her gloved fingers, and she jerked as if he’d singed her. “Poppy,” he said. “You look lovely.”

  She gave a subtle tug on her hand, which he had refused to relinquish. “My lord,” she hissed beneath her breath, “people are staring.”

  Of course people were staring. No one had given her a second thought prior to their marriage, content to write her off as homely little spinster. Not one of them had expected her to turn up as elegantly as she had, to find beauty in the woman they had delighted in excoriating as a scheming social climber. But David had. In fact, he had seen the promise in her long before now, and it had had nothing at all to do with anything so insipid as mere prettiness. It had everything to do with her fierce loyalty to her sisters, with her unrelenting perseverance, her insatiable curiosity. She would be beautiful even if she hadn’t turned out quite so pretty, even if he had been the only one able to see it.

  Still he did not release her hand. It was scandalous in the extreme to make such an overt show of possessiveness, but just at the moment he could not find it in himself to give even half a damn about scandal.

  “Relax, Poppy. No one’s gossiping about you.” It wasn’t strictly true, but he could confidently say that whatever was whispered of her now had nothing at all to do with the indecent haste surrounding their marriage.

  “Of course they are.” She gave another tug on her hand, a flush of color pinking her cheeks. With a sigh, he surrendered it back to her, but smoothly countered by placing his palm on the small of her back.

  “Not for the reason you might think,” he murmured in her ear. “I assure you, the circumstances of our marriage are the very last thing on anyone’s mind. Instead they’re whispering how beautiful you look. It’s not malice, Poppy—it’s envy.”

  Her shocked gaze slid to his, wide and unblinking, those delightful little specks of gold within them shimmering in the light. She didn’t believe him, not really. But a part of her—perhaps only a very small part, but a part nonetheless—wanted
to. There was that disarming flicker of vulnerability, the fear that he was having a laugh at her expense, the tentative hope that he was not. She hadn’t the artifice to hide such things, and he hoped she would never learn it.

  He was aware of a cluster of women not ten feet away from them. He had heard their shocked inhalations as Poppy and Jilly had walked into the room, the hushed whispers they had uttered.

  So he bent once again to Poppy’s ear and whispered, “You see those women just off to my right? No, don’t turn your head, just watch them as best you can from here—you see them talking behind their fans? They’d give anything to know what I’m whispering in your ear just now.”

  Her cheeks went redder still. The ladies’ fans fluttered as they began whispering furiously to one another. And David laughed, absurdly pleased.

  “Well!” Jilly said, and Poppy, having quite forgotten she was still nearby, jumped. But Jilly only gave her an airy embrace, and said, “I’m sorry to leave you, but I must find James.”

  “She’ll be fine, Jilly. I count at least seven unrepentant rakes present who love nothing better than to make free with other men’s wives, and I’ll not leave her to their mercies, so don’t fuss.” At the very least, Poppy had made no effort to sidle away from his hand at her back.

  “Rakes?” Poppy echoed with a start. “But the girls—”

  “Are fine. I’ve kept a careful eye on them. I wouldn’t have let them go off with anyone I knew to be injurious to them.” He tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear and heard half a dozen sighs echo around them. No one would be suggesting that he’d been trapped into marriage after tonight. “Perhaps I can be of some use there,” he said. “I can certainly advise you on who should be permitted to call upon them and who should not.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Her brows drew together.