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For long moments Pierce remained where he was, drinking in his wife’s incredible, untainted beauty, not only that which was visible to the eye, but that which was not. How fiercely she protected those she loved, even at the risk of her own safety. And her values—as unsullied and precious as the innocence she’d gifted only to him. A one-guest dinner party and the concept of restoring a battered roof exhilarated her more than a deluge of elegant balls and a strongbox of jewels. Her heart was full—with love, with compassion, with the wonder of discovery. And, by some miracle, that incomparable heart belonged to him.
As his did to her.
Pierce rose, walking inanely about the room. He’d never uttered the words I love you aloud, never even dreamed he was capable of feeling them. But all that was once dead inside him had been reborn that fateful day at Newmarket when Daphne came into his life. And whether he uttered the words or not, they were there.
Reveling in this strange, new emotion, Pierce glanced back at the bed, smiling when he saw how deeply asleep his “untired” wife was. He strolled over to the nightstand, intending to extinguish the lamp. Noting the chaos he’d created in her open drawer, he paused to rearrange the items he’d flung about in his earlier search for smelling salts. He was about to slide the drawer shut when the corner of a sheet of paper caught his eye. The headline, “Tin Cup Bandit Eludes Authorities Again,” immediately captured his attention. Without thinking, he reached in to extract the paper, only to find that it was part of a bound volume of some sort. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Pierce eased the book from its home, opening the volume to scan its contents.
“Bandit Succeeds—Workhouse Prospers!,” was the first headline Pierce turned to. He recognized the article at once. It was one of the first reported by the London Times when the bandit had made his debut amid the beau monde.
Brows drawn in bafflement, Pierce turned the page once, twice, three times. Each page was the same: an article recounting the bandit’s latest crime, right up to his most recent theft at the Earl of Selbert’s Mansfield estate, together with the authorities’ frustration at not being able to thwart the mysterious phantom who preyed on the rich and gave to the needy.
What Pierce was holding was a damned testimonial to the Tin Cup Bandit.
Slamming the book onto the nightstand, Pierce was seized by unreasonable, irrational jealousy that blasted through him like gunfire. At the same time, he was appalled at the ludicrousness of his own reaction. What the hell was he jealous of? He was the bandit, for God’s sake. Not to mention the fact that the bandit wasn’t actually a man, but a legend, a valiant figment of Daphne’s fanciful mind.
But he wasn’t only a legend, damn it. He was flesh and blood, a man Daphne had met in the intimacy of her own bedchamber. They’d stood tantalizingly close, heat blazing between them, and her response to his touch had not been his imagination. He was a man, all right, one who had wanted Daphne Wyndham with every fiber of his being.
What was more, the blossoming woman within Daphne had wanted him, too.
She hadn’t—couldn’t—have recognized that, he argued with himself for the umpteenth time. She was too damned naive.
Still, she’d gazed up at him, adoration lighting those mesmerizing kaleidoscope eyes, and her breath had quickened when he’d come near. Consciously or not, she’d responded to him. And all this time he’d excused it away with the fact that she’d never been this close to a man and was therefore too inexperienced to recognize what was happening or to dismiss it in lieu of something real—the something she experienced in Pierce’s arms.
But she was a married woman now. And she bloody well understood what passion was about. Hell, not mere passion. Explosive, consuming passion that was intensified all the more by the fact that it was rooted in love. She belonged to him, body and soul. So why the hell had she brought that bloody journal with her to her new life as his wife?
No. Any way he contemplated it, the result was the same. His wife, in love with him or not, was at the same time completely enthralled with another man.
Even as he flinched at the thought, Pierce shook his head in self-censuring disbelief. For the love of heaven, he was behaving as if Daphne had been unfaithful to him.
Well, hadn’t she?
No. Yes. In a matter of speaking.
Pierce uttered a muffled curse. His deduction was utter lunacy, and he knew it, and that only served to heighten his rage. Daphne’s betrayal, if one could call it that, was only in thought, not fact. Yet it was still thoroughly untenable. Especially tonight, when he’d finally admitted to himself that he loved her, when the vulnerability spawned by his newly acknowledged emotions demanded that she belong wholly and forever to him.
Determinedly, Pierce lowered himself to the edge of a chair, gripping his knees as he began his evening vigil. He’d wait for Daphne to waken.
At which time she had a great deal of explaining to do.
The heavyset man arrived at Tragmore precisely on schedule. Ushered to the marquis’s study, he extracted a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“You have a report for me?” Tragmore demanded, sipping at his brandy.
“Yes, sir. However, my findings are rather disappointing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Very well.” The man cleared his throat. “Lady Tragmore has received a mere three visitors at Rutland.”
“Really? Who?”
“Your daughter, for one. Accompanied by her new husband.”
Tragmore waved that information away. “And the third guest?”
Pudgy cheeks drooped lower still. “Your church vicar.”
The marquis’s glass came down with a thud. “Chambers?” His eyes glinted. “You’re certain?”
