Chapter Six
“You,” Samuel told his reflection sternly, “are going to be absolutely fine.”
There was a giggle behind him and he whirled around, trying not to flush at being caught.
Miss Morgan—soon his wife, soon Lady Aylesbury, Samuel reminded himself sternly—was placing a pair of pearl earbobs in her ears. “Do you always start your mornings with such a lecture?”
“No,” lied Samuel with a wry expression. “Sleep well?”
It had been the first point of order when the carriage he’d hired had arrived at the Regent’s Hotel last night. He had chosen that time of day—while his family would be dining—so he could hurry Miss Morgan upstairs through a servants’ corridor. It was a wonder how much a few shillings could do.
“Sleeping arrangements,” Miss Morgan had said. “Ah.”
“I’ve got it all sorted out,” Samuel had said hurriedly. “You’ll take the bed—”
She had grinned. “Most generous, for your wife.”
“And I’ll take the sofa. It’s only for one night, after all,” he had added with a shrug. “I’ll speak to the hotel manager about getting you your own suite.”
If she had been surprised at the ease at which he could spend money, Miss Morgan had not said anything. “I see.”
“And, Miss Morgan—”
“Rose, I think, is best,” his soon-to-be temporary wife had said as she had placed down her trunk she had insisted on carrying herself and looked about his hotel room. “And you are to be Samuel to me, are you?”
His stomach had twisted last night, and it twisted now as Samuel looked at the woman with whom he would be spending the next year in close quarters.
Strange. In all his schemes, and in truth he had spent far too much time thinking about this, he had never quite considered just how much time they would be spending together.
A great deal of time.
A great deal of time not kissing Rose Morgan…
Rose Chance. Soon enough. Even if just for a short while.
Pushing the thought, and the memory of that toe-curling kiss, far from his mind at once, Samuel nodded. “I am glad you slept well.”
“I do not think I have slept well in all my life.” Rose yawned.
Samuel grinned. “And yet you yawn.”
“Well, I am about three weeks’ short on sleep,” she said with a shrug. “Which, by the way, is how long we will be telling your family we have been married?”
“Yes, I don’t see why Mr. Todd should reveal the truth to anyone,” Samuel said shortly, pulling on his jacket and smoothing down his lapel.
The solicitor had raised an eyebrow at the marriage license, but he had not said anything to the new marquess about the date.
He’d probably figured it was none of his business, so long as it fulfilled the terms set by the will.
Still, he would have to go back tomorrow with the signed license to prove they had gone through the wedding.
Another layer of lies—but then what did it matter? All would be counterbalanced by the good he could do, would do with Great-Aunt Tessie’s fortune.
“Excellent. And how precisely adoring would you like me to be?” Rose said matter-of-factly, sitting on the end of the bed and carefully pinning a few errant curls back into her bun. “You’ve requested doe eyes for a start.” She blinked, her eyelashes distractingly long over her wide, dark eyes.
Samuel’s stomach roiled horribly. It was not as though he had not expected there to be a certain…
well, businesslike manner about the whole thing.
In a way, it was a relief. He would not get attached to her so it would not bother him when she inevitably left with enough money to set her up for life.
He should be glad, he knew, that Miss Morgan—that Rose was not begging for his affection and wishing he would fall in love with her.
He’d never trust any sentiment from her.
Not after he’d seen her acting so up close.
But still. A little begging might have been nice.
“A bit adoring,” he said awkwardly. “We are supposed to be newly married, after all.”
“We really will be tomorrow,” Rose pointed out with a dry smile. “But I understand. And your sister truly is called ‘Frank’?”
“Francesca, but she won’t answer to it, hasn’t for years,” Samuel said, his grin becoming sincere now. “And my sister Lilianna isn’t here with us. She’s with her husband in London.”
“You have a large family,” said Rose on a sigh, almost a hint of wistfulness on her face.
Samuel laughed. “Oh—forgive me, I am not laughing at you. It’s just—well. The Chance family as a whole—there are four branches of us—becomes almost a crowd. When I am just with my parents and siblings, it feels…intimate.”
Rose slipped off her shoes and dug her toes into the lush carpet. “That sounds…nice.”
He thought about it. He had never had to think about it before. The Chances were just…there. His father, his father’s three brothers, and all their wives and all his cousins. Most definitely a crowd.
“You haven’t told me about your family,” he said mildly. “I should probably know about them, for the pretense.”
And the smile disappeared from her eyes like a candle snuffed out not by a breeze, but a gale. “I have no family.”
“But you must once have had—”
“Are you coming down for breakfast, you old dog?”
Samuel froze. The previous sentence had been accompanied by a great deal of hammering at his door, something that would not have normally been acceptable in a hotel—but then his brother clearly did not care.
“Who is that?” asked Rose curiously, slipping her shoes back on.
“Get into the washroom,” said Samuel in a hiss. “Now!”
Panic was rising and his instincts said to hide—hide, in the convenient washroom that was a revelation. A hotel with a washroom for each suite?
Rose stood to her feet with a grimace. “But if that is your family, surely, I should meet—”
“Not him, and not like this,” Samuel said firmly, striding toward her and bundling her toward her washroom, trying not to notice the softness beneath his fingertips. “Go on, hide!”
“This is not the most auspicious beginning, you know, husband,” Rose said sharply as he shut the door in her face.
The door behind him banged open. “What on earth are you doing, Samuel?”
Samuel whirled around and saw his rascal of a brother. “Benjamin!”
“You know that I have been sent up here to get you,” his younger brother said with a scowl. “God, you wouldn’t know that we are well past one and twenty, would you? It’s like being at Eton again.”
“I liked Eton,” said Samuel mildly, stepping away from the washroom and hoping his brother could not hear the frantic thudding of his heart.
Benjamin snorted. “Of course you did. So come on, what wench has kept you up here?”
There was a sharp twist between his ribs. “No one. Why don’t you—”
“Why don’t you go to the solicitors today with me?” Benjamin interrupted, throwing himself on the bed and sighing heavily. “I am certain I could get old Todd—”
“He’s not that old,” Samuel interrupted, hoping desperately to distract him. “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”
“I think I could convince him to sign over the money to you without a wife, you know,” Benjamin said, pointing a finger at his older brother. “Come on. I’ll go with you and we’ll see what we could do. We could always bribe him, you know—you’ll have enough funds. How about it?”
Samuel hesitated.
Precisely why he did not wish Benjamin to meet Miss Morgan—Rose—he did not know.
Oh, the meeting had to happen at some point. There was not much point in a secret temporary wife, not when one needed the temporary wife in the first place to claim money from a lawyer.
But Benjamin… Well, he was a rake, wasn’t he? A rogue, the man bedded every serving girl and Society widow he came across—and there were rumors he did not always wait until they were widowed. And that was not the sort of gentleman whom he wished introduced to his wife.
Damn it. To Rose. To his temporary wife.
“Samuel, come on,” Benjamin said, his voice quieter now. “I know we don’t always see eye to eye—”
“Your dirty boots are on my bed,” Samuel could not help but point out.
The eyeroll his brother gave him was truly a work of art. He moved his boots off the bed. “Let me come with you to the solicitor’s. You can’t go alone!”
Samuel opened his mouth, but the next words to be spoken in the room were not uttered by him. They were not uttered by his brother, either.
“He has already gone to the solicitor’s to sort everything out,” said Rose lightly as she sashayed into the room, her hips swaying and a teasing smile on her lips. “His wife went with him.”
Benjamin’s jaw dropped. So did Samuel’s, but he managed to close it just in time.
Remember, you are supposed to have been married to this woman for weeks!
“Dear God,” murmured Benjamin.
“Manners,” Samuel snapped, trying to gain his bearings and keep his younger brother in line at the same time—never an easy task. “A lady is present.”
“Yes, she most certainly is,” said his brother as he rose to his feet with a most delighted grin on his face. “Your wife, I presume?”
“You presume correctly,” said Rose graciously, holding out a hand to be kissed.
Samuel knew he should not mind that she did so. He also should not mind that Benjamin almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to get to her. He most certainly should not mind that Rose’s smile widened at the gesture.
“Samuel, you did not tell me you had such a handsome and charming brother,” she said in a voice that was so sultry, Samuel was rather surprised the wallpaper did not start peeling off the walls.
Evidently, his brother was similarly impressed. He glanced over his shoulder at the stoic Samuel with a teasing laugh. “Dear God, man, I can see why you kept her to yourself. If I’d had a woman like this in my bedchamber, I’d hardly leave!”
“Benjamin!” hissed Samuel, stepping across the room and pulling him bodily away from his—from Miss Morgan. Rose. Damn it.
The nerve of the man!
But Benjamin was laughing. “Just a jest, old man. You mustn’t get your drawers in a knot. Well, very pleasant to meet you…?”