She’d married a madman. Her marriage was brokered by one madman and had her wed to another.

Their madness was contagious. Nothing else explained Emmaline, dressed in the most elegant ball gown she’d ever owned, hiding out in the fourth-floor chambers she’d taken as her artist’s studio. Perhaps she’d come in search of her courage. Tonight, she and Arthur were to attend their first ball as husband and wife. Their hosts? Sir Stirling James and his wife. It was madness. And she had no idea who or what she was expected to be.

Here, surrounded by every sort of pencil, paint, brush, paper, and canvas an artist desired, she lived the life she’d dreamed of all the years her father either ignored her or made her talent a curse. She picked up her latest sketch and a charcoal pencil. The portrait of Arthur stared back at her. He’d demanded she find the rooms in the house best suited to her work and make them her own. The day after their trip to the Royal Academy the supplies had arrived with a note.

For my unexpected wife and all her unexpected dreams.

A

And after a fortnight of days of laughter and indulgent outings and nights of the sort of sensual satiation only being seduced by a man like Arthur Farnsworth might bring… what Emmaline feared the most was that it might end. Not the marriage. Nothing short of death ended a marriage. But the companionship, the sense of communion with another person, with Arthur, as they visited bookshops, museums, gardens, the theatre and faced the censure of society together.

Actually, they had not faced it. Not really. They’d stood apart from it. They’d skirted the edges of it. Poked fun at it. The difference was vast between knowing the gossipy chattering of the ton centered on the scandal of her father’s daughter married to a duke’s son, and actually hearing every word being said. The undercurrent of a stream might be ignored, until it pulled a body down and made it impossible to breathe. She had mastered the art of breathing beneath the flood refusing to flinch. It had cost her part of her soul. She did not want that for Arthur.

“My lady, what are you doing up here? And in your new gown and all.” Birdie swept into the room, took the sketch from Emmaline’s hand and began to brush at the pencil charcoal on her fingers. “His lordship is in the foyer pacing a path in that snooty butler’s marble floor.”

“I was hoping he’d forget he had a wife and run along to the ball on his own.” Emmaline plucked the sketch from Birdie’s hand and crossed the room to place it on the large oak desk in the corner. She busied herself arranging the dozens of art books from her library stacked all over the desk. The bottom drawer of the desk stood ajar.

“Not likely. The Captain is besotted. Even a blind man can see it.” Birdie stepped behind her to adjust the combs and pearl-topped pins in Emmaline’s intricate coiffure. The maid touched the diamond and gold filigree chain from which a ruby and diamond pendant dangled against the gown’s daringly low décolletage. “A man doesn’t give jewels like these to a wife he is likely to forget.”

Emmaline snorted. “Don’t make too much of it, Birdie. His lordship is generous to a fault to everyone in his service.” She pulled the drawer open and sifted through the old sketchbooks Mr. Warren had discovered amongst the books of her library.

“I don’t see that butler wearing a ruby the size of a quail’s egg. And his lordship doesn’t look after Mrs. Christian like a dog after the last haunch of beef in the butcher’s window.”

Emmaline smiled in spite of herself. Something about the sketchbooks pricked at the back of her neck. Or perhaps it was the idea Arthur had begun to feel what she feared she felt every moment she spent in a room with him. A dangerous feeling. One which had only ever brought her pain and even then, not as powerful as what she felt for him.

“Have you been looking at my sketchbooks, Birdie?” Emmaline closed the drawer and reached up to straighten one of her ruby and diamond earrings.

“You are going on about sketchbooks and keeping that handsome husband of yours waiting?”

“Birdie. The sketchbooks.” Her tiny bit of hope was for nothing should Arthur discover—

“Your father destroyed it, Miss Em. Those ones there are the only ones left. He may have been a useless waste of a man, but he never failed to cover his tracks.” She put her arm around Emmaline, who rested her head briefly on the maid’s shoulder. “Now take yourself downstairs before his lordship and that butler come to blows. Someone needs to tell him his lordship owns this house, including the marble floors.”

 

***

 

“Have I told you how lovely you look this evening, Lady Arthur?” Her husband’s rich voice had come to own her body in the last few weeks. His question, whispered against the curve of her ear, sent rockets of shivers racing down her spine.

“You told me so well in the carriage we nearly shocked your tiger when we arrived.” The deep heat of a blush crept up her décolletage to her ears. “You are taking the unexpected a bit far, my lord.”

He stroked the back of his fingers down her bare arm and sneaked a glancing touch to the side of her breast. “I have an irresistible inspiration to do so.”

She elbowed him gently in the ribs even as a cascade of pleasure roiled down her body. “Behave. Every person of consequence in London is here tonight. My knees have been knocking since Sir Stirling and his wife greeted us.”

“And here I thought it was Lord Abernathy’s corset creaking.”

Emmaline coughed to keep from laughing as the man in question lumbered by with a pale-faced young lady on his arm. Arthur had not left her side since they entered the ballroom. Sir Stirling and his wife had made it a point to walk down the grand staircase with them. The lady was a duchess in her own right, but she struck Emmaline as a kind if no-nonsense sort of woman. She had promised to pay a call with her sisters in the coming week.

How odd it was—the women who’d pulled their skirts aside as she and Arthur had promenaded around the edges of the ballroom had evoked no reaction at all. Yet, a small act of kindness had brought tears to Emmaline’s eyes.

“You look entirely too handsome, my lord.” She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a Birdie-like once over. Criminal handsome indeed. The stark black of his evening wear—a jacket tailored to fit every inch of his muscled shoulders. His black silk knee breeches had no need of padding. The burgundy waistcoat, shot through with gold silk, matched her evening gown.

“Handsome enough to have the next dance?” Arthur asked. He stood beside her, hands clasped behind his back and watched the miasma of dancers beneath the candlelight of half-a-dozen chandeliers as if he expected a band of pirates to emerge from their midst. Emmaline preferred pirates to the haughty lords and ladies whispering and staring at Reginald Peachum’s upstart daughter.

“I’d rather not.” She caught snatches of whispers to the left and the right of them. About her. Not him. He should not have to suffer for her father’s crimes. This was his world. Men nodded in greeting. To him. They behaved as if she did not exist. Which suited her fine, but with each man who ignored her or woman who gave her the cut direct Arthur’s body hummed with indignation fast on its way to anger. She had not been married long, but she recognized the subtle clues to Lord Arthur in a rage.

“Emmaline—”

“Sir Stirling has been trapped conversing with Lady Buxton for the past twenty minutes,” she offered. “Go and rescue the poor man.”

Arthur sighed. “I wanted you to enjoy yourself, Emmaline.”

“I am. But we must not spend the entire evening in each other’s pockets. They have enough to talk about without us adding to the fire.” She spotted Sir Stirling’s wife, the Duchess of Roxburgh, and some ladies standing in the coolness of the open French windows across the ballroom. “I will go and speak with Her Grace.”

Before he could refuse, she picked up her skirts and pushed her way through the crowd of dancers on the floor. Many a hem ripped and many a gentleman had his toes trod upon as the ladies of good breeding rushed to pull their skirts back lest they brush hers. Emmaline continued, head up with a polite smile affixed to her face.

“Lady Arthur,” the duchess greeted her and began to introduce Emmaline to the ladies with her, her sisters. The rumble of voices rose just as the orchestra struck up a waltz. Emmaline turned to ascertain the source of the disturbance. She barely heard the introductions. All she heard was the thrumming of her heart as her husband strode across the ballroom. The dancers parted for him like ocean waves breaking against a war ship, guns blazing. He was reaching for her almost before he arrived before her, close enough for her burgundy skirts to cover his shoes.

“Dance with me.”

“Arthur, I…”

“Never refuse a man who looks at you like that,” the duchess said. A small but insistent hand at her back nudged her forward.

He swept her into the waltz, steering her against the tide of disapproval and hateful stares. She was sailing on a wave of music. Her course around the ballroom as glorious and powerful as any ship running at full sail under a fearless captain’s hand.

“They’re staring at us.”

“To hell with them.”

“We’re causing a scandal.”

“I damned well hope so.”

“You’re swearing, Captain. In a ballroom.”

“I’m a sailor, my lady. We excel at swearing. Dammit.”

Emmaline threw back her head and laughed. Arthur whirled her into a turn and then another. His wicked grin reached his eyes and she knew no work of art would ever compare with the man she’d married—happy, unexpected, and free of the restraints of duty that always seemed just below the surface of his everyday demeanor. He waltzed her around the ballroom, his gaze never wavered—searing and near to setting her body ablaze.

She’d married him to secure a good name, a name free of scandal and the derision of society. Tonight, she discovered something she wanted more—him, with no thought to what the ladies with their pulled aside skirts and the gentlemen with their vacant, dismissive stares saw when they looked at Reginald Peachum’s daughter. She wasn’t her father’s daughter. She was Arthur’s wife. His wife. Who loved him.

Emmaline stumbled.

“Careful, Lady Arthur,” he said as he caught her. “I don’t mind causing a scandal, but not at the cost of my reputation as a dancer.”

“We can’t have that.” She bit her lip and tried to look anywhere save his face. A mistake, as the view over his shoulder revealed the horrified glares and aghast countenances of half of Sir Stirling and the duchess’s guests. Even as she glided through the steps of the waltz, Arthur’s arms the haven she’d always longed for, she saw them in two’s and three’s—staring, nodding at her, and muttering.

“Peachum’s daughter.”

“How dare she?”

“The Duke of Mitford’s son.”

“Has she no shame?”

“What is he thinking, marrying her?”

The music came to an end. Arthur had maneuvered them so as to stop where Sir Stirling, his wife, and a large group of guests stood. Friendly faces. Smiling. Complementing her husband’s dancing, her lovely gown, and her beautiful jewels. They surrounded Emmaline and shielded her from those who questioned her right to be in their midst. Not for her own shame, but for her father’s. Completely unfair, but not if they knew…

“Don’t you agree, Lady Arthur?”

Emmaline started. The duchess looked at her expectantly. The light of the chandeliers was suddenly too bright. The colors of the ladies’ gowns too garish. The scents of flowers, perfumes, champagne, and too many people in too little space threatened to overwhelm her. Through it all, the pressure of Arthur’s hand in hers, the gentle squeeze, and the understanding in his unforgettable grey eyes steadied her. Loving a man was dangerous. What she needed to do to make it right was complete madness.

“I am sorry, Your Grace, I was woolgathering.” She spoke the words by rote and forced herself to pay attention.

“I said men seem to have no trouble starting a scandal, but we women are usually the ones who have to finish it.”

“Or survive it,” Emmaline agreed. Arthur raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“I think you and Lord Arthur have done far better than mere survival, my lady.” Sir Stirling raised his wife’s hand to his lips. He looked from Arthur to Emmaline and smiled.

“I hope you are right, Sir Stirling. I truly do.”