Chapter 22
With some ease from the rife stress, Vincent had managed a few hours of sleep, but by habit drummed into him from Eton days, he was up by dawn and took Titan out in the fields behind the house.
A pale mist lingered over the lawns and meadows, softening the hedgerows and distant trees. The cool, damp breeze carried the scent of dew on grass while Titan ran around without a care in the world, sniffing and snuffling at bushes.
It was the first time in a decade that Vincent experienced, what vaguely felt like, an ordinary day.
His eyes kept skittering back to the manor house, toward the general direction of Emma’s room. This time, the curtain was no longer fixed in place.
She stood there, pale behind the glass, looking down at him.
Swallowing, he turned back to Titan and plucked the small knit ball from his pocket. He was preparing to throw it again when the back door opened, and Emma stepped out, her morning gown and wrapper plain white, her hair in a braid over one shoulder.
No lace or frills, no ribbons or trimming.
Again, that felt oddly refreshing. Worse, it made her look newly tumbled from bed.
“Good morning,” she murmured.
He looked over his shoulder, “Good morning to you, too. I hope you… slept well.”
“I did,” she murmured, though her eyes shifted to the pond and then away.
Liar.
He threw the ball, and Titan charged after it, flinging dew behind his paws. “I thought we might begin your next lesson before breakfast.”
Her fingers tightened on the wrapper’s sash, and it told him just where her mind had gone. “Before… breakfast?”
Wicked man that he was, Vincent let her suffer it for a second.
“Swimming, Emma,” he laughed.
“Oh.” Her cheeks turned pink.
“If you ever fall into another river and I’m not there, I would sleep happier knowing you knew what to do,” he explained, while Titan returned and jammed the wet ball into his palm.
She furrowed her brows. “And why couldn’t you be there. We’re marri—”
Vincent stopped with the ball still in his hand, the damp wool dripping onto his boot, before Emma recovered herself and remembered the short-term nature of their marriage arrangement. “Oh,” she murmured again.
Titan barked once and bumped his head impatiently into Vincent’s belly.
“Good God, you possess the subtlety of a battering ram,” Vincent muttered to the hound, then to Emma, “There are steps at the shallow end. The spring is natural, but I had my engineers widen it and put steps in so I can easily swim. Most lords’ exercise at Gentleman Jacks or fence, I prefer swimming. ”
Her brows lifted. “That’s how you knew how to save me.”
“Sort of,” he answered, while lobbying the ball for Titan again.
As the dog took off, he continued, “When I was seven, my father would take our family to Brighton to teach us by the sea. And now I mean to teach you—in albeit less glamorous conditions, if you’ll let me.
If you wish to stop, we stop, of course. ”
That made her pause longer than fear had. Then, lifting her chin, she stepped toward the stone bank. “Stopping before I begin would be dreadfully embarrassing.”
“Drowning is worse.”
“I had gathered that, thank you.”
With a small sound caught between amusement and exasperation, she tugged off her slippers. Vincent shed his coat and waistcoat, tossed them onto the bench, and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows, which proved a useless thing when he stepped into the pond and the water swallowed the linen anyway.
Emma stared at the submerged steps with an ancient fear.
“Give me your hand,” Vincent coaxed.
She did, and the first press of her palm, warm from sleep and nerves, sent a low, inconvenient heat through his blood.
The water lapped at her toes, and she hissed through her teeth. “It is freezing, how do you…”
“Your body gets used to it after a time,” he explained, catching her elbow when she shifted back a step.
Her answer was lost when she took the next step, and the water climbed to her ankles. The thin hem of her gown darkened instantly, clinging about her feet like grasping fingers.
When the pond reached her knees, her hand locked around his wrist with surprising force.
Vincent looked down at the grip and the memory of last night’s rendezvous seared through his nerve-endings. “We can stop here for this morning, if you’d like. Frankly, I half-expected you to call me mad and surrender back at the stone steps.”
“N-no, I can go further,” she shuddered.
“Perhaps. But my wrist is giving ulterior opinions.”
She loosened her grip with a mortified little gasp. “I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. I have another.”
A shaky laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“Now,” Vincent said, coming behind her. “Lean back against my hands and let the water hold you.”
Emma twisted to look at him, wet hem dragging around her knees, enough to reveal a delicious sample of the milky skin beneath. “Let the water hold me?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t drown,” he chuckled lightly.
“Well, it sounds suspiciously close to drowning,” she frowned back.
His lips twitched. “I have you, pet.”
She went still at that, and he cursed himself for saying it in quite that voice. Nevertheless, she turned back to face the pale sky. Sliding one hand beneath her shoulder blades and the other to her waist, he guided her slowly backward.
Her braids floated over his wrist like a dark rope.
Her skirts spread in ghostly ripples. Her wrapper opened enough at her throat, baring the tender line of her collarbone and the upper swell of her breasts, that he fixed his eyes on the mist beyond her head lest he embarrass himself like some wet-behind-the-ear schoolboy swooning over his first girl.
“Be honest with me,” she whispered. “How ridiculous do I look like this?”
“Like something better men than I would drown for,” he breathed, his thumb stilling between her shoulder blades.
When her only response was a lovely apple-cheeked flush, he continued, “You surprise me daily, Emma. I expected you to ask for undying love and sonnets in the morning, not accompany me swimming.”
Her lips curved, and her cheeks dimpled. “A sonnet… from you.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Vincent felt his own lips soften. “I have read my fair share of the Bard, and I think I remember a good amount of it.”
“Then I shall expect proof one day.”
“Don’t grow greedy now, duchess.”
The title made her lashes flutter. He felt the small change in her body before he spoke again.
“Last night, I… told you what I wanted in the marriage,” he murmured, before the moment could turn too strange, “but I never had the grace to ask you what you wanted, which, honestly, is reprehensible of me because I was taught to know better.”
Emma’s eyes shifted from the sky to his face. “With all the events of yesterday, I hadn’t caught onto that.”
“I don’t want this marriage to be one-sided,” he shrugged. “Now is a better time than ever to speak to your heart’s content.”
She swallowed, and the movement tugged his attention to her throat before he forced it back to her eyes.
Eventually, she did, “I think I wish for our marriage… as long or short as it may be, to be one of respect and understanding—”
A sparrow skimming low over the spring made her hips kick up.
Vincent caught her about the waist before she went under, and she struck his chest with a wet slap of muslin and terror.
“—and not drowning,” she finished, breathlessly clutching his shoulders.
A laugh broke from him.
She tipped her face up, indignant and dripping. “Don’t laugh at my expense, I was almost attacked!”
He sealed his lips with great effort. “You are correct. My apologies, Emma.”
She remained against him a moment longer than necessary, her hands curled in his damp sleeves.
Then, as if remembering herself, she drew back and smoothed her wet gown.
The muslin slid under her palms and clung the harder for it, dark over the dip of her waist, the swell of her hips, the lovely length of her thighs beneath the water.
Vincent’s hands closed uselessly at his sides. “Continue,” he managed.
Emma gathered herself. “To… share in decisions… and treat each other with kindness. More than duty, I would like us to be true companions, I think. I want to get to know you.”
To that, Vincent reached down and laid his palm up beneath the water. After a moment, she rested her hand over his so that their palms met. The touch was so unexpectedly intimate that his insides quivered.
“I can agree to that.”
Her gaze darted from his hand up to his eyes, and her pupils dilated; at least that much was for sure, their attraction was mutual.
“Of course, I have dreamed of a love match like most girls do,” she breathed. “But the reality of my situation, or well, past situation, overshadowed the fantasy in my heart.”
“What did you think would take its place?” he asked.
“A quiet life in the countryside with a school master or vicar husband and becoming a mother,” she admitted.
Something sharp and jagged scraped over his ribs. No wonder she had been taken aback and upset yesterday.
“This is why I needed to ask what you wanted,” he murmured. “I think you know that won’t happen with us, but if you do choose to remarry after, I hope you find someone who will give you all you desire.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “I expected that when you told me you were going to give me an ‘out’ from the marriage. I’ve no intention of bemoaning my fate for as long as this goes on. I intend to keep this as a… business arrangement.”
He paused to assess her tone and body angles, but didn’t find any reason to think she was lying.
“Good.”
“As long as you intend to fulfill your promise to… erm…” she faltered, eyes flicking to the water as though the answer might be written there, “…to help me master the art of the seduction?”
A slow smile crossed his face. “I will teach you how to please a man, but I won’t bed you. As I promised, you’ll be fully prepared for when you leave.”
Before he could decide why those words tasted more bitter than they ought, Titan seized Emma’s wrapper from the bank and bolted across the lawn with it flapping from his mouth like a captured flag.
Emma gasped. “Titan!”
Vincent stared after him. “Titan. Back here, boy!”
“He has my wrapper!” she hissed, folding her arms high across her chest as she looked down at what the pond had made of her gown. The wet muslin clung sheer over the shape of her breasts, her rosy nipples drawn tight by the cold. “Oh God…”
Vincent looked too; beneath the water, his length hardened with a violence that made him hate himself for looking and look again all the same.
“Stay there,” he said, already striding out of the water.
“Where else would I go? I am half-naked in a spring!” she called after him.
“I don’t need the reminder,” he groaned inwardly to himself.
He snatched his coat from the bench and draped it around her shoulders before going after the hound. Titan evaded him twice, sneezed directly into the wrapper, and finally surrendered only when Vincent traded it for the knit ball.
By the time he returned, Emma was on the bank in his coat, wet braid plastered to her shoulder, glaring at the dog like a wronged queen. “I believe your hound has no respect for duchesses,” she remarked with a curled brow.
Vincent grimaced an apology. “He is unused to having a lady around the house. Much like me at times, unfortunately.”
A discreet cough came from behind them. Mrs. Roan stood with a breakfast tray. “Breakfast, Your Graces.”
Mortified, Emma hid her face.