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“Your Grace?” her maid called from the dressing room. “Did you say something?”
“No. Thank you,” she replied.
Smoothing out her silly letter, she actually found herself smiling. What a little fool she’d been, with no idea at all about what she was talking about with regard to marital harmony. Marlowe didn’t know much either, though presumably Caitlin would teach him about spousal pleasure.
She ripped the paper into shreds and threw it down on the desk. She should have done that the moment she realized that the unfinished letter had been moved with her belongings from the Lindow townhouse to her new home. Instead, she had stuck it in the chamber pot with the vague idea of making Devin laugh by showing him that her ignorance of marital beds extended to more than male nipples.
Devin had been holding the chamber pot. Could he have read that foolish letter?
It seemed unlikely. He was angry about something related to a confession he wanted to make. No marriage foundered on a girl’s silly scribblings to a vicar.
Her traveling costume was made from green striped bombazine, worked around the hem with a border of exuberant flowers and trimmed in cherry. The exquisite lace at the neck was cleverly gathered, enabling the wearer to tighten the bow in front and cover her cleavage.
Or not.
Viola pulled the ribbon out entirely. She moved in front of the mirror to adjust the cherry-colored ribbons in her hair, and glanced down to see that her nipples were covered.
Barely.
She leaned forward and rubbed another layer of lip salve on her lips and tucked the case in her pocket for good measure.
“I’m ready.”
“You are exquisite,” her maid cried, hands clasped.
“Good,” Viola said, smiling at her.
She took a deep breath, calmed the sparks of nervousness in her stomach, and walked down the stairs. She meant to eat everything on her plate because she’d be damned before she’d let Devin think that fear of him had gone to her stomach.
That was crucial.
No matter what he was about to confess, he was her husband, and she had no fear of him.
After breakfast, eaten in polite and punctilious silence, they repaired to Devin’s library. Without the forest of Greek statues, it had turned into a looming room that desperately needed refurbishing. Like the rest of the house.
Viola deliberately reapplied her lip salve at the mirror in the corner over the fireplace, sauntered back to the settee opposite Devin, and sat down, making certain to discreetly tweak her bodice to reveal the maximum amount of bosom.
He leaned against his desk, managing to look twice as tall as he usually was. But there wasn’t even a twinkle of fear in Viola’s heart and she waved her hand at him carelessly. “I am ready.”
A moment later, she found herself staring at him, her mouth open.
Incredulity was her primary response.
“You? That was you? I wondered . . . But you said you hadn’t been to Lindow Castle in years!”
“That was years ago.”
“Who was the woman in yellow shoes?”
His brows furrowed. “Her name was Annabel. She was my mistress and I’m afraid that I misjudged her. As you will recall, at the time I chided her, thinking that you were assigned the role of witness, allowing Annabel to try to force me into marriage. I say ‘try’ because I would never have married her.”
Viola’s gut twisted for the first time and she noted that there was one thing that still frightened her. “Did you love her?”
“God, no,” Devin said impatiently.
Viola smiled.
“I was unfair to her. I misjudged her. She wrote to me several times, and I tossed her letters in the fire. I would offer her an apology now, except she married and moved abroad.”
