“I think your beauty is your great misfortune.”
“It got me you.”
She smiled half in embarrassment, half in delight at his understanding of her. “True. But I still think it’s a shame that when people look at you, they see only this gorgeous exterior. I can’t wait until you are wizened and toothless, then people who meet you will be struck by your inner beauty.”
“You sure they won’t just be struck by my toothlessness instead?”
She was very sure. “No, inner beauty.”
He blushed. There was such an adorable shyness to him. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him look shy before.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “It means a great deal to me that you think so.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I love your hair. I love your eyes. I love your shoulders. I love your arms. I love your breasts. I love your hips. I love your thighs. I love your—”
She put her hand over his mouth.
He removed her hand. “I love you madly.”
She snuggled closer into him. “I like Cambridge.”
“You haven’t even seen Cambridge.”
“I want to live here, in this house.”
“And give up your practice? Cambridge doesn’t offer the same assortment of opportunities London does for a lady doctor.”
“It’s only an hour to London by train.”
“Each way,” he reminded her.
“Time for me to read all the medical journals in English, French, and German, which I need to do anyway—and I read slowly in German.”
“Let’s also have a place in London, then. That way, I can live in London between terms and you don’t need to spend so much time traveling.”
She thought about it. “I like that. Then we’ll have time to play chess too.”
Their future settled, they celebrated by making love again, more leisurely and tenderly, until all leisure and tenderness became forgotten and there was only hunger and urgency and need. And then, only glowing satisfaction.
He dressed himself then coaxed her out of bed.
“It’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon. You haven’t had anything for lunch. Come, let’s go get you something to eat.”
He laced her corset, buttoned her jacket, and adjusted her collar so that it sat properly. “Now you almost don’t look as if you’ve been shagged three times in a row.”
She hit him with her hat before setting it on her head. But just as she was about to push her hat pin through it, he removed the hat again and caressed her hair where it was white and fragile.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did I do this to you? Callista said I did.”
She shook her head. “It was a freak happenstance, though at that time I took it as a sign. I asked for the annulment the next day.”
He sighed and pressed his lips to her white hair.
“Should I dye it?” she asked. “I dyed it for a year or so. Then the effort didn’t seem to make much sense.”
“No, don’t dye it. It might be imperfect, but it is still lovely beyond words.” A reflection of their story: imperfect, but to him the most beautiful of stories.
She gazed at him, her green eyes deep and luminous.
“I think you are right,” she said, pulling him into a tight embrace. “It is lovely beyond words.”
In the course of his long and illustrious career, the Honorable Quentin Leonidas Marsden, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, was the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles. For introduction, the articles usually brought up the astonishing papers he published while he was still a student at Cambridge, one or two of his more daring globe-trotting adventures, and the Victoria Cross he’d received as a civilian fighting in the Swat Valley Uprising of ’97.
Some of the articles would also mention that he was married to the medical pioneer Bryony Asquith Marsden, though only one article, which appeared in an American magazine, ever ventured to relate that he’d married Mrs. Marsden not once, but twice.
It was also only in America that Professor Marsden ever commented on the subject of his marriage in public. Or rather, he wrote about it, at the end of the brief biography that Princeton University always requested to be included in the printed programs for the lectures that he was invited to give there every few years.
Over the decades, the body of the brief biography changed to reflect his accomplishments and accolades. But the last paragraph, however, never changed. It always read thusly:
During terms, Professor Marsden lives in Cambridge with his wife, chess player extraordinaire and distinguished physician and surgeon Bryony Asquith Marsden. His favorite time of day is half past six in the evening, when he meets Mrs. Marsden’s train at the station, as the latter returns from her day in London. On Sunday afternoons, rain or shine, Professor and Mrs. Marsden take a walk along The Backs, and treasure growing old together.
Coolies carrying a bathtub over difficult terrains? Native cooks serving European desserts on mountain treks? Had I read it in a book of fiction, I’d have scoffed at the author for lazy research—and transparent scheming for the use of the bathtub. But such had indeed been the case, according to A Sportswoman in India: Personal Adventures and Experiences of Travel in Known and Unknown India by Isabel Savory, a fascinating glimpse into not only the common touring practices at the very end of the nineteenth century, but the fierce, opinionated independence of the woman who authored it.
In the April 27, 1901, issue of the New York Medical Journal, in an article documenting women physicians holding hospital appointments in the United States and the British Empire, the following was said of the New Hospital for Women in London: “Staff consists of 41 physicians and surgeons, of whom 28 are women, holding the following appointments: 4 consulting staff, 5 physicians and surgeons for in-patients, 6 physicians and surgeons for out-patients, 6 clinical assistants, 2 ophthalmic surgeons, 3 anesthetists, 1 pathologist, 3 resident assistant medical officers.” (The numbers don’t add up to 28, as a select few physicians and surgeons probably held multiple appointments.)
In the second half of 1897 multiple uprisings broke out in the vast geographical area referred to as the North-West Frontier of India. Guess which ambitious young journalist got himself to the front as soon as possible to cover the uprising in the Swat Valley? None other than twenty-two-year-old Winston Churchill himself, who later published his account as The Story of the Malakand Field Force.
Will and Matthew Marsden first appeared in my book Delicious, with the irrepressible Will as the secondary hero. I’d given Will four brothers in order for his lady, who didn’t know any of the younger Marsden sons, to plausibly mistake him for Matthew in some respects. Then, once Not Quite a Husband reached the casting stage, I knew I needed a younger hero so I thought to myself, hey, why not the baby Marsden? And thus was born my first two interconnected books.
Sherry Thomas burst onto the romance scene with Private Arrangements, one of the most anticipated historical romance debuts in recent history and a Publishers Weekly Best of the Year book. Lisa Kleypas calls her “the most powerfully original historical romance author working today.” Her books have received stellar reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Chicago Tribune, and Romantic Times, along with enthusiastic praise from many of the most highly trafficked romance review websites and blogs.
Her story is all the more interesting given that English is Sherry’s second language—she has come a long way from the days when she made her laborious way through Rosemary Rogers’s Sweet Savage Love with an English-Chinese dictionary. She enjoys creating stories. And when she is not writing, she thinks about the Zen and zaniness of her profession, plays computer games with her sons, and reads as many fabulous books as she can find.
www.sherrythomas.com
SHERRY THOMAS is
“the most powerfully original historical romance
author writing today!”—Lisa Kleypas
PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS
To all of London society, Lord and Lady Tremaine had the perfect marriage—but that was because husband and wife resided on separate continents. Once upon a time, though, things were quite different for the Tremaines. When Gigi Rowland first laid eyes on Camden Saybrook, the attraction was immediate. But what began in a spark of passion ended in betrayal the morning after their wedding. Now Gigi wants to be free to marry again—but when Camden returns from America with an outrageous demand for her freedom, secrets will be exposed, desire rekindled … and one of London’s most admired couples must fall in love all over again or let each other go forever.
DELICIOUS
Famous in Paris, infamous in London, Verity Durant is as well known for her mouthwatering cuisine as for her scandalous love life. But to rising political star Stuart Somerset, Verity is just a name and food is just food, until her first dish touches his lips. Only once before had he known such pure arousal—a dangerous night of passion with a stranger ten years earlier. But Verity’s past has a secret that could devour them both even as they reach for the most delicious fruit of all ….
Available from Bantam Books
Not Quite a Husband is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2009 by Sherry Thomas
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint
of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90631-8
www.bantamdell.com
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