“Lady Eversleigh, my dear. A pleasure to see you in town.”
Lenore turned to find Lord Selkirk, a friend of Harry’s, by her side. She held out her hand. “Good evening, my lord. Are you here for the duration or merely until the next meeting at Newmarket?”
“Dash it, m’dear. I’m not such a tipster as all that.”
“Lenore, dear. How’s life with His Grace of Eversleigh?”
Absorbed with turning aside such jocular queries, before she knew it Lenore was surrounded by a small court of acquaintances, friends of her brothers and some of the young ladies she had met in the weeks before her wedding. There was no escape from their chatter. Lenore smiled serenely and bore up under the strain, determined none would be able to say that the Duchess of Eversleigh was not up to snuff.
But she was wilting. In the heat of the ballroom, with the press of bodies all about her, the air close and increasingly stale, she started to feel her senses slide and wondered, in desperation, if she could break free. The conversation about her became a droning buzz in her ears.
“There you are, my dear.”
Jason’s strong voice hauled her back to reality an instant before faintness took hold. Lenore looked up at him with relief in her wide eyes and a small, tight smile on her lips.
Jason understood. He had crossed the room as soon as he had realised how long she had been standing at the centre of her circle. While no gathering, no matter how large, held the slightest power to overwhelm him, he knew she felt differently. He took her hand in a comforting clasp and, with the briefest of nods to her court, led her to the dance-floor.
Lenore came back to life to find herself held in her husband’s arms, slowly circling the room in a waltz. She blinked rapidly. “Th-thank you, my lord. I…didn’t feel at all the thing, just then. The lack of air, I expect.”
“No doubt.” Jason glanced down at her. “We’ll leave after this dance.”
Lenore was too grateful to take umbrage at his edict.
When she found herself seated beside him in the carriage, she wondered whether now would be a propitious time to thank him for her jewels. She tried to discover some way of introducing the topic, racking her tired brain to yield some innocuous phrase. Unconsciously, she leaned her head against his shoulder. Two minutes later, she was sound asleep.
Realising as much, Jason kept silent. Deep in consideration of his latest discovery on the fascinating topic of his wife, he was thankful she was not awake to further confound him. He had quite enough to deal with with this latest revelation. Standing in his aunt’s ballroom, watching his wife smile and laugh at other men’s sallies, seeing her attention focused on them, however innocently, he had been racked by a powerful emotion he could only describe as jealousy. He was jealous—of the entire ton, for the women who claimed her friendship were also included in his sights.
Relaxing back against the leather, he drew a deep breath. After a moment’s hesitation he stretched a protective arm about his sleeping wife, settling her safe against his side. A strong surge of emotion rocked him, but he was getting used to the effect she had on his system and no longer felt surprise at such happenings. This, he knew, was how he wanted things between them, her alone with him, comfortable and secure.
Which was why he had no intention of boasting of her condition. A word to his aunt Eckington as they were leaving had reassured him Lenore had not mentioned the fact. That did not surprise him; his wife was intelligent enough to guess how his aunts would behave once the news was out. His reasons for keeping mum were rather more serious. From his vantage point by the wall, he had seen a number of gentlemen eye his wife speculatively. None had dared approach her; the wolves of the ton had a tried and true approach to succulent young matrons who appeared wit
hin their orbit—he should know; he had perfected the art. They would not approach a young wife until she was known to be bearing her husband’s child. With this point established, most husbands could be relied on to become complacent, keeping to their clubs, leaving their front door unattended. Once it became known Lenore was pregnant, she would become fair game—most tempting game, if he had read the looks on his peers’ faces aright. Although he had no intention of ever becoming a complacent husband, he would much rather his wife was not exposed to the lures of the ton’s greatest lovers.
He glanced down at her face, what he could see of it, and felt his features relax. She had done well, his duchess. She had appeared exactly as he would have wished, gracious, with just a touch of hauteur in her manner to keep the unintroduced at bay. She would do well in the ton—she would succeed there as she had in all the other endeavours she had taken on in marrying him.
When the carriage stopped outside their door, and she did not wake, he carried her inside, soothing her confused murmur when she woke in the light of the hall. To his surprise, she blinked up at him, then smiled and, clasping her arms more tightly about his neck, placed her cheek on his shoulder and allowed him to carry her upstairs.
As he did so, he noted that she did not feel any heavier. It seemed strange that she was carrying his child, that it was growing apace within her, yet there was nothing in her slender figure to attest to the fact. Just as well. With any luck, the Little Season would be over before their news became too obvious to hide.
She was asleep again by the time he reached her room. Trencher, hurrying along the corridor, was taken aback to find her in his arms. At his nod, she opened Lenore’s bedchamber door, hanging back as he strode to the bed and gently laid his wife down.
Jason stood by the bed, drinking in the flawless symmetry of his wife’s features. Slowly, he let his gaze travel down, over the gentle swell of her breasts, along the slender lines of her body and the long, smooth curves of her thighs. There was nothing he wished for more than to be able to stay here, with her, for the rest of the night. But after this afternoon, he no longer had the confidence to press his claims.
He had thought the desire that had burned between them would never die, even if it had nothing more concrete beneath to support it. After this afternoon, he was not even sure of that. Her rejection, unconsidered though it had been, had been all the more damning for that. He had surprised her and she had reacted automatically—there was no surer measure of a woman’s true feelings, he knew that well. Lenore was willing to be his wife—but she had never agreed to be more than that.
He was aware of Trencher, hovering by the door. He beckoned her forward. “Try not to wake her,” he whispered. “And let her sleep in the morning.”
With that injunction, he headed for his room before his baser instincts could rebel and change his mind.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Lenore awoke, stretched, and immediately knew she was alone. Surprised, she swung around—and wished she hadn’t. Not only did the smooth pillow beside her bear testimony to the fact that she had not made her peace with her husband as intended, her head was now swimming.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured weakly, putting a hand to her brow. It felt slightly clammy.
It was still clammy half an hour later, but by then, she felt slightly better, well enough to stand somewhat shakily and cross to the bell-pull.
“Oh, Y’r Grace! Looks like it’s got to you good and proper.”