by Dalton, Lily
Sophia almost hurled the stated heirloom, just to see if its destruction would cause a break in his dispassionate façade. It was no wonder he had been chosen by the Crown to represent England’s interests abroad. Everything about him screamed of control. But she returned the figurine to its place. After all, she bore no ill will toward Claxton’s great-grandmother, only Claxton. Finding nothing else within arm’s reach suitable for hurling, she rounded the settee to confront him.
“Don’t call me your darling,” she raged, barely able to contain the impulse to leap on him and pummel him with her fists. Even now, the scent of Lady Meltenbourne’s perfume clung to him. It clouded her nostrils, driving her toward the most uncontrolled madness. “You forfeited the right long ago. Why are you even here?”
He muttered something that sounded like “because of Scotland.”
“What did you say?” Sophia demanded.
“I said, because I’m a deuced selfish bastard,” he growled.
“How did you even get inside?” She glared up from beneath the brim of her velvet cap, which she still wore, in addition to her redingote and gloves.
He smiled rather like a wolf, stripping the gloves from his hands, which unnerved her further because it indicated his intention to stay. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Though difficult to justify, even to herself, in this moment she ached, feeling more sadness than fury. He stood not two feet away, looking so tall and dark and dashing. Against all good sense, her heart still tried its feeble best to recognize him not as a wastrel but as the man she’d once loved.
“Vile man,” she shouted. “I don’t want you here.”
He loomed over her, an imposing figure in the darkness. A stranger who wore the features of someone she used to know. “I came here tonight to find you—”
“And brought your mistress along for company?”
Heat flashed in his eyes, but he spoke with measured deliberation. “Good God, Sophia. Lady Meltenbourne is a bothersome gnat of a woman. She is not and has never been my mistress.”
“A mere dalliance then.”
“No.”
“How colossal a fool do you think I am?” she cried, swiping her arm at the room, indicating the cushions and bottle. “I saw the proof with my own eyes.”
“No, damn it, you didn’t.” With the meager fire at his back, his broad shoulders cast everything in shadows, including his face. “Your sisters informed me you would be here, but when I arrived, I found the countess here with Haden.”
Oh, her sisters! They could not be trusted with the merest of secrets. How she would punish them once she returned to London. Still, the pieces of the puzzle with which she had been presented made no sense.
“With Lord Haden, you say?” Eyes wide with affected drama, she searched the room, peering into shadows and behind the settee. “Where is he? No doubt vanished in the same magical manner in which you appeared? I had not realized I married into a family of sprites.”
He closed his eyes as if imposing calm. “You would have passed his carriage on your way through the village. The bloody driver misheard the instructions and left before I could get them both in the carriage.” Again his eyes opened to her. “If you did not realize it, the countess was quite inebriated, as was my brother.”
She trembled in reaction, wanting to believe, but so afraid of being made his fool. Perhaps there had been a carriage. The night had been so dark, and she preoccupied. She did not know Haden very well. He’d returned to London only recently, having spent the last two years abroad, the most recent seven months in the duke’s diplomatic retinue. Still, he’d earned the reputation of a rakehell. Much like his brother, she supposed. Perhaps things were even more sordid than she realized, and the two brothers shared a mistress.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she exclaimed, turning from him, now not wanting to see his face or his seemingly earnest expression.
He came round, forcing her to do so. A sudden passion blazed to life in his eyes.
“Believe me.” He uttered the words fiercely through clenched teeth. “Me, Sophia. Because I tell you the truth.”
“I can’t,” she exclaimed, unsettled by the intensity of his emotion. She would not be the sort of pitiable wife who blindly believed a husband’s lies.
“You need only confirm my account with your sisters.”
“My sisters can’t explain everything,” she blurted. “If only—if only it was just Lady Meltenbourne.”
He nodded, and with a turn of his wrist, he flicked his coat open to fist his hand at his hip, on the lower edge of his waistcoat. “I understand I have hurt you. It is why I followed you here tonight, in hopes of answering for myself. Please say whatever you have to say. All of it, Sophia. Because after tonight, it is done. After tonight, I will defend myself no more.”
A long moment passed, wherein Sophia paced in front of the fire. Once she spoke the words, they would be impossible to retrieve. She had held them inside so long, never confiding them even to her mother or sisters.
“You are not completely to blame. If I hadn’t been so naïve and had such unrealistic expectations of marriage, I wouldn’t have been so wounded and hurt by it all.” She closed her eyes and forced the words out. “It all started with Lady Darch.”
Claxton’s sudden exhalation of breath compelled her eyes open again. He pressed his lips together and looked away. A damning confession. The resulting stab of pain to her heart spurred her on.
“The morning we were married, in fact.”
She lowered herself to the settee and untied the ribbon underneath her chin, removing the cap from atop her head, because suddenly the satin felt like a coarse ligature across her throat, making it near impossible to breathe.
“You remember her ladyship.” Sophia scrutinized his face, wanting to observe his every reaction. “She was in my wedding party. A very beautiful widow.”
He did not move. He only listened, his face several shades paler and his jaw clamped tight.
She could not stop now. “We were alone for only a few moments after the ceremony, before we all went into breakfast, but she was kind enough to assure me how fortunate I was to be wedding you.” With each word spoken, her courage increased. It felt good, at last, to speak a secret she’d held inside so long.
Expressionless, Claxton closed his eyes because obviously he knew what she was about to say.
“That she knew from intimate experience how very satisfying you would be as a lover. That you were imminently talented in that regard, not only in the bedroom, but in the carriage and”—here she paused for breath, for the courage to say the rest—“in the garden. Wherever your passion might strike you.”
The blood drained from Vane’s cheeks. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. But she knew if she had not died from heartache after losing their child and after he had abandoned her, she would not expire from it now.
“Sophia—” he uttered, his voice thick.
She lifted a silencing hand. “Lady Darch never stopped smiling, the whole time she spoke, but I suspect she was quite heartbroken that you and I had married.” She looked Claxton directly in the eye. “Which is why I tried very hard to forget the whole unpleasant matter.”
He held both of his palms open to her. “I never spoke to her again after you and I were betrothed. I swear it.”
Sophia nodded, her hands working the ribbon of her cap. “I believe you, Claxton, and that’s what I believed then as well, which is why I never mentioned her to you. I forgave you Lady Darch. After all, it wasn’t as if I believed you to be a virgin when we married.”
“Then what?” he demanded quietly. “Why tell me this now?”
Sophia blinked. “Once we married, I was very satisfied being your wife. More than satisfied. I was happy.” Her voice failed on the word, and she had to clear her throat to continue. “I think you know that to be true. I believe you were happy as well?”
“I was, yes,” he answered.
“I fear, though, h
er ladyship’s words always stayed somewhere in the back of my mind, like an ugly little whisper, which is why I overreacted when I accidentally opened that letter from the actress.”
Claxton’s chin jerked.
She closed her eyes, pressing forward. “After we lost the baby, you were gone so much, especially at night. You seemed so miserable in our marriage, as if you didn’t like me very much anymore.”
“That’s not true.” He shook his head. “It was never true.”
“Then that French letter fell out of your pocket.”
“Received in jest from an old military friend,” he provided in a controlled voice. Yet his knuckles, where they gripped the mantel, whitened. “A bawdy bit of male humor you were never intended to see.”
Sophia frowned and glanced at her lap. “I’m certain that’s what every husband says to his wife upon her discovering something untoward in his pocket.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You must understand that by then numerous rumors had already reached my ears—”
“Rumors,” Claxton hissed.
“That you’d been seen in Hyde Park in a parked carriage, passing time with Lady Bamber.”
“She is—an old friend.” His lips grew thin and white, and his nostrils flared. “Passing time. Mere conversation. Nothing more—”
“Mrs. Burke. Lady Dixon.”
His eyelids fluttered, and his teeth clenched. “If you would just—”
“There were more rumors, of course, and they didn’t stop after you accepted your diplomatic assignment. I could recount them here for you to deny, to talk them away, but my heart and my mind are weary of it all.” Sophia gave a little shrug.
“Weary of the rumors or me?”
She looked at him directly. “I only know what my old nanny, Mrs. Hudson, used to say, that to every rumor there is a kernel of truth.”
“You would justify my condemnation with an…an idiom?” His eyes widened.
“A very wise idiom by my way of thinking. Perhaps I was naïve when we married, but I’m not anymore.” Her voice softened. “Besides, none of that really matters. The rumors, those women—”
“They don’t?” he inquired hoarsely.
“No.” Perhaps it ought to make her feel good and satisfied to see him so discomposed by her words, but it didn’t. She examined his face, feeling too old and too wise for her years. “What matters most is that when I needed you to be my husband, to tell me everything would be all right—”
“Yes, I know—” His blue eyes, in that moment, became black and empty. “The baby. It’s just that—”
“You left me and went on to live your life without me. As if the baby and I meant nothing at all to you.”
Claxton opened his mouth as if to speak.
Sophia stood from the settee. Leaving her cap there, with its shining ribbons trailing onto the floor, she walked the edge of the carpet. “I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that. What a strange and terrible thing to say, being that it’s almost Christmas, but it’s the truth. It’s wedged here, like a piece of broken glass in my heart, and I don’t think the hurt will ever go away.”
He moved toward her. “Sophia—”
“Please.” She stepped back, shaking her head. “I’m not finished.”
Now that she’d gone this far, she felt strong enough to say the rest. He’d left her no choice.
“While you were away, I passed a lot of my time alone, thinking.” She straightened her shoulders to signify her resolve. “It is why I came here tonight. After seeing you, I knew I needed to make a decision, and everyone would have such different opinions, you see. My mother. My sisters. Grandfather. I needed to ruminate, to be alone and make my own decision, without being pulled in different directions.”
His face hardened into stone, but at least, thankfully, he remained silent and allowed her to speak.
“And then I found you here with Lady Meltenbourne, who had already quite humiliated me tonight in front of all my family and friends, asking everyone your whereabouts. At my grandfather’s party, no less.” She shrugged. “Even if she is not your lover, I don’t believe I’ll ever get the image out of my head. I’m not that sort of wife.”
Claxton did not say anything. He only stood there, his eyes burning like cinders.
“It would only be a matter of time until there was a similar misunderstanding or difficulty to drive us apart. As things stand, I don’t see that there is any way to return to the way things were before. I know what I am about to say may shock you, but I can think of no other solution.”
His gaze lost its heat to be replaced with an icy gleam.
Her heart pounded so that she could barely catch her breath. He only stared at her, making each word a challenge to speak.
“If you care about me at all, Claxton, one little bit, I want…well, I want a separation.”
*
At hearing the words from Sophia’s lips, the earth opened up and he fell through into a burning crevice of hell, a place he remembered well. Somehow, amid the flames, he heard it—his own quick inhalation of breath sharply audible in the silence.
“No.”
It was all he could think. No. Goddamn it, no.
“I thought you might say that,” she replied quietly, looking down at her hands. “But you see, I have something to offer in exchange for your agreement.”
“Don’t, Sophia—” He knew with a dark and sudden certainty what she would say. What she would offer to gain his compliance.
“A child.”
He closed his eyes. “Damn you.”
She cleared her throat. “In exchange for—a child—you will grant me a separation.”
For a long moment, he seethed in silence.
“A boy?” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “An heir?”
Her lashes lowered against her cheeks, something he’d always found painfully alluring. “A child,” she said firmly. “Whatever its sex may be.”
He’d never felt an obligation to continue the Claxton line. But yes, he had wanted children with Sophia desperately. The loss of their first had devastated him to his soul, and he had grieved each day since for that baby, just as strongly as he’d grieved the loss of his wife’s affection.
Now she offered him one of the two things he wanted most in the world, a daughter or a son, in exchange for the other—herself. Instinct commanded that he go to her and fall on his knees and beg her to withdraw her abominable proposal. To carry her upstairs and make love to her until she loved him back.
Yet fear that she would still reject him paralyzed him, and he did nothing. Instead, all his hurt and anger spilled out from his throat.
“Do I have any choice?” he snapped.
“My grandfather’s lawyers have assured me the separation will occur if I so wish it, regardless of your cooperation. So the choice is yours. We will separate, either with a child…or without.”
“A formal separation with all the legal and binding implications,” he whispered.
“A complete severance of our marital obligations.”
“I shall have to think. Given the circumstances, perhaps there should be no child.” He forced a casual shrug and with the next words sought to wound her just as deeply as she’d wounded him. “Perhaps, as long as we’re undertaking to create a scandal, I might simply prefer a divorce. To be truly free of you. To marry and have children with someone else.”
“A divorce?” she blurted, eyes widening. “But I didn’t commit the adultery.”
Parliament, as a rule, granted divorces only to husbands who proved adultery by their wives. There were only very rare exceptions.
“Neither did I,” he ground out. “But the truth doesn’t seem to signify with you. The endeavor would simply require that we make up some salacious stories about you. The more the better. Repeat them enough, and they’re as good as true, eh, Sophia? Then we can have our divorce and truly be done with each other.”
“Claxton,” Sophia exclaimed,
visibly mortified.
“Then a Scottish divorce, perhaps, which allows for a husband’s adultery as a cause of action.” He pretended to ponder the idea, tapping his finger against his lips. “We’ve the estate in Inverness to establish residency. I resided there for nearly a month after…well, I’m certain your investigator can find some local doxy to say she was my—”
“I believe a separation will suffice,” she blurted coldly. “You’re all bluster. I suspect you want a child as badly as I do, not the scandal and nastiness of a divorce.”
He laughed into the shadows, a bitter sound. Of course, she was right. He wanted a child with Sophia, or no child at all. She had him by the bollocks.
This night had gone nothing at all like he had planned. It had been his intention in coming to Camellia House to confess every one of the allegations she had spoken—except for Lady Darch, which of course had occurred before their betrothal—to ask her forgiveness for giving her cause to question his commitment to their marriage. But the same sins, when described by her innocent lips, had become infinitely more indefensible than he’d allowed himself to believe. How could he have blundered so badly and caused such damage to the trust between them that she now despised him so completely? He had no idea how to take her pain away or how to return their world to center. At the same time, he felt so angry at her. He’d harbored such hope. He could not help but feel betrayed.
Sophia fled to the window and pushed aside the curtain to stare into the night, so she would not have to look at him anymore, he knew.
“What a miserable Christmas this has turned out to be,” she announced.
Christmas. His mother had always made their Christmases special. When the duchess Elizabeth had lived within these walls, Camellia House had been draped in greenery, warmth, and light, nothing like the cold, cavernous shell that surrounded them now.
For years after her death, he’d not known a true Christmas. His father did not celebrate the occasion, finding such observances overly sentimental and gauche. Later, while an officer in the army, he had attended the occasional Christmas ball or supper, but afterward had retired to his quarters alone.
The only Christmas in recent memory where he’d felt included in a family and at peace with the world had been last Christmas, which he’d spent at Wolverton’s country estate with Sophia and her family. A magical memory. How had he allowed things to fall apart so completely since that time?
