England, 1877
ictoria awoke to the unmistakable thumps of footsteps approaching her bed. It was devilishly dark in her chamber and she couldn’t see a blessed thing. Her heart kicked into a frantic pace, threatening to gallop from her chest. As horror churned through her, she reached for the nearest weapon at hand, which turned out to be the novel she’d been reading earlier. Fortunately, it had just enough heft to do damage. Blessedly verbose fellow, that Dickens. As the unseen assailant approached her bed, she struck out in his general direction.
Thwack. She landed an appreciable blow in what she hoped was the scoundrel’s face. How dare someone have the impudence to accost her, the Countess of Pembroke, in her bed? Had the world gone completely to the dogs?
“Blast it, woman,” came a masculine growl through the murk. “I think you’ve broken my bloody nose.”
Dear God, she knew that growl, knew it better than her own voice. It mattered little that she hadn’t heard it in months. The velvety timbre hadn’t changed one whit. Nor had its unwanted effect upon her.
“Pembroke?” she asked though she needn’t have. “Is that you?”
“Yours as ever, madam.” The voice was now muffled though redolent with derision. “Although that was not precisely the welcoming I expected.”
“You weren’t expected,” she pointed out, making a concerted effort to squelch the sudden rush of jumbled emotion his appearance had stirred. She could not allow him to see how very much he distressed her.
“Nonsense. I live here.”
“Indeed.” She crossed her arms and glared at him, summoning the hurt and anger he’d dealt her. In the moonlight, she could discern only his broad silhouette, and how she wished she could see more. “Is it possible you’ve been hiding about in the kitchens with Mrs. Rufton for the last few months?”
“When did you acquire such a sharp tongue, my dear?”
He sounded surprised by her ire, the rogue. She hoped she had broken his nose. It would be a suitable punishment, a well-deserved imperfection to disrupt the masculine beauty of his face.
“One can take up any number of pursuits whilst abandoned in the country.” She sighed. “Can you not at least light one of the lamps? I dislike being at a disadvantage to my enemy.”
“Harsh words for your husband. Not even a kind remark or a kiss from your lovely lips?” There was a scuffling sound as she presumed he attempted to light the gas lamps.
That he would jest in such a moment of tumult infuriated her. Had he no feeling? No compunction? No inkling of how he’d torn her down as if she were no better than a crumbling garden wall, leaving her to grow lichens and moss on his vast estate? Being ignored was the gravest form of insult, for it showed an incredible dearth of compassion and feeling both. She must have meant less than nothing to him.
“You’re more likely to receive a kiss from Mrs. Morton,” she snapped.
“Who the devil is Mrs. Morton?” Light flared to life, making her absentee husband visible.
He was handsome as ever, the rotten cad, with thick mahogany hair worn a bit too long, blue eyes, a hint of whiskers shading his strong jaw, and high cheek bones. Some of the ice inside her melted, despite her firm determination to remain impervious. He’d had the same effect upon her from the moment she’d first seen him, and it was equal parts dizzying and infuriating. It wasn’t merely that he was fine-looking and charming. There was some indefinable quality that drew women to him, some rare magnetism that made everyone in a room aware of him the instant he’d entered it, and it vexed her to admit she had fallen prey to his charisma herself.
But not any longer. He still stole her breath, much as he’d stolen her foolish heart. And she still resented him for both. It would seem that little had changed save the level of her exasperation.
“Mrs. Morton is the housekeeper,” she explained to him through gritted teeth. She took great care to draw the counterpane up to her chin, all the better to defend herself.
“What became of Mrs. Grimshaw?” He looked truly perplexed. “Am I not to be made aware of changes in my own household? Why the devil didn’t the steward tell me?”
“There is no steward at Carrington House. As you should know, there hasn’t been one for some time. I wrote you a letter explaining Mrs. Grimshaw had unexpectedly passed on to her rewards and that we were in need of a replacement.” She couldn’t keep the scorn from her voice. She had been installed in his home for mere months and she already knew more of it than he, who had roamed its echoing halls and sprawling fields his entire life. But that was what Pembroke did, she’d discovered. He slipped through life, charming women, using his devastating good looks to his advantage, and happily ignoring all responsibilities. “Very likely you never deigned to read it.”
“No steward? Bloody hell.” He had the decency to look rather shamefaced at the revelation. “I’m afraid my secretary handles the bulk of my correspondence. I shall take him to task for not keeping me aware of the comings and goings of the estate.”
“Yes,” she agreed with feigned sweetness, “you certainly should. I’m quite sure it isn’t as if you merely toss my epistles into the dustbin the instant you recognize my penmanship.”
“I’ve never thrown away a single one of your letters.” Pembroke frowned at her, revealing small furrows next to his eyes. Surely their original source was laughter, she thought, rather than displeasure. A man of his nature spent his days in nothing but self-indulgence and sin.
“Nor have you answered any of them.” Not a single, blessed one. And she had sent many, varying in tone from polite to thoroughly aggrieved. Finally, she had simply stopped writing altogether, recognizing an exercise in futility when she saw one. “Indeed, I daresay you’ve never read them either.”
If bitterness laced her words, there was ample reason for it. She’d been taught well by her mother how to treat her husband. He was to be honored and respected above all. Her proud parents, nouveau riche and not old blood enough for Knickerbocker elite in New York, had gone to great pains to secure an English title for her with their wealth. And secure one they had, such a feather in her cap. The heir to the Duke of Cranley, the very picture of fine, English masculinity. Her mother had returned to New York victorious, determined to follow the same course with her younger daughters.
Victoria had been left alone, mired in the misery of the unwanted. She was no longer an innocent miss who believed her husband cared whether or not she even breathed. He’d dazzled her in the ballroom and then promptly forgotten her on the first day of their honeymoon as he rode back to London and a score of scandalous women.
He sat on the edge of the bed and her gaze slipped to his hands. She recalled too well how they had felt on her body. But those hands had betrayed her, bringing the same forbidden pleasure to countless others in her stead. He caressed the line of her leg beneath the counterpane and she scooted away from his touch.
“I’ve missed you.”
The pronouncement startled a laugh from her. She didn’t trust him. Not one jot. “You’ve arrived in the midst of the night to tell me you missed me? Surely you can think of something more worthy of your silver tongue than that, Pembroke.”
He shrugged as if he hadn’t a care. Perhaps he didn’t. After all, his life was nothing but one long string of balls, opera singers, and whisky-soaked nights. If only she’d realized the sort of man he truly was before becoming his wife, she would have spared herself a great deal of heartache and loneliness. She’d been left an ocean away from her parents and younger sisters, saddled with the duty of a grand and neglected manor and the knowledge that her husband was off reveling in his degenerate life of London decadence.
“I wasn’t aware there were rules for arriving at my own residence.” His hand found her leg again and slid higher, only the barriers of bedclothes and fabric between them. That voice of his was smooth and sinful and deep, putting her in mind of Odysseus and his Sirens. “I know I’ve been remiss.”
His touch wasn’t lost on her. He reached her inner thigh. It would be so easy to give in, allow him to nudge her legs apart, strip away the bedclothes… She had been able to accomplish a great many things during her time at Carrington House, yet she had not been able to become entirely resistant to her husband’s lure. Even now, after months of silence as he betrayed her with half the ladies of London, his caress forced an unwanted trickle of need through her.
Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight him.
She slapped at his hand as though he were an offending insect. “You may continue being remiss. I have no wish for your company now or ever.”
He gave her a lazy smile, dimples bracketing his sculpted mouth. “I’m afraid you’re about to suffer a great deal of my company.”
Pembroke was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen on either side of the Atlantic, and the very worst part of this plain truth was that he knew it. He had a knack for flirting, for giving stolen kisses in the shadows of a ball. He had a gift for making women love him. He’d made her love him, once, though she’d done her best to bury all traces of that unwelcome emotion in the wake of his desertion. It was still difficult to resist his charm when he deigned to ply it, even if he collected hearts the way some men amassed tomes in a library.
“You’ll be back in London in less than a fortnight,” she predicted.
“I shall prove you wrong.” He startled her by moving his caress to her cheek. He had never, not even during their courtship, touched her face. Just a slow, deliberate swipe of his thumb over her cheekbone, his long fingers cradling her jaw. Hardly anything, really. Hardly noteworthy, and yet it chipped at the careful boundary she’d crafted between them.
She tilted her head, severing the contact. “What do you want?”
But his hand merely continued its gentle travels elsewhere. Down the curve of her throat, then sliding to cup the base of her skull. His eyes scoured her face intently, as though she were a book whose meaning somehow evaded him. “Your hair is very pretty. Have I ever told you that?”
“No.” She eyed him warily. There was a time when she would have welcomed his praise, when she’d craved his smallest gesture. When she’d wanted to be more than the American fortune he’d married. But that time had ended. “Sham flattery will get you as far as traveling on a one-legged pony would.” Which was to say nowhere at all.
“What of truthful flattery?” His thumb kneaded into the taut muscles of her neck in lazy circles. “You’re lovely.” His breath teased her lips. He’d drawn nearer, near enough to kiss. He leaned forward.
No. She would not allow him to so easily sway her. He didn’t deserve her, the knave. “Please don’t.”
It was too bad, really, that she hadn’t realized what he was about, that she’d been so pathetically naïve. He had done his best to court her as though it wasn’t her fortune he was after. She knew differently now.
“Don’t what?” He came even closer. “Don’t do this?” Pembroke lowered his mouth to hers for a slow, soft kiss. He fitted his upper lip between hers, gently at first, and then with increasing pressure, catching her bottom lip between his teeth and tugging. “Or this?” He pulled the bedclothes from her grasp.
She wasn’t sure which was worse, his sudden amorous advances after so long a silence or her traitorous reaction to them. He cupped her breasts through the delicate fabric of her nightdress. A slow, languorous ache slid through her, no matter how much she tried to stifle it. Every part of her body reawakened. He’d introduced her to this world of pleasure before shutting her out of it.
“Pembroke,” she protested, but her voice was shamefully weak. She loved his hands on her, always had. The awful man knew his way about a woman’s body, and though it was plainly the result of far too much carnal knowledge, she couldn’t deny the way that particular surfeit of knowledge made her feel. Her nipples hardened.
She forced herself to think of the women whose bedchambers he’d been frequenting during his absence. Their names were a dagger’s prick to her senses. Lady Lonsdale. The Duchess of Eastwick. Mrs. St. Hillaire.
He grazed her lips with his again, exerting just enough pressure to leave her hungry for more. He knew how to kiss, the devil. “Have you missed me?” he whispered into her mouth.
She swallowed, holding herself stiffly, refusing to capitulate. “Not in the least.”
Hadn’t there been the Countess of Ardmore, after all? Lady Northclyffe, too. The gossip had been more prolific than a New York blizzard. At first she’d devoured each troubling bit of news. But it had been too painful, and so she’d stopped her connection with the outside world, save letters from her dear friend Maggie in London and her family in New York, who remained blissfully unaware of her husband’s peccadillos.
His mouth moved over hers with increasing insistence. He smelled divine. Lady Shillington. The actress Lillie Longwood. She bit his lip. Not with enough force to bloody him, but with a pressure that stated her resistance. He could not simply appear in the night and bend her to his whims with his good looks and bone-melting kisses. No, he could not. She was not a twig to bow in the wind of his whims. She was a woman. A woman with a heart and feelings, a woman who’d been cured of the naïveté with which she’d married him.
“Damn it!” He hauled back, staring at her as though she were a creature he’d just witnessed in the wild for the first time. “You bit me.”
“Did I?” She kept her tone light, unconcerned. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“I detect a notable lack of sincerity.” He pressed his fingers to his mouth before holding them out for inspection. “No blood, thank Christ.”
She caught the bedclothes in her hand and held them over her bosom as though it were a suit of armor. “I wouldn’t dream of disfiguring you. What would all your ladybirds think?”
“Ladybirds.” He stared at her, his expression revealing nothing.
Did he think her daft? Well, perhaps she couldn’t entirely blame him for his underestimation of her. After all, she’d been duped by him before, and her stupidity aggrieved her still.
“The women you’ve been taking to bed,” she elaborated. “I won’t call them ladies. It’s a title they don’t deserve, regardless of their ranks.”
“I have no ladybirds. Darling, it’s you that I want.”
The bold pronouncement sent a flurry of old longing through her before she tamped it down. How was it that he could treat her as if she were no more important than a cup of tea and still set her aflame? Thankfully, even if her body and heart were turncoats, her common sense remained. “You cannot expect me to believe such tripe.”
“Believe it, love.” He squeezed her upper arm. “I’ve come for you.”
He had come to Carrington House, yes. But his intentions weren’t as pure as he pretended. Couldn’t be. Not after all this time, all this silence. She couldn’t help but wonder why, given the intervening months and lack of word, he would appear in her chamber, ready to seduce her as though she were one of his strumpets.
Very well, she’d play at his game. All the better to rout her enemy. “Why now?”
“Why not now?” He gave her another maddening kiss.
She broke it, her palms finding his shoulders and pushing. “Perhaps I ought to rethink your disfigurement. I don’t trust you, Pembroke. You’re a stranger to me, and I certainly don’t want your kisses. Surely there are any number of women scattered about London who would be more than eager to receive them.”
“I’m not so strange. I’m your husband.” He slid her nightdress down over her shoulder. “And I daresay your lips might be telling me one tale, but your body tells me another. You aren’t as cold as you would pretend, my girl.”
“You’re five months too late recalling we’re wed, my lord.” How many nights had she lain alone, thinking of his kiss, his hands on her, his body joining hers? Far too many to give in with such ease, her conscience warned her. She did not wish to become a victim to him yet again. “Or do you expect me to believe you’ve suffered a blow to the head and have been wandering about London an amnesiac left with no choice save pilfering the drawers of every woman you can find?”
He nipped the curve of her shoulder with his teeth, sending a shiver of awareness through her. “On that account, I can assure you that you’re hopelessly wrong, my dear. I’ve never once purloined the drawers of any lady of my acquaintance.”
How like him not to deny his sins but to attempt distraction and seduction instead. “That is probably owed to them not wearing any,” she said with grim boldness, not caring if she shocked him. Let him be shocked. Let him be angry. Let him be anything but the cad she’d married, all beautiful of face and silver of tongue.
He cast her an amused glance as he licked her skin. “Have you a peculiar habit of peering beneath other ladies’ skirts? I daresay if you have, I might be tempted to watch.”
The rotten man. She should’ve known she couldn’t shock someone of his reputation, a man who thought he could leave his wife to collect dust in the countryside while he gadded about London, only to return months later with fast hands and a wicked mouth. “Of course I haven’t, you scoundrel.” She shrugged away from him. “If there is anyone in this chamber with a fondness for being beneath other ladies’ skirts, it is you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll own my failings.” He stilled, capturing her gaze with his. Even after all he’d done, the impact took her breath. “I’ve hurt you.”
Pembroke said it as though he were just processing the realization, almost as if the fact that she possessed feelings was a revelation. Perhaps he had never thought of her as a flesh-and-blood woman with expectations and emotions. Certainly, it would have been far more convenient for him that way.
Of course he had hurt her. He’d hurt her far more than she cared to admit and far more than she would admit to him. “You disappointed me and misused me.”
“I’m sorry, darling.” He bent his head and kissed her shoulder again.
She wished that apology hadn’t slid so effortlessly off his tongue, for it only underscored his disingenuousness. But she wasn’t the girl he’d married any longer, now was she? She had come a long way from the quiet, shy debutante who’d been more terrified of London’s Upper Ten Thousand than she’d been of New York’s frigid Four Hundred.
Victoria stopped him again. “No. You mustn’t.”
“Ah, but I must.” Her husband’s mouth was on her neck, kissing a trail over her bare skin.
She steeled herself against him. His brand of persuasion was exceedingly intoxicating, but the price would prove dear. It always had with him. “When last I saw you, your tone was quite different,” she reminded.
“Circumstances change.” Somehow, the bedclothes had pooled around her waist once more. He peeled the fabric of her nightdress back and kissed his way down the swell of one breast.
“How could they have changed so swiftly?” She pushed him away but he caught her hands, turning them over to kiss. “You made it abundantly clear you didn’t want a wife, and you most certainly didn’t want me.”
“I did no such thing,” he scoffed. His teeth scored the sensitive center line of her palm.
Victoria recalled all too well the awful argument they’d had before he left for London. His words still stung, even with the intervening time that had passed. I married you because I had no other option besides penury. My father demanded it. I bloody well never wanted a wife. I’ve done my duty, and now I’m going to carry on living my life as I see fit.
The Duke of Cranley held Pembroke’s purse strings, she had discovered after their nuptials took place. The duke wanted his heir to settle down, and he’d done what he needed to make certain the unruly Pembroke would comply. He’d cut him off. Having satisfied the old man’s stipulation, Pembroke had once again had no need for an unwanted wife. He’d left her behind in the country and pretended as if she didn’t exist.
She’d somehow been foolish enough to believe he held her in regard, but he had merely been good at manipulation and getting what he wanted. She had begged him to stay, and he’d looked through her as if she were a piece of furniture in his study. Expendable. The reminder was like stepping into a hip bath of ice water. She shoved him. “Go away, Pembroke.”
He rolled over onto his back, his big body stretched out alongside hers, and heaved a sigh. “I can’t go away. I live here.”
“You live in London,” she countered.
“I live wherever I choose.”
She supposed he did. But he’d chosen to live as far away from her as possible. Victoria straightened her nightdress and propped herself up on her elbow to study him. “Why have you decided to return to Carrington House? Truly?”
He skewered her with a ferocious frown. “Why pepper your husband with blasted questions when he’s just returned home? Should you not be overjoyed to see me?”
Victoria considered him, wishing he was not quite so debonair, not quite so compelling. Not quite so likeable in spite of his voluptuary ways. His teasing air and persuasive kisses were like wine. She didn’t dare over imbibe. “No. I daresay I ought not to be. If you think you can return here after mostly ignoring me for the entirety of our marriage and expect a warm welcome, you are positively delusional.”
“It’s only been a fortnight or so.”
Oh he was a maddening creature. “It’s been five months.”
“Dear me. Has it?” The look he directed her way was half sheepish.
And then, like a sudden burst of light in a dark room, it came upon her, the real reason for her husband’s return, for his presence in her chamber, his skilled kisses and roaming hands. Her lips tightened and a wave of fury hit her with so much force her body trembled with it. “You’ve spent the money you received in the marriage settlement, haven’t you?”
He frowned. “Of course not.”
She didn’t believe him. “The duke has cut you off.”
“Lower your voice, my girl. You’ll have all the miscreants belowstairs prattling about us.”
“I am not your girl.” Her outrage heightened at his blasé tone. “The only miscreant in this house is you, Pembroke. Now leave me to my slumber and find your own chamber. For that matter, go back to London. Surely there are any number of women awaiting you. I don’t want you here.”
“I daresay you’ll change your mind. Let’s not make a row of it.”
She gritted her teeth and reached for the Dickens volume, holding it aloft in threatening promise. “If you don’t get out at once, I’ll give your nose another good, hard thwack with Great Expectations.”
Pembroke rose to a sitting position, raking a hand through his already-disheveled hair. “You wouldn’t.”
Perhaps she ought to blacken his eye while she was at it. “I most certainly would. Now get out.”