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He did not know what it was today.
“With me,” she clarified. “You don’t want any part of a life with me.”
“No.” It felt like a lie. He had wanted it. He’d intended to marry her—this vibrant, funny, beautiful woman who seemed to know more about joy and love and family than he ever had. And then he’d realized she wasn’t real, and neither was what they had.
“Then why not let me go?”
Because I still want you. “Because this is the bed in which we lie.”
She was silent for a long moment—long enough that he thought to look back at her, even as he refused himself the gift of it. The pain of it. This was the battle they fought.
“What do you wish? Do you wish me to get on my knees? To beg you for my freedom?”
He did turn back at that. “Would you do it?”
Her eyes, cerulean and stunning, slayed him with their shock. She’d meant it as hyperbole. And now, suddenly, it hung between them. “Is that what it would take to win my freedom? To win my sisters’?”
“If it were? Would you beg?” He hated himself for the question.
And then he hated her, when she said, “I would.” She would do anything to be rid of him. And he could not blame her.
“Get out,” he said, turning back to the window.
“I could leave. I could run.” She spat the words.
He waved his hand at the door once more. “By all means.”
She couldn’t run, however, not without bringing down her sisters, and she knew that. He did, too. Sera had always been the noble one. Even in deception.
Her skirts rustled against the carpet, and for a moment, he imagined that she might have done it, lowered herself to her knees. Offered him a plea like a serf to a king. Instead, she spoke all too near. “Do not ever imagine that I do not see what you do,” she said. “You play the dog in the manger. You don’t want me. But you don’t want anyone else to have me, either.” He faced her, hating the guilt that threaded through him at the words. “You are punishing me. And doing a superior job.”
She was right. It was one or the other. It might have been both. But he was so blinded by betrayal and anger that he couldn’t have said which. All he knew was that he wasn’t letting her go.
Even as he knew it made him the worst kind of man.
She seemed to see it, though, taking a deep breath and closing in on him like a huntress, setting a single finger to his chest, strong as steel. Just as she always was. “Fair enough. You do what you must to me, Malcolm. You blame me for my betrayal, and for the shattered remains of what was once promised to us.”
“I do blame you,” he said, backing away from her. “Make no mistake.”
She pursued him. In this, unwilling to let him hide. “Then blame me. They have nothing to do with it. And I expect you to fix this.”
It was an impossible request. Once the gossip rags had their teeth in a tale, they held on until it was dead. She knew that. She and her sisters had been called the Soiled S’s since her coal-baron father had come down from Newcastle with five beauties in tow. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before, Sera.”
The words were a mistake.
She turned on him, and he saw the rage in her face. “Before? Before what? Before you stumbled onto the balcony that night? Before you urged me to dance? Before you kissed me? Before you sent a carriage to fetch me to your country house? Because, as I recall it, there were two of us on the floor of your study, Duke. Not just Delilah, with her wicked blade.”
His anger rose, too, along with guilt and frustration and—goddammit—desire. And he approached her, pulling her close. “You were Delilah,” he growled. “Delilah and Salome and Diana . . . goddess of the damn hunt.” He paused. “And I the blind, fat bull.”
“What nonsense,” she spat back, meeting him without fear. “You think I do not remember? How you opened my gown? How you lifted my skirts? Who begged then, Duke?” She laughed, the sound a wicked sting. “I wish I could take it all back. What a mistake I made.”
He pulled her close, and she bent backward, over his arm, his lips lingering at her skin, loving the warmth and the scent and the feel of her even as he hated himself for being drawn to her. For wanting her so desperately. For being unable to give her up. Even as he hated her for wanting to go. “You say you made a mistake.”
The words were air at her throat, and he imagined he could see the proud pounding of her pulse beneath them. “The worst of them.”
“Tell me precisely what it was. Was it the trap that was your mistake? Or the fact you were caught setting it? Would you do it again if you could be certain I’d never know what you’d planned? How you orchestrated it? How you lured me in?”
Her gaze flew to his and he saw the pain in her eyes the instant before she confessed. “Of course I would.”
For the rest of his life, he would wonder why he kissed her then, crushing her mouth beneath his until they were both gasping for breath. Until her arms were wrapped around his neck and she was matching every touch, every groan, every caress. And he would wonder why she kissed him back instead of pushing him away and leaving him forever. Perhaps it was because in passion, they saw the truth—that they were perfectly matched in strength and power and desire. Perhaps it was because, in those moments, there was a tiny thread of hope that they might find each other again, when their anger had passed and there was space for something else.
Or perhaps it was because he loved her, and she loved him in return.
Chapter 16
Lawn Bowls? Or Courtship Goals?
“Come along, Emily, toss the kitty!”
“Oi! Don’t rush her! You take your time, Lady E. Get it just right.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s lawn bowling, not surgery, Em.”
“All right!” Lady Emily found her voice, and Sera could not help but smile. “I’m throwing it.”
“Tossing it,” Seline corrected, quickly adding when the entire assembly looked to her, “What? That’s what it’s called.” She added under her breath, “It’s not my fault I’m married to a sportsman.”
Sera resisted the inclination to suggest that lawn bowls were not precisely sport, and most definitely not when played by eight women in the gardens of an Essex manor house.
A cheer went up when Emily tossed the small ball the ten yards or so necessary to start the next round of bowls, punctuated by a cacophony of barking from the Marchioness of Bumble’s dachshunds and Sesily’s “Cor! That’s a good arm, Emily!”
Lady Emily blushed prettily and dipped her head, uncomfortable with the praise. “Thank you,” she said softly. “It is a good throw, rather, isn’t it?”
“No one likes a lady with confidence, Emily,” her mother called out from where the older women were assembled beneath several large shades nearby, fanning themselves and watching the game with frustrating focus. “You shall never win the duke’s attentions if he thinks you prideful.”
Emily’s face fell. “Yes, Mother.”
“If we ever see the duke, you mean,” Mrs. Mayhew said before barking, “Shoulders back, Mary. He could arrive at any time.”
Sera did not think Malcolm would come anywhere near lawn bowls, but she avoided saying so, turning her back to the mothers with a bright smile for Lady Emily. “I thought it was a terrific throw.”
“Toss,” Seline said again, following the groans that ensued with, “I agree. Also, don’t ever listen to your mother, Emily. Decent men like a woman who knows her value.” She paused, then said, “Though I’ll grant that we’ve seen no evidence that Haven is a decent man.”
Sera sighed. “He’s a decent man.”
“I should demand proof of it before I agree to marry him, girls,” Sophie said from her place near a stack of blue bowls.
Her sisters were dangerous, indeed. If they did not stop with their snide comments, Haven might well be without a betrothed in the end, which would render this entire exercise moot and leave Sera without a divorce.
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She would be damned if she was spending weeks at Highley, with its memories around every corner, for a moot exercise. “He is a decent man,” she said, sending warning glares at her sisters. “You shall just have to take my word for it.”
“Not to be contrary, my lady,” Lady Lilith piped in, “but did you not leave him?”
“Lilith!” Countess Shropshire barked. “That’s quite enough.”
“You’re the one who said I should do my best to understand the man,” Lilith pointed out.
“Not like this!” her mother protested. “Be more subtle!”
Lilith grinned in Sera’s direction. “Subtlety has never been my strong suit.”
“Not to worry, Lady Lilith, Duchess isn’t very subtle herself.” Caleb had arrived, looking freshly rested and freshly washed. He raised a brow in Sera’s direction. “After all, she nearly brought down Parliament several weeks ago.”
Sera cut him a look and did her best to change the subject. “Mr. Calhoun! How kind of you to join us. I do know how you enjoy outdoor games.”
“I prefer things where there’s a bit more of a threat of danger.”
“You haven’t played lawn bowls with the Soiled S’s,” Sophie said cheerfully.
“Fair enough.” He looked to the field. “An excellent toss.” He winked at Lady Emily, who immediately blushed.
“Emily!” Countess Brunswick barked again, and her red-faced daughter moved to join her team.
“Stop it,” Sera said, approaching her friend. “You’ll chase them all away.”
Caleb’s masculine pride was palpable. “If you think that girl wants to run from me, you’re losing your understanding of young women in your old age.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I’m barely nine and twenty.”
“Practically one foot in the grave,” he replied.
She huffed her irritation. “How is my tavern?”
He raised a brow. “My tavern is fine. Repaired. The entertainment is passable.” He’d been heading to London nightly to oversee the business of the pub, to ensure the entertainers were safe and the liquor well stocked.
She nodded. “But?”
He tilted his head. “But without the Sparrow, it’s a watering hole.”
A pang of regret threaded through her. She missed the place, the smell of freshly worked wood and liquor, the smoke of the candles and tobacco, and the sound of the music—the best in London, she was certain.
But mostly, she missed herself there. The way she lost herself to the music and became herself. The Sparrow. Free.
“How’s your divorce?”
“If he’d spend time with the girls, it would help.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want the girls.”
“They’re his selections.”
“Maybe he only selected them because he didn’t think you were an option.”
She scowled. “I’ll be back as soon as he picks a wife.”
Caleb grunted, and she did not like the meaning imbued in the sound. “What?”
He rocked back on his heels, fingers in the waist of his trousers. “Nothing. Only that I’m not certain you’re coming back at all if you can’t stand up to your duke.”
She narrowed her gaze with an angry whisper. “What does that mean?”
“You think I don’t know what happens whenever you are alone?” her friend said, all quiet casualness, as though they discussed the weather.
“I think you don’t know a thing about it, as a matter of fact.”
“Sparrow, that duke has had you since the moment you met. And you’ve had him. And neither years apart nor a divorce will change the way he looks at you. Or the way you don’t look at him.”
“You don’t know what you’re on about,” she said, turning away and clapping her hands, marching to the place where the small white ball lay happily in lush green grass. “Which team shall go first?”
The way he looks at you.
He didn’t look at her. He didn’t want her. He never had. And if she didn’t look at him, that was because she had barely seen him since they arrived. Not because she didn’t want to see him looking at her.
How did he look at her?
No. Nonsense. Caleb didn’t know a damn thing about looking.
Thankfully, one could always trust Sesily to distract. “As we won the last round . . .” She paused triumphantly—the words punctuated by a collection of cheers from Sera’s sisters, laughing jeers from the four candidates for duchess, and barks from the hounds at the sideline. “We shall go first! Prepare to be bowled over!”
Several of the mothers harrumphed at Sesily’s brash performance, but as they had quickly learned that complaining about the presence of the Talbot sisters wrought nothing but Sera’s irritation and the sisters’ increased impropriety, they remained tight-lipped.
It did not help, she imagined, that their daughters seemed to like the Soiled S’s. Lady Lilith and Lady Felicity Faircloth—no one seemed to be able to refer to her as anything but her full name—appeared to more than like them, even. They appeared to be influenced by them. Sesily bent to fetch a heavy blue lawn bowl, and Lady Lilith called out, “I, for one, am already bowled over by that frock, Lady Sesily.”
Sesily stood and canted one hip in the gown that might have been called too tight by some, and was certainly called such by the older women assembled. “I am happy to recommend you to my seamstress, Lady Lilith.”
“Perhaps for your trousseau!” Sophie teased.
“Now, now,” Sesily said, after the laughter died down. “Everyone knows Haven has an affinity for women who can command a bowl course.”
“Is that true?” Miss Mary said, concern in the words.
“Very,” Sesily said. “Ask Sera. She knows all about his interest in . . . orbs.”
A septet of women laughed on a spectrum ranging from choke to guffaw. Caleb made it worse when he tipped his hat to Sesily and said, “I’m right. You are trouble.”
Sesily winked. “Only the very best kind, American.”
He laughed, full and welcome, and Sera couldn’t help but join him, forgetting, for a moment, the true reason for their assembly.
Until Mrs. Mayhew reminded them all, slapping her fan shut and rapping it against her thigh. “Really! This is too unacceptable!”
Sesily blinked wide-eyed innocence at the older woman. “I don’t know what you think I am referring to, Mrs. Mayhew. Haven likes bowls.” She looked to Sera. “Doesn’t he?”
“Very much, as a matter of fact,” she said, rather proud of her ability to steel her expression. Sesily Talbot did not simply live up to the expectations for the Talbot sisters—she exceeded them. And Sera had always adored her for it.
Perhaps they could grow old together, partners in ruinous sisterhood.
“And what of the fact that she’s a wicked flirt?” Mrs. Mayhew prodded in ear-piercing outrage.
“I see no reason why that should impede a game of lawn bowls,” Sera said with a shrug.
“Excellent!” Sesily said. “It’s decided, then! If I win, I get the American.”
“And if someone else wins?” Caleb said with a laugh, “Not that I do not expect you to trounce them, Lady Sesily.”
Sesily smiled wide. “Of course you do, future husband. I don’t know . . . if someone else wins, they can have Haven. Isn’t that what they’re all here for?”
Sera’s sisters laughed, as did Lady Lilith and Lady Felicity Faircloth, while Mrs. Mayhew and her poor daughter looked as though they might be sick. Lady Emily did not respond at all. Sera had just decided to step in and stop her sister’s performance when Sesily set her eyes on a point beyond Sera’s shoulder, and she smiled wide. “Don’t you think it a capital idea, Your Grace?”
“It certainly would make things easier.” He stopped behind her, his warmth all she could feel. “Good afternoon, ladies.” The suitesses dropped into curtsies in a bloc, and Haven added, “I feel as though I should apologize for my distance since you arrived. An esta
te of this size requires more than a little attention when I return from town.”
It was a proper lie. Haven had the best land steward in Britain working for him—an older gentleman with immense skill and virtual sovereignty over the land. Haven cared about nothing but the architecture. Sera had never seen a man so proud as when he spoke of the unique rooms of the main house, of the dower house, of the folly that stood in the eastern pastures.
“At any rate, I should enjoy spending a bit of idyll with you. Lawn bowls sound lovely.” He was close to her—far too close considering he was speaking to an assembly of a dozen. And then he turned to her, the question he asked brushing over her skin like a caress. “Is the duchess playing?”
Sesily’s eyes lit up. “Would you like her to?”
Sesily thinks I want you back.
None of this business. She stepped away from Haven, taking her place behind the ball Lady Emily had thrown, doing her best to pretend he was not there, no doubt looking poised and perfect. “I am not,” she said. “I am the referee.”
He nodded and made a show of looking over the field. “And the teams?” he asked, loud enough for everyone to hear, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning to look at him. He sounded—content. As though he’d been looking for something to do with his time, and lawn bowls seemed a perfectly reasonable option.
Suspicion flared, and not a small amount of panic.
What was happening?
Seline leapt in to answer. “The unmarrieds versus the marrieds. And Sesily.”
Sesily sighed dramatically. “Always a bridesmaid.” She looked to Caleb. “American bride?”
Caleb laughed loud and brash, and Mrs. Mayhew harrumphed again from the sideline. Haven ignored the interjection, instead straightening his sleeve and considering the teams in question, which, to any bystander who happened along, would appear terribly unevenly matched.
On the left of the playing field stood four fresh-faced, pretty young women in shades of pastel, each with some combination of hope, excitement, and terror in her eyes, each likely more eager than the next to impress the Duke of Haven and make herself a proper aristocratic match.
