Kitabı oku: «The Historical Collection 2018»

I grew up a PK (“preacher’s kid”). Emma, the heroine of this book, is a vicar’s daughter. I want to make clear that Emma’s father is nothing like my own. My father was—and is—loving, patient, supportive, and understanding.

Thanks, Dad. This book’s for you.

Please don’t read chapters 7, 9, 11, 17, 19, 21, or 28.

Chapter One

Emma Gladstone had learned a few hard lessons by the age of two-and-twenty.

Charming princes weren’t always what they seemed. Shining armor went out of fashion with the Crusades. And if fairy godmothers existed, hers was running several years late.

Most of the time, a girl needed to rescue herself.

This afternoon was one of those times.

Ashbury House loomed before her, taking up one full side of the fashionable Mayfair square. Elegant. Enormous.

Terrifying.

She swallowed hard. She could do this. Once, she’d walked to London alone in the bitter heart of winter. She’d refused to succumb to despair or starvation. She’d found work and made a new life for herself in Town. Now, six years later, she’d swallow every needle in Madame Bissette’s dressmaking shop before she’d go crawling back to her father.

Compared to all that, what was knocking on the door of a duke?

Why, nothing. Nothing at all. All she had to do was square her shoulders, charge through the wrought-iron gates, march up those granite steps—really, there were only a hundred or so—and ring the bell on that immense, richly carved door.

Good afternoon. I’m Miss Emma Gladstone. I’m here to see the mysterious, reclusive Duke of Ashbury. No, we aren’t acquainted. No, I don’t have a calling card. I don’t have anything, really. I may not even have a home tomorrow if you don’t let me in.

Oh, good heavens. This would never work.

With a whimper, she turned away from the gate and circled the square for the tenth time, shaking out her bare arms under her cloak.

She had to try.

Emma stopped her pacing, faced the gate, and drew a deep breath. She closed her ears to the frantic pounding of her heart.

The hour was growing late. No one was coming to her aid. There could be no further hesitation, no turning back.

Ready. Steady.

Go.

From his library desk, Ashbury heard an unfamiliar ringing sound. Could it be a doorbell?

There it came again.

It was a doorbell.

Worse, it was his doorbell.

Damned gossips. He hadn’t even been in Town but a few weeks. He’d forgotten how London rumors traveled faster than bullets. He didn’t have the time or patience for busybodies. Whoever it was, Khan would send them away.

He dipped his quill and continued the letter to his feckless solicitors.

I don’t know what the devil you’ve been doing for the past year, but the state of my affairs is deplorable. Sack the Yorkshire land steward directly. Tell the architect I wish to see the plans for the new mill, and I wish to see them yesterday. And there’s one other thing that requires immediate attention.

Ash hesitated, quill poised in midair. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to commit the words to paper. But much as he dreaded it, it must be done. He wrote:

I need a wife.

He supposed he ought to state his requirements: a woman of childbearing age and respectable lineage, in urgent need of money, willing to share a bed with a scarred horror of a man.

In short, someone desperate.

God, how depressing. Better to leave it at that one line.

I need a wife.

Khan appeared in the doorway. “Your Grace, I regret the interruption, but there’s a young woman to see you. She’s wearing a wedding gown.”

Ash looked at the butler. He looked down at the words he’d just written. Then he looked at the butler again.

“Well, that’s uncanny.” Perhaps his solicitors weren’t as useless as he thought. He dropped his pen and propped one boot on the desk, reclining into the shadows. “By all means, show her in.”

A young woman in white strode into the room.

His boot slipped from the desk. He reeled backward and collided with the wall, nearly falling off his chair. A folio of papers tumbled from a nearby shelf, drifting to the floor like snowflakes.

He was blinded.

Not by her beauty—though he supposed she might be beautiful. It wasn’t possible to judge. Her gown was an eye-stabbing monstrosity of pearls, lace, brilliants, and beads.

Good Lord. He wasn’t accustomed to being in the same room with something even more repulsive than his own appearance.

He propped his right elbow on the arm of his chair and raised his fingertips to his brow, concealing the scars on his face. For once, he wasn’t protecting a servant’s sensibilities or even his own pride. He was shielding himself from . . . from that.

“I’m sorry to impose on you this way, Your Grace,” the young woman said, keeping her gaze fixed on some chevron of the Persian carpet.

“I should hope you are.”

“But you see, I am quite desperate.”

“So I gather.”

“I need to be paid for my labor, and I need to be paid at once.”

Ash paused. “Your . . . your labor.”

“I’m a seamstress. I stitched this”—she swept her hands down the silk eyesore—“for Miss Worthing.”

For Miss Worthing.

Ah, this began to make sense. The white satin atrocity had been meant for Ash’s formerly intended bride. That, he could believe. Annabelle Worthing had always had dreadful taste—both in gowns and in prospective husbands.

“When your engagement ended, she never sent for the gown. She’d purchased the silk and lace and such, but she never paid for the labor. And that meant I went unpaid. I tried calling at her home, with no success. My letters to you both went unanswered. I thought that if I appeared like this”—she spread the skirts of the white gown—“I would be impossible to ignore.”

“You were correct on that score.” Even the good side of his face twisted. “Good Lord, it’s as though a draper’s shop exploded and you were the first casualty.”

“Miss Worthing wanted something fit for a duchess.”

“That gown,” he said, “is fit for a bawdy-house chandelier.”

“Well, your intended had . . . extravagant preferences.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “I can’t even take the whole thing in. It looks like unicorn vomit. Or the pelt of some snow beast rumored to menace the Himalayas.”

She tilted her gaze to the ceiling and gave a despairing sigh.

“What?” he said. “Don’t tell me you like it.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it suits my tastes, Your Grace. I take pride in my handiwork regardless, and this gown occupied months of it.”

Now that the shock of her revolting attire had worn off, Ash turned his attention to the young woman who’d been devoured by it.

She was a great improvement on the gown.

Complexion: cream. Lips: rose petals. Lashes: sable.

Backbone: steel.

“This embroidery alone . . . I worked for a week to make it perfect.” She skimmed a touch along the gown’s neckline.

Ash followed the path her fingertips traced. He couldn’t see embroidery. He was a man; he saw breasts. Slight, enticing breasts squeezed by that tortured bodice. He enjoyed them almost as much as he enjoyed the air of determination pushing them high.

He pulled his gaze upward, taking in her slender neck and upswept bounty of chestnut-brown hair. She wore it in the sort of prim, restrained coiffure that made a man’s fingers itch to pull the pins loose, one by one.

Take hold of yourself, Ashbury.

She couldn’t possibly be as pretty as she seemed. No doubt she benefited by contrast with the revolting gown. And he’d been living in solitude for some time. There was that, as well.

“Your Grace,” she said, “my coal bin is empty, the larder’s down to a few moldy potatoes, and my quarterly rent comes due today. The landlord has threatened to turn me out if I don’t pay the full amount. I need to collect my wages. Most urgently.” She held out her hand. “Two pounds, three shillings, if you please.”

Ash crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. “Miss . . . ?”

“Gladstone. Emma Gladstone.”

“Miss Gladstone, you don’t seem to understand how this whole intruding-on-a-duke’s-solitude business works. You should be intimidated, if not terrified. Yet there’s an appalling lack of hand-wringing in your demeanor, and no trembling whatsoever. Are you certain you’re merely a seamstress?”

She lifted her hands, palms facing out for his view. Healed cuts and calluses showed on her fingertips. Persuasive evidence, Ash had to admit. Yet he remained unconvinced.

“Well, you can’t have been born to poverty. You’re far too self-possessed, and you appear to have all your teeth. I suppose you were orphaned at a tender age, in some particularly gruesome way.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Are you being blackmailed?”

“No.” She drew out the word.

“Supporting a passel of abandoned children, whilst being blackmailed?”

“No.”

He snapped his fingers. “I have it. Your father is a scapegrace. In debtor’s prison. Or spending the rent money on gin and whores.”

“My father is a vicar. In Hertfordshire.”

Ash frowned. That was nonsensical. Vicars were gentlemen. “How does a gentleman’s daughter find herself working her fingers to nubs as a seamstress?”

At last, he saw a flash of uncertainty in her demeanor. She touched the spot behind her earlobe. “Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn.”

“Now that is a grave understatement.”

Fortune was a heartless witch in perpetual anticipation of her monthly courses. And didn’t Ash know it.

He swiveled in his chair and reached for a lockbox behind the desk.

“I am sorry.” Her voice softened. “The broken engagement must have been a blow. Miss Worthing seemed a lovely young woman.”

He counted money into his hand. “If you spent any time with her, you know that isn’t the case.”

“Perhaps it’s for the best that you didn’t marry her, then.”

“Yes, it was excellent foresight that I destroyed my face before the wedding. What bad luck it would have been if I’d waited until afterward.”

“Destroyed? If Your Grace will forgive me saying it, it can’t be that bad.”

He snapped the lockbox closed. “Annabelle Worthing was desperate to marry a man with a title and a fortune. I am a duke and ungodly wealthy. She still left me. It’s that bad.”

He stood and turned his ruined side to her, offering her a full, unobstructed view. His desk was in the most shadowy corner of the room—and purposely so. The room’s heavy velvet drapes kept out much of the sunlight. But scars as dramatic as the ones he wore? Nothing but complete darkness could obscure them. What bits of flesh had escaped the flames had only been ravaged further—first, by the surgeon’s knife and then, for hellish weeks afterward, by fever and suppuration. From his temple to his hip, the right side of his body was a raging battle of cicatrices and powder burns.

Miss Gladstone went quiet. To her credit, she didn’t swoon or vomit or run screaming from the room—a pleasant change from his usual reception.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“War. Next question.”

After a moment, she said quietly, “May I have my money, please?”

He extended a hand, offering her the money.

She reached for it.

He closed his hand around the coins. “Once you give me the gown.”

“What?”

“If I pay you for your work, it’s only fair that I get the gown.”

“For what purpose?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t decided. I could donate it to a home for pensioned opera dancers. Sink it to the bottom of the Thames for the eels to enjoy. Hang it over the front door to ward off evil spirits. There are so many choices.”

“I . . . Your Grace, I can have it delivered tomorrow. But I must have the money today.”

He tsked. “That would be a loan, Miss Gladstone. I’m not in the money-lending business.”

“You want the gown now?”

“Only if you want the money now.”

Her dark eyes fixed on him, accusing him of sheer villainy.

He shrugged. Guilty as charged.

This was the peculiar hell of being disfigured by sheer chance on the battlefield. There was no one to blame, no revenge to be taken. Only a lingering bitterness that tempted him to lash out at anything near. Oh, he wasn’t violent—not unless someone really, truly deserved it. With most, he merely took perverse pleasure in being a pain in the arse.

If he was going to look like a monster, he might as well enjoy the role.

Unfortunately, this seamstress refused to play the trembling mouse. Nothing he said rattled her in the least, and if she hadn’t fled in terror yet, she likely never would.

Good for her.

He prepared to hand over the money, bidding her—and that gown—a grateful adieu.

Before he could do so, she exhaled decisively. “Fine.”

Her hands went to the side of the gown. She began to release a row of hooks hidden in the bodice seam. One by one by one. As the bodice went slack, her squeezed breasts relaxed to their natural fullness. The sleeve fell off her shoulder, revealing the tissue-thin fabric of her shift.

A wisp of dark hair tumbled free, kissing her collarbone.

Jesu Maria.

“Stop.”

She froze and looked up. “Stop?”

He cursed silently. Don’t ask me twice. “Stop.”

Ash could scarcely believe he’d managed the decency to say it once. He’d been on the verge of a private show for the price of two pounds, three. Significantly higher than the going rate, but a bargain when the girl was this pretty.

Not to mention, she was a vicar’s daughter. He’d always dreamed of debauching a vicar’s daughter. Really, what man hadn’t? However, he was not quite so diabolical as to accomplish it through extortion.

A thought occurred to him. Maybe—just maybe—he could still manage that fantasy, through different, somewhat less fiendish, means. He regarded Emma Gladstone from a fresh angle, thinking of that list of requirements in his interrupted letter.

She was young and healthy. She was educated. She came from gentry, and she was willing to disrobe in front of him.

Most importantly, she was desperate.

She’d do.

In fact, she’d do very well indeed.

“Here is your choice, Miss Gladstone. I can pay you the two pounds, three shillings.”

He placed the stack of coins on the desk. She stared at them hungrily.

“Or,” he said, “I can make you a duchess.”

Chapter Two

A duchess?

Well. Emma was grateful for one thing. At least now she had an excuse to stare at him.

Ever since the duke had revealed the extent of his scars, she’d been trying not to stare at him. Then she’d started worrying that it would be even more rude to avoid looking at him. As a result, her gaze had been volleying from his face, to the carpet, to the coins on the desk. It was all a bit dizzying.

Now she had an unassailable excuse to openly gawk.

The contrast was extreme. The injured side of his face drew her attention first, of course. Its appearance was tortured and angry, with webs of scar tissue twisting past his ear and above his natural hairline. What was more cruel—his scarred flesh stood in unavoidable contrast with his untouched profile. There, he was handsome in the brash, uncompromising way of gentlemen who believed themselves invincible.

Emma didn’t find his appearance frightful, though she could not deny it was startling. No, she decided, “startling” wasn’t the right word.

Striking.

He was striking.

As though a bolt of lightning had split through his body, dividing him in two, and the energy still crackled around him. Emma sensed it from across the room. Gooseflesh rippled up her arms.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I must have misheard.”

“I said I will make you a duchess.”

“Surely . . . surely you don’t mean through marriage.”

“No, I intend to use my vast influence in the House of Lords to overturn the laws of primogeniture, then persuade the Prince Regent to create a new title and duchy. That accomplished, I will convince him to name a vicar’s daughter from Hertfordshire a duchess in her own right. Of course I mean through marriage, Miss Gladstone.”

She gave a strained laugh. Laughter seemed the only possible response. He had to be joking. “You can’t be asking me to marry you.”

He sighed with annoyance. “I am a duke. I’m not asking you to marry me. I am offering to marry you. It’s a different thing entirely.”

She opened her mouth, only to close it again.

“I need an heir,” he said. “That is the thrust of the matter.”

Her concentration snagged on that word, and the blunt, forceful way he said it.

Thrust.

“If I died tomorrow, everything would go to my cousin. He is an irredeemable prat. I didn’t go to the Continent, fight to preserve England from tyranny, and survive this”—he gestured at his face—“only to come home and watch my tenants’ lives crumble to ruins. And that means those laws of primogeniture—since I don’t intend to overturn them—require me to marry and sire a son.”

He crossed the room, advancing toward her in unhurried strides. She stood in place, unwilling to shrink from him. The more nonchalant his demeanor, the more her pulse pounded.

His face might be striking, but the rest of him . . . ?

Rather splendid.

To distract herself, Emma focused on her own realm of expertise: attire. The tailoring of his coat was immaculate, skimming the breadth of his shoulders and hugging the contours of his arms. The wool was of the finest quality, tightly woven and richly dyed. However, the style was two years behind the current fashion, and the cuffs were a touch frayed at the—

“I know what you’re thinking, Miss Gladstone.”

She doubted it.

“You’re incredulous. How could a woman of your standing possibly ascend to such a rank? I can’t deny you’ll find yourself outclassed and un-befriended among the ladies of the peerage, but you will no doubt be consoled with the material advantages. A lavish home, generous lines of credit at all the best shops, a large settlement in the event of my death. You may pay calls, go shopping. Engage in some charitable work, if you must. Your days will be yours to do whatever you wish.” His voice darkened. “Your nights, however, will belong to me.”

Any response to that was beyond her. An indignant warmth hummed over every surface of her body, seeping into the spaces between her toes.

“You should expect me to visit your bed every evening, unless you are ill or having your courses, until conception is confirmed.”

Emma tried, one more time, to understand this conversation. After running through all the possibilities, one alternative seemed the most likely.

The duke was not merely scarred on his face. He was sick in the head.

“Your Grace, do you feel feverish?”

“Not at all.”

“Perhaps you ought to have a lie-down. I could send your butler for a physician.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Do you need a doctor?”

“Maybe I do.” Emma touched one hand to her brow. Her brain was spinning.

If he wasn’t ill . . . Could this be some sort of ploy to make her his mistress? Oh, Lord. Perhaps she’d given him the wrong impression with her willingness to disrobe.

“Are you—” There seemed no way to say it but to say it. “Your Grace, are you trying to get me into your bed?”

“Yes. Nightly. I said as much, not a minute ago. Are you listening at all?”

“Listening, yes,” she muttered to herself. “Comprehending, no.”

“I’ll have my solicitor draw up the papers.” He returned to his place behind the desk. “We can do it on Monday.”

“Your Grace, I don’t—”

“Tuesday, then.”

“Your Grace, I cannot—”

“Well, I’m afraid my schedule is quite booked for the rest of the week.” He flipped through the pages of an agenda. “Brooding, drinking, indoor badminton tournament . . .”

“No.”

“No,” he echoed.

“Yes.”

“Yes, no. Make up your mind, Miss Gladstone.”

She turned in a slow circle, looking about the room. What on earth was happening here? She felt like a Bow Street runner trying to solve a mystery: Emma Gladstone and the Case of the Missing Dignity.

Her gaze fell on the clock. Already past four. After leaving here, she must return the gown, pay her landlord, and then visit the market.

Having come this far, there was no way she could back down now.

She stiffened her posture. “Your Grace, you called my work ‘unicorn vomit.’ You asked me to disrobe for money. Then you made the absurd declaration that you would make me a duchess, and that I should visit your bed on Monday. This entire interview is nonsensical and humiliating. I can only conclude that you are making sport of me.”

He lifted one shoulder in an unapologetic shrug. “A scarred recluse must have some amusement.”

“What about your full schedule of drinking and indoor badminton? Isn’t that enough?” She had lost all patience now. She enjoyed a bit of teasing, and she could laugh at herself—but she had no desire to be the object of cruel jokes. “I’m beginning to suspect Miss Worthing’s reason for jilting you. You are exceedingly—”

“Hideous,” he supplied. “Repulsive. Monstrous.”

“Exasperating.”

He made a sound of bemusement. “So I’m being reviled for my personality? How refreshing.”

Emma lifted her hands in a nonthreatening gesture. “Your Grace, I shall impose on you no further. I am going to approach the desk, pick up the coins, and then back away. Slowly.”

In a series of cautious steps, she approached the desk and stopped within a yard of where he stood on the opposite side. Without breaking eye contact, she gathered the two pounds, three shillings from the desktop. Then, with the briefest of curtsies, she turned to leave.

He caught her by the wrist. “Don’t go.”

She turned and looked up at him, astonished.

The contact was electric. Like the jolt one received when grabbing a doorknob on a dry, cold day. Clashing and sparking with a force that belonged to neither of them, but existed only in the space between. The shock buzzed up the bones in her arm. Her breathing and pulse were suspended. She felt stripped down—not to her skin, but to the raw elements that composed her being.

The duke seemed stunned by it, too. His piercing blue eyes interrogated hers. Then he cast a confused look at his hand, as though he weren’t certain how it had come to be gripping her arm.

For a moment, Emma’s heart invented the wildest fancies. That he was someone other than the cynical, embittered man he seemed. That beneath the Before and After sketched on his face, there was a man—a hurting and lonely man—who remained unchanged in essentials.

Don’t believe it, Emma. You know your heart is a fool.

He released her, and the side of his mouth pulled into a wry smile. “You can’t leave now, Miss Gladstone. We’re just starting to have fun.”

“I don’t care to play this game.”

She gathered as much composure as she could locate. Clutching the coins in one hand, she picked up her skirts with the other and made haste in the direction of the door.

“Don’t trouble to bid me farewell,” he called.

I won’t.

“I shan’t bother, either. We both know you’ll be back.”

She paused—briefly—midstep. The duke believed they would see one another again?

Dear God. Not if Emma could help it.

Not in a thousand years.

“Isn’t it silly of me?” Miss Palmer stood in a draped corner of Madame Bissette’s shop, holding still as Emma measured her waistline. “More and more plump by the day. I suppose I’ve been eating too many teacakes.”

Emma doubted it. This was the second time in a month Davina Palmer had visited the shop to have a dress let out, and Emma had been stitching her wardrobe since her first Season. She’d never known the young woman to gain weight, and certainly not this rapidly.

Teacakes were not to blame.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t Emma’s place to say anything. But she’d taken a liking to Miss Palmer. She was the only daughter of a shipping magnate, and heiress to his fortune. A bit spoiled and sheltered, but she had a sparkle to her. She was a customer who always made Emma’s day better rather than worse, and that said something. Most of the ladies who came into the shop looked right through her.

Today, when she met Miss Palmer’s gaze, there was no sparkle. Only terror. The poor girl so clearly needed a confidante.

“How many months along?” Emma asked softly.

Miss Palmer dissolved into tears. “Almost four, I think.”

“Does the gentleman know?”

“I can’t tell him. He’s a painter. I met him when he came to paint the portrait of our dogs, and I . . . It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. Went to Albania in search of ‘romantic inspiration,’ whatever that means.”

It means he’s a scoundrel, Emma thought. “What of your family? Do they know?”

“No.” She shook her head with vigor. “There’s only Papa. He has such high expectations for me. If he knew I’d been so careless, he . . . he’d never look at me the same.” She buried her face in her hands and broke into quiet sobs. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Emma drew the girl into a hug, rubbing her back in a soothing rhythm. “Oh, you poor dear. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do. I’m so frightened.” She pulled away from the hug. “I can’t raise a child on my own. I’ve been thinking, if only I could place the babe with a family in the country. Then I could visit from time to time. I know it’s done.” Miss Palmer placed a hand on her belly and looked down at it. “But I’m growing larger every day. I won’t be able to hide it much longer.”

Emma offered the girl a handkerchief. “Is there anywhere you can go? A friend or cousin, perhaps. In the country, or on the Continent . . . Anyone who might take you in until you give birth?”

“There’s no one. No one who would keep the secret, at any rate.” She clutched the handkerchief in her fist. “Oh, if only I hadn’t been so stupid. I knew it was wrong, but he was ever so romantic. He called me his muse. He made me feel . . .”

Treasured. Wanted. Loved.

Miss Palmer didn’t have to explain it. Emma knew exactly how the girl felt.

“You mustn’t be hard on yourself. You aren’t the first young woman to trust the wrong man, and you won’t be the last.”

And yet somehow, the woman always paid the price.

Emma hadn’t landed in Miss Palmer’s delicate situation, but she, too, had been punished for the simple crime of following her heart. The memories still pained her—and the thought of watching the same cruel fate befall another young woman? It made her quake with anger at the injustice of it all.

“Emma,” Madame Bissette chided from the other side of the curtain. “Lady Edwina’s hem won’t sew itself.”

“One moment, Madame,” she called back. To Miss Palmer, she whispered, “Return next week to retrieve your altered frock, and we’ll speak further. If there’s any way at all I can help you, I will.”

“I can’t ask that of you.”

“You don’t need to ask.” Emma was determined. Her conscience would allow no less. She took Miss Palmer’s hands and squeezed them. “Whatever may happen, you will not be alone. I swear it.”

That afternoon, Emma’s concentration was so splintered, nothing went right. Twice, she had to rip out uneven stitches in Lady Edwina’s hem and rework them.

At last, it was closing hour.

“Are you coming out tonight?” her fellow seamstress asked after Madame had withdrawn to her apartment upstairs. “There’s to be dancing at the assembly rooms.”

“Not tonight, Fanny. You go on ahead.”

Emma didn’t have to offer twice. Fanny was out the door as soon as she could blow a kiss.

Another time, she might have enjoyed a rare evening of dancing, but not tonight. Not only was she worried sick for Miss Palmer, she was still reeling from her own encounter at Ashbury House.

The duke was probably laughing at his own cleverness even now. Marry a seamstress? Ha-ha-ha. What a joke.

How dare the man? Really.

Emma shook off the memory, telling herself not spare the duke another thought. She had more important things to do.

She took a stub of a candle from Madame Bissette’s drawer, placed it on the counter, and struck the flint as quietly as possible. After rummaging for a discarded scrap of brown paper, she ironed it flat with her hands and chewed on a stub of pencil, thinking. Waistlines had started to drop this season, moving away from Empire silhouettes. Concealing an expanding belly would be more difficult, but Emma would do her best.

She placed pencil to paper and began to sketch. Miss Palmer would need a corset with extra give toward the bottom . . . perhaps a frock with small buttons inside the waistline, to gather or let out the skirts. A fetching pelisse was a must—the right embellishments would draw the eye upward.

The task absorbed her attention so fully, she didn’t notice how much time had passed until someone knocked at the door.

Thump-thump-thump.

Emma jumped in her skin and crumpled the sketches into her pocket. “We’re closed.”

The rapping only grew louder. More insistent.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

With a sigh, Emma went to the front of the shop. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door just an inch.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re shut for the eveni—”

“You’re not shut for me.”

She found herself pushed aside as a man bulled his way through the door. He wore a dark cape and a tall hat with its brim pulled low, concealing most of his face—but she knew him at once. Only one man would have behaved in such a presumptuous manner.

The Duke of Ashbury.

“Miss Gladstone.” He inclined his head in the slightest possible nod. “I told you we’d meet again.”

Oh, Lord.

Emma closed the door and turned the key. There was nothing else to do for the moment. She couldn’t leave it ajar and risk being seen alone with a gentleman.

“Your Grace, I can’t admit visitors after hours.”

“I’m not a visitor. I’m a customer.” He strolled around the darkened shop, prodding a headless dressmaking form with his walking stick. “I need a new waistcoat.”

“It’s a dressmaking shop. We don’t offer gentlemen’s attire.”

“Very well, I’m here to order a gown.”

“A gown for whom?”

“What does it matter?” He made an annoyed gesture. “For a particularly ugly woman, approximately my size.”

Good heavens, what could this man be after? Was his mockery yesterday not enough to satisfy him? He couldn’t actually want to retrieve Miss Worthing’s gown.

Whatever his aim, Emma meant to exact a price in return. Today, he was welcome to share in the humiliation.

She drew a box to the center of the floor—the one ladies stood upon to have their hems pinned—and waved him toward it. “Up you go, then.”

He stared at her.

“If you want a gown—”

“It’s not that I want a gown.”

“If your very ugly, duke-sized friend wants a gown, I will need measurements. Sleeve, torso, hem.” She arched an eyebrow. “Bosom.”

There. Surely he would retreat from that.

Instead, the unscarred corner of his mouth tipped with amusement. He set his walking stick aside. He removed his hat. Then his cloak. Next his gloves. And, finally, his topcoat. Without breaking her gaze, he stepped onto the box and lifted his arms to either side, palms up. Like an actor on a stage, expecting applause.

“Well?” he prompted. “I’m waiting.”

Emma retrieved her measuring tape. She’d begun this little farce, and she couldn’t back down from it.

“How did you know where to find this shop?” she asked, suspicious. “Did you follow me?”

“I am a duke. Of course I didn’t follow you. I had you followed. It’s an entirely different thing.”

She shook her head, unfurling the measuring tape. “And yet no less disturbing.”

“Disturbing? Yesterday you turned down a lifetime of wealth in favor of two pounds, three shillings in ready coin, and then fled from my house as though it were afire. Has it not occurred to you that I might have pursued you out of some genuine concern for your well-being?”

She gave him a doubtful look.

“I’m not saying I did. Only that it should have occurred to you.”

Emma moved behind him and stretched her measuring tape from his left shoulder to his wrist, ostensibly taking the length of his sleeve. In actuality, most of her concentration was consumed with ignoring his closeness. Only a single layer of fine, crisp linen separated her touch from his body, and she had no desire to relive that buzzing shock of connection they’d shared in his library.

You can’t leave now. We’re just starting to have fun.

She took the measurement from one shoulder to the other. When she inhaled, she drew in the masculine scents of shaving soap and rich cologne.

None of this was helping with her focus problem.

“You’re not writing these measurements down,” he said.

“I don’t need to. I’ll remember.”

Unfortunately. Whether she wished it or not, Emma knew this encounter would be burned into her memory forever. Or if not forever, at least until she was sufficiently old and feebleminded to hold conversations with a squash.

She turned the tape vertically and put one end to the nape of his neck. A mistake. Now, atop all these unwanted memories, she’d added the feel of his shorn hair. It had the texture of expensive velvet, with a dense, luxurious pile.

Velvet, Emma? Really?

“Almost finished. I’ll just measure your chest now.” She held the end of the tape on one side of his rib cage, and then turned to circle him in the opposite direction, drawing the tape across the satin backing of his waistcoat and all the way around, meeting both ends at his breastbone.

She cinched the tape. He winced.

Good.

There, now. She had the beast on a leash.

So why did she feel like his captive?

It wasn’t his scars that intimidated her. Quite the reverse. When she stood this close, her gaze couldn’t take in both halves of him at the same time. She had to choose a side.

Emma knew with a sinking heart which one would capture her. There were two approaches to successful dressmaking—to find flaws and conceal them, or to bring out the hidden beauty. She’d always believed in the latter method, and oh, it came back to bite her today.

Don’t do it, Emma. Don’t give your foolish heart an inch of rope, or it will have you tied in knots.

But it was too late. Now, as she looked up at him, all she could see was a man. One with searching blue eyes and a hidden heart beating in a strong, defiant rhythm.

A man with wants, needs. Desires.

A man who’d reached out for her yesterday, and now . . .

And now gave every indication of leaning in for a kiss.

Chapter Three

Ash had never wanted to kiss a woman more.

He wanted to kiss her so badly, he could taste it. He’d devour the pink sweetness in those lips, stroke all the tart words from the tip of her tongue. Teach her a lesson or two. Leave her breathless. Rattle her to her bones.

He wanted to do far more than kiss her, of course. As he leaned forward, he could peer through the gap of her fichu and catch a glimpse of the valley between her breasts—that dark, fragrant rift that held so many promises of pleasure.

By Venus’s hand.

A few years ago, he would have kissed her, and more. He would have seduced her with a campaign of little trinkets and witty teasing. She would have come willingly, even eagerly, to his bed, where they would have enjoyed one another. Thoroughly.

But that was in the past. His once-charming wit had been replaced by smoldering anger, and his once-attractive face had been rearranged. No woman would be wooed by the kisses of a bitter, disfigured wretch.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to woo a lover. He needed to secure a wife. Wed her, bed her, and, once she was swelling with his heir, tuck her away in the country. The end.

He straightened, arching a sardonic eyebrow. A fortunate thing, that he still had one eyebrow intact. What was being a duke, if not arching a sardonic eyebrow?

She released the tape. “Choose your fabric at the draper’s and have five yards sent over. With your coloring, I suggest a pink brocade.”

His tilted his head. “Really? I was thinking of peach.”

She gathered his hat, cloak, gloves, and walking stick and pushed them into his arms. “And now I must ask you to leave. I need to be getting home.”

“We can accomplish both those things at once. I’ll take you home. My carriage is just outside.”

“Thank you, I prefer to walk.”

“More convenient still. My feet are even closer than the carriage.”

She headed for the rear exit of the shop. Ash replaced his topcoat, cloak, gloves, and hat, then followed her out into a dank, reeking alleyway. With his long strides to her short ones, he quickly made up the ground.

Her shoes tapped over the cobblestones at an irritated clip. “I will not be your mistress. My body is not for let.”

“That can’t be entirely true. You’re a seamstress, aren’t you? Your fingers are for let.”

“If you don’t know the difference between a woman’s fingers and her womb, I would definitely not share a bed with you.”

After a moment’s stunned pause, he laughed. It was a rusty, unappealing sound. He supposed he was out of practice.

“I do know the difference.” He reached for her ungloved hand and brushed his thumb over each of her fingertips. “You can trust I won’t confuse the two.”

He stroked a callus on the tip of her second finger. It made him angry. A gentleman’s daughter should have soft hands, but life had hardened her in these small ways. He had disturbing fancies of lifting her hand to his lips and kissing all that hurt away.

She sucked in her breath, as if she could read his thoughts. Or maybe her own thoughts had startled her.

She withdrew her hand. “What is your aim? Simply to torment me further?”

“No, that is not my aim. Though I suspect, over time, it will be an unavoidable consequence.”

She gave a little growl.

Ash found it wickedly arousing. Not that he would tell her so. He was too distracted by the way she hugged herself and shivered. “Where is your cloak?”

“I left it at your house yesterday.”

“Well. I hope that teaches you a lesson about making dramatic exits.”

Ash removed his own cape and twirled it about her shoulders, tucking in the ends until she resembled a penguin. “Come along, then.” He swiveled her by the shoulders and nudged her into a waddle.

Offering her his cloak was not mere gallantry. It was self-protection. He had gloves, but the leather was too fine, too supple. Without the barrier of the cloak, he could still feel her. He didn’t wish to relive the visceral shock that had rocketed through him in his library.

“Now,” he said, “perhaps you’ll pay attention. I don’t recall saying anything about a mistress. I believe I used the word ‘duchess.’” He gestured at their bleak surroundings. “I would not trouble to come here for any other purpose.”

“You can’t be serious. Not really, truly, honestly, earnestly, properly.”

He allowed a few moments to pass. “Are you quite done listing adverbs? I should hate to interrupt.”

His little penguin bounced in agitation.

Ash was agitated, as well. Judging by her insistence that he couldn’t possibly want her, he suspected some other man had made her feel unwanted. That made him furious.

“Listen to me, Emma.”

Look, he was already thinking of her as Emma. A small, stubborn little name, Emma. It suited her.

“The answer is yes,” he said. “I am serious. Really, truly, honestly, earnestly, properly. And I mean to have you, completely.”

Emma lost her footing and nearly stumbled face-first into an apple seller’s cart.

She righted herself, but not before the duke’s hand shot out to steady her. He didn’t let go, either. Instead, he gripped tighter and guided her around the cart, maneuvering his body between her and a passing carriage.

He moved swiftly, and she struggled to keep pace with him. In truth, she’d been struggling to keep pace with him since the moment she’d entered his library. Wrestling to understand his intentions, sparring with his wit. Chasing after her own body’s responses. He was exhausting. Less of a man, more of a gymnasium.

“If it’s a wife you want,” she said, “surely you could find many women—many well-bred ladies—who would be willing to marry you.”

“Yes, but I’d have to find them. This saves me so much effort.”

She threw him a sidelong glance. “Can you not hear yourself? Do you truly not know how insulting that sounds?”

“I should think it sounds beneficent. I’m offering you a title and fortune. All you have to do is lie back in the dark, then spend nine months swelling up like a tick. What could possibly deter any woman from accepting?”

“What, indeed. Perhaps a disinclination to feeling like a broodmare.”

They stepped off the pavement and crossed the street.

“A broodmare. Hm. I’m not certain I mind that comparison. If you’re a broodmare, that would make me the stud.”

“And there,” she said, “is the injustice of the world in a nutshell.”

He ignored her statement. “On reflection, I prefer ‘stallion.’”

“Never mind the horses!” She made a strangled noise of frustration. “It’s absurd to even suggest we could marry. We scarcely know each other. And what little we do know of each other, we don’t like.”

“I’m not aware of the courtship customs back in your quaint little inbred village, but at my level of society, wedlock is a matter of two concerns: childbearing and finances. What I’m offering is a marriage of convenience. You’re living in poverty, and I”—he laid his hand to his chest—“have a great deal of money. I need an heir, and you”—he waved toward her with a flourish—“have the capacity to bear one. There’s no need to like each other. As soon as a child is conceived we’ll go separate ways.”

“Separate ways?”

“You’d have your own house in the country. I’ll have no further need of you then.”

When they turned onto a busier lane, he tugged down the brim of his hat and turned up the collar of his coat. Night was falling, but the moon was bright. He obviously didn’t want to draw attention. Sympathy breezed into Emma’s heart like an unwelcome visitor.

“You’re assuming,” she continued, “that your theoretical child would be male. What if you fathered a girl? Or five of them?”

He shrugged. “You’re the vicar’s daughter. Pray for a boy.”

“You are terrible.”

“Since we are on the subject of personal failings, you are irrational. You’re allowing pride to cloud your common sense. Spare yourself the effort of argument and skip to the inevitable conclusion.”

“I conclude that this conversation is madness. I don’t understand why you keep speaking as though you’d marry me.”

“I don’t understand why you keep speaking as though I won’t.”

“You are a duke. I am a seamstress. What else is there to be said?”

He held up one hand and counted off on his fingers. “You are a healthy woman of childbearing age. You are a gentleman’s daughter. You are educated. You’re passably pretty—not that it’s a concern for me, but a child should have at least one nonhideous parent.” He was down to his last finger. “And you’re here. All my requirements are met. You’ll do.”

Emma stared at him in disbelief. That was, perhaps, the most unfeeling proposal she could imagine. The man was cynical, insensitive, condescending, rude.

And she was definitely going to marry him.

Against all logic, and contrary to everything she knew of society, he appeared to be making her an earnest proposal of marriage. She would be the greatest ninny in England to refuse.

Seamstresses didn’t have many long-term prospects. The years of detailed needlework caused their eyes to fail and fingers to stiffen. Emma knew that her best chance—perhaps her only chance—at security was to marry. She would be a fool to refuse any duke, even if he were a bedridden septuagenarian with poor hygiene.

This particular duke was none of those things. Despite his many, many faults, Ashbury was strong, in the prime of life, and he smelled divine. He offered her security, at least one child to dote upon . . .

And a house.

A quiet house of her own in the country. Precisely the thing that would allow her to help Miss Palmer, at a time when the poor girl had no one else.

The duke slowed to a halt. “By the Holy Rood. This isn’t right.”

Drat. That would teach her to dream, even for a second. He’d come to his senses after all. This was the moment where he sent her away, and she ended an old woman on the docks, darning sailors’ shirts for ha’pennies and muttering about how she might have been a duchess.

“We’re in the middle of St. James Park,” he said.

“Are we?” She took in their surroundings. Autumn-browned grass. The half-bare branches of trees. “I suppose we are. What’s a Holy Rood?”

“The cross of Christ. And you call yourself a vicar’s daughter? You father would be appalled.”

“Believe me, that wouldn’t be a new development.”

“Just where is it you live, anyway?”

“In an attic garret, two doors down from the shop.”

“So we’re here because . . .”

She bit her lip. “I was hoping to lose you. But I’ve since changed my mind.”

“Damned right you have.” With gruff impatience, he drew her to his side, steering her with a hand to the small of her back. “Do you know what kind of scum lurks in St. James Park by night?”

“Not really.”

“Pray you do not have occasion find out.”

“It’s barely nightfall yet. I’m certain we’ll be—”

She didn’t have a chance to complete the thought. A pair of men emerged from the shadows, almost as though the duke had hired them precisely to prove his point.

And from the looks on their faces, the men were expecting to be paid.

Chapter Four

Ash hated always being right.

He positioned himself between the men and Emma, keeping one hand on her back and clutching his walking stick with the other. “Well?” he goaded. “Get to it, already. Tell me what it is you want, so that I can tell you to get stuffed, and we can all carry on with our lives. I’ve a full schedule this evening.”

“Toss over the purse, guv. Watches and rings, too.”

“Get stuffed. There, now. See how easy that was?” He slid his arm around Emma’s shoulders. “We’ll be going.”

The second man held up a knife. “Hold there. I wouldn’t try anything clever.”

“I should hope you wouldn’t,” Ash replied dryly. “You’d no doubt injure yourself in the attempt.”

The man with the knife feinted, jabbing it in the direction of Ash’s ribs. “Shut it. And give up your coins and baubles, unless you fancy bleedin’ to death in front o’ your bit of skirt.”

His bit of skirt?

“Not to worry, miss.” The first man chuckled, winding a length of rope around one of his hands and pulling it tight with the other. “We’ll be glad to take you off the gentleman’s ’ands.”

A savage growl rose in Ash’s throat. “Like the devil you will.” Brandishing his walking stick like a sword, he sliced the air in a wide arc, forcing the footpads back. “Touch her and you will pay with your lives, you diseased, maggoty curs.”

He’d gone beyond anger, sailed straight past rage, and crashed into a place of primal fury, where blood ran in colors he hadn’t known to exist.

The blade glinted in the gathering dark. Its owner lunged, but Ash stepped to the side, pushing Emma back with his free arm. With a vicious strike, he sent the blackguard to his knees. The knife tumbled into the grass.

Whirling around, he raised his walking stick again, preparing to deal the other cutpurse a backhand blow, hard enough to crush bone.

Before he could swing, a gust of wind dislodged his hat.

In unison, the thieves recoiled.

“Sweet Jesus,” one of them whispered.

“Christ ’ave mercy,” the other said, scrambling backward on his hands and feet. “’Tis the Devil, to be sure.”

Ash stilled, fuming with a wrath that burned his lungs and holding his stick poised for violence. However, violence no longer appeared necessary. After a tense silence, he lowered the stick. “Begone.”

Neither of them dared to move.

“Begone!” he roared. “Slink home like the craven whoresons you are, or I swear to you, you will beg for the Devil to take your souls.”

They scrambled and fled. No victory had ever been so hollow.

On returning to London, Ash had harbored a small hope that he might not look quite so monstrous as his few interactions had led him to believe. Maybe Annabelle was just Annabelle—shallow and prizing appearances above all else. Perhaps his former friends truly had been too busy to visit more than once, and the majority of his servants really had needed to visit far-flung relations who’d suddenly taken ill.

Maybe—just maybe—the scars weren’t that bad.

He’d been deluding himself. That much was now clear. His appearance was every bit as repulsive as he’d feared, if not worse. Those were hardened criminals he’d sent scurrying like rats into the gutter. And he expected a quick-witted, lovely young woman to rejoice at his offer of marriage?

Everyone would revile him. No woman with any sense would have him. When he turned, Emma would be gone. He was certain of it.

He knew nothing.

She was still there, wielding a tree branch in both hands as she stared after the retreating brigands. His cloak had slipped from her shoulders. Her breaths made angry clouds of vapor in the cold air.

At length, she dropped the branch, then moved to retrieve his hat from where it had landed a few feet distant. “Are you unharmed?”

Ash stared at her in bewilderment. Her question didn’t make sense. None of this made any sense.

She’d not only not run, she’d prepared to defend him—absurd as that was. He didn’t know what to do with her, and he didn’t have the faintest notion what to do with himself. He couldn’t help but feel . . .

He couldn’t help but feel. All manner of emotions, and all of them at once.

To begin, he was vaguely insulted by the suggestion that he might need help from a wisp of a girl. That led to a growing desire to possess her, to show her just who protected whom in this exchange. And then, beneath everything, there was some quiet, unnameable emotion that made him want to lay down his pride, rest his head in her lap, and weep.

That third was, of course, unthinkable. Never going to happen. Nevertheless, the decision was made. She’d sealed her own fate.

If she meant to escape him, she’d missed her chance.

He’d be damned if he’d let her get away now.

Emma sensed the change in him. The stony set of his jaw. The furious rise and fall of his breath. No blue remained in his eyes—only a cold, glittering black.

He’d been intense from the first, but now he was . . . so intensely intense, she couldn’t find a word to properly describe it. But she felt it. Oh, she felt it to her toes. Each hair on her body lifted at the root; her every nerve jumped to attention.

Her body knew something would happen.

Her mind had no idea what it would be—except that it would involve the unleashing of formidable power.

“Your hat,” she said. As if it might need explaining that the hat-shaped object in her hand was indeed a hat and not, say, a joint of mutton.

He took the hat.

He took his cloak from where it had fallen to the spongy turf.

And then he took her.

He didn’t offer his arm, as gentlemanly custom would dictate. He gripped her by the elbow instead, herding her toward the street. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“I’m not,” she muttered.

Not that Emma was happy they’d been set upon by thieves. That had been terrifying, and she had no desire to ever experience it again. However, now, with the benefit of knowing they’d escaped unscathed, she could revisit the memory and feel a thrill at his instinctive move to guard her and the outraged precision with which he’d dispatched the two men.

No one had ever protected her that way.

Whatever attraction she’d felt toward him beforehand—and she had felt an attraction, no matter how unwillingly—was increased a hundredfold.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said. “It was all my fault. We would not have ended here in the park if—”

“If I’d paid the slightest attention. The fault was mine.” He led her out of the park without further conversation. At the nearest crossing, he hailed a hackney cab. “You’re going home. My carriage will come for you tomorrow. Have your things ready.”

The air vacated her lungs. “Wait. What are you saying?”

“From there, you’ll go to a hotel. Mivart’s, I think.”

Mivart’s. The finest, most luxurious hotel in Mayfair. Emma had visited it once, to hem a gown for a visiting Austrian baroness. She had never imagined she would stay in such a place.

“I’ll send for you once the solicitors have finished the contracts.” The duke opened the hackney’s door and stuffed Emma into it. “We’ll be married at Ashbury House.”

“But . . . but . . .”

He gave directions to the hackney driver, then moved to close the door and shut her inside. “On second thought, don’t pack your belongings. I’ll buy you new. I’ve no use for moldy potatoes.”

She thrust her boot into the door opening before he could close it. “Wait.”

He stared at her. “What?”

Excellent question. Emma didn’t have the faintest idea what. Only that this was all happening so fast. Too fast. Her life had been set spinning, and she didn’t want to make it stop—but she needed some sort of handle to grasp.

“I . . . I insist on bringing a cat.”

He made a noise of unmitigated disgust. “A cat.”

“Yes, a cat. My cat.”

Emma, you idiot. You don’t even have a cat.

She would find one, she decided. If she meant to enter a marriage with no promise of affection and inhabit that vast, elegant house, she needed at least one ally. What better than a fuzzy, wide-eyed kitten?

“For a bride of convenience, you are proving to be a great deal of trouble.” He tucked her foot into the hackney, then leveled a finger at her before closing the door. “This cat of yours had better be well-behaved.”

Chapter Five

The cat was the most foul, filthy, repulsive creature Ashbury had seen in his life, outside of the rare occasions when he regarded himself in a mirror. It was no more than a collection of bones encased in smudge-colored fur, and doubtless crawling with fleas.

His bride clutched the beast with both hands, holding it in front her like some sort of spinster bouquet.

Excellent. What was it they said? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something yowling.

Ash scowled at the thing.

The creature hissed in reply.

The dislike would seem to be mutual.

“Does it have a name?” he asked.

She looked up, as if startled by the question. “What?”

“A name. Does the cat have one?”

“Oh. Yes. Breeches. His name is Breeches.”

“Breeches?”

“Isn’t that what I said?” She showed no signs of releasing the thing. Instead, she looked about the hall. “Where are we reciting our vows? The library?”

“You can’t mean to hold that thing throughout the ceremony.”

“But if I put him down, I fear he’ll run off. Besides, he wants to be a witness. Don’t you, Breeches?” She turned the cat to face her and made a kissy face. “This is the Duke of Ashbury. Aren’t you pleased to meet him?” She took the creature’s paw and mimicked a wave of greeting in Ash’s direction. “He’s quite friendly.”

The cat’s claws made a vicious swipe through the air.

Right. That was it.

Ash reached out, wrested the animal from her grasp, and set it on the floor. The gray beast darted off at once.

“This house is enormous,” she objected. “He might be lost for days.”

“We can only hope.”

He tugged at the front of his waistcoat and turned to have a proper look at his bride. Of all that cat’s many offenses, its worst by far was obscuring his view of her. Thus far, he had seen her only two ways: first, wearing a gown made of leprous icicles, and second, wearing a modest shopgirl frock.

The morning dress she wore today was simple, but a welcome respite for his beauty-starved eyes. It was fashioned from wool in a rich, flattering shade of blue. The fit was perfect. He supposed that shouldn’t have been a surprise—she’d likely sewn it herself—but the frock embraced her in all the best places. The sleeves were long, and she’d added an edge of slender lace at the wrists. The merest hint of sweetness, like a dusting of confectioner’s sugar.

It was charming.

No, no. Charming? Had he just thought that word? He wasn’t charmed. He was never charmed. Bah.

He was ruttish, that was all. Eager to break an interminable stretch of celibacy. He admired her frock for one reason: because it would make such a satisfying heap on the floor.

What a shame he wouldn’t have the opportunity to see it that way. It would be dark when he visited her bed tonight.

Her rose-petal lips moved. Damn it, that meant he’d been staring at them. And now he hadn’t heard whatever it was she’d said.

“The curate is in the drawing room,” he said.

She hesitated.

He braced himself to hear, I can’t possibly do this, or What was I thinking? or I’d rather be hungry and homeless, thank you.

“Which way is the drawing room?”

With a relieved sigh, he turned and offered her his arm. “This way.”

Her steps were not precisely light, and he couldn’t fault her for it. She no doubt would have wished to marry for love, and he was about to steal that dream from her tiny, work-reddened fingers—replacing the charming, handsome groom of her dreams with an ill-tempered monster.

Guilt jabbed him in the ribs.

He had to ignore it. War had taught him two things. First, life was fleeting. Second, duty wasn’t. If he died without an heir, his toad of a cousin would carve up the lands, making every decision for his own expedience and enrichment. Ash would have failed the thousands who depended on him.

And if he failed them, he would not be the man his father raised. No prospect could be more gutting.

The irony of it hit him as they entered the drawing room.

He was the one marrying for love.

Just not hers.

It wasn’t precisely the wedding of Emma’s youthful imaginings. She’d seen herself having a church wedding, naturally, packed with friends, neighbors, relations. She’d dreamed of wearing pink ribbons and a crown of flowers in her hair. But then, she’d abandoned those girlish fancies years ago.

In the drawing room, there were no guests or flowers—only the curate, the butler, the housekeeper, and a frightful number of papers awaiting her signature. Emma riffled through the pile, intimidated. She supposed there was no better place to begin than the beginning.

She was only halfway through the second page before the duke’s patience expired.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Reading them?”

“Of course I’m reading them. I don’t sign anything I don’t read first. Do you?”

“That’s different. I might have something to lose.”

And Emma didn’t. That was the duke’s clear implication. In truth, it would be hard to argue the point. She’d already left the dressmaking shop, her garret, and most of her belongings behind.

He left her to her reading, retreating to pace in circles at the other end of the drawing room. Emma was visited by the strange suspicion he might be as nervous as she was.

No, that couldn’t be. More likely, he was eager to have it done.

“May I assist you, Miss Gladstone?” The murmured question came from nearby. “I know how weighty those stacks of paper can be.”

She looked up to find the butler standing near. She’d met him the other day. What was his name? Mr. Khan, she thought she recalled.

What she remembered with certainty was that she’d liked him at once. He had bronze skin, an Indian cadence to his speech, and silver hair with a part as arrow-straight as his posture. He’d treated her with kindness, even when she’d appeared on the doorstep with no card and no invitation. In fact, he’d seemed strangely delighted to see her.

“The duke isn’t always like this,” Khan confided, handing her the next set of papers.

“No?” Emma pounced on the kernel of hope.

“Usually, he’s a great deal worse.” With a glance over his shoulder, the butler exchanged one set of papers for another. “He’s been alone and is determined to remain that way. He doesn’t trust anyone, but he respects those who challenge him. I suspect that’s why you are here. He’s angry, resentful, bored, in more pain than he lets on—and you’ll either be the making of him, or he’ll be the ruin of you.”

She swallowed hard.

“If it helps,” he said, “the entire staff is pulling for the former.”

“It does help. I think.”

Whatever was required to “be the making” of a wounded duke, Emma was positive she lacked it. However, if Khan wanted to be in her corner, she wouldn’t complain. She needed to have one friend in the house, and it clearly wasn’t going to be her husband.

Nor that cat, wherever it was.

“What’s going on over there?” the man in question demanded.

“Nothing,” she called. “That is, I’m nearly finished.” To the butler, she whispered, “Do you have advice?”

“I suppose it’s too late to run.”

“Other than that.”

“Drink heavily? Someone in the house ought to, and I cannot.”

“Khan, stop standing about and make yourself useful. Fetch the family Bible.”

The butler straightened. “Yes, Your Grace.”

The subtle wink he gave her in parting was one of beleaguered sympathy. We’re in this together now, it seemed to say.

She reached for the pen.

Once she’d finished signing all the contracts, the curate cleared his throat. “Are we ready to begin, Your Grace?”

“God, yes. Let’s get on with it.”

As she and the duke took their places side by side, Emma couldn’t help but steal a glance at him. His uninjured profile was to her. Decisive and compelling, with no trace of doubt on his features.

Then he suddenly turned his head, displaying his scars. Embarrassed at having been caught staring, she looked away—and instantly knew in her stomach that looking away was the wrong thing to do.

Well done, Emma. Just capital. That won’t offend him at all.

As they recited their vows, the duke clasped her hand to slide a plain gold band on her finger. His grip was firm and unsentimental, as if he were asserting a claim. The two servants signed as witnesses, and then they and the curate departed.

They found themselves alone, the three of them. Emma, the duke, and a thick, uncomfortable silence.

He clapped his hands. “Well, that’s done.”

“I suppose it is.”

“I’ll have the maid bring some refreshment to your suite. You’ll want to rest.”

As he turned to leave, Emma put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

He turned back. “What.”

The word wasn’t a question, but a scolding.

She steadied her nerves. “I want to have dinner.”

“Of course you will have dinner. Do you think I mean to starve you? That would hardly suit my purposes of siring a healthy child.”

“I didn’t mean that I merely wish to be fed. I’d like the two of us to dine together. Not only tonight, but every evening. Proper dinners, with multiple courses. And conversation.”

From his expression, one would think she’d suggested nightly abdominal surgery. Performed with a knitting needle and a spoon.

“Why would you want that?”

“There must be something more than bedding between us. We must come to know one another, at least a little bit. Otherwise, I’ll feel too much like a . . .”

“A broodmare. Yes, I recall.” He looked to the side, sighed, and then looked back at her. “Very well, we will dine together. However, let’s have a few matters settled right now. This is a marriage of convenience.”

“That’s what we agreed.”

“There will be no affection involved. In fact, every precaution will be taken against it.”

“I’m surprised you believe we’ll need any precautions.”

“Only one act is required on your part. You must permit me to visit your bed. I’m well aware of my distasteful appearance. You need not fear any crude or lascivious attentions from my quarter. All encounters will be as dignified as possible. No lights, no kissing. And of course, once you are pregnant with my heir, we will be done.”

At this, Emma was stunned. No kissing? No lights? On account of his “distasteful appearance”?

The pain implied in that litany tugged at her emotions. Annabelle Worthing’s rejection must have been a cruel blow. Even if he’d formed the idea that his scars were intolerably repulsive . . . Emma was his wife now. She refused to underscore it. She knew how it felt to be an outcast.

He turned to walk away. Once again, she stopped him.

“One more thing. I want you to kiss me.”

She was mortified by the way she’d blurted it out, but it was done—and now she must not back down. If she ceded to him on this, she would never regain what little ground she held.

“Have you been paying attention? I only just now stipulated there would be no kissing.”

“You said kissing in bed,” she pointed out. “This isn’t bed. I promise, I’ll only ask the once.”

He passed a hand over his face. “Dinner. Kisses. This is what I get for wedding a vicar’s daughter from the country. Girlish notions about romance.”

“Believe me, being a vicar’s daughter from the country did nothing to fill me with notions of romance.”

Strumpet. Harlot. Jezebel.

The cruel words whispered from the shadowy corners of her memory. She tamped them down, as she’d learned to do over the years. Perhaps someday she would learn how to banish them.

“I can do without a jeweled ring, or guests, or a fine gown,” she said. “I’m only asking for this one tiny gesture, to make it all feel a bit less . . . cold. More like an actual wedding.”

“It was an actual wedding. The vows are perfectly legal and binding. A wedding does not require a kiss.”

“I think my wedding requires one.” Her voice gathered strength. “A woman only gets one of these ceremonies, and as hasty and contractual as it’s all been thus far, I’d appreciate one small gesture that makes me feel like something other than chattel.”

She watched closely for his reaction. His reaction was to refuse to react at all. He was expressionless—both sides of him. The whole, and the scarred. Perhaps he was uncertain of himself. Then again, perhaps he was uninterested in her. Either thought made her throat tighten.

“I could do the kissing, if you prefer,” she offered. “It needn’t be a long kiss. You only have to stand there.”

She stretched up on her toes.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down. “The bride does not kiss the duke.”

Oh, Lord. This could not possibly be any more humiliating.

“The duke,” he continued, “kisses the bride. It’s an entirely different thing.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Close your eyes.”

Emma closed her eyes. Her heart drummed in her chest as the waiting stretched longer . . .

And longer still.

She was a fool. He was laughing at her. He’d changed his mind. About the kiss. About her. About everything.

She was on the verge of opening her eyes, slinking from the room, and constructing a fortification of pillows, novels, and kittens in which to hide for the remainder of her life, when—

His hands cupped her face. Rough, possessive. And just when she was certain she’d combust from the cruel suspense of it all, his lips touched hers.

Something inside her came apart.

That hidden pocket of yearning that she’d sewn up tight years ago—his kiss ripped it open at the seams. A flood of emotion poured forth, overwhelming her. A surge of passion and desire and . . .

And something else. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge, much less name. She’d pore over it later, no doubt. Her mind wouldn’t allow her to let it alone. But as long as his lips touched hers, she could delay that dreaded reckoning.

If only this kiss could last forever.

Chapter Six

Get it over with, Ash told himself. Touch lips, hold for a count of three—no, two—and be done with the business altogether. Foolish to humor her, perhaps, but a perfunctory kiss seemed the fastest way to end the conversation.

What the kiss ended up being, however, was the fastest way to unravel him completely.

Softness. Warmth. The tastes of sweet and tart and cool. Parts of him went weak, and others were well on the way to rock-hard. She played on so many of his senses, he couldn’t sort them out. The kiss unfurled tendrils of madness in his brain, strangling his ability to think, to regain control . . .

To count.

How long had his lips been on hers? It might have been two beats, or three, or a thousand. He didn’t care anymore.

Her cheeks flushed beneath his palms, and he thought surely that heat must signal distress or embarrassment. But she didn’t pull away. She leaned closer, pressing her hand against his coat. Not only against his coat, but against the scars beneath it, and straight through to all the pain and bitterness beneath that. The sensation spiraled through him like a whirlwind in a desert, catching bone-dry dust and tossing it up to the sky.

Everything was wrong. Everything was right. Everything was possible.

He lifted his mouth from hers, but he couldn’t wrench his gaze from her face. Long seconds passed before she opened her eyes, as though she were savoring the sensations. Stamping a memory. As though she’d enjoyed it.

He was a wretched fool for ever indulging her with this kiss. He’d neglected to consider that one kiss made a man want another.

And another.

And yet another still, each more passionate than the last.

He would have her later, in bed and often. But he wouldn’t have her like that again. He wouldn’t taste the fresh sweetness lingering where her lips had met his. The taste of beginnings, anticipation, and the hope of more.

He released her and stepped back.

She swayed on her feet, finding her balance. “Thank you.”

It was entirely my pleasure, he thought. And I shall never forgive you for it.

He said, “Dinner’s at eight.”

When Emma left the drawing room, she found the assembled servants of Ashbury House waiting in the entrance hall. Khan introduced each servant by position and name. Emma felt certain she would recall none of them. There were simply too many. Housekeeper, cook, upstairs maids, downstairs maids, scullery maids, footmen, coachman, grooms.

“Mary will serve as your lady’s maid.” He indicated an eager, smiling young woman in a crisp black uniform. “Mary, show the duchess to her suite.”

“Yes, Mr. Khan.” Mary bounced with enthusiasm. “Please do come this way, Your Grace.” Once they were out of others’ hearing, she chattered all the way up the stairs. “I’m so glad you’ve come. We all are.”

“Thank you,” Emma said, bewildered.

Surely an experienced lady’s maid would be insulted to find herself in service to a duchess who had been, until a quarter hour ago, a seamstress. Wouldn’t she?

Apparently not.

“Never hesitate to call upon us. We are here to serve you in any way.”

“You’re very kind.”

“Kind?” Mary asked. “Not at all, Your Grace. It’s clear at a glance that you’re a vast improvement over that horrid Miss Worthing. Once the duke falls in love with you, everything’s going to be so much better.”

“Wait.” Emma halted in the corridor. “Once the duke falls in love with me?”

“Yes, of course.” Mary clasped her hands at her breast. “What a thrill it would be if it took only a few days. Perhaps it will only take the one night! Though I suppose a few months is the more likely course. We mustn’t get too ahead of ourselves.”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong idea,” Emma said. “This isn’t a love match, and I can assure you, it’s not going to become one. Not in a few days, nor a few months. Not ever.”

“Your Grace, never say it. It must happen.” Mary looked over both shoulders before continuing. “You don’t understand how we suffer here. Ever since his injury, the duke has been miserable—and he’s made our lives unbearable as well. He never leaves the house, never has visitors. Never asks Cook for anything but the simplest of dishes. The staff is as lonely and bored as the duke is, and atop it we’re in the service of a master whose moods run from black to the darkest gray. We are—all of us—counting on you.” She took Emma’s hands and squeezed them. “You’re our only hope. The duke’s only hope, too, I daresay.”

Oh, heavens. That was . . . intimidating. Emma had no idea how to reply. She was struggling to retain a few scraps of optimism for her own future, plus a thread of hope for Miss Palmer’s. Now she had a score of servants depending on her to rescue them, too?

“I have every faith in you, Your Grace.” Mary beamed again and opened the door to a lavish suite. “Now this is your private sitting room. The bath is just through that door. To the other side you’ll find your bedchamber, and beyond that, the dressing room. Shall I leave you for a bit to settle in? You’ve only to ring for me when you’re ready to dress for dinner. I have so many ideas for your hair.” With a little wave and a hop, she disappeared.

Emma wasn’t eager to be left alone. This sitting room alone was larger than the garret she’d lived in for the past three years. It must take bushels of coal to heat. If she wouldn’t have felt so foolish, she would have cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted her name—just to see if it echoed back.

As she wandered through the other rooms, her gaze skipped from one luxurious furnishing to the next. She didn’t know how she’d ever dare to use them.

In the bedchamber, everything was laid out and waiting. The small assortment of belongings she’d brought with her, and many luxuries she hadn’t. Fresh flowers, no doubt from a hothouse. On the dressing table, she found a silver hairbrush and hand mirror. The bed was covered with new linens, freshly pressed.

Oh, Lord. The bed.

She couldn’t think about that just now.

Her one and only frock remotely fit for a formal dinner had been pressed and hung in readiness. She hoped it wouldn’t be obvious that it was merely a years-old bit of rescued silk she’d used to practice new styles. The waistline had been lowered and lifted countless times. The hem had been flounced and unflounced again. Ribbon trim had been exchanged for lace, then beading. It was hardly a proper gown, but it was what she had.

She took a folded quilt from the edge of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders before sitting on the hearthrug, drawing her knees to her chest, and curling into herself like a bug.

She wasn’t a seamstress any longer. She was a wife, a duchess.

And she was terrified.

At eight o’clock, Emma found herself seated at one end of a mile-long table. She could scarcely make out the opposite end of it. The white linen surface seemed to disappear into the horizon. A few bits of crystal and silver twinkled like far-off stars.

The duke entered, nodded in her direction, and then began a prolonged, unhurried stroll to the far end of the dining room. It took him a full minute. There, he waited for a footman to draw out his chair, and then he sat.

Emma blinked at the manly dot in the distance. She needed a spyglass. Or a speaking trumpet. Both, preferably. Conversation would be impossible without them.

A servant snapped open a linen napkin with a flourish, laying it across her lap. Wine was poured into her glass. Another footman appeared with a tureen of soup, which he ladled into a shallow bowl before her. Asparagus, she thought.

“The soup smells divine,” she said.

In the distance, she saw the duke motion to a footman. “You heard her. Pour Her Grace some more wine.”

Emma let her spoon fall into her bowl. This was ridiculous.

She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet, gathering the bowl in one hand and her wineglass in the other. The servants looked to one another, panicked, as she walked the full length of the dining table and set her food at his end. She chose the corner facing his unscarred side, to lessen the awkwardness.

He looked annoyed.

She didn’t care.

He broke the silence. “Really?”

“Yes, really. We had a bargain. I admit you to my bed; you appear at the dinner table. And we engage in conversation.”

He took a draught of wine. “If you insist. I suppose we can converse as normal English people do. We’ll talk about the weather, or the latest horse race, or the weather, or the price of tea, and oh, did we happen to discuss the weather?”

“Shall we talk about life in the country?”

“That will serve. The upper classes always talk about the country when in Town, and the Town when in the country.”

“You mentioned that I would have my own house.”

“Yes, it’s called Swanlea. Situated in Oxfordshire. Not a grand house, but comfortable enough. The village is a few miles distant. No one’s been in residence for years, but I’ll have it opened for you.”

“It sounds enchanting. I’d love to go for a visit. Would it be ready by Christmas?”

Christmas seemed her best chance. It was only some nine weeks away. That would put Miss Palmer at nearly six months pregnant—but with luck and clever dressmaking, she might be able to conceal her condition that long. If Emma could have her settled in Oxfordshire by the new year, this just might work.

“The house will be ready by Christmas,” he said. “However, I doubt you’ll be ready by Christmas.”

“What do you mean?”

He waved for the servants to remove the soup. “You won’t be going anywhere until you are confirmed to be with child.”

What?

Emma choked on her wine.

The servants brought in the fish course, forcing her to hold her tongue.

The moment they had some measure of privacy, she leaned forward. “Do you mean to hold me captive in this house?”

“No. I mean to hold you to our bargain. Considering that the purpose of this marriage is procreation, I cannot allow you to reside elsewhere until that goal is achieved. Or at least well under way.”

She searched her brain for a reasonable excuse. “But I’ve been yearning for Christmases in the country. Roasted chestnuts and sleigh rides and caroling.” That much was no falsehood. Passing the holiday alone in a drafty garret had been lowering indeed. “I don’t see why I couldn’t visit for a week.”

He speared a bite of fish. “I know how these things go. A week becomes a fortnight, and then a fortnight becomes a month. Before I know it, you’ve run off to some seaside hamlet to hide for a year or two.”

“If you believe I’d do that, you don’t know me very well.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “If you believe you won’t be tempted, you don’t know me at all.”

Emma stared at her plate. This was an unforeseen complication. Helping Miss Palmer was one of the reasons she’d agreed to this marriage. Not the only reason, of course—but an important one. At the least, Emma needed to take the young woman to the country and see her settled, even if the duke insisted she return to London afterward. Now she learned he wouldn’t permit any travel whatsoever. Not unless she was pregnant first.

She supposed it was possible she could be with child by Christmas, if she conceived soon. Very, very soon. And if she didn’t . . . Well, she would just have to change his mind, she decided. He couldn’t deny her a brief holiday once she gained his trust.

He doesn’t trust anyone, Khan had said.

Wonderful.

“Your Gra—” She broke off mid-syllable, frowning. “What do I call you now? Not Your Grace, surely.”

“Ashbury. Or Duke, if you must be more familiar.”

Heavens. Being addressed as Duke counted as familiar?

“I’m your wife. Surely that means I’ve earned the privilege of calling you something more friendly. What did they call you when you were younger, before you inherited? You weren’t Ashbury then.”

“I was addressed by my courtesy title.”

“Which was . . . ?”

“The Marquess of Richmond. A title which will become my heir’s. Soon, with any luck. You may as well save it for him.”

She supposed he was right. “What about your family name?”

“Pembrooke? Never used it.”

Emma wasn’t inclined to use it, either. Too stuffy, and it didn’t precisely trip off the tongue. “Your Christian name, then.”

“George. It was my father’s name, and his father’s name before that, and the name of every third gentleman in England, it would seem.”

“It’s my father’s name, too.” She shuddered. “So that’s out. We’ll have to find something else.”

“There is nothing else. There’s Ashbury, or Duke. Choose one.”

Emma thought on it for a moment. “No, dear husband, I don’t believe I shall.”

He dropped his fork and glowered at her.

She smiled.

He doesn’t trust anyone, Khan had said. But he respects those who challenge him.

If respect was what the duke had to offer, respect was what she must earn. Emma could put up a challenge. She hoped her husband was up to the task of meeting it.

She reached for a nearby bowl. “Would you like more sauce, sweeting?”

His fingers strangled the stem of his wineglass. She could practically hear the grapes calling for help. She hoped that was a good sign.

“If you don’t cease that nonsense,” he said, “you will regret it.”

“Is that so, my heart?”

He plunked one forearm on the table and turned to face her. Piercing blue eyes, striking scars, and all. “Yes.”

Despite all her intentions to challenge him unabashed, Emma found herself, inconveniently, just a little bit abashed. Perhaps she should talk of the weather.

She was saved, however, from starting a discussion about the autumn chill.

A flash of silver fur darted from the side of the room. Breeches leapt onto the table, sank his teeth into the steamed trout, and absconded with it before either of them could say a word.

“That’s it.” The duke threw his linen napkin on his plate. “Dinner is over.”

Chapter Seven

Ash cinched his dressing gown and tied the sash. Then he undid it and tried again. He’d made such a tight knot on his first attempt, he’d impeded his ability to breathe.

He was damnably anxious. Emma wouldn’t be the only inexperienced one tonight. He was hardly a virgin himself—but he’d never bedded a virgin before, and he wasn’t sure what to expect from her quarter. Would she be merely timid, or outright terrified? How much pain was he likely to cause?

He supposed there was one comfort he could offer her. Considering how long it had been for him, the whole matter ought to be over within minutes. If not seconds.

He padded down the corridor on bare feet. When he arrived at her bedchamber, he gave a knock of warning before opening the door a few inches.

“I assume you’re ready,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He entered, extinguishing his candle soon after. She had a few tapers of her own burning, and he went about the room snuffing them in turn. When he’d banked the fire to a dim red glow, he turned to join her on the bed.

On his first step forward, he bashed his knee on the edge of . . . something. A table? The leg of a chair?

The bedclothes rustled. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said tersely.

“You know, a bit of light might be a good idea.”

“No. It would not be a good idea.”

“I’ve seen your scars already.”

“Not like this.” And not all of them. The scars on his face were merely the prologue to an epic tale of deformity.

She might be able to stomach his appearance from across the room or in a darkened carriage, even at the dinner table. But within the intimacy of the marriage bed? Unclothed, in the light? Not a chance. The point been made painfully clear the first—and last—time he’d allowed a woman to view him that way.

The memory remained as sharp and painful as a poison-tipped arrow.

How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?

How, indeed.

Ash had no wish to relive that moment, and not merely to preserve his pride. This was a matter of saving his bloodline. He couldn’t afford to frighten Emma off. When it came to bedding, she was already timid about the enterprise. He couldn’t risk giving her any further reason to demur. A man was only allowed one wife. If she didn’t give him an heir, that would mean the end of his line. At least the end of the decent side of it—the one without irredeemable prats.

“I’m over here,” she said. “This way.”

He followed the sound of her voice, stumbling a bit over some carpet fringe, but otherwise arriving at the edge of the bed in one piece. After tugging at the sash of his dressing gown, he undid the knot and slipped free of the garment, setting it aside.

He settled his weight toward the foot of the mattress and reached out to grasp—well, whatever part of her he could grasp. This would be a tricky business, deflowering a virgin bride in near-total darkness. Perhaps he ought to have strategized more in advance.

It was too late now. Ash felt around the quilted coverlet until his hand landed on what seemed to be a foot. An encouraging sign. He followed upward, sketching the shape of a leg.

Hm. Her calf was a bit stouter than he’d been expecting. But then, perhaps she was one of those women formed more amply below the waist than above it. It made no difference to him. The female body came in all shapes and sizes, and he’d never seen any reason to complain about the variety.

His hand swept over the familiar knob of a knee, and then up the slope of what must be a thigh. Now he was getting somewhere. A tightness gathered in his loins.

Ash stretched out beside her on the bed, the better to aid his explorations. He tried to murmur something soothing as he skimmed over the prominence of her hip and further upward, until he located the edge of the coverlet. But truthfully, his voice didn’t lend itself to calm tones at the moment. Years’ worth of pent-up lust coursed through his body. His cock swelled and stiffened against the bedding. By the time he grasped the hem of the coverlet and began to draw it downward, his body was ready. Very, very ready.

He peeled the quilted satin downward and prepared to lay his palm on what he expected would be the linen of her night rail, and some part of her warm body beneath. It was like playing darts blindfolded. There was little way of knowing on which target his touch would land. He would have been satisfied with a shoulder or her belly, he supposed, but by God, he was hoping for a breast. Fate owed him a stroke of luck.

He braced himself for that pleasant jolt of first contact.

No jolt occurred. Instead of her shift and tempting body, his hand connected with . . . a wool blanket? Well, then. It would seem he had another layer to remove.

He drew the blanket downward and made another attempt. This time, his hand connected with a thickly padded quilt. Good God, she was layered like an onion. No wonder her leg had felt thick enough to support a small tree.

“How many of these are there?” he asked, trying to locate the edge of the quilt.

“Only five or so,” she answered.

“Five?” He flung back the quilt, not bothering with patience any longer. “Are you attempting to deter me? Exhaust me before I even get to the act?”

“I was cold. And then you banked the fire.”

“I think you’re playing me a trick. Perhaps I’ll keep peeling these away and find there’s nothing beneath them but a pair of pincushions and a broomstick.”

“You’re down to the last one, I swear it. Let me.”

Fabric shifted beside him, and beneath it, her body wiggled in a way that was pure torture. He was desperate to be between her legs, inside her. He had a vision of her beneath him, naked. Her legs locked around his waist, and her back arched in pleasure.

Abandon that fantasy, he told himself. It wasn’t going to be that way. Not tonight, not ever.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

His cock throbbed at the husky sound of her voice.

Thank God.

When he reached for her this time, he found what he’d been seeking. Her. Emma. His bride. His hand did not land on a breast, he realized with some disappointment, but her waist instead.

That would do.

He made a fist in the fabric of her shift. As he hiked the linen—only daring to raise it as far as her waist—his breath was shaky.

He stroked his hand downward, over her bared hip. He gave a helpless groan. God. He wanted to touch every part of her. The tender skin at her wrist, her lips, her hair. Her hair. He wondered if her hair was undone, and whether he dared to reach for the dark, heavy silk of it, twining his fingers round and round.

An imprudent idea, he decided. The way this night was going, he would probably poke her in the eye instead.

He moved his hand in a lateral caress, aiming for the center of her. As his fingertips brushed the tantalizing curls covering her mound, he cursed himself. He’d meant to bring some oil to ease the way.

He couldn’t go back to retrieve it. If he stopped now, Lord only knew how many layers she’d be buried under when he returned. Instead, he raised two fingers to his lips and sucked them into his mouth, wetting them.

Then he reached between her thighs.

She gasped.

Clenching his jaw in an attempt at restraint, he focused on the task at hand. He slid his fingers up and down the seam of her cleft. Her breathing quickened—with apprehension, no doubt.

“You do understand what will happen?” he asked belatedly, his voice thick with lust. “What goes where, and all that?”

He felt her nod. “Yes.”

“I’ll try to be gentle with you. Failing that, I’ll be quick.”

He parted her folds, and then pressed his second finger inside her heat. Just a fingertip at first, and then a few inches more.

Goddamn. Bloody hell. Jesus Christ.

Fuck.

And every other bit of blasphemy he would have been thrashed as a youth for daring to say.

She was so hot, so tight, and made of the same flawless silk inside as her body was without.

Her breath came faster still, thin at the edges. Damn, he was a monster. She was anxious, even fearful. He was mindless with lust. Lost in the instinctive desire to lick and taste and suck, then take her hips in both hands and thrust deep.

If this didn’t happen soon, he was going to spill his seed on all five of her blankets, and the entire exercise would have been in vain.

He pushed another finger inside her, sliding in and out, stretching her body to prepare his way.

Was she ready?

He withdrew his fingers to the tips, then thrust them both inside to the hilt, driving deep.

She cried out in surprise, and her hips bucked. “Please.”

Her breaking voice pierced through his haze of lust.

Please.

Ash removed his hand at once. Struggling to catch his breath, he pushed himself up on one elbow, then rose to a sitting position. “Sorry.”

He fumbled for his dressing gown, and then thrust his arms through the sleeves. By the fact that the thing barely covered his arse when he stood, he deduced that he’d put it on upside-down.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Truly. We can continue.”

“No. I’ve pressed you too far, too quickly.” He thought about attempting to retrieve his candle, then abandoned the idea. His eyes had adjusted enough that he could find his way to the door.

“But—”

“It will wait for tomorrow.”

He opened the door, went through it, and closed it behind him. He paused, taking a few deep breaths to steady himself. But when he started to leave, he felt something tugging him back.

Damn it. He’d shut a fold of his dressing gown in the door.

He thunked his head against the doorjamb. Did marriage make utter fools of all men? Or was it just him?

He turned the doorknob again.

“Did you change your mind?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, defensive. “I came back to tell you that I hadn’t.”

“Oh.”

“So you needn’t worry I’ll be returning tonight. Aside from this time, of course.”

He shut the door on her reply, but it followed him into the corridor.

“If you say so.”

Ash took all his unsatisfied lust and carried it out-of-doors, into the night. He’d considered giving himself some manual relief. However, the idea of spending his wedding night with his own hand was too pathetic to contemplate.

Walking it off was the only respectable option.

He stuck to the narrower lanes and the alleyways behind the mews, keeping the collar of his cloak upturned and his hat pulled down over his brow.

Eventually, he out-walked the aching tension in his groin. Yet there was something else he couldn’t seem to shake.

Please, she’d whispered.

Please.

The word had shocked him. He’d pulled away at once, uncertain whether she’d uttered it in pleasure or pain. Her breathless voice almost suggested the former—but that was too absurd to contemplate.

First, she was a virgin. Second, she was a vicar’s daughter. Third, she was a virgin vicar’s daughter. And fourth, he was the scarred, ill-tempered—if fantastically wealthy—wretch who’d strong-armed her into in a marriage of convenience with no courtship whatsoever.

He must have hurt her, or scared her, or—most lowering to contemplate—repulsed her.

At best, he’d merely pressed her beyond her comfort for the first night.

Ash kicked at stones as he walked. Until he kicked something rotted and soft. Ugh. He didn’t know what it was, but he was not stopping to investigate. He switched to poking at obstacles with his walking stick.

He would have to revise his plan, he decided. Take the bedding slowly, even if the waiting was torture. If he pushed her too far, too fast, and she shied from him . . . It all would have been for nothing. He would have no legitimate heir, and his father’s legacy would die with him.

Unthinkable. He would not allow that to happen.

Please.

It echoed through his mind again. A fresh shiver of arousal traveled the length of his spine.

He gave himself a mental shake.

She was not sighing in ecstasy, you clotpole.

That was only his desperate, lonely, sex-starved imagination, grasping at any phantom resembling affection.

He walked through the shuttered stalls of Shepherd Market, using his walking stick to push refuse out of his way and into the middens.

He prodded at a heap of rags.

The heap of rags stirred.

It unfolded, transforming into the figure of a young girl. No doubt she’d been left there to keep watch on the family stall by night.

“Whassat?” She drew herself up to a sitting position, rubbed her eyes, and turned to blink up at his face.

She blinked again.

And then she shrieked, loud and long enough to wake the dead.

“It’s all right,” Ash muttered. “I don’t wish to—”

She paused for a breath, then unleashed another high-pitched scream. Dogs nearby began to snarl and bark.

“Be still, child. I’m not going to—”

“Get away!” She kicked at his shin, shouting. “Get away! Leave me be!”

“I’m going.” He fished for what coins he had in his pocket, placed them beside the boarded-up stall, and made a hasty retreat. His heart was pounding.

See? he chided himself, once he was some distance down the lane.

Children screamed at the sight of him. Dogs howled as they would at a fiend.

No woman would be begging for him now. Not in bed, in the dark.

For that matter, not by day in the park.

Not on land, not at sea. She does not want you, Ashbury.

God, he was a blithering idiot.

Somewhere in the distance, glass shattered. He halted in his paces, turning an ear toward the sound. From the same direction, he heard a wallop, followed by a coarse shout.

Ash frowned. Then he started into motion, following the sounds in brisk strides. Walking stick at the ready.

Whatever the trouble, it wasn’t his concern.

But it might prove a welcome distraction.

Chapter Eight

The next morning, Emma took herself to the morning room. It seemed the expected thing. When she entered the sun-washed space, her gaze skipped over the tasseled upholstery and vases of flowers and went straight to the humblest furnishing in the room: an escritoire.

Perfect.

She had letters to write.

She sat at the writing desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, unstoppered the ink, and dipped the quill.

Her first priority was sending a note to reassure Miss Palmer, but Emma wasn’t certain how to do so. A message delivered from Ashbury House would raise eyebrows. No one even knew a Duchess of Ashbury existed yet. It wouldn’t be wise to call at the Palmer residence, either. Emma was merely a seamstress in their eyes. Once word got about that the duke had married, perhaps, but for now . . .

Fanny. Yes. She would write a note and send it in care of Fanny, asking her pass it along when Miss Palmer returned to the shop.

That accomplished, Emma turned her attention to another letter.

One that was six years overdue.

Dear Father,

It has been much too long since we’ve spoken.

But had been too long? Really? Her difficulty in penning this letter suggested it might be too soon.

Dear Father,

I hope this letter finds you in good health.

She stared at the sentence. As many times as she’d wished him to suffer boils, she wasn’t certain that was accurate, either.

Emma crumpled the sheet of paper and tried once more. Apparently polite salutations weren’t going to serve.

Father,

Do you recall the last time we saw one another? If not, permit me to remind you. You cast me out into a storm, barred me from my home, and told me no respectable man would ever want me. Well, it is my cold pleasure to inform you now, sir—you were gravely mistaken. Someone wanted me after all, and that someone is a duke.

But then . . . once again, she doubted. Did the duke truly want her? They’d agreed to a marriage of convenience, no more. For him, bedding her was a means to an end.

Her thoughts returned to their disastrous attempt at consummation the previous night. Perfunctory as the act was intended to be, and all his “rules” notwithstanding, his caresses were tender, patient. His hands told an entirely different story than his gruff, cynical words, and she couldn’t help but respond.

She’d been alone so long, isolated and untouched.

Waiting.

He’d awakened her desires. And yet, the moment she’d surrendered to them . . . he’d stopped. As if he’d been shocked by her response, or even displeased with it.

Perhaps he didn’t want her, after all. Or more to the point, perhaps he didn’t want a freely passionate wife, and that would only affirm her father’s judgment.

No decent man will have you.

Devastating.

Yes, their relationship was a convenient agreement. Yes, she’d resolved to keep her reckless, foolish heart uninvolved. Still, she craved a bit of closeness. Though she’d scraped by on her own for years, she was starved for human connection. And now she’d tethered herself, for the remainder of her life, to a man unwilling to connect with anyone. She felt more alone than ever.

Don’t be maudlin, Emma. It was only one night. A bit of awkwardness was to be expected. Surely it would improve with time.

A flurry of odd noises saved her from wallowing in self-pity. Emma rose from the writing desk. The cat had probably found a divan or chaise to claw to shreds. That might be a blessing in disguise if he had. Replacing the upholstery would give her a project to undertake.

As she followed the sounds, however, they sounded less and less likely to be feline. Soft thwacking and muffled grunting emanated from behind a set of imposing double doors.

She approached in soft footsteps and placed her ear to the door.

“Really, Khan.” The duke’s voice. “Try to muster a bit of effort.”

“I am attempting to do so, Your Grace.”

“Then muster harder. It’s your turn to receive.”

Emma pushed the door open a few inches and peered inside. She discovered a grand, open space, floored with inlaid parquet and bordered by walls hung with life-sized portraits. Capping off the opulence, elaborate scrollwork and chandeliers decorated the ceiling.

And across the middle of this majestic ballroom was strung a sort of crude netting. Two men—the duke and his butler—faced off on either side of it.

The duke swung a racquet, sending a plumed cork sailing over the net.

Khan, having caught sight of Emma, paid it no notice—with the result that the shuttlecock bounced directly off his forehead.

“Oh, come on.” The duke shook his racquet in accusation. “I all but sealed and posted you that one.”

Khan ignored his employer, opting to bow in Emma’s direction instead. “Good morning, Your Grace.”

The duke whipped around, still holding his racquet at a threatening angle. He swept a glance over her. “You.”

Be still her heart. What a salutation.

She moved into the room. “I thought you were joking about the badminton.”

“I wasn’t.”

“So I see.”

After a pause, he waved her toward the doors. “Well? You must have things to do. Take breakfast. Confer with the housekeeper, now that you’re mistress of the place. Do something ridiculous with your hair.”

“I’ve accomplished the first and second, and I will politely decline the third. I’m out of occupations at the moment.”

“Wonderful,” Khan interjected, striding toward her. “You can take over this one.” He pressed his racquet into Emma’s hand. Before making for the door, he mouthed two words. Save. Me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the duke demanded.

The butler turned in the doorway. “I’m not certain, Your Grace. Perhaps I’ll do something ridiculous with my hair.”

He bowed, closed the double doors, and was gone.

The duke bellowed after him. “I’ll dock your wages for this, you milk-livered cullion.”

In the ensuing quiet, Emma regarded the racquet in her hand. “Khan doesn’t seem to enjoy badminton.”

“He enjoys steady employment. We have sport three times a week. A man needs to keep up his stamina somehow.”

Stamina. Yes. Just looking at the duke, it was plain to see that he’d been an active man, long before his injury. Those shoulders and thighs could not have developed overnight. As he bent to retrieve the shuttlecock, she admired the tight contour of his backside. That didn’t come from idleness, either.

He stood, and she quickly averted her gaze.

Drat.

Again, she’d been caught staring. Again, he would misinterpret it entirely.

It wasn’t her fault, Emma told herself, but simply an occupational habit. Knowing fabric and thread was only part of a seamstress’s work. Key to success was understanding the body beneath the garments. How joints fit together; how muscles flexed and stretched. After years of practice, Emma only had to glance at a person to imagine them stripped of all clothing—and when regarding a person so finely formed by God and honed by exertion, the temptation proved difficult to resist.

But how did one say such a thing?

My apologies. I wasn’t staring out of horror. I was merely undressing you in my mind.

Oh, that would go brilliantly. Very duchesslike, that.

When the duke finished setting aside the equipment, he reached for his topcoat.

“We . . .” Emma forced herself to say it. “We could play. The two of us. You and I.”

He stared at her in disbelief.

He respects those who challenge him, she reminded herself. Although, at the moment, the piercing quality of his gaze didn’t strike her as admiration.

But Emma was in for the penny now. She may as well try for the pound.

“I adore badminton.” She attempted to twirl the racquet in a casual, sporty fashion. Instead she dropped it, and it bounced off her toe. She bit her lip, holding back a yelp of pain. “Whoops. How careless of me.”

She picked up the racquet with as much dignity as she could manage and limped to the other side of the ballroom, ducking under the net.

She gave him a game smile. “Shall we?”

“Very well. Let’s wager on it.”

“If you like. What is the forfeit?”

Now Emma’s interest was piqued. Weren’t the forfeits in these wagers typically naughty? A kiss, perhaps, or two minutes locked in the closet.

“When I win, you agree to leave me be. I’ve already conceded dinners, and further interruptions are unwelcome. I have a dukedom to manage.”

Well, and badminton to play, it would seem—which apparently outranked his wife in his leisure-time priorities.

“Fine,” she said, feeling testy. “But if I win, you agree to treat me with a modicum of respect.”

“Oh, come now. I already give you a modicum.”

“More than a modicum, then.” Emma considered. “How much is a modicum, anyway?”

“Somewhere between a soupçon and a whit, I imagine.”

“Then I want an ounce.”

“An ounce?”

“Two ounces. Actually, no. I should like a full pint of respect.”

He shook his head. “Now you’re just being greedy.”

“Greedy? I realize I may not be as captivating as a shuttlecock or a decanter of brandy, but I am your wife. The woman who is to be the mother of your child.”

After a pause, he said, “There’s no purpose in arguing the point. You’re not going to win.”

That’s what you think.

She might not win this silly game, but she was determined to triumph eventually. The battle began here and now.

He retrieved his racquet and a shuttlecock, took his position on the court, and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the shuttlecock sailing over Emma’s head before she could even move.

“Well done,” she said. “One point to you.”

“That wasn’t even a serve. I was merely lobbing you the shuttlecock. First service should be the lady’s. There’s your modicum.”

“But of course. Thank you, darling.” With an awkward swipe of the racquet, she managed to send the shuttlecock flying . . . straight into the net.

This time, he was the one to stand still in the center of the court. “What did you call me?”

“I called you ‘darling.’ We discussed at dinner yesterday that I must call you something. I refuse to address you as Ashbury or Duke, and you didn’t like ‘dear husband’ or ‘sweeting’ or ‘heart.’” She motioned toward the shuttlecock lying on the floor. “I believe it’s your turn, darling.”

“I am no one’s darling.” He batted the shuttlecock with a fierce backhand swat.

To her surprise, Emma managed to scramble under the falling missile and return it. “I don’t know if you have a say in that.”

“I’m a duke. I have a say in everything.”

Another effortless return on his part; another ungainly, desperate swipe on hers. This time, she missed.

“Darling is in the eye of the beholder.” Emma was already a bit out of breath as she retrieved the dropped shuttlecock. “If I choose to make a darling of you, there is nothing you can do about it.”

“Of course there’s something I can do about it. I can have you sent to an institution for the feebleminded and insane.”

She shrugged. “If you say so, cherub.”

He leveled his racquet at her. “Let’s set something straight, the two of us. You seem to be plotting a campaign of kindness. No doubt with the aim of soothing my tortured soul. It would be a waste of time. My temperament was not created by injury; it will not be magically healed by sweetness or pet names. Am I making myself clear? Do not harbor any illusions that my scars transformed me into a jaded, ill-tempered wretch. I was always—and shall remain—a jaded, ill-tempered wretch.”

“Were you always this long-winded, too?”

He growled.

Emma’s next attempt at a serve skittered across the floor. No matter. She was enjoying this game anyway.

“Ashbury is my title. It is what I’ve been called since my father died. No one calls me anything else. I’ve told you this.”

“And as I told you, I am your wife. Being the only one who addresses you differently is rather the point.”

Speaking of points, Emma had lost count of how many points she was behind.

He sent a serve back toward her. Emma noticed a hitch in his swing. He winced ever so slightly. Perhaps the reason behind the thrice-weekly sport was not mere boredom, but restoring the use of an injured arm. If so, his wounds must extend beyond his visible scars.

She wondered how severe those wounds were. She wondered how much they still pained him.

Too much wondering. It wouldn’t all fit in her brain. Instead, it traveled down to her chest and tightened there.

She smiled. “Shall we continue, poppet?”

His glare in response could have shattered marble.

After a few minutes’ practice, Emma’s agility had improved. She could hold her side of a respectable volley.

“What about ‘precious’?” she suggested.

“No.”

“‘Angel’?”

“God, no.”

“‘Muffin’?”

In response to that, he hit the shuttlecock so hard, it sailed all the way to the back wall and thwacked one of his ancestors right in the powdered wig.

She cheered. “Well done, my precious angel muffin.”

“This stops,” he said. “Now.”

Ignoring his outburst, Emma retrieved the shuttlecock. She served, barely managing to scrape it over the net. “I warn you, I don’t give up.”

“I warn you, I am more stubborn by far.”

“I left home at sixteen.”

“Orphaned at eleven,” he replied, sounding bored.

“I walked to London by myself. In the snow.”

“I marched a regiment to Waterloo.”

“I had to make a new life on my own. Begging for work. Stitching my fingers to nubs.” She dashed across the ballroom, rescuing the shuttlecock just before it hit the floor. Her swing sent it rocketing upward, almost to the ceiling.

He stood beneath the bundle of cork and feathers, waiting on it to swirl back to earth. “A rocket exploded in my face. I spent months near death. The scars left me a living monster. I quit opium by sheer force of will. My intended bride turned from me in revulsion. I’m still here.” He struck the shuttlecock, driving it into the parquet at her feet. “I win.”

She put a hand to her side, struggling to breathe. “Very well. You win.”

Emma felt chastened, and a bit ashamed. She’d been brave when she left home. People she held dear had turned from her, too. But the courage she’d been forced to summon couldn’t match that of a soldier in battle. As for the duke’s wounds, his scars . . . Vain and shallow as Annabelle Worthing might be, her rejection had heaped insult atop injury. The broken engagement must have deeply wounded his pride, if not his heart.

She bent to pick up the shuttlecock.

“Wait.” He jogged toward her, ducking under the net. “This will never be a proper match. Your volley is passable, but your serve is a disaster. Give it here, I’ll show you.”

Casting his own racquet aside, he plucked the shuttlecock from the floor and came to stand behind her, closing his right hand over hers where she gripped the racquet, and reaching around her with the other arm to position the shuttlecock.

She was in his embrace.

However unbelievably, for a couple who’d been engaged for a week, wed a full day and a night, and come within inches of consummating their union . . . this was the first time he’d held her in his arms.

All at once, the ballroom became a glasshouse—one filled with a steamy, intimate heat that amplified every sound, every scent. Sweat beaded at the nape of her neck, and she was deeply conscious of each wisp and strand of her hair that had tumbled free.

Mostly, though, she was aware of him. The wall of his chest against her back, and the strength of his arms around her. The soap and sandalwood scent she was coming to recognize. She stared at his hand. Last night, in the dark, those sure, confident fingers . . . they had been inside her.

“Hold it this way.” He shifted her grip on the racquet handle. “Better.”

A small vibration of joy went through her. Two curt syllables of praise from him, and her heart thrummed like a dragonfly’s wings.

Don’t, she bid it. Don’t you dare.

Her heart didn’t listen to her—but then, it never did.

Chapter Nine

This was the stupidest thing Ash had done in . . . at least twelve hours.

Between his walk last night and the sport this morning, he’d only just managed to push the thought of Emma from his mind. Now here he was again, right up against her, teetering on the edge of lust.

It wasn’t only desire tearing through him, however. There was seething anger, too.

Who was the villain who’d hurt her?

Someone must have hurt her, to send her fleeing her home for London at the age of sixteen, alone and penniless. Ash wanted to hurt that someone back. With something sharp. And deadly. He was hardly an empathetic man, but he was offended indeed when someone dared to threaten anyone in his protection.

And Emma was now in his protection.

Hell, she was in his arms.

Standing this way, with the top of her head tucked under his chin, he felt like a battered, scuffed-up case made to hold something delicate and lovely.

He could also see straight down her frock.

“It’s all in the timing,” he said. “You can’t release it and hit it at the same time. Wait a beat, then swing.” He demonstrated, dropping the shuttlecock in front of her racquet, then guiding her arm to give it a sound thwack. “See?”

“I think so.”

“Then give it a go.”

He stepped back, giving her the space to attempt it for herself. She bit her lip, and her brow pinched with concentration. Then she released, waited, swung—and succeeded in an almost respectable serve. The thing got over the net, at least.

To watch her, though, one would think she’d claimed a ten-guinea prize. Ash wished he could feel as joyful about anything as she felt about hitting a shuttlecock. She bounced in triumph and turned to him with eyes lit up like . . . like a pleasure garden, or an opera house, or a royal ball, or some other place he would never, ever be able to take her. Damn it all.

“Well . . . ?” she prompted, clearly eager for praise.

He tilted his head, making her wait for it. “Not bad.”

“Thank you.” She gave him an impish smile. “That means a great deal coming from you, lambkin.”

“Oh, now that is quite enough.” He lunged for her.

She darted away with a shriek of laughter.

By ducking under the net, he headed off her escape. He caught her by the waist and swept her off her feet, tossing her over his good shoulder.

A mistake. The sudden motion sent pain screaming from his neck to hip. He had to pause, breathing through the fiery, wrenching ache.

“Are you well?” She added no absurd endearments to the question, and there was genuine concern in her voice.

“Fine,” he said tightly.

He wasn’t really fine, but sometimes the pain was worth it.

To distract himself, he entertained lewd fantasies. Ideas of laying her down on the settee, and tossing her petticoats to her ears. Or more depraved still, pressing her against the wall and trapping her there as he disappeared under her skirts. Anything to get her legs around him. Any part of him. Gripping his waist, wrapped over his hips, hooked over his shoulders . . . he wasn’t particular.

As the pain dulled, he forced himself to set aside those imaginings. Oh, she would be his. But he must wait until nightfall, unwrap his Egyptian mummy from her ten blankets, and take her in apologetic silence.

He let her slide down his body, her soft curves dragging over him as she descended. The sweetest torture. She was breathing hard from the laughter and the chase, flushed with pink in all the best places.

As she looked at him, her smile faded. “You are in pain.”

“No, I’m not.”

She prodded his bad shoulder. He winced.

“It’s nothing. Nothing to concern you, at any rate.”

“I am your wife. If you’re hurting, it concerns me.”

Stop, he silently pleaded. Don’t do that. Don’t come any closer, don’t ask about my wounds, don’t prod at them. Don’t care.

A better man would have been grateful for such sweet concern. And a part of him was grateful. A part of him wanted to fall at her feet and weep. But that bitter, scarred-over half of his soul couldn’t stomach her pity. The devil in him would lash out at her in some unthinking, unforgivable way—until she was so busy licking her own wounds, she couldn’t spare a thought for his.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said sternly. “You can let me be.”

See? She looked wounded already. For her own sake, and that of the son she would bear him, he had to push her away.

But he didn’t know how.

Just then—miracle of miracles—Khan had a well-timed bout of usefulness.

The butler opened the ballroom doors and cleared his throat. “Your Grace, I hate to interrupt.”

Ash stepped away from his wife, relieved. “Liar. You love to interrupt.”

“Surprisingly enough for us both, this time I am being sincere. Your solicitor’s secretary has arrived. I’ve shown him to the library.” With a bow, Khan left the way he’d arrived.

Ash gestured toward the door. “I should really—”

“Go manage your dukedom,” Emma finished, smoothing her frock. “Yes, I know. Leaving you alone was my forfeit.”

With a nod of agreement, he quit the room.

Just as well they’d been interrupted, he told himself. Fortunate, even. This marriage wasn’t about games. Pleasure wasn’t the goal. And any form of affection would be disastrous.

He would bed her for a few weeks. With luck, that would be sufficient to get her with child. He would have done his duty.

And then it would be over.

That evening’s dinner was uneventful, and Emma was thankful for it. In fact, the meal was almost too short. She found herself with a surfeit of time to while away before he would visit her.

Mary came up to brush her hair and help her change out of her one and only evening dress. After she’d gone, Emma paced the bedchamber. She stared at the clock, willing it to tick faster. The idea of reading or stitching didn’t appeal—she’d never be able to concentrate. Finally, she decided she might as well prepare the room, and herself. She extinguished the candles and climbed into bed.

As she tucked herself under the quilts and blankets, she admitted the truth.

She wasn’t nervous.

She was impatient.

She wanted to feel his touch again, quite desperately. Not only his touch, but his tenderness. He might be snappish and aggravating during the day, but in the darkness last night, he’d seemed an entirely different man. Patient, respectful. Sensual.

This time, Emma resolved, she wouldn’t ruin it. The sooner this reproduction effort was under way, the better for all concerned.

At last, a knock at the door.

He entered without waiting for her answer.

“Tonight, this will be all business,” he announced. “In. Out. Done.”

Possibly the least seductive words imaginable, but Emma was apparently a madwoman, because they excited her all the same.

He did not bank the fire completely, leaving a bit of warmth and a faint amber glow. With less stumbling than last time, he joined her on the bed. He found the edge of the quilts—she’d limited herself to two tonight—and flung them back in one motion before stretching his body alongside hers. She held her breath, waiting for the first brush of exquisite contact.

“Good God,” he said. “You’re naked.”

Well, this wasn’t off to the most promising start.

“Why would you be naked?”

Had she heard him correctly? Had he truly just asked why she would be naked? How could this even be a question?

“I didn’t disrobe last night only because I thought you might want to undress me.”

He was silent.

“Shall I undress you?” she asked.

“No.” And then, with a tone of resignation, “Let’s just get on with it.”

Oh, now that was too much to be borne. She couldn’t remain silent any longer.

She pushed up on her elbow. “What am I doing wrong? Surely your previous lovers were active participants in the act.”

“Yes, but they were experienced. A few of them professionals. You’re a wife. You’re not supposed to enjoy this, you’re supposed to lie there and endure it.”

“So that’s what you expect from me. A silent, listless partner.”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” she said, disheartened. “I’ll try.”

His hand settled on her thigh, and he nudged her legs apart with a brusque motion.

Then he paused, keeping his hand utterly still.

When he resumed touching her, everything was different.

Despite his stated resolve to be quick, and his professed displeasure at finding her naked, he seemed to have changed his mind about making this a hasty, dispassionate encounter. In fact, his entire demeanor transformed. Once again, his brusque touch became a caress. As he explored her body, he made quiet, growly sounds of approval that thrilled her to her toes.

His palm covered her breast. Racked by pleasure, she bit her lip to stifle a soft cry of joy. He kneaded and stroked the soft flesh, switching from one breast to the other and back again. Her nipples puckered, begging for attention. The lazy, teasing back-and-forth of his thumb was the sharpest, sweetest pleasure—but it wasn’t enough.

Her breath quickened. She wanted him to hurry, but he took his time. His palms skimmed along her every dip and curve, painting her body hot with desire.

Most arousing of all, he began to speak.

“How is it you’re here?” he murmured. Not to her, but seemingly to himself. “How the devil did I manage it?” He wove his fingers into her hair and pulled away gently, letting the locks glide through his fingers. He exhaled on a single, stirring word. “Lovely.”

She reached for him, longing to touch and explore in return. She placed her hands flat against his chest, skimming over the thin lawn of his shirt.

He stiffened. “Don’t.”

She let her hands fall to her sides. “I—I’m sorry, I—”

Emma didn’t know what to say. That brief, stolen caress was burned into her palms. In one of her hands, she balanced a memory of strong, sleek muscle beneath ironed-flat linen. On her other palm, however, a different sensation lingered. The firm ridges of scar tissue, stretching and tugging across his chest like a fiendish spider’s web.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

He turned aside, and Emma despaired. Had she discouraged him from continuing? Again?

Instead, he reached for a small vial of some kind. She heard the sound of it being uncorked. An exotic scent wafted in her direction, and she glimpsed him pouring a few drops into his hand. Some sort of oil, perhaps?

Her guess about the substance was proven correct. His fingers slicked over her sex without friction, stroking up and down her intimate folds. The sensations were as impossible to catch as running water, and they made her just as wet.

By the time he settled between her thighs, she was desperate for him, awash with a deep, sweet ache that she somehow knew only he could satisfy. She knew what it was to bring about her own pleasure, but she’d never been able to fill that hollowness. Not on her own.

The rigid column of his manhood connected with her belly, sliding downward on the thin sheen of oil. The feeling of his steely hardness against her aroused sex . . . it nearly undid her, there and then. She whimpered with frustrated desire, rolling her hips to seek more contact.

He froze again.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, breathless. “Please. I’m fine. I promise. I’m very, very, very fine.”

He hushed her. “Don’t make a move.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not alone.”

Chapter Ten

Ash found himself staring into a pair of firelit eyes, glittering at him from the corner of the room. The base of his spine tingled. His heartbeat went from a gallop to a standstill.

An intruder.

How the devil had someone slipped in?

Never mind, he told himself. That question could wait. The more pressing inquiry at hand was this: How was he going to kill the bastard? He mentally ran through the available weapons in the room. The fireplace poker would be most effective, but it was out of reach. The sash of his dressing gown could make a decent garrote, in a pinch.

If needed, he’d fight hand-to-hand. His only concern was keeping Emma safe.

He rolled to the side and came to his knees, putting his body between her and the threat. “You have three seconds to leave the way you came,” he ordered. “Or I vow to you, I will snap your knavish neck.”

The intruder struck first, leaping forward with a fiendish yowl.

Something that felt like a dozen razor-sharp barbs pierced straight through his nightshirt, digging into his shoulder and arm. He gave a stunned shout of pain.

Emma flung back the bedclothes. “Breeches! Breeches, no!”

The cat?

Claws. Teeth. Hissing.

The cat.

Ash stumbled from the bed and whirled in a backward circle, whipping his arm to shake off the beast, all while guarding his breeding organs with the other hand. He could afford to lose a lot of bits, but not those.

From the bed, Emma shouted and pleaded with the hellish creature, to no avail. She heaved a pillow, which hit Ash in the face and did nothing to dislodge the demon she’d brought into his house. His next lashing attempt cleared the dressing table of anything that could break into tiny shards, as his bare feet quickly learned. He flung himself against the bedpost repeatedly, trying to startle the thing into letting go. Didn’t work. The cat only clung to his shirt—and flesh—like a burr. A yowling burr with teeth.

Ash was ready to plunge his arm, cat and all, into the fire—what were a few more burns, after all—but burning fur was a disgusting scent, and he was just decent enough to balk at the idea of murdering Emma’s pet before her very eyes.

No, he would take it out into the garden tomorrow and murder it there.

At the moment, however, he just needed the cursed thing off.

Leaving his groin unprotected, he reached around, grabbed the cat by its scruff, and shook both of his arms until he had it free. The little devil hit the ground running and disappeared into the shadows. Never to come back, if it knew what was good for it.

Ash checked the family heirlooms. All still present and apparently unscathed, but both bob and bits had pulled so far up into his body, there would be no coaxing them back out tonight. Not for all the tits in Covent Garden.

That was that. He would be taking another long, frustrated walk tonight.

“Are you bleeding?” Emma asked.

“Only in about twenty places.” He touched his shoulder, wincing. His fingers came away wet. “The fly-bitten measle.”

She fell back onto the bed with a pitiable sigh. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea he was even in the room.”

“Mark my words,” Ash said grimly. “Tomorrow night, he will not be.”

“Did you truly marry the Duke of Ashbury?” Davina Palmer laced her arm through Emma’s, drawing close enough to whisper as they strolled through the park. “If you don’t mind me asking . . . How did that happen?”

Emma laughed a bit. “I don’t mind at all. I’ve been asking myself the same question. Hourly.”

She drew Miss Palmer away from the crowded path. Too great a risk of being overheard. As they circled a pond flecked with ducks, Emma related a brief version of the tale. Miss Worthing’s gown. The duke’s pressing need for a wife. His strange proposal, now merely a week past, and their hasty wedding.

“As shocking as it was, I couldn’t refuse him.”

“Refuse a duke? Of course not. No woman in England would, I wager.”

One woman in England had done so. Social-climbing Miss Worthing, of all ladies, had declined Ashbury’s hand. The more Emma ruminated on it, the less sense it made.

But that wasn’t the question of the day.

“If only I had your good sense, Emma.” Davina’s voice quivered. “What an idiot I was to land in such a situation.”

“You were not an idiot.”

“I still don’t understand how it could have happened. I took every precaution against conceiving.”

Emma lowered her voice. “Do you mean the gentlemen withdrew, before he . . . finished the act?”

“No.”

“A sponge, then.”

“A sponge? What would I do with a sponge?”

“So he wore a French letter?”

Davina gave her a blank look. “What’s that?”

Emma was nonplussed. “Precisely what precautions did you take?”

“All the usual ones. After it was done, I jumped up and down for ten minutes. Sniffed pepper to make myself sneeze three times, and drank a full teacup of vinegar. I did everything right.”

Emma pressed her lips together. If this was Davina’s idea of contraception, perhaps the girl was just a little bit of an idiot. Nevertheless, she shouldn’t pay for one mistake for the rest of her life.

“The important thing is that you have a friend in me. To start, I’ve drawn up some patterns for your wardrobe, to conceal the fact that you’re increasing. I’ll have Fanny send word when they’re ready. Beyond that . . .” Emma took the girl’s arm, drawing her close as they walked. “The duke says I’m to have a house of my own in Oxfordshire. I’ll invite you for a nice long visit.” Assuming, of course, that Emma could travel there herself. “You can stay with me in the country until you’ve given birth.”

“Are you certain the duke won’t object?”

“He won’t even know. It’s a marriage of convenience. All he needs is an heir. Once I’m with child, he will want nothing to do with me.” Emma smiled. “We will be a pair, the two of us. Sitting with our swollen ankles propped on the tea table, gorging ourselves on sweetmeats and knitting tiny caps.”

“Oh, it sounds perfect. But what will happen afterward?”

“That will be your decision. But if you’re set on finding a family to take the child in, perhaps we might find one nearby. Then you could visit whenever you liked. Our children could play together.”

Davina clasped Emma’s wrist. “I can’t believe you would do this for me.”

“It’s no imposition. You can’t know how happy it makes me to help you this way.”

“Oh, but I shall need Papa’s permission first. That’s the only snag.”

“Surely he wouldn’t deny you the chance to visit a duchess.”

“Well . . .” Davina looked hesitant. “It’s merely that—”

“I’m not the usual sort of duchess,” Emma finished. And for that matter, her husband wasn’t the usual sort of duke. He hadn’t been seen publicly in years, and then he’d wed a seamstress.

“There will be a certain amount of curiosity,” Davina said.

Curiosity. What a charitable way of saying gossip.

Emma knew the unkind things ladies said about one another. In the dressmaking shop, they’d spoken in front of her as though she didn’t exist.

“But surely the duke will expose you to society,” Davina said. “He’ll have to introduce you at court. From there, simply ask him to take you to balls and the opera and dinners.”

Hah. To be sure, Emma could simply ask him. And he would simply say no.

This plan of hers was becoming more and more complicated. In order to help Davina she must either get pregnant immediately—which fate and felines were conspiring to prevent—or convince the duke to allow her a holiday despite it. Meanwhile, she must make herself a respectable duchess in the eyes of the ton, so that Mr. Palmer would allow his daughter to join her.

It all felt rather hopeless.

“What if your father won’t grant you permission?” she asked.

“I suppose I shall be forced to run away,” Davina said softly. “I’m the only child, and Papa wants me to marry a well-placed gentleman who can take over his business affairs. If I’m ruined, his plans will be ruined, too. Can you understand?”

“Yes. I can.”

Emma understood perfectly. She, too, had adored her father. But when she’d needed him most, he’d chosen to protect appearances rather than protecting her.

She refused to let the poor girl face this alone. Though Emma’s own situation had been different, it had felt no less dire. She still carried the cruel reminders: Some were visible, while others lurked deep inside. There was no way to erase the pain in her past, but she had a chance to save this young woman’s future.

No matter what it took, she would find a way.

And her best strategy, at the moment, was to go home and entice—or drag, if need be—her husband to her bed.

“Your Grace, would you describe yourself as clumsy?” Mary asked the question as she arranged Emma’s hair for dinner.

“No,” Emma answered. “Not particularly.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

“Why is it too bad?”

“Well, I was thinking . . . what if you tripped, and the duke had to catch you? That would surely encourage his affection. Or spill wine on your dress, and he would whip off his cravat to mop it up.” Before Emma could respond, Mary perked with another idea. “Ooh, you might even turn your ankle. Then he would have to carry you. That would be romantic.”

“I’m not going to turn my ankle.”

“You don’t think you could try? Even just a little stumble?”

“No.”

“Never mind it. We’ll think of something else. I was pondering, what if you went up to the attic . . . and then Mr. Khan sent the duke up to the attic . . . and then you and the duke were locked inside the attic, together. Accidentally.”

“Mary. You need to abandon these ideas. The duke is not going to fall in love with me—not even in a locked attic. In fact, he’s rather put out with me at the moment.”

Or at least he was put out with her cat.

With a sigh, Mary put the last pin in Emma’s hair. “There, now. Turn and let me have a look at you.”

After looking Emma over, Mary reached forward and grasped the sleeves of her gown, slid them off her shoulders, and tugged the bodice down so far, it barely covered her areolae. “That’s something, at least.”

When Emma arrived in the dining room, the duke wasn’t even there to angle for a glimpse of her areolae. She waited a quarter hour. Nothing.

He must truly be infuriated with her. Perhaps she wouldn’t see him later tonight, either. At this rate, they would never accomplish procreation.

She prepared to return to her rooms, planning to ring the maid for a dinner tray and sink into bed with a novel. As she passed down the corridor, however, someone called to her in a low whisper.

“In here.”

She turned, curious. The duke was in his library, barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the carpet, staring at the empty, unlit fireplace.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh.” He raised an open palm in her direction. “No sudden movements.”

“All right.” She drew out the words, kicking off her slippers and making her way into the room on stocking feet, sitting next to him on the floor. She folded her legs beneath her skirts and stared into the fireplace, too. “What are we looking at?” she whispered.

“Your cat. The little beast is hiding behind the grate. We’ve been waiting one another out.”

Emma peered into the dark fireplace. Yes, she could just make out a set of green eyes gleaming back at her from the sooty recesses of the hearth.

“How long have you been here?” she whispered.

“What time is it now?”

“Half seven.”

“Four hours, then.”

“Four hours? And how long do you plan to stay like this?”

He set his jaw and glowered at the fireplace. “As long as it takes.”

She noted an open trunk sitting on the opposite side of him. Two thick leather straps with buckles lay at the ready.

She gasped. “You’re going to lock Breeches in a trunk?”

“For the night, yes. Doors don’t seem to contain the beast.”

“With no food, no water?”

“I made air holes. And believe me, he’s fortunate to get that much.”

“But . . . why?”

“Is it not obvious?” For the first time since she’d entered the library, he slid a glance toward her. “Because I intend to impregnate you tonight, or make a valiant attempt at it. And this time, there will be no interruption.”

He turned back to regarding the grate.

“Oh.” Emma bit her lip, trying to ignore the hot flush creeping from her neck to her hairline. “Were you terribly hurt last night? Are you furious with me?”

“I don’t know that I can ever forgive you,” he said in a dry tone. “I’m going to have a scar.”

She paused a moment, then laughed.

The corner of his mouth quirked with a smug little smile. He was pleased with himself for having provoked her to laughter. Emma was pleased, as well. When he wasn’t using that sharp wit to slice her to ribbons, he had a rather charming sense of humor.

“I’ll be back,” she said, drawing to her feet.

A quarter hour later, she returned with a tray of sandwiches, two glasses, and an uncorked bottle of wine.

“Here.” She offered him a roast beef sandwich. “To keep up your stamina.”

He accepted it and took a large, manly bite.

“No progress?” She bit the corner from an egg-and-cress sandwich.

He shook his head. “Where did you acquire this pestilent, mewling jackanapes?”

“Where did you acquire the habit of cursing with such imagination?”

He reached for another sandwich. “For that, you can thank my father. The summer I was nine, my mother overheard me utter some foul words I’d learned at school. My father drew me aside and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was an educated gentleman and he never wanted to hear me use such crude language again. He said, ‘Blaspheme as you will, but at least use words from Shakespeare.’ I’d read all the plays by the summer’s end.”

“Quite ingenious of him.”

“He was a wise man. A good man. I may not be a wise or good man, but I at least possess a sense of duty. His legacy, and everything and everyone he protected, has fallen to me. I won’t let that wither and die.”

“And you still draw your curses from Shakespeare.”

“I try, in speech at least, as a way to honor his memory. I cannot claim my thoughts are always so literary in their inspiration.”

Emma let the quiet abide for a moment. “You must miss him a great deal. And to lose him so young. How did it—” She broke off the question. Perhaps she was delving too deep.

“A fever took them both. I was away at school.”

“Oh, dear.” She inched a bit closer. “That must have been terrible.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t there to see them ill. They’ll always be strong in my memory that way. Likewise, I’m grateful they never had to see me after I was . . . you know. Like this.”

She gathered his meaning, but she didn’t believe he was sincere. Having a loving family around him would have made all the difference.

He downed a large swallow of wine, then glanced toward her. “What about your parents? You mentioned leaving home for London at a tender age. What was that about?”

She chewed a bite slowly. “The usual. Strict discipline. Youthful rebellion. Words exchanged that couldn’t be taken back.”

“That,” he said, “was not an answer.”

“Yes, it was. You asked a question. I replied. With words and everything.”

“I gave you details. Ages, events . . . feelings. I cracked open my soul.”

She gave him a disbelieving look.

“All right, fine. I don’t have a soul. But the point remains. You can be more specific than that.”

“It’s a boring story, truly.” Before he could object, she withdrew a clipped bit of newsprint from her pocket. “Now this is an interesting story. ‘Cloaked Monster Menaces Mayfair.’”

He paused. “Sounds ridiculous.”

“I thought it sounded exciting.” She cleared her throat and read aloud. “‘For the second time in as many weeks, a chilling specter has wrought mayhem and terror in the most unlikely of neighborhoods: Mayfair. The ghoul is described as a tall, narrow figure clad all in black, with fine boots and a beaver hat pulled down to meet the upturned collar of his cloak. This reporter interviewed a well-shaken fellow who attested to seeing the caped monster in St. James Park this Thursday past. Only yesternight, witnesses residing near Shepherd Market tell of a demon with hideous face and a twisted snarl roaming the alleyways. The apparition threatened no fewer than a dozen souls—among them, three innocent boys—before disappearing into the night. Mothers are advised to clutch their children close, lest the Monster of Mayfair strike again.’” She lowered the paper. “Well?”

“Sensationalist rubbish.”

“I thought the writing was evocative.” Emma folded the clipping leisurely and tucked it away. “Any ideas who this ‘monster’ might be?”

He was silent.

“It’s quite a coincidence. Because we were in St. James Park last week. And you do happen to have a tall hat and black cloak. But of course you wouldn’t go around terrorizing innocent boys.”

He gave in with a huff. “Innocent boys, my eye. The brats knocked over a flower seller for her pennies. They deserved whatever they got.”

She smiled. “Do you know, I suspected you were a good man, deep down. Even if very, very, very deep down. In a fathomless cavern. Underneath a volcano.”

There was more to him than she’d suspected. More than anyone suspected, perhaps. Humor, patience, passion. She found it all distressingly attractive.

Come along then, Breeches.

At last, there was a stirring in the dark corner behind the grate.

“Hush now.” He pinched the corner from a salmon sandwich and leaned forward, holding it out until it was close enough to provide an irresistible feline temptation. “Come on then, you odious, mewling bugbear,” he crooned. “I have your dinner.”

With a steady stream of low, deceptively tender insults, he drew the cat out from the fireplace. Emma remained absolutely still, so as not to startle the creature.

“That’s it,” he whispered, drawing his hand closer to his lap. Reeling the cat in like a fish on the line. At last, he allowed Breeches to catch the bait. The starving cat attacked the sandwich in ravenous bites. “There you are, then.”

He had the little beast eating out of his hand.

Monster of Mayfair, indeed.

While Breeches ate from one hand, he reached out with the other—grabbing the cat by the scruff. He scooped the creature up, placed both cat and sandwich in the trunk, and latched it tight. Breeches didn’t even make a complaint.

Then he stood and dusted his hands before offering Emma assistance in rising to her feet.

“Now,” he said. “I am going to ring for a footman to clear this tray and place the cat under lock, key, bolt, and guard. Then I’m going to go upstairs, find a fresh shirt, and rinse the soot from my hands. In all, I estimate that will occupy three minutes.” His intense eyes caught hers. “That’s how much time you have.”

“How much time to what?”

“To make ready. Before I come to your room and pin you flat against the bed.”

“Oh.”

He leisurely strolled over to ring the bell. “Make haste, Emma. You’re down to two and a half minutes now.”

Emma swallowed hard.

Then she turned and ran.

Chapter Eleven

Emma didn’t bother to retrieve her slippers. She dashed on stocking feet for the staircase, gathering her skirts in both hands to lift them out of the way.

When she reached her suite, she chased away the maid and went directly to the bedchamber. As she rushed, she tugged at the buttons of her frock with one hand and went about snuffing candles with the licked fingertips of her other, leaving only the dim firelight. She still didn’t see any reason for darkness, but she didn’t wish to waste time arguing.

Not tonight.

She’d barely succeeded in loosening her bodice when he opened the door.

No knock. No greeting. He was true to his word.

He strode to her, put his hands on her waist, lifted her off her feet, and tossed her onto the bed.

Her breath left her. When the capability returned to her hands, she fumbled to find her buttons and continue disrobing.

“Don’t bother,” he said, in a gruff, commanding voice.

Very well, then.

She never would have guessed she’d find this curt, brutish treatment arousing . . . but she did. Oh, she did. He was capable of patience and tenderness. He’d demonstrated as much downstairs with the cat. The knowledge made her feel safe, even if he overwhelmed her now. Besides, she knew from experience, he’d stop the moment she expressed the slightest discomfort.

She didn’t want him to stop.

He stood at the foot of the bed, a dark silhouette, wrestling with the closures of his falls, then shucking his trousers.

She was panting with arousal by the time he joined her on the bed.

He straddled her hips and pulled at her bodice, tugging it down. She heard a seam rip. No matter; she could mend it tomorrow. Before she’d finished deciding if she had the right color of thread, he had her breasts bared and his hands fitted over them, kneading and stroking. Desire shivered over her skin. Her nipples tightened, and he found them with his thumbs. As he rolled and pressed the sensitive peaks, she writhed under his expert teasing.

“You like this.” Half smug statement, half question.

She nodded, then realized he might not be able to see the gesture. “Yes.”

“And this?”

He pinched her nipple, and she had to chase after her thoughts before she was able to reply. “Yes.”

“Just making certain. Before I do this.”

“Do what?”

He cupped one of her breasts and lifted it. She felt a cool swipe across her nipple.

He’d licked her.

She jolted with the keenness of the sensation. “I thought you had a rule,” she gasped. “No kissing.”

“This isn’t kissing. It’s licking.” Another gliding caress—warm this time—swirling in terrible, wonderful circles. “And sucking.” He pulled her nipple into his mouth, drawing on her with no mercy.

She cried out and bucked. She reached instinctively to grip his shoulders, remembering too late he didn’t wish to be touched.

He sat up, caught her hands, and pushed them back against the mattress on either side of her head. “We discussed this.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I forgot. I can’t think when you touch me that way. Or when you touch me this way, for that matter.”

The commanding way in which he gripped her arms only pitched her excitement higher. The pulses of her wrists thumped wildly beneath his palms, and her heartbeat was a clamor in her ears.

“Don’t forget it again,” he said in a low, thrilling voice. “Or I’ll be forced to tie you to the bed.”

At the suggestion, her intimate muscles fluttered. “Is that meant to be a threat? Because I . . . I don’t seem to find the idea entirely objectionable.”

“You don’t?”

She licked her bottom lip. “Well, you’re very good at this, apparently. And what with the dark . . . It’s all very shadowy and sensual. Like one of those feverish dreams one has on a hot summer’s night.”

“This is something you’d dream about. Being pawed by a hulking stranger in the dark.”

Emma squeaked out her tentative reply. “Maybe?”

Unbearable moments passed in silence.

“You are incredible.”

Whether he meant that as a compliment or censure, she didn’t know. She didn’t have a chance to ask. He released her wrists and moved between her legs, shoving her skirt and petticoat to her waist.

Rubbing his fingers up and down her sex, he made a sound of approval. “Wet for me already.”

The heel of his hand pressed against her mound. Emma tried her best to remain still. It wasn’t easy. But if he stopped now, she would expire of frustration. His fingers penetrated her, stroking deep. Oh, God. Perhaps she would expire not of frustration, but of bliss.

Instead of shifting his weight to move atop her, he lowered himself onto one elbow. She felt his tongue again. Not on her nipple this time.

There.

She couldn’t help it now. Her body convulsed with pleasure, arching and twisting beneath his mouth. He licked her over and over, spinning her into new landscapes of arousal with languid strokes of his tongue. All the while, he kept up rhythmic thrusts with his fingers, hitting a place deep inside her that made her clutch the bed linens in her fists.

Emma didn’t know how much more she could take. But even if she wished to beg him for mercy, what would she cry out? Duke? Ashbury? No. She refused. Intimate moments called for intimate address, and she feared his wrath if she tried “dear” or “darling” or “precious angel muffin” instead.

No, there would be no begging for mercy. She surrendered to the pleasure, letting him nudge her closer and closer to the brink of madness with each flick of his tongue.

She whispered, “Don’t stop.”

Don’t stop.

As if she needed to tell him so.

Ash would not have stopped for anything. Never mind a feral cat. The royal menagerie could crash down the chimney, and he would not have lifted his head from his task.

She was so close. He could feel it. He could taste it. And as badly as she needed to come, he needed her to come even more.

Bringing a woman to orgasm had always been a particular pleasure for him. With most women he’d known, even if no deep affection was involved, a climax required a bit more than a skilled tongue and fingers. It took closeness, trust. Intimacy. Feeling a woman come beneath his hand, his mouth, his body—well, it made him feel like king of the planet, of course—but it also made him feel connected. Human.

Now he was a monster.

Look, it even said so in the Prattler.

Ash had expected—he’d feared, to put a finer point on it—that he’d never know a woman’s intimate trust again. Not this way. What woman would allow this scarred, repulsive face between her thighs?

Emma would, apparently. Whether that labeled her a lunatic or a fool, he would decide later. She was likely both. He’d convinced her to marry him, after all.

Then she arched her hips and began to ride his tongue in a halting rhythm, chasing her own bliss. The unbearable sweetness made him moan. His already hard cock pulsed with impatience.

Now. By the gods, let it be now.

She gasped, her full body tensing as the pleasure took her. The wet heat of her sex squeezed his fingers. He savored each shudder, each soft, lovely sigh.

When her body relaxed, he slid his hand free and stroked her silky essence over his cock. She parted her thighs, and he knelt between them, hooking her legs over his hips. Taking himself in hand, he placed the broad crown of his erection where it needed to be, tensed his thighs . . . and pushed.

Then he was in her. And in her. And God, so exquisitely deep in her—and still he wanted more.

He couldn’t help but groan.

He began to thrust in earnest, working himself further and further into that narrow tunnel of heat. He hoped she’d experienced the worst of her discomfort last night, because gentleness was beyond him now. He thrust with purpose, determined to get at the very heart of her and feel her body sheathing him whole. She made a bridge of her body, lifting her hips to connect his pelvis to hers.

“That’s it,” he whispered between shaky breaths. “Just like that.”

He worked both hands beneath her bottom and lifted it, tilting her hips. Her body yielded to him a fraction more, and he sank home.

Perfect. So perfect.

Still on his knees, he held her by the hips and thrust faster. With the help of the dim firelight, he could just make out the taut globes of her breasts, rolling with his every stroke. God, how he wanted to see those breasts in full daylight. The nipples alone. He’d learn their color; trace their shape with his fingers, then his tongue. Nuzzle and feel the softness against his cheek.

But as much as he wished to see them, Ash had to admit that picturing them . . . It was working, too. Really, really working. It threw him back to his youth, when he’d made do with nothing but a hand and his imagination. Except this wasn’t his callused hand, and his imagination had never been anywhere near this good. This lover wasn’t a fantasy, but real. She had shape and heat and scent.

She had a name.

“Emma.”

When he called to her, her body tightened deliciously around his cock.

So he did it again.

“Emma.” The pleasure was keen, slicing through him like a knife. He gritted his teeth. “Emma.”

Words were beyond him after that. He squeezed her plump little bottom in both hands and took her hard and fast, relentless in his race to the peak.

And then he came. He came hard, spending into her with fierce joy. His hips jerked with each wrenching spasm. The climax seemed to go on and on, approaching forever. And yet it wasn’t nearly enough.

He collapsed on the bed beside her, weakened and emptied. If he’d known taking a wife would be like this, he would have married ages ago.

Of course, marrying ages ago would have meant taking a different wife. He wasn’t certain wives like this one abounded.

He turned his head to face her in the dark. “Where on earth did you come from?”

She was silent for a long moment. “Hertfordshire.”

He laughed, without restraint or apology.

“You really must give me something to call you,” she said. “If we go on like this, I’m going to need a name to cry out, and I don’t think you want it to be honeybee.”

“Just try it, blossom.” He sat up in bed. “But if you insist on something else, just use Ash. It’s what my friends call me.” Or called me, when I still had friends.

He reached for his trousers.

“You don’t mean to leave me,” she said. “After that?”

Her obvious satisfaction swelled his pride, but staying the night was out of the question. He was not going to allow her to wake up beside him in the full light of day, mere inches from his mangled face, let alone the wreckage that remained of his neck, chest, shoulder.

Not now, not yet. Perhaps not ever.

She’d think she’d woken from a nightmare. She’d shrink from him. Run from the room. Worse had happened before. Unless she was pregnant with his child, he could not take that risk. And once she was pregnant, they were done.

The sooner that happened, the better.

He left her room on wobbly legs, then sank against the door.

Please be fertile, or you’ll be the death of me.

Chapter Twelve

Walking through the streets that night was a novel experience.

Forget stalking and prowling down the darkened alleyways. Tonight, Ash was all but skipping. Gamboling.

He didn’t encounter any enraging specimens of human refuse.

He was no longer sexually frustrated to the point of irascibility.

He felt almost . . . human again.

He even strolled across an open square.

“Say!” someone called. “You’re the Monster of Mayfair!”

And with that, Ash’s lightened mood popped like a balloon. So much for feeling human.

A gangly figure jogged across the green to him. Ash pushed back the brim of his hat, revealing his face, and scowled. That always worked on the children.

For it was, in fact, a school-aged boy who’d approached him. One who’d clearly learned to curse this past Michaelmas term at school.

“I’ll be damned.” The boy whistled low. “You truly are as fearsome and ugly as the papers said.”

“Oh, really. And do they say anything about this?” Ash brandished his walking stick. “Now go home. Your nursemaid will be missing you.”

He turned and kept walking. The lad followed.

“I saw you over by Marylebone Mews,” the boy called out. As if they were two old chums holding a conversation at the club. “You thrashed that gin-soused cur. The one who was beating his wife, remember?”

Yes, of course Ash remembered. It was only two days past.

“That was bloody brilliant.” By now the youth was scampering alongside him. “Just capital. And I heard about the footpads in St. James’s, too. All of London has.”

Ash released a long, slow breath. He refused to be baited. The more thoroughly you ignore him, the faster he’ll go away, he told himself. Like a canker sore.

“So where are we off to tonight?” the boy asked.

We?

Now that was too much.

Ash halted in the center of the empty square. “Just what is it you want?”

The boy scratched his ear and shrugged. “To see you thrash someone new. Give some fellow what’s coming to him.”

“Well, then.” Ash lifted his walking stick and gave the lad a shove with the blunt end, sending him arse-first into the shrubbery. “There you have it.”

Several days later, Emma stood before a terraced house faced with white stone and corniced windows, having made the journey across Bloom Square. As short a distance as it was, she seemed to have dropped her bravery somewhere along the way.

She knew she must not indulge her nerves. She needed to start moving in society, and asking the duke to squire her about Town would be a waste of breath. If Davina wanted permission to visit her at Swanlea, Emma must form acquaintances with ladies of impeccable breeding and genteel accomplishment—not as their seamstress, but as their equal. Today was an important first step.

She looked down at the invitation and read it again.

To the new Duchess of Ashbury—

Warmest welcome to Bloom Square! Every Thursday my friends come around for tea. We’d be most delighted if you would join us.

Lady Penelope Campion

P.S. I should warn you: We’re different from other ladies.

That last line gave Emma hope—and the courage to knock.

“You came!” A young woman with fair hair and rosy cheeks pulled her into the entrance hall. She’d scarcely closed the door before kissing Emma on the cheek in greeting. “I’m Penny.”

“Penny?”

“Oh, yes. I should have said. I’m properly called Penelope, but the name is rather a mouthful, don’t you think?”

Emma was amazed. This was Lady Penelope Campion? She opened her own door and greeted perfect strangers with kisses on the cheek? Apparently her note of invitation hadn’t been an exaggeration: She truly wasn’t like other ladies.

Emma curtsied, probably more deeply than a duchess would—but the habit was ingrained in her. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise. The others are dying to meet you.”

Lady Penelope took Emma by the wrist and drew her into a parlor. The room was a jumble of unquestionably fine furnishings that seemed to have seen better days.

“This is Miss Teague,” she said, swiveling Emma toward a ginger-haired young woman dusted with freckles . . . and a fine white powder that looked like flour. “Nicola lives on the southern side of the square.”

“The unfashionable side,” Nicola said.

“The exciting side,” Lady Penny corrected. “The one with all the scandalous artists and mad scientists.”

“My father was one of the latter, Your Grace.”

“Don’t listen to her. She’s one of the latter, too.”

“Thank you, Penny,” Nicola said. “I think.”

“And this is Miss Alexandra Mountbatten.” Emma’s hostess turned her to the third occupant of the salon.

Miss Mountbatten was small of stature and dressed in unremarkable gray serge, but her appearance was made stunning by virtue of her hair—an upswept knot of true black, glossy as obsidian.

“Alex sells the time,” Lady Penelope stated.

Emma could not have heard that correctly. “Sells the time?”

“I earn my living setting clocks to Greenwich time,” she explained, curtsying deeply. “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, Your Grace.”

“Do sit down,” Penny urged.

Emma obeyed, taking the offered seat—a carved chair that must have been rescued from some French chateau, if not the royal palace. The upholstery, however, had been worn to threads—even slashed in places, with tufts of batting peeking through.

A bleating sound came from somewhere toward the rear of the house.

“Oh, that’s Marigold.” Penny lifted the teapot. “Never mind her.”

“Marigold?”

“The goat,” Nicola explained.

“She’s sick in love with Angus, and she’s most displeased about being quarantined. She has the sniffles, you see.”

“You have two goats, then?”

“Oh, no. Angus is a Highland calf. I shouldn’t encourage them, but they’re herd creatures. They each need a companion. Do you take milk and sugar?”

“Both, please,” Emma said, a bit dazed.

Nicola took pity on her. “Penny has a soft spot for wounded animals. She takes them in, ostensibly to heal them, and then never lets them go.”

“I do let them go,” Penny objected. “Sometimes.”

“Once,” Alexandra put in. “You let one go, once. But do let’s try to hold a normal conversation, just for a few minutes. Otherwise we’ll frighten Her Grace away.”

“Not at all,” Emma assured her. “I’m happy to be here.” The elegant, imposing ladies would wait for another day. “How did you know to invite me?”

“Oh, it’s a small square. Everyone knows everything. The cook tells the costermonger, who tells the maid down the street . . . so on and so forth.” She handed Emma a cup of tea. “They’re saying you were a seamstress until only last week.”

Oh, dear. Emma deflated. She supposed it was unrealistic to hope she could hide it.

Penny clasped her hands together in her lap. “Tell us everything. How did you meet? Was your courtship terribly romantic?”

“I don’t know that one could call it romantic.” In fact, one could call it just about anything else.

“Well, for a duke to marry a seamstress is an extraordinary thing. It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it? He must have fallen desperately in love with you.”

That wasn’t the truth at all, of course. But how could Emma tell them that he’d married her chiefly because hers was the first convenient womb to appear in his library?

She was saved from answering when a pincushion nestled in a nearby darning basket unfurled itself and toddled away. “Was that a hedgehog?”

Penny’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, but the poor dear’s terribly shy. On account of her traumatic youth, you see. Do have a biscuit. Nicola made them. They’re heavenly.”

Emma reached for one and took a bite. She’d given up on trying to understand anything in this house. She was a barnacle on the hull of the HMS Penelope—she’d no idea of their destination, but she was along for the ride.

Goodness. The biscuit was heavenly. Buttery sweetness melted on her tongue.

“Please don’t think we’re mining you for gossip,” Miss Mountbatten—Alexandra, was it?—said. “Penny’s only curious. We wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

“We scarcely talk to anyone else,” Nicola said. “We’ve a tight little club, the three of us.”

Penny smiled and reached for Emma’s hand. “With room for a fourth, of course.”

“In that case . . .” Emma thoughtfully chewed her last bite of biscuit, washing it down with a swallow of tea. “May I be so bold as to ask for some advice?”

In a unanimous, unspoken yes, Penny, Alexandra, and Nicola leaned forward in their chairs.

“It’s about . . .” She lost her nerve for honesty. “It’s about my cat. I took him in from the streets, and he hasn’t a proper name. Will you help me make a list of possibilities?”

Ash. That’s what his friends called him, he’d said. It felt like progress to be admitted to that inner circle, but Emma wasn’t certain she liked that name, either. For man who’d survived severe burns, Ash sounded ironic at best. At worst, it felt cruel.

Besides, she was having too much fun with the others.

She needed to draw him out. Gain his respect. If luck was with her, a pregnancy would take root, but could it be assured in time to help Davina? Doubtful. She must convince him to change his mind, if it didn’t.

In the days since their first night together—their first successful night together, at any rate—he’d made every effort to assure her pleasure. A man who cared for her satisfaction in bed could be convinced to honor her wishes outside it, couldn’t he? She had begun to care about him, however unwillingly.

“If it’s pet names you want, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” Penny said.

Nicola took a tiny pencil from the notebook hanging about her neck on a silver chain. “I’ll keep a list.”

“It must be something affectionate,” Emma said. “For the cat. He’s rather untrusting and prickly, and I can’t seem to draw him out.”

“Well, if it’s a sweet little name you want, there are all the delightful words for new creatures,” Penny said. “Puppy, kitten, piglet, foal, fawn, calf, polliwog . . .”

Alexandra reached for her teacup. “Oh, dear. She’ll go on forever now.”

“That’s just the beginning,” Penny went on. “There are the birds. Duckling, eaglet, gosling, cygnet, poult . . .”

Nicola looked up from her scribbling. “Poult?”

“A turkey hatchling, fresh from the egg.”

Emma laughed. “As tempting as calling him a turkey might be, I think it’s polliwog, duckling, and piglet that are my favorites thus far.”

“I can contribute a few astronomical ones, I suppose,” Alexandra said. “Bright star, twinkles, moonbeam, sunshine . . .”

“Oh, Lord.” Emma could just imagine the duke’s reaction to “Twinkles.” “Those are perfection. What do you think, Nicola?”

“I don’t know. I’m surrounded by gears and levers, for the most part. Pet names aren’t my forte.” Her eye fell on the biscuits. “I suppose there are the sweet things. Sugar, honeycomb, tartlet.”

“I’m afraid I’ve tried most of those already.”

“Sweetmeat?” she suggested in perfect innocence.

After a moment’s pause, the rest of them dissolved into laughter.

“Oh, dear heavens.” Alexandra dashed a tear from her eye.

Nicola looked at the three of them. “What?”

“Nothing,” Emma said. “You truly do have a brilliant mind.” She nodded at the notebook. “You must most definitely add sweetmeat to the list.”

A half hour later, she left Lady Penelope Campion’s house with a packet of leftover biscuits and a quiver full of verbal arrows. Hopefully one or two of them would pierce the reserve of laughter in his chest. She knew better than to aim for his heart.

Penny embraced her in farewell. “Do keep trying with your cat. The creatures most difficult to reach make the most loving companions in the end.”

Emma felt a sharp twinge of irony. She had no doubt in Penny’s ability to tame not only cats, but pups and goats and Highland calves and even traumatized hedgehogs.

But the duke she’d married was a different sort of beast.

Chapter Thirteen

Bang.

Ash lifted his head from the accounts ledger.

Don’t mind it, he told himself. Mrs. Norton will see to whatever it is. It’s not your concern.

But when he lowered his head, he found himself unable to focus on the work at hand. He pushed back from the desk and stood, leaving the room in brisk paces.

If he’d ever possessed the ability to ignore explosive noises, he’d left that talent behind at Waterloo.

After tense moments of searching, he discovered the source of the clamor. A brass embellishment had crashed to the morning room floor. That sight, in itself, was nothing particularly remarkable. What took him aback was the other half of the scene: His wife standing on a ladder and clinging to the curtain rod, a good twelve feet above the floor.

She craned her neck to look at him. “Oh, hullo.”

“What is this?”

“I’m taking down these draperies.”

“Alone?” He crossed the room and put his hands on the ladder. Someone had to be near her in case she tumbled and fell.

“Sorry if I alarmed you with all that noise. I lost my grip on the finial.”

She’d lost her grip on the finial. Bully for her. Ash was losing his grip on his sanity.

“Since you seem to need reminding, you are a duchess. Not a circus performer or a squirrel.”

She made a dismissive noise. “It’s a ladder, not a trapeze. And I engaged the wheel lock. I promise, I do know how these things work.”

“Yes, but apparently you don’t know how servants work.” He braced the ladder under her feet, wheel lock or no. If she insisted on risking her neck, he felt entitled to bark at her. “Come down from there, then.”

“I may as well finish what I came up here for. Or else all of this effort will have been for nothing.”

“Oh, do go ahead,” he said in a bored tone. “It’s not as though I have anything else to do. I’m only amusing myself overseeing estates all over the country. Making improvements to the land. Looking out for the welfare of thousands of tenants.”

“I won’t be but a minute.”

“Fine.” He tilted his head. “But as a penalty, know that I’ll be looking up your skirts the entire time.”

He couldn’t see all that much, unfortunately—just a pair of slim legs disappearing into a cloud of petticoats—but the sight stirred him all the same. Her stockings were knitted of plain, pale wool. Demure, innocent. Unspeakably arousing.

“There,” she declared.

A waterfall of blue velvet rushed to the floor. The room flooded with sunlight.

Ash caught the ghost of his reflection in the windowpane. What a picture. Emma, descending from the heavens above him on a cloud of muslin, and him, the monster lurking beneath.

When she neared the last rung, he placed a hand on the small of her back to steady her. He extended his fingers as far as they would stretch, claiming as much of her as he could.

All too soon, her slippers met the floor.

He took a few steps in retreat before she turned around. There was too much light, and she was too close. He didn’t wish to startle her.

She brushed the dust from her hands. “Oh, that’s so much better.”

“No, it’s not. I can’t imagine what you have against draperies.”

“To begin, this house is a cave. We can’t live in the dark.”

“I like the dark.”

“It’s not good to work and read in dim lighting. You’ll go blind.”

“Hah. If frigging myself raw in adolescence and having a rocket explode in my face haven’t accomplished that . . . Doubtful.”

“Well, I’m not doubtful. I’ve seen it. It’s what happens to seamstresses after too many years of fine stitching by weak light. Even I can’t read for more than an hour at a time, and it’s only been six years.”

What an inconveniently affecting statement. It made him want to roll her into a ball and hold her in both hands forever, so that nothing could wound or frighten her ever again.

“Anyhow, these are lovely fabric.” She reached for the edge of the fallen drape. “This velvet could be put to better use.”

“No.” He put his foot down, literally. With his boot, he pinned the river of blue velvet to the floor. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”

“Forbid what? You can’t even know what I have in mind.”

“Yes. I do. You have the ridiculous idea that you’ll make a gown out of draperies. And I forbid it.”

She stammered and flushed. “I . . .”

“You,” he interjected, “are a duchess. You shop for your gowns. You ask servants to climb ladders. And that is the end of any argument.”

This wife he’d acquired was far too enamored of economy. She’d come by the habit out of necessity, he supposed. Ash could understand that—even admire it, to a degree. He didn’t like waste, either. However, she was under his care now. There would be no “making do” or scrimping for the mother of his heir.

She certainly wouldn’t be caught wearing draperies.

“Tomorrow, you’ll order a full wardrobe. I’ll see that you have lines of credit at all the best shops in Bond Street.”

“Madame Bissette’s is the best dressmaking shop in Town, and the only one I could fathom entering without crumpling into a ball of fraudulence. But how could I return to the shop as a customer, mere weeks after leaving her employ?”

“That would be the best part. Think of the envy you’ll inspire. The vindication after being undervalued.”

“No doubt other women might enjoy gloating. But I wouldn’t. Madame gave me a post, and she taught me a great deal. And the other girls in the shop were my friends. I don’t want to embarrass them. Besides, paying a modiste to make me a wardrobe would be a waste. I have nothing if not time. I know the latest fashions. I’ve made gowns for many a fine lady.”

“Yes,” he said tightly. “I’m well aware of that.”

She cringed. “Of course you’re aware of it. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up Miss Worthing. I know how it must pain you to—”

“What pains me is the thought of my wife going about clad in draperies. You will not sew your own wardrobe.” He tugged on his end of the velvet.

She tugged back. “Aren’t ladies encouraged to do needlework?”

“That’s different.” He yanked with both hands, pulling her off balance. She stumbled toward him a step. “Fine ladies make useless things, like wretched pillows, and samplers no one wants, and disturbing seat covers for the commode. They don’t use their skills to perform common labor.”

“This isn’t common labor. I enjoy it, when it isn’t a twenty-hour-a-day task. There’s a creativity to it. I never had any talent for music or painting, but”—she clutched her end of the velvet and leaned back, putting her full weight into resisting him—“I’m good at this.”

With a flick of his wrist, he wrapped the fabric around his left forearm, just as he’d do with the reins when driving a team. And then he braced his legs, flexed his arm, and gave a full-strength pull.

She came reeling toward him. He caught her in his arms.

His brain promptly went to porridge. Their little tug-o’-wills suited her. The exertion made her cheeks pink, and her labored breathing did delicious things for her breasts. Ash had to admit, she would look lovely in a dress of that sapphire velvet.

Nevertheless, it was out of the question. Emma would not sacrifice the pleasure of reading in favor of sewing her own gowns. He’d allow her to go about naked before he consented to such a thing.

Damn. Now he was picturing her naked.

“Listen to me. I know very well you can stitch a gown. You could be the best dressmaker in England, and I still wouldn’t permit this.” He reached for her hand and turned it palm side up, like a fortune-teller. With meaningful intent, he brushed his thumb over the calluses on her fingertips, lingering over each proof of her labor. “There’ll be no more of these now.”

She was quiet for a moment. “That’s shockingly caring of you.”

“It’s not caring.”

“Then how would you describe it?”

“As . . . something else.” Anything else. Imagining her naked was only natural. Protecting her was his duty. Caring was much too dangerous. “I don’t know. I’m not a dictionary.”

She gave him a chastening yet affectionate look. A wifely look. “No, you aren’t. You are very much a man.”

His heart kicked and thrashed like an unbroken colt in a stable.

A man, she said. Not a title. Not a fortune. Not a twisted monster formed of scars. She couldn’t know how those two simple words affected him.

She looked down at her hand, cradled in his. Then she turned it over, so that their palms pressed together and their fingers interlaced in a tight clasp.

Sunlight gilded the wisps of hair framing her face. Her dark eyes were wide, sincere. Unafraid. So lovely. Her gaze met his and held it, never straying to his patchy hair or his twisted cheek.

The moment was glorious.

And wonderful.

And accompanied by soaring orchestral music.

And exceedingly, unforgivably imbecilic of him to allow. This sort of thing could not happen. This kind of closeness was too great of a risk.

Ash cleared his throat. “This, uh . . . This thing we’re doing is probably a bad idea.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Precautions.” Her hand slipped from his. “I’ll order a wardrobe tomorrow.”

He stepped away. “You’ll order a wardrobe later in the week. Tomorrow we’re taking an outing.”

“An outing? To where?”

“Swanlea. Your future house.” Before she could grow too excited, he held up a hand. “Not to stay. Just for the afternoon, so you can make a list of what needs to be done.”

They had an agreement, and for the good of them both, he needed to remember and adhere to it.

“Be ready tomorrow. We’ll leave at dawn.”