Chapter 20
Those words stayed with her as she parted ways with Vincent and slipped into her private rooms. She closed the door behind herself, wondering again about the separate chambers.
Perhaps Vincent was trying to give her space to prepare herself for their wedding night. She knew that he did not want to consummate the marriage, but he had proposed teaching her bedsport—which she still wasn’t sure whether to accept.
As her new maid helped her undress and bathe, an old, buried thought slithered back to the forefront of her mind. That night I found him—why was he injured?
As much as she knew about Vincent… she realized she did not know him much at all.
“Please sit up, Your Grace,” Lilian said as she reached for a pitcher to rinse her hair.
Sitting up and tilting her head back, Emma wondered if she should ask Vincent about it at supper… or was that still too heavy of a subject to bring up?
“Let me help you out, Your Grace,” Lillian coaxed, “and Mrs. Roan has asked me to give you a light tour about the house if you are up for it after.”
Emma accepted the offer. Bundled up, she headed out of her rooms for the tour with one lasting look at the far door.
Seated at his desk at his countryside study, Vincent worked through a ton of business contracts, reviewed bills from Parliament, and began to write a speech for the next debate… but now that he’d finally made some time alone after the past few days, his mind inevitably strayed to Custor.
Is it best to carry on with this now that I’m married… or leave it alone until after?
Sagging into his chair, he rubbed his face and winced at the prickle of his beard coming in.
His hand automatically roved to the lowest shelf-drawer on his escritoire and drew it open to reveal a distinct, ivory mask, and at once, all the memories, each and every sin committed unto his family flashed through his mind, violently so that he had to slam the drawer shut to silence it.
I am so close. If Gibbs Custor, the architect of the shipping scheme, isn’t punished, all will be for naught. But I can’t do anything if the bastard remains so elusive…
He contemplated calling for coffee, just to have something to distract him from the weights on his mind, when Weston came in to remind him that supper was served.
“Thank you, Weston,” he muttered.
His manservant did not leave; instead, he gave Vincent a long look that sparked memories of when his father used to do the same to him. The look went on long enough that the air began to chafe over his skin.
“Is something on your mind?” Vincent grated.
“If you’re considering making a move on Custor and presumably putting the lovely young lady in the other room in his crosshairs, I’d reconsider the former,” Weston said calmly.
Vincent’s lips ticked down, “I oft forget that you have the preternatural sense of reading my mind.”
“I think I am the voice of reason that brings you back from the brink,” Weston answered with a small bow.
“I see that smirk on your face, wiseacre,” Vincent rolled his eyes. “Regardless, I can hardly make a move when the bounder is no more present in London than the Black Death.”
“Forgive my presumption, but perhaps that is for the best. For now, of course.”
Vincent scowled as he pushed away from the table and headed to the small dining room he had built instead of a formal one.
Emma was already waiting, wearing that simple brown dress with a low neckline, her hair pinned up to dry. Her cheeks were pink from the bathwater, yet, fresh-faced with a simple lock of hair trailing down her temple, he felt she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
A fire was crackling in the hearth as his eyes skimmed over the meal on the table: bowls of pheasant soup, flaky brown bread, cold slivers of the bird, thin slices of cheese, and fruit for dessert.
Circling the feast Mrs. Roan had labelled as ‘light’ earlier, he pulled out Emma’s chair and then took his own.
“I hope this meal exceeds your expectations.”
“It looks like something Grandmama would cook us on special occasions,” Emma smiled.
As they ate, Emma was quiet, but with the way her brows creased and her eyes would flicker to his face and back away, he knew she had something on her mind.
He waited for the main course to finish before he reached for his glass of sherry and asked, “What is worrying you?”
“I keep wondering what you mean by discussing the arrangements and what we ‘expect from each other’,” she murmured finally. “I know we are not… consummating the marriage, but aside from that, I—I am at a loss.”
His brows furrowed. “I only mean we’ll dutifully play the part of an attentive couple in public assemblies,” he said. “Away from the ton, we’ll share cordial companionship.”
“Companionship,” she echoed. “That is an interesting choice of words.”
“I don’t wish to embarrass you with crasser words,” he grimaced. “Especially at the supper table.”
Her lips flickered up, “But inside my bedroom or a carriage is fine?”
“I am to be as proper as I can,” he corrected while ruffling his hair. “It does not always come out as I’d hope, but I try.”
Emma sat back in a way that the firelight cast half her face in golden rays and the other in shadow. “Do you plan on marrying after this again? Surely the duty for a duke is to have an heir.”
Vincent felt his chest contract. “Emma… as much as I’d like to admit that I have planned that far in my life, I have not. The truth is that with my station, marriage is not something I need to… fixate on.
“I can be seventy, and there will be a line of marriageable ladies ready to take my hand. It sounds… presumptuous, I know—”
“It is.”
“—but it is why I have always taken marriage, a wife, and children for granted. I never cared to be attached, nor do I intend to in the imminent future.”
She looked away then, and he was surprised by the depth of feeling upon her face. Something troubled moved through her in waves—unhappiness, confusion, regret maybe? He did not know what to make of it and was not sure if he should ask.
“I…” she swallowed finally. “I see.”
This was certainly not the direction he’d envisioned the night to go. “It’s not all for naught, Emma. With the power you now have, you can do anything you desire.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” he repeated. “The world is your oyster.”
“If only I had the sword to open it,” Emma quoted Pistol from the Merry Wives of Windsor.
“You needn’t violence to take over,” he chuckled lowly, “Only my name.”
“This all feels…” she faltered, “…like a strange dream.”
“A good one?” he asked while finishing his drink.
She slowly shook her head, “I’m… unsure as of yet.”
Vincent noted the change in her tone. Whatever had wounded her a moment ago had not vanished, but it had retreated enough for him to know better than to pursue it. The day had asked too much of her already.
“Are we going to share a bed?” she blurted out, blushing.
“Not unless you’d like to,” he offered, leaning forward and bracing his forearms on the table.
Finding her gaze and holding it, he admitted, “I will not lie to you, Emma, I want you. And I’m far beyond being subtle about it.
I want you more than I have wanted a woman in years, and I know I professed the desire to remain unattached, but my offer still stands.
“I want you badly enough that sitting across from you in my own home without touching you feels like a punishment.”
Her lips parted a smidgen before she shut them and cleared her throat. “How very… magnanimous of you. I think I shall retire now. I have… quite many things to think over.”
By pure ingrained training, he rose as she did. “Good night, Emma.”
She crossed to the door, then wavered with her hand nearly upon the latch. For one suspended moment, she stood very still. Then she turned back.
He was halfway into his chair when she came at him in a flurry of muslin and temper, planted one hand against his chest, tipped onto her toes, and put her mouth to his.
At first, he mistook it for a farewell kiss: some small feminine experiment in vengeance. Until her fingers drove into his hair, her eagerness unleashing an ungovernable hunger.
Then, just as suddenly, she pulled away, breathlessly whispering, “Good night.”
The door shut behind her, and Emma pressed her back to it, her heart still galloping against her stays.
Foolish girl! What were you thinking?
That was the trouble. She hadn’t been thinking—not with her head, at least, which was the only part of her she could afford to trust just now. She touched her fingertips to her lips and made herself remember what those lips could cost.
Vincent wanted her; he had said as much, plainly, and the wanting was a heady, dangerous thing.
But wanting was not the same as keeping, and she would do well not to confuse the two.
A man might desire a woman and still hand her off at the end of a bargain with a kind word and a carriage to elsewhere.
He had promised her recompense. A tutor for James.
A future stitched together out of his name and his coin—and all of it rested on the cool, sensible understanding that this was an arrangement, nothing more.
What leverage had a lovesick wife? None.
A wife who wept and clung and confessed her heart was a wife who could be soothed, managed, gently set aside. But a partner who kept her side of a cold bargain; that woman could hold a duke to his word.
James and Grandmama Agnes needed her to hold him to his word.
His hand dropped from her waist as she slipped away from him and departed the room. He stared after her swaying derrière until the door shut; slowly, he sank into the chair and rubbed his fingers over his lips. A pin from her hair lay glinting on the carpet near his foot.
For a while, he only looked at it. At that small, damning relic of her disorder. Then the grandfather clock gave its dim, solemn gong for nine, and the room seemed to return around him: the abandoned plates, the guttering candles, the wine gone dull in the glass.
With a sigh, he rang for the footmen to clear the table. Only when the room was empty again did he stoop, take up her butterfly hairpin, and carry it with him upstairs.
In his bedchamber, he flung open the window and dragged down the sheets.
Slipping between the bedsheets, he tried to sleep, but no sleep came; instead, he tossed and turned. Eventually, he merely rolled on his back, tucked behind his head, and stared up at the shadows frolicking on the ceiling.
Without the fog and smoke of London, clear moonlight streamed through a part in the curtains. A raw mix of worry and fear was churning in his stomach as he tried to figure where he had gone wrong…
I did not ask her what she wanted from this marriage.
Pressing the heel of his hands into his eyes, he sighed, “You know better than this.”