“I am happier I wasn’t a girl. Had I been a girl, I’d have been Morgana Igraine.” They were outside Somerset House now and his coachman spotted them.
She fairly howled. Her laughter, completely unladylike and wholly enchanting. “Thank God you weren’t a girl then.” She gazed up into his face, hers still alight with merriment.
“I am rather glad of that myself at the moment, Lady Arthur.” He didn’t know why he’d said it, but it was the right thing to say. She smiled the sort of smile a man might wait a lifetime to see. The carriage drew up beside them and the young tiger jumped down to open the door. “Emmaline, I must apologize.”
“Don’t.” She touched her fingers to his mouth. “Thank you for taking me to see the paintings. I loved every minute of it.” She allowed the tiger to hand her into the carriage. Once Arthur climbed in and settled across from her she added, “It’s to be expected, my lord. Although I think Mrs. Christian might be horrified to hear you threatened to throw your brother down the stairs of Somerset House in front of half the ton.”
“She knows Win. She’d probably help.” He knocked lightly on the roof of the carriage and John Coachman set it in motion. “Emmaline, about what Win said—”
“You didn’t tell me you were a war hero, Captain.” She placed her reticule, the guidebook, and sketchbook beside her on the padded leather carriage bench and folded her hands in her lap. Her stern governess-like expression and slight smile did not disabuse him of the truth. The stares, the whispers, his brother’s rudeness—she’d not remained unscathed. She had no desire to discuss it. He’d honor her wishes. For now. Even if it meant conversing on his least favorite subject.
“I wasn’t. There is nothing heroic about keeping your head down and not allowing a French ship to sink the one under your command.” He’d attempted to sound bored beyond words. The minute widening of her eyes told him he’d failed. Married but a day and she already attended his moods more astutely than any of his family or his few friends.
“Come now, Captain. You know far more about me than I do of you and your exploits. Your father must have been proud to have you return from war covered in glory.” The carriage hit a bump and she gripped the seat to steady herself.
“There is no glory in killing or dying, even for king and country. Coming home, with the breath of life, no matter how painful, still in your body. That is the only glory in war.” The final word came out on a rasp of air. He dropped his head. Weariness settled over him. It always did when he turned his thoughts to what he’d seen, and heard, and done for his naval career. He looked down to find she’d reached across the carriage and covered his clasped hands with one of hers.
“How old were you?” she asked. Her voice put him in mind of a lullaby heard from an open window on a summer’s eve.
Arthur concentrated on her eyes, so green and filled with genuine commiseration. “When I joined the navy? Twelve.”
“Twelve? You were a child.” Her indignation made him smile.
“I was another male child. The last thing either of my parents wanted. Win was the heir. Percival was the spare. Mordred went for the church, after a fashion. I was… cannon fodder. I did what was expected of me.”
“And you hated it. That is why you retired once Napoleon was defeated.” She moved her thumb across his knuckles.
“I decided thirty-one years was long enough.”
“Long enough?”
“To attempt the impossible. Even captaining a crew against the entire French navy can be an act of cowardice when you do it for the wrong reasons.”
Emmaline nodded. “My father expected me to marry well. Any man who offered, so long as he was plump in the pockets. And I’d have done it too, had anyone asked.” She swallowed and turned her gaze to the window as if the sight of the streets of London passing by enthralled her. “We all do things we never meant to do to please our parents. There are many levels of cowardice, Arthur. You have no idea what Ned and I did in the hope our father might one day love us.” She turned back to him, a watery smile on her lips. “More fools we, Reginald Peachum never loved anyone save himself.”
“I have no use for my family’s love. At this point, however, I deserve their respect and so do you. I’ll settle for that.” The carriage turned onto Bond Street. Street criers shouted their wares in the distance. Wheels turned on the cobblestones, horses’ hooves struck in rhythmic cacophony, harnesses jingled. And a profound communion passed between Arthur and his unique and mysterious bride. The carriage had stopped. The door opened. His tiger stood at the foot of the lowered steps. Still Emmaline simply gazed at him—serene and resolutely amused. Arthur forced himself to alight from the carriage and hand her down.
“I shall have to improve my mode of dress to garner even a modicum of respect from your family, especially the fashionable Lord Winwood.” She smoothed her hands over the blue silk of her skirts.
“I happen to like this dress, Lady Arthur.” He untied her bonnet, removed it, and tossed it back into the carriage.
“I do too. It is the same color as my lord husband’s eyes.” She took his arm and allowed him to escort her to the shop he’d sent a note around to earlier that morning. She balked, however, at the door. “This is Madame Fousco’s. Why are we here?”
“For my wife to acquire a new wardrobe.” He pushed the door open and cozened her into the establishment of the most elegant modiste in London. From table to table he strolled and pointed at various bolts of fabrics, whilst Emmaline stood just inside the door, staring at him, aghast. The modiste’s assistants scurried to gather his selections. “More blues, to be sure, but also emerald green, some gold. Definitely this burgundy.” The petite dark-haired modiste glided toward him. “Madame Fousco. My wife will need a ball gown from the burgundy immediately.”
“My lord.” Emmaline hurried after him. “I have no need of a ball gown. And these colors are—”
“Not what is expected of you?” He touched her hair and slid his fingers down her arm to take her hand. “We’re done with that, Emmaline. Let’s do the unexpected. Shall we?”
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. He schooled his features to betray nothing of what he was feeling. No mean trick, as he had no idea what his feelings were. He wanted her to have the dresses, and her art, and her beloved books, and anything else that pleased her. As Madame Fousco and her assistants shepherded her into the fitting room, Arthur suspected from his wife’s expression that his going to the devil might please her.
“Just a moment.” She stuck her head out of the curtains of the fitting room. “Why do I need a ball gown immediately? Captain? My lord? Lord Arthur Farnsworth, come back here and answer my question!”
Chapter Six
She’d married a madman. Her marriage was brokered by one madman and had her wed to another.
Their madness was contagious. Nothing else explained Emmaline, dressed in the most elegant ball gown she’d ever owned, hiding out in the fourth-floor chambers she’d taken as her artist’s studio. Perhaps she’d come in search of her courage. Tonight, she and Arthur were to attend their first ball as husband and wife. Their hosts? Sir Stirling James and his wife. It was madness. And she had no idea who or what she was expected to be.
Here, surrounded by every sort of pencil, paint, brush, paper, and canvas an artist desired, she lived the life she’d dreamed of all the years her father either ignored her or made her talent a curse. She picked up her latest sketch and a charcoal pencil. The portrait of Arthur stared back at her. He’d demanded she find the rooms in the house best suited to her work and make them her own. The day after their trip to the Royal Academy the supplies had arrived with a note.
For my unexpected wife and all her unexpected dreams.
A
And after a fortnight of days of laughter and indulgent outings and nights of the sort of sensual satiation only being seduced by a man like Arthur Farnsworth might bring… what Emmaline feared the most was that it might end. Not the marriage. Nothing s
hort of death ended a marriage. But the companionship, the sense of communion with another person, with Arthur, as they visited bookshops, museums, gardens, the theatre and faced the censure of society together.
Actually, they had not faced it. Not really. They’d stood apart from it. They’d skirted the edges of it. Poked fun at it. The difference was vast between knowing the gossipy chattering of the ton centered on the scandal of her father’s daughter married to a duke’s son, and actually hearing every word being said. The undercurrent of a stream might be ignored, until it pulled a body down and made it impossible to breathe. She had mastered the art of breathing beneath the flood refusing to flinch. It had cost her part of her soul. She did not want that for Arthur.
“My lady, what are you doing up here? And in your new gown and all.” Birdie swept into the room, took the sketch from Emmaline’s hand and began to brush at the pencil charcoal on her fingers. “His lordship is in the foyer pacing a path in that snooty butler’s marble floor.”
“I was hoping he’d forget he had a wife and run along to the ball on his own.” Emmaline plucked the sketch from Birdie’s hand and crossed the room to place it on the large oak desk in the corner. She busied herself arranging the dozens of art books from her library stacked all over the desk. The bottom drawer of the desk stood ajar.
“Not likely. The Captain is besotted. Even a blind man can see it.” Birdie stepped behind her to adjust the combs and pearl-topped pins in Emmaline’s intricate coiffure. The maid touched the diamond and gold filigree chain from which a ruby and diamond pendant dangled against the gown’s daringly low décolletage. “A man doesn’t give jewels like these to a wife he is likely to forget.”
Emmaline snorted. “Don’t make too much of it, Birdie. His lordship is generous to a fault to everyone in his service.” She pulled the drawer open and sifted through the old sketchbooks Mr. Warren had discovered amongst the books of her library.
“I don’t see that butler wearing a ruby the size of a quail’s egg. And his lordship doesn’t look after Mrs. Christian like a dog after the last haunch of beef in the butcher’s window.”
Emmaline smiled in spite of herself. Something about the sketchbooks pricked at the back of her neck. Or perhaps it was the idea Arthur had begun to feel what she feared she felt every moment she spent in a room with him. A dangerous feeling. One which had only ever brought her pain and even then, not as powerful as what she felt for him.
“Have you been looking at my sketchbooks, Birdie?” Emmaline closed the drawer and reached up to straighten one of her ruby and diamond earrings.
“You are going on about sketchbooks and keeping that handsome husband of yours waiting?”
“Birdie. The sketchbooks.” Her tiny bit of hope was for nothing should Arthur discover—
“Your father destroyed it, Miss Em. Those ones there are the only ones left. He may have been a useless waste of a man, but he never failed to cover his tracks.” She put her arm around Emmaline, who rested her head briefly on the maid’s shoulder. “Now take yourself downstairs before his lordship and that butler come to blows. Someone needs to tell him his lordship owns this house, including the marble floors.”
***
“Have I told you how lovely you look this evening, Lady Arthur?” Her husband’s rich voice had come to own her body in the last few weeks. His question, whispered against the curve of her ear, sent rockets of shivers racing down her spine.
“You told me so well in the carriage we nearly shocked your tiger when we arrived.” The deep heat of a blush crept up her décolletage to her ears. “You are taking the unexpected a bit far, my lord.”
He stroked the back of his fingers down her bare arm and sneaked a glancing touch to the side of her breast. “I have an irresistible inspiration to do so.”
She elbowed him gently in the ribs even as a cascade of pleasure roiled down her body. “Behave. Every person of consequence in London is here tonight. My knees have been knocking since Sir Stirling and his wife greeted us.”
“And here I thought it was Lord Abernathy’s corset creaking.”
Emmaline coughed to keep from laughing as the man in question lumbered by with a pale-faced young lady on his arm. Arthur had not left her side since they entered the ballroom. Sir Stirling and his wife had made it a point to walk down the grand staircase with them. The lady was a duchess in her own right, but she struck Emmaline as a kind if no-nonsense sort of woman. She had promised to pay a call with her sisters in the coming week.
How odd it was—the women who’d pulled their skirts aside as she and Arthur had promenaded around the edges of the ballroom had evoked no reaction at all. Yet, a small act of kindness had brought tears to Emmaline’s eyes.
“You look entirely too handsome, my lord.” She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a Birdie-like once over. Criminal handsome indeed. The stark black of his evening wear—a jacket tailored to fit every inch of his muscled shoulders. His black silk knee breeches had no need of padding. The burgundy waistcoat, shot through with gold silk, matched her evening gown.
“Handsome enough to have the next dance?” Arthur asked. He stood beside her, hands clasped behind his back and watched the miasma of dancers beneath the candlelight of half-a-dozen chandeliers as if he expected a band of pirates to emerge from their midst. Emmaline preferred pirates to the haughty lords and ladies whispering and staring at Reginald Peachum’s upstart daughter.
“I’d rather not.” She caught snatches of whispers to the left and the right of them. About her. Not him. He should not have to suffer for her father’s crimes. This was his world. Men nodded in greeting. To him. They behaved as if she did not exist. Which suited her fine, but with each man who ignored her or woman who gave her the cut direct Arthur’s body hummed with indignation fast on its way to anger. She had not been married long, but she recognized the subtle clues to Lord Arthur in a rage.
“Emmaline—”
“Sir Stirling has been trapped conversing with Lady Buxton for the past twenty minutes,” she offered. “Go and rescue the poor man.”
Arthur sighed. “I wanted you to enjoy yourself, Emmaline.”
“I am. But we must not spend the entire evening in each other’s pockets. They have enough to talk about without us adding to the fire.” She spotted Sir Stirling’s wife, the Duchess of Roxburgh, and some ladies standing in the coolness of the open French windows across the ballroom. “I will go and speak with Her Grace.”
Before he could refuse, she picked up her skirts and pushed her way through the crowd of dancers on the floor. Many a hem ripped and many a gentleman had his toes trod upon as the ladies of good breeding rushed to pull their skirts back lest they brush hers. Emmaline continued, head up with a polite smile affixed to her face.
“Lady Arthur,” the duchess greeted her and began to introduce Emmaline to the ladies with her, her sisters. The rumble of voices rose just as the orchestra struck up a waltz. Emmaline turned to ascertain the source of the disturbance. She barely heard the introductions. All she heard was the thrumming of her heart as her husband strode across the ballroom. The dancers parted for him like ocean waves breaking against a war ship, guns blazing. He was reaching for her almost before he arrived before her, close enough for her burgundy skirts to cover his shoes.
“Dance with me.”
“Arthur, I…”
“Never refuse a man who looks at you like that,” the duchess said. A small but insistent hand at her back nudged her forward.
He swept her into the waltz, steering her against the tide of disapproval and hateful stares. She was sailing on a wave of music. Her course around the ballroom as glorious and powerful as any ship running at full sail under a fearless captain’s hand.
“They’re staring at us.”
“To hell with them.”
“We’re causing a scandal.”
“I damned well hope so.”
“You’re swearing, Captain. In a ballroom.”
“I’m a sailor, m
y lady. We excel at swearing. Dammit.”
Emmaline threw back her head and laughed. Arthur whirled her into a turn and then another. His wicked grin reached his eyes and she knew no work of art would ever compare with the man she’d married—happy, unexpected, and free of the restraints of duty that always seemed just below the surface of his everyday demeanor. He waltzed her around the ballroom, his gaze never wavered—searing and near to setting her body ablaze.
She’d married him to secure a good name, a name free of scandal and the derision of society. Tonight, she discovered something she wanted more—him, with no thought to what the ladies with their pulled aside skirts and the gentlemen with their vacant, dismissive stares saw when they looked at Reginald Peachum’s daughter. She wasn’t her father’s daughter. She was Arthur’s wife. His wife. Who loved him.
Emmaline stumbled.
“Careful, Lady Arthur,” he said as he caught her. “I don’t mind causing a scandal, but not at the cost of my reputation as a dancer.”
“We can’t have that.” She bit her lip and tried to look anywhere save his face. A mistake, as the view over his shoulder revealed the horrified glares and aghast countenances of half of Sir Stirling and the duchess’s guests. Even as she glided through the steps of the waltz, Arthur’s arms the haven she’d always longed for, she saw them in two’s and three’s—staring, nodding at her, and muttering.
“Peachum’s daughter.”
“How dare she?”
“The Duke of Mitford’s son.”
“Has she no shame?”
“What is he thinking, marrying her?”
The music came to an end. Arthur had maneuvered them so as to stop where Sir Stirling, his wife, and a large group of guests stood. Friendly faces. Smiling. Complementing her husband’s dancing, her lovely gown, and her beautiful jewels. They surrounded Emmaline and shielded her from those who questioned her right to be in their midst. Not for her own shame, but for her father’s. Completely unfair, but not if they knew…
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