They stayed like that for a moment, neither of them speaking, the baby still silent across the room.
Then he shifted, just enough to ease out of her and settle onto the sofa, dragging her with him. She didn’t resist. Still flushed, still trembling, she let him pull her into his lap. He cradled her against his chest, one hand curled protectively around her thigh, the other—his injured one—stroking her back, awkward but intent. His mouth brushed her damp temple as if the contact steadied him. Her breathing remained uneven. Her eyes—half-lidded, dazed—still held the shock of pleasure.
After a moment, she smiled, alight with mischief. “I didn’t take you for the insecure type. Making poor Mary announce your full rank as though we were at Court.”
That made him lift his head, scowling faintly. “It was protocol.”
“Oh, yes. Protocol. Of course.”
She gave in to laughter now, loose and bright in the quiet room, murmuring something under her breath that sounded very like ‘silly man.’ He kissed her again—fierce, unrepentant, and entirely possessive.
She knew she shouldn’t encourage him—but God, there was a certain levity to it. He’d strutted in like a peacock in full regalia, bristling with medals and masculine pride.
“Jealousy suits you, William,” she murmured, trailing her fingers down his torso. “It makes you desperate. I think I like you desperate.”
He caught her hand before it slipped below his waist. “That’s enough,” he growled. “Unless you want me to take you again, right here.”
“That was exactly my intention, my lord.” She arched a brow, entirely unbothered, then leaned in, slow and deliberate, to nip at his ear.
Chapter 49
True to his word, William began attending Jane’s salons. At first, he stood near the fireplace or the window, hands clasped behind his back like a sentry posted in peacetime. He rarely spoke unless addressed, and when he did, his tone was cool, his phrasing military, and his opinions few.
He listened—though God help him, he often had no notion of what he was listening to. Arguments about poetry he could tolerate, though most of it struck him as overwrought. He held no opinion on whether Lucan’s vision of doomed resistance was more honest than Byron’s self-indulgent despair, nor could he fathom how these arguments could last hours. When the young radicals turned the discussion toward Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, or the collapse of monarchy in France—Mary went pale in the doorway, clutching the tea tray as if it might shield her from sedition.
It didn’t help that they seemed utterly unfazed by the presence of a marquess in their midst. They spoke of revolution as if it were a dinner invitation. One had even referred to the House of Lords as a ‘festering relic.’ William had been halfway through a sip of claret at the time and nearly choked.
They weren’t afraid of him. Worse, they seemed to think he was irrelevant.
He tried, in his way, to keep up. He brought up Tacitus once, clumsily, in a discussion of classical liberty, and was met with indulgent nods, like a child had repeated a grown man’s phrasewith appropriate seriousness. Jane didn’t correct him. She didn’t need to. She simply seemed amused. Always amused.
And that drove him mad. Not as mad, however, as the way they looked at her—familiar, reverent, far too comfortable for his peace of mind. One called her a “brilliant flame.” Another referred to her voice as “music of reason.” A third had nearly kissed her hand—her hand, for God’s sake—before William stepped forward just enough to make the man retreat like a tide going out.
One particular afternoon, the tension boiled to its slow, simmering peak. The topic had turned to the legal fiction of marriage.
Mr. Harrison—a slender, long-limbed man with easy charm and the eyes of a fox—was speaking. He had the kind of voice that unfurled like perfume: languid, beguiling, and just a touch unctuous. William already loathed him.
“Marriage,” Harrison said, leaning forward, “is no sacrament. It is a construct. A legal apparatus designed to reduce women to property. A woman of wit such as yourself, Mrs. Strathmore, must surely see that. You are far too clear-eyed to mistake a chain for a garland.”
Jane didn’t smile. Not yet. She answered him plainly, but her words carried across the room with quiet authority.
“It is true the law grants women little enough. A wife’s property becomes her husband’s. Her wages—if she earns them—are his. Even her children may be taken from her.” She glanced at the baby sleeping in his basket, then looked to William, level and pointed. “But to say that marriage itself is a mere legal trick is another matter. Since the beginning of time, men and women have lived together—and called that bond by one name or another. That is no invention, but nature itself.”
Harrison inclined his head, unbothered. “And yet nature requires no priest, no magistrate. Only mutual will. Why shouldnot men and women live free? Love whom they please, when they please?”
It was a provocation, and William knew it. He stood straighter, his voice cutting across the drawing room like a blade. “Marriage,” he said, “is not simply a matter of law. It is the framework upon which our society rests. It protects women—not only from gossip but from destitution. From being cast off the moment a man tires of her. You would see it demolished—for what? A poet’s fancy?”
From the corner, Charlotte gave a theatrical sigh. “I did not know you were such a stalwart defender of marriage, William,” she said dryly—biting back the rest, wondering how many married women he had debauched over the years.
“This is not the time, Charlotte,” he bit out.
Jane, who had remained composed throughout, lifted her eyes to him. “And yet I should hope marriage offers more than protection, my lord,” she said, tone low but sharp. “More than law or safety. It should be companionship. A promise—to stand together, in joy and in sorrow. A promise made not in law alone, but before God. And witnessed by those we love.” She held his gaze a beat too long.
A murmur rippled through the room. William said nothing. He couldn’t. Not when her words stabbed so cleanly at the hidden truth between them.
Mr. Harrison leaned forward again, triumphant. “And where is your husband, Mrs. Strathmore? He has abandoned you, has he not? Surely you, of all women, can see the emptiness of such chains.”
Jane’s lips curled faintly. She glanced across the room—to where William stood, stiff with fury.
