Her face softened, and he was embarrassed that she had seen his flash of nerves.
“I’m touched. I had no idea you had paid such attention to the specifics of my plans.”
“Well, Cavendish,” he said gruffly, “a clever businessman knows that when a woman is so struck by the brilliance of an idea she falls off her horse, it may be worth further inquiry.”
She laughed. “Thank you. You are very thoughtful.”
“There’s one more thing. The property came with a house. It’s in an indifferent state of repair but rather lovely. I thought you might prefer it to the town house.”
An odd expression flashed behind her eyes, and the pleasure in them vanished. “Oh?” was all she said.
God’s toes, but it was torture, maintaining her approval. He’d hoped she’d be pleased, given her obvious dislike of his terrace in Hoxton.
“Would you like to see it?” he ventured nonetheless.
“Now?”
He nodded.
Poppy tried to hide her apprehension as Archer led her past the crowd of men loading goods bound for lighters and down the narrow footpath to his wharf. “The river is the fastest way of getting west,” he said, helping her onto his wherry. “And I thought you might enjoy the view.”
She had never been on a boat. This one was as finely made as any carriage, black lacquered with handsome silver fixtures and deeply polished wood.
Archer tucked an arm around her shoulders.
At his touch, she felt like she might weep. After the way he had made love to her last night, she’d been so sure she was not imagining he cared for her. And yet here he was, making the distance between them official: installing her in a separate house. She should not be surprised. He had as good as said this was his plan the day before. But still, it stung.
The oarsmen slowed the boat at a tall iron gate built up along the riverbank. “A private wharf,” Archer said. “You’ll not need to pay for access to the quays. And we can build a warehouse here. I’ve already seen to it that our best builder is made available.”
She tried to muster some enthusiasm for this. But the truth was that she could scarcely concentrate, because her heart had spent its puppy-love years sighing over plants and was unaccustomed to such violent surges of emotion.
Only when they alighted and she saw the grounds did her mood improve. The empty stretch of land looked nothing like London at all.
The grass was green and rose up to her knees. She reached down and removed a glove, burying her fingers in the soil. It came up easily, dark and thick with roots and fungi. Earthworms writhed about in the hole she’d made, an auspicious sign that trees would grow.
Suddenly, she could see it. The sloping ground where she would build walled gardens, the places for potting sheds, force houses, an arboretum. She walked deeper onto the property, imagining how it would look buzzing with builders and masons, humming with the work of hired gardeners dragging up the soil to prepare for the first planting.
She had made the right decision.
Her dream was going to come true. She itched to get to work. She moved quickly through the property, making plans. She nearly forgot that Archer was with her until he tapped her shoulder and pointed out the pathway to the house. Through a grove of trees, a large Italianate villa stood near a quiet, pretty flower garden, still colorful with the fading blooms of August. Standing on the empty land, shrouded in its pleasant garden, it looked like a piece of her beloved countryside. If you ignored the musky river breeze, the place could be Bantham Park.
Still, she didn’t want it.
“Would you like to tour inside?” he asked.
Not really.
Nevertheless she nodded.
Archer led her through wide, airy rooms, blessed by high ceilings and pleasant lines, even if the paint was peeling. She tried to admire the plasterwork, the birdsong drifting in from the garden, the good air and strong light. But all she could think about was the size. How she would bear to live in it alone she could hardly fathom.
“There’s room enough for you to conduct your business here, if you choose,” Archer pointed out, smiling like this was excellent news. He was correct, and yet all her heart heard was the word “you.” Not us. Not him, whom her heart desired despite her better sense.
“Do you like it?” he asked her, as they stood in the largest bedchamber on the top floor.
“It’s beautiful.”
He must have heard the note of sadness in her voice, for he cocked his head at her.
“When I saw it, I thought it suited you. It reminded me of your home.”
The sweetness of the sentiment stabbed at her. She turned away from him.
“We can have it renovated any way you like.”
“I like it as it is.”
“What’s wrong? What aren’t you saying to me?”
“Only that you’re very kind, and I’m very grateful,” she said, striving for a joyful tone. It would only confuse things to say any more. It was she who kept allowing herself to mistake his kindness for something more. He had never been anything but clear in saying what he wanted.
In the corridor she noticed a door they had not entered. “What’s through there?” she asked.
“The attic,” he said.
“I wonder if it’s too damp for seed storage.” She opened the door and found a staircase lit by skylights and painted in pastel scenes from fairy stories. The sunlit room above was filled with wooden toys and little cots—some previous family’s nursery.
She turned back to look at Archer, but he hadn’t followed her up the stairs.
He was waiting at the landing, drumming his fingers on the banister, his face troubled.
“It’s a nursery,” she told him. “A beautiful one.”
“Yes,” he said, like she’d discovered something he’d rather she not see.
“You called it an attic.”
He stared at her.
“I was going to ask the architect to move the nursery downstairs,” he said finally. “I would never be able to sleep with them helpless above us.”
Now it was her turn to stare at him.
“In case of fire,” he went on weakly.
He didn’t wish to leave her here.
He wished to live here with her. In this gorgeous, rambling, romantic house.
Where he might worry after the safety of his children in the nursery as they slept.
Children he claimed meant no more to him than ink on the pages of a contract.
Her loneliness flared into something brighter, harder, more like anger.
At herself, for being moved by him. And at him, for making gestures that meant everything and insisting that they meant nothing at all.
Cordial business arrangements did not feel this way. Cordial business did not make one feel like one’s heart was constricting one’s throat, depriving one of breath.
She sank back against the door.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” Poppy said, looking at him oddly.
Archer shifted on his feet and looked away from her, hating to be observed feeling as he did.
She made an odd sound in the back of her throat. It sounded like … laughter.
He glanced up. She rested her head back against the wall with her eyes closed, some private amusement taking hold of her until she was actually shaking with silent mirth at the apparent absurdity of what he’d just admitted.
He gaped at her, unbelieving.
Something about that nursery, when he had seen it, had ripped him open. Something in him was unable to walk into that room and think merely about “heirs.” He thought of family. Of what it would be like to have one. With her.
He didn’t want to think about it. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice the nursery door at all.
Clearly, he had been foolish to think she might see the hope and fear that overtook him at the thought of something so fragile taking root here.
She hadn’t noticed anything. He spoke of fir
e, and she laughed at him.
“May I ask what you find so amusing?” he asked.
She opened her eyes. There was no mirth in them. “Only that I now see you intend to live here too.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “That is traditionally the way that marriage is conducted,” he said, not bothering to keep the edge out of his voice.
“Perhaps. But this isn’t a traditional marriage. Or so you keep insisting.”
He had had enough of this.
“I insist on nothing more than what you agreed to.”
“Yet I find myself confounded by what exactly it is that you want from me. You wish to make love in the rain, yet you rebuke me for asking questions of your health? You say we are no more than polite associates, that you will have no interest in your heir, and yet you wish to live with me in a family house with fairy pictures in the nursery? Forgive me, Archer, if I find your notions of a business arrangement maddening.”
“Maddening. I do apologize, Poppy. However, I fail to see what you find so difficult to understand. I told you we would attempt to conceive a child, and we have. I told you I would enable you to build the business you desire, and I have. If my attempts at fulfilling these commitments with some concern for your pleasure and comfort are too maddening, I will leave off of them forthwith. You have my word.”
Never mind that it was puerile and that he was a man of four and thirty, he turned on his heel and marched downstairs.
Maddening. She was maddening.
He had spent days tiptoeing around her unhappiness, weeks scouring half the country to find exactly the right gift for her, making his men half-deviled with his demands for briefs on horticultural trade and agrarian economics. He had lain awake at that godforsaken inn racked with guilt for hurting her, more guilt still for, even in his state of shame, not being able to shake the memory of how their bodies fit together—for being obsessed with how she tasted, how she sounded as she came, that precise moment she had sunk down on his cock and bitten his thumb and ridden the very life from him.
And then, last night.
He was, indeed, mad for her. Sick and foolish with it.
He had to stop this.
He had to draw a line.
He should have done it yesterday like he’d intended.
He’d let the threat of rumors make him cowardly.
“Make sure Her Grace is seen home in the wherry,” he said to the architect waiting downstairs with a steward. “I have business elsewhere.”
He strode down the country lane to the nearest thoroughfare and flagged down a hackney. “Charlotte Street,” he ordered.
He sat in the dark, enclosed vehicle and closed his eyes, picturing Elena in her severe black gown, a raised eyebrow at seeing him in such a state in daylight, with no appointment and the threat of whispers circling. How furious she’d be. What she’d do to him.
His cock stirred, and he grasped it through his breeches, throwing back his head in anticipation. Fuck, but this was what he needed. He clenched his jaw and stroked himself. God, the relief it would be, after these weeks of denying himself. The pure, bracing pleasure of it. Without it, his control over himself was slipping. He was becoming far too bloody soft.
Poppy’s face broke into his thoughts. His innocent young wife going glumly about her business in the pretty family house where he’d left her as he stroked himself to a frenzy in a hackney imagining the crack of leather on his back.
It doesn’t matter. He had promised her a greenhouse and a ship—not the loyalty of his body. Not his private, most intimate self.
Of course it does.
He thrust his hands away from his groin and into his hair. He wanted to rip it from his skull. He wanted to scream in frustration.
Instead he stuck his arm outside and pounded on the side of the coach.
“Change of address. Threadneedle Street.”
Chapter 23
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes she had wandered the empty house alone, searching for her husband. Ten minutes she had poked around in corridors and closets before it finally dawned on her that he had left her there. An indignity confirmed by the sheepish architect and steward waiting in the parlor, where they had no doubt spent ten minutes listening to her disbelievingly calling out her husband’s name.
“His Grace asked me to see you home in his wherry,” Mr. Partings mumbled, flushing.
“I see,” she said.
And she did. She finally saw.
She saw the image in this man’s eyes of the pathetic, abandoned figure she was cutting. An object of pity. The Duchess of Westmead, once again, crushed.
She saw this woman, and she had had enough of her.
For this creature, the Duchess of Westmead, whose fine clothing she wore, was insufferable. Poppy was bored senseless of this lady, with her ever-injured feelings and fits of bloody unrequited longing.
Poplar Elizabeth Cavendish did not behave this way. Poplar Elizabeth Cavendish had no patience for ladies who acted foolishly, so deep and sure was her scorn for the practice of making oneself vulnerable to men.
Poplar Elizabeth Cavendish was smart enough to recognize that Westmead was neither her friend nor her ally. He was merely her husband. Husbandry, in the purest definition of the word, was the nature of their connection. And somehow, she had let this fact escape her despite her training as a botanist.
In the greenhouse there was no romance to the act of reproduction. She did not grow misty-eyed as she swabbed pollen from a stamen and applied it to a pistil with her brush. One crossed two hearty specimens to produce a third. That was all he’d asked of her. Why she had allowed herself to imbue the act with so much fretfulness she could not say.
Except that unschooled countrywomen from the land where she was from sometimes whispered of a spirit called the devil in the road. A sprite who waited at the juncture of wooded paths and offered riches for a maiden’s soul. There were many versions of this story, but the moral was always the same: the temptations the man offered were damnation in disguise.
In other words: she should have known.
Which is why, as soon as she stepped back into the Hoxton town house, she marched upstairs and summoned a maid and rid herself of her stiff Valeria Parc day dress, with its bustle and embroidery and its suffocating stays.
“Such a pretty gown, Your Grace,” her maid enthused.
“Do you like it, Sophie? Why don’t you keep it?”
“But you’ve only worn it once. I took it out of paper just this morning.”
“I find it doesn’t suit me.”
She went into the back of the dressing room and searched a trunk. Here it was. Old gray muslin with a mended hem. Her favorite.
Once dressed, she went to the study and sat at her husband’s desk. She regarded his neatly sorted papers and expensive kit of writing implements. She pushed them aside and smiled as they fluttered to the floor. She placed her tattered ledger on her right, her botanical correspondence on her left, and a stack of blank pages in between.
And Poplar Elizabeth Cavendish set to work.
If she had indeed traded her soul, she intended to get what she was promised for it.
The devil could hang.
Archer climbed the town house stairs at midnight, having worked in the counting-house until the boiling feeling in his blood simmered into something less likely to cause burns to passersby. He intended to finish sorting his effects from Westhaven as late into the night as it took to achieve a state of calm that might allow him to sleep.
But that would be impossible. Because his wife was in his study basking at his desk, upon which she had created a mess so disordered it resembled primordial chaos.
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded, at a volume that was not civil.
She glanced up at him, as though annoyed at his intrusion into his own study in his own house. “Working.”
“I did not give you permission to colonize my desk,” he snapped. “Nor did I invite you to use m
y study. This house is filled with empty rooms. Pick one.”
“I don’t believe I asked for your permission, Your Grace,” she said, unmoved by his aggression. “And you have no right to shout at me. Do go away.”
He stared at her, so serene in her disorder. He noticed papers at her feet.
She had pushed his papers to the floor.
A man aspired to be rational and levelheaded. He aspired to meet his responsibilities, to be a river to his family. For some, perhaps, this came naturally. For him, it came by rigor.
His wife could mock his stacks of paper, his lists and calculations. But these things had never failed him. They proved that turmoil could be ruthlessly sorted until it was brought to order. Control was the only antidote to the unseemly, chaotic force of passion.
Which was why he could not seem to make his tone anything but menacing when he parried back, “In fact, I am your husband. I have every right to shout at you, or do whatever else I wish. As you are undoubtedly aware, given your uncommon familiarity with law.”
Her chin somehow found a way to look even more contemptuous than usual.
“Ah yes,” she sighed. “There are so many means of protecting male authority. The law … inheritance …” She reached across the desk and tapped a single disdainful finger to his chest. “Brutish shows of strength. We ladies lack such facile means. We must rely only on our wits. So please, Archer, invoke the law if it brings you comfort. But do so with the knowledge that you reveal yourself as weak.”
She smiled at him serenely and resumed scribbling at her letter.
He tried a different tactic.
“Leave my fucking desk and go to bed, Poppy,” he shouted.
Catlike, she smiled.
“I’m not fatigued, Your Grace.”
If she meant to goad him, she had picked the wrong night to test what he was made of.
He was not unaware of the belief that he had no depth of feeling. That he was all hauteur, a domineering prig. When he heard these things about himself, he smiled, for it meant that it was working. It meant that the rafters he had built within himself to stanch the overflow of temperament were structurally sound and visually unassuming. The truth was that he did not lack feeling. He overflowed with it. It was a bloody labor to be the bloodless Duke of Westmead. There was nothing effortless about it.
The Duke I Tempted Page 19
