Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma

“Oh!” she gasped as she raked her gaze over the familiar masculine form. His relaxed and pleasant smile lent him an air of calm and dignified authority. And safety.

Then terror washed over Cressida, that all her wickedness was about to be revealed.

What could she say that would adequately explain her presence? Dear Lord, she’d been caught. Either she was sneaking after him as if she didn’t trust him, or she was the kind of depraved being who sought out the sins of the flesh in a place like this. What kind of a wife would he think her? Mistrustful? Deceitful? Depraved?

She closed her eyes and forced herself to be calm. She could barely see clearly through the thickness of her veil.

Of course he would have no idea who she was.

“Madam?” He raised his eyebrows in polite enquiry and her resolve shattered. Her husband was smiling at her and every particle of her being answered in a breathless chorus—anything to be in his arms. He was the breath of her life, the sun to her moon, the axis on which her existence revolved. He was the reason she was here, so that she might rediscover the secret of the happiness they once had shared.

“Sir.” On sudden impulse, she swallowed down her fear, forcing a smile as calm and self-controlled as his as she closed the door behind her. Here was her beloved husband, whose heart she believed she still possessed but whose desire she was desperate to rekindle…if what her new friend had told her was true—that passion and pregnancy need not always go hand in hand.

Justin was busy working at something. She knew that his look of polite interest masked the fact that his mind was completely on his task.

He was here…alone. There was a document in his hands. Not a woman.

And he had no idea who his new visitor was. Cressida could say anything, do anything…

The sense of being an actress in a play took hold. Boldly she went over to him, standing in his light just a couple of feet away.

Now his smile was distant and there was a slight wariness in his tone as he murmured, “I think you have lost your way, madam, for the front door is down the corridor to your right. Shall I show you the way?”

She did not move, did not falter as she gazed up at him through her heavy veil. Justin was here at Mrs Plumb’s, exactly where she’d dreaded she’d find him, but his concentration on a particular document suggested his interest in the place was not the women.

Of course it was not, and how like Justin. Justin was just as likely to be concerned over the use of child labour as the rescue of fallen women, but had not wanted to hint to his protected wife that his work involved him with such depraved creatures.

All Cressida’s doubts about Justin’s constancy dissipated to be replaced by the unadulterated joy at the prospect of being taken in his arms once again.

Yet as she stepped forward she felt again the slightest stirring of doubt. Catherine always told her she was much too credulous for her own good.

“Mrs Plumb told me I’d find the gentleman I was looking for in this room.” She made her voice softer, breathier. Holding the back of the sofa she turned, swaying slightly towards him, striving for a tone and gesture both appealing and vulnerable. Justin’s chivalrous impulses were easily stirred. She wanted to see the effect she had on him when she was not his wife but a stranger. An appealing, interested stranger.

She raised a trembling hand to her mouth. “I am a widow, sir. I lost my beloved husband a year ago. Mrs Plumb directed me here. She said you were a kind man who’d listen…if I wanted to talk.”

Despite the dimness of the room she saw indecisiveness cross his face. Justin was a kind man but how far would he allow himself to be swayed by a lonely widow? How much did she want him to be?

She caught herself up. This was madness. She had no desire to be confronted by her husband’s weaknesses—if he had any—yet here they were, in a cosy, intimate setting, where each could pretend to be someone else.

It was too much to resist.

Lowering herself onto the sofa, she tilted her head in invitation. “Just five minutes of your time, sir. Perhaps you knew my husband?”

Justin was on the point of refusing, of kindly but firmly leading the woman out of the sitting room, when his senses switched to high alert. There was something familiar about the line of her throat when she tilted her head, glimpsed for a second through her thick veil. Also, the voice—the soft, breathy tone could almost be…

When she stepped from the shadows and into the light he thought he was hallucinating.

Why, Cressida would no more frequent a place like this than have a public affair with the footman.

Yet the doubt refused to be dislodged.

Frowning, Justin cautiously seated himself beside her as he was bid.

It was impossible to make out her features but the slender line of her body beneath the black silk gown and the swell of her breasts, even more desirable after five children, were devastatingly familiar. He shook his head to clear it. He was being ridiculous. It was wishful thinking or his worst nightmare.

The sofa was small and he sat awkwardly, his thigh touching hers. If this was, in fact, Cressida, he acknowledged wryly, then this tableau promised greater intimacy between them than they’d shared in many months.

Doubt dissipated when she moved slightly and a faint waft of lavender mixed with his wife’s familiar scent confirmed what his sixth sense had been screaming since she’d spoken.