Leo hadn’t returned home.
Knees drawn close to her chest, Chloe sat on the sofa in the Ivory Parlor. Laying her cheek to her night skirts, she rubbed back and forth, absently contemplating the bronze sculpture atop the hearth.
Chloe might be a virtuous lady, but she had a former rogue of a brother and enough sense to know that when a gentleman disappeared for hours on end, and into the night, there were few respectable places he might be.
You’ll hear this first. That rake… the one that has your mother weeping and your brother ready to duel me at dawn? That is precisely the man I am…
Her stomach muscles clenched, and she hated herself for caring that he was off doing… doing… rakish things. While she? She sat here, alone, as she’d been sitting, waiting for his return.
Yes, waiting. Because she was not one who’d lie to herself… on either score.
She hated the idea of Leo off with one of his scandalous ladies, exploring the curve of a cheek and a hip that belonged to another, as he had done hers.
The soft tread of footfalls punctured the quiet.
Chloe swung her legs over the side of the couch and quickly rescued Mary Darby Robinson’s works that rested beside her. From over the top of the leather volume, she peeked. Her heart beat harder.
Leo strode past, and then his footfalls stopped.
She yanked her attention downward.
“Chloe,” he greeted with not even the barest hint of enthusiasm.
“Leo,” she returned, lowering the book. “I didn’t—” She gasped. Abandoning all attempts at nonchalance, she tossed aside the leather tome. It tumbled to the floor, forgotten. “My God,” she breathed, rushing over to where his powerful figure was framed in the doorway. The fire’s glow played off the macabre blood staining his face and the beginning shades of purple and blue bruises setting in. She pressed a hand to her lips.
“You are still awake,” he noted tiredly.
“What happened?” she demanded. Taking him by the hand, she tugged him forward. Before he could reply, she pressed her palms against his shoulders and gave a slight push. “Sit,” she ordered. Chloe ran her gaze over his face, assessing his bruises. His right eye had already swelled and showed faint hints of purpling. A faint crack in his left cheek seeped blood. Having suffered through endless rounds of torture at her father’s merciless fists, she well knew the agony of those blows, how a strike to the temple caused a brutal ache. “Oh, Leo,” she whispered.
“It is fine,” he assured.
She was already moving. Reaching the bellpull, Chloe tugged the string. Perhaps he’d been off with another woman and been discovered and beaten by an angry husband. And perhaps she was a pathetic ninny, but Chloe could not turn a cheek to his suffering.
Tomlinson materialized almost instantly. He glanced from Chloe to Leo and then back to Chloe. “My lady?” The absolute composure at seeing his employer in his existing state spoke of one who’d seen Leo in this condition before.
“You needn’t worry, Chloe,” Leo called from behind her.
“I require two bowls of water, a pitcher, and scraps of cloth,” Chloe instructed, ignoring the useless assurances from her husband.
Dropping a bow, Tomlinson set off.
Chloe rejoined her husband at the sofa. Resting one knee on the cushion, she examined his injuries more closely. Her stomach pitched.
“Never tell me you’re going to faint, love,” he drawled, his voice slightly strained.
He was hurting.
Tentatively, she probed a knot at his temple. “I don’t faint.” He winced, and she gentled her touch. Were his injuries a product of a lover’s irate husband? A fight at the gaming tables?
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered.
Chloe paused in her examination. “Would you rather I be the wilting sort?”
Leo captured her wrist, staying her movements. Drawing her hand close, he placed a lingering kiss on the place where her pulse hammered. Delicious shivers radiated from that butterfly-soft caress. “I wouldn’t change you, love,” he murmured, his brandy-tinged breath wafting over her. That always hateful scent, now wrapped in words so beautifully tender, exploded warmth in her breast.
She bit the inside of her cheek hard.
Fool. Fool. Fool. Fool.
Even now, she hurt for a man who neither wanted her fidelity, nor wished to give his to her in return, who likely wore the bruises he did because of another woman.
But mayhap not.
A pair of servants rushed in with the requested items. Chloe jumped up, directing them to set the pitchers and bowls down. While they organized the materials on a rose-inlaid table, she hovered at the fireplace, alongside the bronze sculpture.
She absently trailed her fingertips along the peculiar creature’s face, using the servants’ presence to rein in the sick knot low in her belly at the thought of Leo off whispering in his husky baritone words meant to seduce another. Chloe curled her toes so tight, the arches of her feet ached.
When they’d gone, she returned to Leo’s side. Giving him her back, Chloe grabbed a white cloth and dunked it in one of the bowls. She wrung out the excess water and applied the compress to the worst of his bruises.
Leo flinched.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, knowing firsthand that the pain of a beating came not just in the act, but in the body’s healing.
His gaze pierced hers, eyes that could see through her, if he so wished. But she’d wager her soul on Sunday that there was no woman whose heart or soul Leo would ever have a use or want for. Why did that leave her bereft? Chloe slid her attention back to his injuries.
“You really do not have to—”
“I know I don’t have to,” she interrupted, removing the cloth. “I want to.” Ever so gently, she applied the damp fabric to the cut on his cheek. “How did the other gentleman fare?”
“Immensely better,” he said with a droll edge. He grimaced, and murmuring her apologies, Chloe gentled her ministrations.
He wrapped a hand loosely about her wrist, briefly halting her efforts. She stared at him with a question in her eyes. “I should not have shared what I did this afternoon.”
Chloe didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Contained within his gaze was an insecurity she’d never before seen from him.
Lightly brushing the luxuriant gold strands back from his brow, she tangled her fingers ever so gently in the faint curls. “Do you take me as a woman who’d judge you for your birthright? Who your father was does not define you.” Any more than my father defines me. And yet, she’d allowed the ghost of the late Marquess of Waverly to determine her future—whether or not she would marry or have children of her own. Leo had shown her that. And how very freeing it was. “Who you are is what matters, Leo,” she said softly.
Leo’s throat worked. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.
She offered him a tremulous smile.
A comfortable silence fell, a companionable one that defied the earlier tension that had sent him fleeing the townhouse… to wherever he’d gone. Chloe soaked the rag again and reached for another. All the while, her skin prickled with the feel of Leo’s eyes on her.
“You’ve experience with this,” he noted when she touched the damp fabric to another injury.
She applied a light pressure. “Is that a question about my past?”
A devastating half-grin curled his lips. “Those were my terms, love.”
Just like that, the tension that had throbbed between them since their carriage ride vanished. Chloe pointed her eyes to the heavens. “You’re insufferable.”
“As I’ve been told.”
“Countless times?”
His smile deepened, dimpling his left cheek. “Vast in its sum.”
They shared a smile.
There was a boylike quality to Leo’s teasing that made the cold scoundrel who’d come upon her four days… four years… a lifetime ago at the Earl of Waterson’s a distant figure who might as well have been conjured of one’s imaginings.
Chloe soaked the cloth again and reapplied the compress to his right eye, obscuring his vision. “My brother Alex was often nursing bruises and breaks,” she said softly. Vicious injuries doled out gleefully by their miserable sire. How many times had she been nursed this way by a loyal maid? Or tended wounds left upon Gabriel?
“Your brother Alex would have been better served with better friends,” Leo drawled.
Entranced by the smallest cut at the corner of his right eye, she stared on, transported back to like marks worn by her brothers… and herself. “A better father,” she whispered.
Leo shook his head slowly.
She sucked air in through her teeth. The revelation did not shake the foundation of her world as she’d long expected it would. Chloe stole a peek at him.
“Your father beat your brothers?” he ventured in grave tones.
And me… Her mouth went dry. But God help her, she could not make herself utter that truth. “He did and often.”
“He was the monster you spoke of.”
You shameful, lying bitch… reading smut not fit for a whore…
Chloe’s fingers curled reflexively into the rag, digging into the split on his cheek.
Leo winced.
“My apologies,” Chloe murmured, unclenching the digits. An ache settled at the base of her skull. The ache proved to be a weighted pressure that wrapped around the whole of her head. She bit the inside of her cheek, willing the familiar pain gone.
It was inevitable. Her megrims had been with her the whole of her life, and eventually they would come, and Leo would know and—
The cloth slipped through her shaking fingers, landing with a noisy thwack in the bowl. Water splattered over the rim.
“Chloe? Are you all—?”
One time, her father had dealt her swift blows, simultaneously, to both ears. She’d collapsed, all noise and sound coming from a distance, muffled and muted. Mouths had moved, but the words had emerged murky.
She blinked, settling her gaze on Leo’s mouth. This moment felt very much like that one, and yet not. For this voice was not raised in anger, this face was not mottled with rage, and she clung to those differences in a bid to anchor herself to reality. Chloe struggled to bring her husband’s melodious baritone into focus.
As it had then, all sound and noise came forth on a whirring rush.
Leo palmed her cheek, and she leaned into that gentle touch, one of tenderness and warmth, wholly removed from violence. His hooded gaze swept over her face. “What is it?”
Chloe shook her head slightly. “M-my sister and sister-in-law visited earlier,” she said in a desperate need to shift them to safer discourse.
His hand froze on her. “Did they say something to upset you?”
The hard edge there sent a chill scraping along her spine.
“Did they…” she processed slowly.
He stood.
“No,” she said on a rush. He’d misunderstood the reason for her unrest. “They came to make their apologies and offer us their assistance.”
The tension ebbed from Leo’s frame, and he let his arm fall to his side. “I see,” he said, his brow wrinkled with befuddlement.
“Sit.” Chloe urged him back to his seat. Recovering the cloth she’d dropped, she returned it to the bowl and reached for another. Chloe dipped a new rag into the slightly cooler water. “We spent the day strategizing how best to help with what you require—being respectable. And… Was it over a woman?” The question tumbled forth before she could call it back. Chloe bit the tip of her tongue.
Leo stiffened.
“Yes.”
Her husband didn’t even pretend to misunderstand, and the automaticity of that reply hit her like a fist to the belly. He met her gaze squarely. She searched, wanting… nay, needing to see remorse, regret. Something. Just not this impenetrable emptiness.
“Was it the lady’s husband?” she asked quietly. Why did she continue to torture herself?
He nodded once.
“I… see.” With shockingly steady fingers, she set the cloth down. She braced for him to hurl those reminders about the type of man he was and how she needed to accept that she’d wed a rake, and other useless reminders.
His silence, therefore, stood out stark, more potent for its solemnity.
Flustered, Chloe tidied the makeshift medical station. She was wringing out wet rags and laying them to dry, folding untouched ones into neat, methodical squares. All the while, Leo watched her.
When she’d finished, she put several steps between them.
At last composed, she looked at Leo. “I agreed to help you, my lord.” He stiffened. Was it the fact that she was even now calling him out or her use of his formal title that he took umbrage with? “H-however…” She faltered slightly as he unfurled to his full height. Quickly regaining her composure, she went on. “Anything I do will be in vain as long as you are off seducing other ladies.”
He took several steps closer. Those steps were the sleek, pantherlike ones of a man on the prowl. The seducer had returned. She knew it by the way he lowered his thick, long, golden lashes and the curve of his hard—and damn him, tempting—lips. As he spoke, the sough of his breath fanned her cheeks. “So I’m not to seduce other ladies, which begs the question…”
“Th-the question?”
Leo placed his mouth close to her ear, and she slid her eyes closed. All her senses and nerves went on alert, vibrating and alive. Because of him. For him. “Who is the lady I should be seducing?” His lips caressed the shell of her ear in a fleeting silken kiss.
Chloe remained trapped in a web of desire only this man was capable of weaving. She was the prey trapped by a spider, wrapped and twisted, to be devoured by him. As if he’d sensed her weakness, he curled his palms under her buttocks, shifting her closer.
Chloe tipped her head back, wanting him, wanting his kiss, and his touch, and everything that would lay her bare and open before him. She yearned to taste desire and passion in his arms. He lowered his mouth to hers. And yet—
Chloe turned away. His kiss landed sloppily, grazing her cheek.
She’d not humble herself before a man who that very night had been beaten for the attentions he’d bestowed upon another woman.
She stepped out of his arms. “In two days, there is a ceremony at my sister’s institution. She has asked us to be there.”
“Very well. I would ask that we host a soiree.”
Of anything he might have said, that certainly hadn’t been what she’d expected. She eyed him warily. “You promised I wouldn’t be required to host any events.” With the unpredictability of her headaches, the din of a crowded ballroom and crush of bodies within formal halls had always proven perilous.
Leo gathered her hand and drew it to his mouth. He placed a lingering kiss upon her knuckles. “I’m not demanding it, Chloe. I’m asking you,” he said simply.
She bit down on her lower lip. Damn him for not making demands and being so blasted… polite with his request.
“There is nothing that demonstrates more clearly to Polite Society that I’ve reformed my ways than our hosting, as a newly married couple, a formal gathering. A respectable one,” he tacked on, almost as an afterthought, a reminder that he was known for throwing scandalous affairs whispered about behind closed doors.
Chloe chewed at the tip of her index finger. Leo was correct. Establishing themselves as a leading host and hostess among the ton could only benefit him in his quest, and Chloe in her goal of becoming headmistress.
She didn’t blink for several moments.
For she hadn’t, since her marriage, given much thought to her hopes for Jane’s school. The muscles of her stomach knotted. How had the role of headmistress, the single-minded goal she’d set for herself, become singularly forgotten since she’d wed Leo?
It was simply because of the whirlwind of her marriage. Her whole life had been thrown into an upheaval. Yes, that was surely the reason for it all.
Calmed by the reassurance, Chloe conceded the point. “Very well. We’ll host a small soiree.”
“We need to act quickly. The event must take place next week at the latest.”
She sputtered. “At the latest?” She’d never personally thrown a function and had avoided her mother’s planning of them like the Great Plague. But Chloe knew enough that such events were certainly not thrown together in a week’s time. “It’s impossible, Leo. There are the invitations and the orchestra and flowers and… People likely already have commitments by this point, anyway.”
He snorted. “Not a single lord or lady would neglect an invitation from Society’s most scandalous couple.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t say we are the most scandalous. Simply that we were caught in a scandalous situation.”
“Chloe?” he prodded.
Goodness, he was determined.
“Do we even have the funds for such a venture?”
“You’ll have what you require in terms of monies.”
Questions sprang to the tip of her tongue about how, but she set them aside for the more important matter at hand.
Chloe released a beleaguered sigh. “You ask too much.”
“It needs to take place within a week, Chloe.” Her husband reached inside his jacket and drew out a folded sheet of paper. “I’ve taken the liberty of assembling names of the dullest gents I’d never dare entertain,” he explained, handing over the scrap, his notes written in pencil. “However, for the sake of what I require, I’d like these gentlemen and their families invited.”
Not taking the sheet, she ran her gaze over the rough list. At the top, the Earl of Waterson’s name stood out with those of other, less familiar yet notoriously stodgy, lords underneath. “You’ve given this a good deal of thought,” she finally said, briefly lifting her head.
“Indeed.” Leo waved the scrap. “There are my debts to consider.”
“Of course,” she said, bitterness creeping in. Chloe accepted the sheet, and her fingers brushed Leo’s. The familiar electric warmth tingled at the point where they touched.
She made to draw her hand back… and then froze.
Chloe stood motionless, her gaze riveted upon his hands.
Her husband promptly let his arms fall to his sides, clasping them behind his back. He cleared his throat. “I thank you for agreeing to host an event.” My God. He is rambling. Always composed and smooth and unaffected, his words now rolled together. “Again, it needs to be soon. No more than a week’s time.” He dropped a quick bow and, without another word, left.
Chloe stared at the doorway long after he’d gone.
Despite his hasty flight, she’d already seen that which he’d clearly attempted to hide—his hands had revealed not a hint of evidence of one who’d beaten another gentleman. Surely there would have been a cracked or bruised knuckle, something to indicate he’d delivered a blow himself.
She frowned.
How many secrets did her husband carry? As she quit the room and sought out her chamber, Chloe resolved to find out.