She’d been here before. Sneaked in, cloaked and mysterious, to see him. To surprise him. Just as she’d surprised him today.
No. That day was nothing like today. It had been the opposite of today.
That day, she’d come for love.
She ignored the thought and spun to face him, uneasy as the door closed, the quiet snick like a gunshot. He tore the wig from his head, tossing it to a nearby chair with enough disregard to betray his outward calm. He worked at the fastening of the heavy robes, and she found herself unable to look away from that large, sure hand, bronzed and corded with grace and strength. When his task was complete, he swung the garment from his shoulders, the wave of the deep scarlet fabric distracting her, pulling her gaze up to his, where one dark brow arched in unsettling knowledge.
When the robes hung in their place by the door, he came farther into the room. “Where have you been?”
She moved to the massive window that looked east, to where the dome of St. Paul’s gleamed in the distance. Crossing her arms over her chest with affected nonchalance, she replied, “Does it matter?”
“As you ran from me, and half of London believes me guilty of some kind of nefarious plot, yes. It matters.”
“They think me dead?”
“They don’t say it, but I imagine so. Your sisters don’t help, glowering at me whenever we cross paths.”
She inhaled sharply, hating the way her chest tightened at the reference to her four younger sisters. More loves lost. “And the other half of London? What do they think?”
“Likely the same, but they don’t blame me for it.”
“They think I deserved it. Of course.” He did not reply, but she heard the reason nonetheless. She deserved it for trapping the poor, eligible duke into marriage, and not even having the decency to deliver him an heir. Ignoring the pang of injustice that came with the thought, she said, “And here I am, very much alive. I imagine that shall set tongues wagging.”
“Where did you go?” The question was soft and if she hadn’t known better, Sera would have thought it was filled with something other than frustration.
Her attention fell to a row of black crows perched on the roof of the opposite wing of the building, shimmering in the August heat. She took a moment, counting them before she answered. Seven. “Away.”
“And that is all the answer I am to receive? I—” The reply was clipped and angry, but the hesitation was the thing that drew her attention.
She turned. “You?”
For a moment, he looked as though he would say something more. Instead, he shook his head. “So. You are returned.”
“Ever more troublesome, am I not?” He leaned against his great oak desk in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and trousers, long, muscled legs crossed at the ankles, a crystal glass dangling from his fingers, as though he had not a care in the world. She ignored the way her chest tightened at the portrait he made, and raised a brow. “You do not offer your wife a drink?”
His head tilted slightly, the only evidence of his surprise before he straightened and moved to a nearby table adorned with a decanter and three crystal glasses. She watched as he poured her two fingers of amber liquid—he moved in the same way he always had, all privilege and grace, lifting the glass and delivering it to her with an outstretched arm.
She sipped, and they stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity, until she could bear it no longer. “You should be happy with my return.”
“Should I?”
She would have given everything she had to know what he was thinking. “Divorce will give you everything you ever wanted.”
He drank. “How did you ever guess that I longed to be plastered across the newspapers of London?”
“You married a Talbot sister, Your Grace.” Five girls, infamous in the London gossip rags that had named them the Soiled S’s, daughters of the Earl of Wight, once a coal miner with a skill for finding valuable stores of the fuel—skill enough to have bought himself a title. Earldom or no, the rest of the aristocracy could not stomach the family, loathing them for their remarkable ability to climb, labeling them celebrities for celebrity’s sake. The irony, of course, was that their father had worked for his money, not been born into prestige.
How backward the world was.
“My destiny, then, a Dangerous Daughter.”
Sera held back the cringe at the moniker—the one she’d inherited for them all.
You trapped me.
I did.
Get out.
“Not just any,” she said, refusing to bend. “The most dangerous.”
He watched her for a moment, as though he could see her thoughts. She resisted the urge to fidget. “If you won’t tell me where you went, perhaps you will tell me why you have returned?”
She drank, considering the lie she would have to tell. “Did I not make myself clear?”
“You think divorce so easily obtained?”
“I know it is not, but you would prefer . . . this?”
He did not look away, his gaze so unsettling, seeming to see so much even as it hid everything. “We would not be the first to suffer a loveless marriage.”
They had not always been so loveless.
“I’ve suffered enough.” She spread her hands wide. “And, unlike the rest of the aristocracy, I have no reason not to end our unhappy union. I have nothing to lose.”
He leveled her with a look. “Everyone has something to lose.”
She matched it with one of her own. “You forget, husband. I have already lost everything.”
He looked away. “I don’t forget.” He drank, and she watched the muscles in his hand tighten and strain against the glass, a small, secret, locked-away part of her wondering at it.
That part could remain locked away. She did not care what he remembered.
She cared only that he was a powerful man, with remarkable resources, and that the dissolution of their marriage was essential to the life she had chosen for herself. The one she had built from the ashes of the life she had left. “Let me be entirely clear, Haven,” she said, forcing the formality. “This is our only chance to be rid of each other. To be rid of our past.” She paused. “Or did you have another plan to exorcise the demons of our marriage?”
He exhaled, heading around the desk, as though he were through with the conversation. She watched him, considering the action. Imagining what he was thinking. “Did you?”
“I did, as a matter of fact.”
Surprise flared. There were only three ways to dissolve a marriage. Hers was one. The others—“Annulment is not possible,” she said, hating the thread of sadness that threatened at the words. At the idea that he might have pushed for it. There had been a—
There had been a child.
He met her gaze then. “Not annulment.”
“Then you were intending to have me declared dead.” It had occurred to her, of course. At night, when she thought about the possibility that he might desire an heir. That he might have changed his mind. That he might have decided another woman and another family were desirable.
There was only one way to clear the path to a new heir. With the exception of the fact that she was not dead. And one other minor issue.
“Four years hence?” The law required seven to have passed before a person could be declared dead. He looked away. “Ah. But you’ve the funds and the power to circumvent a little thing like the passage of time, don’t you, Duke?”
His gaze narrowed. “You say that as though you do not plan to use those same funds to convince Parliament to grant us a divorce—something so exorbitantly costly that there have been, what, two hundred and fifty authorized? Ever? In history?”
“Three hundred and fourteen,” Sera answered. “And at least at the end of my plan we are both alive. Was I to die soon? Am I lucky I arrived before the summer recess and not after it? When Parliament returns from summer idyll, rested and ready to disappear one duchess and make room for another?”
“It no longer
matters, does it?” he said, the words calm enough to tempt her to rage.
It shouldn’t have. She had one goal. The Singing Sparrow, her tavern. And with it funds, freedom, and future. None of which was hers until he cut her reins.
“So get to it, Sera. What is the reason for the dissolution of our once legendary union? There are limited arguments for divorce. What, then? Shall you tell my colleagues that I was intolerably cruel? Declare to all London that I am a lunatic? Perhaps you were forced to marry me? No,” he scoffed. “Everyone knows you came quite willingly. Fairly tripping down the aisle to shackle yourself to me.”
“What a silly girl I was,” she snapped. “That was before I knew the truth.”
His gaze narrowed. “And what truth is that?”
That you never wanted me. That you cared more for your title than for your future. That we would never be more than a passing, fleeting moment. That you wouldn’t care when our family became an impossibility.
“It is no matter.”
“I never lied,” he said.
It was an echo of years earlier. You lied. She could still hear the words, as though he’d said them yesterday instead of three years ago, when he’d refused to listen. When he refused to believe.
Because she hadn’t lied. Not when it was important. She raised her chin, defiant and defensive. “In this, husband, you do forget.”
He set the weighted tumbler to his desk with an ominous thud, punctuating his movement as he came to her, a muscle twitching in his cheek the only indication of his irritation.
Sera willed her breath steady, her heart calm. She’d intended to infuriate him. She’d wanted to set him on edge. To make him wish her gone. To give her what she wanted. To set her free. She’d planned to be here. Planned to irritate. To leave him for the summer with the sourest of tastes.
She simply had not expected to be so trapped by the memory of him.
“I don’t forget it, Seraphina. Not a moment of it. And neither do you.” He drew closer, and she could not stop the step she took backward, toward the windowsill overlooking all London—the city that bowed to him as she once had. She took a deep breath, refusing to let him intimidate her.
And he did not intimidate. He did something much worse.
He reached for her, his fingers playing gently down the column of her neck, barely there, a whisper that she should have been able to ignore. “You think I do not remember you well enough to see it? You think I did not see the memories assault you when you stepped through that door? Into this room? You think I did not recall those same memories? The last time you were here? In this room?”
She swallowed, disliking the way he closed in upon her. “I don’t recall ever being here.”
“Lie to the rest of the world, Sera,” he said, his fingers teasing over her shoulders. She would not pull away. Would not let him win. “Lie to me, even. About your past and your plans for the future. About where you have been and where you plan to go. But do not ever, ever imagine that I do not know the truth of your memories.”
His touch reversed itself, returning to her neck, this time finding purchase, fingers curling warm and sure, his thumb stroking strong and familiar across her jaw, tilting her face up to his.
Marking her with the past.
With his words, soft as silk. “Do not ever, ever imagine that I do not know that you watched me remove those robes thinking all the while of the thickness of them. Of the softness of them against your skin. Of the way you once lay bare on them on this very floor. Of the way I lay there with you.”
He was so close now, close enough to feel, to smell—leather and earth, as though he’d come in from the fields instead of the Houses of Parliament—intoxicating in his nearness even as his words stung.
Even as she told herself she did not care.
“I remember, Sera. I remember the taste of you, like sunshine and peace. I remember the feel of you, heat and silk. I remember the way you gasped, stealing my breath for yourself. Stealing me. The way you offered yourself as a prize. Making me believe in you. In us. Before I fell and you triumphed.”
The insinuation that she had ruined them and what they might have had should not have surprised her, and still it did, moving her to find her words and strike her own blow. “It was never triumph. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
Her aim was true. He released her. Thank heavens. “You received your title, did you not? And your sisters, the purchase they required to scale the walls of the aristocracy. And your mother, the voice to crow her triumph to the world. Her eldest trapped a duke.”
Only because I never wanted anything like I wanted you.
She shook her head, hating him for being so close. Hating herself for wanting him even as she wanted nothing to do with him. “I no longer want it.”
He drew nearer, his eyes locked upon her, forcing her to tip her head back to remain his equal. “You should have considered that before you took it.” Closer still, until she could feel the soft warmth of his breath on her skin. On her lips. “You think you have not ruined this place for me? This place that is for men of purpose? For history? For order? You think I am not in constant reminder of you? Of the future we might have had?”
It was a lie, of course. He didn’t think of their future. If he thought of her at all, it was in anger and nothing else. But even now he toyed with her, searching for emotion. She’d always been his toy. Never his equal. She shook her head, refusing to be swayed by him. Refusing to be deterred from her goal.
“Enough,” she said. “It’s ancient past.”
He gave a little laugh at that, devoid of humor. “Past is prologue, Angel. I think of it every day.”
Sera’s lips parted on a silent gasp. He was close enough to kiss her, and suddenly she could remember, too. The feel of him. The taste of him. The way he had made her ache with want.
Except she was no longer that silly, stupid girl. She placed her hands flat against his chest, the strong, muscled ridges beneath his shirt stiffening at the movement, rippling as she traced them to his shoulders, her fingers teasing at the warm skin of his neck, tempting him.
He leaned in barely, nearly undetectable. Detected, nonetheless. Sera sensed victory. Her own whisper echoed in the room. “Your memory fails you if you think I have wreaked such havoc alone, husband. There were two of us on those robes. Two of us at Highley the day I trapped you. Two of us in London the day I begged you to release me—the day you swore you would take your vengeance for my sins by refusing me the only thing I ever wanted.” She was proud of the steel in her words. Of how she could speak without her voice cracking. Without summoning memory of the child she’d lost, and the hope she’d lost in the same instant.
Proud enough to stand in her purpose and drive her point home. “But perhaps you do not recall the specifics as well as you think. Surely, it is difficult to remember all the times with me, as there have been so many other women since.”
She reveled in his response, the way his head snapped up, his eyes—those beautiful, mysterious eyes—finding hers. He watched her, his anger clear, and she waited for his next move. Ached for it, even as she hated herself for doing so.
It had always been like this. Intense and evenly matched. Tempting beyond measure, even when it hurt.
“And so we get to it. Adultery.” He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck as he looked away, exhaling on a soft laugh. “Unfortunately, this is London in 1836, and while you might think yourself a veritable Boadicea, wife, the law does not. My actions beyond our bedchambers are not grounds for divorce. You shall have to keep searching.”
She picked at an invisible speck on her sleeve, affecting boredom. “Never fear, Duke. There is always impotence.”
His lips flattened into a thin, straight line as Sera pushed past him, toward the door to the chamber, her heart pounding from his proximity, from memory and panic and something else she did not care to name. She released the breath she had been holding in a long, slow exhale as she reached for the
door handle.
She turned back to find that he was now staring out the window, across the rooftops of London, the golden, liquid sunlight gleaming around him like a halo, marking his broad shoulders, his straight spine, his strong arms and narrow hips. She hated herself for noticing any of it. For remembering the feel of it. The warmth of him.
“Malcolm,” she said, the handle already turning in her grasp. He stilled at the use of his given name, but did not look to her, not even when she said, proud and clear, “I feel I should point out that, while a husband’s infidelities may not be grounds for divorce, a wife’s are quite a different thing altogether.”
And with her closing salvo, the Duchess of Haven left the Houses of Parliament, scandal in her wake.
Scandal, and a husband so irate, she imagined her divorce would come swift and without hesitation.
Chapter 4
So-Fine Seraphina!
Doe-Eyed Duke Meets His Match
March 1, 1833
Three years, five months, and two weeks earlier
Mayfair, London
“Surely there is nothing in the wide world worse than the first ball of the season.” Haven pushed his way onto a small balcony at Worthington House, grateful for the cold, crisp March air, a welcome respite from the cloying heat and stench of the rooms inside, packed with more aristocrats than he could have imagined—all desperate to resume city life after months in the country, consumed with boredom.
“It’s not so very bad,” the Marquess of Mayweather replied, closing the door behind him.
Haven cut his friend a skeptical look. “It’s impossible to move for all the debutantes and matchmakers within. They’re slavering after us, as though we are meat.”
Mayweather smirked. “There are, what, a half-dozen titles up for grabs this season? That is, young and able-bodied titles. A marquess and a duke on the cusp of middle age are prime cuts, Haven.”
“Thirty isn’t middle age.”
The marquess moved to the balcony balustrade, setting his drink there and looking out over the extensive back gardens of Worthington House. “It’s old enough for marriage to be on our minds.”