He laughed to himself, although there was no humour in the sound. The heirs he hoped for were poised precariously between his wife’s hatred and her brothers’ aversion.
He suddenly and sincerely wished that everything could just have been easy.
Lucinda had seen Taylen Ellesmere walk for the door in the company of Jonathon Wigmore some five minutes ago.
All she wished to do was to leave, to run from the farce and close the door against gossip. But to do so would be adding to it and so she stayed, her conversation amenable and her smile bright. Only Posy watched her with any idea of the truth and she made a point not to look in the direction of her best friend at all.
Tonight she was the woman she had fostered so diligently to appear to be since she had arrived here a year before. Poised. Mannered. In such armour she was left alone, the figure of pity waiting plaintively for a husband who she thought would never return diminished into the new persona.
And now he had returned, taller and more imposing, striding into her life as if he had not left it and demanding the production of an heir. As she bit down on her disbelief, the reality of all she had agreed to seemed far more terrible without him here in front of her, yet in the recesses of places she had long since neglected a sense of excitement moved.
She would lie with him for all the long hours of the night. Had he not said so himself? A half-formed smile lifted her lips, and when Edmund Coleridge came to claim a dance she curtsied prettily and allowed him her hand.
Later as Lucinda lay in bed she replayed the conversation she had had with Taylen Ellesmere over and over in her mind.
He had promised her the freedom of deciding the time that they would lie together and he had also promised that she would enjoy it.
Such arrogance was something she would normally find most unappealing, but with Taylen Ellesmere there was a certain truth that saved him from sounding smug. Besides, when he had danced with her at the Croxleys’ ball the touch of his skin against her own had made her feel … excited. Excited for the first time in years, the vibrating possibility of it all leaving her breathless.
He did not wish for a quick tumble, either, but had stipulated the promise of a whole night. It was not some momentary and sordid tryst that he was proposing, but the vow of a lengthy coupling that was … unimaginable. She was beyond the first flush of youth and had never known the things that he spoke of. A sad statement of fact, but true. Pushing back the sheets, she took off her nightgown and wandered across to the mirror on the far wall of her room.
She was not a siren with her small breasts and thinness, but everything looked to be in place, did it not? Turning to one side, she tried to make her stomach extend outwards by arching her back so that an impression of fullness was gained. What would it feel like to hold a child inside her? His child? One hand fell to the curve and she smiled and straightened, her hair falling away from her body in a long and pale curtain. Taylen was probably used to experienced, curvaceous women, women who knew what to do to make a man feel … more than she could. How would she compare to them? The smile on her face was lost.
A knock on the door had her scrambling for her nightdress and dressing gown.
Emerald walked in as she called out for her to enter and her sister-in-law did not look pleased. The conversation they had had when she had come home, she supposed, and the discussion about her intentions of joining Taylen Ellesmere.
‘You do not need to leave with him, Lucy. I would bet my life on the fact that Alderworth is bluffing and if you call it he will be forced to back down completely.
‘Ellesmere is not a man you can play with, Lucinda. He reminds me of the sailors on the Mariposa: harsh, raw men with blood on their hands and childhoods that have crushed any kindness from them. He is worse than your brothers.’
‘He is not a pirate, Emerald. He is a Duke.’
‘The difference only of a title. If he wants something, he will get it. I hope that thing is not you, for if he hurts one hair on your body I will—’
Lucinda interrupted her. ‘I am married, Emerald, and I want to know what that feels like. I want a child and I want a home that is mine.’
‘This one is yours.’
‘No. It is Asher’s, a ducal residence that is passed down across the generations to the next inheritor of the title. I do not wish to still be here when I am thirty and that is not far away.’
Unexpectedly Emerald began to laugh. ‘Asher is hardly sleeping for the worry of what will happen and here you are actually wanting what it is he thinks you do not. Do you love Alderworth?’
‘I barely know him.’
‘But you are happy to take the chance of doing so?’
‘Yes.’
Silence reverberated around the chamber for one long moment and then two. ‘I wish to give you something.’ Emerald reached into the bodice of her nightdress and slipped a necklace from around her throat. ‘I have no more use for this, Lucy, but I swear that it is a formidable talisman.’ She placed the green jade carving in Lucinda’s outstretched hand. ‘For happiness,’ she explained. ‘An old woman in Jamaica gifted it to me and I rarely take it off. But I want you to have it now because in wearing it I will feel that you are safe.’
Lucinda’s fingers closed around the treasure still warm from Emerald’s skin. ‘A well-paid-for heir’ did not quite seem in the spirit of the happiness the jade was imbued with, but she said nothing.
‘And one more thing, Lucy. Men are simple, remember that, and you will know exactly what to do to please them.’
In the light of the candles with her hair down and her turquoise eyes bright with promise, Emerald had the look of an enchantress from one of the story books of Lucinda’s childhood.
‘Simple?’
‘Happy with small pleasures. Sex. Food. And love if it is honest.’
Which mine is not. She almost said it, but didn’t, choosing instead to slip the necklace over her head and position it above the warmth of her heart.
Taylen met Taris Wellingham at the pub of the Three Jolly Butchers in Warwick Lane and was glad when Lucinda’s brother dismissed his servant to another, distant table on his arrival. He had sent the note to Taris after breakfast, hardly daring that he might heed it.
‘Thank you for coming. I know it is short notice.’
Wellingham laughed. ‘The idea of meeting you in a crowded pub allayed my concerns that the engagement would become physical, Alderworth. Words, however, can have the same effect of wrapping their meaning around your throat and squeezing.’
‘Free speech in the broadest sense of the term?’ Tay could not help but feel a certain respect for the man’s intellect as he replied.
‘Exactly. What is it you need?’
‘I have asked your sister to come with me to Alderworth Manor tomorrow, and she has agreed.’
‘You have asked her already?’
‘Last night at the Croxleys’ ball. She has agreed.’
‘Then there must have been a strong reward to entice her to such a promise. She is not apt to sing your praises about anything.’
Disconcerting opaque eyes watched him with all the focus of one who could see to the heart of the matter clearly.
‘Lucinda hates you. How plain do you need to hear it in order to go away, Alderworth, or are you one of those obtuse men who fancy they see hope where there is none and would batter their heads against a brick wall for the rest of their days rather than facing a truth they do not wish to hear?’
‘Going away is no longer an option for me.’ Tay kept his voice low. ‘Lucinda is my wife according to the letter of the law and under the authority of the Church, and I would never agree to a divorce. Besides, I have enough money to care for her now and the desire to do so.’
‘Desire?’ Unexpectedly Wellingham leant forwards and one hand shot out to entrap his in a grasp that was unyielding. A surprising accuracy, too, given his lack of sight. ‘Desire to bed our sister again and then leave her? Desire to beget an heir upon her and then be on your way into the shady corners of the world when nothing turns out quite as easy as you expected it to? That kind of desire?’
Had his wife already spoken to her brothers about their bargain? Surely not. His hand ached with the force of strong fingers wrapped into flesh, but he did not pull away. Let the bastard see how little anyone could ever hurt him again. Aye, Taris Wellingham could break every damn bone in his hand and he would allow himself no reaction.
And then Lucinda’s brother let go, simply sitting back against the fine leather chair and lifting his glass to drink as if nothing had happened.
‘My desire to protect your sister is none of your business, Lord Wellingham.’ Taylen did not make any effort to accord the words politeness, scrawling them instead with the seedy innuendo her brother had read into their meaning.
The show of force from the older man was a smokescreen. He could do nothing legally to stop them leaving and he knew it. Threading his hands in his lap to prevent himself from retaliation, Tay waited. This meeting was not going anything like he had hoped that it would.
‘With a name slathered and immured in depravity, it might be hard to protect anyone or anything, Alderworth. Your history of wildness and debauchery does not make for good reading and a hundred men and women of the ton would swear you are the Devil incarnate. No.’ He shook his head. ‘If we are looking into the etymology of words, I doubt protection in your book has the same meaning as it does in mine.’