Chapter 6
Five men.
Rosaline could count the males with whom she’d had a relationship—or an entire conversation—on one hand.
Her indifferent father. Her damaged brother.
Her vicious uncle. Doddering old Doctor Pritchard back in Hampshire.
And the endlessly decent Sir Carlton. She’d three more brothers-in-law, but Titus Conleith was a new father and busy preeminent surgeon, and the other two had been abroad practically since they’d been introduced.
This didn’t leave them very much time to become closely acquainted.
Five men.
And now…she had a husband.
A husband she couldn’t stop staring at.
A husband she’d barely had a glimpse of in two weeks.
A husband who refused to spare her more than a passing glance the entirety of their wedding day.
After a profoundly mediocre ceremony sealed with a perfunctory kiss on the corner of her mouth, Mr. Wolfe—Eli—had abandoned her to preparations for the ball they were throwing in lieu of a honeymoon.
Another wedding was to be had not a month hereafter, and it was explained that Elijah and Rosaline Wolfe would not disembark until the young Baron, Emmett, and his bride, Lucy, were well on their way to wedded bliss.
Rather than enjoying one of the few balls she’d been invited to attend, one that had been thrown in her own honor, Rosaline retreated to a shadowy nook above the grand staircase at the first opportunity to indulge in a bit of panic and self-pity.
She gazed down through the ornate banner to the resplendent scene below. From her vantage, she could only see the swirling hems of glittering gowns as they waltzed across a dance floor she’d not been invited to.
Her husband didn’t dance, apparently.
The fortnight since she’d enjoyed her first kiss was now a haze of chaos. Her fiancé didn’t visit but once, and that was to commiserate with Morley, who explained that Eli was seeing to some business interests before their wedding.
Though she’d been disappointed, Rosaline had believed Morley.
She’d had to.
Because the alternative was that with one kiss, he’d changed his mind about the entire thing. Or, with one kiss, the pleasant evening they’d spent had been wiped from his mind, replaced with revulsion.
Could she have done it wrong, the kissing?
To her, it’d felt so extraordinarily right. In fact, after his impassioned tirade, admitting he found her desirable, she’d abandoned a very instinctual fear of intimacy of any kind, and leapt into the kiss with all of herself.
Perhaps he’d wanted to be the one in control of the kiss. Maybe he’d disliked that she used her tongue in the same fashion he had done.
That she’d taken a taste for herself.
Men, as she understood it, liked it when women were submissive, silent, and still. She’d been neither during their interlude, becoming this unrecognizable creature of sensation driven by a heady instinct born of need.
It occurred to her that this was why people in his realm didn’t kiss. Because of how distracting it was. Indeed, she’d thought of little else since.
At night, she’d lie in bed and imagine that the taste of him still lingered on her lips. Warm skin spiced with all things masculine and mysterious.
There in the dark, she’d dream his hands were on her again, large and strong and careful. She’d conjure the press of his lips to her mind, running her fingers along her mouth in a pale attempt to capture the same sensation.
In her heart, she secretly wished he did the same. Perhaps not so frivolously as she, as he was a stern sort of man without the leisure of romantic idealism. But she hoped he thought of her in a few idle moments of his busy days and smiled. That he looked forward to their next kiss. And more.
She looked across the way from her bedroom window often at night, wondering which chamber in Hespera House was his.
Which one would be hers?
A fortnight ago, Rosaline had been devastated to learn that she’d have to marry.
But their kiss had given her hope. Not only the kiss, but the reverent gasp he made when he watched the stars. The open curiosity he showed when she spoke of things that excited and inspired her.
She’d left Hespera House liking her husband-to-be.
It was why she’d expended so much effort for the wedding.
Her hopelessly straight hair had been in curling wraps for two nights, and she’d even allowed Emmett to splurge on one of the most heavenly wedding dresses she could imagine.
Nora had suggested she wear the family jewels and Baroness tiara for the occasion.
When Rosaline had looked in the mirror right before the ceremony, she hadn’t recognized herself. Eyes bright with a bit of hope. With anticipation. A neckline that swooped just below her shoulders and skimmed the tops of her breasts in a way that made her look as if she had any breasts to speak of.
She’d felt like a princess. Like a woman a wealthy man like Elijah Wolfe would be pleased to see as his approaching bride.
Except, he hadn’t been.
Once she appeared on Emmett’s arm to advance up the aisle, Eli had dashed a swift glance at her, then affixed his gaze somewhere above her head as his expression shifted from grim to grave.
Rosaline had a lifetime of hiding her emotions from a man who didn’t want to see them, but it was all she could do to stop a disappointed tear from escaping.
In fact, escape was all she’d sought since. A quiet place to grieve her dashed hopes and muster up the courage to face him.
To face him every day until death did they part.
Unless he planned on stashing her away somewhere he wouldn’t be bothered by her.
Just like her father had done to her mother.
Her sallow, bitter, cruel mother who died early of nothing more than disappointment and distemper, leaving her children to the mercy of Uncle Reginald.
Worrying at the inside of her cheek with her teeth, Rosaline blinked when an emerald-green skirt and a cup of punch appeared in front of her.
Emmaline, her only full-blooded elder sister, always had a knack for finding her when others seemed perfectly content to allow her to disappear. “I added a bit of spice to it.”
Spice was her secret word for spirits.
Scanning the ballroom with her Baltic blue eyes, Emmaline scratched at the matching dress that set her copper hair aflame. “Do we know any of these bloody people?”
“Emma,” Rosaline admonished in a loud whisper, though there was no real heat in it. “Someone will hear you.”
She waved Rosaline’s worry away with a hand she’d relieved of a glove before pinning her with a pensive examination. “Did something happen? You’re not quite the cheerful woman you were this morning.”
Cursing Emma’s observant nature, Rosaline smoothed her hand over the curls that were quickly becoming as limp as she felt. How did she share the strange and fickle emotions swirling inside of her? How did she burden someone who cared about her in all this helplessness she battled?
“I’m just…a bit overstimulated,” she lied, painting on a placating smile.
Emma threaded their arms together, careful of the fine dress and the artfully arranged hair and veil. “You made the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” she sighed, kissing Rosaline on the cheek. “And your groom isn’t difficult to look at either.”
No. No he wasn’t.
If Rosaline had been asked to remember a word of the ceremony, she’d have failed miserably. Because, even though her husband hadn’t been impressed with her, she’d almost lost her wits at the sight of him.
They called him Midas, but if Rosaline were to give him a mythological assignation, it would be none other than Hades himself.
Not a being of light, but a dark-haired, flinty-eyed God. One who’d crafted a kingdom beneath the earth and ripped gold from stones and ore. His features were a perfect canvas for the stark and brutal bones beneath them.
Stealing covert glances during the ceremony had forced her to notice only one defining feature at a time.
The grooves etched in the corners of his eyes.
The sparse threads of silver anointing the dark hair at his temple.
The strong cut of his jaw that wanted a shave by three in the afternoon.
The lackadaisical arrangement of his limbs, loose and lethal when so many of her countrymen were taught to stand with regimental posture.
He presented the image of a predator at rest. A wolf in the woods surveying his territory as, though he was in a foreign country, it seemed that any land he stood upon was claimed by him.
That it would be easier to move a mountain than the man.
The constant challenge in his eyes invited anyone to try.
Rosaline had yearned to examine his rough, scarred hand as she’d slid on the ring with trembling fingers. The gold band had been simple and wide, cold and hard to the touch.
Like him.
As she understood it, he was a being of the desert, a man used to unthinkable heat and a relentless sun. How did he fare in their damp, chilly land?
She’d given his chilled hand a squeeze between the two of her own after sliding the ring into place, hoping to impart some of her warmth.
Without reciprocation, or even acknowledgment, he’d extracted his hand from hers, his fingers closing into tight fists.
“Why are you hiding here?” Emma asked with gentle solemnity settling onto the stair beside her. “Is this not a happy day?”
Swallowing the sand in her throat, Rosaline studied her own ring, also gold, though a few diamonds winked from where they were inlayed into the band like little captured stars.
“I was hoping for a happy match, despite the circumstances, but I don’t think Mr. Wolfe is at all pleased to be called my husband. ”
Emma’s expression darkened as much as her gingery complexion would allow. “If he’s unhappy with you, Ros, he’s a fool.”
“I don’t know…” Plucking at a stray thread on her sleeve, she fought back emotion with all the fervency of a besieged stronghold.
Once the walls collapsed, there’d be nothing to protect what was inside. Her soft, vulnerable underbelly so often exposed to bruising blows and crushing cruelty.