by Mia Vincy
“But your cravat,” she said, with a sideways glance.
“Don’t like it. It restricts my movement.”
“Your coat.”
“Too tight. It restricts my movement.”
She threw up her hands, which did interesting things to her bosom. “Heaven knows why you’re so preoccupied with movement. You’re not moving!”
In a single bound, he was on his feet. He arranged his banyan over his shoulders then glanced at her slyly, and yes, aha, caught her looking at him again. She was an unwelcome interruption, but at least she was an entertaining one.
He sauntered to her side, reached past her to fish some candied lemon from a bowl, and leaned one hip on the desk. As he chewed, she pulled a white flower out a few inches, turned it a few degrees, then pushed it back in one inch.
“What is the point of all these flowers anyway?” he said.
Her hands continued to move over the flowers, brisk, confident, competent. Whatever she was doing, the arrangement somehow became more harmonious. Clever, that. Pointless, but clever.
“Fresh flowers are pleasant.”
“They’re inefficient.” He paced away from those devilishly competent hands. “You cut them, put them in a vase, and then they die.”
“Everything dies. We cannot avoid loss, but we can compensate with pleasure and joy.”
“Pleasure and joy?” He swung around. “Did you come here to philosophize at me? If I wanted philosophy, I would consult the works of someone more…” He sought the right word. “Dead.”
“I shall keep that in mind.”
“How long do you mean to plague me anyway? Newell says your efforts with the duchess failed.”
“She merely feels neglected by her family. She’ll change her mind.”
“If the bloody woman doesn’t want you, sod her. You have friends,” he rushed on, before she could chide him for his language. “You’re out at all hours and I can’t take two steps without someone telling me how charming Mrs. DeWitt is, how agreeable, how amiable, how we must attend this tedious dinner or that ridiculous ball. Get some friend to dispose of Lucy for you.” He paced over to the fireplace and back, the room smaller than usual today. “How about the woman you were with the other day—the tall, terrifying one?”
“Arabella, Lady Hardbury?”
“That’s the one.”
“She has offered, but she hinted that she might be, ah, in a delicate condition.”
His legs froze, his heart raced with the fear that she might broach a conversation about delicate conditions. He risked a glance at her. Their eyes met briefly and then she hastily took to lining up the objects on his desk: a polished lump of iron ore, the bowl of candied lemon, a green glass paperweight filled with bubbles shaped like tears.
But all she said was, “Besides, it’s the principle. The duchess is family.”
“So you’ll grovel to her.”
“If that’s what I must do for Lucy. I’d do anything for my mother and sisters and children. Oh—”
She pressed her lips tight shut, her hand frozen around the paperweight, but the word had snuck out. It wafted through the air with a stench more ripe than the Thames in summer. No doubt she was cursing her wayward tongue. He certainly was.
He breathed through the yawning ache of emptiness and the phantom sensation of his son’s head on his arm. If she wanted children…
“There are plenty of children running around the streets of London,” he snapped. “Help yourself.”
“Of course, children would be too much of a nuisance for you, wouldn’t they?” She dropped the paperweight with a clunk. “No wonder you didn’t have any in your first marriage.”
“Right,” he said, not bothering to correct her. “A nuisance.”
“And I hear your brother Isaac has called, but he’s a nuisance too.”
“You’re all bloody nuisances. So if that’s all you wanted to say, you can stuff your self-righteousness into your trunk and take it with you to hell.” He strode to the door and yanked it open. “Now get out. I’m busy.”
“Fine!” She marched two steps toward him, chin high, eyes fierce, but stopped. “Except…”
“What? What?”
“I’m afraid I got a little distracted,” she said, sheepishly. “I meant to inform you that we are attending a rout at Lord and Lady Morecambe’s house this evening.”
He flung the door shut and leaned against it. “We are?”
“Yes. You and I.”
“Lady Morecambe invited us?”
“She is my aunt by marriage. Of course she invited us.”
That couldn’t be right. Invite Cassandra, certainly. But Joshua too? Cassandra’s uncle and grandfather—the Marquess of Morecambe and the Duke of Sherbourne—both received Joshua, but not to the more refined events, especially if Treyford would be there; society took care to avoid having Joshua and his father in the same room.
“Mr. Das and Mr. Newell have freed up your schedule tonight,” she went on, cheerfully oblivious to her looming social faux pas.
He was too amused to mind that she had taken over his schedule too. He pushed off the door and paced back around the room, trying to hide his grin.
“I should be delighted to attend,” he said.
“Good. It will be our first outing together as a married couple.” She smiled. No wonder she was welcome everywhere, with a smile like that. “Mr. Newell has had a word with your valet, a Mr. Vickers, I believe, who will select an appropriate outfit and shave you. Please remove the earring and do try to sit still long enough for him to tie your cravat properly. And if you could submit to a more fashionable haircut…”
She eyed his hair, which was, admittedly, getting too long. He wondered how long her hair was, when she let it out, all those thick chocolate tresses tumbling down her back. He did not have a chance to wonder too long before she turned to leave, saying, “Just…make an effort.”
Her skirts swayed about her as she marched to the door, graciously and purposefully, and he could almost make out the shape of her bottom and thighs beneath the layers of fabric.
“Is my hair so very terrible?” he called.
She stopped and turned back.
“It suits you, I suppose.” She looked him over again. “Your bruise has faded to a fetching shade of yellow. Like a kingcup.”
“Perhaps Vickers can find a matching waistcoat. I shall be the envy of every dandy in town.”
She didn’t seem to be listening. After a brief hesitation, she crossed back to him. “Why did Harry, I mean, Lord Bolderwood punch you anyway?”
“How the blazes did you know it was him?”
“You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
“So now you have sympathy. For Harry.”
“Well, you’re bigger and more dynamic and…”
She fluttered her hands at him. It took him a moment to realize she was indicating the size of his shoulders and chest.
“He is a bit puny, isn’t he?” he said. “Not all men can be as powerfully built as I am, you know. I trained as a blacksmith in my youth, and I worked as a stevedore. I’m still so strong I can balance a ton of steel on my little finger.”
She gave an endearing huff. “You would need to be strong to carry your vanity, which must weigh more than a ton.”
“Who said anything about vanity?” He feigned affront. “You’re the one who started talking about how broad and muscular my chest and shoulders are.”
“I never said a word about muscular shoulders!”
“So now you’re saying I’m puny too. Well.” He folded his arms over his chest, watched her eyes follow the movement. “That’s a bit unkind.”
“Of course you’re not puny! You’re shaped like a classical warrior and you know it. But that…Oh. You’re impossible. Why…Oh.”
Words having failed her, she closed her eyes and covered her face with one hand.
Faced with her charming embarrassment, Joshua could not maintain his act. He did enjoy teas
ing her, and her obvious curiosity about his body provided a marvelous source of entertainment. To strip away her polite facade and explore the real woman beneath would be…
Would be a very, very stupid thing to do.
“Baltic investment,” he said.
She pulled her hand away from her face and peered at him with bright eyes. More green than brown today, they were. “I beg your pardon?”
“Bolderwood lost money on a Baltic investment scheme and blames me for it.”
“Oh.”
Her eyes glazed over, somewhere around “investment,” which fortunately put an end to her questions. He would rather not mention Bolderwood’s ridiculous accusation that Joshua had his eye on Bolderwood’s wife. It was Joshua’s frank declaration of Lady Bolderwood’s lack of appeal that had earned him the punch.
“Anyway, please desist from any arguments tonight, and behave like a polite gentleman.”
“Smug and idle, you mean? Wasting hours tying my cravat and composing stupid odes to women’s eyes? Is that your notion of the ideal husband?”
She flashed a half-smile and he realized that, yes, that was her ideal. After all, useless, pretty Bolderwood had almost been her husband.
“Too bad,” he said, irritated with her again. “I might have been a polite gentleman, but I’m not. And I’m glad of it. I’m a businessman, a Birmingham man. Everyone in Birmingham walks fast, did you know that? Because we all have purpose and activity. And as for these polite gentlemen of yours, strolling about with fancy cravats because they have nothing else to do with their time—bah! What a shame you didn’t manage to marry one of them.”
“Never mind that now. You are not the kind of husband I need, but you are the one I have. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she added hastily. “I am immensely sensible of the sacrifice you made in marrying me.”
He shrugged and wandered away from her. “No sacrifice,” he said. “It means no one else can try to marry me. I don’t want a wife, so one who hardly exists suits me well. The sooner you can go back to not existing, the better.”
Silence filled the room, as if he had already gotten his wish. He resisted the urge to check that she was still there.
Until she came to his side and laid a hand on his arm, her expression soft and pleading.
“I know you are not that man, but could you not pretend?”
“Pretend to be someone I’m not?” He jerked his arm away from her. “Unlike you, I do not need everyone to like me. I have some pride.”
“Some of us haven’t the luxury of pride.” Something hard flashed in her eyes. “I need everyone to like me because then they will invite me into society, speak well of me, and overlook the fact that I am married to the rudest man in England. They will be more likely to welcome my sister into society and less likely to object if someone wishes to marry her. And if Lucy does something dreadful, we are more likely to come out of it all right.” She jabbed a finger at him. “And since your behavior reflects on me, the better you behave, the more likely I am to find a solution to Lucy. After which I shall go back to not existing, as you so charmingly put it, and you can go back to being as rude as you like.”
She maintained her facade, but her little speech was edged with anger, tainted with frustration, searing with the hint that some part of her longed to scream the words and pummel his chest and hurl heavy objects at his head. Her sense of injustice, her lack of power, her subtle strength of character—he imagined them wrestling with each other like drunks in a brawl, wreaking havoc inside her, with only her politeness to keep them locked in.
A better man would help her fight her battles, so she could have some peace.
Well, he was not a better man, and he had battles of his own, and no one saw him going around pestering people for help. Start taking on each other’s burdens and they’d never know when to stop.
Besides, he had agreed to a marriage in name only. Name only. Name. Only.
“What do I get in return?” he said. “For behaving properly and pretending to be someone I’m not?”
“Why would you need something in return?”
“When an employee performs well, I offer a reward. Or when a businessman hesitates on a deal, I throw in an inducement to make him agree.”
“Helping your family should be inducement enough.”
“And yet it is not.”
She considered for a moment. “What do you want, then?”
What he wanted was for her to leave him be, to stop disrupting his life, to stop making him question who he was and how he got here and who he wanted to be.
So he did the obvious thing, really.
He stepped right up to her and pressed a hand to her waist to hold her steady, her body firm and warm under his palm. He lowered his head so his mouth was so close to her ear he could have nibbled it. A lock of her hair brushed his cheek. She was tense, and he could feel her breathe. Her warm, floral, womanly fragrance slid under his skin and into his blood.
He ignored it all and murmured in her ear. He explained clearly, descriptively, succinctly, what he wanted her to do to him, as reward and inducement for good behavior.
She responded exactly as he had intended: She gasped and stumbled away from him, hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide.
“I will never do such a disgusting, depraved thing!” she cried. “That you would even think of it!”
Bull’s-eye! He grinned, ignoring the void beside him where she had been.
“If you refuse to comply, I refuse to behave,” he said.
“Oh, you…” Her lovely full mouth moved, helplessly seeking words to voice her outrage, then she gave up and stormed out, finally, mercifully leaving him alone, with his thoughts in disarray.
Chapter 7
Cassandra’s infuriating, vexing, depraved husband neither shaved nor removed the infernal earring, and he met Cassandra’s pointed look with raised eyebrows, which reminded her of his suggestion and her natural mortification. She carefully ignored him all the way to the rout at her aunt and uncle’s house, where, fortunately, he went his own way, and she was able to enjoy herself, though she could not forget what he had said.
Routs were silly, really: a crowd speeding through a house, conversing in frantic, frivolous bursts, reveling in the crush even as they complained. But she loved talking to people and thinking up amusing conversation points and admiring other ladies’ gowns.
She spied Arabella on the upper level and climbed the stairs to join her. Arabella made a haughty, cool island of stillness amid the social whirl, but her gentle smile suggested Lord Hardbury was nearby.
“Arabella, I must ask you something.” Cassandra’s hands were clammy in her gloves; she could not believe she was about to ask something so brazen, but she simply had to know. She started to speak but with this racket, she would have to nearly yell to be heard. “I need to whisper. Please stoop.”
“How intriguing,” Arabella said and complied.
“Do you ever…” Cassandra glanced around. No one could hear. “Kiss…your husband’s…organ?”
A strange sound burst out of Arabella and she hastily covered her mouth with her fist. “Did you say what I think you said?”
Cassandra’s cheeks burned. “Mr. DeWitt suggested that I…But I…Oh, stop laughing.”
But Arabella only straightened, her shoulders shaking with the effort to repress her mirth. The astonishing sight of Lady Hardbury laughing drew unwanted attention. It also drew Lord Hardbury, bemusement replacing his usual scowl.
“Whatever are you two up to?” he asked. “Mrs. DeWitt, you look overheated. Do you need some air?”
Too embarrassed to look at him, Cassandra seized her first opportunity to escape. “Oh, there’s Leo with Sir Gordon,” she said brightly, and hurried away from her unhelpful friend.
If her color was still high when she reached the Duke of Dammerton and Sir Gordon Bell, they were too polite to comment. After some pleasant chatter, the heat mercifully subsided, and by the time Sir Gor
don bowed and moved away, she felt like herself again.
“I see you brought that dreadful husband of yours,” the duke said. “You remember what he looks like, then?”
She smiled at his good-natured teasing. “He is not really so dreadful, is he?”
“Good heart, bad manners. Better than the alternative, I always say,” he said. “I never expected to see him here at Lord and Lady Morecambe’s party, though.”
“Lord Morecambe is my uncle.”
“I know but…Lord Treyford is here, and DeWitt and his father do not get along.”
“But he won’t make a scene here.”
His Grace’s smile faltered. He started to speak, stopped, and then excused himself to talk to someone else.
Oh dear. Cassandra decided she had better go in search of her husband, although heaven knew what she was supposed to do when she found him. She nudged her way toward the balcony overlooking the main gallery, but before she could search for him, she came face to face with—
“Harry!”
“Cassandra!”
Harry Willoughby, Lord Bolderwood, looked as fair and handsome as the day they got engaged, three years ago now. His purse may be suffering, but his face, at least, betrayed no ill effects of his marriage to—
“Do introduce us, Harry, my sweet.”
“My wife, Phyllis, Lady Bolderwood.”
The tips of Harry’s ears turned pink and he didn’t meet Cassandra’s eye. The two ladies subtly inspected each other. Lady Bolderwood’s blue silk gown was elaborate and expensive, but her only adornment was a ribbon around her throat. Cassandra caught herself fingering the rubies at her own throat and hastily dropped her hand. She decided that, whatever Arabella said, Lady Bolderwood was pretty, and they made an ideal couple, and Cassandra was a big enough person to wish them well.
Besides, seeing Harry again confirmed that she hadn’t a shred of feeling left for him. How odd love and romance were. Once, his attentions had left her giddy with delight and his kisses had thrilled her. Now, the idea of kissing him seemed ridiculous, whereas the idea of kissing her husband seemed…
Also ridiculous. For he was dreadful and she disliked him and he had made that depraved suggestion.