“Know him? I would’ve given a monkey to watch it happen.”
“Kate,” Mrs. Havens chastised her niece. “How many times have I told you not to say—”
“Fine. I would’ve paid ‘five hundred pounds’ to see the look on his face.”
Sarah shifted uncomfortably, regretting she’d ever confided her story. Ravenwood was one of the best men she had ever known. “You dislike the duke?”
“Dislike him?” Miss Ross chortled. “Good God, no. Ravenwood is a beautiful, solemn, lofty, mysterious, utterly unflappable automaton of ducal restraint. I’ve never seen him smile or even frown. He just nods gravely and deals dispassionately with whatever comes his way. An automaton, I tell you. His lack of passion is utterly disturbing.”
“She’s quite taken by him,” Mrs. Havens whispered conspiratorially. “In case it’s not obvious.”
Miss Ross snorted. “He fascinates me, is all. The mystery of it. I’ve never known someone not to have feelings.”
“He has feelings,” Sarah protested.
“Does he?” Miss Ross arched a brow. “Did he fall deeply in love with you, then? Is that why you were at the altar?”
“No, but—”
“Was he crushed when your former lover returned? Did his piercing emerald eyes glisten with manly tears as he begged you not to leave him, lest his heart be forever broken?”
“No, but—”
“Can you say, with any degree of honesty, that he particularly cared one way or the other which groom you took to be your husband that day?”
Sarah tightened her fists and glared at her hostess in mute defiance.
Miss Ross leaned back in satisfaction. “There you have it. A classic automaton. All brain and no emotion. You should see him in the House of Lords.”
Sarah’s shoulders twitched. “You’ve watched him in the House of Lords?”
Miss Ross grinned. “I’ve watched everyone in the House of Lords since I was old enough to sneak in.”
“Kate hasn’t always behaved outrageously,” Mrs. Havens assured Sarah, sotto voce. “The few months before she learned to crawl were quite idyllic indeed.”
“Bah, Aunt!” Miss Ross snapped a playful handkerchief toward her great aunt’s knee. “I’m sure I found ways to be outrageous even then.”
Sarah found herself smiling despite her best effort not to. Miss Ross hadn’t meant to be disrespectful to Ravenwood. She didn’t know him. She simply said precisely what she was thinking, the moment it occurred to her.
She shook her head. “I suppose you’re the opposite of an automaton?”
Miss Ross affected a haughty expression. “I should hope so. I’m deeply emotional about absolutely everything. I even have deeply emotional feelings about the roasted chestnuts in this bowl and the currant biscuits on that plate. I will challenge you to a duel if you dare consume more than your portion.”
“I’m…pregnant,” Sarah protested, daring to use the more vulgar term.
“That’s why you get half and not a third, as would be more fair.” Miss Ross tossed a saucy grin at her aunt. “See? I share. Occasionally.”
Sarah widened her eyes and pointed over Miss Ross’s shoulder. “Is that another tray of chestnuts?”
Miss Ross gasped in delight and twisted in her chair to see.
Sarah lifted the plate of currant biscuits off of the tray and placed it atop her belly for quick access. When Miss Ross spun back around with narrowed eyes, Sarah’s mouth was delightfully full of biscuit.
“Well done, Miss Fairfax,” Miss Ross said approvingly.
“Blackpool,” Sarah mumbled around a mouthful of delicious biscuit. “I’m married now.”
“You poor thing,” Miss Ross agreed with a shiver. “God willing, I shall never fall into the parson’s trap. I’d make a terrible wife. You, however… Tell me how you ended up leg-shackled, and what I can do to avoid it.”
“I fell in love,” she admitted miserably. “From the first day I met him. He was brash and audacious and confident and handsome and everything a girl like me thought she wanted in a man.”
Miss Ross nodded pensively. “It turned out he wasn’t what you’d thought?”
“It turned out he was exactly what I’d thought. The daredevil side of him I’d found so magnetic was the same impetus that sent him off to war and very nearly got him killed.” Sarah bit her lip, then met Miss Ross’s gaze. “I’ve already lost him once. I can’t go through that again. I won’t.”
Miss Ross arched her brows. “And yet you married him.”
“I love him,” Sarah said simply. “I always have. The man I gave my heart to was warm and tender and loving. But the man who came home, I cannot recognize. He’s colder now. He didn’t ask for my hand. He informed me—and the Duke of Ravenwood—that I was his, and that was final. There was no mention of love. He has never actually stated that the feeling was mutual.”
Miss Ross frowned. “Yet you married him for love?”
“Do you think me foolish? My parents certainly do. But even if I take my heart out of consideration, Edmund is still my child’s father. Would you be able to keep your child from his father?”
Miss Ross recoiled as if Sarah had flung spiders at her. “Bite your tongue. I wouldn’t have a child at all.”
“Kate has a horror of childbirthing,” Mrs. Havens whispered to Sarah. “Anthony Fairfax had to promise her you were still a fortnight from any danger before Kate was half willing to invite you to tea, much less stay the night.”
“Aunt, honestly,” Miss Ross huffed. “We’re discussing Mrs. Blackpool’s private matters, not mine.”
Sarah blinked in startled confusion before she recalled that “Mrs. Blackpool” meant her, and not Edmund’s mother. She hid a smile behind her napkin. “Call me Sarah. Please.”
“Brilliant.” Miss Ross beamed at her and held out her hand. “You may call me Katherine.”
Amused at the odd gesture, Sarah lifted her fingers to shake Katherine’s hand—and gasped in mock outrage when Katherine took the opportunity to snatch what was left of the biscuit plate from atop Sarah’s belly instead.
“Eat some chestnuts,” Katherine advised her around a mouthful of biscuit. “Less fattening.”
Sarah’s answering laugh was hollow. “That is another problem. I have always known that Edmund chose me because I was pretty to look at. You might notice I’m no longer a diamond of the first water.”
Frowning, Katherine set down the plate of biscuits. “Pregnant women are supposed to be fat. In case nobody’s told you, there’s a baby in there.”
Sarah rubbed her face. “Precisely the problem. Edmund never asked to be saddled with this.”
He had wanted someone who could adorn his arm. Someone to gaze up at him with stars in her eyes and welcome him to her bed.
She had worshipped him. She still did. He was strong and dashing and unpredictable. Their every encounter took her breath away.
No, they had never exchanged I love yous. Their encounters had been too exciting, too passionate, to waste them with words.
When she had arrived in Bruges eight months ago, neither one of them had cared whether theirs was a love match. Their physical attraction was impossible to deny. His eyes had devoured her with such intensity, ’twas a wonder they hadn’t made love right there on the dock.
She spread her fingers over her swollen belly. The white marks stretching up her stomach would never go away. Her hips would widen, her feet had flattened, her ankles were alarmingly thick.
Now that the carnal hunger was gone, what did they have left? Would they be strong enough to survive everything the future now held?
Chapter 8
The endless squadrons of soot-stained row houses closed in on Edmund like the bloodthirsty troops of an invading army. London’s noisy cobblestone streets, fetid waste pits, and imposing shields of solid brick surrounded him. Mocking him with their superior numbers. Gleefully concealing all traces of his bride.
Sarah was not at hom
e. She was not at Edmund’s home, she was not at Ravenwood House, she was not with her family. She wasn’t anywhere.
“We going somewhere?” The hack driver spat into the street. “Or you paying me to rest my arse?”
Edmund slammed his fist against the moldy squab. “We’re going somewhere.”
The question was where.
He’d flagged down the hack not just because he had no carriage of his own, but because the streets had filled with so many pedestrians—beggars, pie makers, women with parasols, chimney boys—all bustling and banging into him and shouting to be heard over the clop of horses and the click of iron wheels against cobblestone that Edmund couldn’t even think.
The drafty, open hack did little to block the overwhelming noise but at least Edmund wasn’t constantly buffeted by so many hurrying people, hundreds of strange bodies elbowing and shoving.
The last time such a tide had rushed in and over him from all sides, he’d ended up facedown with a bullet in his chest. All he could hear were the racing footsteps, the urgent horse hooves, the shouts as storming soldiers slashed and shot and fell.
He fought the urge to cover his ears with his hands. He would not think of the past. He was in London, not Waterloo. He was in a hackney cab, not lying upon a blood-stained cart. The noise was the same, the chaos was the same, but he had to focus on the mission at all costs.
Find Sarah.
“Carlisle House,” he said suddenly. “Take me to the Earl of Carlisle’s estate.”
The driver spat again and shook the reins.
Edmund leaned back against the carriage to avoid looking out at the street. Instead, he closed his eyes and summoned an image of Sarah. There was no doubt she had run.
His heart clenched. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. That was the last thing he wished. He just wanted… he just wanted their old lives back. He wanted to be carefree and happy. He wanted her to gaze up at him like she used to, with her hazel eyes sparkling with love and her fingers entwined with his. He wanted the promises they’d made each other not to be dreams, but reality.
Reality, unfortunately, had other plans.
Sarah had run. There were few places she could run to. She was married now, and therefore the baby’s legitimacy had been ensured, but that didn’t mean Sarah could pay house calls on Polite Society the day after her wedding. Married or not, she was eight months pregnant and even the dullest of debutantes could perform simple math.
Thus, Oliver.
Oliver had chosen to leave Edmund bleeding to death on a foreign battlefield. Oliver had chosen to stay home, rather than to attend Edmund’s wedding. If he thought Sarah needed rescuing, Oliver would have chosen to harbor Edmund’s wife without a second thought.
Edmund rubbed the bridge of nose and sighed. Did Sarah need rescuing?
Before leaving for France, Edmund had never had to worry or care about anyone else’s expectations. War was different, of course, in that there were different rules and fierce enemies and a new hierarchy. But none of that had been any problem. He was a crack shot with a rifle, became a brigadier in the blink of an eye—and he was the only soldier of his acquaintance whose love interest back home actually sailed to Bruges to spend the night in his arms.
Everything had been easy. His life had always been perfect.
Until a bullet shattered his rib and there were so many running, trampling footsteps, none of which cared a fig about the dying soldiers unable to rise from the blood-soaked ground…
“This is Carlisle House,” said the driver. “That’ll be an extra shilling for the delay.”
Edmund tossed him a coin and leapt from the hack. His boots landed against the frozen grass with a soft crunch.
His tense muscles relaxed slightly. The row houses were too far away to see. The people were gone. The only sounds were the call of a misplaced winter robin and the fading clomp of the hack driver’s departing carriage. Bless Oliver for owning enough land to have a bit of peace and quiet.
Edmund would still plant him a facer, though, if the earl was hiding Edmund’s wife.
He strode up the walkway and rapped the heavy knocker against the front door. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to Carlisle House. Oliver’s father had always been earl, as well as a pompous drunkard. He and his son got on like Wellington and Bonaparte, so Oliver had spent the vast majority of his time at Ravenwood House or with one or both of the Blackpool brothers.
Lord knew a single afternoon of Edmund’s mother hovering and cooing and forcing favorite meals down everyone’s throats would make anyone feel as though he’d been mothered for decades.
The door swung open, revealing an elderly butler that Edmund wasn’t quite certain if he recognized. He belatedly recalled he had no calling cards with which to present himself. Not that it mattered. If Sarah was inside, Edmund would happily take the earl’s estate by force.
But first, he would try polite manners. “Edmund Blackpool to see the earl.”
“Wait here, please.”
Edmund laced his fingers behind his back to keep from clenching and unclenching them in anxiety and trepidation. If Oliver had Edmund’s wife… he’d kill him. But if the earl did not? Where was there left to look?
The butler returned. “Come with me, sir. He’s having dinner with his family, but has arranged another place setting for you.”
Edmund frowned, but followed.
None of this made sense. If Oliver was harboring Edmund’s wife, it seemed unlikely the earl would extend an invitation to the supper table. And it was odd that the butler had said Oliver was dining with his family, rather than with his new wife.
Oliver had no family. Edmund had no idea who the earl’s wife was, but they couldn’t have been married long enough to have a family. Edmund had started a trifle too soon, and even his bride still carried their child within her.
“Here you are, sir.”
Edmund blinked at the four place settings and the modest offering upon the table. Oliver was already rising to his feet from the head of the table, as were the two beautiful, dark-haired women who had sat on either side.
“If you are not too dangerous to approach,” Oliver said quietly, “I would very much like to apologize.”
Edmund neither replied nor turned away.
“It is good to see you, Edmund. No—it is wonderful to see you. An answer to a prayer. You cannot know how much guilt, how many nightmares…”
Edmund met his eyes. “Bartholomew told me.”
“Of course he did. He is your brother and you deserved to know. I would not have disrespected you further by keeping a secret.”
Edmund’s jaw worked. That did sound like Oliver, damn him. Honorable to a bloody fault.
Sarah would not be here.
“You didn’t come to the wedding,” he said instead.
“Your wedding was about you, not me or us.” Oliver reached forward and grasped Edmund’s hand. “It’s so good to have you back. To see you alive. I had thought… We had all feared…”
Edmund did not pull his hand from Oliver’s grasp. “Most of the fallen did not live to rise again.”
Oliver’s eyes glistened. “Oh, Edmund, I am so sorry. So wretchedly, inexcusably sorry—”
Edmund wrapped his arms about the earl. “If you had let my brother die, I would have killed you.”
Oliver gave a choking laugh and hugged Edmund back. “I’m so glad you’re home. Please say you’ll stay for supper. Now that you’re back, I’m not quite ready to let you out of my sight.”
Edmund stepped back and nodded. He might as well stay for a meal. He hadn’t eaten all day, and he had no idea where to go next. And despite his conflicted feelings about being left on the battlefield to die… it was good to see Oliver, too. Had Edmund been forced to choose between saving his brother and saving the earl, there would be no earldom.
Sometimes, there were no right choices. Just… choices.
Oliver puffed out his chest and gestured at the two ladies on eithe
r side. “It is my deep honor to present you to my wife Grace, and her mother, Mrs. Halton.”
Edmund tried to hide his surprise. The women looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Mrs. Halton was clearly the elder of the two, but old enough to have birthed a countess? He stepped forward to bow, and kiss both sets of fingers. “It is my pleasure.”
Lady Carlisle’s eyes shone. “No, the pleasure is mine. I’m so glad to actually meet you!”
Edmund jerked his startled gaze toward Oliver, who laughed as though he’d been waiting for this joke the entire time.
“Yes, I’m afraid she’s American.” Oliver slid a possessive arm about his wife’s waist and kissed her temple. “But I love her anyway.”
Lady Carlisle slapped him in the chest, but blushed becomingly.
Her mother flashed Edmund a rueful smile. “For better or worse, I’m from right here in London. Although you can perhaps tell by my accent that my heritage is not as lofty as you’re used to.”
Edmund was suddenly grateful for the table. He was going to need to sit down after all. Oliver’s story must be as astonishing as Edmund’s own.
He waited until the ladies had retaken their seats before claiming his own. “What have I missed? Tell me everything.”
A footman hurried forward to fill Edmund’s plate with food.
“My father passed,” Oliver began, “leaving me the title and more bills than the estate was worth.”
“He needed an heiress,” Lady Carlisle explained with a smile.
“Ah.” Edmund nodded.
Lady Carlisle’s smile widened. “I was not one.”
Edmund’s fork paused.
Mrs. Halton tilted her head toward her daughter. “I was in Pennsylvania at the time.”
“Dying of consumption,” Lady Carlisle clarified. “She needed emergency care if she was to survive, but we had no money.”
“But my parents did.” Mrs. Halton’s cheeks flushed. “So I sent Grace to London in the hopes they’d offer her a dowry.”
Lady Carlisle kissed her husband’s cheek. “Before we were even married, Oliver sent a pirate to fetch my mother.”
Edmund’s fork clattered onto his plate. “Sent a what?”
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