by Dalton, Lily
He couldn’t fault her for that. Looking back at himself as he existed seven months before, he despised that man as well. God, he’d behaved like an ass—but worse, a coward. He ought never to have left her. He ought to have fought harder for them.
Before his betrothal and marriage to Sophia, he’d been…desperately lost. Only he knew how completely her love had transformed him. She’d given it so freely, touching him to his very soul and blotting out the stain of his former life. He’d never burdened her with those best-buried and forgotten details of his past. Even now, in the aftermath of their tragedy, she could never understand the magnitude of the gift she’d given him when they’d learned they were expecting a child.
Yet that dreadful February afternoon, she had turned her back on him.
Now, almost a year later, she turned her back to him again. Lifting the crystal decanter, she poured a splash into a half-filled punch glass. “For my grandfather.”
Capping the bottle, she lifted the glass and maneuvered toward him through the darkness. She would have walked past him if he hadn’t stepped into her path. Her skirts brushed his breeches, but she stopped herself before allowing their bodies to touch. It required every ounce of his restraint not to touch her face, to kiss, inhale, and taste her. To push her back inside the room and lock the door behind them.
“Come home with me tonight,” he said, his voice thick with desire.
Did she realize how difficult the words were for him to speak? That he had just given her a dagger and invited her to stab him in what was already a grievously wounded heart, one that he had made every effort to shore up in hopes that he might be worthy of her forgiveness? Of her acceptance?
She avoided his gaze. “I’ve already made arrangements to stay the night here.”
And so stab him she did, carefully sidestepping him and going a short distance beyond before turning back.
This time her eyes met his unwaveringly. “But you could certainly extend the invitation to Lady Meltenbourne. She’s here—I’m sure you know—and has already been making inquiries about you.”
*
Sophia wended through the crowd, avoiding the myriad curious gazes fixed upon her. Her hands shook. She quaked inside to her very bones. Had she truly just encouraged her husband to spend his night in the arms of another woman? Perhaps she ought to indulge in maraschino more often.
Cheeks aflame, she slipped behind the shelter of a Corinthian column, one of six twin pairs that lined the north and south sides of the ballroom. Backed against the cool plaster, she gasped in a fortifying breath. Except for the occasional servant rushing between the teaboard and the kitchen, and two blank-eyed marble busts of famed political statesmen and adversaries, Fox and Pitt, she was alone here.
While she could not exactly claim to have shocked Claxton, his eyes had noticeably widened and his lips had parted ever so slightly. For her cool, always-controlled husband, those reactions were quite nearly the equivalent. While the gravity of their exchange did not escape her, she could not deny the satisfaction that rushed through her at having astonished him.
Come home with me tonight.
Did he truly believe it would be that simple? That after months of frigid separation she would forgive and forget? With one of his paramours presently circling the waters of her grandfather’s birthday party like a hungry shark, she was in no mood to do either, nor would she ever be. What sort of husband would subject his wife to such public degradation? If she was honest with herself, she could admit she shared some of the blame.
How differently would things have turned out if she’d waited to confront him about that awful letter at home, rather than reacting like a child and running out of the house in a hysterical rush onto steps slickened with ice? Certainly there would still have been tears and angry words and hurt feelings, but maybe they would still have their child. Perhaps, even, they would still have each other.
Days later, when at last he had come to her, smelling of drink and looking like a man destroyed, he openly confessed an affair with the actress who wrote the letter, but assured her, in a most earnest and forceful manner, that the relationship ended months before their betrothal, before he and Sophia ever met. He swore that despite the unfortunate phrasing of the letter couching the affair in present terms, there had been no further dalliance, not even a spoken word.
She believed him, but still, the ugliness of the incident remained, along with a new air of mistrust between them. Seeking comfort, she withdrew to the warm embrace of her mother and sisters to grieve and to heal, never sharing with them the existence of the letter or the trouble it had caused. Claxton vacated London with Lord Haden and his gentlemen friends for his hunting lodge near Inverness. Weeks passed and he returned, but only out of obligation to his seat in the House. At her mother’s insistence, she too had returned home, yet she found herself very much alone. When not in sessions, Claxton adjourned to his club, or so she thought, but Lord Havering confided to having seen him in numerous St. James’s gambling hells at all hours of the night. On the rare occasions when he came home, his eyes and his manner showed the signs of increased drink and dissolution.
All that she could have forgiven. Time passed, and the heartache of losing the child was not gone, but it had eased in the same way her pain over Vinson’s and her father’s deaths had. She just needed him to talk to her, to say he was sorry, so that she could tell him she was sorry too. Then maybe she could have let him hold her. It was what she wanted more than anything. But then she started to hear rumors, gravely repeated to her by her closest friends at tea and cards, who thought she would want to know. He’d been seen in the company of one unsuitable woman, perhaps two.
Just the normal ton scandal broth, which Sophia did her best to brush off, but then early one morning when he returned home sotted after another night out, Sophia crossed paths with the maid who had retrieved his clothing. A different sort of “letter” had fallen from the pocket of his coat onto the floor between them, carefully folded inside a paper envelope. A French letter, which Sophia had only heard about, but never actually seen. The poor maid, only under duress, identified the awful thing and confirmed its purpose—to prevent a man from getting a woman with child.
Consumed by pain and rage, she hadn’t been able to help herself. As he slept the sleep of the dead, she crept into his room. There, with the mother-of-pearl-handled letter opener he’d given her their first Christmas together, she stabbed the vulgar thing through and wedged the blade into his headboard so that he would awake to it dangling over his head. Relations between them only grew chillier after that.
She’d almost been relieved when in May he’d left her with barely a good-bye, sent abroad by a diplomatic appointment to Reichenbach, without so much as a suggestion that she join him later. Soon, the first letter arrived, then another. Written in his distinctive script—dark, elegant slashes and flamboyant whorls of ink—they informed her of his relocation to Töplitz and eventually Leipzig, including only the sparest descriptions of lodgings and environs, and negotiations, treaties, and battles. There had been no mention by her diplomat husband of the balls and dinners and routs he attended. Those letters came instead from a lively Hanoverian baroness, who in the manner of any social hostess worth her snuff, assured Sophia that her husband was being well entertained.
His mistress? She did not know. She did not know anything anymore.
What she did know was that in London she had awakened each day alone to the silence of Claxton’s magnificent Park Lane house, to the equally magnificent attendance of his servants. His carriage had delivered her about town, wherever she wished to go. There were endless invitations. Constant callers. Every drawing room and shop welcomed her enthusiastically as his duchess. His accountants paid her bills without question.
Yet every night she went to bed feeling like a fraud, her only company the whispers that followed her everywhere, celebrating her husband of little more than a year as a connoisseur of beautiful women, a libertine, and
a rogue. She’d been left to suffer it alone, managing, she believed, to keep the worst of it from her family’s collective ear.
Come home with me tonight.
No, their reunion would not be as simple as that. Her breathing slowed.
Exactly how long had she stood here, behind this column? Not that she wished for Claxton to pursue her, but—
He would come after her, would he not?
With all discretion, she peeked through the heads and shoulders of party guests, in the direction from whence she had come. Her mouth grew dry. Claxton was gone.
Shock rippled through her, leaving her lips and fingertips numb. Did she, as his wife, matter so little to him that he would not pursue her? Worse yet, would he do as she had challenged him to do and spend his night with another? A sudden vision of Claxton tangled in silken sheets with the buxom, vacant-eyed Lady Meltenbourne—
“Sophia.”
“No!” she exclaimed, her head turning so abruptly her curls bounced off her nose.
The devil himself stared down at her, his face mere inches from hers. Cool liquid permeated her glove, dampening her palm. His hand came beneath hers to steady the glass, a gesture so unexpected and intimate that she gasped.
“No?” he repeated, one dark eyebrow elevated in question.
“Oh,” she insisted. “I meant, ‘Oh.’”
Oh, Claxton, her inner femininity sighed in spite of everything.
Upon close inspection, Claxton had not a single perfect feature. Yet with all the imperfect pieces of him put together, what a compelling picture he made. He was handsome in that way, yes, but shared nothing in common with the affable, fashionable dandies portrayed in contemporary fashion plates. His attractiveness was all darkness and intensity combined with the power of uncommon height, broad shoulders, and the lean musculature of an athlete.
She stood taller and straightened her shoulders, attempting in whatever small way to match him. She hated how he always made her feel like a child.
“You’ve stained your glove,” he observed quietly, glancing down, then again into her eyes.
She did not breathe. Could not breathe with him standing so near and scrutinizing her with such interest. With his shoulder to the column, he held her gaze with the easy confidence of a roué who feared no rebuff, which only infuriated her because in contrast she had known nothing but his disregard.
“Of course my glove is stained,” she retorted. “It is your fault for startling me.”
Displeasure flickered across his countenance. “For the second time tonight, it seems.”
And yet in the next moment his lips slanted into a boyish half smile, one that sent her heart bounding about inside her chest like a happy hound greeting its master. Her heart had always responded in this manner at the sight of one of Claxton’s smiles. Only she wasn’t a sweet-tempered hound. She was a woman—and she hadn’t forgotten the bitter terms upon which they’d parted.
“The third time, actually,” she bit out. “The first being your unannounced arrival. You’ve been away seven months, Claxton. You ought to have sent word.”
He deftly lifted the glass from her hand and conveyed it to the nearby ledge. “It’s not my intention to be so startling.”
Before she knew what he was about, he’d pinched her fingertips and stolen her dampened glove from her hand. Cool air bathed her bare skin, sending a chill down her spine. While his free hand dispatched the glove into his coat pocket, the other held hers in place with a slight upward curl of his fingertips.
His lips pursed sensually. “As for your ruined glove, it would be my pleasure to escort you to your favorite shop and purchase another pair for you.”
She stared at him in bewilderment. He proposed togetherness? After months of bitterness and separation? She could only stand and stare and wonder what he was about. Her bare hand appeared small and vulnerable in his much larger one, an unsuspecting bird alighted on a wicked trap. Indeed, with a curl of his knuckles, he secured hers within his and lifted—
“Claxton—” she warned, discomfited by his sudden foray into intimacy.
“Immediately. Posthaste.” He pressed his lips to the tops of her fingers. His gaze unwaveringly held hers. “Perhaps tomorrow morning?”
The warm bliss that was his mouth moved to the underside of her wrist, where he pressed his nose to her skin and inhaled, eyes closed, as if she exuded some intoxicating perfume. A mad, delicious tingling spiraled up from her toes along the back of her thighs.
His gaze captured hers. “If only you will say the word and allow it.”
Say what word? Half-drunk on sensation, she didn’t even recall what they were talking about.
The next kiss, placed at the center of her palm, sent a languorous pleasure into her veins, awakening long-buried desires.
Involuntarily she swayed toward him, her body a traitor that for too long had wanted and ached and yearned for the husband and lover she’d believed him to be. Over his shoulder, Fox and Pitt watched, two stone-faced voyeurs. From the other side of the column came the sounds of music and laughter and conversation, while she and Claxton remained just out of sight, hidden in shadows. The clandestine nature of the moment only made Claxton’s kiss more thrilling.
More thrilling? What was she thinking?
Her husband had shown no care for her whatsoever since the loss of their child. He had betrayed the sanctity of their marriage and abandoned her. And now…now he sought to seduce her? Angry heat gathered in her cheeks.
She tore her hand away. “Everyone knew you’d returned to London but me.”
He considered her steadily, the smile fading from his lips. “Perhaps I feared that given advance warning, you would flee.”
“I don’t flee,” she retorted too loudly.
“Oh, but you do, Sophia.” His blue eyes flashed heat. “Twice tonight, within the space of a quarter hour, which makes us almost even as far as me startling and you fleeing are concerned.”
Just moments before, in the book room, she’d felt so much the lioness. For once, she’d gained the upper hand against a man who always held the upper hand, whether it were with his young wife or a political foe. And oh, la! Clearly Claxton believed all it required for him to erase his sins from her mind was a sensual look. An intimate touch.
“I’ve missed you.” He leaned closer, his gaze hot on her mouth, his intention apparent. Her husband was going to kiss her, and she had but a half second to decide whether to let him.
It took her less than that.
She planted her hand against his chest and pushed. “Do you truly believe I’m that unskilled a player of the game?”
“Game?” His nostrils flared.
She stepped back. “That I am just a sad little ingenue who, at your first warm glance, will welcome you back into my life and my bed?”
Claxton’s expression darkened. “No to the ingenue part, but…I am hopeful that I will be welcomed back into your life.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slowly leaned closer. “And your bed.”
Her cheeks, already warm, now went to flames.
After a long moment, he prompted, “Sophia?”
“It’s just that”—her voice cracked with indignation—“I’m trying to determine what about our brief time spent together this evening has given you any cause to be hopeful on either front.”
“My darling.” He tilted his head and spoke in a low, patient tone, as if he need only talk her through an irrational female moment. “I’m the first to confess that when I departed England our marriage was not on the steadiest of footholds. Indeed, considering the circumstances, I assume full blame, but I had hoped that tonight we might—”
“You hoped wrong.” Roar. The lioness had returned. She would not fall so easily. “I require more from you than this.”
When she tried to quit him, he blocked her path, maneuvering her back into the shadows.
He did not touch her, but he might as well have for as close as he stood. “A moment ago, outside the b
ook room, why the provoking comment about Lady Meltenbourne? I’m not married to her.” His gaze moved over her possessively. “I’m married to you.”
No doubt his words and manner were intended as reassurance, foreplay for a reconciliation. Yet the presence of Lady Meltenbourne’s name on his lips was like a bucket of cold water to her face, a reminder of an infuriating reality she simply couldn’t forget.
“That, my lord”—she reached for the punch glass—“is precisely the problem.”
He scowled, the frostiness she remembered so well returning to his blue eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Stolen kisses in shadows? Sweet words of seduction? After everything that has happened, after all this time—that is all you have to offer me?” She laughed sharply. “I’m your wife, Claxton, not some dreamy-eyed girl. Not anymore. You’re going to have to do much better than that.”
*
An hour later, Vane emerged from Lord Wolverton’s study, along with the select other gentlemen who had been invited by his lordship to stay for further conversation, cigars, and spirits. The party was over, the ballroom empty of guests. During the season, balls and soirees lasted until the morning hours, but the chime of a clock indicated the hour to be just nine.
Several gentlemen donned their hats and coats and pushed out into the night, where their drivers waited to convey them home.
“Good night, Fox,” Vane said to the man beside him, with all the cordiality he could summon.
He was sorely tempted, however, to plant his fist in Lord Havering’s face. For the entirety of the evening, Sophia’s childhood friend had submitted him to a ceaseless barrage of acidic barbs and black glares.
Without the slightest acknowledgment, Fox continued walking, unsmiling and with his gaze fixed forward. Under his breath he muttered, “It’s Lord Havering to you.”
Accepting his hat from the footman, he disappeared into the night.
Vane’s cheek twitched, but he held himself in check. He deserved the man’s disdain, but his jealous heart seethed over the idea that Havering should in any way play the part of his wife’s protector. Clearly, breaking the man’s face would only hinder his efforts to win Sophia back, so Vane instead turned to his wife’s grandfather.
