by Sara Ramsey
But his mind still raced. It was only four o’clock, hours earlier than he had told Amelia he would be home. He had come straight to his study when he returned at three. It didn’t feel like his study, not with the empty desk and the books rented to fill the shelves until he could order according to his preferences. It was better than waiting for Amelia in his bedchamber, though.
With a bed, it would be all too easy to pretend, one last time, that they were perfect.
He felt like he was suffocating. He yanked at the knot in his cravat, tossing it on his desk when it finally came free. The cloth covered the book he’d flung there an hour earlier. Ferguson had warned him, a lifetime ago, to ask Amelia about it. And he had asked — but he hadn’t pressed, even when her request to write should have roused his suspicions. At the time, he told himself it was because he had already ruined her, and nothing could get him out of it.
But now he knew — he hadn’t asked because Amelia was the only bright spot in the life he’d given over to his duties. He hadn’t wanted to lose that. And his selfish desire to keep a bit of pleasure for himself, to keep his faith in her intact, may have cost them everything.
Malcolm drummed his fingers against the desk, letting some of his anger leach away so he wouldn’t resort to draining the entire decanter before Amelia came home. The rhythmic tapping reverberated in the room. There were no carpets yet, and the wood floor did nothing to dampen the aggressive sound. It sounded like his heart pounding in his ears — the way it had earlier, trying to drown out Kessel’s voice.
Malcolm and Ferguson had adjourned to White’s for luncheon. Ferguson didn’t enjoy Parliament, even though he could one day dominate the government if he wished to. With his scheming tendencies and the dozen seats his duchy controlled in the Commons, the new Duke of Rothwell was an undeniable force.
But Ferguson didn’t want that type of power. “Do you finally believe me that governance is a vastly boring endeavor?” Ferguson had asked as they cut into their racks of lamb in White’s main room.
Malcolm had looked around the club. The men who were most interested in politics seemed to directly overlap with the men he liked the least. “I won’t argue that point. But if you leave the act of governing to this lot...it’s little wonder there’s so much that needs changing.”
“Are you the one to do it, though?” Ferguson asked. “It’s rather like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain.”
“Someone must be Sisyphus,” Malcolm said. “And if I’m cursed to push this boulder up the hill, so be it.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be Zeus? King of your mountain castle, lovely bride at your side, making babies and ruling your world? Make someone else be Sisyphus.”
Malcolm laughed. “Zeus’s wife was a jealous bitch and most of his children hated him.”
Ferguson grinned. “I know. I hoped you’d take the metaphor without remembering the rest of the story.”
“I’ve only been here a month. Once I’ve made some allies, there is progress to be made.”
“I’m sure you’ll go to the devil in your own way, MacCabe — you always do,” Ferguson said with a shrug.
They’d lapsed into companionable silence, punctuating their chewing with the occasional jest. If London was full of women like Amelia and men like Ferguson, Malcolm might have tolerated it quite well.
But instead, there were men like Kessel, who stopped by their table with a slap on the back that seemed friendly and dark eyes that were full of malice. “Carnach!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
Kessel was several years older than Malcolm and Ferguson, and Malcolm had barely known him at Eton or during his brief trips to London in his youth. But Malcolm’s voice was smooth as he invited Kessel to join them. “It has been an age. Rothwell, I trust you still remember Lord Kessel?”
Ferguson gave a cursory nod as Kessel took a seat. “Kessel.”
“I am still so very sorry about your brother, your grace,” Kessel said, his oily voice finding the crack in Ferguson’s armor. “Carriage accidents are so tragic.”
Ferguson’s smile was all teeth. “I’m sure he would be glad to know someone mourns him.”
Ferguson’s brother died in a poorly hushed-up suicide, not a carriage accident — a fact Kessel, like the rest of the ton, was all too aware of. Malcolm tensed. Kessel was after something. And even if he wasn’t after something, Malcolm disliked the man for what had happened between him and Amelia the previous year. But Kessel was also a powerful figure in the Lords, one who spoke often about the superiority of England over all the other British isles. He would never be an ally — but Malcolm hadn’t wanted him as an out-and-out enemy.
Of course, hours later, in his study, Malcolm knew that Kessel was his enemy — perhaps was always destined to be his enemy, no matter what Malcolm could have said. Still, as he hashed over the conversation again, he grimaced. He shouldn’t have offered the man a chair. He shouldn’t have let him speak. He shouldn’t have listened.
He shouldn’t have let his words burrow into his soul, where they would fester and bleed, just as Kessel wanted them to.
But it was too late for “should.” The conversation had happened, and there was no taking back the words.
Malcolm had tried to claim Kessel’s attention, to distract him from his odd attack on Ferguson’s brother, not knowing it was just Kessel’s opening salvo before turning the battle to Malcolm. “What can we assist you with, Kessel? I’m sure you’d rather take your luncheon than sit about reminiscing.”
“Oh, but reminiscing is such fun, isn’t it? And I couldn’t let another day elapse without offering you felicitations on your marriage.”
It was Malcolm’s turn to bare his teeth. “How kind of you to remember.”
“How could I forget? Lady Amelia — forgive me, Lady Carnach — is hard to forget. I hope you don’t regret the circumstances of your marriage.”
His voice was quiet, but it carried. Heads were beginning to turn. Malcolm leaned in, maintaining the slightest veneer of civility. “I offered for her hand, and the lady was kind enough to accept. Any other story you’ve heard is a lie.”
“I did not mean to impugn her honor,” Kessel said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Of course, why a woman called ‘the Unconquered’ would marry so quickly does raise eyebrows. I’m sure she’s pleased with her bargain, though.”
Ferguson had been examining his fingernails while Kessel spoke, but he finally interjected. “I find you quite tiresome today, Kessel. If you have something to say, say it.”
Kessel’s cheeks flushed a dull red, matching the nose that was already showing the longterm effects of drink. His gaze shifted from Ferguson to Malcolm, but neither of them apologized. Malcolm may not have approved of Ferguson’s attack, but it was the slightest bit gratifying to see Kessel squirm. Ferguson was a duke, after all, and Malcolm’s earldom outranked a mere barony — there was little Kessel could say.
It should have ended there. Malcolm and Ferguson both turned back to their plates, expecting Kessel to leave. But then his voice turned from oil to fire, igniting the air between them.
“I hope you can control your wife’s pen better than you can control your friend’s tongue,” he said to Malcolm.
Malcolm kept cutting at his lamb. He knew how this game was played. “My wife’s pen is none of your concern.”
“Is it not? When she would make fools of everyone in the ton?”
Malcolm made the mistake of looking up. Whatever Kessel saw on his face made him smile. He continued without an invitation. “Don’t say she didn’t tell you. How shameful that I discovered her secret before you did.”
“Careful, Kessel,” Malcolm said through his teeth. “You would regret dishonoring her.”
“Does she regret dishonoring me? If she were a man, I’d call her out for what she’s done.”
Everyone around them had grown silent. The silence fell across the dining room, doing nothing at all to distract Malcolm fr
om the heartbeat in his ears. “What, precisely, has she done?”
Kessel reached into his coat and pulled out a slim volume, bound in calfskin. He threw it on the table like a gauntlet. “She wrote that nasty bit of filth. I’d wager she’s sitting at home even now, penning more stories under your very nose. Perhaps this time you’ll be the villain instead of me.”
Then he stood. “Again, I wish you very happy, Mr. Rosefield.”
The name on the book was A.S. Rosefield — a pseudonym, as everyone knew, although he hadn’t known who the name protected until that moment. The murmurs broke out around them, sounding like hundreds of scuttling beetles coming to pick over his bones. Malcolm ignored the crowd. He ignored the book. He even ignored the voice that told him to stay calm, to smooth the waters.
Instead, he had lunged up and punched Kessel in the face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Amelia arrived home at four-fifteen. The carriage ride from Ellie’s house on Portman Square to her new house on Curzon Street was not overly long, but her dread made it feel like a lifetime. She wondered if Madeleine’s mother, the Marquise de Loubressac, had felt this way as she was driven to the guillotine.
Then she winced and told herself not to be dramatic. Her aunt had lost her head in the French Revolution, which was why Madeleine had grown up with Amelia instead. No matter what happened, Amelia wasn’t at risk of being executed. Losing Malcolm wouldn’t be as bad as that, would it?
She couldn’t answer that question.
She had offered to drop Prudence at her house in Bloomsbury, even though it was a substantial detour from the more exclusive streets around Hyde Park, but Prudence had declined. If talking to Lady Harcastle could prevent the impending scandal, she would have gone, but Prudence thought Amelia’s pleas would fall on deaf ears.
So when the carriage rolled to a halt outside her front door, there was nothing she could do but wait for Malcolm to return — and hope she could tell him everything before he heard it elsewhere.
When she walked up the steps to the house that still didn’t feel like a home, her butler greeted her. “His lordship has returned, my lady. He requests your presence in his study.”
She handed the butler her cloak, her reticule, her gloves — everything she could think to give him, but it only delayed the inevitable by a few moments. She walked down the hall alone, her half-boots echoing on the bare floor. She heard herself slowing down, until the cadence of her steps sounded like a funeral cortege.
When she reached Malcolm’s study, the door was closed. She paused outside it. Her hand, when she raised it to knock on the door, trembled in front of her like a dying leaf as she exhaled.
“You did this to yourself,” she whispered. “Now see it through.”
She rapped her fist on the wood.
“Enter,” his voice rumbled.
She pushed open the door. He sat at the other end of the room, between his desk and the French door behind him. In the twilight of encroaching winter, she couldn’t read his face. He hadn’t lit any candles, or lamps, or even fires. The room was cold — but he blazed with heat. Sprawled in his chair, with his jacket and waistcoat missing and his cravat lying in a heap on his desk, he looked like the king of hell awaiting a concubine.
She shivered as she closed the door behind her. Her imagination was wild even in the best moments — in this, perhaps the worst since her father’s death, it threatened to undo her.
When she turned back to him, he was still seated, watching her with hooded eyes as he sipped from the glass in his hand. “Come here,” he ordered.
He rarely stayed seated in her presence. She swallowed hard. She had a sudden urge to run, to hide, to crawl into the deepest cellar and hope the storm would break over her.
But she walked toward him. She owed him that. Whatever happened, he deserved better than a coward.
And she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
It was still the longest walk of her life. He didn’t smile. He didn’t rise to greet her. He didn’t show the slightest hint of encouragement. Over his glass, his eyes dropped to her breasts, then to her hips. He watched her like she was a dark goddess. And he was a pagan hunter, torn between his lust and his need to destroy her.
She reached the chair opposite his desk. She gripped the back, waiting for him to speak, knowing that if she spoke first her words would disintegrate into a babbled plea. When he finally broke the silence, his voice was full of gravel.
“Light the candle.”
She looked down at the table beside her. Her hands shook as she picked up the tinderbox. She’d never had trouble before, but it was a futile effort. She couldn’t get the sparks to light.
Malcolm cursed. He set down his glass with nearly enough force to break it, then strode around the side of the desk and took the flint from her hands. He lit the candle on the first attempt. The flare of light threw demonic shadows on his face. There were questions in his eyes she couldn’t face — and judgment in his jaw she didn’t want to see.
He returned to his chair and leaned back. She started to sit, but he stopped her with a gesture. “You don’t have permission to sit, wife.”
His mouth twisted on her title. She sucked in a breath. “Will you let me speak? Or have you already decided to end us?”
“Wherever did you get the idea that I would end us?”
She exhaled, letting out just a bit of fear. As long as he didn’t leave, they had a chance...
But he wasn’t finished. “You know divorce is unacceptable. And I still want my heirs from you, even if I must tie you to my bed until you provide them.”
She sat down, permission or no. She couldn’t stay standing when her knees buckled — and his voice was so cold she doubted she could anger him further. “You don’t have to be cruel, Malcolm. I was coming here to beg your forgiveness.”
“Beg my forgiveness?” he asked. His laughter was bleak, cutting through the last scraps of her defenses. “You’d best start on your knees. And use that pretty mouth for something other than your lies.”
Something snapped at his crude language. “How dare you. Banish me if you will, but I won’t be spoken to like that.”
If his eyes softened, it must have been a trick of the flickering light. His voice was still brutal, uncompromising. “I’ll speak however I wish. You wanted a conversation about our marriage yesterday. Now you have it.”
“What changed?” she asked.
It was beyond obvious that he’d learned the extent of her secrets, but she tried to delay, tried to give the lover she knew a chance to emerge from behind the warrior who faced her.
The fury that rode him made him too ruthless to be rescued. He reached forward, unearthing a book from beneath his discarded cravat. She recognized it as soon as he grasped it, holding it between a thumb and forefinger as though it might poison him.
“Now, wife,” he said, deadly calm, “tell the truth, for once in your life. Did you write this?”
She met his eyes. He’d already made up his mind. But there was just a bit of hope there — that, against all odds, she would redeem herself, that she hadn’t hidden this from him.
She didn’t want to lose that look.
But it was inevitable. She confessed the way a good hunter killed her prey — mercifully swift, but implacable.
“Yes. I wrote it.”
He dropped the book on the desk. It landed badly, falling open and creasing the pages. He picked up his drink again, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
“I didn’t intend to cause a scandal.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
Amelia drew a breath. “No one who knew would have betrayed me. If you’d married Prudence...”
His eyes snapped open. “Don’t you dare say this is my fault.”
“I know where the fault lies. But I wrote that book long before I met you. If I had known...”
She stopped herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. The words
were dragged over the gravel of his voice, then flung bleeding at her feet.
She spread out her hands. “When? When should I have told you? When we were first married? Why ruin the best weeks of my life? Or in London, where you’ve barely said two words to me outside our bed?”
Her anger sparked, burning dangerously alongside her guilt. “It was wrong not to tell you,” she continued. “But don’t pretend that my secret is the only wedge driving us apart.”
“It’s not your secret I care about,” Malcolm said. “It’s that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me everything. Instead, I find out from Kessel, in front of an entire room of men at White’s.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Truly?”
“I’m not the liar in the room,” he snapped. “All I required from you, all I requested, was that you not cause a scandal. Was that so much to ask?”
It was little wonder he’d gone so cold. To have her writing made so public, in such a humiliating way...
“I’m sorry, Malcolm. I am truly, truly sorry. If I’d known when I wrote it that it would lead to this, that it would cost you so much...”
“It’s too late for apologies,” he said. “If you’d told me, if you had trusted me, perhaps there would have been a different outcome. But you didn’t.”
“Fine. I didn’t do enough. At least I am honest about what I failed to do for us.”
He didn’t acknowledge the blow. “What am I going to do with you?”
It was almost a whisper, more of a question for himself than anything she could answer. “Do I get a say in the matter?” she asked.
“No.”
She stood. No matter how angry he was, no matter how badly she’d behaved, she wouldn’t be a martyr. “Fine. Send me a note when you’ve decided what to do. I’ll be at my mother’s house.”
That threat was finally enough to draw him from his chair. “You aren’t leaving,” he said, coming around his desk to grasp her arms. “You may be a liar, but you’re still my wife.”
